With the close of 2019, a total of six movies released by Walt Disney Studios and their various sub-brands have grossed over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office: Marvel Comics adaptations Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel, remakes of animated films like The Lion King and Aladdin as well as sequels to highly successful animated films like Toy Story 4 and Frozen II. By January of next year, Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, will join the billion dollar club, bringing Disney's already record-shattering total to seven movies. Disney CEO's Bob Iger's sizable investment in the acquisition of studios Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm has paid off quite handsomely this year.
Since Iger took over Disney back in 2005 and started aggressively implementing his plan of acquiring "high quality, branded content" and building up Disney's IP inventory, this has been the film division's single biggest year, and probably the biggest box-office haul of any studio ever. Given that Disney basically has no plans of slowing down, and that things like inflation mean that billion dollar movies will eventually be easier to come by, and given further that James Cameron's sequel to Avatar is due to come out from Disney in 2021, the same year Disney will be releasing three new Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, it's reasonable to argue that they could conceivably scale such box office heights again in the future.
I will argue, however, that this is not quite as likely as it may seem, and I'll go over the reasons one by one. There are five key elements to Disney's record-breaking year that may or may not ever come together again.
1. Avengers: Endgame, for example, the linchpin of the Disney's phenomenal 2019 success story, wasn't just a movie, but a once-in-a-22-film event. It was the kind of payoff that had never been seen before on film and will most likely never be seen again, not even from Marvel itself. Sure, they could conceivably create pent-up demand for another Avengers megastory, but it won't feel new anymore, and when something has been done, diminishing returns is almost an inevitability. While I'm sure Marvel will continue to chug along like the well-oiled machine that it is, I'm almost certain that Endgame is a high point in history it won't be able to repeat. Marvel will most likely continue to churn out billion-dollar grossers at the rate of at least one a year, but I really, really doubt it'll be able to capture the zeitgeist in quite the same way again.
2. With The Lion King, Disney has adapted the last of the films that, from 1989 to 1994, marked the renaissance of its animation division under its then-boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. Almost every movie that came out after the original Lion King in 1994 followed a distinctly downward trend in terms of grosses, which culminated in Pixar knocking Disney off its perch at the top of the animation heap, and with Pixar bosses John Lasseter and Ed Catmull taking over Disney animation. Next up is Mulan, which has already proven to be a lightning rod for controversy thanks to comments of its lead star expressing support for the Hong Kong police, who have gained infamy for their rampant human rights violations in handling the protests that have shaken the city for the last several months. Not only that, but even before that became a talking point, it had the dubious distinction of being the very first adaptation of a Disney musical without any of the songs, and it carries an eyebrow-raising pricetag of $300 million, all on top of the fact that the original film was not quite the most loved of all Disney musicals. Assuming Mulan manages to do well, though, I doubt it'll scale Lion King heights, and I doubt they'll have two billion dollar adaptations in a single year.
3. Pixar is a reliable force at the box office, but the best thing about them is also the thing which casts into doubt Disney's ability to generate another 7 billion dollar grosser year. The fact that they're willing to take risks with original content rather than constantly regurgitating sequels for fans means billion-dollar hits like Toy Story 4 or The Inredibles will often take a back seat to original films like Onward and Soul, which may or may not hit the magic billion-dollar mark.
4. Disney animation, like Pixar, is quite capable, under its current management, of generating four-quadrant blockbusters that please critics and awards bodies (e.g. Zootopia), but as with Pixar, not all of its films are billion-dollar year sure things. Even sequels to successful films like Wreck-It-Ralph can still fall short of the ten-figure mark.
5. Finally, the future success of Star Wars after the conclusion of the Skywalker saga with this year's Star wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is basically a huge question mark. The abject failure of last year's anthology prequel Solo exposed a huge chink in Lucasfilm's armor, and the tumult surrounding the new trilogy has further cemented a view shared by many fans that the single biggest problem of the Disney/Star Wars empire is that there isn't any real battle plan moving forward. The good news, though, is that film production has been brought to a halt while Lucasfilm takes a moment to rethink its approach to telling stories in this universe. Until they come out on the other side, though, their ability to make hits on the scale of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, which benefited hugely from pent-up anticipation, is still in question.
In short, for all the fanboys and girls who sat through these seven films, I think it's quite possible we've all witnessed history this year.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Friday, December 20, 2019
It's Not Quite the Epic Sendoff Many Were Hoping for...But That's OK: A Review of Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
directed by J.J. Abrams
written by Chris Terrio, Abrams, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow
I've noticed it's become quite fashionable among critics to thrash the so-called "final chapter of the Skywalker Saga" or Star Wars: Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker. While the film hasn't exactly achieved Batman v. Superman levels of infamy its score over on rottentomatoes.com is currently the worst of any Star Wars movie that has been released in the Disney era. Many writers have called it a regression, repudiating Rian Johnson's "bold choices" made in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, while its defenders are happy to see a lot of the creative decisions of the last film chucked out the window, with at least one of the defenders promising that viewers who liked The Last Jedi will hate this movie.
Well, never one to be stuck in boxes, I have to respectfully disagree. I genuinely enjoyed The Last Jedi, both for its story and how it flipped the bird at some overused story tropes, and I also genuinely enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, even as I acknowledge that it is a deeply-flawed film. Ironically enough I'll concede that it's possible that the rash of bad reviews actually helped temper my expectations and enabled me to enjoy the movie more than I otherwise would have.
J.J. Abrams dives right into the story from the opening title crawl: Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), believed dead since the end of Return of the Jedi 36 years ago, turns up alive and in command of a massive fleet of Star Destroyers. As a result, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher...more on her later) must dispatch Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) to investigate reports of this return, and of a spy in the First Order willing to help the Resistance. Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) continues her Jedi training under Leia's tutelage, while over at the First Order, newly-crowned Supreme Leader Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo (Adam Driver) seeks to kill Palpatine, who poses a threat to his power. The one-time galactic emperor, however, offers Ren greater power than he has ever known before, all if he can kill Rey, the last Jedi. Ren, however, has other plans, and continues his plan to turn Rey over to the dark side, even as Rey, Poe and Finn learn that the only way to find the Emperor and his fleet is through a Sith wayfinder. Thus, the three of them must find the wayfinder before Palpatine unleashes the power of the Sith fleet on what remains of the Resistance.
This film had quite a bit to do: it had to cap off Disney's new sequel trilogy of Star Wars films and tack on a satisfactory ending to a saga that many people had already considered finished over three decades ago. Given the lack of a coherent overall story plan, the disparity of creative vision between creators, and the untimely death of one of the actors playing a pivotal role in this new saga, this was always going to be a tall order. In short, this film was never going to be on the level of Avengers: Endgame but to my mind, it was nowhere near the dumpster fire that a lot of mainstream critics are making it out to be. In fact, it managed to be quite enjoyable.
I suppose I'll never know if it was always Abrams' intent to bring back Emperor Palpatine or if his hand was forced by the events of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson quite abruptly killed off Supreme Leader Snoke, the big bad guy Abrams had introduced. To be fair, though Abrams puts Palpatine to good use in one sense, even if he feels distinctly underused in others. By setting up the movie as a race against time and pitting the heroes against a definitive big bad guy other than Ben Solo, furthermore, Abrams also offers Kylo Ren, one of the richer characters of this new story, a path to redemption, and it was interesting to see where that went.
Unfortunately, in the name of wrapping everything up Abrams makes some creative choices that I dare not spoil, that don't completely undo the film, but which compromise it quite a bit. It's the kind of plot that won't hold up to scrutiny, even without something as convoluted as time travel gumming up the mix. Most likely aware of this, Abrams keeps things moving quite briskly and imbues the film with quite a bit of atmosphere to distract audiences from some of the film's fundamental shortcomings. I particularly liked a sequence in which the lead characters visited a planet with a haunting relic from the original trilogy.
I also liked the way Abrams revisited some of his "mystery box" threads from The Force Awakens, and paid them off in a way that, while arguably contradicting some of Rian Johnson's declarations in his film, were pretty skillfully written around them in such a way that the picture Johnson painted wasn't false, just incomplete. Suffice it to say that the issue of Rey's parentage is revisited, and quite satisfyingly resolved, to the extent that even my biggest problem with The Force Awakens has been laid to rest.
One thing Abrams could not write or shoot around, though, was Carrie Fisher's tragic death, which left him with eight minutes of cut footage from The Force Awakens with which to fulfill General Leia's preordained role as Rey's teacher in the Jedi arts. He tries mightily to make it work, but the execution comes across as goofy as hell, with ridiculous dialogue like "never underestimate a droid" and "try to be positive" being awkwardly shoehorned into conversations about the fate of the entire Resistance. I'll credit Abrams at least for not cursing his movie with a CGI simulacrum of Carrie Fisher, at least not for any substantial period of time, but the fact that he (and presumably producer Kathleen Kennedy) were adamant on this arc for Leia even after Fisher's death really works against this movie.
The living actors, however, do an incredible job of selling this movie, especially Driver (the breakout star of the entire franchise, in my opinion) and Ridley, whose Rey doesn't quite get the hero's journey she deserves, but faces more conflict in this film than in any other in the trilogy. Even when the script is basically struggling to maintain coherence and even logic, these thespians just solider on and ultimately elevate the material. If I'm honest, it's really hard to hate a movie with actors working this well. The climactic light saber fight we glimpsed in the trailer was appropriately intense and, to my mind, arguably one of the best of the entire 42-year-old franchise. The other two of the "big three" characters of the new trilogy are inevitably sidelined, though they do get some love from Abrams. Boyega's Finn gets a nice little mini story with another stormtrooper-turned-rebel (Naomi Ackie) who feels like a much better storytelling match for him than Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico given their shared history, while Isaac's Poe gets an awkward but entertaining side story with someone from his past as a smuggler, the helmeted Zorri Bliss (Abrams' frequent collaborator Keri Russell). There's even a little suggestion that Finn may be a bit of a Force wielder himself, but it's never a real payoff.
I'm sure I'll do a more comprehensive postmortem of the new trilogy someday (as will many, MANY other people) and I feel that this new series would have greatly benefited from a more coherent master plan, similar to what tied together the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm not of the persuasion that George Lucas would have done any better than the current crew as I am still of the opinion that the prequels were by and large terrible, but at least some kind of grand outline would have done the storytelling a power of good.
Ultimately, I submit that while this film is not the disaster many are making it out to be, even the diehard fans have to acknowledge that this is not the best sendoff such a beloved franchise as this could have gotten. Given that the Skywalker saga has gotten a bit long in the tooth, though, it's just as well that, one way or another, it has ended.
6.5/10
written by Chris Terrio, Abrams, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow
I've noticed it's become quite fashionable among critics to thrash the so-called "final chapter of the Skywalker Saga" or Star Wars: Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker. While the film hasn't exactly achieved Batman v. Superman levels of infamy its score over on rottentomatoes.com is currently the worst of any Star Wars movie that has been released in the Disney era. Many writers have called it a regression, repudiating Rian Johnson's "bold choices" made in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, while its defenders are happy to see a lot of the creative decisions of the last film chucked out the window, with at least one of the defenders promising that viewers who liked The Last Jedi will hate this movie.
Well, never one to be stuck in boxes, I have to respectfully disagree. I genuinely enjoyed The Last Jedi, both for its story and how it flipped the bird at some overused story tropes, and I also genuinely enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, even as I acknowledge that it is a deeply-flawed film. Ironically enough I'll concede that it's possible that the rash of bad reviews actually helped temper my expectations and enabled me to enjoy the movie more than I otherwise would have.
J.J. Abrams dives right into the story from the opening title crawl: Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), believed dead since the end of Return of the Jedi 36 years ago, turns up alive and in command of a massive fleet of Star Destroyers. As a result, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher...more on her later) must dispatch Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) to investigate reports of this return, and of a spy in the First Order willing to help the Resistance. Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) continues her Jedi training under Leia's tutelage, while over at the First Order, newly-crowned Supreme Leader Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo (Adam Driver) seeks to kill Palpatine, who poses a threat to his power. The one-time galactic emperor, however, offers Ren greater power than he has ever known before, all if he can kill Rey, the last Jedi. Ren, however, has other plans, and continues his plan to turn Rey over to the dark side, even as Rey, Poe and Finn learn that the only way to find the Emperor and his fleet is through a Sith wayfinder. Thus, the three of them must find the wayfinder before Palpatine unleashes the power of the Sith fleet on what remains of the Resistance.
This film had quite a bit to do: it had to cap off Disney's new sequel trilogy of Star Wars films and tack on a satisfactory ending to a saga that many people had already considered finished over three decades ago. Given the lack of a coherent overall story plan, the disparity of creative vision between creators, and the untimely death of one of the actors playing a pivotal role in this new saga, this was always going to be a tall order. In short, this film was never going to be on the level of Avengers: Endgame but to my mind, it was nowhere near the dumpster fire that a lot of mainstream critics are making it out to be. In fact, it managed to be quite enjoyable.
I suppose I'll never know if it was always Abrams' intent to bring back Emperor Palpatine or if his hand was forced by the events of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson quite abruptly killed off Supreme Leader Snoke, the big bad guy Abrams had introduced. To be fair, though Abrams puts Palpatine to good use in one sense, even if he feels distinctly underused in others. By setting up the movie as a race against time and pitting the heroes against a definitive big bad guy other than Ben Solo, furthermore, Abrams also offers Kylo Ren, one of the richer characters of this new story, a path to redemption, and it was interesting to see where that went.
Unfortunately, in the name of wrapping everything up Abrams makes some creative choices that I dare not spoil, that don't completely undo the film, but which compromise it quite a bit. It's the kind of plot that won't hold up to scrutiny, even without something as convoluted as time travel gumming up the mix. Most likely aware of this, Abrams keeps things moving quite briskly and imbues the film with quite a bit of atmosphere to distract audiences from some of the film's fundamental shortcomings. I particularly liked a sequence in which the lead characters visited a planet with a haunting relic from the original trilogy.
I also liked the way Abrams revisited some of his "mystery box" threads from The Force Awakens, and paid them off in a way that, while arguably contradicting some of Rian Johnson's declarations in his film, were pretty skillfully written around them in such a way that the picture Johnson painted wasn't false, just incomplete. Suffice it to say that the issue of Rey's parentage is revisited, and quite satisfyingly resolved, to the extent that even my biggest problem with The Force Awakens has been laid to rest.
One thing Abrams could not write or shoot around, though, was Carrie Fisher's tragic death, which left him with eight minutes of cut footage from The Force Awakens with which to fulfill General Leia's preordained role as Rey's teacher in the Jedi arts. He tries mightily to make it work, but the execution comes across as goofy as hell, with ridiculous dialogue like "never underestimate a droid" and "try to be positive" being awkwardly shoehorned into conversations about the fate of the entire Resistance. I'll credit Abrams at least for not cursing his movie with a CGI simulacrum of Carrie Fisher, at least not for any substantial period of time, but the fact that he (and presumably producer Kathleen Kennedy) were adamant on this arc for Leia even after Fisher's death really works against this movie.
The living actors, however, do an incredible job of selling this movie, especially Driver (the breakout star of the entire franchise, in my opinion) and Ridley, whose Rey doesn't quite get the hero's journey she deserves, but faces more conflict in this film than in any other in the trilogy. Even when the script is basically struggling to maintain coherence and even logic, these thespians just solider on and ultimately elevate the material. If I'm honest, it's really hard to hate a movie with actors working this well. The climactic light saber fight we glimpsed in the trailer was appropriately intense and, to my mind, arguably one of the best of the entire 42-year-old franchise. The other two of the "big three" characters of the new trilogy are inevitably sidelined, though they do get some love from Abrams. Boyega's Finn gets a nice little mini story with another stormtrooper-turned-rebel (Naomi Ackie) who feels like a much better storytelling match for him than Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico given their shared history, while Isaac's Poe gets an awkward but entertaining side story with someone from his past as a smuggler, the helmeted Zorri Bliss (Abrams' frequent collaborator Keri Russell). There's even a little suggestion that Finn may be a bit of a Force wielder himself, but it's never a real payoff.
I'm sure I'll do a more comprehensive postmortem of the new trilogy someday (as will many, MANY other people) and I feel that this new series would have greatly benefited from a more coherent master plan, similar to what tied together the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm not of the persuasion that George Lucas would have done any better than the current crew as I am still of the opinion that the prequels were by and large terrible, but at least some kind of grand outline would have done the storytelling a power of good.
Ultimately, I submit that while this film is not the disaster many are making it out to be, even the diehard fans have to acknowledge that this is not the best sendoff such a beloved franchise as this could have gotten. Given that the Skywalker saga has gotten a bit long in the tooth, though, it's just as well that, one way or another, it has ended.
6.5/10
Triumphing Over Tarantino: A Review of "Parasite"
directed by Bong Joon Ho
written by Bong Joon Ho and Jin Won Han
Five years ago, I was introduced to the work of Bong Joon Ho through his English-language dystopian thriller Snowpiercer, which starred Avengers' Chris Evans in a decidedly different role from his turn as Captain America. I loved it, and even though I didn't get to watch his Netflix-produced follow-up, Okja, I considered myself a fan of Bong Joon Ho's work.
It would have been a shame, therefore, to miss his almost universally-acclaimed new film, Parasite, but I almost did, were it not for the fact that our local distributor saw fit to re-release it in view of all of the awards buzz it's been getting since crushing all opposition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, including Quentin Tarantino's grossly overrated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Parasite tells the story of the Kim family, composed of the father Kim Ki-Taek (frequent Bong Joon Ho collaborator Song Kang Ho), mother Kim Chung Sook (Hye-Jin Jang), son Kim Ki-Woo (Choi Woo Shik) and daughter Kim Ki-Jung (So-Dam Park), all of whom live on the edge of poverty in what is known as a "semi basement" taking odd jobs and barely having enough money to make ends meet. When Ki-Woo's friend drops in, though, with an opportunity to tutor Park Da Hye (Ji-so Jung), the daughter of telecommunications magnate Park Dong-ik (Sun Kyun-Lee), things start looking up. As Ki-Woo starts his new job, he meets Dong-ik's wife Park Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo) and is introduced to the family and world of opulence they inhabit, where he finds himself facing a world of possibility.
It's honestly hard to go into great detail about what makes this film so compelling without spoiling plot points; as Bong himself has said on talk shows, it's a movie best enjoyed "cold" or without any clue as to what takes place in it. That said, in broad strokes, I can definitely say that Bong's storytelling is even sharper here than it was in the tour de force that was Snowpiercer. The scripting is deliberate; almost every choice the characters make defines what happens next, and even though I felt there was one distinctly false note in the script, a moment in which the film felt plot-driven rather than character-driven as it had been up until that point, it was utterly entrancing to watch Bong weave his web.
Even in Snowpiercer I was struck by Bong's ability to extract the very best from his actors, and it is again the case here, especially with his muse Song Kang Ho as the family patriarch. His pathos as a middle-aged man who has spent pretty much his entire life in the same place informs the storytelling, juxtaposed clearly against the one-percenter smugness that Sun Kyun-Lee puts on display as Park Dong-ik. A recurring theme here is smell, and it's fascinating to see how the chasm between socio-economic classes is most effectively emphasized through something as basic as human senses. The other actors obviously play significant parts in how this story turns out but it's these two performances that give the film its center of gravity, and the movie is certainly all the better for it.
With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker now in theaters, Parasite is probably gone again from all but the most esoteric screens, but I sincerely hope that when Oscar buzz starts in a few weeks, this film is remembered, as one that should not only stand alongside blatant Oscar-bait like Tarantino's pointless, fetishistic love letter to 1960s Hollywood, but head and shoulders above it.
9/10
written by Bong Joon Ho and Jin Won Han
Five years ago, I was introduced to the work of Bong Joon Ho through his English-language dystopian thriller Snowpiercer, which starred Avengers' Chris Evans in a decidedly different role from his turn as Captain America. I loved it, and even though I didn't get to watch his Netflix-produced follow-up, Okja, I considered myself a fan of Bong Joon Ho's work.
It would have been a shame, therefore, to miss his almost universally-acclaimed new film, Parasite, but I almost did, were it not for the fact that our local distributor saw fit to re-release it in view of all of the awards buzz it's been getting since crushing all opposition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, including Quentin Tarantino's grossly overrated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Parasite tells the story of the Kim family, composed of the father Kim Ki-Taek (frequent Bong Joon Ho collaborator Song Kang Ho), mother Kim Chung Sook (Hye-Jin Jang), son Kim Ki-Woo (Choi Woo Shik) and daughter Kim Ki-Jung (So-Dam Park), all of whom live on the edge of poverty in what is known as a "semi basement" taking odd jobs and barely having enough money to make ends meet. When Ki-Woo's friend drops in, though, with an opportunity to tutor Park Da Hye (Ji-so Jung), the daughter of telecommunications magnate Park Dong-ik (Sun Kyun-Lee), things start looking up. As Ki-Woo starts his new job, he meets Dong-ik's wife Park Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo) and is introduced to the family and world of opulence they inhabit, where he finds himself facing a world of possibility.
It's honestly hard to go into great detail about what makes this film so compelling without spoiling plot points; as Bong himself has said on talk shows, it's a movie best enjoyed "cold" or without any clue as to what takes place in it. That said, in broad strokes, I can definitely say that Bong's storytelling is even sharper here than it was in the tour de force that was Snowpiercer. The scripting is deliberate; almost every choice the characters make defines what happens next, and even though I felt there was one distinctly false note in the script, a moment in which the film felt plot-driven rather than character-driven as it had been up until that point, it was utterly entrancing to watch Bong weave his web.
Even in Snowpiercer I was struck by Bong's ability to extract the very best from his actors, and it is again the case here, especially with his muse Song Kang Ho as the family patriarch. His pathos as a middle-aged man who has spent pretty much his entire life in the same place informs the storytelling, juxtaposed clearly against the one-percenter smugness that Sun Kyun-Lee puts on display as Park Dong-ik. A recurring theme here is smell, and it's fascinating to see how the chasm between socio-economic classes is most effectively emphasized through something as basic as human senses. The other actors obviously play significant parts in how this story turns out but it's these two performances that give the film its center of gravity, and the movie is certainly all the better for it.
With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker now in theaters, Parasite is probably gone again from all but the most esoteric screens, but I sincerely hope that when Oscar buzz starts in a few weeks, this film is remembered, as one that should not only stand alongside blatant Oscar-bait like Tarantino's pointless, fetishistic love letter to 1960s Hollywood, but head and shoulders above it.
9/10
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
"If It Ain't Broke...": A Review of Jumanji: The Next Level
directed by Jake Kasdan
written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kasdan
About two years ago, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the action-comedy Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or the sequel to the 1995 hit film starring Robin Williams, to which it bore only the remotest resemblance. Having loathed the older film in just about every respect, I gave that sequel, a relatively mediocre film, a pretty high grade all things considered, noting just how drastically it had improved on its predecessor. Audiences thought so, too, and the film very nearly grossed a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
Two years later, I have sat through the obligatory sequel, and while I rolled my eyes a bit at the flimsy pretext for having the characters revisit this world, I will acknowledge that the filmmakers did a decent job following up, especially since they experimented a bit more with the original "body swapping" premise.
As anyone who's seen a trailer for this movie will know, Spencer (Alex Wolff), who spent majority of the last movie in the world of the video game Jumanji as Dwayne Johnson's perfect human specimen Smolder Bravestone, having gone off to college in New York, away from his friends, is miserable and lonely once again. Apparently the last time he truly felt alive was as Bravestone, and so, as he bunks with his visiting grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) Spencer hatches a plan to get back into the world of the game, which he has salvaged from the dumpster in which he and his friends put it and the end of the last movie, right after taking a baseball bat to it. When Spencer's friends Martha (Morgan Turner), Fridge (Ser'Darius Blaine) and Bethany (Madison Iseman) finally meet up at a local diner and Spencer doesn't show up, they deduce that something is up with him and go to his house, where they find his grandfather Eddie, who is the middle of an argument with his estranged friend and business partner Milo (Danny Glover) and discover that Spencer has gone back into Jumanji. Being the friends that they are, Martha, Fridge and Bethany decide to go in after him, but things do not at all turn out the way they expected. Of course, there's a quest to recover some artifact from some horrible-looking bad guy (Rory McCann), but the protagonists don't quite enter the game the same way they did last time.
Though the movie has been out for some time, and is about to lose a whole lot of screens to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and even though a lot of plot points were already spoiled in the trailers, I'll still leave some of the plot under wraps as there is some fun in discovering the movie. Suffice it to say that the original sequel's central joke about being bodily displaced is still very much front and center, and makes for some reasonably funny jokes, especially since Kasdan and his writers aren't afraid to mix things up a little bit. Some new elements are introduced, including a new video game character named Ming, played by comedienne Awkwafina and the visual effects are improved a bit, but plotwise, the film basically retreads the first sequel almost beat for beat. There's a nice bit of story between Eddie and Milo, but out of an apparent fear of bogging down the action with sentimentality the filmmakers don't really develop it a whole lot, opting to keep the film sprinting along to its inevitable and predictable conclusion.
I found the first sequel to be quite remarkable for having reinvented the wheel, improving on the first film to a degree I hadn't even imagined possible, but this film just basically plays it safe and gives audiences what the filmmakers think they want. It's hard to argue with 900++ million at the global box office, after all. It's a pleasant enough distraction, but they won't be getting any "most improved franchise" accolades from me this time around. Not that this'll stop Sony from laughing all the way to the bank.
6.5/10
written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kasdan
About two years ago, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the action-comedy Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or the sequel to the 1995 hit film starring Robin Williams, to which it bore only the remotest resemblance. Having loathed the older film in just about every respect, I gave that sequel, a relatively mediocre film, a pretty high grade all things considered, noting just how drastically it had improved on its predecessor. Audiences thought so, too, and the film very nearly grossed a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
Two years later, I have sat through the obligatory sequel, and while I rolled my eyes a bit at the flimsy pretext for having the characters revisit this world, I will acknowledge that the filmmakers did a decent job following up, especially since they experimented a bit more with the original "body swapping" premise.
As anyone who's seen a trailer for this movie will know, Spencer (Alex Wolff), who spent majority of the last movie in the world of the video game Jumanji as Dwayne Johnson's perfect human specimen Smolder Bravestone, having gone off to college in New York, away from his friends, is miserable and lonely once again. Apparently the last time he truly felt alive was as Bravestone, and so, as he bunks with his visiting grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) Spencer hatches a plan to get back into the world of the game, which he has salvaged from the dumpster in which he and his friends put it and the end of the last movie, right after taking a baseball bat to it. When Spencer's friends Martha (Morgan Turner), Fridge (Ser'Darius Blaine) and Bethany (Madison Iseman) finally meet up at a local diner and Spencer doesn't show up, they deduce that something is up with him and go to his house, where they find his grandfather Eddie, who is the middle of an argument with his estranged friend and business partner Milo (Danny Glover) and discover that Spencer has gone back into Jumanji. Being the friends that they are, Martha, Fridge and Bethany decide to go in after him, but things do not at all turn out the way they expected. Of course, there's a quest to recover some artifact from some horrible-looking bad guy (Rory McCann), but the protagonists don't quite enter the game the same way they did last time.
Though the movie has been out for some time, and is about to lose a whole lot of screens to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and even though a lot of plot points were already spoiled in the trailers, I'll still leave some of the plot under wraps as there is some fun in discovering the movie. Suffice it to say that the original sequel's central joke about being bodily displaced is still very much front and center, and makes for some reasonably funny jokes, especially since Kasdan and his writers aren't afraid to mix things up a little bit. Some new elements are introduced, including a new video game character named Ming, played by comedienne Awkwafina and the visual effects are improved a bit, but plotwise, the film basically retreads the first sequel almost beat for beat. There's a nice bit of story between Eddie and Milo, but out of an apparent fear of bogging down the action with sentimentality the filmmakers don't really develop it a whole lot, opting to keep the film sprinting along to its inevitable and predictable conclusion.
I found the first sequel to be quite remarkable for having reinvented the wheel, improving on the first film to a degree I hadn't even imagined possible, but this film just basically plays it safe and gives audiences what the filmmakers think they want. It's hard to argue with 900++ million at the global box office, after all. It's a pleasant enough distraction, but they won't be getting any "most improved franchise" accolades from me this time around. Not that this'll stop Sony from laughing all the way to the bank.
6.5/10
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
A Whodunit for Trump's America: A Review of Knives Out
written and directed by Rian Johnson
How does one follow up the most divisive Star Wars movie ever made? Apparently by eschewing film franchises altogether and instead revisiting a virtually forgotten but nonetheless engaging film genre: the murder mystery, albeit with a slightly modern twist. Thus has Rian Johnson made his return to the big screen, with Knives Out, an ambitious, engrossing film that can't completely avoid some cliches of the genre, but still manages to entertain considerably.
The film begins in the manor of mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), with Thrombey's housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) going upstairs to serve him breakfast, only to find him dead, with his throat slit. After his funeral, an investigation into the death, initially believed to be a suicide, begins, fronted by police investigator Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield), abetted by state trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) and quietly observed by private investigator Blanc (Daniel Craig). Given the considerable fortune Thrombey has left behind, just about all of his surviving family members are suspects, starting with his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Richard (Don Johnson), their son Ransom (Chris Evans), her brother Walt (Michael Shannon), and her sister-in-law Joni (Toni Colette). All of them have something or other to gain from Harlan's demise. Another key player in the sordid saga is Thrombey's caregiver Marta (Ana de Armas), a registered nurse originally hailing from a Latin American country nobody in the Thrombey family seems to remember, who has her own dark secret. The question on everyone's mind, then, is who killed Harlan Thrombey?
It's hard to navigate through a review of a murder mystery movie without risking spoiling plot points by mentioning even the most casual details, so I'll keep this short.
I've never been a big fan of whodunits, though I have seen enough of them and read enough Sherlock Holmes books to know that the genre has been around long enough for several tropes to form, and to Johnson's credit he dodges most of them. Even when he doesn't, though he renders his narrative with such flourish that it's still hard to fault him. Freed from the constraints of franchise filmmaking, Johnson presents a taut narrative into which his advocacy is quite skillfully woven. The film is less a murder mystery, in a sense, and more a fable about entitlement and bigotry. Conversations like real world politics may have been too much for Star Wars fans to bear, but they belong right at home here, and the film doesn't suffer for it one bit.
Although discussing the story is pretty much off-limits, I would like to share how I felt about the acting, which is really front and center here. It was hugely entertaining to see veteran actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson just chew up the screen, just as it was a lot of fun to see stars of franchise films like Daniel Craig and Chris Evans in such a vastly different film from the visual spectacles that basically made them famous. Craig, one of the central characters, goes for broke with his Southern drawl in a role that is decidedly NOT James Bond, while Evans, who has significantly less screen time, retools his cocky Johnny Storm routine from the Fantastic Four movies, and quite effectively so. Christopher Plummer is always a delight to watch, though he doesn't particularly flex any acting muscles here, while Toni Collette, as his widowed daughter-in-law Joni basically just annoys, though given that this was how her character was written, I suppose that's mission accomplished. Ana de Armas, whom I found quite beguiling as Ryan Gosling's digital waifu in Blade Runner 2049 acquits herself well, though I'll admit I liked her better in Denis Villeneuve's 2017 sci-fi sequel. For me, though, the real standout was one-time General Zod Michael Shannon, who trades in his superpowers for a cane and manages a voice that's an least an octave higher than his normal one, and basically transforms himself into the weaselly Walt. The rest of the cast, including Lakeith Stanfield, who made his short role as a lobotomized vessel for a geriatric white person's brain in Get Out quite memorable, round out the film nicely with solid, if not necessarily splashy performances.
Knives Out is a genuinely good time at the movies, and it's gratifying to see it succeed at the box-office as cannily-timed adult counter-programming to the gargantuan family movie Frozen II. With its characters, twists and turns and emotional roller coaster, it's a movie that deserves both the accolades and the returns it's currently getting, even as it adds to the growing list of films that continue to prove that Martin Scorsese is full of shit for asserting that franchise films are killing "real" cinema.
8.5/10
How does one follow up the most divisive Star Wars movie ever made? Apparently by eschewing film franchises altogether and instead revisiting a virtually forgotten but nonetheless engaging film genre: the murder mystery, albeit with a slightly modern twist. Thus has Rian Johnson made his return to the big screen, with Knives Out, an ambitious, engrossing film that can't completely avoid some cliches of the genre, but still manages to entertain considerably.
The film begins in the manor of mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), with Thrombey's housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) going upstairs to serve him breakfast, only to find him dead, with his throat slit. After his funeral, an investigation into the death, initially believed to be a suicide, begins, fronted by police investigator Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield), abetted by state trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) and quietly observed by private investigator Blanc (Daniel Craig). Given the considerable fortune Thrombey has left behind, just about all of his surviving family members are suspects, starting with his daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Richard (Don Johnson), their son Ransom (Chris Evans), her brother Walt (Michael Shannon), and her sister-in-law Joni (Toni Colette). All of them have something or other to gain from Harlan's demise. Another key player in the sordid saga is Thrombey's caregiver Marta (Ana de Armas), a registered nurse originally hailing from a Latin American country nobody in the Thrombey family seems to remember, who has her own dark secret. The question on everyone's mind, then, is who killed Harlan Thrombey?
It's hard to navigate through a review of a murder mystery movie without risking spoiling plot points by mentioning even the most casual details, so I'll keep this short.
I've never been a big fan of whodunits, though I have seen enough of them and read enough Sherlock Holmes books to know that the genre has been around long enough for several tropes to form, and to Johnson's credit he dodges most of them. Even when he doesn't, though he renders his narrative with such flourish that it's still hard to fault him. Freed from the constraints of franchise filmmaking, Johnson presents a taut narrative into which his advocacy is quite skillfully woven. The film is less a murder mystery, in a sense, and more a fable about entitlement and bigotry. Conversations like real world politics may have been too much for Star Wars fans to bear, but they belong right at home here, and the film doesn't suffer for it one bit.
Although discussing the story is pretty much off-limits, I would like to share how I felt about the acting, which is really front and center here. It was hugely entertaining to see veteran actors like Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson just chew up the screen, just as it was a lot of fun to see stars of franchise films like Daniel Craig and Chris Evans in such a vastly different film from the visual spectacles that basically made them famous. Craig, one of the central characters, goes for broke with his Southern drawl in a role that is decidedly NOT James Bond, while Evans, who has significantly less screen time, retools his cocky Johnny Storm routine from the Fantastic Four movies, and quite effectively so. Christopher Plummer is always a delight to watch, though he doesn't particularly flex any acting muscles here, while Toni Collette, as his widowed daughter-in-law Joni basically just annoys, though given that this was how her character was written, I suppose that's mission accomplished. Ana de Armas, whom I found quite beguiling as Ryan Gosling's digital waifu in Blade Runner 2049 acquits herself well, though I'll admit I liked her better in Denis Villeneuve's 2017 sci-fi sequel. For me, though, the real standout was one-time General Zod Michael Shannon, who trades in his superpowers for a cane and manages a voice that's an least an octave higher than his normal one, and basically transforms himself into the weaselly Walt. The rest of the cast, including Lakeith Stanfield, who made his short role as a lobotomized vessel for a geriatric white person's brain in Get Out quite memorable, round out the film nicely with solid, if not necessarily splashy performances.
Knives Out is a genuinely good time at the movies, and it's gratifying to see it succeed at the box-office as cannily-timed adult counter-programming to the gargantuan family movie Frozen II. With its characters, twists and turns and emotional roller coaster, it's a movie that deserves both the accolades and the returns it's currently getting, even as it adds to the growing list of films that continue to prove that Martin Scorsese is full of shit for asserting that franchise films are killing "real" cinema.
8.5/10
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
The Parent Trap: A Review of Frozen II (Mild Spoilers)
directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck
written by Marc Smith, Bob Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Lee and Buck
When Walt Disney Animation Studios released Frozen back in 2013 it was truly a breath of fresh air, with its dazzling animation and its empowering storytelling, punctuated by the song that eventual became an anthem for girl power all around the world, "Let It Go." It demolished the age-old trope (the propagation of which Disney actually abetted for some time) that a princess needed a man to somehow validate her existence in the world and inspired little girls everywhere. With over a billion dollars in the bank, a sequel was all but assured, and the only surprise is that it's taken Disney over six years for to make it.
As much as I'd like to say that the sequel followed through on the winning magic of the first film, I really...can't.
First, let's get the story out of the way.
In a flashback (which is, itself a frequent trope used to justify a sequel), young princesses Elsa (Mattea Conforti) and Anna (Hadley Gannaway) listen to a bedtime story from their father King Agnarr (Alfred Molina) who tells them of an enchanted forest far to the north of Arendelle one which he visited in his boyhood alongside his father King Runeard (Jeremy Sisto) when they presented the people of the north, the (sigh) Northuldra tribe with the gift of a great dam. A conflict broke out for no apparent reason, and Agnarr was whisked away by an unknown savior back to Arendelle, where he was crowned king, with his father having been lost in the conflict, and with the spirits of the forest now barring entry to it.
Years later, Queen Elsa (Adela Daz--err--Idina Menzel) starts hearing a voice that calls her from what she is sure is the forest up north, and grows restless. It's been a few years since she was crowned queen and came to terms with her powers, and things are looking well for her and her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) whose beau, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) is working up the courage to propose marriage to her, and their enchanted snowman friend Olaf (Josh Gad) who, as before, is just happy to be alive. After Elsa tries her best to shut the voice out, but when mysterious magic causes things in Arendelle to go terribly awry, from the lamplights flickering out to the very ground starts shaking uncontrollably, Elsa realizes there is a connection between what is happening and what she is hearing, and she sets out immediately, with Anna, Olaf, Kristoff (and his reindeer Sven) in tow, to learn the truth behind these mysterious events.
Okay, I will now flirt with spoilers.
From the time that Disney Animation was revitalized back in 2010 with Tangled, almost all of its releases have had a very specific plot structure, dating back to 2012's Wreck-It-Ralph, which regularly involves a twist regarding the villain of the story. Of all the times it's been done, in my opinion it only really worked in 2016's Zootopia. Without going into specifics, Disney employs the same technique again here, and it makes for really clunky storytelling. The thing is, movies can survive clumsy twists (e.g. Iron Man) when they have something else going for them, but given that this film has basically no meaningful character development at all, and is essentially just plot-driven, it's hard to not notice how badly structured the story is, and how it telegraphs its intentions far, far too early. The whole problem with mystery-box storytelling is that it has to hit hard with its payoff, and when the payoff is as predictable as it was here, the entire point of the mystery set up is defeated. It irks even more that it took Disney SIX YEARS to get this movie off the ground, and this was apparently the very best their brain trust could come up with.
I get that this movie is for kids, but to cite Disney's very own work, so was Zootopia, and that worked on a number of levels, particularly in terms of the lead characters' personal journeys. The writing here, in contrast, feels woefully cut-and-paste. The difference between a film like this and Zootopia is not unlike the difference between a thoroughly thought-out Marvel pic like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and copy-paste efforts like Doctor Strange, which basically rehashed Iron Man's plot. In short, the "it wasn't made for you" argument is just plain lazy; parents are the ones who have to pay for their kids' tickets, so we're within our rights to expect a plot that isn't completely by-the-numbers. Unfortunately, in their slavish adherence to their new "twist" formula, Disney couldn't be bothered to give us that.
Fortunately, though, as compensation for the lackluster writing, they gave us Gen-Xers a catchy soundtrack, particularly a show-stopping, 80s-inspired love ballad right smack in the middle of the second act called "Lost in the Woods" sung by Jonathan Groff's Kristoff which evokes Queen, Air Supply and Peter Cetera all at the same time. It kind of upended the entire tone of the movie at that point, but I pretty much didn't care; it was disarming and charming and hilarious all at the same time. But the song ended, and I still hadn't forgotten that the story was simply not well-written.
Of course, for additional incentive there's the animation, which is basically beyond reproach at this point. Since getting their shot in the arm when John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over Disney Animation years ago Disney has basically gone from strength to strength, pretty much matching Pixar in terms of craft, and standing pretty much head and shoulders above anyone else. So it's never in issue that the picture looks absolutely gorgeous.
Of course, whatever I may think of it, the movie is currently fulfilling its purpose of making a ton of money, so another sequel is a foregone conclusion at this point. I just hope that next time they put as much thought into writing their story as they do into their animation and their writing of 80's-inspired songs.
6/10
written by Marc Smith, Bob Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Lee and Buck
When Walt Disney Animation Studios released Frozen back in 2013 it was truly a breath of fresh air, with its dazzling animation and its empowering storytelling, punctuated by the song that eventual became an anthem for girl power all around the world, "Let It Go." It demolished the age-old trope (the propagation of which Disney actually abetted for some time) that a princess needed a man to somehow validate her existence in the world and inspired little girls everywhere. With over a billion dollars in the bank, a sequel was all but assured, and the only surprise is that it's taken Disney over six years for to make it.
As much as I'd like to say that the sequel followed through on the winning magic of the first film, I really...can't.
First, let's get the story out of the way.
In a flashback (which is, itself a frequent trope used to justify a sequel), young princesses Elsa (Mattea Conforti) and Anna (Hadley Gannaway) listen to a bedtime story from their father King Agnarr (Alfred Molina) who tells them of an enchanted forest far to the north of Arendelle one which he visited in his boyhood alongside his father King Runeard (Jeremy Sisto) when they presented the people of the north, the (sigh) Northuldra tribe with the gift of a great dam. A conflict broke out for no apparent reason, and Agnarr was whisked away by an unknown savior back to Arendelle, where he was crowned king, with his father having been lost in the conflict, and with the spirits of the forest now barring entry to it.
Years later, Queen Elsa (Adela Daz--err--Idina Menzel) starts hearing a voice that calls her from what she is sure is the forest up north, and grows restless. It's been a few years since she was crowned queen and came to terms with her powers, and things are looking well for her and her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) whose beau, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) is working up the courage to propose marriage to her, and their enchanted snowman friend Olaf (Josh Gad) who, as before, is just happy to be alive. After Elsa tries her best to shut the voice out, but when mysterious magic causes things in Arendelle to go terribly awry, from the lamplights flickering out to the very ground starts shaking uncontrollably, Elsa realizes there is a connection between what is happening and what she is hearing, and she sets out immediately, with Anna, Olaf, Kristoff (and his reindeer Sven) in tow, to learn the truth behind these mysterious events.
Okay, I will now flirt with spoilers.
From the time that Disney Animation was revitalized back in 2010 with Tangled, almost all of its releases have had a very specific plot structure, dating back to 2012's Wreck-It-Ralph, which regularly involves a twist regarding the villain of the story. Of all the times it's been done, in my opinion it only really worked in 2016's Zootopia. Without going into specifics, Disney employs the same technique again here, and it makes for really clunky storytelling. The thing is, movies can survive clumsy twists (e.g. Iron Man) when they have something else going for them, but given that this film has basically no meaningful character development at all, and is essentially just plot-driven, it's hard to not notice how badly structured the story is, and how it telegraphs its intentions far, far too early. The whole problem with mystery-box storytelling is that it has to hit hard with its payoff, and when the payoff is as predictable as it was here, the entire point of the mystery set up is defeated. It irks even more that it took Disney SIX YEARS to get this movie off the ground, and this was apparently the very best their brain trust could come up with.
I get that this movie is for kids, but to cite Disney's very own work, so was Zootopia, and that worked on a number of levels, particularly in terms of the lead characters' personal journeys. The writing here, in contrast, feels woefully cut-and-paste. The difference between a film like this and Zootopia is not unlike the difference between a thoroughly thought-out Marvel pic like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and copy-paste efforts like Doctor Strange, which basically rehashed Iron Man's plot. In short, the "it wasn't made for you" argument is just plain lazy; parents are the ones who have to pay for their kids' tickets, so we're within our rights to expect a plot that isn't completely by-the-numbers. Unfortunately, in their slavish adherence to their new "twist" formula, Disney couldn't be bothered to give us that.
Fortunately, though, as compensation for the lackluster writing, they gave us Gen-Xers a catchy soundtrack, particularly a show-stopping, 80s-inspired love ballad right smack in the middle of the second act called "Lost in the Woods" sung by Jonathan Groff's Kristoff which evokes Queen, Air Supply and Peter Cetera all at the same time. It kind of upended the entire tone of the movie at that point, but I pretty much didn't care; it was disarming and charming and hilarious all at the same time. But the song ended, and I still hadn't forgotten that the story was simply not well-written.
Of course, for additional incentive there's the animation, which is basically beyond reproach at this point. Since getting their shot in the arm when John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over Disney Animation years ago Disney has basically gone from strength to strength, pretty much matching Pixar in terms of craft, and standing pretty much head and shoulders above anyone else. So it's never in issue that the picture looks absolutely gorgeous.
Of course, whatever I may think of it, the movie is currently fulfilling its purpose of making a ton of money, so another sequel is a foregone conclusion at this point. I just hope that next time they put as much thought into writing their story as they do into their animation and their writing of 80's-inspired songs.
6/10
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
(SPOILER ALERT) Martin Scorsese is Full of Sh*t, and Both the Success of "Ford v. Ferrari" and the Failure of Various Franchises at the Box Office Prove It (SPOILERS FOR FORD V FERRARI)
I basically thought I'd already said my piece on the whole "what constitutes real cinema" debate kicked off by Martin Scorsese about two months back when he took a cheap shot at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As much of a fanboy as I admittedly am, I really had no interest in joining that particular fray because, well, one: there are other things to do, two: nobody's exactly paying me to launch some spirited online defense and, three: with 22 billion in the bank, a brace of Oscars and an arguably bright future ahead, Marvel certainly doesn't need anyone to stand up for them.
The thing is, it irks me that Scorsese has used this initial comment for some pretty shameless self-promotion in the weeks that have followed, basically rehashing it over and over again, and even launching a faux "advocacy" against the supposed "death of cinema," claiming that movie theaters should "rebel" against showing Marvel films. In short, while I was never particularly bothered about what ol' Marty thought of Marvel movies, it started to get on my nerves that, outwardly at least, he was appearing to launch some kind of campaign against them.
I had to admit, though, that given the glut of franchise films in the marketplace in 2019 alone, though, it was hard to argue with the impression that they really were muscling other non-franchise, risk-laden properties out of silver screen real estate. Had people forgotten what it was like to consume movies that aren't just part of some mass-marketed product line?
Then, two weeks after burgeoning franchise launcher Joker dominated the box-office, Maleficient: Mistress of Evil, a perfunctory sequel to 2014's surprise hit Maleficent opened to surprisingly limp numbers at the U.S. box office. It was enough to get the movie to number one, but not enough to even bring the film to half the opening weekend of the original. The movie now stands to finish its global box-office run with less than two-thirds of the surprisingly muscular box office of its predecessor. So basically, a significant portion of the first film's audience rejected the filmmakers' attempts to get a franchise going.
Things didn't end there; weeks later, Paramount attempted to launch Terminator: Dark Fate, its second reboot of the once-popular Terminator film franchise, following the disastrous Terminator: Genisys back in 2015, this time managing to attach James Cameron's name to the project as one of its screenwriters and producers. This was a sequel/reboot that next to nobody asked for, and the numbers reflected this reality as the film's #1 debut was overshadowed by the paltry amount it took in (USD29 million) next to its gargantuan budget (USD185 million). Audiences had now said "no" to two franchises in a row.
A week later, Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of a Stephen King novel, The Shining, tanked at the box office in spite of decent tracking, showing that goodwill from the cult status of The Shining wasn't going to be enough to sell a new movie. Another franchise lost, this time to Midway, a World War II movie by disaster-porn meister Roland Emmerich. That's three in a row.
But the best was yet to come.
Last weekend, Ford v Ferrari, a new film based on the remarkable true story of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans and the events leading up to it, opened against a reboot of Charlie's Angels, a franchise last seen in theaters way back in 2003, which, if I'm honest, absolutely nobody was asking for. Ford v Ferrari was tracking to do well thanks to the combined star power of proven box-office draw Matt Damon and former Batman Christian Bale, and was predicted to open well above Charlie's Angels. What happened? FvF ended up exceeding expectations, grossing USD31.5 million versus 20+ million predictions, while CA made USD8.8 milion versus predictions of USD13 million.
-SPOILER ALERT-
Ford v Ferrari, it should be pointed out, is not a typical underdog story in that it's not about the hero winning in the end or even about a "Rocky" finish in which the hero loses the fight but "wins" the crowd. The hero, Ken Miles DOESN'T actually win the 24 Hours of Le Mans despite being the best driver of the race, nor does he lose to Ferrari and get a standing ovation. Rather, what happens is that, on Henry Ford II's orders, he slows down his race-leading car so that the three Ford GT40s can come home in a dead heat and make a sensational photo op for the company. Unfortunately, by doing so he has exposed himself to a technicality that means that the driver who started farther back from him then wins the race as he has driven a longer distance. It's one of the most farcical endings to a race in motorsport history, and full kudos to James Mangold and his crew for not sugarcoating it in any way. And THEN, in a cruel twist which also reflects what really happened, scarcely a month after NOT winning at Le Mans and while he is busy at work developing next year's car, Miles crashes and dies. Holy cow. Having read about this race in a book, I knew these things were going to happen, but seeing them unfold on the big screen I was struck at the filmmakers' courage and candor. They may have fudged some of the details but they were truly honest when it really counted, and in doing so they delivered a gut-punch of an ending that is decidedly NOT franchise-friendly.
And yet, for all of that, audiences embraced this movie unequivocally, and continue to do so.
-END SPOILER ALERT-
That audiences have ignored several franchises in a row and have embraced a good, old-fashioned, emotionally authentic yarn about underdogs that doesn't feel in any way engineered or market-tested basically debunks Scorsese's assertion that franchise pics will gobble up the marketplace. Ford v Ferrari got made, didn't it? It got a wide release, didn't it? And perhaps most notably, it was CHAMPIONED, at festivals and in general marketing efforts, by the very studio whom Scorsese accuses of inundating the marketplace with "amusement park rides."
In short, there is no truth to the assertion that Marvel movies are "killing cinema" because several franchises in a row have JUST tanked, and audiences have JUST embraced a very genuine example of old-school filmmaking.
The bottom line is that audiences can embrace both a Marvel movie like Avengers: Endgame and a smaller, more intimate movie like Ford v Ferrari because both of them speak to them on a primal emotional level. They can reject franchise entries like Charlie's Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate and Maleficent 2 because those feel, by contrast, like by-the-numbers products injected with catchy marketing hooks and "updated" sensibilities. Scorsese can make claims about emotional connections all he wants, but I'm willing to bet nobody was hospitalized from crying uncontrollably after the death of a character in one of his movies, even the popular ones.
What people don't realize about Scorsese's assertions is that he isn't just insulting Marvel; he's insulting the audience that likes to watch their movies, basically claiming that we wouldn't know "cinema" if it hit us on the head, and that it's up to auteurs like him to save us from all of this commercialized claptrap.
Well, sorry to break it to you, Marty, but we DO know good movies when we see them, and we AREN'T just numb consumers who'll eat up anything the monolithic franchise-generating Hollywood throws at us.
If you couldn't get money for YOUR overblown passion project, maybe it's less a problem of Marvel movies and more about the fact that your last movie lost a bundle of money for the studio who bet on it, and that this new one, had it received a traditional theatrical release, probably would have done the same.
In short, if audiences can embrace a film like Ford v Ferrari, which by even your standard is definitely a sterling example of "cinema" but not YOUR work, then maybe you're the problem.
The thing is, it irks me that Scorsese has used this initial comment for some pretty shameless self-promotion in the weeks that have followed, basically rehashing it over and over again, and even launching a faux "advocacy" against the supposed "death of cinema," claiming that movie theaters should "rebel" against showing Marvel films. In short, while I was never particularly bothered about what ol' Marty thought of Marvel movies, it started to get on my nerves that, outwardly at least, he was appearing to launch some kind of campaign against them.
I had to admit, though, that given the glut of franchise films in the marketplace in 2019 alone, though, it was hard to argue with the impression that they really were muscling other non-franchise, risk-laden properties out of silver screen real estate. Had people forgotten what it was like to consume movies that aren't just part of some mass-marketed product line?
Then, two weeks after burgeoning franchise launcher Joker dominated the box-office, Maleficient: Mistress of Evil, a perfunctory sequel to 2014's surprise hit Maleficent opened to surprisingly limp numbers at the U.S. box office. It was enough to get the movie to number one, but not enough to even bring the film to half the opening weekend of the original. The movie now stands to finish its global box-office run with less than two-thirds of the surprisingly muscular box office of its predecessor. So basically, a significant portion of the first film's audience rejected the filmmakers' attempts to get a franchise going.
Things didn't end there; weeks later, Paramount attempted to launch Terminator: Dark Fate, its second reboot of the once-popular Terminator film franchise, following the disastrous Terminator: Genisys back in 2015, this time managing to attach James Cameron's name to the project as one of its screenwriters and producers. This was a sequel/reboot that next to nobody asked for, and the numbers reflected this reality as the film's #1 debut was overshadowed by the paltry amount it took in (USD29 million) next to its gargantuan budget (USD185 million). Audiences had now said "no" to two franchises in a row.
A week later, Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of a Stephen King novel, The Shining, tanked at the box office in spite of decent tracking, showing that goodwill from the cult status of The Shining wasn't going to be enough to sell a new movie. Another franchise lost, this time to Midway, a World War II movie by disaster-porn meister Roland Emmerich. That's three in a row.
But the best was yet to come.
Last weekend, Ford v Ferrari, a new film based on the remarkable true story of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans and the events leading up to it, opened against a reboot of Charlie's Angels, a franchise last seen in theaters way back in 2003, which, if I'm honest, absolutely nobody was asking for. Ford v Ferrari was tracking to do well thanks to the combined star power of proven box-office draw Matt Damon and former Batman Christian Bale, and was predicted to open well above Charlie's Angels. What happened? FvF ended up exceeding expectations, grossing USD31.5 million versus 20+ million predictions, while CA made USD8.8 milion versus predictions of USD13 million.
-SPOILER ALERT-
Ford v Ferrari, it should be pointed out, is not a typical underdog story in that it's not about the hero winning in the end or even about a "Rocky" finish in which the hero loses the fight but "wins" the crowd. The hero, Ken Miles DOESN'T actually win the 24 Hours of Le Mans despite being the best driver of the race, nor does he lose to Ferrari and get a standing ovation. Rather, what happens is that, on Henry Ford II's orders, he slows down his race-leading car so that the three Ford GT40s can come home in a dead heat and make a sensational photo op for the company. Unfortunately, by doing so he has exposed himself to a technicality that means that the driver who started farther back from him then wins the race as he has driven a longer distance. It's one of the most farcical endings to a race in motorsport history, and full kudos to James Mangold and his crew for not sugarcoating it in any way. And THEN, in a cruel twist which also reflects what really happened, scarcely a month after NOT winning at Le Mans and while he is busy at work developing next year's car, Miles crashes and dies. Holy cow. Having read about this race in a book, I knew these things were going to happen, but seeing them unfold on the big screen I was struck at the filmmakers' courage and candor. They may have fudged some of the details but they were truly honest when it really counted, and in doing so they delivered a gut-punch of an ending that is decidedly NOT franchise-friendly.
And yet, for all of that, audiences embraced this movie unequivocally, and continue to do so.
-END SPOILER ALERT-
That audiences have ignored several franchises in a row and have embraced a good, old-fashioned, emotionally authentic yarn about underdogs that doesn't feel in any way engineered or market-tested basically debunks Scorsese's assertion that franchise pics will gobble up the marketplace. Ford v Ferrari got made, didn't it? It got a wide release, didn't it? And perhaps most notably, it was CHAMPIONED, at festivals and in general marketing efforts, by the very studio whom Scorsese accuses of inundating the marketplace with "amusement park rides."
In short, there is no truth to the assertion that Marvel movies are "killing cinema" because several franchises in a row have JUST tanked, and audiences have JUST embraced a very genuine example of old-school filmmaking.
The bottom line is that audiences can embrace both a Marvel movie like Avengers: Endgame and a smaller, more intimate movie like Ford v Ferrari because both of them speak to them on a primal emotional level. They can reject franchise entries like Charlie's Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate and Maleficent 2 because those feel, by contrast, like by-the-numbers products injected with catchy marketing hooks and "updated" sensibilities. Scorsese can make claims about emotional connections all he wants, but I'm willing to bet nobody was hospitalized from crying uncontrollably after the death of a character in one of his movies, even the popular ones.
What people don't realize about Scorsese's assertions is that he isn't just insulting Marvel; he's insulting the audience that likes to watch their movies, basically claiming that we wouldn't know "cinema" if it hit us on the head, and that it's up to auteurs like him to save us from all of this commercialized claptrap.
Well, sorry to break it to you, Marty, but we DO know good movies when we see them, and we AREN'T just numb consumers who'll eat up anything the monolithic franchise-generating Hollywood throws at us.
If you couldn't get money for YOUR overblown passion project, maybe it's less a problem of Marvel movies and more about the fact that your last movie lost a bundle of money for the studio who bet on it, and that this new one, had it received a traditional theatrical release, probably would have done the same.
In short, if audiences can embrace a film like Ford v Ferrari, which by even your standard is definitely a sterling example of "cinema" but not YOUR work, then maybe you're the problem.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Chasing Perfection: A Review of Ford v Ferrari
directed by James Mangold
written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller
After what feels like an eternity in development hell for those of us following this film, Ford v Ferrari finally hits theaters worldwide this weekend, and boy, does it hit hard.
The film begins with race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) winning the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin, only to be told in the very next scene during a doctor's visit that he can no longer race because of a serious heart condition. He then turns his attention to designing and selling cars in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) grandson of the late, great Henry Ford, is having trouble selling his stodgy old cars to the baby boomers now coming of age with lots of cash to spend. One of his junior execs, the energetic Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) comes up with a bold idea: make the name of Ford synonymous with international motorsport glory by buying up the company of Italian racing legend Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) who has apparently expressed interest in selling it. Ford greenlights the idea, and Iacocca makes the trip to Ferrari's factory headquarters in Modena, Italy, only to be shot down in spectacular fashion when Enzo turns down the offer, having used Ford's offer to purchase to leverage a higher price from Italian automaker Fiat, who had also been looking to purchase Ferrari's company.
Humiliated, Ford comes up with a different plan: he dispatches Iacocca to assemble a team of the best automotive engineers in the world so that he can build a car to beat Ferrari at the single most important motorsport event in the world: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race which Ferrari's cars have won for the last five years. This directive brings Iacocca to Shelby's doorstep, but Shelby will only agree if he gets to bring his team on board, including his irascible driver and mechanic Ken Miles (Christian Bale) a World War II vet who is not only a wizard behind the wheel but has an uncanny knack for understanding what makes a car go even faster. Miles is at first averse to the idea of working for a corporate slug like Ford, but with his LA garage being locked up by the Internal Revenue Service and a family in the form of wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) to take care of, Miles accepts Shelby's offer. Unfortunately, as they begin their quest to build Ford's world-beating car, Shelby, Miles and crew are beset by the Ford's right-hand man, the slimy Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) whose main goal is to sell more cars. Unfortunately for Shelby and company, Miles doesn't quite fit into Beebe's image of a "Ford Man," i.e., a driver who can sell cars. Thus the true battle of the film begins: Shelby and his small crew of artisans find themselves in a pitched battle against the consummate capitalist Beebe and his own assembled crew for the right to bring glory to the Ford name.
I was drawn to this story upon reading A.J. Baime's thoroughly engrossing book "Go Like Hell," which narrated the events of this movie, albeit rather more expansively, and I was really looking forward to seeing this made into a movie. Though Ford v Ferrari is not based on Baime's narration of the events, and even though Mangold and his writers have excised a few key players from these events, like Ferrari driver John Surtees, they've preserved what really matters about this truly incredible story and, despite some inevitable creative flourishes, have crafted something that honors the legacy of everyone involved, especially the previously unheralded Ken Miles.
Damon and Bale are in top form as these two motorsport icons. While the latter is perhaps rightfully getting a bit more attention for his portrayal of the fiery ex-tank commander-turned race driver Ken Miles, in equal parts because of his steely performance and his somewhat shocking weight loss, Damon's turn is no less impressive given that it's a far more subtle role. He not only conveys Shelby's ability to navigate both the world of the corporate mogul and the pure racer, but also captures the barely-expressed but nonetheless visible anguish of a racer who has been forced out of the sport by events beyond his control. As he would take his pills for his heart condition I could almost feel him groaning.
It's together, though, that Damon and Bale truly deliver dynamite performances. Their onscreen chemistry is sensational, and really put me right in the moment, helping me feel the pressure that their real life counterparts must have felt knowing that they had a very tall order to deliver against considerable odds. Bale also has a great onscreen rapports with Catriona Balfe as Mollie, a strong and supportive wife who manages to elevate her somewhat minor role, and with Noah Jupe as Peter, whose hero worship of his father is tempered only by his wide-eyed fear that every time Ken climbs into a race car may be his last, but it's Miles' onscreen relationship with Carroll Shelby that defines this film.
Though Damon and Bale carry the film, the rest of the supporting cast make their presence felt as well. Letts shines as Henry Ford II, or "the Deuce" as he was popularly known in automotive circles, a mogul struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by his late, pioneering grandfather, whose ruthlessness as a businessman is matched only by his personal insecurity and his pettiness. I'd argue that Ford was the biggest casualty of the inevitable trimming that the screenwriters had to do to cram this story into its surprisingly brisk two-and-a-half hour running time, as Baime's book expounded quite a bit on what was going on in his head, but Letts definitely makes the most out of the role and then some. I wouldn't be surprised if his name comes up when award nominations are announced in a few months' time. Bernthal turns in a nicely-nuanced performance as Iacocca, another eventual automotive icon in his own right, but who, back in those days, was just a suit with ambitions of being a rebel just like Shelby and Miles, ambitions that he unfortunately had to keep in check to please his boss. As his colleague Leo Beebe, whose sole ambition is to please his boss, Josh Lucas goes quite broad with the oiliness, and I might be inclined to critique him for it, but he's so effective as what is effectively the film's bad guy that it's hard to begrudge him his approach. There were other actors in smaller parts who left quite a nice impression on me as well, like Ray McKinnon as Shelby's crew chief Phil Remington, and even Remo Girone in his brief turn as the legendary Enzo Ferrari.
While Mangold smartly focuses on the human element of this story, when the action hits the racetrack he also definitely delivers the goods as well. Personally, I have seen a fair number of racing movies, both in theaters and on home video, including classics like John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix, adrenaline rushes like Tony Scott's Days of Thunder and Ron Howard's Rush and even parodies like Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say, as far as recreating thrilling racing sequences goes, Ford v Ferrari is right up there with the best of them. According to the filmmakers, the use of computer-generated imagery was kept to a minimum, which means a lot of the high-octane sequences were as close to the real thing as it can get. The film teases the on-track action early on with snippets of Shelby's win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and, a little later a gripping race at Willow Springs which Miles wins by the skin of his teeth. Apparently one of the film's few embellishments was that several of the victories Miles claimed in his career were nowhere near as close as the movie made them out to be, i.e. he won them by (ahem) miles. This was perhaps one of the movie's foibles; several of the otherwise gripping races were decided by late lunges or last-lap gasps by Miles, an occurrence that most racing fans can attest is not all that common in one's entire racing career, let alone in one season. Ron Howard's Rush was a little more faithful to history in this respect. Still, given the fantastic cinematography and choreographed driving at work, and the overall panache with which the on-track action was presented, it's really hard to hold this bit of creative license against the filmmakers. And as someone who pored over Baimes' book and Youtube videos on the subject, I can attest that the extraordinary ending is quite accurately depicted. As a fan of film soundtracks I also greatly appreciated Marco Beltrami's and Buck Sanders' jazzy, dynamic, era-appropriate soundtrack.
This movie is a must-see for gearheads, sports fans and fans of underdog stories in general. Anyone not familiar with the events depicted should steer clear of Wikipedia or other internet articles talking about them to maximize their enjoyment. I may have known exactly what was going to happen, but I still had a marvelous time.
9.5/10
written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller
After what feels like an eternity in development hell for those of us following this film, Ford v Ferrari finally hits theaters worldwide this weekend, and boy, does it hit hard.
The film begins with race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) winning the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin, only to be told in the very next scene during a doctor's visit that he can no longer race because of a serious heart condition. He then turns his attention to designing and selling cars in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) grandson of the late, great Henry Ford, is having trouble selling his stodgy old cars to the baby boomers now coming of age with lots of cash to spend. One of his junior execs, the energetic Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) comes up with a bold idea: make the name of Ford synonymous with international motorsport glory by buying up the company of Italian racing legend Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) who has apparently expressed interest in selling it. Ford greenlights the idea, and Iacocca makes the trip to Ferrari's factory headquarters in Modena, Italy, only to be shot down in spectacular fashion when Enzo turns down the offer, having used Ford's offer to purchase to leverage a higher price from Italian automaker Fiat, who had also been looking to purchase Ferrari's company.
Humiliated, Ford comes up with a different plan: he dispatches Iacocca to assemble a team of the best automotive engineers in the world so that he can build a car to beat Ferrari at the single most important motorsport event in the world: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race which Ferrari's cars have won for the last five years. This directive brings Iacocca to Shelby's doorstep, but Shelby will only agree if he gets to bring his team on board, including his irascible driver and mechanic Ken Miles (Christian Bale) a World War II vet who is not only a wizard behind the wheel but has an uncanny knack for understanding what makes a car go even faster. Miles is at first averse to the idea of working for a corporate slug like Ford, but with his LA garage being locked up by the Internal Revenue Service and a family in the form of wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) to take care of, Miles accepts Shelby's offer. Unfortunately, as they begin their quest to build Ford's world-beating car, Shelby, Miles and crew are beset by the Ford's right-hand man, the slimy Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) whose main goal is to sell more cars. Unfortunately for Shelby and company, Miles doesn't quite fit into Beebe's image of a "Ford Man," i.e., a driver who can sell cars. Thus the true battle of the film begins: Shelby and his small crew of artisans find themselves in a pitched battle against the consummate capitalist Beebe and his own assembled crew for the right to bring glory to the Ford name.
I was drawn to this story upon reading A.J. Baime's thoroughly engrossing book "Go Like Hell," which narrated the events of this movie, albeit rather more expansively, and I was really looking forward to seeing this made into a movie. Though Ford v Ferrari is not based on Baime's narration of the events, and even though Mangold and his writers have excised a few key players from these events, like Ferrari driver John Surtees, they've preserved what really matters about this truly incredible story and, despite some inevitable creative flourishes, have crafted something that honors the legacy of everyone involved, especially the previously unheralded Ken Miles.
Damon and Bale are in top form as these two motorsport icons. While the latter is perhaps rightfully getting a bit more attention for his portrayal of the fiery ex-tank commander-turned race driver Ken Miles, in equal parts because of his steely performance and his somewhat shocking weight loss, Damon's turn is no less impressive given that it's a far more subtle role. He not only conveys Shelby's ability to navigate both the world of the corporate mogul and the pure racer, but also captures the barely-expressed but nonetheless visible anguish of a racer who has been forced out of the sport by events beyond his control. As he would take his pills for his heart condition I could almost feel him groaning.
It's together, though, that Damon and Bale truly deliver dynamite performances. Their onscreen chemistry is sensational, and really put me right in the moment, helping me feel the pressure that their real life counterparts must have felt knowing that they had a very tall order to deliver against considerable odds. Bale also has a great onscreen rapports with Catriona Balfe as Mollie, a strong and supportive wife who manages to elevate her somewhat minor role, and with Noah Jupe as Peter, whose hero worship of his father is tempered only by his wide-eyed fear that every time Ken climbs into a race car may be his last, but it's Miles' onscreen relationship with Carroll Shelby that defines this film.
Though Damon and Bale carry the film, the rest of the supporting cast make their presence felt as well. Letts shines as Henry Ford II, or "the Deuce" as he was popularly known in automotive circles, a mogul struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by his late, pioneering grandfather, whose ruthlessness as a businessman is matched only by his personal insecurity and his pettiness. I'd argue that Ford was the biggest casualty of the inevitable trimming that the screenwriters had to do to cram this story into its surprisingly brisk two-and-a-half hour running time, as Baime's book expounded quite a bit on what was going on in his head, but Letts definitely makes the most out of the role and then some. I wouldn't be surprised if his name comes up when award nominations are announced in a few months' time. Bernthal turns in a nicely-nuanced performance as Iacocca, another eventual automotive icon in his own right, but who, back in those days, was just a suit with ambitions of being a rebel just like Shelby and Miles, ambitions that he unfortunately had to keep in check to please his boss. As his colleague Leo Beebe, whose sole ambition is to please his boss, Josh Lucas goes quite broad with the oiliness, and I might be inclined to critique him for it, but he's so effective as what is effectively the film's bad guy that it's hard to begrudge him his approach. There were other actors in smaller parts who left quite a nice impression on me as well, like Ray McKinnon as Shelby's crew chief Phil Remington, and even Remo Girone in his brief turn as the legendary Enzo Ferrari.
While Mangold smartly focuses on the human element of this story, when the action hits the racetrack he also definitely delivers the goods as well. Personally, I have seen a fair number of racing movies, both in theaters and on home video, including classics like John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix, adrenaline rushes like Tony Scott's Days of Thunder and Ron Howard's Rush and even parodies like Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say, as far as recreating thrilling racing sequences goes, Ford v Ferrari is right up there with the best of them. According to the filmmakers, the use of computer-generated imagery was kept to a minimum, which means a lot of the high-octane sequences were as close to the real thing as it can get. The film teases the on-track action early on with snippets of Shelby's win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and, a little later a gripping race at Willow Springs which Miles wins by the skin of his teeth. Apparently one of the film's few embellishments was that several of the victories Miles claimed in his career were nowhere near as close as the movie made them out to be, i.e. he won them by (ahem) miles. This was perhaps one of the movie's foibles; several of the otherwise gripping races were decided by late lunges or last-lap gasps by Miles, an occurrence that most racing fans can attest is not all that common in one's entire racing career, let alone in one season. Ron Howard's Rush was a little more faithful to history in this respect. Still, given the fantastic cinematography and choreographed driving at work, and the overall panache with which the on-track action was presented, it's really hard to hold this bit of creative license against the filmmakers. And as someone who pored over Baimes' book and Youtube videos on the subject, I can attest that the extraordinary ending is quite accurately depicted. As a fan of film soundtracks I also greatly appreciated Marco Beltrami's and Buck Sanders' jazzy, dynamic, era-appropriate soundtrack.
This movie is a must-see for gearheads, sports fans and fans of underdog stories in general. Anyone not familiar with the events depicted should steer clear of Wikipedia or other internet articles talking about them to maximize their enjoyment. I may have known exactly what was going to happen, but I still had a marvelous time.
9.5/10
Saturday, November 9, 2019
The Acting Dead
So, according to a story that first ran in The Hollywood Reporter, actor James Dean, who died in a car crash in 1955 after making only three films, will be resurrected digitally by a new film company in order to star in a new feature film, one set in the Vietnam War, which began a full ten years after his death.
This is apparently legal, given that the fledgling filmmakers have already approached Dean's estate and secured its permission, most likely with a big wad of cash. That said, however, there is something distinctly repugnant about these people's declaration that they have "cast James Dean" in a role when it won't be James Dean actually playing the role, but rather a digital avatar bearing his likeness. It won't be James Dean reciting lines, or emoting, or doing pretty much anything onscreen, but rather a combination of computer-generated imagery, possibly someone in a motion-capture suit and a voice actor. So, however lawful this planned project it may be, it feels all kinds of wrong.
The sad part is that Hollywood has only itself to blame for creating an atmosphere in which people could even begin to think that this was okay. They've been resurrecting dead recording artists to star alongside living ones in commercials since the 1990s. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole have all done television commercials well after their death, and in feature films the line was crossed quite some time ago when Laurence Olivier appeared in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie filmed approximately 14 years after his death. Disney basically sealed the deal when they grafted the late Peter Cushing's digital face onto a double in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three years ago.
But Olivier's appearance, while off-putting, amounted to little more than a cameo in a movie that almost no one saw, a bit of an oddity designed to show off how digital technology could pay homage to the pulpy movies of old, and Cushing's "reprising" his role as Grand Moff Tarkin, while arguably even more off-putting, served a greater narrative purpose.
In the great scheme, this planned film with its digital star would probably be ignored were it not for the gimmick of casting someone who's been dead for over sixty-four years. In fact, even with the press it's been getting over the last couple of days, there's still no guarantee it'll be any more than a blip at the box office. James Dean has been dead for so long that only the oldest of baby boomers would even remember watching him in any original theatrical release. He's only relevant to film buffs and hipsters, which means this movie, even with this gimmick, is far from a sure sell. One might argue that the filmmakers aren't even doing this to make an easy buck considering that most moviegoing audiences these days don't even know who James Dean was. Maybe they're sincere "Deanphiles," motivated by a sincere albeit misguided desire to do him some form of homage. The scary thing, however, is the gates this movie, even if it's only moderately successful, could kick wide open.
The people representing Dean's estate already offered a somewhat chilling preview of what the success of this movie could portend, as they basically referred to their entire portfolio of dead actors and actresses whose likenesses could be plundered for future films. And surely, the big boys like Disney and Warner Brothers are now paying attention to how this will play out as well, even if the stars of their movies are voicing their disagreement. Disney, for one thing, has already borrowed a dead actor's face.
Considering how amoral the likes of Hollywood producers are, I could see them justifying this practice in a heartbeat. Why bother looking for Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond when you could just pay Sean Connery for his likeness, or Roger Moore's estate for his? Why wrangle out contracts with Henry Cavill when you could just put "Christopher Reeve," the actor best remembered by most people in the role, in all future Superman movies? Why put up with Joaquin Phoenix's eccentricities when you could have Heath Ledger "play" the Joker forever? And then there's the question of how the folks at Marvel, who doubtlessly have terrabytes of digital footage of Avengers stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more, may use this data in the future, when Kevin Feige has retired and been replaced by an exec who's less interested in telling stories and more keen on cashing in on nostalgia. The possibilities for exploitation and really terrible creative decisions are quite numerous.
Frankly, I don't really care if things like this mean that actors can no longer demand eight-figure salaries. One of the reasons I love superhero movies apart from the fact that they bring to life the comics I grew up with is that they effectively killed the superstar system that was so en vogue in the 80s and 90s, where films were star-driven rather than story-driven and during which we got some pretty shlocky stuff. But I do sympathize with the struggling actors and actresses who won't be able to get decent work because some asshole in a suit would rather pay some long dead actor's estate than help a living one put food on the table. It's dehumanizing, if I'm honest, and justifying this practice by saying crap like "the family approves" doesn't really help matters any. I'm sure the relatives of James Dean, many of whom have probably never even met him, are thrilled to get a big bag of cash that they didn't lift a finger to earn beyond signing on the dotted line. In short, their motives are somewhat suspect as well.
As a moviegoer, though, I'd have to say, again, that this utter dehumanizing of movie performances is something that could doom cinema in a way that Martin Scorsese, in his anti-Marvel rants, never imagined possible. One reason I have loved movies since childhood, whether these are live-action or animated, is the fact that, however fantastical many of the movies I enjoy may be, there is still a very human element in all of them. Whatever the snobs may say, even these movies convey emotional truths that are at the very core of our humanity, even through the art of make-believe.
But there is a world of difference between the humanity conveyed by a character in an animated film like Coco and the inhuman monstrosity that James Dean's prospective grave robbers will soon unleash upon whoever pays to see their movie. One is the work of loving creators who work from scratch to craft something authentic, while the other is distinctly inauthentic, with its purveyors appropriating something they didn't create in the hope of evoking emotions in the audience that the likeness of the living person might have done had he been alive. Of course, to even attempt to compare the digital avatar to an actual, human actor, which is something the sorry excuses for filmmakers have attempted to do, isn't something that anyone with even a vague sense of human decency should do.
This is one of those times in which we, as the audience, have infinitely more power than the high-powered Hollywood producers and their ilk. Whether it's a stunt being pulled by some two-bit, unknown filmmakers like these guys, or whether it's the big players like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony or anyone else trying to sell us movies with resurrected stars, we have to reject this affront to storytelling. The art of movies is part of what makes us human, and there is quite honestly nothing human about what could follow if this becomes, to paraphrase Elijah Wood, "a thing."
This is apparently legal, given that the fledgling filmmakers have already approached Dean's estate and secured its permission, most likely with a big wad of cash. That said, however, there is something distinctly repugnant about these people's declaration that they have "cast James Dean" in a role when it won't be James Dean actually playing the role, but rather a digital avatar bearing his likeness. It won't be James Dean reciting lines, or emoting, or doing pretty much anything onscreen, but rather a combination of computer-generated imagery, possibly someone in a motion-capture suit and a voice actor. So, however lawful this planned project it may be, it feels all kinds of wrong.
The sad part is that Hollywood has only itself to blame for creating an atmosphere in which people could even begin to think that this was okay. They've been resurrecting dead recording artists to star alongside living ones in commercials since the 1990s. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole have all done television commercials well after their death, and in feature films the line was crossed quite some time ago when Laurence Olivier appeared in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie filmed approximately 14 years after his death. Disney basically sealed the deal when they grafted the late Peter Cushing's digital face onto a double in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three years ago.
But Olivier's appearance, while off-putting, amounted to little more than a cameo in a movie that almost no one saw, a bit of an oddity designed to show off how digital technology could pay homage to the pulpy movies of old, and Cushing's "reprising" his role as Grand Moff Tarkin, while arguably even more off-putting, served a greater narrative purpose.
In the great scheme, this planned film with its digital star would probably be ignored were it not for the gimmick of casting someone who's been dead for over sixty-four years. In fact, even with the press it's been getting over the last couple of days, there's still no guarantee it'll be any more than a blip at the box office. James Dean has been dead for so long that only the oldest of baby boomers would even remember watching him in any original theatrical release. He's only relevant to film buffs and hipsters, which means this movie, even with this gimmick, is far from a sure sell. One might argue that the filmmakers aren't even doing this to make an easy buck considering that most moviegoing audiences these days don't even know who James Dean was. Maybe they're sincere "Deanphiles," motivated by a sincere albeit misguided desire to do him some form of homage. The scary thing, however, is the gates this movie, even if it's only moderately successful, could kick wide open.
The people representing Dean's estate already offered a somewhat chilling preview of what the success of this movie could portend, as they basically referred to their entire portfolio of dead actors and actresses whose likenesses could be plundered for future films. And surely, the big boys like Disney and Warner Brothers are now paying attention to how this will play out as well, even if the stars of their movies are voicing their disagreement. Disney, for one thing, has already borrowed a dead actor's face.
Considering how amoral the likes of Hollywood producers are, I could see them justifying this practice in a heartbeat. Why bother looking for Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond when you could just pay Sean Connery for his likeness, or Roger Moore's estate for his? Why wrangle out contracts with Henry Cavill when you could just put "Christopher Reeve," the actor best remembered by most people in the role, in all future Superman movies? Why put up with Joaquin Phoenix's eccentricities when you could have Heath Ledger "play" the Joker forever? And then there's the question of how the folks at Marvel, who doubtlessly have terrabytes of digital footage of Avengers stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more, may use this data in the future, when Kevin Feige has retired and been replaced by an exec who's less interested in telling stories and more keen on cashing in on nostalgia. The possibilities for exploitation and really terrible creative decisions are quite numerous.
Frankly, I don't really care if things like this mean that actors can no longer demand eight-figure salaries. One of the reasons I love superhero movies apart from the fact that they bring to life the comics I grew up with is that they effectively killed the superstar system that was so en vogue in the 80s and 90s, where films were star-driven rather than story-driven and during which we got some pretty shlocky stuff. But I do sympathize with the struggling actors and actresses who won't be able to get decent work because some asshole in a suit would rather pay some long dead actor's estate than help a living one put food on the table. It's dehumanizing, if I'm honest, and justifying this practice by saying crap like "the family approves" doesn't really help matters any. I'm sure the relatives of James Dean, many of whom have probably never even met him, are thrilled to get a big bag of cash that they didn't lift a finger to earn beyond signing on the dotted line. In short, their motives are somewhat suspect as well.
As a moviegoer, though, I'd have to say, again, that this utter dehumanizing of movie performances is something that could doom cinema in a way that Martin Scorsese, in his anti-Marvel rants, never imagined possible. One reason I have loved movies since childhood, whether these are live-action or animated, is the fact that, however fantastical many of the movies I enjoy may be, there is still a very human element in all of them. Whatever the snobs may say, even these movies convey emotional truths that are at the very core of our humanity, even through the art of make-believe.
But there is a world of difference between the humanity conveyed by a character in an animated film like Coco and the inhuman monstrosity that James Dean's prospective grave robbers will soon unleash upon whoever pays to see their movie. One is the work of loving creators who work from scratch to craft something authentic, while the other is distinctly inauthentic, with its purveyors appropriating something they didn't create in the hope of evoking emotions in the audience that the likeness of the living person might have done had he been alive. Of course, to even attempt to compare the digital avatar to an actual, human actor, which is something the sorry excuses for filmmakers have attempted to do, isn't something that anyone with even a vague sense of human decency should do.
This is one of those times in which we, as the audience, have infinitely more power than the high-powered Hollywood producers and their ilk. Whether it's a stunt being pulled by some two-bit, unknown filmmakers like these guys, or whether it's the big players like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony or anyone else trying to sell us movies with resurrected stars, we have to reject this affront to storytelling. The art of movies is part of what makes us human, and there is quite honestly nothing human about what could follow if this becomes, to paraphrase Elijah Wood, "a thing."
Monday, October 14, 2019
Staying in the Conversation Without Even Trying
Not having seen a movie since Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I haven't really had much to write about. I may go to see Joker eventually, but given all that's been written about it, even if I do see it I probably won't weigh in beyond a paragraph or two. Overall, then, I've been content to let this blog go quiet, though I briefly had contemplated writing a piece about how I could, theoretically, just walk away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with the possible exception of the Spider-Man series) given how satisfyingly Avengers: Endgame tied up just about everything. It was a silly post, with even more fanboygasming than usual, and I eventually abandoned it.
But then, THEN, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, while promoting his new Netflix movie The Irishman makes an off-the-cuff comment about Marvel films not being "cinema" and THEN, after a brief surge of outrage from Marvel fandom which dies down in almost no time at all, doubles down and says that theaters should resist the urge to put Marvel movies in theaters and put "narrative" films in there instead. This is the stuff of blogger gold, but maybe not for the reasons one would think.
I have no interest in defending Marvel movies against "attacks" by anyone, even someone as esteemed as Scorsese. They've kept me thoroughly entertained over the last ten years and have taken plenty of my money in the bargain. I don't really owe them anything.
What interests me, though, is the notion of Marvel being such a force in the film industry that, even with its latest movie still seven months away, even without a single trailer for any of its films scheduled to drop in the near future, even without Disney lifting any of the considerable marketing muscle it can bring to bear, it can still manage to remain a dominant part of the pop culture conversation. This, to me, is astonishing and, I will argue, unprecedented. We never saw this happen to franchises like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or even James Bond.
It's even more amazing when one considers where Marvel were as a company a little over twenty years ago; teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they sold off their characters to two-bit filmmakers like Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (among others) and were just happy to keep their doors open. Now, if one is to believe Scorsese, they're like some kind of all-conquering overlords that theater owners need to "resist." Who'd have thought they'd come this far in so short a time?
All that said, while I do sympathize with Scorsese, who had a hard time finding funding for The Irishman, and whose last theatrical release, Silence was ignored at both the box office and the Oscars, I have to say his doom and gloom scenario is basically wrong. Setting any discussion of artistic merit aside, Marvel movies only come out at specific times in the year, make most of their money in their first two weeks or so (with very few exceptions), after which they leave, leaving plenty of room for the "narrative films" Scorsese is championing to breathe. Look at the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Movies in general are going to be just fine, even with Marvel all over the landscape. Heck, Downton Abbey opened at number one at the U.S. box office just a few weeks ago, so clearly there's enough moviegoers' money to go around.
Secondly, even before Marvel movies started dominating the scene, there were plenty of other populist films making "all" the money, whether it was Jerry Bruckheimer films, or any number of movies from the "movie star era" like franchise entries starring Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy or Will Smith. If and when the "Marvel era" comes to an end, someone else is simply going to step in and fill the vacuum and I honestly would hate for it to be overpaid movie stars again. I can pretty much guarantee that even if Marvel stopped releasing movies tomorrow, the likes of the aforementioned Downton Abbey, or any of Scorsese's movies for that matter, would not suddenly start making a billion dollars around the world.
Still, my net takeaway from all of this is a positive one. I'm old enough to remember a time when I could never have imagined that movies based on Marvel Comics would have achieved anything even approaching the level of success they have enjoyed. There's nothing that declares one has arrived quite like taking a few snipes from the titans of the industry. Heck, when I was growing up, had an interviewer asked one of the important directors of the time (except maybe for pulp lovers like Steven Spielberg) about Marvel products, the most likely response would have been "what's Marvel?" To go from not even being in the conversation, to dominating the conversation without even trying, is really something.
Sure, the "Marvel era" will come an end one day, just as Pixar's hegemonic stranglehold on the animated feature-film genre eventually came to an end, but in my humble opinion, that day isn't coming any time soon.
But then, THEN, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, while promoting his new Netflix movie The Irishman makes an off-the-cuff comment about Marvel films not being "cinema" and THEN, after a brief surge of outrage from Marvel fandom which dies down in almost no time at all, doubles down and says that theaters should resist the urge to put Marvel movies in theaters and put "narrative" films in there instead. This is the stuff of blogger gold, but maybe not for the reasons one would think.
I have no interest in defending Marvel movies against "attacks" by anyone, even someone as esteemed as Scorsese. They've kept me thoroughly entertained over the last ten years and have taken plenty of my money in the bargain. I don't really owe them anything.
What interests me, though, is the notion of Marvel being such a force in the film industry that, even with its latest movie still seven months away, even without a single trailer for any of its films scheduled to drop in the near future, even without Disney lifting any of the considerable marketing muscle it can bring to bear, it can still manage to remain a dominant part of the pop culture conversation. This, to me, is astonishing and, I will argue, unprecedented. We never saw this happen to franchises like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or even James Bond.
It's even more amazing when one considers where Marvel were as a company a little over twenty years ago; teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they sold off their characters to two-bit filmmakers like Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (among others) and were just happy to keep their doors open. Now, if one is to believe Scorsese, they're like some kind of all-conquering overlords that theater owners need to "resist." Who'd have thought they'd come this far in so short a time?
All that said, while I do sympathize with Scorsese, who had a hard time finding funding for The Irishman, and whose last theatrical release, Silence was ignored at both the box office and the Oscars, I have to say his doom and gloom scenario is basically wrong. Setting any discussion of artistic merit aside, Marvel movies only come out at specific times in the year, make most of their money in their first two weeks or so (with very few exceptions), after which they leave, leaving plenty of room for the "narrative films" Scorsese is championing to breathe. Look at the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Movies in general are going to be just fine, even with Marvel all over the landscape. Heck, Downton Abbey opened at number one at the U.S. box office just a few weeks ago, so clearly there's enough moviegoers' money to go around.
Secondly, even before Marvel movies started dominating the scene, there were plenty of other populist films making "all" the money, whether it was Jerry Bruckheimer films, or any number of movies from the "movie star era" like franchise entries starring Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy or Will Smith. If and when the "Marvel era" comes to an end, someone else is simply going to step in and fill the vacuum and I honestly would hate for it to be overpaid movie stars again. I can pretty much guarantee that even if Marvel stopped releasing movies tomorrow, the likes of the aforementioned Downton Abbey, or any of Scorsese's movies for that matter, would not suddenly start making a billion dollars around the world.
Still, my net takeaway from all of this is a positive one. I'm old enough to remember a time when I could never have imagined that movies based on Marvel Comics would have achieved anything even approaching the level of success they have enjoyed. There's nothing that declares one has arrived quite like taking a few snipes from the titans of the industry. Heck, when I was growing up, had an interviewer asked one of the important directors of the time (except maybe for pulp lovers like Steven Spielberg) about Marvel products, the most likely response would have been "what's Marvel?" To go from not even being in the conversation, to dominating the conversation without even trying, is really something.
Sure, the "Marvel era" will come an end one day, just as Pixar's hegemonic stranglehold on the animated feature-film genre eventually came to an end, but in my humble opinion, that day isn't coming any time soon.
Monday, September 2, 2019
(SPOILER ALERT) On Fifties' TV Stars and Foot Fetishes: A Review of Quentin Tarantino's Curious Historical Fantasy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (SPOILER ALERT)S)
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
For the third time in the last four movies, auteur Quentin Tarantino rewrites a specific period in history, giving it his signature quirky twist. Having tackled the Antebellum South and the middle of the Second World War, Tarantino trains his lens on a slightly more esoteric place and time in history: Hollywood in 1969, and even more specifically, the murder of actress Sharon Tate and several of her friends in a horrific incident that has since been dubbed the Manson family murders.
Here, Tate is played by Margot Robbie, who, if I'm honest, does little with the character other than show how carefree and whimsical a 60's ingenue could be, as well as show off her filthy feet in a movie theater. Here, as she was in real life, she is married to Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), she hangs out with her ex, Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), and lives in the house where, in real life, she was eventually murdered.
In this film though, she is next-door neighbors with fictional washed-up actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who, together with his stunt double and man Friday Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), has moved out to Hollywood to live out his career playing bad guys on television shows. The bulk of the movie basically follows Dalton's spiraling descent into depression over his own impending obsolescence while at the same offering foreshadowing of the brutal fate that, to our knowledge at least, is supposed to befall Tate as Booth encounters the commune of hippies from which three people, later known as the Manson family, will come to murder Tate. The film spends nearly two and a half hours doing this, all the while showing off various pairs of feet, including more than one pair of dirty feet shoved right into the camera.
Critics of this film have used the phrase "self-indulgent" so often in describing this movie that I don't want to repeat it, even though I wholeheartedly agree with them. Given that this is the third time that Tarantino dips into the alternate history well, I really cannot help but ask why he has fixated on this specific incident, especially since he basically does nothing to make us feel any connection to Robbie's Tate, or DiCaprio's self-absorbed Dalton, or even Pitt's blank-slate Booth, whose much-reviled fight scene with Bruce Lee (played here by Mike Moh), is every bit as ridiculous as the worst brickbats hurled at this film have described it to be. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained worked as "reimaginings" of history because there was something utterly cathartic about how Tarantino empowered the previously powerless, putting in a Jew's hands the the machine gun that killed Adolf Hitler and letting a black man go on a relentless killing spree in the deep, deep pre-Civil War South. The coupling of the righting of historical wrongs with fantastically violent wishful thinking was a powerful narrative tonic that helped people overlook just how silly both movies inherently were.
Here, the fate of Sharon Tate and her doomed friends hinges on the actions of two men who were never even there, and she ends the movie blissfully unaware of the horror that very nearly befell her, not in any way empowered or, for that matter, any different than when she started the movie as a whimsical airhead. Sure, Robbie brings her ethereal charm to the role, but given that Tarantino gives her little to do but laugh and show off her dirty feet, not even that counts for much. I mean, what makes Sharon Tate so important that she and her friends deserved to be "saved" from atrocity any more than millions of other people? This cuts to the thematic essence of the film, which, as many have observed, feels like a love letter to that era of Hollywood, an age of innocence when "men were men" as demonstrated by Pitt's ubermensch of a stuntman who can basically kick Bruce Lee's ass, notwithstanding the film's diplomatic stalemate, and DiCaprio's flame-thrower-wielding has-been. Clearly, Tarantino feels something significant died along with Tate and her friends that fateful August day in 1969, and wants to set things right, even in his own fictional world. Tarantino even directs a fake cigarette commercial as a mid-credits Easter Egg of sorts, though to be fair Dalton spends a fair amount of time in the film coughing his lungs up. Still, a fake cigarette commercial these days feels like an excess in a film that is already chock full of them.
What makes this even sadder is that this film is full of Tarantino's trademarks, like biting wit in the dialogue, amped-up songs of the era in lieu of a music score, plenty of morbid humor and, of course, extreme violence, though in this case it's reserved mainly for the very end of the movie. DiCaprio and Pitt have an easygoing chemistry, and the various other actors who pop up throughout the movie are fun to watch, like Tarantino regular Kurt Russell, who doubles as a stunt coordinator who fires Booth after he fights with Bruce Lee and the film's Narrator, and even former television Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as actor-turned-director Sam Wanamaker. I especially liked the performance of the precocious Julia Butters, who plays a child star acting opposite Dalton's bad guy. That kid's got quite a career ahead of her, perhaps even in more Tarantino movies, which, I genuinely hope, are better than this one.
It just disappoints that Tarantino's considerable talent is brought to bear on a story that doesn't particularly feel like it was worth telling.
6/10
For the third time in the last four movies, auteur Quentin Tarantino rewrites a specific period in history, giving it his signature quirky twist. Having tackled the Antebellum South and the middle of the Second World War, Tarantino trains his lens on a slightly more esoteric place and time in history: Hollywood in 1969, and even more specifically, the murder of actress Sharon Tate and several of her friends in a horrific incident that has since been dubbed the Manson family murders.
Here, Tate is played by Margot Robbie, who, if I'm honest, does little with the character other than show how carefree and whimsical a 60's ingenue could be, as well as show off her filthy feet in a movie theater. Here, as she was in real life, she is married to Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), she hangs out with her ex, Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), and lives in the house where, in real life, she was eventually murdered.
In this film though, she is next-door neighbors with fictional washed-up actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who, together with his stunt double and man Friday Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), has moved out to Hollywood to live out his career playing bad guys on television shows. The bulk of the movie basically follows Dalton's spiraling descent into depression over his own impending obsolescence while at the same offering foreshadowing of the brutal fate that, to our knowledge at least, is supposed to befall Tate as Booth encounters the commune of hippies from which three people, later known as the Manson family, will come to murder Tate. The film spends nearly two and a half hours doing this, all the while showing off various pairs of feet, including more than one pair of dirty feet shoved right into the camera.
Critics of this film have used the phrase "self-indulgent" so often in describing this movie that I don't want to repeat it, even though I wholeheartedly agree with them. Given that this is the third time that Tarantino dips into the alternate history well, I really cannot help but ask why he has fixated on this specific incident, especially since he basically does nothing to make us feel any connection to Robbie's Tate, or DiCaprio's self-absorbed Dalton, or even Pitt's blank-slate Booth, whose much-reviled fight scene with Bruce Lee (played here by Mike Moh), is every bit as ridiculous as the worst brickbats hurled at this film have described it to be. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained worked as "reimaginings" of history because there was something utterly cathartic about how Tarantino empowered the previously powerless, putting in a Jew's hands the the machine gun that killed Adolf Hitler and letting a black man go on a relentless killing spree in the deep, deep pre-Civil War South. The coupling of the righting of historical wrongs with fantastically violent wishful thinking was a powerful narrative tonic that helped people overlook just how silly both movies inherently were.
Here, the fate of Sharon Tate and her doomed friends hinges on the actions of two men who were never even there, and she ends the movie blissfully unaware of the horror that very nearly befell her, not in any way empowered or, for that matter, any different than when she started the movie as a whimsical airhead. Sure, Robbie brings her ethereal charm to the role, but given that Tarantino gives her little to do but laugh and show off her dirty feet, not even that counts for much. I mean, what makes Sharon Tate so important that she and her friends deserved to be "saved" from atrocity any more than millions of other people? This cuts to the thematic essence of the film, which, as many have observed, feels like a love letter to that era of Hollywood, an age of innocence when "men were men" as demonstrated by Pitt's ubermensch of a stuntman who can basically kick Bruce Lee's ass, notwithstanding the film's diplomatic stalemate, and DiCaprio's flame-thrower-wielding has-been. Clearly, Tarantino feels something significant died along with Tate and her friends that fateful August day in 1969, and wants to set things right, even in his own fictional world. Tarantino even directs a fake cigarette commercial as a mid-credits Easter Egg of sorts, though to be fair Dalton spends a fair amount of time in the film coughing his lungs up. Still, a fake cigarette commercial these days feels like an excess in a film that is already chock full of them.
What makes this even sadder is that this film is full of Tarantino's trademarks, like biting wit in the dialogue, amped-up songs of the era in lieu of a music score, plenty of morbid humor and, of course, extreme violence, though in this case it's reserved mainly for the very end of the movie. DiCaprio and Pitt have an easygoing chemistry, and the various other actors who pop up throughout the movie are fun to watch, like Tarantino regular Kurt Russell, who doubles as a stunt coordinator who fires Booth after he fights with Bruce Lee and the film's Narrator, and even former television Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as actor-turned-director Sam Wanamaker. I especially liked the performance of the precocious Julia Butters, who plays a child star acting opposite Dalton's bad guy. That kid's got quite a career ahead of her, perhaps even in more Tarantino movies, which, I genuinely hope, are better than this one.
It just disappoints that Tarantino's considerable talent is brought to bear on a story that doesn't particularly feel like it was worth telling.
6/10
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
One of the Alleged Reasons for the Sony/Marvel Rift Over Spider-Man...is Actually the Main Reason They Need to Mend the Rift
It's been more or less a week since the bombshell dropped that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures have had a major falling out over their contract negotiations for the continued shared use of Spider-Man, the result of which is that Spider-Man will no longer be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and enough has been written about the controversy to fill yet another 23-film saga. In short, pretty much everyone's weighed in by now, and I wouldn't be inclined to write about it at all but for one thing: apparently, the failure of last June's X-Men: Dark Phoenix to make any sort of impression on the global box-office is being blamed for Marvel's decision to pull out of the Sony deal and focus on their newly-acquired Fox properties instead. To put it differently; Marvel would rather have Kevin Feige revive the now-moribund X-Men franchise than keep the once-moribund, now-vibrant Spider-Man live-action franchise going.
To me, the fate of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is precisely one of the reasons why Marvel should have stayed (or should stay, depending on what reports one believes) at the negotiating table with Sony until something mutually acceptable is worked out between them.
In the 21 years that have passed since Blade first showed franchise-hungry Hollywood that movies based on Marvel Comics characters are viable investments, we have seen the stumbling or utter failure of a number of film franchises based on Marvel characters, some of them even before Kevin Feige ever set foot in the offices of the Walt Disney Company. For one, the Blade franchise itself, after two commercial successes, flopped in ignominious fashion with its third movie, stopping the series dead in its tracks all the way back in 2004. More prominently, though, pre-Disney 20th Century Fox produced three Fantastic Four movies, all of which were critically thrashed, and the last of which did so badly at the box office that the property's rehabilitation at Marvel is yet another priority for Kevin Feige. Finally, Sony itself has nearly killed the Spider-Man franchise on two separate occasions, without any help or interference from anyone, once with the awful Spider-Man 3 and again, less than a decade later, with the even worse Amazing Spider-Man 2.
And that's just the stuff that got off the ground. Examples of would-be franchises that stalled after one or two installments abound, like the 2003 failures Daredevil and Hulk, Sony's Ghost Rider franchise, which tanked after two movies, and the three separate attempts by two small-time studios, New World and Lionsgate, to get a Punisher film franchise off the ground, one in 1989, one in 2004 and one in 2008, the last attempt crashing and burning the very same year that Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And let's not forget that not even George Lucas, arguably still riding on his Star Wars fame three years after the release of Return of the Jedi could sell Howard the Duck.
The bottom line is that coming up with a sustainable franchise, contrary to popular belief, is nowhere near as simple as slapping the word "Marvel" on the title card and waiting for the money to come pouring in, as all of the aforementioned failures, whether right out of the gate or after "x" number of installments, amply demonstrate. The X-Men film series showed that even a creative team with bona fide success under their belt, like the first two Bryan Singer movies, 2011's X-Men: First Class and 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, can still fall by the wayside.
That's basically what can happen to Sony's Spider-Man series once Kevin Feige's gone; it's happened not just once but twice before. Heck, Spider-Man 3 was the follow-up to what is still regarded as one of the greatest comic-book-based movies of all time, and it still managed to sink that iteration of the franchise.
In terms of sustainability, Marvel Studios really ripped up the form book in terms of what a studio can accomplish with film franchises over an extended period of time. Sure, they've had their misfires over the years, but they've shown they can bounce back from them (e.g. from Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok). They've shown that whatever tropes they may lean on from time to time, they're not afraid of pushing boundaries here and there, or changing formulas to ensure a better product. For example, who would have imagined that taking Peter Parker out of not only his beloved New York but out of the United States altogether would result in his highest grossing movie of all time? That's not a gambit Sony Pictures would have taken on their own. Things like this are why Marvel is justified in not only wanting to work on more Spider-Man movies, but also to have a measure of creative control over the rest of Sony's Marvel-related slate as well.
Sure, Spider-Man movies without the Marvel Studios banner will make money for Sony. I mean, the aggressively average Jumanji sequel came within a hair's breadth of a billion dollars two years ago. History has shown, however, that even when Sony (and other studios for that matter) have Marvel's crown jewels fronting their films, they simply cannot maintain a consistent standard of quality for very long. Only Marvel and their brain trust headed by Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Louie D'Esposito and Nate Moore have shown that they are capable of that.
And personally, I hope that both executives at Sony and Disney look past the bottom line and realize this.
To me, the fate of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is precisely one of the reasons why Marvel should have stayed (or should stay, depending on what reports one believes) at the negotiating table with Sony until something mutually acceptable is worked out between them.
In the 21 years that have passed since Blade first showed franchise-hungry Hollywood that movies based on Marvel Comics characters are viable investments, we have seen the stumbling or utter failure of a number of film franchises based on Marvel characters, some of them even before Kevin Feige ever set foot in the offices of the Walt Disney Company. For one, the Blade franchise itself, after two commercial successes, flopped in ignominious fashion with its third movie, stopping the series dead in its tracks all the way back in 2004. More prominently, though, pre-Disney 20th Century Fox produced three Fantastic Four movies, all of which were critically thrashed, and the last of which did so badly at the box office that the property's rehabilitation at Marvel is yet another priority for Kevin Feige. Finally, Sony itself has nearly killed the Spider-Man franchise on two separate occasions, without any help or interference from anyone, once with the awful Spider-Man 3 and again, less than a decade later, with the even worse Amazing Spider-Man 2.
And that's just the stuff that got off the ground. Examples of would-be franchises that stalled after one or two installments abound, like the 2003 failures Daredevil and Hulk, Sony's Ghost Rider franchise, which tanked after two movies, and the three separate attempts by two small-time studios, New World and Lionsgate, to get a Punisher film franchise off the ground, one in 1989, one in 2004 and one in 2008, the last attempt crashing and burning the very same year that Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And let's not forget that not even George Lucas, arguably still riding on his Star Wars fame three years after the release of Return of the Jedi could sell Howard the Duck.
The bottom line is that coming up with a sustainable franchise, contrary to popular belief, is nowhere near as simple as slapping the word "Marvel" on the title card and waiting for the money to come pouring in, as all of the aforementioned failures, whether right out of the gate or after "x" number of installments, amply demonstrate. The X-Men film series showed that even a creative team with bona fide success under their belt, like the first two Bryan Singer movies, 2011's X-Men: First Class and 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, can still fall by the wayside.
That's basically what can happen to Sony's Spider-Man series once Kevin Feige's gone; it's happened not just once but twice before. Heck, Spider-Man 3 was the follow-up to what is still regarded as one of the greatest comic-book-based movies of all time, and it still managed to sink that iteration of the franchise.
In terms of sustainability, Marvel Studios really ripped up the form book in terms of what a studio can accomplish with film franchises over an extended period of time. Sure, they've had their misfires over the years, but they've shown they can bounce back from them (e.g. from Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok). They've shown that whatever tropes they may lean on from time to time, they're not afraid of pushing boundaries here and there, or changing formulas to ensure a better product. For example, who would have imagined that taking Peter Parker out of not only his beloved New York but out of the United States altogether would result in his highest grossing movie of all time? That's not a gambit Sony Pictures would have taken on their own. Things like this are why Marvel is justified in not only wanting to work on more Spider-Man movies, but also to have a measure of creative control over the rest of Sony's Marvel-related slate as well.
Sure, Spider-Man movies without the Marvel Studios banner will make money for Sony. I mean, the aggressively average Jumanji sequel came within a hair's breadth of a billion dollars two years ago. History has shown, however, that even when Sony (and other studios for that matter) have Marvel's crown jewels fronting their films, they simply cannot maintain a consistent standard of quality for very long. Only Marvel and their brain trust headed by Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Louie D'Esposito and Nate Moore have shown that they are capable of that.
And personally, I hope that both executives at Sony and Disney look past the bottom line and realize this.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Lose-Lose-Lose: Some Thoughts on the Marvel/Sony Split Over Spider-Man
As of writing, Disney, the parent company of Marvel Studios, and Sony Pictures, who currently hold the exclusive rights to produce feature films starring Spider-Man, have failed to reach terms of agreement on the production of future Spider-Man movies, after the expiration of their original, 2015 deal earlier this year with the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Long story short, as of right now, Spider-Man is no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There's a cynic in me saying that this is all part of some high-stakes game, in which both parties are playing hardball with one another, tossing their unresolved dispute into the court of public opinion, also known as the internet and waiting to see who comes off worst. It's no secret that money is at the heart of the dispute, serving as a sobering reality check to us fans that at the end of the day, it's the main reason why these films are made. Sure, folks like Kevin Feige and many, if not most of the filmmakers he shepherds may be sincere in their artistic intentions, but he's not the one who signs the checks.
Either way, whatever I think, there really isn't much for me to say, is there? I mean, whoever is at fault, and considering there's no contract yet to speak of, it's hard to put the blame on any one person, the net result is still the same: Sony suffers because the creative force behind the last two live-action Spider-Man movies, including the first-ever Spidey film to gross a billion dollars worldwide (notably, in a crowded superhero movie marketplace), is gone, Marvel suffers because, following the retirement of two of its top characters from the MCU at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man should have been an important cog in its narrative moving forward, and ultimately, the fans lose for obvious reasons. So nobody wins. Nobody.
What hurts about this is how it comes on the heels of a banner year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which Marvel's record-breaking success was basically a direct result of its love for the fans. All of us fans pushed Avengers: Endgame past Avatar at the global box-office, and Spider-Man: Far From Home past Skyfall because Marvel and Sony (with a huge helping hand from Marvel), made these films that we loved. Period. I wish I had something cleverer to say, some kind of in-depth analysis to offer, but really, I just feel angry at both Disney and Sony for pulling this crap.
With Avengers: Endgame, I basically felt that all sense of urgency in following the MCU was gone, and that I could take or leave any of the films to come. With the insane cliffhanger provided by Spider-Man: Far From Home, that changed, at least for Spider-Man's story, but now, well, maybe I can really and truly walk away. Maybe I should thank both Disney and Sony for making it easy.
There's a cynic in me saying that this is all part of some high-stakes game, in which both parties are playing hardball with one another, tossing their unresolved dispute into the court of public opinion, also known as the internet and waiting to see who comes off worst. It's no secret that money is at the heart of the dispute, serving as a sobering reality check to us fans that at the end of the day, it's the main reason why these films are made. Sure, folks like Kevin Feige and many, if not most of the filmmakers he shepherds may be sincere in their artistic intentions, but he's not the one who signs the checks.
Either way, whatever I think, there really isn't much for me to say, is there? I mean, whoever is at fault, and considering there's no contract yet to speak of, it's hard to put the blame on any one person, the net result is still the same: Sony suffers because the creative force behind the last two live-action Spider-Man movies, including the first-ever Spidey film to gross a billion dollars worldwide (notably, in a crowded superhero movie marketplace), is gone, Marvel suffers because, following the retirement of two of its top characters from the MCU at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man should have been an important cog in its narrative moving forward, and ultimately, the fans lose for obvious reasons. So nobody wins. Nobody.
What hurts about this is how it comes on the heels of a banner year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which Marvel's record-breaking success was basically a direct result of its love for the fans. All of us fans pushed Avengers: Endgame past Avatar at the global box-office, and Spider-Man: Far From Home past Skyfall because Marvel and Sony (with a huge helping hand from Marvel), made these films that we loved. Period. I wish I had something cleverer to say, some kind of in-depth analysis to offer, but really, I just feel angry at both Disney and Sony for pulling this crap.
With Avengers: Endgame, I basically felt that all sense of urgency in following the MCU was gone, and that I could take or leave any of the films to come. With the insane cliffhanger provided by Spider-Man: Far From Home, that changed, at least for Spider-Man's story, but now, well, maybe I can really and truly walk away. Maybe I should thank both Disney and Sony for making it easy.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
A Different Kind of Fantasy: A Review of "Yesterday"
directed by Danny Boyle
written by Richard Curtis, Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook
Contrary to popular belief, even amid the bombastic superhero blockbusters of the North American summer season and the dead-serious, self-important awards fare of the end of year, there is room for other movies that aren't out to make all the money or win all the Oscars to carve out their own little niche. Their success or failure rate can vary, but sometimes, just sometimes they can really hit the sweet spot with just the right audience. One such example is the charming "what if?" romantic comedy, Yesterday.
Yesterday is the story of Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) a struggling twentysomething musician living in Suffolk, England who works part-time and sings anywhere from empty pubs to sidewalks to try to find his audience. About his only fan is his manager and childhood friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James), and after Jack plays at a virtually empty tent at a music festival he decides to finally throw in the towel. On the very night he does so, however, something strange happens: all around the world, for twelve seconds, everyone loses electricity, and as result, Jack, while riding his bike, is unable to see the bus that then clobbers him.
When Jack wakes up, he learns that apparently the Beatles have been erased from everyone else's memory but his own, to the extent that not even a Google search can turn them up (which, weirdly enough, is the case for a seemingly random assortment of other bits of popular culture like Coca-Cola and cigarettes, among other things) and as can be expected, once Jack realizes what has happened, he decides to cash in on this amazing gift. It takes a while for people to catch on, but when pop superstar Ed Sheeran (played by, well, Ed Sheeran) catches wind of Jack's--phenomenal "songwriting talent," he takes Jack under his wing, introducing to a life Jack had only dreamed of, and to his cutthroat manager Debra (Kate McKinnon) who plans to milk Jack for everything the Beatles' songs are worth. It's all coming true at last for this struggling musician, but will he be able to handle the fame, fortune and all of the trappings that will inevitably come with claiming to have authored some of the greatest rock songs in history? And, will he be able to live with the fact that he's only getting all of this because of someone else's work?
The movie is a ton of feel good, goofy fun, even though its premise has almost as many holes as a time-travel movie. Patel is genuinely charming as the down-on-his-luck Jack, and he does a wonderful job covering the Beatles if I'm honest. It's not mimicry but loving homage, and for my part I can see why he got the job. It's gratifying that the character appears not to have been written as Indian, as a result of which there isn't any gaudy treatise on Indian culture or some self-conscious discussion on the inevitable interracial romance between Jack and Ellie, whose adoration for Jack is fairly obvious from the very first scene they share. This is diversity at work: when a person of color slips effortlessly into any given role without the script having to trumpet the issue of his race every chance it gets.
Patel and James carry the movie almost effortlessly, even when the script blunders into "unfortunate cliche" territory. Also adding to the fun is Joel Fry as Rocky, Jack's boisterous roadie, a self-deprecating Ed Sheeran as himself, and Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as Jack's loving, wonderfully comic parents. Kate McKinnon gets the short end of the stick playing an oily, one-dimensional bad-guy and what makes it worse is that she doesn't even seem to care.
Still, there's enough to like about this movie to sit through it and its fantastical, if sometimes clumsily handled premise. I know that quite a few reviewers were expecting more from this film than a feel-good romance, but given that this was the writer who gave us such unabashedly maudlin fare as Notting Hill and Love Actually I'm not really sure why. Well, I liked it, anyway.
7/10
written by Richard Curtis, Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook
Contrary to popular belief, even amid the bombastic superhero blockbusters of the North American summer season and the dead-serious, self-important awards fare of the end of year, there is room for other movies that aren't out to make all the money or win all the Oscars to carve out their own little niche. Their success or failure rate can vary, but sometimes, just sometimes they can really hit the sweet spot with just the right audience. One such example is the charming "what if?" romantic comedy, Yesterday.
Yesterday is the story of Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) a struggling twentysomething musician living in Suffolk, England who works part-time and sings anywhere from empty pubs to sidewalks to try to find his audience. About his only fan is his manager and childhood friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James), and after Jack plays at a virtually empty tent at a music festival he decides to finally throw in the towel. On the very night he does so, however, something strange happens: all around the world, for twelve seconds, everyone loses electricity, and as result, Jack, while riding his bike, is unable to see the bus that then clobbers him.
When Jack wakes up, he learns that apparently the Beatles have been erased from everyone else's memory but his own, to the extent that not even a Google search can turn them up (which, weirdly enough, is the case for a seemingly random assortment of other bits of popular culture like Coca-Cola and cigarettes, among other things) and as can be expected, once Jack realizes what has happened, he decides to cash in on this amazing gift. It takes a while for people to catch on, but when pop superstar Ed Sheeran (played by, well, Ed Sheeran) catches wind of Jack's--phenomenal "songwriting talent," he takes Jack under his wing, introducing to a life Jack had only dreamed of, and to his cutthroat manager Debra (Kate McKinnon) who plans to milk Jack for everything the Beatles' songs are worth. It's all coming true at last for this struggling musician, but will he be able to handle the fame, fortune and all of the trappings that will inevitably come with claiming to have authored some of the greatest rock songs in history? And, will he be able to live with the fact that he's only getting all of this because of someone else's work?
The movie is a ton of feel good, goofy fun, even though its premise has almost as many holes as a time-travel movie. Patel is genuinely charming as the down-on-his-luck Jack, and he does a wonderful job covering the Beatles if I'm honest. It's not mimicry but loving homage, and for my part I can see why he got the job. It's gratifying that the character appears not to have been written as Indian, as a result of which there isn't any gaudy treatise on Indian culture or some self-conscious discussion on the inevitable interracial romance between Jack and Ellie, whose adoration for Jack is fairly obvious from the very first scene they share. This is diversity at work: when a person of color slips effortlessly into any given role without the script having to trumpet the issue of his race every chance it gets.
Patel and James carry the movie almost effortlessly, even when the script blunders into "unfortunate cliche" territory. Also adding to the fun is Joel Fry as Rocky, Jack's boisterous roadie, a self-deprecating Ed Sheeran as himself, and Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as Jack's loving, wonderfully comic parents. Kate McKinnon gets the short end of the stick playing an oily, one-dimensional bad-guy and what makes it worse is that she doesn't even seem to care.
Still, there's enough to like about this movie to sit through it and its fantastical, if sometimes clumsily handled premise. I know that quite a few reviewers were expecting more from this film than a feel-good romance, but given that this was the writer who gave us such unabashedly maudlin fare as Notting Hill and Love Actually I'm not really sure why. Well, I liked it, anyway.
7/10
Monday, August 5, 2019
Ruminations on Marvel Studios' 5 Billion Dollar Year and on Phase 4
As I write this, three of the top five movies at the global box office are films based on Marvel Comic books, two out of the three of them produced and released by Disney's Marvel Studios, with the third, the sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home, being produced by Marvel Studios through a deal with Sony Pictures. Sony may have taken the lion's share of the money for Far From Home, but there's little doubt as to whose input was responsible for generating that money in the first place.
If I were to step back in time to 1989, when Tim Burton's Batman ruled the box office while the best Marvel could come up with at the time was Howard the Duck, and direct-to-video movies featuring Dolph Lundgren as the Punisher and J.D. Salinger's son wearing rubber ears as Captain America, and tell my despondent 14-year-old self of what the future held, I would definitely not have believed myself. I especially would not have believed the yarn that with only three movies, Marvel Studios have made FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in a single year. Of course, in real terms, their success is as beneficial to me as the construction of a Trump Tower would be, but as shallow as this sounds, there really is something gratifying somehow about knowing that I loved Spider-Man and all of those other characters "before it was cool" as the cliche goes.
I mean, I laughed out loud when retired tennis star Andy Murray's mother described him and his brother as "tennis geeks" basically appropriating a word that had once described people on the fringe to describe a couple of out-and-out jocks, who in general are the OPPOSITE of what geeks are in terms of societal integration. Such is the degree to which geekdom is the new normal, and how Marvel superheroes have pretty much captured the cultural zeitgeist.
Such is the stranglehold Marvel has on culture that critics of their approach to filmmaking just sound ridiculous as they shout themselves hoarse. There's something hilarious and hypocritical about how more "old school" fans of film decry superhero films (often targeting Marvel films in particular, seeing as how they're at the forefront of this wave) as bad for cinema in general while pining for such the return of old chestnuts like Westerns, which are not only often culturally-stunted but which could be every bit as vapid and formulaic as the very worst that the superhero genre has to offer. It's even funnier how many of these detractors have been trying for years now to predict the demise of superhero films and a return to the "good old days," whatever the hell those were. Before Marvel exploded, the movie landscape was dominated by overpaid movie stars, formulaic action movies and insipid romantic comedies. Having grown up with movies of the 80s, 90s and 00s, I can recall quite clearly that the cineplexes weren't exactly some utopia full of life-changing thinkpieces and indie gems. Heck, a brain-dead comedy like Home Alone and its virtually identical sequel managed to make a killing at the box-office back in 1990 and 1992, and for years during those decades, people like Meg Ryan made a killing playing the same person over and over again. And don't even get me started on the turkeys for which the likes of Demi Moore and Brad Pitt were inexplicably paid eight-figure salaries.
If nothing else, Marvel and other franchise movies have done the filmgoing community a favor by pretty much killing the star-driven way of making movies, and for that alone, I am immensely grateful to them.
My cup has run over several times. That said, and while I do look forward to their future films, I really hope to see them exploring different ways to tell their stories.
I honestly don't think Marvel have a problem of variety when it comes to their approach to scripts and stories. I absolutely loved Black Panther's approach to realpolitik as well as the glorious 70's-paranoia feel pervading Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for one thing. They know they can't just get by doing exactly the same thing over and over again, but there are some tropes that they tend to lean on a little too heavily, like computer-generated imagery and their almost ubiquitous humor.
As much as I defended The Winter Soldier's massive CGI climax featuring three Helicarriers crashing into the Potomac River (which I still think made sense in the context of the story) the more I think about it the more I would have appreciated a climax more in keeping with the movie's nicely grounded and gritty approach to storytelling. Not every climax has to be the epic battle we saw in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, moments like Endgame's battle become all the more special when the CGI is used sparingly.
To perhaps cite a better (or worse) example of why Marvel should probably scale back on CGI use, Black Panther had some really exceptional production value, including a solid script, vibrant cinematography, art direction and costume design, and a catchy, involving music score, only to have it compromised on many occasions, including during the climactic battle, by some truly awful CGI. Of course, some of their more fantastical movies will continue to need CGI, but I sincerely hope that as Marvel Studios enters this exciting new phase of their existence, they scale back a bit, the way they did with the first Iron Man film, and learn to use CGI a bit more judiciously. Not every film will need it in abundance.
Case in point; over the next two years Marvel will launch two movies featuring main characters without superhuman abilities. Black Widow and Shang-Chi, while sublimely skilled in martial arts, don't fly, wear high-tech suits of armor or even have serum-enhanced strength. In short, opportunities abound to go with purely practical effects, or to at least to use CGI in more subtle ways, like the makers of Logan did. This is the chance for Marvel to use CGI to enhance the viewer's experience, as they've done in the very best of their movies.
Also, perhaps Marvel can be a bit more deliberate with the humor. It works most of the time, but there are films in which it feels a tad overdone. I submit that Avengers: Age of Ultron was guilty of this as was, to a lesser extent, Avengers: Infinity War. Most of the time, humor works in advancing the story, but I do hope Marvel remembers that a film can survive without too much of it. Among the best examples of this, for me, are, again, The Winter Soldier and Black Panther, which, while managing to sneak some of the studio's trademark laughs into the script, manage to maintain a tone befitting the serious themes of their respective scripts. Not every Marvel movie has to be like Ant Man and its sequel or the MCU Spider-Man movies, after all, and one thing that really works for Endgame, a film that admittedly went for a fair share of laughs, is how dead serious it is about treating the effects of Thanos' snap, with extremely somber scenes like the memorial onto which Scott Lang stumbled upon returning from the Quantum Realm. Have Marvel flubbed it with the non-stop quippiness? Sure; Captain Marvel's constant snark in her debut movie just feels weird and borderline obnoxious at times, and when it's pointed out that much of Tony Stark's humor consists of him identifying characters in the films by pop-culture references (e.g. Squidward, Legolas, Reindeer Games, etc.) it's kind of hard to "unnotice" it. Adam Sandler tried doing the same thing in Pixels in what appears to be some kind of parody of it.
In truth, these ideas really feel like meaningless nitpicking considering that Marvel has gotten the art of blockbuster filmmaking virtually down to a science, and even managed to break their Oscar duck earlier this year with the multiple-award-winning Black Panther. I mean, who am I, who basically was just twiddling my thumbs and silently weeping back in the 1980s, to tell them how to do what they do? And truth be told, no matter how many risks Kevin Feige and co. take or now matter how many glass ceilings they try to break, there will always be critics.
But really, some suggestions are worth heeding. As recently as two years ago the internet was full of commentaries and Youtube videos, mostly from armchair experts, decrying the music that featured in Marvel films as "generic" or "forgettable" and propounding a number of reasons for this ranging from a general lack of quality to poor marketing strategy. Well, three years later, Marvel now has the distinction of having the first (and so far, only) superhero movie ever to have won an Academy Award for its original music score. Alan Silvestri's "Portals" from Avengers Endgame is a piece of film music that is almost as indelibly printed on the moviegoing consciousness as the Imperial March or Hedwig's Theme. I'll tell you this: ask any latter-day millennial or gen-i kid who isn't a movie buff to identify the themes of both Back to the Future and The Avengers, and I'm almost willing to bet I know which theme the majority of respondents would be able to recognize in a heartbeat. In short, Marvel paid attention, no matter how insignificant that segment of fandom seemed.
With very few exceptions in its 23-film catalog, Marvel's output has consistently entertained audiences and critics alike, but now, with a whole new generation of obscure heroes like Shang-Chi and the Eternals (as well as a whole bunch we don't yet know about) set to be unveiled, the temptation to lean on their formula will no doubt be overwhelming. I just hope, whether or not they respond to any fan input, that Marvel remembers that one of the main reasons they were able to succeed in the first place was by their willingness to try things that no one had ever seen before, and that, in all likelihood, this very same sense of daring will keep them at the forefront.
If I were to step back in time to 1989, when Tim Burton's Batman ruled the box office while the best Marvel could come up with at the time was Howard the Duck, and direct-to-video movies featuring Dolph Lundgren as the Punisher and J.D. Salinger's son wearing rubber ears as Captain America, and tell my despondent 14-year-old self of what the future held, I would definitely not have believed myself. I especially would not have believed the yarn that with only three movies, Marvel Studios have made FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in a single year. Of course, in real terms, their success is as beneficial to me as the construction of a Trump Tower would be, but as shallow as this sounds, there really is something gratifying somehow about knowing that I loved Spider-Man and all of those other characters "before it was cool" as the cliche goes.
I mean, I laughed out loud when retired tennis star Andy Murray's mother described him and his brother as "tennis geeks" basically appropriating a word that had once described people on the fringe to describe a couple of out-and-out jocks, who in general are the OPPOSITE of what geeks are in terms of societal integration. Such is the degree to which geekdom is the new normal, and how Marvel superheroes have pretty much captured the cultural zeitgeist.
Such is the stranglehold Marvel has on culture that critics of their approach to filmmaking just sound ridiculous as they shout themselves hoarse. There's something hilarious and hypocritical about how more "old school" fans of film decry superhero films (often targeting Marvel films in particular, seeing as how they're at the forefront of this wave) as bad for cinema in general while pining for such the return of old chestnuts like Westerns, which are not only often culturally-stunted but which could be every bit as vapid and formulaic as the very worst that the superhero genre has to offer. It's even funnier how many of these detractors have been trying for years now to predict the demise of superhero films and a return to the "good old days," whatever the hell those were. Before Marvel exploded, the movie landscape was dominated by overpaid movie stars, formulaic action movies and insipid romantic comedies. Having grown up with movies of the 80s, 90s and 00s, I can recall quite clearly that the cineplexes weren't exactly some utopia full of life-changing thinkpieces and indie gems. Heck, a brain-dead comedy like Home Alone and its virtually identical sequel managed to make a killing at the box-office back in 1990 and 1992, and for years during those decades, people like Meg Ryan made a killing playing the same person over and over again. And don't even get me started on the turkeys for which the likes of Demi Moore and Brad Pitt were inexplicably paid eight-figure salaries.
If nothing else, Marvel and other franchise movies have done the filmgoing community a favor by pretty much killing the star-driven way of making movies, and for that alone, I am immensely grateful to them.
My cup has run over several times. That said, and while I do look forward to their future films, I really hope to see them exploring different ways to tell their stories.
I honestly don't think Marvel have a problem of variety when it comes to their approach to scripts and stories. I absolutely loved Black Panther's approach to realpolitik as well as the glorious 70's-paranoia feel pervading Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for one thing. They know they can't just get by doing exactly the same thing over and over again, but there are some tropes that they tend to lean on a little too heavily, like computer-generated imagery and their almost ubiquitous humor.
As much as I defended The Winter Soldier's massive CGI climax featuring three Helicarriers crashing into the Potomac River (which I still think made sense in the context of the story) the more I think about it the more I would have appreciated a climax more in keeping with the movie's nicely grounded and gritty approach to storytelling. Not every climax has to be the epic battle we saw in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, moments like Endgame's battle become all the more special when the CGI is used sparingly.
To perhaps cite a better (or worse) example of why Marvel should probably scale back on CGI use, Black Panther had some really exceptional production value, including a solid script, vibrant cinematography, art direction and costume design, and a catchy, involving music score, only to have it compromised on many occasions, including during the climactic battle, by some truly awful CGI. Of course, some of their more fantastical movies will continue to need CGI, but I sincerely hope that as Marvel Studios enters this exciting new phase of their existence, they scale back a bit, the way they did with the first Iron Man film, and learn to use CGI a bit more judiciously. Not every film will need it in abundance.
Case in point; over the next two years Marvel will launch two movies featuring main characters without superhuman abilities. Black Widow and Shang-Chi, while sublimely skilled in martial arts, don't fly, wear high-tech suits of armor or even have serum-enhanced strength. In short, opportunities abound to go with purely practical effects, or to at least to use CGI in more subtle ways, like the makers of Logan did. This is the chance for Marvel to use CGI to enhance the viewer's experience, as they've done in the very best of their movies.
Also, perhaps Marvel can be a bit more deliberate with the humor. It works most of the time, but there are films in which it feels a tad overdone. I submit that Avengers: Age of Ultron was guilty of this as was, to a lesser extent, Avengers: Infinity War. Most of the time, humor works in advancing the story, but I do hope Marvel remembers that a film can survive without too much of it. Among the best examples of this, for me, are, again, The Winter Soldier and Black Panther, which, while managing to sneak some of the studio's trademark laughs into the script, manage to maintain a tone befitting the serious themes of their respective scripts. Not every Marvel movie has to be like Ant Man and its sequel or the MCU Spider-Man movies, after all, and one thing that really works for Endgame, a film that admittedly went for a fair share of laughs, is how dead serious it is about treating the effects of Thanos' snap, with extremely somber scenes like the memorial onto which Scott Lang stumbled upon returning from the Quantum Realm. Have Marvel flubbed it with the non-stop quippiness? Sure; Captain Marvel's constant snark in her debut movie just feels weird and borderline obnoxious at times, and when it's pointed out that much of Tony Stark's humor consists of him identifying characters in the films by pop-culture references (e.g. Squidward, Legolas, Reindeer Games, etc.) it's kind of hard to "unnotice" it. Adam Sandler tried doing the same thing in Pixels in what appears to be some kind of parody of it.
In truth, these ideas really feel like meaningless nitpicking considering that Marvel has gotten the art of blockbuster filmmaking virtually down to a science, and even managed to break their Oscar duck earlier this year with the multiple-award-winning Black Panther. I mean, who am I, who basically was just twiddling my thumbs and silently weeping back in the 1980s, to tell them how to do what they do? And truth be told, no matter how many risks Kevin Feige and co. take or now matter how many glass ceilings they try to break, there will always be critics.
But really, some suggestions are worth heeding. As recently as two years ago the internet was full of commentaries and Youtube videos, mostly from armchair experts, decrying the music that featured in Marvel films as "generic" or "forgettable" and propounding a number of reasons for this ranging from a general lack of quality to poor marketing strategy. Well, three years later, Marvel now has the distinction of having the first (and so far, only) superhero movie ever to have won an Academy Award for its original music score. Alan Silvestri's "Portals" from Avengers Endgame is a piece of film music that is almost as indelibly printed on the moviegoing consciousness as the Imperial March or Hedwig's Theme. I'll tell you this: ask any latter-day millennial or gen-i kid who isn't a movie buff to identify the themes of both Back to the Future and The Avengers, and I'm almost willing to bet I know which theme the majority of respondents would be able to recognize in a heartbeat. In short, Marvel paid attention, no matter how insignificant that segment of fandom seemed.
With very few exceptions in its 23-film catalog, Marvel's output has consistently entertained audiences and critics alike, but now, with a whole new generation of obscure heroes like Shang-Chi and the Eternals (as well as a whole bunch we don't yet know about) set to be unveiled, the temptation to lean on their formula will no doubt be overwhelming. I just hope, whether or not they respond to any fan input, that Marvel remembers that one of the main reasons they were able to succeed in the first place was by their willingness to try things that no one had ever seen before, and that, in all likelihood, this very same sense of daring will keep them at the forefront.
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Reparations: A Review of the 2019 Remake of "The Lion King"
directed by Jon Favreau
written by Jeff Nathanson, Brenda Chapman
When I watched the original animated film The Lion King, way back in 1994, I quite enjoyed it. While it was basically a Disney-fied Hamlet set on the African plains, I was struck by its visual splendor and enjoyed its catchy tunes, even though some of them stuck more than others. One other thing, even then, struck me, though: this was a story set firmly in Africa, and yet the heroic lion of the story was voiced by Matthew Broderick, possibly the whitest guy imaginable at the time, the guy who played Ferris Bueller. His leading lady, then "it" girl Moira Kelly, was also white, as were the performers who sang the characters' songs. Representation in film wasn't a big thing then; one could actually count on one hand back then the number of Disney animated films to prominently feature black actors, including this one, and the fact that they were all in supporting roles rather than in lead ones struck me as being distinctly off, and I'm not even black.
When I watched the 2019 version of this film with my six-year-old daughter, who loved every minute of it, I was absolutely struck how closely it hewed to the original, unlike previous remakes of animated films like The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and even Aladdin, all of which seized on opportunities to flesh out characters, remove stereotypes, address plot holes and other small touches aimed at updating those films for modern audiences. This movie is nothing like any of those.
Essentially, The Lion King is the story of Simba (JD McRary) a lion who is the son King Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Queen Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) and destined to be king of Pride Rock, much to the irritation of Mufasa's brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who schemes together with a pack of Hyenas led by Shenzi (Florence Kasumba) to unseat Mufasa and take the throne for himself. When Scar makes his move, disaster follows, and Simba flees far from Pride Rock as his father's kingdom falls into ruin. Simba's childhood friend Nala (Beyonce Knowles-Carter) goes off to find him, or anyone willing to help, but finds adult Simba (Donald Glover) now living a carefree life with his friends, the meerkat Timon (Billy Eichner) and the warthog Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), and going back to save his father's kingdom is the last thing on his mind. Will he embrace his destiny?
While it's a given that the only reason films like this are even made is to cash in on nostalgia and make bundles of money, I found it interesting for a moment that this movie, save for very, very minor tweaks, was remade virtually shot-for-shot, unlike Favreau's previous venture into this remake business, Jungle Book. I mean, it's not like the original was without any flaw, and yet, unlike the people who remade Beauty and the Beast and even Aladdin, who tried to update their scripts a little bit, these folks pretty much trot out the original script, in many cases word-for-word. I'm at a loss as to what they brought to the table.
Visually, though, the movie is really an astonishing look into what computers can bring to the big screen. It calls to mind how I felt about the bland but visually-arresting 2000 film Dinosaur. There's no point to calling it a "live-action remake" because the entire film was basically birthed inside a computer, and did not, unlike any of the other remakes up until this point, feature any actual, live-action elements.
The songs, it should be said, are nothing more than covers of the Oscar-nominated (or winning) originals, with no real innovation, and as much as I'd like to say they are all improvements over the originals (and to be fair, a few of them are), the filmmakers having Seth Rogen try to sing basically prevents me from praising any of their other musical choices. Hans Zimmer, who won his only Oscar so far for this score back in 1994, basically just dusted it off, though he did add some flourishes, and one of the wordless chants from the first film actually has lyrics now. Again, though, musically, there's almost nothing new about this film, Beyonce's tacked-on single "Spirit" notwithstanding.
As strange as this may sound, this movie really does feel like some form of reparations to the African-Americans who were deprived of hearing black actors play Simba and Nala the first time around, because creatively it really just doesn't serve any other purpose.
It does make me wonder, though, what kind of truly astonishing worlds Disney could create with the tech that was on glorious display in this film.
6/10
written by Jeff Nathanson, Brenda Chapman
When I watched the original animated film The Lion King, way back in 1994, I quite enjoyed it. While it was basically a Disney-fied Hamlet set on the African plains, I was struck by its visual splendor and enjoyed its catchy tunes, even though some of them stuck more than others. One other thing, even then, struck me, though: this was a story set firmly in Africa, and yet the heroic lion of the story was voiced by Matthew Broderick, possibly the whitest guy imaginable at the time, the guy who played Ferris Bueller. His leading lady, then "it" girl Moira Kelly, was also white, as were the performers who sang the characters' songs. Representation in film wasn't a big thing then; one could actually count on one hand back then the number of Disney animated films to prominently feature black actors, including this one, and the fact that they were all in supporting roles rather than in lead ones struck me as being distinctly off, and I'm not even black.
When I watched the 2019 version of this film with my six-year-old daughter, who loved every minute of it, I was absolutely struck how closely it hewed to the original, unlike previous remakes of animated films like The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and even Aladdin, all of which seized on opportunities to flesh out characters, remove stereotypes, address plot holes and other small touches aimed at updating those films for modern audiences. This movie is nothing like any of those.
Essentially, The Lion King is the story of Simba (JD McRary) a lion who is the son King Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Queen Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) and destined to be king of Pride Rock, much to the irritation of Mufasa's brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who schemes together with a pack of Hyenas led by Shenzi (Florence Kasumba) to unseat Mufasa and take the throne for himself. When Scar makes his move, disaster follows, and Simba flees far from Pride Rock as his father's kingdom falls into ruin. Simba's childhood friend Nala (Beyonce Knowles-Carter) goes off to find him, or anyone willing to help, but finds adult Simba (Donald Glover) now living a carefree life with his friends, the meerkat Timon (Billy Eichner) and the warthog Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), and going back to save his father's kingdom is the last thing on his mind. Will he embrace his destiny?
While it's a given that the only reason films like this are even made is to cash in on nostalgia and make bundles of money, I found it interesting for a moment that this movie, save for very, very minor tweaks, was remade virtually shot-for-shot, unlike Favreau's previous venture into this remake business, Jungle Book. I mean, it's not like the original was without any flaw, and yet, unlike the people who remade Beauty and the Beast and even Aladdin, who tried to update their scripts a little bit, these folks pretty much trot out the original script, in many cases word-for-word. I'm at a loss as to what they brought to the table.
Visually, though, the movie is really an astonishing look into what computers can bring to the big screen. It calls to mind how I felt about the bland but visually-arresting 2000 film Dinosaur. There's no point to calling it a "live-action remake" because the entire film was basically birthed inside a computer, and did not, unlike any of the other remakes up until this point, feature any actual, live-action elements.
The songs, it should be said, are nothing more than covers of the Oscar-nominated (or winning) originals, with no real innovation, and as much as I'd like to say they are all improvements over the originals (and to be fair, a few of them are), the filmmakers having Seth Rogen try to sing basically prevents me from praising any of their other musical choices. Hans Zimmer, who won his only Oscar so far for this score back in 1994, basically just dusted it off, though he did add some flourishes, and one of the wordless chants from the first film actually has lyrics now. Again, though, musically, there's almost nothing new about this film, Beyonce's tacked-on single "Spirit" notwithstanding.
As strange as this may sound, this movie really does feel like some form of reparations to the African-Americans who were deprived of hearing black actors play Simba and Nala the first time around, because creatively it really just doesn't serve any other purpose.
It does make me wonder, though, what kind of truly astonishing worlds Disney could create with the tech that was on glorious display in this film.
6/10
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Why the MCU Version of Spidey Actually Does Tony Stark No Favors (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME)
As of writing, the latest Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Far From Home, has just spent its second week at the top of the box-office in the United States and Canada. None of the trades have mentioned this, but it is the first movie to do so since Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 back in 2007. Put differently, it had been 12 years since a movie featuring Spider-Man had spent two weeks as America's number 1 movie. Such was the stink left by not only Spider-Man 3 but the two attempts Sony made in the years that followed to erase that film from people's memory, that Spider-Man went from a box-office champion to an also-ran. Consider: in May of 2014, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, in only its second weekend, was booted out of the top spot by Seth Rogen's and Zac Efron's Neighbors. I mean, Neighbors, for God's sake.
Given his downward box-office trajectory, therefore, folding Spidey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe was pretty much the only way that Sony Pictures could have saved the character, and what better way was there to ensure his proper integration into the MCU than to hitch Peter Parker's star to the brightest one in that particular universe, i.e. that of Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man? The logic of the move was airtight.
The execution, not so much.
For Spidey's debut, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel brain trust opted to have him join Tony Stark's faction of squabbling Avengers in Captain America: Civil War, a film only very loosely-based on Mark Millar's and Steve McNiven's 2006 comic in which an adult Peter Parker also sided with Iron Man against Captain America over a significant clash of beliefs. In the film, their ideological divide was differently framed, but more crucially, so was Peter Parker: he went from being the married twentysomething of the comics to a fifteen-year-old high school kid whom Tony found on Youtube catching a car and whom he then recruited to fight a couple of super soldiers, both of whom were extremely formidable, and one of whom was a confirmed killer. This was compounded by the fact that Tony essentially blackmailed Peter ("I'd better tell Aunt Hottie...") into agreeing to go with him. There was no preexisting relationship here; Tony, who was operating at the time under the apparent auspices of the United Nations, found some kid online whom he didn't know from Adam and recruited him to go toe-to-toe with Captain America. Tweak the circumstances a bit, and Tony's basically a war criminal. Granted, they weren't fighting a war (title of the film notwithstanding) and Cap didn't kill Peter, but he sure as hell could have, considering he dropped a freaking airport gangplank on him and it was, at minimum, a severe case of child endangerment.
As much as I enjoyed Civil War, this little aspect of the plot bothered me so much that up until today, when I give lectures on International Humanitarian Law to security forces, as an ice-breaker I always include slides of Iron Man and Spider-Man just to introduce the violation of recruiting children to fight in armed conflict. It felt like a necessary evil, though, and Tony did sort of end up "punished" at the end of that movie, so I could still forgive Marvel this strange, somewhat off-putting decision.
When Tony tried to recruit Peter into the Avengers at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, the moment is played for laughs, and premium is placed on the fact that Peter turns him down, but I still found the moment rather irksome. It's Peter who's acting like the mature adult at the end of that movie, doing the right thing and refusing, basically at Tony's expense, but as annoying as that was, it was still something I could live with, because for all its flaws I quite enjoyed Homecoming, which brought my beloved Spidey back from the yawning abyss into which Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and their hapless sock-puppet director had plunged him.
Fortunately, in the two movies that followed, Tony took a break from his grossly improper relationship with Peter.
Tony was not to blame for what happened to Peter in Avengers: Infinity War. With Thanos' infamous snap being completely random in its effects, and considering the number of Peter's friends and community who got "dusted," it's reasonable to suppose that if Tony had never even met Peter the same fate would have befallen him and, if Tony had never met Peter, he never would have felt the guilt that impelled him, in Avengers: Endgame, to help Cap undo what Thanos had done. So Tony's heroism in those movies, especially as exemplified by his sacrifice, remains undiminished.
And then, we come to Spider-Man: Far From Home, and it's Civil War all over again.
Now, to be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with Tony's disgruntled employees being revealed as the bad guys, including classic Spidey bad guy Mysterio as played by Jake Gyllenhaal. While I found Mysterio's second-act exposition a tad gratuitous, I actually thought the twist (which anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with Spider-Man could see coming from a mile away) was pretty well-played and that it made sense in the context of the MCU.
No, I took issue with the fact that the late Tony entrusted Peter with what is effectively a weapon of mass destruction in the form of the "E.D.I.T.H." glasses. This is particularly galling when I consider that he has a number of other people in his circle, like his widow Pepper Potts, his trusted friend and Man Friday Happy Hogan, or any of his surviving Avengers teammates like the Hulk or Hawkeye to whom he could have entrusted the glasses instead. I mean, of COURSE Peter would screw up handling E.D.I.T.H.; he's a sixteen-year-old kid to whom the ramifications of this device were not properly explained.
When one thinks about it, Spider-Man wasn't at all responsible for a lot of the chaos that went down in Far From Home. It wasn't his fault, for example, that faux-Nick Fury, a.k.a. Talos the Skrull, got suckered by Mysterio's CGI trickery, which is supremely ironic considering that fooling people is supposed to be the Skrulls' stock-in-trade. If Peter made a mistake entrusting Mysterio with E.D.I.T.H., it was in no small part because faux-Fury had already given Mysterio the all-clear and basically ordered Peter to unmask in front of him, a decision that came back to bite Peter on the ass in the mid-credits sequence. Peter's bad decision basically just compounded several worse ones that had already been made by Talos and more importantly, by Tony Stark. In the end, Peter really did save the day, but the only reason he even had to in the first place was that the adults in the film had screwed up really badly, including the dead one.
Make no mistake: I genuinely enjoyed Spider-Man: Far From Home. Of the five MCU movies in which Peter Parker has appeared, it's the one that feels truest to the character. With the last-gasp cameo from J. Jonah Jameson, the film is also taking the character back to places he hasn't been since Tobey Maguire was wearing the tights. If Sony and Marvel, whose current deal regarding the use of Spidey ends with this film, decide to extend their collaboration, this franchise will be all the better for it.
I just hope they finally leave Tony Stark alone. I mean, the guy's dead. There's no need to posthumously make him an idiot, too.
Given his downward box-office trajectory, therefore, folding Spidey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe was pretty much the only way that Sony Pictures could have saved the character, and what better way was there to ensure his proper integration into the MCU than to hitch Peter Parker's star to the brightest one in that particular universe, i.e. that of Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man? The logic of the move was airtight.
The execution, not so much.
For Spidey's debut, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel brain trust opted to have him join Tony Stark's faction of squabbling Avengers in Captain America: Civil War, a film only very loosely-based on Mark Millar's and Steve McNiven's 2006 comic in which an adult Peter Parker also sided with Iron Man against Captain America over a significant clash of beliefs. In the film, their ideological divide was differently framed, but more crucially, so was Peter Parker: he went from being the married twentysomething of the comics to a fifteen-year-old high school kid whom Tony found on Youtube catching a car and whom he then recruited to fight a couple of super soldiers, both of whom were extremely formidable, and one of whom was a confirmed killer. This was compounded by the fact that Tony essentially blackmailed Peter ("I'd better tell Aunt Hottie...") into agreeing to go with him. There was no preexisting relationship here; Tony, who was operating at the time under the apparent auspices of the United Nations, found some kid online whom he didn't know from Adam and recruited him to go toe-to-toe with Captain America. Tweak the circumstances a bit, and Tony's basically a war criminal. Granted, they weren't fighting a war (title of the film notwithstanding) and Cap didn't kill Peter, but he sure as hell could have, considering he dropped a freaking airport gangplank on him and it was, at minimum, a severe case of child endangerment.
As much as I enjoyed Civil War, this little aspect of the plot bothered me so much that up until today, when I give lectures on International Humanitarian Law to security forces, as an ice-breaker I always include slides of Iron Man and Spider-Man just to introduce the violation of recruiting children to fight in armed conflict. It felt like a necessary evil, though, and Tony did sort of end up "punished" at the end of that movie, so I could still forgive Marvel this strange, somewhat off-putting decision.
When Tony tried to recruit Peter into the Avengers at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, the moment is played for laughs, and premium is placed on the fact that Peter turns him down, but I still found the moment rather irksome. It's Peter who's acting like the mature adult at the end of that movie, doing the right thing and refusing, basically at Tony's expense, but as annoying as that was, it was still something I could live with, because for all its flaws I quite enjoyed Homecoming, which brought my beloved Spidey back from the yawning abyss into which Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and their hapless sock-puppet director had plunged him.
Fortunately, in the two movies that followed, Tony took a break from his grossly improper relationship with Peter.
Tony was not to blame for what happened to Peter in Avengers: Infinity War. With Thanos' infamous snap being completely random in its effects, and considering the number of Peter's friends and community who got "dusted," it's reasonable to suppose that if Tony had never even met Peter the same fate would have befallen him and, if Tony had never met Peter, he never would have felt the guilt that impelled him, in Avengers: Endgame, to help Cap undo what Thanos had done. So Tony's heroism in those movies, especially as exemplified by his sacrifice, remains undiminished.
And then, we come to Spider-Man: Far From Home, and it's Civil War all over again.
Now, to be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with Tony's disgruntled employees being revealed as the bad guys, including classic Spidey bad guy Mysterio as played by Jake Gyllenhaal. While I found Mysterio's second-act exposition a tad gratuitous, I actually thought the twist (which anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with Spider-Man could see coming from a mile away) was pretty well-played and that it made sense in the context of the MCU.
No, I took issue with the fact that the late Tony entrusted Peter with what is effectively a weapon of mass destruction in the form of the "E.D.I.T.H." glasses. This is particularly galling when I consider that he has a number of other people in his circle, like his widow Pepper Potts, his trusted friend and Man Friday Happy Hogan, or any of his surviving Avengers teammates like the Hulk or Hawkeye to whom he could have entrusted the glasses instead. I mean, of COURSE Peter would screw up handling E.D.I.T.H.; he's a sixteen-year-old kid to whom the ramifications of this device were not properly explained.
When one thinks about it, Spider-Man wasn't at all responsible for a lot of the chaos that went down in Far From Home. It wasn't his fault, for example, that faux-Nick Fury, a.k.a. Talos the Skrull, got suckered by Mysterio's CGI trickery, which is supremely ironic considering that fooling people is supposed to be the Skrulls' stock-in-trade. If Peter made a mistake entrusting Mysterio with E.D.I.T.H., it was in no small part because faux-Fury had already given Mysterio the all-clear and basically ordered Peter to unmask in front of him, a decision that came back to bite Peter on the ass in the mid-credits sequence. Peter's bad decision basically just compounded several worse ones that had already been made by Talos and more importantly, by Tony Stark. In the end, Peter really did save the day, but the only reason he even had to in the first place was that the adults in the film had screwed up really badly, including the dead one.
Make no mistake: I genuinely enjoyed Spider-Man: Far From Home. Of the five MCU movies in which Peter Parker has appeared, it's the one that feels truest to the character. With the last-gasp cameo from J. Jonah Jameson, the film is also taking the character back to places he hasn't been since Tobey Maguire was wearing the tights. If Sony and Marvel, whose current deal regarding the use of Spidey ends with this film, decide to extend their collaboration, this franchise will be all the better for it.
I just hope they finally leave Tony Stark alone. I mean, the guy's dead. There's no need to posthumously make him an idiot, too.
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