I would love to tell everyone reading this, especially my fellow Filipinos, that Tony Gilroy's Bourne franchise sequel/spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, the last act of which takes place in Metro Manila, is a worthy addition to the franchise. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case.
Understand, The Bourne Legacy is not what I consider a terrible movie; it's not even necessarily a bad one, but it comes in the wake of three movies with quality that ranged, in my opinion, from very good to excellent. The Bourne trilogy is one of those rare cinematic animals that got better as it went along, with each new movie in the trilogy getting better reviews and earning bigger box-office bucks, in the United States and everywhere else, as it went along. They were all taut, intelligent thrillers, even though all three of them followed distinctive story beats (several fist-fights, including one with an enhanced agent, at least one car chase, and a final confrontation, all laced with shadowy political intrigue) with The Bourne Ultimatum, in particular, providing such spectacular entertainment that, even today, I can watch it over and over again. Those three movies are among my very favorites in my DVD collection. Not only that, but they ended on an absolutely perfect note, much like the Indiana Jones trilogy before a fourth, entirely superfluous film was tacked onto the franchise. All loose ends were tied up and Matt Damon's Jason Bourne basically came full circle.
Ironically enough it was because the first three Bourne movies worked so well, individually and taken together, as a single, cohesive narrative, that it was actually more sensible to take the story, if it had to continue at all, in a new direction. The spinoff, had it been handled properly, could actually have captured a good deal of what made the trilogy as compelling as it was. From a storytelling point of view, this is actually what director/screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three of the first three movies, has attempted, and I must credit him for that, but he seriously fumbles the execution.
The film begins at around the same time the last film ended, with Jason Bourne's expose of the government's enhanced-assassin programs threatening a whole lot of people in high places, prompting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) to pay a visit to Admiral Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) regarding the problem. Turso then approaches Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton), who is overseeing the latest iteration of this program, dubbed Outcome, which involves chemically-enhanced agents.
One such agent, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), meanwhile is thousands of kilometers away, at a training ground in the Alaskan wilderness. He is constantly popping green and blue pills which, we later learn, are critical not only to his physical and mental enhancements, but to his ability to function. When he runs low , he looks up another agent in the field, known only as Number Three (Oscar Isaac) and stays for a while in the same cabin where he's holed up.
Meanwhile, the shady government types decide to close down the Outcome program altogether, which involves giving the chemically dependent operatives out in the field a yellow pill that takes them out, sending a drone to dispose of Number Three and Cross (which in the case of the latter doesn't quite take), and killing the scientists responsible for the chemical process of enhancement, one of whom is Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). Fortunately for Shearing, Cross reaches her in time to save her from the spooks out to kill her. Shearing needs Cross to stay alive, and Cross needs Shearing's expertise, which could be the key to getting him off his "chems" once and for all. Of course, Turso and Byer will do everything in their power to make sure that they do not reach their destination, or any other for that matter.
The film's single biggest problem is its pacing; at two hours and fifteen minutes it feels half an hour too long, especially considering how much of that running time is devoted to some laborious exposition. There are action scenes aplenty, and quite impressively staged at that, but Gilroy simply fails to build tension in the first half of the film, something his predecessors Doug Liman, who directed the first film, and Paul Greengrass, who directed the second and third ones, did quite handily. Gilroy devotes in inordinate amount of time to explaining everything, apparently forgetting one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: show, not tell.
The exchanges between Cross and Number Three, for example, feel like they could have been at least five minutes shorter. There seems a vague attempt on Gilroy's part to suggest tension between the two of them, like they could erupt into a fight to the death at any moment, but to my mind Gilroy simply doesn't pull it off. Cross could have been sitting in Number Three's cabin by himself, looking for the much-needed "chems" and it would have had the same effect.
The most egregious lapses in narrative judgment, however, involve the "command center" moments featuring Turso, Byer and their team. Each and every film in the series has had such "command center" scenes, first involving Chris Cooper's Alexander Conklin, then later involving Joan Allen's Pamela Landy and David Strathairn's Noah Vosen, and all of them involved terrific amounts of tension even if it was basically just people in a room talking. For some reason, even though he's actually recreated scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum, Gilroy is unable to replicate with any real conviction the excitement of these moments. The dialogue about the horrible repercussions of Jason Bourne's actions seems, quite honestly, interminable, and as capable an actor as Edward Norton is, even he can't mask the fact that Gilroy's endlessly expository dialogue slows the film down to a snail's pace. It was astonishing to see how Gilroy could incorporate some of the most exciting scenes from the last film, including the death of a pivotal character, and still come up with something as boring as many of his scenes were to me. I was thoroughly perplexed by the fact that Gilroy made so much of the narrative of this film dependent on the events of the previous films, but was unable to transmit any of the thrills from those films to this one. Not only that, but each and every one of the previous Bourne films could stand on its own as well as being part of a bigger storytelling tapestry. This film is deliberately, infuriatingly written as something incomplete; it requires both a working knowledge of what has come before and leaves a great deal hanging, even after the more than two hours of running time are over.
The painful irony at work here is that one of the few memorable lines from the film, Turso's utterance, "I gave you a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower," is the perfect way to describe Gilroy's script in relation to the rest of the franchise, especially the last film.
The good news is that when the action begins in earnest, it pretty much does not stop. The film's first major action sequence pits Cross against a drone and a wolf, but for me, it's only when he unleashes his fighting skills and smarts against a team of black-ops agents that the action really begins. Accomplished second unit director/stunt guru Dan Bradley and his various stunt crew members truly deliver the goods, especially when the action shifts to Manila. There's a rooftop chase to rival the one that took place in Tangiers in the last film, and a motorcycle chase that's easily on par with any of the other car chases that have featured in the series so far, though it ends on a bit of an anticlimactic note and with some pretty silly-looking computer-generated imagery (CGI).
I should make clear that I don't have any beef with Jeremy Renner taking over this franchise, and to be frank his performance was the only thing that made this film worth watching while I was waiting for the action to actually start. Rachel Weisz makes a welcome addition to the series as well, though now that she's actually performed what was needed of her I can't help but wonder, somewhat cynically, how much longer her character will last in future films, should there be any. Edward Norton does the best he can with a poorly-scripted role, but if nothing else he sets himself up to be a primo bad guy in future installments. Stacy Keach looks imposing, but his Turso isn't nearly as engaging a bad guy as Cooper's Conklin, Brian Cox's Ward Abbott of the second film, or Strathairn's Vosen were.
I should also point out that Metro Manila, in all its overcrowded, grimy glory, is not to blame for Tony Gilroy's shortcomings; to me it is more alive than any of the cities that came before it, where people were, by and large, just part of the background. The Filipino actors led by John Arcilla, Lou Veloso and Cecilia Montes really threw themselves into their brief but fairly substantial roles (Arcilla's in particular) and it filled me with pride to watch them strut their stuff for what I'm sure will be a wider audience than any of them have ever known.
For all of my love for my home country, I cannot for the life of me give this movie the ringing endorsement I would have wanted to because frankly the scenes that do not take place in the Philippines are, by and large, rather laborious to sit through.
Given that he wrote all three of this film's predecessors, Tony Gilroy's huge role in making the first three Bourne movies as riveting as they were cannot be denied, but now that he has occupied the director's chair as well it has become clear to me that the series needs the sure-handed direction of someone who knows when it's time to focus on dialogue and when it's time to focus on adrenaline-pumping action. Now that he's gotten all of the lengthy explanation of the Outcome program out of the way, maybe Gilroy can craft a script that hews more closely to the brilliantly-paced stories of the first three films, and maybe he can hire a decent action director while he's at it. To be honest I wouldn't mind if Dan Bradley took over next time.
3/5
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The Best for Last: A Review of The Dark Knight Rises
I was a little worried,walking into The Dark Knight Rises that I would not be able to watch it without thinking, in the back of my mind at least, of the shooting in Colorado that claimed the lives of a dozen people.
As it turns out, while I was not completely able to keep that tragedy out of my mind, I was still able to enjoy a truly compelling film, reportedly the last Batman film Christopher Nolan, the director who has brought the Bat franchise to unprecedented heights, will ever make.
Eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) took the blame for the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) the city of Gotham, thanks to legislation known as "the Dent Act" that has apparently removed parole and short-circuited due process, organized crime has been all but eradicated. In that same span of time, Batman has apparently disappeared altogether while his alter-ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, has turned into a recluse.
That changes, however, when, during an event held at Wayne Manor commemorating Dent's martyrdom, Bruce is burgled by a thief masquerading as one of his maids (Selina Kyle). Never missing a trick, Bruce is able to deduce that what Kyle was after was really his fingerprints, which in fairly short order sets him on the trail of someone far more dangerous than a simple thief, the masked terrorist known as Bane (Tom Hardy), a powerful, terrifying figure with close ties to Bruce's past whose master plan could have explosive consequences for Bruce as well as all of Gotham City. Bruce dons the cape and cowl again for the first time after nearly a decade away, but the challenge ahead of him will be unlike any he has ever faced.
Considering that the movie is loaded with twists and surprise revelations, some of them clever, others not so much, I'll refrain from discussing any more plot points at this point and simply limit myself to a review of the film, which I found absolutely splendid.
The bad-guy-taking-revenge-on-the-hero-for-the-defeat-of-a-previous-bad-guy isn't the freshest storyline around, as plots go, but as I love to say, it's all in the execution, and Nolan and company, with their variation of this particular plot, have done themselves proud here. From the characterizations to the action set pieces this film is uniformly outstanding.
Christian Bale, in his last outing as Batman, turns in a fantastic performance. Sure the "cookie monster" Batman voice is still a little grating, but Nolan actually remedies the situation by having Bale spend more time as Bruce Wayne, a bit of a throwback to Batman Begins. Anne Hathaway is delightful as Selina Kyle, who is actually never referred to in this film as Catwoman. I love how Hathaway really invests herself in her roles; for me she was one of the few bright spots of the otherwise forgettable Alice in Wonderland a couple of years ago, and she shows the same energy and dedication here that she did to that role, and even more, considering she's got more than a few fight scenes here. Notably she also infuses the proceedings with humor it wouldn't otherwise have. Tom Hardy as Bane is a little harder to rate considering he spends almost the entirety of his screen time behind a mask, but a good benchmark would be to rate his performance next to that of Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta, in which that actor had to spend the whole movie masked. Weaving still edges out Hardy in terms of pure performance, but considering that the Australian is a much more experienced actor than the Brit, Hardy's performance is still quite commendable. Finally, among the actors new to the saga the real treat for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as young police officer John Blake. I've long enjoyed this guy's work, especially the recent bittersweet romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, and while he doesn't deliver an especially outstanding performance, his optimistic, bright-eyed take on Nolan's clever, dedicated police officer is a pleasure to watch; in a movie that is as deliberately, unrelentingly dark as this one, characters like Hathaway's witty Kyle and Gordon-Levitt's indefatigably optimistic Blake serve as welcome foils. Oscar-winning hottie Marion Cotillard is a bit wasted here; she does not make much of an impression as Miranda Tate, even if she turns out to be more important to the story than the viewer is originally led to believe.
Series veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth continue to give Batman's crucial supporting case members the heft they deserve, though Fox and Gordon have considerably less to do in this film than in the last two, while Caine's Alfred gets the opportunity to flex some dramatic muscles.
In terms of the action playing out, at nearly three hours the movie did feel a little long to me at some points, but it's hard to fault Nolan for his very deliberate pacing. What I can fault Nolan for, though, is giving me the opportunity to consider plot holes and logical gaffes by stretching out the running time as he did. All Hollywood blockbusters have holes in their plots; this is almost a rule of thumb. The trick has always been keeping things moving too briskly for the viewer to want to pay attention, with the flaws surfacing during the second or third viewings. By making the film as long as he did, though, Nolan gave me plenty of time to wonder why certain things were the way they were, though I won't go into them to avoid spoiling anything.
Not only that, but a lot of his topical references felt a little too heavy-handed and a little simplistic. The "99 percenters" who overran Gotham City at the threat of annihilation (though not quite of the kind that the actual United States is facing) were basically depicted as mindless rabble right out of Charles Dickens' take on the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, complete with a mob mentality and kangaroo courts. The tattered American flags depicted at one point in the story were about as subtle as the giant American flag behind Spider-Man in the last of Sam Raimi's Spider-man movies. One upside of this aspect of the plot, though, was a welcome cameo from Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Flaws notwithstanding, though. Nolan has really ended his tenure on Batman on a high note, and he really deserves a round of applause for this. He had nothing to do with the tragedy that took place in Colorado, and while this film will be indelibly associated with that horrible incident, those who have seen it will always remember its quality, or at least, to my mind, they should.
Score: 4.5/5
As it turns out, while I was not completely able to keep that tragedy out of my mind, I was still able to enjoy a truly compelling film, reportedly the last Batman film Christopher Nolan, the director who has brought the Bat franchise to unprecedented heights, will ever make.
Eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) took the blame for the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) the city of Gotham, thanks to legislation known as "the Dent Act" that has apparently removed parole and short-circuited due process, organized crime has been all but eradicated. In that same span of time, Batman has apparently disappeared altogether while his alter-ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, has turned into a recluse.
That changes, however, when, during an event held at Wayne Manor commemorating Dent's martyrdom, Bruce is burgled by a thief masquerading as one of his maids (Selina Kyle). Never missing a trick, Bruce is able to deduce that what Kyle was after was really his fingerprints, which in fairly short order sets him on the trail of someone far more dangerous than a simple thief, the masked terrorist known as Bane (Tom Hardy), a powerful, terrifying figure with close ties to Bruce's past whose master plan could have explosive consequences for Bruce as well as all of Gotham City. Bruce dons the cape and cowl again for the first time after nearly a decade away, but the challenge ahead of him will be unlike any he has ever faced.
Considering that the movie is loaded with twists and surprise revelations, some of them clever, others not so much, I'll refrain from discussing any more plot points at this point and simply limit myself to a review of the film, which I found absolutely splendid.
The bad-guy-taking-revenge-on-the-hero-for-the-defeat-of-a-previous-bad-guy isn't the freshest storyline around, as plots go, but as I love to say, it's all in the execution, and Nolan and company, with their variation of this particular plot, have done themselves proud here. From the characterizations to the action set pieces this film is uniformly outstanding.
Christian Bale, in his last outing as Batman, turns in a fantastic performance. Sure the "cookie monster" Batman voice is still a little grating, but Nolan actually remedies the situation by having Bale spend more time as Bruce Wayne, a bit of a throwback to Batman Begins. Anne Hathaway is delightful as Selina Kyle, who is actually never referred to in this film as Catwoman. I love how Hathaway really invests herself in her roles; for me she was one of the few bright spots of the otherwise forgettable Alice in Wonderland a couple of years ago, and she shows the same energy and dedication here that she did to that role, and even more, considering she's got more than a few fight scenes here. Notably she also infuses the proceedings with humor it wouldn't otherwise have. Tom Hardy as Bane is a little harder to rate considering he spends almost the entirety of his screen time behind a mask, but a good benchmark would be to rate his performance next to that of Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta, in which that actor had to spend the whole movie masked. Weaving still edges out Hardy in terms of pure performance, but considering that the Australian is a much more experienced actor than the Brit, Hardy's performance is still quite commendable. Finally, among the actors new to the saga the real treat for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as young police officer John Blake. I've long enjoyed this guy's work, especially the recent bittersweet romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, and while he doesn't deliver an especially outstanding performance, his optimistic, bright-eyed take on Nolan's clever, dedicated police officer is a pleasure to watch; in a movie that is as deliberately, unrelentingly dark as this one, characters like Hathaway's witty Kyle and Gordon-Levitt's indefatigably optimistic Blake serve as welcome foils. Oscar-winning hottie Marion Cotillard is a bit wasted here; she does not make much of an impression as Miranda Tate, even if she turns out to be more important to the story than the viewer is originally led to believe.
Series veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth continue to give Batman's crucial supporting case members the heft they deserve, though Fox and Gordon have considerably less to do in this film than in the last two, while Caine's Alfred gets the opportunity to flex some dramatic muscles.
In terms of the action playing out, at nearly three hours the movie did feel a little long to me at some points, but it's hard to fault Nolan for his very deliberate pacing. What I can fault Nolan for, though, is giving me the opportunity to consider plot holes and logical gaffes by stretching out the running time as he did. All Hollywood blockbusters have holes in their plots; this is almost a rule of thumb. The trick has always been keeping things moving too briskly for the viewer to want to pay attention, with the flaws surfacing during the second or third viewings. By making the film as long as he did, though, Nolan gave me plenty of time to wonder why certain things were the way they were, though I won't go into them to avoid spoiling anything.
Not only that, but a lot of his topical references felt a little too heavy-handed and a little simplistic. The "99 percenters" who overran Gotham City at the threat of annihilation (though not quite of the kind that the actual United States is facing) were basically depicted as mindless rabble right out of Charles Dickens' take on the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, complete with a mob mentality and kangaroo courts. The tattered American flags depicted at one point in the story were about as subtle as the giant American flag behind Spider-Man in the last of Sam Raimi's Spider-man movies. One upside of this aspect of the plot, though, was a welcome cameo from Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Flaws notwithstanding, though. Nolan has really ended his tenure on Batman on a high note, and he really deserves a round of applause for this. He had nothing to do with the tragedy that took place in Colorado, and while this film will be indelibly associated with that horrible incident, those who have seen it will always remember its quality, or at least, to my mind, they should.
Score: 4.5/5
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Film Or Not, It's Something Special: A Review of "This is Not a Film"
If one can imagine a fish being forced not to swim, or a kangaroo being restrained from hopping, or an eagle being prevented from flying, then perhaps one can imagine the plight of Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker who was placed under house arrest while making his last movie and who now faces a 20-year-ban on filmmaking. This is Not a Film, an opus that is over an hour long and was captured partly on a digital video camera and partly on an iPhone, is his cry for help to the rest of the world.
The documentary film is a sort of slice-of-life treatment of Panahi's situation; he's under house arrest in his posh Tehran apartment, and about to face trial. He's already been imposed a 20-year-ban on filmmaking, obviously for displeasing the state with his work. He talks to his lawyer, and then shares with his friend, who is effectively directing the movie, his idea for a movie that, Panahi realizes with considerable sorrow, is not likely to be made any time soon. After a little over an hour, Panahi's day winds down and the last person he talks to before the film ends is the building's garbage collector.
There's something distinctly clever about the structure of Panahi's "non-film;" in particular I found myself struck by his conversation with his lawyer, in which, in rather precise terms, the casual viewer comes to understand exactly what Panahi's situation is. As a lawyer, I could not quite believe that she would knowingly do anything that would jeopardize her client's case, like, in this case, help him make a movie against a strict government injunction, but then, one must remember that Panahi is a filmmaker to the bone, and that there are all kinds of tricks to the trade that could be at work here. Was his lawyer completely ignorant of her role in his narrative? Or was it even his lawyer at all he was talking to on the phone?
As Panahi shows footage from a 1997 film of his titled The Mirror, which chronicles a very young girl trying to find her way home from school. At the climax of that film she breaks the fourth wall, takes off her uniform/costume and declares that she doesn't want to act in the film anymore. There's a clever little ambiguity in this scene; there seems to be the suggestion that her onscreen rebellion against the filmmaker is part of a larger narrative tapestry.
Part of me, the lawyer watching this film, pitied Panahi's lawyer, who no doubt had her work cut out for her when this film started doing the rounds and surfaced at the Cannes Film Festival. But the person who has enjoyed the freedom to express himself his whole life through watched this opus and saw a man whose art was as important to him as breathing, and I understood him, no matter how foolish his endeavor was, and how potentially destructive to his court case.
This is filmmaking at its most primal. No budget, no merchandising, no considerations of profit or loss, no...PERMISSION. Just an irrepressible urge to express one's own truth. I could feel the vigor in Panahi's spirit as he attempted to outline the movie he wanted to make for his friend holding the camera. I could feel the frustration in his voice and even his body language. This man is every inch a filmmaker, and probably ten times the filmmaker that most of the drones working in Hollywood are.
The fact that this film was shot surreptitiously and then smuggled into France on a flash drive stuffed in a cake is but a small, albeit rather remarkable part of a truly extraordinary story.
Not being too big on independent film (I'm more of a junk food/blockbuster fan myself most of the time) I had not even heard of this man before this film, er--non-film, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever forget him now.
Panahi's lawyer talked about international pressure on Iran's government possibly having an effect on his case; I hope the government is feeling the heat right now.
Score: 5/5
The documentary film is a sort of slice-of-life treatment of Panahi's situation; he's under house arrest in his posh Tehran apartment, and about to face trial. He's already been imposed a 20-year-ban on filmmaking, obviously for displeasing the state with his work. He talks to his lawyer, and then shares with his friend, who is effectively directing the movie, his idea for a movie that, Panahi realizes with considerable sorrow, is not likely to be made any time soon. After a little over an hour, Panahi's day winds down and the last person he talks to before the film ends is the building's garbage collector.
There's something distinctly clever about the structure of Panahi's "non-film;" in particular I found myself struck by his conversation with his lawyer, in which, in rather precise terms, the casual viewer comes to understand exactly what Panahi's situation is. As a lawyer, I could not quite believe that she would knowingly do anything that would jeopardize her client's case, like, in this case, help him make a movie against a strict government injunction, but then, one must remember that Panahi is a filmmaker to the bone, and that there are all kinds of tricks to the trade that could be at work here. Was his lawyer completely ignorant of her role in his narrative? Or was it even his lawyer at all he was talking to on the phone?
As Panahi shows footage from a 1997 film of his titled The Mirror, which chronicles a very young girl trying to find her way home from school. At the climax of that film she breaks the fourth wall, takes off her uniform/costume and declares that she doesn't want to act in the film anymore. There's a clever little ambiguity in this scene; there seems to be the suggestion that her onscreen rebellion against the filmmaker is part of a larger narrative tapestry.
Part of me, the lawyer watching this film, pitied Panahi's lawyer, who no doubt had her work cut out for her when this film started doing the rounds and surfaced at the Cannes Film Festival. But the person who has enjoyed the freedom to express himself his whole life through watched this opus and saw a man whose art was as important to him as breathing, and I understood him, no matter how foolish his endeavor was, and how potentially destructive to his court case.
This is filmmaking at its most primal. No budget, no merchandising, no considerations of profit or loss, no...PERMISSION. Just an irrepressible urge to express one's own truth. I could feel the vigor in Panahi's spirit as he attempted to outline the movie he wanted to make for his friend holding the camera. I could feel the frustration in his voice and even his body language. This man is every inch a filmmaker, and probably ten times the filmmaker that most of the drones working in Hollywood are.
The fact that this film was shot surreptitiously and then smuggled into France on a flash drive stuffed in a cake is but a small, albeit rather remarkable part of a truly extraordinary story.
Not being too big on independent film (I'm more of a junk food/blockbuster fan myself most of the time) I had not even heard of this man before this film, er--non-film, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever forget him now.
Panahi's lawyer talked about international pressure on Iran's government possibly having an effect on his case; I hope the government is feeling the heat right now.
Score: 5/5
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Rebooted in Glorious 3-D: The Amazing Spider-Man
I'll admit I'm one of the fans of Spider-Man, both the comic book character and the film franchise, that was a bit ambivalent about Sony Pictures' decision to reboot the series after Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 proved to be a critical and commercial disappointment relative to the first two movies. None of the early pre-production announcements, from the casting of then-relatively unknown Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) as Peter Parker to the selection of Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) as the film's director, got me particularly excited. Neither, for that matter, did the first few trailers. As the marketing campaign got a bit more aggressive after the release of The Avengers, I started to perk up and take notice. This was a marked departure from Sam Raimi's take on the character that only ended five years ago with the unqualified disaster that was Spider-Man 3, and it appeared that Sony was intent on doing things quite differently this time.
Of course, The Amazing Spider-Man is still the story of high school student Peter Parker (Garfield, in a captivating performance), whose parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) have left him, at a very early age, with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field), and never returned. He grows up to be very bright, like his scientist father, but somewhat introverted and more than a little troubled by the fact that his parents have basically abandoned him. He's not quite the stereotypical nerd; he can stand up to school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) even if it means getting his butt kicked, and he rides around on a skateboard, but he's still very much an outsider. The one person who appears to bring Peter out of his shell is fellow high school student Gwen Stacy (the delectable Emma Stone). One day while tooling around in the basement, Peter happens on an old briefcase belonging to his father, one that happens to contain a picture of his father, who used to work as a geneticist, with an old colleague of his, and some mysterious documents. Uncle Ben identifies the old colleague as Dr. Curtis Connors (Rhys Ifans), another geneticist who works at Oscorp. Peter sneaks into a tour of the Oscorp facility, where he meets Dr. Connors, an amputee who is missing his right arm and rather keen to remedy the situation. Peter's curiosity gets the better of him during the tour, and as a result he sneaks into a room where the company appears to be breeding several kinds of exotic spiders which are used to manufacture one of its products, the "bio-cable." One spider bites Peter, and his life changes forever. From kicking bullies' butts to skateboard stunts, Peter finds himself having a ball with his new powers.
The void with his father is still very present, though, and, Peter studies the papers he found in a secret compartment of the briefcase, in particular an equation written on them that seems very important to the cross-species genetics work that Dr. Connors was discussing during the tour. Peter goes to Dr. Connors' home and shares the equation with him, little knowing that, under enormous pressure from his superiors to deliver some kind of wonder serum, and wanting very badly to use the reptilian DNA they've been experimenting with to generate a replacement for his own arm, Connors is ready and willing to shoot himself up with his formula.
When someone important to Peter dies, he uses his powers, at first, to go on a vigilante rampage to catch the killer, a crusade that puts him squarely in the crosshairs of the New York Police Department, headed by Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) who happens to be Gwen's dad. When Connors' self-experimentation goes horribly awry though, the newly-christened Spider-Man has to put his manhunt on hold for new mission; to save New York from a monster with a horrible agenda.
Comparisons with the Sam Raimi films are inevitable, so I might as well get them out of the way. This film has established a markedly different direction for the character, but the unfortunate reality is that, this close to the first Sam Raimi movie, most of the things that happen in the first hour of the film still feel all too familiar. There are definite tweaks, but the beats remain the same. The bullying, the awkwardness around the object of his affection, the spider bite and the death of a significant family member, all of which remain integral to the character's mythology all play out, as a result the proceedings feel a tad tedious for a spell.
What makes this particular pill easier to swallow are some well-directed and acted performances by all of the lead actors, and wonderful chemistry between Garfield and the other cast members, particularly his chemistry with romantic lead Stone, which was a lot more engaging to watch than the puppy-love exchanges between erstwhile Peter Parker Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man. It's familiar, but incrementally better in many respects, though unfortunately not all of them. The death of a pivotal character that anyone who knows anything about Spider-Man will certainly know does not play out as well here as it did in Raimi's first film, and that hurts the narrative considerably, as does the exclusion, or confusing paraphrasing, of the previous films' signature phrase, "with great power comes great responsibility."
On its own merits, and the aforementioned storytelling shortfalls aside, this is a rock-solid film which works surprisingly well, even if it doesn't always soar. Gone is the whimsical buoyancy of the first two films, but gone as well as the ridiculous "Power Ranger" style fighting and ridiculous dialogue of the first film (one need only look back on the ridiculous rooftop dialogue between Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin to see how bad it could get), as well as some of the goofier aspects of the first three films. In its place is storytelling that isn't so much "darker" as many people have claimed as it is moodier. Garfield's Peter is utterly compelling; he doesn't quite wear his angst out on his sleeve but he isn't some super-cool rebel either, and unlike Maguire he perfectly captures the dichotomy of Spider-Man, shy and withdrawn as himself but completely cocksure when in costume. Emma Stone, more attractive as Gwen than Dunst ever was as MJ, is probably the strongest female character ever featured in the cinematic Spideyverse and it's easy to see why Peter would fall for her; it's a most welcome change from tradition that this Spider-Man does not spend the last few minutes of the movie rescuing her from the clutches of the villain. It's interesting to see if the filmmakers will actually follow Stacy's storyarc in the comic books considering what her character's ultimate fate is. Sheen does excellent work as Uncle Ben, Peter's surrogate father, and his performance is easily on par with that of his predecessor, the late Cliff Robertson, even though the script lets him (and everyone else) down at Ben's most pivotal moment in the film. Field brings Aunt May to life a lot more convincingly than her predecessor Rosemary Harris did. She may not quite look the part but I loved watching her interact with Garfield's Peter. It was right out of the pages of the comics, and considering that Peter's on-page relationship with his Aunt is more enduring than any romantic relationship he has ever had this is critical. Rhys Ifans, as Connors, conveys inner conflict and menace well, but it irks me that he didn't bother to put on an American accent, unlike fellow Brit Garfield who not only put on an American accent but who actually tried to go for a vague Queens accent. All together one can see that collective and individual effort of the cast to make this iteration of Spider-Man's universe their own, and something audiences haven't seen before. They don't always succeed, but that's usually more a function of the first film being too recent in my mind than their own inadequacies.
The crew is similarly diligent. Director of photography John Schwartzman's more nuanced lighting helps the characters explore a rather wider range of emotion than Don Burgess' pastel colors did, or even Bill Pope's often over-saturated orange-y sunsets. The visual effects crew of Sony Pictures Imageworks have striven to craft a Spider-Man who seems that much more gravity-bound than his more obviously digital predecessor. This is helped in large part by efforts to create a lot of the swinging and fighting sequences using stunts and practical effects rather than pushing the CGI button almost every time a fight scene came along, the way Raimi used to do. One technical aspect of this film which conspicuously outshines the Raimi films is the music score, with the soaring melodies of James Horner (Avatar) making far more of an impression than Danny Elfman's admittedly effective scoring did. Spider-Man actually has a THEME now, something I can hum, something the band at the Academy Awards show can actually play if this film wins an Oscar or two. Geek note: when Spider-Man 2 won its visual effects Oscar, the only Oscar a Marvel film has won so far, the band played the execrable "Hero" song of Chad Kroeger, which wasn't even in that film but was played at the end of the first film.
I have to give special mention to the 3-D in this film, which is, all hyperbole aside, the best I've seen since James Cameron's Avatar. It utterly puts the last 3-D film I saw, The Avengers, in the shade. The image was never too dark (which was remarkable considering how much of the film took place at night), and the action basically exploded off the screen during the last twenty five minutes or so of the film. Webb and his crew shot this film in 3-D, taking pointers from Cameron himself, and the attention to detail shows. Coupled with SPI's new-and-improved digital web slinger, the 3-D made for easily the most incredible viewing experience I've had since Jake Sully blasted off for Pandora three years ago. Not only is this film good enough to merit a repeat viewing; it's the first film since Avatar that I've wanted to see again in exclusively in 3-D. The difference between this and The Avengers is the difference between shooting a film in 3-D, as was done with this, and converting one to 3-D, as was done with Marvel's mega-smash.
Yes, this film is flawed and yes, as a reboot it feels like it's happening too soon, but considering that the stink left by Spider-Man 3 left Sony with no choice but to do a reboot and considering that the threat of losing the cash-cow franchise to Disney/Marvel forced them to make the reboot sooner rather than later I am able to look past the whole "reboot" gripe and appreciate this film on its own merits, as hard as that may be.
Score: 4/5
Of course, The Amazing Spider-Man is still the story of high school student Peter Parker (Garfield, in a captivating performance), whose parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) have left him, at a very early age, with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field), and never returned. He grows up to be very bright, like his scientist father, but somewhat introverted and more than a little troubled by the fact that his parents have basically abandoned him. He's not quite the stereotypical nerd; he can stand up to school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) even if it means getting his butt kicked, and he rides around on a skateboard, but he's still very much an outsider. The one person who appears to bring Peter out of his shell is fellow high school student Gwen Stacy (the delectable Emma Stone). One day while tooling around in the basement, Peter happens on an old briefcase belonging to his father, one that happens to contain a picture of his father, who used to work as a geneticist, with an old colleague of his, and some mysterious documents. Uncle Ben identifies the old colleague as Dr. Curtis Connors (Rhys Ifans), another geneticist who works at Oscorp. Peter sneaks into a tour of the Oscorp facility, where he meets Dr. Connors, an amputee who is missing his right arm and rather keen to remedy the situation. Peter's curiosity gets the better of him during the tour, and as a result he sneaks into a room where the company appears to be breeding several kinds of exotic spiders which are used to manufacture one of its products, the "bio-cable." One spider bites Peter, and his life changes forever. From kicking bullies' butts to skateboard stunts, Peter finds himself having a ball with his new powers.
The void with his father is still very present, though, and, Peter studies the papers he found in a secret compartment of the briefcase, in particular an equation written on them that seems very important to the cross-species genetics work that Dr. Connors was discussing during the tour. Peter goes to Dr. Connors' home and shares the equation with him, little knowing that, under enormous pressure from his superiors to deliver some kind of wonder serum, and wanting very badly to use the reptilian DNA they've been experimenting with to generate a replacement for his own arm, Connors is ready and willing to shoot himself up with his formula.
When someone important to Peter dies, he uses his powers, at first, to go on a vigilante rampage to catch the killer, a crusade that puts him squarely in the crosshairs of the New York Police Department, headed by Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) who happens to be Gwen's dad. When Connors' self-experimentation goes horribly awry though, the newly-christened Spider-Man has to put his manhunt on hold for new mission; to save New York from a monster with a horrible agenda.
Comparisons with the Sam Raimi films are inevitable, so I might as well get them out of the way. This film has established a markedly different direction for the character, but the unfortunate reality is that, this close to the first Sam Raimi movie, most of the things that happen in the first hour of the film still feel all too familiar. There are definite tweaks, but the beats remain the same. The bullying, the awkwardness around the object of his affection, the spider bite and the death of a significant family member, all of which remain integral to the character's mythology all play out, as a result the proceedings feel a tad tedious for a spell.
What makes this particular pill easier to swallow are some well-directed and acted performances by all of the lead actors, and wonderful chemistry between Garfield and the other cast members, particularly his chemistry with romantic lead Stone, which was a lot more engaging to watch than the puppy-love exchanges between erstwhile Peter Parker Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man. It's familiar, but incrementally better in many respects, though unfortunately not all of them. The death of a pivotal character that anyone who knows anything about Spider-Man will certainly know does not play out as well here as it did in Raimi's first film, and that hurts the narrative considerably, as does the exclusion, or confusing paraphrasing, of the previous films' signature phrase, "with great power comes great responsibility."
On its own merits, and the aforementioned storytelling shortfalls aside, this is a rock-solid film which works surprisingly well, even if it doesn't always soar. Gone is the whimsical buoyancy of the first two films, but gone as well as the ridiculous "Power Ranger" style fighting and ridiculous dialogue of the first film (one need only look back on the ridiculous rooftop dialogue between Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin to see how bad it could get), as well as some of the goofier aspects of the first three films. In its place is storytelling that isn't so much "darker" as many people have claimed as it is moodier. Garfield's Peter is utterly compelling; he doesn't quite wear his angst out on his sleeve but he isn't some super-cool rebel either, and unlike Maguire he perfectly captures the dichotomy of Spider-Man, shy and withdrawn as himself but completely cocksure when in costume. Emma Stone, more attractive as Gwen than Dunst ever was as MJ, is probably the strongest female character ever featured in the cinematic Spideyverse and it's easy to see why Peter would fall for her; it's a most welcome change from tradition that this Spider-Man does not spend the last few minutes of the movie rescuing her from the clutches of the villain. It's interesting to see if the filmmakers will actually follow Stacy's storyarc in the comic books considering what her character's ultimate fate is. Sheen does excellent work as Uncle Ben, Peter's surrogate father, and his performance is easily on par with that of his predecessor, the late Cliff Robertson, even though the script lets him (and everyone else) down at Ben's most pivotal moment in the film. Field brings Aunt May to life a lot more convincingly than her predecessor Rosemary Harris did. She may not quite look the part but I loved watching her interact with Garfield's Peter. It was right out of the pages of the comics, and considering that Peter's on-page relationship with his Aunt is more enduring than any romantic relationship he has ever had this is critical. Rhys Ifans, as Connors, conveys inner conflict and menace well, but it irks me that he didn't bother to put on an American accent, unlike fellow Brit Garfield who not only put on an American accent but who actually tried to go for a vague Queens accent. All together one can see that collective and individual effort of the cast to make this iteration of Spider-Man's universe their own, and something audiences haven't seen before. They don't always succeed, but that's usually more a function of the first film being too recent in my mind than their own inadequacies.
The crew is similarly diligent. Director of photography John Schwartzman's more nuanced lighting helps the characters explore a rather wider range of emotion than Don Burgess' pastel colors did, or even Bill Pope's often over-saturated orange-y sunsets. The visual effects crew of Sony Pictures Imageworks have striven to craft a Spider-Man who seems that much more gravity-bound than his more obviously digital predecessor. This is helped in large part by efforts to create a lot of the swinging and fighting sequences using stunts and practical effects rather than pushing the CGI button almost every time a fight scene came along, the way Raimi used to do. One technical aspect of this film which conspicuously outshines the Raimi films is the music score, with the soaring melodies of James Horner (Avatar) making far more of an impression than Danny Elfman's admittedly effective scoring did. Spider-Man actually has a THEME now, something I can hum, something the band at the Academy Awards show can actually play if this film wins an Oscar or two. Geek note: when Spider-Man 2 won its visual effects Oscar, the only Oscar a Marvel film has won so far, the band played the execrable "Hero" song of Chad Kroeger, which wasn't even in that film but was played at the end of the first film.
I have to give special mention to the 3-D in this film, which is, all hyperbole aside, the best I've seen since James Cameron's Avatar. It utterly puts the last 3-D film I saw, The Avengers, in the shade. The image was never too dark (which was remarkable considering how much of the film took place at night), and the action basically exploded off the screen during the last twenty five minutes or so of the film. Webb and his crew shot this film in 3-D, taking pointers from Cameron himself, and the attention to detail shows. Coupled with SPI's new-and-improved digital web slinger, the 3-D made for easily the most incredible viewing experience I've had since Jake Sully blasted off for Pandora three years ago. Not only is this film good enough to merit a repeat viewing; it's the first film since Avatar that I've wanted to see again in exclusively in 3-D. The difference between this and The Avengers is the difference between shooting a film in 3-D, as was done with this, and converting one to 3-D, as was done with Marvel's mega-smash.
Yes, this film is flawed and yes, as a reboot it feels like it's happening too soon, but considering that the stink left by Spider-Man 3 left Sony with no choice but to do a reboot and considering that the threat of losing the cash-cow franchise to Disney/Marvel forced them to make the reboot sooner rather than later I am able to look past the whole "reboot" gripe and appreciate this film on its own merits, as hard as that may be.
Score: 4/5
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
It's All on Sony
While there's never such thing as a sure thing, of the current crop of movies there are a couple of films that have been almost predestined to succeed. Disney's The Avengers, for example, with its unique marketing campaign that included five other movies of the individual characters as part of its strategy, was always going to be a hit, even though the eventual magnitude of its success came as a bit of surprise. Warner Bros' The Dark Knight Rises is another preordained success, and even if it doesn't end up the year's top-grossing movie it'll be all right because the franchise is scheduled for a reboot immediately afterwards.
20th Century Fox's Prometheus has long been expected to succeed as it is currently doing, and it'll take some ill fortune for the upcoming Brave to break Pixar's long running streak of movies that have grossed at least half a billion dollars at the global box-office.
For me, though, the biggest question mark of this season remains to be Sony Pictures' reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, which marks the studio's attempt to revitalize the franchise following the widely perceived failure of the last installment, Spider-Man 3, to live up to the lofty standard laid down by the first two films of the series. The concern that's been raised by a number of online fans (including myself, actually) is that the reboot is coming too soon after the last movie. This is a two-edged sword; it could be too soon in that it's trying too early to supplant the still-beloved first two films, or too soon in that fans are still smarting from how bad the last film in the series was. Either way, reaction on the internet seems to be largely mixed to negative.
To Sony's credit, though, in deciding to reboot the series they've tried to fix what was missing from the first three movies and have added the two crucial "W"s to Peter Parker's arsenal, namely webshooters (mechanical as opposed to his biological ones) and wisecracks. Fans who have grown up with Spider-Man comics know that the webshooters are a key part of the mythology; they're testament to the fact that far from being just another musclebound lunkhead in spandex, Spider-Man is, in fact, brilliant, and one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe. The wisecracks are similarly integral to Spider-Man's personality and have been since the very beginning. The whole dichotomy of Spider-Man is that when he's Peter Parker, he's shy and unassuming, but when he dons the mask and tights he assumes a confidence that otherwise isn't there. Raimi's first movie in the series featured Spidey mocking the wrestler played by the late Randy Savage, but they never really picked up on it beyond that, which was disappointing. Still, as the saying goes, haters gotta hate.
Between the Marvel fanatics who want Sony to lose their rights to Spidey to Disney/Marvel, the Raimi zombies who revere his original trilogy and want this new direction to fail, and the rabid fans of Christopher Nolan who want any movie that poses even the slightest threat to their beloved Batman to crash and burn, it's not entirely clear which demographic is going to actually go out and see this movie. Having laid relatively low with their advertising earlier in the year, in the wake of the success of The Avengers, Sony is going all out on its advertising campaigns for the web slinger, employing everything from viral videos to b-roll footage online. A few posts ago I questioned the wisdom of Disney's saturation-style advertising for The Avengers but given the breakout success of that film I have to concede it was a wise move and think that Sony is playing it safe by following this lead. They know they've got a lot to live up to, and that TASM has to make a lot of money in the two weeks before Nolan's next Batman movie hits theaters.
The good news for Sony and everyone wanting the new Spider-Man movie to succeed, however, is that as important as the internet has become, things posted on it are far from indicative of how a movie will eventually fare at the box office. In the months and weeks leading up to the release of The Avengers, rare was the internet pundit, whether a box-office analyst or a casual fanboy, who predicted that the film would do significantly better at the box-office than the first Iron Man film. Even boxofficemojo.com, my most trusted site for box-office numbers and forecasts, predicted only a $420 million U.S. gross for the film after its record breaking $207 million opening weekend. For those not in the know, The Avengers is now poised to become only the third film in history to gross $600 million in the United States alone (the only one not directed by James Cameron), and it's already grossed $1.4 billion around the world.
Of course, the bad news for Sony in the wake of the astonishing success of The Avengers is that the bar has now been set ridiculously high. I, for one, am already taking for granted that TASM will not scale the heights reached by Spidey's fellow Marvel heroes, but I'm holding out hope that, with its earnestness towards correcting the mistakes of the past series, this new movie can at least restore respectability to the franchise, the way Batman Begins did for the Batman series back in 2005, and make some money in the process, regardless of whether or not it ends up on top of the box-office charts by year's end.
20th Century Fox's Prometheus has long been expected to succeed as it is currently doing, and it'll take some ill fortune for the upcoming Brave to break Pixar's long running streak of movies that have grossed at least half a billion dollars at the global box-office.
For me, though, the biggest question mark of this season remains to be Sony Pictures' reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, which marks the studio's attempt to revitalize the franchise following the widely perceived failure of the last installment, Spider-Man 3, to live up to the lofty standard laid down by the first two films of the series. The concern that's been raised by a number of online fans (including myself, actually) is that the reboot is coming too soon after the last movie. This is a two-edged sword; it could be too soon in that it's trying too early to supplant the still-beloved first two films, or too soon in that fans are still smarting from how bad the last film in the series was. Either way, reaction on the internet seems to be largely mixed to negative.
To Sony's credit, though, in deciding to reboot the series they've tried to fix what was missing from the first three movies and have added the two crucial "W"s to Peter Parker's arsenal, namely webshooters (mechanical as opposed to his biological ones) and wisecracks. Fans who have grown up with Spider-Man comics know that the webshooters are a key part of the mythology; they're testament to the fact that far from being just another musclebound lunkhead in spandex, Spider-Man is, in fact, brilliant, and one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe. The wisecracks are similarly integral to Spider-Man's personality and have been since the very beginning. The whole dichotomy of Spider-Man is that when he's Peter Parker, he's shy and unassuming, but when he dons the mask and tights he assumes a confidence that otherwise isn't there. Raimi's first movie in the series featured Spidey mocking the wrestler played by the late Randy Savage, but they never really picked up on it beyond that, which was disappointing. Still, as the saying goes, haters gotta hate.
Between the Marvel fanatics who want Sony to lose their rights to Spidey to Disney/Marvel, the Raimi zombies who revere his original trilogy and want this new direction to fail, and the rabid fans of Christopher Nolan who want any movie that poses even the slightest threat to their beloved Batman to crash and burn, it's not entirely clear which demographic is going to actually go out and see this movie. Having laid relatively low with their advertising earlier in the year, in the wake of the success of The Avengers, Sony is going all out on its advertising campaigns for the web slinger, employing everything from viral videos to b-roll footage online. A few posts ago I questioned the wisdom of Disney's saturation-style advertising for The Avengers but given the breakout success of that film I have to concede it was a wise move and think that Sony is playing it safe by following this lead. They know they've got a lot to live up to, and that TASM has to make a lot of money in the two weeks before Nolan's next Batman movie hits theaters.
The good news for Sony and everyone wanting the new Spider-Man movie to succeed, however, is that as important as the internet has become, things posted on it are far from indicative of how a movie will eventually fare at the box office. In the months and weeks leading up to the release of The Avengers, rare was the internet pundit, whether a box-office analyst or a casual fanboy, who predicted that the film would do significantly better at the box-office than the first Iron Man film. Even boxofficemojo.com, my most trusted site for box-office numbers and forecasts, predicted only a $420 million U.S. gross for the film after its record breaking $207 million opening weekend. For those not in the know, The Avengers is now poised to become only the third film in history to gross $600 million in the United States alone (the only one not directed by James Cameron), and it's already grossed $1.4 billion around the world.
Of course, the bad news for Sony in the wake of the astonishing success of The Avengers is that the bar has now been set ridiculously high. I, for one, am already taking for granted that TASM will not scale the heights reached by Spidey's fellow Marvel heroes, but I'm holding out hope that, with its earnestness towards correcting the mistakes of the past series, this new movie can at least restore respectability to the franchise, the way Batman Begins did for the Batman series back in 2005, and make some money in the process, regardless of whether or not it ends up on top of the box-office charts by year's end.
R-Rated Tentpoles
I haven't done the statistics, but having been a fan of movies (and of their box-office numbers, which are available on several websites) for two decades now I think I can say with some certainty that as a general rule the most lucrative movies are the ones rated PG-13. The rating, which, as I understand it, was first devised in the United States by its film classification board as a way of rating movies that weren't quite suitable small children but which were suitable for young people.
For some reason, films that receive this rating are quite often the perfect "four-quadrant" movies, i.e. movies that please men and women, old and young people alike, and therefore make the most money. There are exceptions to this rule but in general a PG-13 rating, whether by design or not, seems integral to the financial success of a commercially inclined movie.
The problem is that not all action movies can be told within the parameters of a PG-13 rating. In fact, a lot of them shouldn't be. Ridley Scott's Gladiator, for example, would probably not have been able to adequately capture the peril of the arena had it been constrained by a PG-13 rating. The first Die Hard would not have been nearly as effective in planting the audience right in the nail-biting peril of the situation had it not shown how violent the criminals against whom Bruce Willis' character was facing off were. The PG-13 rated fourth installment of the Die Hard series was not that bad, but it felt distinctly neutered compared to its predecessors.
R-rated comedies like The Hangover and American Pie are not uncommon because of how relatively cheap they are to produce and therefore how easy it is for studios to recover their investment, but in general studios seem leery of spending large amounts of money on R movies.
It's refreshing, therefore, to see at least one movie studio, 20th Century Fox, infamous for creating a PG-13 Die Hard and for micro-managing their movies, is releasing not just one but TWO "R" rated big-budget action tentpoles this year,namely Prometheus and, in a couple of weeks, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
That Fox was willing to fork over a reported $120 million for Prometheus is particularly remarkable considering how badly their Alien vs. Predator sequel did back in 2007, but it's made even more remarkable by the fact that even though director Ridley Scott himself prepared a "PG-13 cut" for studio heads, Fox went ahead with the gorier, scarier "R" version, despite knowing that this could curtail potential box-office. Sure, I may have had issues with the actual quality of the film, but I have to commend Fox for their willingness to stick their necks out for a change and to spend some real money on what is effectively a bloody horror movie.
Speaking of horror movies, it's similarly impressive that Fox has positioned the unabashedly bloody, R-rated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as one of its tentpoles for the summer of 2012. I haven't read the book (though I've been meaning to) but the premise and trailers alone promise a thoroughly blood-soaked affair. The gore isn't what's making me keen to see it (the historical fiction aspect is), but again, I find myself applauding a studio that's quite notorious for trimming out "adult content" to keep its movies box-office friendly for its decision to adapt a famously violent work and getting Timur Bekmambetov, a director famous for his violent movies like Wanted and Night Watch, to adapt it.
Now I'm not saying violence, profanity, drug references, nudity, sexuality or whatever else qualifies a movie for an "R" rating make for a better film, but sometimes they're necessary for proper storytelling. Tom Hooper's Academy Award winning film The King's Speech, as I understand it, landed an "R" rating solely for the fact that King George, Colin Firth's character, uttered "fuck" and other colorful words several times over to help him conquer his speech impediment. There was no nudity, violence, or even drug reference; just a string of bad words which were integral not only to the story of the film but an actual part of the history on which it was based. So often the rating system (the American one, I should emphasize, which doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of us outside the United States of America), can be pretty stupid. But at the end of the day it's nice to see film executives, even notoriously profit-oriented ones, putting storytelling integrity over the bottom line.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Not Quite There: A Review of Prometheus
Arguably one of the most anticipated genre films of the year, Prometheus marks the return of British director Ridley Scott to the genre that basically launched his mainstream career.
The film, set in the year 2093, tells the story of a scientific expedition into deep space to a planet where, it is believed, the origins of life on earth may be found. Leading this expedition, funded by aging tycoon Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) are archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who have discovered, by studying ancient carvings and murals from lost civilizations all around the world of people worshiping giant, human-like beings pointing to the stars, a map leading to a solar system with a planet that may well be capable of supporting life much like that on earth. There are skeptics among them, like the geologist (Sean Harris) and botanist(Rafe Spall) who form part of the expedition, those simply doing a job like Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and his pilots Chance (Emun Elliot) and Ravel (Benedict Wong), and finally there are those who seem to know a bit more about the expedition than they are willing to let on, like Weyland Corporation executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and android David (a captivating performance by Michael Fassbender). They arrive on the mysterious planet hoping to find some clues as to the origins of mankind, and, as is usually the case with movies of this sort, find something altogether different and infinitely more terrifying.
In marketing this film, Twentieth Century Fox was deliberately vague about its narrative connections to the Alien film franchise created by screenwriters Dan o' Bannon and Ronald Shusett, even though this film was initially announced as a "reboot" of that same franchise, and even though there are obvious connections between this film and those that came before it, presumably in order to allow this film to rise or fall on its own merits.
The film starts out with a pretty heady brew of ideas, like the questions of creation, and delivers some pretty striking if not necessarily iconic visuals such as the titular ship itself, Prometheus, and the inside of what appears to be a very old complex of some sort, but as it kicks into horror mode, the filmmakers bring us, well, those of us who have seen at least one of the predecessors of this film, into overly familiar territory with not much new to write home about. One can almost predict the order of people dying in this movie (and that's not a spoiler, I assure you), though if it's any consolation, the film quite mercifully eschews the cliche of having the African-American guy (or the Asian guy) die first. Apart from that, however, the film, and apart from its visuals, which still echo the designs of Alien designer H.R. Giger, brings distressingly little to the table that is new. I've seen B-grade sci-fi horror movies on cable TV that take bigger narrative risks than this film did, which is depressing considering that the original Alien all but reinvented the genre thirty-three years ago.
Another disappointment is the performance of Noomi Rapace as Shaw. Scott raised a lot of eyebrows with his unconventional choice of a lead in Sigourney Weaver in the original Alien, but ultimately Weaver's acting chops showed she was well-worth whatever risk Scott took in hiring her, and in fact she was able to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress when she reprised the role in the 1986 sequel. Rapace, while arguably delivering a competent performance, is no Weaver, and Scott's first mistake was casting her as an Englishwoman. Time and again she drops the ball on her English accent, and it's extremely distracting. There are plenty of actual Englishwomen who could have essayed the role more effectively, and if Scott had really wanted Rapace he could have easily made a script tweak or two for her to speak with her Swedish accent. Also, while other writers have lavished praise on what they describe as her unusual beauty, all I saw was a slightly younger, better looking-version of Frances McDormand. Sigourney Weaver, with her strong jaw, is admittedly an unconventionally beautiful woman, but with her short stature and constantly vanishing British accent, Rapace's performance comes across as thoroughly unimpressive.
Fortunately, however, the film is saved by a rather riveting performance by Michael Fassbender as Weyland's pet android David. It's a fantastic turn; he manages to come across as childlike, extremely intelligent and menacing all at the same time. This isn't a regurgitation of what's come before, or even of Brent Spiner's Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's a wonderfully textured portrayal, with the added bonus that Fassbender has conquered his Irish accent a lot more handily than he did in X-Men: First Class. His acting speaks volumes even when he isn't saying a word; the scene where he activates a hologram of charted space was, for me, the highlight of the film. Fassbender doesn't spoil it by uttering so much as a word of dialogue, and the thought that he's basically acting against absolutely nothing underlines how brilliantly he played the scene.
Fassbender's performance, while certainly the most outstanding, isn't the only noteworthy one here. Charlize Theron is pretty effective as a not-exactly-bad bad guy, Idris Elba makes the most out of a somewhat thankless role, giving Captain Janek some emotional heft, and the rest of the cast do a pretty good job of being scared. Guy Pearce is virtually unrecognizable in what is practically a cameo role, but he most certainly makes his presence felt in his limited time on the screen.
As stated, the movie doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, which is disappointing considering the expectations that have been riding on it. It's eye candy, that's for sure, and the earnestness with which the cast approaches the film certainly at least deserves mention, but even as a standalone sci-fi opus Prometheus falls well short of greatness. As part of a film series that features one of my favorite movies of all time, James Cameron's Aliens which featured taut, virtually airtight storytelling, this film is deeply, fundamentally disappointing.
As strange as it may sound, I have now seen every film in the Alien series (not counting the ridiculous Alien vs. Predator movies) EXCEPT for the very first movie, Alien, so I have written this review without any intention of comparing Prometheus to its ground-breaking, Scott-directed progenitor. It simply isn't that good a movie.
3/5
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