written directed by Dean DeBlois
In this day and age of never-ending film franchises, it is refreshing, nay, shocking to see a profitable film franchise actually end, but that's exactly what the popular How to Train Your Dragon series does with the new film How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It's an emotional, if sometimes flawed coda for the enjoyable film series.
For the last several months following the last film, Viking Chief Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), his girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrera) and the rest of his friends from the island of Berk have spent their time saving dragons from dragon trappers and bringing them back home to Berk, where they offer them sanctuary. Unfortunately, this has made Berk a target for dragon trappers everywhere, particularly the deadly Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham) who has been hired by the dragon trappers to capture the dragons of Berk, especially the alpha, the Night Fury, Hiccup's best friend Toothless. Hiccup, during flashbacks from his childhood remembers a place that his late father Stoick (Gerard Butler) told him about where dragons roam freely and safely, a hidden world, and decides that the Berkians must move there with their dragons. Time is not on their side as Grimmel closes in on them, and Hiccup will have to call on the help of his family, namely his mother Valka (Cate Blanchett) and his friends Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (Justin Rupple), Gobber (Craig Ferguson) and Astrid to face the oncoming threat, especially since Grimmel has a particularly formidable weapon to use against the otherwise indomitable Toothless: a female Night Fury.
One nice thing about framing a movie as a final installment is that it helps give the narrative emotional heft because we viewers know that the characters won't be doing this anymore. Fortunately, apart from the hype, the film earns its emotional resonance when Hiccup realizes he has tough choices to make. There's also a sense of real peril given that Stoick has already met his maker in the previous film (um, spoiler alert) and so we know that character death is a real possibility. This adds a sense of menace to Grimmel and his fantastically-designed dragon-scorpion hybrids. A good chunk of the fun of these movies, which, together with the Kung Fu Panda films, are my favorite in Dreamworks Animation's catalog, is seeing what new outlandish designs for dragons the artists and animators can come up with, and the creatures here are a lot more intriguing than the generic gigantic dragons that were so central to the plots of the first two films. Size doesn't always matter. These dragons are defined by their unique abilities (spitting venom, scorpion tail).
There are some false notes in the narrative as the film kind of departs from the first movie in characterizing Stoick as wanting to leave the dragons in peace rather than destroy them, which was what he was all about in the first film. Also, the film wants to emphasize that Hiccup doesn't need Toothless to be a great man, and yet about the only thing he does without Toothless in the film is, well, rescue Toothless, so the filmmakers kind of undercut themselves there. I also had some issues with the film's bad guy, but I think Abraham acquits himself well, as do all of the returning cast members.
Still, this is still a film in which the strengths outweigh the weaknesses, and apart from the generally strong storytelling, the movie makes its case with astonishing visuals that are, thanks to the leaps in technology in the nine years that have passed since the first film, leagues upon leagues improved in terms of quality and overall craftsmanship from the first film. In terms of visual pizzazz this movie is every bit the equal of anything coming out of Pixar from the rendering to the camera movement to the sheer beauty of what appears on the screen; it's a real treat. Contributing to this sensory feast is a soaring musical score by series mainstay John Powell that calls back to the familiar themes of the series but adds quite a few stirring choral pieces. Powell received an Academy Award nomination for his work on the first film, and personally I wouldn't mind if he got another nod for this one.
To anyone who cynically scoffs at the "last installment" hype, I can categorically say that whatever direction the franchise may take from here, it's done with this particular set of characters, and I'm happy to say that despite a few missteps, this particular iteration of this film franchise still managed to end on a high note.
8/10
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Not Quite Awesome, but Definitely A-O.K.: A Review of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
directed by Mike Mitchell
written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Five years ago, Warner Brothers released The Lego Movie and rode on a wave of goodwill stemming from worldwide love of the popular Lego brick toys, as well as a surprisingly well-written, well-directed and even well voice-acted film by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to global success at the box office. What I had basically expected to be an extended toy commercial turned out to be a charming story about imagination, and a touching relationship between a father and his son.
The follow-up, while it no longer benefits from the element of surprise that made the impact of the first film that much more meaningful, still benefits from much the same charm, even though there is the inevitable repetitiveness of a sequel.
Following the events of "Taco Tuesday" in the first film, the sprawling Lego City of Bricksburg has been hit by one catastrophic alien invasion after another, and five years later, that once bustling metropolis is gone, having been replaced by the bleak and desolate Apocalypseburg, which, as the name suggests, is basically a Mad-Max-inspired, wasted landscape. It is here that Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett), Unikitty (Alison Brie), Benny (Charlie Day), Metalbeard (Nick Offerman) and all of the rest of the characters from the first movie now live, and while most of the citizens of this post apocalyptic world are immersed in it, Emmett remains irrepressibly joyful as always. When, following another alien attack, a mysterious outsider named General Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) arrives and kidnaps Wildstyle, Batman, Unikitty, Benny, and Metalbeard and takes them to the mysterious Systar System, ruled by the even more mysterious Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), Emmet takes it on himself to follow them in his rocket house. Along the way, Emmet meets the rugged Rex Dangervest (Chris Pratt) a space explorer with a vague past who may either be the key to helping Emmet save his friends...or to helping him destroy the entire Systar System.
While this movie is definitely not one of those "better than the original" sequels, the good news is that it retains much of the charm of the first film, even though it no longer benefits from the element of surprise the way that film did. The new characters introduced, while primarily an excuse to sell new Lego sets, are charming in their own way, like Haddish as the Queen and Beatriz as General Mayhem who who may or may not be bad guys, and Pratt's new character Rex, who may or may not be a hero, but it's the old characters like Wildstyle and Emmet who continue to carry the show.
Of course, as it the first film, the theme is still about family, with this film tackling the often contentious relationship between siblings in a manner that is sweet, if sometimes a bit simplistic. It's gratifying that, even as they sell toys, the filmmakers at least make an effort to tell a story.
I was still a bit put off by the shoehorning in of DC Superheroes into the movie, who are basically just a blatant effort by Warner Brother to create visibility for their Intellectual Property by putting them into a story to which they are basically irrelevant, but at least Will Arnett was funny again.
This sequel, which was actually foreshadowed at the end of the first film, works pretty well as a narrative, and notably, it all ties up quite neatly in the end, so given this, and its so-so box office results, maybe it's time to wrap up this particular narrative and see what other stories the Lego "Cinematic Universe" can offer.
8/10
written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Five years ago, Warner Brothers released The Lego Movie and rode on a wave of goodwill stemming from worldwide love of the popular Lego brick toys, as well as a surprisingly well-written, well-directed and even well voice-acted film by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to global success at the box office. What I had basically expected to be an extended toy commercial turned out to be a charming story about imagination, and a touching relationship between a father and his son.
The follow-up, while it no longer benefits from the element of surprise that made the impact of the first film that much more meaningful, still benefits from much the same charm, even though there is the inevitable repetitiveness of a sequel.
Following the events of "Taco Tuesday" in the first film, the sprawling Lego City of Bricksburg has been hit by one catastrophic alien invasion after another, and five years later, that once bustling metropolis is gone, having been replaced by the bleak and desolate Apocalypseburg, which, as the name suggests, is basically a Mad-Max-inspired, wasted landscape. It is here that Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett), Unikitty (Alison Brie), Benny (Charlie Day), Metalbeard (Nick Offerman) and all of the rest of the characters from the first movie now live, and while most of the citizens of this post apocalyptic world are immersed in it, Emmett remains irrepressibly joyful as always. When, following another alien attack, a mysterious outsider named General Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) arrives and kidnaps Wildstyle, Batman, Unikitty, Benny, and Metalbeard and takes them to the mysterious Systar System, ruled by the even more mysterious Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), Emmet takes it on himself to follow them in his rocket house. Along the way, Emmet meets the rugged Rex Dangervest (Chris Pratt) a space explorer with a vague past who may either be the key to helping Emmet save his friends...or to helping him destroy the entire Systar System.
While this movie is definitely not one of those "better than the original" sequels, the good news is that it retains much of the charm of the first film, even though it no longer benefits from the element of surprise the way that film did. The new characters introduced, while primarily an excuse to sell new Lego sets, are charming in their own way, like Haddish as the Queen and Beatriz as General Mayhem who who may or may not be bad guys, and Pratt's new character Rex, who may or may not be a hero, but it's the old characters like Wildstyle and Emmet who continue to carry the show.
Of course, as it the first film, the theme is still about family, with this film tackling the often contentious relationship between siblings in a manner that is sweet, if sometimes a bit simplistic. It's gratifying that, even as they sell toys, the filmmakers at least make an effort to tell a story.
I was still a bit put off by the shoehorning in of DC Superheroes into the movie, who are basically just a blatant effort by Warner Brother to create visibility for their Intellectual Property by putting them into a story to which they are basically irrelevant, but at least Will Arnett was funny again.
This sequel, which was actually foreshadowed at the end of the first film, works pretty well as a narrative, and notably, it all ties up quite neatly in the end, so given this, and its so-so box office results, maybe it's time to wrap up this particular narrative and see what other stories the Lego "Cinematic Universe" can offer.
8/10
Sunday, February 17, 2019
A Movie that ONLY James Cameron Could Have Gotten Made: A Review of Alita: Battle Angel (SPOILERS AT THE END)
directed by Robert Rodriguez
written by James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis and Rodriguez
I'll start off this review by stating an irrefutable fact: every single Hollywood adaptation of a Japanese animated cartoon (or "anime" as they are popularly known) has been a critical and commercial failure. This not up for debate; both boxofficemojo.com and rottentomatoes.com will disclose that every single time Americans (or Canadians) have made a live-action remake of a popular Japanese animated series or feature film, the result has been box office poison with almost uniformly bad reviews. Even when they made an animated remake, specifically 2009's Astro Boy which used computer-generated imagery in lieu of the hand-drawn animation in which Ozamu Tezuka created the character, audiences and critics turned their backs.
All this means is that it took James Cameron enormous balls of steel to not only dare to make Alita: Battle Angel, a live-action adaptation of a relatively obscure manga-turned-anime, but to sink nearly $200 million into it and then hand the director's reins off to Robert Rodriguez, a man who, while a competent enough action director in his own right (see the "Mariachi" trilogy), doesn't exactly have Cameron's Midas touch at the box office. The end product is a deeply flawed but visually arresting action spectacle.
In the year 2563, following a cataclysmic war, the Earth is divided between people who live on the sky city of Zalem, and those who live on what remains of the surface world, who congregate in Iron City. Among the residents of Iron City is a kindly cybersurgeon named Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), who repairs people's robot parts in exchange for fruit or basically nothing, and who scavenges the ground for parts he can use to help his patients. One day he finds a discarded robotic head and shoulders and is startled to find that a still-living brain is inside. He takes the distinctly female head home, attaches her to a robotic body once intended for his long-dead, paraplegic daughter, and "reboots" her. Because the now revived cyborg (Rosa Salazar) cannot remember her name, Ido names her after his daughter as well, calling her Alita. As the newly-reactivated Alita familiarizes herself with the new world around her, she finds friends, including Hugo (Keean Johnson), foes, including the murderous Grewishska (Jackie Earle Haley), and a sport called motorball. Behind the scenes, people who know who she really is, like motorball mogul Vector (Mahershala Ali), cybersurgeon Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who happens to be Ido's ex-wife, and the mysterious Nova begin plotting her demise, and Alita will have to unlock the skill hidden in her forgotten past if she is to stay alive.
In truth, the movie feels a lot like the manga brought to the big screen. Not having seen the anime, I can't compare the two, but when it comes to the manga, director Rodriguez and his co-writers Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis have pretty much captured the atmosphere quite well, especially how unnerving the cyborg characters look. This is, for me, a big part of why this movie works; Rodriguez and co. take an entirely different approach to the dreaded "uncanny valley," in that, instead of trying to vault over it, they basically integrate it into the story. This actually goes a long way towards making the interactions between the human actors and their more fantastical counterparts that much more believable. Of course, state-of-the-art motion capture helps, too.
Of course, none of this would have worked if Rodriguez didn't have topnotch talent in front of the camera as well as behind it, and for the most part he has succeeded in this respect, especially by casting Rosa Salazar, without whose performance the digital magic would not have been enough to sell the walking, talking Photobooth distortion known as Alita. Salazar gets able, if slightly bland support from Oscar winners Waltz and Connelly. Dyson Ido is the second most prominent character in the film next to Alita, and if the character comes across as a little bit bland it's certainly not on Waltz's account, but rather on that of the script (more on that later). Unfortunately, as we get to the less prominent characters, the acting talent noticeably declines. Keean Johnson is all right as the nondescript love interest Hugo, as are Jorge Lendeborg, Jr. and Lara Condor as his buddies, but apart from them things really start to go downhill. Mahershala Ali, for one thing, seems content to ham it up as the villainous Vector, and while he doesn't have all that much time to chew the scenery, it does get grating at some points. With the exception of Ed Skrein as cyborg Hunter-Killer Zapan, all of the actors that play cyborgs, including veteran Jackie Earle Haley, completely immersed in CGI as Salazar is, basically turn in the kind of performances one would see in a badly-dubbed anime. It doesn't at all help that so much of the dialogue coming out of the characters' mouths, even those played by decent actors, is frequently quite clunky.
And that, for me, is the film's biggest problem in a nutshell; James Cameron, whose scriptwriting resume includes classics like Aliens and Terminator 2, appears so determined to lift dialogue from the manga that he's forgotten that a lot of the translations from the Japanese are just plain awkward, and that he would have just been better off infusing the dialogue with his own sensibility. He was a little too reverent to the source material here, and the film suffers for it, as it does from a number of hackneyed plot turns.
When the film's action switches on, though, it's actually possible to forget, if only for a few glorious moments, all of the narrative ungainliness because it is when Alita is kicking ass that the movie absolutely soars. Sure, Alita's "waif-fu" against opponents three times her size is a little silly to behold at times, even though it does have a pseudo-scientific explanation behind it, but I'll be damned if the fight choreography isn't some of the most astonishing I've witnessed in quite some time. Rodriguez has come a long way from sending Antonio Banderas sliding along tables while shooting two pistols; this is where he shows that Cameron's faith in him was justified. If the John Wick movies are the epitome of what practical movie fight scenes should look like, than Alita: Battle Angel has just showcased truly jaw-dropping fight scenes that can only happen with the aid of computer generated imagery.
Some actions scenes look better than others; the motorball sequences meant as the film's climactic moments, while energetic in their own right, have a been-there, done-that feel to them, especially since they seem lifted right out of another manga-turned-Hollywood-movie, Speed Racer. This movie depicts its action a bit more clearly than that one did, though, and in 3-D it really is a sight to behold.
The thing is, as much as I was willing to forgive the movie its narrative shortcomings because of its slam-bang action sequences, I found myself facing yet another stumbling block to liking this movie as much as I wanted to going in. If you want to know what that is, proceed past the final score to see what it is, but if not, stop reading here.
Suffice it to say, with this little twist, I could not bring myself to give this movie a higher score than I just have.
6/10
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(SPOILER ALERT)
The movie actually ends on a bit of a downer as Alita's love interest, Hugo, whom she has actually just saved from death, gets killed trying to climb a cable from Iron City to Zalem. The final scene has Alita standing at the beginning of a motorball tournament, and holding her sword up against the big bad guy, Nova (played by Edward Norton) who looks on from Zalem, just before the film cuts to the end credits. I get that the manga ended on a similar anticlimax, but given that Cameron, Kalogridis and Rodriguez have already taken liberties with the manga's timeline, it feels shameless not to end the first installment of what is clearly planned as a franchise on a satisfactory note. As much as I want to see more of this story, I think they kind of got ahead of themselves here.
written by James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis and Rodriguez
I'll start off this review by stating an irrefutable fact: every single Hollywood adaptation of a Japanese animated cartoon (or "anime" as they are popularly known) has been a critical and commercial failure. This not up for debate; both boxofficemojo.com and rottentomatoes.com will disclose that every single time Americans (or Canadians) have made a live-action remake of a popular Japanese animated series or feature film, the result has been box office poison with almost uniformly bad reviews. Even when they made an animated remake, specifically 2009's Astro Boy which used computer-generated imagery in lieu of the hand-drawn animation in which Ozamu Tezuka created the character, audiences and critics turned their backs.
All this means is that it took James Cameron enormous balls of steel to not only dare to make Alita: Battle Angel, a live-action adaptation of a relatively obscure manga-turned-anime, but to sink nearly $200 million into it and then hand the director's reins off to Robert Rodriguez, a man who, while a competent enough action director in his own right (see the "Mariachi" trilogy), doesn't exactly have Cameron's Midas touch at the box office. The end product is a deeply flawed but visually arresting action spectacle.
In the year 2563, following a cataclysmic war, the Earth is divided between people who live on the sky city of Zalem, and those who live on what remains of the surface world, who congregate in Iron City. Among the residents of Iron City is a kindly cybersurgeon named Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), who repairs people's robot parts in exchange for fruit or basically nothing, and who scavenges the ground for parts he can use to help his patients. One day he finds a discarded robotic head and shoulders and is startled to find that a still-living brain is inside. He takes the distinctly female head home, attaches her to a robotic body once intended for his long-dead, paraplegic daughter, and "reboots" her. Because the now revived cyborg (Rosa Salazar) cannot remember her name, Ido names her after his daughter as well, calling her Alita. As the newly-reactivated Alita familiarizes herself with the new world around her, she finds friends, including Hugo (Keean Johnson), foes, including the murderous Grewishska (Jackie Earle Haley), and a sport called motorball. Behind the scenes, people who know who she really is, like motorball mogul Vector (Mahershala Ali), cybersurgeon Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), who happens to be Ido's ex-wife, and the mysterious Nova begin plotting her demise, and Alita will have to unlock the skill hidden in her forgotten past if she is to stay alive.
In truth, the movie feels a lot like the manga brought to the big screen. Not having seen the anime, I can't compare the two, but when it comes to the manga, director Rodriguez and his co-writers Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis have pretty much captured the atmosphere quite well, especially how unnerving the cyborg characters look. This is, for me, a big part of why this movie works; Rodriguez and co. take an entirely different approach to the dreaded "uncanny valley," in that, instead of trying to vault over it, they basically integrate it into the story. This actually goes a long way towards making the interactions between the human actors and their more fantastical counterparts that much more believable. Of course, state-of-the-art motion capture helps, too.
Of course, none of this would have worked if Rodriguez didn't have topnotch talent in front of the camera as well as behind it, and for the most part he has succeeded in this respect, especially by casting Rosa Salazar, without whose performance the digital magic would not have been enough to sell the walking, talking Photobooth distortion known as Alita. Salazar gets able, if slightly bland support from Oscar winners Waltz and Connelly. Dyson Ido is the second most prominent character in the film next to Alita, and if the character comes across as a little bit bland it's certainly not on Waltz's account, but rather on that of the script (more on that later). Unfortunately, as we get to the less prominent characters, the acting talent noticeably declines. Keean Johnson is all right as the nondescript love interest Hugo, as are Jorge Lendeborg, Jr. and Lara Condor as his buddies, but apart from them things really start to go downhill. Mahershala Ali, for one thing, seems content to ham it up as the villainous Vector, and while he doesn't have all that much time to chew the scenery, it does get grating at some points. With the exception of Ed Skrein as cyborg Hunter-Killer Zapan, all of the actors that play cyborgs, including veteran Jackie Earle Haley, completely immersed in CGI as Salazar is, basically turn in the kind of performances one would see in a badly-dubbed anime. It doesn't at all help that so much of the dialogue coming out of the characters' mouths, even those played by decent actors, is frequently quite clunky.
And that, for me, is the film's biggest problem in a nutshell; James Cameron, whose scriptwriting resume includes classics like Aliens and Terminator 2, appears so determined to lift dialogue from the manga that he's forgotten that a lot of the translations from the Japanese are just plain awkward, and that he would have just been better off infusing the dialogue with his own sensibility. He was a little too reverent to the source material here, and the film suffers for it, as it does from a number of hackneyed plot turns.
When the film's action switches on, though, it's actually possible to forget, if only for a few glorious moments, all of the narrative ungainliness because it is when Alita is kicking ass that the movie absolutely soars. Sure, Alita's "waif-fu" against opponents three times her size is a little silly to behold at times, even though it does have a pseudo-scientific explanation behind it, but I'll be damned if the fight choreography isn't some of the most astonishing I've witnessed in quite some time. Rodriguez has come a long way from sending Antonio Banderas sliding along tables while shooting two pistols; this is where he shows that Cameron's faith in him was justified. If the John Wick movies are the epitome of what practical movie fight scenes should look like, than Alita: Battle Angel has just showcased truly jaw-dropping fight scenes that can only happen with the aid of computer generated imagery.
Some actions scenes look better than others; the motorball sequences meant as the film's climactic moments, while energetic in their own right, have a been-there, done-that feel to them, especially since they seem lifted right out of another manga-turned-Hollywood-movie, Speed Racer. This movie depicts its action a bit more clearly than that one did, though, and in 3-D it really is a sight to behold.
The thing is, as much as I was willing to forgive the movie its narrative shortcomings because of its slam-bang action sequences, I found myself facing yet another stumbling block to liking this movie as much as I wanted to going in. If you want to know what that is, proceed past the final score to see what it is, but if not, stop reading here.
Suffice it to say, with this little twist, I could not bring myself to give this movie a higher score than I just have.
6/10
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(SPOILER ALERT)
The movie actually ends on a bit of a downer as Alita's love interest, Hugo, whom she has actually just saved from death, gets killed trying to climb a cable from Iron City to Zalem. The final scene has Alita standing at the beginning of a motorball tournament, and holding her sword up against the big bad guy, Nova (played by Edward Norton) who looks on from Zalem, just before the film cuts to the end credits. I get that the manga ended on a similar anticlimax, but given that Cameron, Kalogridis and Rodriguez have already taken liberties with the manga's timeline, it feels shameless not to end the first installment of what is clearly planned as a franchise on a satisfactory note. As much as I want to see more of this story, I think they kind of got ahead of themselves here.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
My First Movie of the Year...Is a Wonderful Trip Back to Yesteryear! A Review of Bumblebee
directed by Travis Knight
written by Christina Hodge
In the interest of disclosure, allow me to share my history with the Transformers film franchise. I watched the original animated movie released in 1986 a grand total of 26 times on home video. I was 11. I cried when Optimus Prime died. At the ripe old age of 32 years old, I watched, and detested the first Michael-Bay-directed Transformers movie that came out in 2007, so much so that I refused to watch the second, third, and fifth one in theaters. I only watched the fourth one because there was literally nothing else showing at the mall that day, and after a long day's work I was honestly quite desperate to watch a movie. I didn't bother to review it, though.
To me, the cardinal sin of every Transformers movie that came out between the 1986 film and the new prequel Bumblebee isn't even the fact that they are the exemplification of style over substance, or the fact that they pander to director Michael Bay's addiction to explosions and his determination to objectify the women in his movie, whether they are the love interest of the lead or the lead character's actual daughter.
No, what turned me off to those movies to the extent that, after the first movie, I only ever watched another one because the alternative was walking around a mall, waiting for my colleagues for two hours, was that none of these movies was made with anything even remotely resembling heart.
I have no illusions that the 1986 animated Transformers movie anything more than an extended commercial for a new line of toys, but even then, it had an emotional core. It was a coming of age story for its lead character, Hot Rod, who underwent a journey from callow youth to Autobot leader. It had stakes, it had emotional highs and lows, and one heck of a soundtrack. The Bay movies had none of that.
Bumblebee, from virtually the word "go" lets the viewers know it has more in common with that cult-favorite 80s animated movie than any of the live-action Bay films. The movie starts on Cybertron, and us fans of the Generation 1 Transformers designs are treated to a smorgasbord of characters from that era, from Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), to Soundwave and Shockwave (Jon Bailey), to Ravage, with Bumblebee, or, as he is known at that point B-127 (briefly voiced by Dylan O' Brien) as the war between the Decepticons and the Autobot rebels rages, with the Autobots having to flee Cybertron. B-127 is dispatched to earth, where, upon crash landing, he almost immediately figures in an unfortunate encounter with not only American soldiers led by Major Burns (Jon Cena) but a Decepticon too. In the ensuing battle, B-127 literally loses his voice as the mechanism that controls it is destroyed.
Not too long thereafter, we find Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a young girl going through tough times; even though she's just turned 18, she's down on her luck and still recovering from the death of her father. She's annoyed that her mother (Pamela Adlon) seems to have moved on so easily from her husband's death, having moved on to a new boyfriend, Ron (Stephen Schneider), and is even more annoyed with her kid brother Otis (Jason Drucker) whom she finds self-absorbed. She doesn't even care about being snickered at by the local mean girls, and is completely oblivious to Memo (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), her co-worker at the carnival with a massive crush on her. All she wants is to escape her life, and so she after her job at the carnival selling corn dogs and lemonade she tinkers with her father's broken old Corvette. She rummages around in the local junkyard looking for parts, when she stumbles on a beat-up old Volkswagen Beetle that catches her eye. After haggling with the junkyard owner she takes the Beetle home, only to discover that it's actually B-127 in disguise. Thus begins an interesting, if somewhat hair-raising friendship, especially when B-127's radio signals attract Decepticons Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux) to earth to find the hidden Autobot. Even as B-127 strikes up a friendship with Charlie, who dubs him Bumblebee based on his buzzing "speech," little does he realize that his mortal enemies are coming for him, and plan to use him to wipe out the Autobots once and for all.
Like its predecessors, this movie is an action movie first and foremost, but unlike the Michael Bay movies, there is so much more to this little confection than just clanging metal and wanton explosions. Travis Knight, whose only other film is the beautiful, hauntingly tragic animated film Kubo and the Two Strings, infuses this 80s set prequel with dollops of charm, helped along by a charismatic lead and a catchy 80s soundtrack. The script, while it hews to a number of outsider/teen movie cliches, is wonderfully lively, genuinely funny, and actually manages to go the entire running time without a single crude joke. Whereas the writers of the last "Transformers" movie I watched apparently put more thought into a single line exempting someone from statutory rape than they did the entire script, writer Christina Hodge went through the trouble of crafting a likable teenage girl whose angst made her easy to relate to. Like Hogarth, the protagonist of Brad Bird's little-seen but much loved 1999 film The Iron Giant, of which this is a spiritual remake, Steinfeld's Charlie is without a father, and we really feel his absence too. It makes her friendship with Bumblebee that much richer than the boy-and-pet relationship Shia LeBeouf's Sam Witwicky had with Bumblebee in the first couple of films and adds a surprising amount of heft to an otherwise buoyant outing.
Another thing that sets this film apart from the others in the series is likable human characters. Hailee Steinfeld, whom I've always liked, ever since I first saw her in her Academy-Award-nominated turn as Mattie Ross in True Grit, just shines as Charlie, making her thoroughly sympathetic and imbuing her with a genuine pathos that transcends much of the prosaic teenage angst we're used to seeing in movies about young people. Lendeborg is genuinely likable as Charlie's smitten co-worker, and while John Cena and the rest of the government types in the movie aren't much more than the usual friendly-alien movie cliches, complete with a last-act change of heart, they're still a lot more watchable than John Turturro's cringeworthy Agent Simmons from the original series (who, incidentally, makes an appearance here, albeit played by a much younger actor) or any of the other cardboard cutouts from the other movies.
As a result of having characters worth caring about, including the speechless but extraordinarily animated Bumblebee, the movie manages to imbue its action scenes with actual stakes. It helps that they are far better staged than the ones in the Bay films, which usually looked like two junk piles smashing together.
It's not all good news, though; as much as I like Angela Bassett, the bad guys she and Justin Theroux give voice to are about as generic as it gets, and it's kind of disappointing that a movie with so many generation 1 characters didn't manage to throw in a couple of well-known Generation 1 villains as well.
Overall, though, this was the sort of Transformers movie I was hoping to see when the first one came out almost twelve years ago, and given that Optimus Prime shows up in the end, we may get even more like it sometime soon.
8/10
written by Christina Hodge
In the interest of disclosure, allow me to share my history with the Transformers film franchise. I watched the original animated movie released in 1986 a grand total of 26 times on home video. I was 11. I cried when Optimus Prime died. At the ripe old age of 32 years old, I watched, and detested the first Michael-Bay-directed Transformers movie that came out in 2007, so much so that I refused to watch the second, third, and fifth one in theaters. I only watched the fourth one because there was literally nothing else showing at the mall that day, and after a long day's work I was honestly quite desperate to watch a movie. I didn't bother to review it, though.
To me, the cardinal sin of every Transformers movie that came out between the 1986 film and the new prequel Bumblebee isn't even the fact that they are the exemplification of style over substance, or the fact that they pander to director Michael Bay's addiction to explosions and his determination to objectify the women in his movie, whether they are the love interest of the lead or the lead character's actual daughter.
No, what turned me off to those movies to the extent that, after the first movie, I only ever watched another one because the alternative was walking around a mall, waiting for my colleagues for two hours, was that none of these movies was made with anything even remotely resembling heart.
I have no illusions that the 1986 animated Transformers movie anything more than an extended commercial for a new line of toys, but even then, it had an emotional core. It was a coming of age story for its lead character, Hot Rod, who underwent a journey from callow youth to Autobot leader. It had stakes, it had emotional highs and lows, and one heck of a soundtrack. The Bay movies had none of that.
Bumblebee, from virtually the word "go" lets the viewers know it has more in common with that cult-favorite 80s animated movie than any of the live-action Bay films. The movie starts on Cybertron, and us fans of the Generation 1 Transformers designs are treated to a smorgasbord of characters from that era, from Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), to Soundwave and Shockwave (Jon Bailey), to Ravage, with Bumblebee, or, as he is known at that point B-127 (briefly voiced by Dylan O' Brien) as the war between the Decepticons and the Autobot rebels rages, with the Autobots having to flee Cybertron. B-127 is dispatched to earth, where, upon crash landing, he almost immediately figures in an unfortunate encounter with not only American soldiers led by Major Burns (Jon Cena) but a Decepticon too. In the ensuing battle, B-127 literally loses his voice as the mechanism that controls it is destroyed.
Not too long thereafter, we find Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a young girl going through tough times; even though she's just turned 18, she's down on her luck and still recovering from the death of her father. She's annoyed that her mother (Pamela Adlon) seems to have moved on so easily from her husband's death, having moved on to a new boyfriend, Ron (Stephen Schneider), and is even more annoyed with her kid brother Otis (Jason Drucker) whom she finds self-absorbed. She doesn't even care about being snickered at by the local mean girls, and is completely oblivious to Memo (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), her co-worker at the carnival with a massive crush on her. All she wants is to escape her life, and so she after her job at the carnival selling corn dogs and lemonade she tinkers with her father's broken old Corvette. She rummages around in the local junkyard looking for parts, when she stumbles on a beat-up old Volkswagen Beetle that catches her eye. After haggling with the junkyard owner she takes the Beetle home, only to discover that it's actually B-127 in disguise. Thus begins an interesting, if somewhat hair-raising friendship, especially when B-127's radio signals attract Decepticons Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux) to earth to find the hidden Autobot. Even as B-127 strikes up a friendship with Charlie, who dubs him Bumblebee based on his buzzing "speech," little does he realize that his mortal enemies are coming for him, and plan to use him to wipe out the Autobots once and for all.
Like its predecessors, this movie is an action movie first and foremost, but unlike the Michael Bay movies, there is so much more to this little confection than just clanging metal and wanton explosions. Travis Knight, whose only other film is the beautiful, hauntingly tragic animated film Kubo and the Two Strings, infuses this 80s set prequel with dollops of charm, helped along by a charismatic lead and a catchy 80s soundtrack. The script, while it hews to a number of outsider/teen movie cliches, is wonderfully lively, genuinely funny, and actually manages to go the entire running time without a single crude joke. Whereas the writers of the last "Transformers" movie I watched apparently put more thought into a single line exempting someone from statutory rape than they did the entire script, writer Christina Hodge went through the trouble of crafting a likable teenage girl whose angst made her easy to relate to. Like Hogarth, the protagonist of Brad Bird's little-seen but much loved 1999 film The Iron Giant, of which this is a spiritual remake, Steinfeld's Charlie is without a father, and we really feel his absence too. It makes her friendship with Bumblebee that much richer than the boy-and-pet relationship Shia LeBeouf's Sam Witwicky had with Bumblebee in the first couple of films and adds a surprising amount of heft to an otherwise buoyant outing.
Another thing that sets this film apart from the others in the series is likable human characters. Hailee Steinfeld, whom I've always liked, ever since I first saw her in her Academy-Award-nominated turn as Mattie Ross in True Grit, just shines as Charlie, making her thoroughly sympathetic and imbuing her with a genuine pathos that transcends much of the prosaic teenage angst we're used to seeing in movies about young people. Lendeborg is genuinely likable as Charlie's smitten co-worker, and while John Cena and the rest of the government types in the movie aren't much more than the usual friendly-alien movie cliches, complete with a last-act change of heart, they're still a lot more watchable than John Turturro's cringeworthy Agent Simmons from the original series (who, incidentally, makes an appearance here, albeit played by a much younger actor) or any of the other cardboard cutouts from the other movies.
As a result of having characters worth caring about, including the speechless but extraordinarily animated Bumblebee, the movie manages to imbue its action scenes with actual stakes. It helps that they are far better staged than the ones in the Bay films, which usually looked like two junk piles smashing together.
It's not all good news, though; as much as I like Angela Bassett, the bad guys she and Justin Theroux give voice to are about as generic as it gets, and it's kind of disappointing that a movie with so many generation 1 characters didn't manage to throw in a couple of well-known Generation 1 villains as well.
Overall, though, this was the sort of Transformers movie I was hoping to see when the first one came out almost twelve years ago, and given that Optimus Prime shows up in the end, we may get even more like it sometime soon.
8/10
Sunday, December 16, 2018
There Are Not Enough Superlatives: A Review of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"
directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman
written by Phil Lord and Rothman
I have to be honest; before I watched this film I was actually winding up for a hate-filled tirade against "Ralph Breaks the Internet" a movie I found so abhorrent in its storytelling I gave it a 1/10, and I was preparing to go into greater detail as to why I hated it so much. It turns out the antidote I needed for the vitriol I had for a movie that I hadn't expected to despise so much was a movie that, all thinks considered, I hadn't expected to like so much.
Unlike Peter Parker, Miles Morales, a latter-day iteration of Spider-Man, has a much briefer history. Introduced in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, he was a teenager with an African-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, created partly in reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama, and partly as a result of the semi-serious campaign by then-obscure actor Donald Glover to play Spider-Man. Whatever the motivations behind his creation, Miles clicked as a character and like Peter Parker before him, resonated with teenagers everywhere. He was created as a replacement for Peter Parker in the "ultimate" Marvel universe, which is basically a world that exists parallel to the one that most people casually acquainted with Marvel comic books knows. In that universe, Peter dies heroically, and Miles, who also gains his powers from a mutant spider-bite, reluctantly takes up the mantle. I followed his adventures for the first three years of his publication history. Bendis' stories, however, got increasingly monotonous, and I drifted away from the book, especially after Marvel migrated Miles from the "Ultimate" universe into the mainstream or "616" universe.
While I was genuinely excited to hear that Miles Morales would be getting his own Spider-Man movie, the thought that it would be produced by Sony Pictures Animation, whose track record has ranged from the competent (e.g. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) to the dreadful (e.g. The Emoji Movie) filled me with trepidation, even though production would be shepherded by the talented duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the minds behind the aforementioned Cloudy, The Lego Movie, and both 21 Jump Street and its sequel 22 Jump Street). Even though the trailer was extremely promising and the advance buzz was good, I had my concerns; this particular iteration of Spider-Man seemed intensely geek-centric. Would mainstream audiences get into it? It took Marvel several years and four movies to really draw people into the notion of a shared universe; how easy would it be for audiences to swallow a movie about multiple universes colliding? Not even the critics' glowing reviews could put me at ease. I mean, even the character's creator, Bendis, hadn't managed to make him that compelling.
As it turns out, all the hype was justified.
Here, as in the comics, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is the 13-year-old son of policeman Jeff Davis (Brian Tyree Henry) and nurse Rio Morales (Laura Lauren Velez) who lives in a world where Peter Parker (Chris Pine) fights crime as Spider-Man. Miles is about to start the year at a prestigious, science-oriented middle school, but he'd rather be hanging out with his "cool" Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) and creating street art, notwithstanding his massive potential. During one such hangout, Miles is bitten by a strange, mutated spider marked 42, which he brushes off without a second thought. When he acquires strange powers like sticking to walls and a mysterious sixth sense, he rushes back to the scene where the mysterious spider bit him, and stumbles onto a deadly battle between Spider-Man, and the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) and his minions like Norman Osborn and the mysterious Prowler. Apparently, the Kingpin is trying to use some kind of particle accelerator designed to open portals to different realities, hoping to achieve a goal that, for once, isn't about money but something more personal, but is no less motivated by self-interest, and is no less destructive. When an explosion stops the accelerator, things go horribly wrong for Spider-Man, which Miles witnesses to his horror, just shortly after he promises Spider-Man to take the machine out for good. Before he is able to finish the job, however, Prowler chases him off.
The accelerator has opened the doors to four different realities, and as a result four different Spider-people end up in Miles' world: schlubby fortysomething Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy aka Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Peter Parker from the 1930s, aka Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and her radioactive spider-powered robot Sp//dr, and Peter Porker, aka Spider-Ham (John Mulaney). All of them are on borrowed time, and all of them know that they have to close the portals Kingpin has opened up before all of their realities collapse. They'll need Miles' help, as well as that of the late Spider-Man's spunky Aunt May (Lily Tomlin) but even that may not be enough against Kingpin and his formidable army of superpowered minions.
As superb as this movie is in terms of its craft, from basics like the writing, direction and voice acting, to its eye-popping, astonishingly original animation style, what really grabbed me was how the filmmakers were able to make something so deeply steeped in comic-book lore so accessible. This movie doesn't require watching eighteen movies that came before it (though there some jokes that only make sense to those who've followed the Spider-Man movies). Also, knowledge of the comics lore can actually be a disadvantage here as, in my case, it spoiled a major (albeit somewhat predictable) plot twist for me. This is sublime writing here, by people who have real reverence for this character and the world he inhabits. Even though Peter Parker is not central to this story, it still remains true to Spider-Man's core values. The film's credo is basically that anyone can wear the mask, anyone can be Spider-man, because it's not the powers that make a hero, but the will to use them to do what's right.
It's a relatively simple message, but it's the way the film conveys it that makes it so amazingly effective. Like Peter Parker before him, and just about every other Spider avatar in the film, Miles carries the weight of guilt from very early on in the film, and the thought that he didn't do enough to help out someone in need is what drives him forward, even when his powers and his own body aren't necessarily up to the task. He carries the burden of not only the power he gains from the spider bite but the sense of responsibility that comes along with it. The extended cast of characters requires a little extra time to tell a complete story, which hurts the movie ever so slightly, but in the end it's all worth it. While credit must go to Brian Bendis for creating much of the material from which this story was derived, not only in terms of Miles' origin but even the "Spider-Verse" story itself (which borrows heavily from "Spider-Men II"), writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman craft a story that is just that much better than its various sources, and makes the absolute most out of its medium.
And boy, what a medium it is. We're living in an age in which the technology used to create animated films is so advanced that one could argue that it's only a few steps away from creating a feature film that could pass for a live-action film, with none the wiser. The thing is, with the passage of time, this technology has become so slick and seamless that even as the wizards at Disney and Pixar lead the way, they are also just as prone to putting out supremely competent but increasingly clinical fare like Finding Dory or The Incredibles 2. There's a warmth missing from several of their more recent films (and I will no longer even mention by name Disney's most recent movie which I detested, even in spite of all of its technical wizardry). The makers of Into the Spider-Verse, however, eschew the more "traditional" approach to computer-generated animation and embrace a more rough-and-tumble, hybrid finish that evokes the four-color, early adventures of Spider-Man on the printed page. Sony's previous work has shown they are just as capable of fluid motion as the best of them, but what they've gone for here makes for a much stronger storytelling experience than anything that's ever come out of not only their studio but almost all of their rivals. It's a visual experience similar in impact if not technique to last year's sumptuous Loving Vincent, but this time married to a much stronger story and featuring a much richer voice cast.
On that note, Shameik Moore does an excellent job embodying Miles' youthful insecurity, and later, his steely resolve. Someone like Donald Glover, who'd voiced the role on a television show, might have been a safer choice for this character's big-screen debut, but Sony's gamble on a relative unknown has paid off, as he delivers a performance that really helped me, as a viewer, really root for the character. Jake Johnson's a perfect fit for the disheveled, over-the-hill Peter Parker, just as Chris Pine is for the "ultimate" Peter Parker (and do sit through the credits for Pine's hilarious "Spidey Bells" Christmas song, as well as the customary after-credits treat featuring Oscar Isaac). The supporting players do a great job filling up a pretty large ensemble, but there were definitely a few standouts for me, like Steinfeld as fan-favorite Spider-Gwen, and legendary comic-book geek (and, I'm told, pretty decent actor) Cage as the stylish Spider-Man Noir.
This is a movie that needs not just to be seen, but experienced in theaters. It's a sensory feast quite unlike anything that's ever come before it, and as comic-book based movies go, it really is a blast of fresh air breathed into a genre that didn't even know it needed it.
9.5/10
written by Phil Lord and Rothman
I have to be honest; before I watched this film I was actually winding up for a hate-filled tirade against "Ralph Breaks the Internet" a movie I found so abhorrent in its storytelling I gave it a 1/10, and I was preparing to go into greater detail as to why I hated it so much. It turns out the antidote I needed for the vitriol I had for a movie that I hadn't expected to despise so much was a movie that, all thinks considered, I hadn't expected to like so much.
Unlike Peter Parker, Miles Morales, a latter-day iteration of Spider-Man, has a much briefer history. Introduced in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, he was a teenager with an African-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, created partly in reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama, and partly as a result of the semi-serious campaign by then-obscure actor Donald Glover to play Spider-Man. Whatever the motivations behind his creation, Miles clicked as a character and like Peter Parker before him, resonated with teenagers everywhere. He was created as a replacement for Peter Parker in the "ultimate" Marvel universe, which is basically a world that exists parallel to the one that most people casually acquainted with Marvel comic books knows. In that universe, Peter dies heroically, and Miles, who also gains his powers from a mutant spider-bite, reluctantly takes up the mantle. I followed his adventures for the first three years of his publication history. Bendis' stories, however, got increasingly monotonous, and I drifted away from the book, especially after Marvel migrated Miles from the "Ultimate" universe into the mainstream or "616" universe.
While I was genuinely excited to hear that Miles Morales would be getting his own Spider-Man movie, the thought that it would be produced by Sony Pictures Animation, whose track record has ranged from the competent (e.g. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) to the dreadful (e.g. The Emoji Movie) filled me with trepidation, even though production would be shepherded by the talented duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the minds behind the aforementioned Cloudy, The Lego Movie, and both 21 Jump Street and its sequel 22 Jump Street). Even though the trailer was extremely promising and the advance buzz was good, I had my concerns; this particular iteration of Spider-Man seemed intensely geek-centric. Would mainstream audiences get into it? It took Marvel several years and four movies to really draw people into the notion of a shared universe; how easy would it be for audiences to swallow a movie about multiple universes colliding? Not even the critics' glowing reviews could put me at ease. I mean, even the character's creator, Bendis, hadn't managed to make him that compelling.
As it turns out, all the hype was justified.
Here, as in the comics, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is the 13-year-old son of policeman Jeff Davis (Brian Tyree Henry) and nurse Rio Morales (Laura Lauren Velez) who lives in a world where Peter Parker (Chris Pine) fights crime as Spider-Man. Miles is about to start the year at a prestigious, science-oriented middle school, but he'd rather be hanging out with his "cool" Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali) and creating street art, notwithstanding his massive potential. During one such hangout, Miles is bitten by a strange, mutated spider marked 42, which he brushes off without a second thought. When he acquires strange powers like sticking to walls and a mysterious sixth sense, he rushes back to the scene where the mysterious spider bit him, and stumbles onto a deadly battle between Spider-Man, and the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) and his minions like Norman Osborn and the mysterious Prowler. Apparently, the Kingpin is trying to use some kind of particle accelerator designed to open portals to different realities, hoping to achieve a goal that, for once, isn't about money but something more personal, but is no less motivated by self-interest, and is no less destructive. When an explosion stops the accelerator, things go horribly wrong for Spider-Man, which Miles witnesses to his horror, just shortly after he promises Spider-Man to take the machine out for good. Before he is able to finish the job, however, Prowler chases him off.
The accelerator has opened the doors to four different realities, and as a result four different Spider-people end up in Miles' world: schlubby fortysomething Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacy aka Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Peter Parker from the 1930s, aka Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and her radioactive spider-powered robot Sp//dr, and Peter Porker, aka Spider-Ham (John Mulaney). All of them are on borrowed time, and all of them know that they have to close the portals Kingpin has opened up before all of their realities collapse. They'll need Miles' help, as well as that of the late Spider-Man's spunky Aunt May (Lily Tomlin) but even that may not be enough against Kingpin and his formidable army of superpowered minions.
As superb as this movie is in terms of its craft, from basics like the writing, direction and voice acting, to its eye-popping, astonishingly original animation style, what really grabbed me was how the filmmakers were able to make something so deeply steeped in comic-book lore so accessible. This movie doesn't require watching eighteen movies that came before it (though there some jokes that only make sense to those who've followed the Spider-Man movies). Also, knowledge of the comics lore can actually be a disadvantage here as, in my case, it spoiled a major (albeit somewhat predictable) plot twist for me. This is sublime writing here, by people who have real reverence for this character and the world he inhabits. Even though Peter Parker is not central to this story, it still remains true to Spider-Man's core values. The film's credo is basically that anyone can wear the mask, anyone can be Spider-man, because it's not the powers that make a hero, but the will to use them to do what's right.
It's a relatively simple message, but it's the way the film conveys it that makes it so amazingly effective. Like Peter Parker before him, and just about every other Spider avatar in the film, Miles carries the weight of guilt from very early on in the film, and the thought that he didn't do enough to help out someone in need is what drives him forward, even when his powers and his own body aren't necessarily up to the task. He carries the burden of not only the power he gains from the spider bite but the sense of responsibility that comes along with it. The extended cast of characters requires a little extra time to tell a complete story, which hurts the movie ever so slightly, but in the end it's all worth it. While credit must go to Brian Bendis for creating much of the material from which this story was derived, not only in terms of Miles' origin but even the "Spider-Verse" story itself (which borrows heavily from "Spider-Men II"), writers Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman craft a story that is just that much better than its various sources, and makes the absolute most out of its medium.
And boy, what a medium it is. We're living in an age in which the technology used to create animated films is so advanced that one could argue that it's only a few steps away from creating a feature film that could pass for a live-action film, with none the wiser. The thing is, with the passage of time, this technology has become so slick and seamless that even as the wizards at Disney and Pixar lead the way, they are also just as prone to putting out supremely competent but increasingly clinical fare like Finding Dory or The Incredibles 2. There's a warmth missing from several of their more recent films (and I will no longer even mention by name Disney's most recent movie which I detested, even in spite of all of its technical wizardry). The makers of Into the Spider-Verse, however, eschew the more "traditional" approach to computer-generated animation and embrace a more rough-and-tumble, hybrid finish that evokes the four-color, early adventures of Spider-Man on the printed page. Sony's previous work has shown they are just as capable of fluid motion as the best of them, but what they've gone for here makes for a much stronger storytelling experience than anything that's ever come out of not only their studio but almost all of their rivals. It's a visual experience similar in impact if not technique to last year's sumptuous Loving Vincent, but this time married to a much stronger story and featuring a much richer voice cast.
On that note, Shameik Moore does an excellent job embodying Miles' youthful insecurity, and later, his steely resolve. Someone like Donald Glover, who'd voiced the role on a television show, might have been a safer choice for this character's big-screen debut, but Sony's gamble on a relative unknown has paid off, as he delivers a performance that really helped me, as a viewer, really root for the character. Jake Johnson's a perfect fit for the disheveled, over-the-hill Peter Parker, just as Chris Pine is for the "ultimate" Peter Parker (and do sit through the credits for Pine's hilarious "Spidey Bells" Christmas song, as well as the customary after-credits treat featuring Oscar Isaac). The supporting players do a great job filling up a pretty large ensemble, but there were definitely a few standouts for me, like Steinfeld as fan-favorite Spider-Gwen, and legendary comic-book geek (and, I'm told, pretty decent actor) Cage as the stylish Spider-Man Noir.
This is a movie that needs not just to be seen, but experienced in theaters. It's a sensory feast quite unlike anything that's ever come before it, and as comic-book based movies go, it really is a blast of fresh air breathed into a genre that didn't even know it needed it.
9.5/10
Friday, November 30, 2018
(SPOILER ALERT and STRONG LANGUAGE FOR A REVIEW OF A KID'S MOVIE) How Disney Took a Giant Dump on Its Own Movie (OR, Why Wreck-It-Ralph 2 is a Truly Awful Film): A Review of Ralph Breaks the Internet (Wreck-It-Ralph 2)
directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston
written by Pamela Ribon and Johnston, Moore, Jim Reardon and Josie Trinidad
As hard as it may be to believe, it's been six years since Walt Disney Animation Studios gobsmacked movie goers and video game nuts of all ages with Wreck-It-Ralph, a hilarious, surprisingly moving fable about a bad guy tired of his thankless job who yearns for greener pastures but ultimately learns to love not just who he is but what he has in life. What was even harder to believe for me was that after giving us this utterly charming, nostalgia-fueled confection, Disney pulled down its pants, squatted and took a giant, steaming dump on it with the message of its sequel.
Six years after the first movie, video game character Wreck-It-Ralph (John C. Reilly) is living in utter contentment. By day he works as the bad guy in the arcade game Fix-It-Felix, and by night he gets to hang out with his best friend, Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) star of the popular racing game Sugar Rush. Unlike Ralph, Vanellope has gotten bored with her life and wonders if there's more out there than just winning races and being queen of her realm all the time. As if in answer to her question, the arcade owner Litwak (Ed O'Neill) installs internet in the arcade, but the Surge Protector (Phil Johnston) declares the portal to the internet off-limits. When Ralph, wanting to make Vanellope happy, builds her a new, "bonus" track, Vanellope, about to win a race in the hands of gamer for the nth time, deviates from the track and actually fights the gamer, resulting in the steering wheel of the game breaking. When Litwak is unable to fix the machine and learns from an online search that a new part would cost more than the game even earns, he decides to pull the plug on it, rendering all of the Sugar Rush characters, including Vanellope, homeless. Wanting to make things right, Ralph decides to set off on a trip through the internet to find a new steering wheel and save Sugar Rush, and Vanellope joins him. They learn that they need money to get the part and in their attempt to make it, they enter a grungy, Grand Theft-Auto-inspired game called Slaughter Race in which they must steal the car of Shank (Gal Gadot) the game's leading antagonist. That doesn't pan out, but Vanellope finds herself drawn more and more to this strange new world, even as Ralph tries to raise the money needed to buy the steering wheel by becoming, of all things, an online video sensation through the prodding of head Buzztube algorithm Yesss (Taraji P. Henson). Soon, both Ralph and Vanellope will have to make some very uncomfortable choices.
The visual craft of this movie is just astonishing. Disney Animation is moving ever upwards and onward, even after having jettisoned its former shepherd John Lassetter on allegations of sexual impropriety, and they show, yet again, why they're at the top of the heap in terms of pure technical wizardry. The internet setting make a lot of online jokes possible, as well as a lot of cameos from other Disney properties including Star Wars (the Stormtroopers and C3PO have walk-ons) and Marvel (Groot and the late Stan Lee both make appearances, although the latter isn't a speaking role). It's pretty fun, if only for the visuals and Easter Eggs.
None of that really matters to me, though because the godawful writing just undermines it all.
This movie is thoroughly awful, but to go into why, I'll have to go into some major spoilers. Read on if you want to know more. If not, then you can end the review here.
1/10
(SPOILER ALERT)
(LAST CHANCE)
When the first movie came along, two other films had already taken a stab at telling a story of a bad guy who turned good (i.e. Megamind and Despicable Me) and so it needed a little something extra to distinguish itself, and apart from a plethora of delightful video game references, it managed to impart a charming message about making the most with what one has, even though it was delivered with all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Ralph's "Bad Guy Anonymous" credo was central to the movie's theme and featured in the movie's most touching moment: "I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
The flip side of that surprisingly sweet message, however, was an entire community telling Ralph that he was wrong to dream about being a hero rather than a villain, from the entire supporting cast of the game in which he was the bad guy, to the other games he basically invaded, to the storytellers themselves. When Ralph wanted to improve his lot in life by stepping out of the (literal) box in which he had been confined for thirty years, he nearly destroyed his whole world. They even had a name for it: "Going Turbo." Yes, even the bad guy in the film was basically a cautionary tale as to what would happen if Ralph followed through on chasing his dream.
It seemed a pretty strange message for a Disney movie at the time. Don't chase your dreams? Make do with what you have? It seemed a bit out-of-character for the company as a whole, but the real surprise was how they actually managed to make that message work, largely by telling the audience, which consisted mainly of kids: it isn't all about you; sometimes there are people in your life who depend on you. In the end, Ralph learns to love his thankless job because he has a new friend, and because the people in his life have learned to appreciate him more.
And that's what makes the sequel, which basically throws that message out the window, utterly despicable.
Here, Vanellope, after six years of living the life she always wanted to live (a fact established firmly in the first movie) gets bored with her life and wants to head somewhere else, even though she's the lead character of her game (whose picture was even on the side of the machine, a crucial detail from the first film) and easily the most popular one. Sound familiar? She basically wants what Ralph wanted at the beginning of the first movie, except that unlike him, she's living the high life, without a care in the world and yet, unlike Ralph, the storytellers support her desire to "pursue her dream." So Ralph, after thirty years of being the most hated man in his corner of the world, is wrong to want more, but Vanellope, after a paltry six years of having everything she ever wanted, is absolutely right to want exactly the same thing as Ralph did? How does that make any sense at all within the logic of that world?
There's another, decidedly more sinister subtext when one puts the two movies together. Ralph is clearly a poor, working class schlub with ratty clothes, no shoes and poor personal hygiene as repeatedly established by references to his breath. He's a man of simple joys and yet the first movie chastises him for chasing glory and a better station in life. In contrast, Vanellope was programmed with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. She was created as royalty, and the hero of her own game, only to be cheated out of it by someone who jumped ship from his own game. And yet, for all of her privilege, she, according to this film, is entirely justified in her desire to slum it it in the hellish landscape of Slaughter Race just because she's bored. Call it a stretch, but I'd almost say that the movie is declaring that rich people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, even if it means abandoning all personal responsibility, while us poor assholes had better just shut the fuck up and get back in line or there will be dire consequences. Take a look at what happens to Vanellope's game at the end of the movie; it may have been saved, but nobody's playing it, and it's become boring because the racers have all become nice to each other as a result of a barely-discussed subplot involving Fix-it-Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) adopting them all after Sugar Rush was unplugged and turning them into perfect children. Basically, without Vanellope, the game is screwed, even if it isn't explicitly stated, but that's okay, because Vanellope gets to live her dream with Shank and her gang.
And that's another thing; the supporting characters introduced here are the pits, from Gadot's hollow bad girl to Henson's one-note internet mogul. They pale in comparison to the liveliness that Felix and Calhoun brought to the screen in the first film.
Finally, the movie has the temerity to call Ralph clingy and toxic for basically echoing what the entire supporting cast of the first film was telling him. It's even more detestable considering that in the first film, none of the characters trying to talk Ralph out of his quest really gave a shit about him. They were all basically concerned with maintaining their comfortable little status quo. In the second film, in contrast, Ralph actually cares about Vanellope, and the movie is propelled by his efforts to actually help her, first by building her a new "bonus" track, and then by going into the internet to save her game, a game she ends up abandoning anyway. For all his dedication, he is branded as clingy, insecure, and toxic.
I'll tell you what's toxic: this movie. Sure, it's got amazing visuals and funny pop culture references (including a genuinely funny end-credits sequence which earns the film's sole point) but when all of this craftmanship is employed in service of such an awful story that spits in the face of what came before it, this deserves scorn rather than praise.
Now I know how haters of Star Wars: The Last Jedi feel.
Again: 1/10
written by Pamela Ribon and Johnston, Moore, Jim Reardon and Josie Trinidad
As hard as it may be to believe, it's been six years since Walt Disney Animation Studios gobsmacked movie goers and video game nuts of all ages with Wreck-It-Ralph, a hilarious, surprisingly moving fable about a bad guy tired of his thankless job who yearns for greener pastures but ultimately learns to love not just who he is but what he has in life. What was even harder to believe for me was that after giving us this utterly charming, nostalgia-fueled confection, Disney pulled down its pants, squatted and took a giant, steaming dump on it with the message of its sequel.
Six years after the first movie, video game character Wreck-It-Ralph (John C. Reilly) is living in utter contentment. By day he works as the bad guy in the arcade game Fix-It-Felix, and by night he gets to hang out with his best friend, Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) star of the popular racing game Sugar Rush. Unlike Ralph, Vanellope has gotten bored with her life and wonders if there's more out there than just winning races and being queen of her realm all the time. As if in answer to her question, the arcade owner Litwak (Ed O'Neill) installs internet in the arcade, but the Surge Protector (Phil Johnston) declares the portal to the internet off-limits. When Ralph, wanting to make Vanellope happy, builds her a new, "bonus" track, Vanellope, about to win a race in the hands of gamer for the nth time, deviates from the track and actually fights the gamer, resulting in the steering wheel of the game breaking. When Litwak is unable to fix the machine and learns from an online search that a new part would cost more than the game even earns, he decides to pull the plug on it, rendering all of the Sugar Rush characters, including Vanellope, homeless. Wanting to make things right, Ralph decides to set off on a trip through the internet to find a new steering wheel and save Sugar Rush, and Vanellope joins him. They learn that they need money to get the part and in their attempt to make it, they enter a grungy, Grand Theft-Auto-inspired game called Slaughter Race in which they must steal the car of Shank (Gal Gadot) the game's leading antagonist. That doesn't pan out, but Vanellope finds herself drawn more and more to this strange new world, even as Ralph tries to raise the money needed to buy the steering wheel by becoming, of all things, an online video sensation through the prodding of head Buzztube algorithm Yesss (Taraji P. Henson). Soon, both Ralph and Vanellope will have to make some very uncomfortable choices.
The visual craft of this movie is just astonishing. Disney Animation is moving ever upwards and onward, even after having jettisoned its former shepherd John Lassetter on allegations of sexual impropriety, and they show, yet again, why they're at the top of the heap in terms of pure technical wizardry. The internet setting make a lot of online jokes possible, as well as a lot of cameos from other Disney properties including Star Wars (the Stormtroopers and C3PO have walk-ons) and Marvel (Groot and the late Stan Lee both make appearances, although the latter isn't a speaking role). It's pretty fun, if only for the visuals and Easter Eggs.
None of that really matters to me, though because the godawful writing just undermines it all.
This movie is thoroughly awful, but to go into why, I'll have to go into some major spoilers. Read on if you want to know more. If not, then you can end the review here.
1/10
(SPOILER ALERT)
(LAST CHANCE)
When the first movie came along, two other films had already taken a stab at telling a story of a bad guy who turned good (i.e. Megamind and Despicable Me) and so it needed a little something extra to distinguish itself, and apart from a plethora of delightful video game references, it managed to impart a charming message about making the most with what one has, even though it was delivered with all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Ralph's "Bad Guy Anonymous" credo was central to the movie's theme and featured in the movie's most touching moment: "I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
The flip side of that surprisingly sweet message, however, was an entire community telling Ralph that he was wrong to dream about being a hero rather than a villain, from the entire supporting cast of the game in which he was the bad guy, to the other games he basically invaded, to the storytellers themselves. When Ralph wanted to improve his lot in life by stepping out of the (literal) box in which he had been confined for thirty years, he nearly destroyed his whole world. They even had a name for it: "Going Turbo." Yes, even the bad guy in the film was basically a cautionary tale as to what would happen if Ralph followed through on chasing his dream.
It seemed a pretty strange message for a Disney movie at the time. Don't chase your dreams? Make do with what you have? It seemed a bit out-of-character for the company as a whole, but the real surprise was how they actually managed to make that message work, largely by telling the audience, which consisted mainly of kids: it isn't all about you; sometimes there are people in your life who depend on you. In the end, Ralph learns to love his thankless job because he has a new friend, and because the people in his life have learned to appreciate him more.
And that's what makes the sequel, which basically throws that message out the window, utterly despicable.
Here, Vanellope, after six years of living the life she always wanted to live (a fact established firmly in the first movie) gets bored with her life and wants to head somewhere else, even though she's the lead character of her game (whose picture was even on the side of the machine, a crucial detail from the first film) and easily the most popular one. Sound familiar? She basically wants what Ralph wanted at the beginning of the first movie, except that unlike him, she's living the high life, without a care in the world and yet, unlike Ralph, the storytellers support her desire to "pursue her dream." So Ralph, after thirty years of being the most hated man in his corner of the world, is wrong to want more, but Vanellope, after a paltry six years of having everything she ever wanted, is absolutely right to want exactly the same thing as Ralph did? How does that make any sense at all within the logic of that world?
There's another, decidedly more sinister subtext when one puts the two movies together. Ralph is clearly a poor, working class schlub with ratty clothes, no shoes and poor personal hygiene as repeatedly established by references to his breath. He's a man of simple joys and yet the first movie chastises him for chasing glory and a better station in life. In contrast, Vanellope was programmed with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. She was created as royalty, and the hero of her own game, only to be cheated out of it by someone who jumped ship from his own game. And yet, for all of her privilege, she, according to this film, is entirely justified in her desire to slum it it in the hellish landscape of Slaughter Race just because she's bored. Call it a stretch, but I'd almost say that the movie is declaring that rich people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, even if it means abandoning all personal responsibility, while us poor assholes had better just shut the fuck up and get back in line or there will be dire consequences. Take a look at what happens to Vanellope's game at the end of the movie; it may have been saved, but nobody's playing it, and it's become boring because the racers have all become nice to each other as a result of a barely-discussed subplot involving Fix-it-Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) adopting them all after Sugar Rush was unplugged and turning them into perfect children. Basically, without Vanellope, the game is screwed, even if it isn't explicitly stated, but that's okay, because Vanellope gets to live her dream with Shank and her gang.
And that's another thing; the supporting characters introduced here are the pits, from Gadot's hollow bad girl to Henson's one-note internet mogul. They pale in comparison to the liveliness that Felix and Calhoun brought to the screen in the first film.
Finally, the movie has the temerity to call Ralph clingy and toxic for basically echoing what the entire supporting cast of the first film was telling him. It's even more detestable considering that in the first film, none of the characters trying to talk Ralph out of his quest really gave a shit about him. They were all basically concerned with maintaining their comfortable little status quo. In the second film, in contrast, Ralph actually cares about Vanellope, and the movie is propelled by his efforts to actually help her, first by building her a new "bonus" track, and then by going into the internet to save her game, a game she ends up abandoning anyway. For all his dedication, he is branded as clingy, insecure, and toxic.
I'll tell you what's toxic: this movie. Sure, it's got amazing visuals and funny pop culture references (including a genuinely funny end-credits sequence which earns the film's sole point) but when all of this craftmanship is employed in service of such an awful story that spits in the face of what came before it, this deserves scorn rather than praise.
Now I know how haters of Star Wars: The Last Jedi feel.
Again: 1/10
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Spidey vs. Aquaman vs. Bumblebee: Cannibalistic Christmas at the Cinema
With the year over 80% over, a good chunk of the movies destined to make a killing at the box-office have already run their course and are now racking up Blu-Ray and streaming sales. Using normal math, one could figure that the time for blockbusters is done, and that the year is most likely to go out quietly.
In the United States and Canada, however the grosses of movies that open on or around Christmas Day, and the week that follows it, do not follow the rules of "normal" box-office math. As many box-office analysts are fond of saying, in that part of the world, during that brief period of time every day is Saturday, which, barring the opening day of an extremely front-loaded movie, is invariably the single most lucrative day of any the week for any given movie. Because of this unique time of the year, the impossible becomes possible, such as multiple blockbusters thriving side-by-side (e.g. Avatar co-existing with box-office smashes like Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks), films opening small managing to finish huge (e.g. The Greatest Showman opening to $8 million and going on to finish with $174 million). It's a completely different dynamic from that followed by the average summer blockbuster, which usually adhere to the following rules: 1) opening weekend is usually make-or-break, 2) any competition closer than two weeks away can seriously damage grosses and 3) every dollar earned past the first couple of weeks is a bonus. The pre-Christmas and Christmas day blockbuster, however, is a different animal.
The thing is, the dynamic usually works because at Christmastime, there's usually something for everyone. A movie like Sing can sell $250 million in tickets alongside a $500++ million juggernaut like Rogue One: A Star Wars story because while the latter is busy gobbling up dollars from the 18-to-25, mostly male demographic, the former is busy catering to families, who are out in droves thanks to holidays from school and work. Adults can goose up the grosses of awards-bait like Argo and The Revenant, and basically there's a good time to be had by all.
What makes this year different and worth writing about, in my opinion at least, is that unlike in the past, this Christmas will feature the most number of aspiring blockbusters competing for what is essentially the same patch of box-office real estate.
There are three big guy-centric movies that will compete for the big bucks at or around Christmas, the first being Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which, to be fair will be coming out almost two weeks before Christmas Day, around the same time of release of the Star Wars or Tolkien adaptation movies, but it is hitting theaters only one week before the other two aspiring blockbusters of the season, Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman and Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. All three of them, clearly, hope to partake of that sweet, sweet holiday loot, and up until a month or so ago, a fourth movie with an almost identical target demographic, James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel was originally scheduled to open right alongside Aquaman and Bumblebee. Alita: Battle Angel has since moved to February of next year, but it has been replaced with a PG-13 re-release of Deadpool 2, which, while not expected to make serious money, being a re-release, could spoil things for somebody's blockbuster-in-waiting nonetheless. As it is, three brand new movies with considerable audience overlap are going to duke it out and put to the test, more than ever has been done before, just how much the marketplace can expand to accommodate multiple blockbusters.
Personally, as a lifelong fan of the Spider-Man character, I'm most pumped for Into the Spider-Verse, considering that, more than any of the other offerings it looks like something we've never seen before, with its universe crisscrossing plot and its unique and quite honestly eye-popping animation style. I'm rooting for it more than any of the others, and quite frankly, with the earliest release date and family appeal (being an animated film) I think it has the best shot of the three of coming out on top. If nothing else, by the time the melee starts, it will most likely have webbed up about a cool hundred million or so.
Of all the "18 to 25" movies coming out on the weekend before Christmas, Aquaman has the best chance of winning the weekend. Its closest competitor for the crown, the long-awaited Mary Poppins Returns, opens on a Wednesday and will have burned off considerable demand by the weekend. Besides, Disney is most likely playing the long game with that particular film, which will cater to a different demographic, while Aquaman, like any comic-book blockbuster barring Black Panther or Wonder Woman, in contrast, is likely to be frontloaded. Considering that Warner Bros./DC had Aquaman in the can when Justice League tanked a year ago, releasing it in December was arguably the best thing they could have done with it. Had it been released any sooner, it'd still carry the stink of JL's failure, while waiting too long to release it would cast serious doubt on WB's confidence in the film and might also put it in the path of other blockbusters-in-waiting like Captain Marvel. WB marketing got this just right; how much money the movie makes now is all up to...the movie.
For me, the one truly puzzling release of Christmas 2018 is the Transformers prequel (reboot?) Bumblebee, which, in my estimation at least, looks most likely to lose out, if indeed there will be a loser when the dust settles. The truth be told, the thought that this movie could get lost in a sea of blockbusters makes me a little sad, because in over eleven years and six movies, this film, if the trailer is any indication, marks the first time that the folks at Paramount are ditching Michael Bay's brain-dead approach to filmmaking and have elected to actually make a film with heart. Not only is this evident from the trailer which suggests an 80s-set, Iron Giant-inspired narrative, but also from the pedigree of the filmmakers, like Travis Knight, director of the Academy-Award nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, and the two up-and-coming female scriptwriters Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, both firsts for the franchise. Oh, and the film also starts Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld as the lead (though to be fair, Mark Wahlberg, lead of the last two Transformers films, also has an Oscar nod under his belt). As odd as this may sound, of all the 18-to-25-skewing movies coming out this December, this movie actually has the most pedigree, though the presence of former wrestler John Cena kind of evens that out a bit.
I'm glad Alita: Battle Angel, which to me looked like the most unique of the entire Christmas bunch, dodged the bullet of having to face off against so many big titles, but even without it in the mix I find myself genuinely curious to see how this box-office battle royale will ultimately play out.
In the United States and Canada, however the grosses of movies that open on or around Christmas Day, and the week that follows it, do not follow the rules of "normal" box-office math. As many box-office analysts are fond of saying, in that part of the world, during that brief period of time every day is Saturday, which, barring the opening day of an extremely front-loaded movie, is invariably the single most lucrative day of any the week for any given movie. Because of this unique time of the year, the impossible becomes possible, such as multiple blockbusters thriving side-by-side (e.g. Avatar co-existing with box-office smashes like Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks), films opening small managing to finish huge (e.g. The Greatest Showman opening to $8 million and going on to finish with $174 million). It's a completely different dynamic from that followed by the average summer blockbuster, which usually adhere to the following rules: 1) opening weekend is usually make-or-break, 2) any competition closer than two weeks away can seriously damage grosses and 3) every dollar earned past the first couple of weeks is a bonus. The pre-Christmas and Christmas day blockbuster, however, is a different animal.
The thing is, the dynamic usually works because at Christmastime, there's usually something for everyone. A movie like Sing can sell $250 million in tickets alongside a $500++ million juggernaut like Rogue One: A Star Wars story because while the latter is busy gobbling up dollars from the 18-to-25, mostly male demographic, the former is busy catering to families, who are out in droves thanks to holidays from school and work. Adults can goose up the grosses of awards-bait like Argo and The Revenant, and basically there's a good time to be had by all.
What makes this year different and worth writing about, in my opinion at least, is that unlike in the past, this Christmas will feature the most number of aspiring blockbusters competing for what is essentially the same patch of box-office real estate.
There are three big guy-centric movies that will compete for the big bucks at or around Christmas, the first being Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which, to be fair will be coming out almost two weeks before Christmas Day, around the same time of release of the Star Wars or Tolkien adaptation movies, but it is hitting theaters only one week before the other two aspiring blockbusters of the season, Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman and Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. All three of them, clearly, hope to partake of that sweet, sweet holiday loot, and up until a month or so ago, a fourth movie with an almost identical target demographic, James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel was originally scheduled to open right alongside Aquaman and Bumblebee. Alita: Battle Angel has since moved to February of next year, but it has been replaced with a PG-13 re-release of Deadpool 2, which, while not expected to make serious money, being a re-release, could spoil things for somebody's blockbuster-in-waiting nonetheless. As it is, three brand new movies with considerable audience overlap are going to duke it out and put to the test, more than ever has been done before, just how much the marketplace can expand to accommodate multiple blockbusters.
Personally, as a lifelong fan of the Spider-Man character, I'm most pumped for Into the Spider-Verse, considering that, more than any of the other offerings it looks like something we've never seen before, with its universe crisscrossing plot and its unique and quite honestly eye-popping animation style. I'm rooting for it more than any of the others, and quite frankly, with the earliest release date and family appeal (being an animated film) I think it has the best shot of the three of coming out on top. If nothing else, by the time the melee starts, it will most likely have webbed up about a cool hundred million or so.
Of all the "18 to 25" movies coming out on the weekend before Christmas, Aquaman has the best chance of winning the weekend. Its closest competitor for the crown, the long-awaited Mary Poppins Returns, opens on a Wednesday and will have burned off considerable demand by the weekend. Besides, Disney is most likely playing the long game with that particular film, which will cater to a different demographic, while Aquaman, like any comic-book blockbuster barring Black Panther or Wonder Woman, in contrast, is likely to be frontloaded. Considering that Warner Bros./DC had Aquaman in the can when Justice League tanked a year ago, releasing it in December was arguably the best thing they could have done with it. Had it been released any sooner, it'd still carry the stink of JL's failure, while waiting too long to release it would cast serious doubt on WB's confidence in the film and might also put it in the path of other blockbusters-in-waiting like Captain Marvel. WB marketing got this just right; how much money the movie makes now is all up to...the movie.
For me, the one truly puzzling release of Christmas 2018 is the Transformers prequel (reboot?) Bumblebee, which, in my estimation at least, looks most likely to lose out, if indeed there will be a loser when the dust settles. The truth be told, the thought that this movie could get lost in a sea of blockbusters makes me a little sad, because in over eleven years and six movies, this film, if the trailer is any indication, marks the first time that the folks at Paramount are ditching Michael Bay's brain-dead approach to filmmaking and have elected to actually make a film with heart. Not only is this evident from the trailer which suggests an 80s-set, Iron Giant-inspired narrative, but also from the pedigree of the filmmakers, like Travis Knight, director of the Academy-Award nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, and the two up-and-coming female scriptwriters Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, both firsts for the franchise. Oh, and the film also starts Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld as the lead (though to be fair, Mark Wahlberg, lead of the last two Transformers films, also has an Oscar nod under his belt). As odd as this may sound, of all the 18-to-25-skewing movies coming out this December, this movie actually has the most pedigree, though the presence of former wrestler John Cena kind of evens that out a bit.
I'm glad Alita: Battle Angel, which to me looked like the most unique of the entire Christmas bunch, dodged the bullet of having to face off against so many big titles, but even without it in the mix I find myself genuinely curious to see how this box-office battle royale will ultimately play out.
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