This is the first time I'm writing about #metoo, the sudden surge of complaints by women and even men who have been victims of sexual assault or harassment in Hollywood by men in positions of power, because as important as it may be, I never felt particularly qualified to say anything, nor did it really affect "my corner" of pop culture, given that even before he was exposed as a monster, I always thought Harvey Weinstein was as Oscar-baiting, self-aggrandizing blowhard. Arguably, John Lasseter's departure from Disney as a result of, among other things, "unwanted hugs" was something that affected movies that I care about, but honestly, that seemed pretty clear cut; there were allegations of impropriety which were presumably investigated, and they were dealt with swiftly.
On its face, Disney's decision to drop the axe on Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn for a series of offensive tweets regarding rape and pedophilia looks equally straightforward. I've seen screen captures of some of the tweets, and they are not only offensive, but they are distinctly unfunny, despite Gunn's professed intention to post them as some of shocking humor. Absolutely nobody has defended or attempted to justify the tweets themselves.
My problem is that they were already out there when Disney hired Gunn; the newest tweet came out five years before the first Guardians movie did. These things were on the internet, and if they were easy enough for a gaggle of Trump apologists to find, I'm sure Disney's crack team of background investigators could easily have found them as well, and yet for all of that, Gunn went and made two movies for them.
The long and the short of what I'm saying is that if Gunn's proclivities had really mattered to Disney from the very beginning, then they never would have hired him because the evidence of what kind of person he supposedly is was already out there for everyone to see. Apart from his tweets, the over-the-top humor in his films, like the somewhat brutal Super, should have been the biggest of red flags. Gunn is no Roseanne Barr; their reaction to her blatantly racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett was perfectly timed and measured.
However, had that tweet been ten years old, and had they hired Roseanne with that tweet out there, only to fire her when someone brought it up, then there would have been a bit of a problem. That, to my mind, is what's happened with Gunn. They knew, or were entirely in a position to know everything about his past when they hired him, but went and decided to make one and a half billion dollars with him at the global box office anyway.
In short, Disney deserves scorn, rather than praise, for firing Gunn as a knee-jerk reaction to decade-old tweets that they had probably already known about long before the spotlight was shone upon them again. I'm not saying Gunn's hands are clean, but by no means are Disney's either.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Sunday, July 8, 2018
So...How About Those Twists? (Ant-Man and the Wasp Edition...HEAVY SPOILERS)
You all know the drill by now (whoever reads this blog anyway)...there be SPOILERS AHEAD, so anyone who claims to have been spoiled by this post is simply being disingenuous.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
LAST CHANCE.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay. After blowing fandom's minds with Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel smartly went a bit more low-key with its follow-up, the lighthearted Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Apart from a fairly predictable twist involving Laurence Fishburne's character Bill Foster, i.e. that Foster was actually in league with Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, one which plays out fairly early in the film, unlike Marvel's usual third-act shockers, there's not much by way of "OMG, I don't believe it" surprises in the main narrative, even though there are a few fun bits peppered throughout.
Luis' "storytelling" moment, which I was almost afraid wouldn't feature, didn't disappoint, and it was even funnier that Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly got in on the Michael Pena lip-syncing action.
The big bombshell, however, dropped in the mid-credits sequence, when Thanos' population-eradicating finger snap is finally felt in this corner of the MCU, taking out the entire Pym family and leaving Scott stranded in the Quantum Realm. This is unique in that it's the first credits sequence to leave the hero hanging off the proverbial cliff, and it's no doubt a direct lead-in to Ant Man's participation in Avengers 4, or whatever they're ultimately calling it. And yet, even after this gasp-inducing twist, Marvel reassures us that "Ant-Man and the Wasp will return" thereby confirming what just about everyone else already figured out: that being reduced to ash by Thanos doesn't necessarily mean a final death.
Another point worth discussing is not so much a twist as it is a plot device: Janet Van Dyne's weird grab bag of powers. I mean...telepathy? Quantum energy healing? The ability to project her consciousness into someone else...to do...mind control? The screenwriters don't exactly bother to explain how the Quantum Realm has endowed her with these powers, instead contenting themselves with just asserting that she has them, and they both drive the plot forward and even resolve it in the end. Apart from that, these astonishing abilities are basically played, in the case of Paul Rudd doing his best Michelle Pfeiffer impersonation, for laughs.
The thing is, these powers are, in a word, awesome, and quite unlike anything else in the entire MCU, short of Thanos' near-omnipotence. There is incredible potential for what can be done with her powers. A sympathetic character with healing powers? A telepath (albeit one with apparent conditions) without the X-Men? Janet is the second hero (after Guardians of the Galaxy's Mantis) to have powers in the MCU that don't involve fighting with someone, and there is a heck of a lot they could do with what she's got. I wonder if they realize this. Honestly, Janet Van Dyne has got to be one of the gems of the MCU right now, or at least, she will be, once she's been reconstituted from a pile of ash.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
LAST CHANCE.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay. After blowing fandom's minds with Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel smartly went a bit more low-key with its follow-up, the lighthearted Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Apart from a fairly predictable twist involving Laurence Fishburne's character Bill Foster, i.e. that Foster was actually in league with Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, one which plays out fairly early in the film, unlike Marvel's usual third-act shockers, there's not much by way of "OMG, I don't believe it" surprises in the main narrative, even though there are a few fun bits peppered throughout.
Luis' "storytelling" moment, which I was almost afraid wouldn't feature, didn't disappoint, and it was even funnier that Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly got in on the Michael Pena lip-syncing action.
The big bombshell, however, dropped in the mid-credits sequence, when Thanos' population-eradicating finger snap is finally felt in this corner of the MCU, taking out the entire Pym family and leaving Scott stranded in the Quantum Realm. This is unique in that it's the first credits sequence to leave the hero hanging off the proverbial cliff, and it's no doubt a direct lead-in to Ant Man's participation in Avengers 4, or whatever they're ultimately calling it. And yet, even after this gasp-inducing twist, Marvel reassures us that "Ant-Man and the Wasp will return" thereby confirming what just about everyone else already figured out: that being reduced to ash by Thanos doesn't necessarily mean a final death.
Another point worth discussing is not so much a twist as it is a plot device: Janet Van Dyne's weird grab bag of powers. I mean...telepathy? Quantum energy healing? The ability to project her consciousness into someone else...to do...mind control? The screenwriters don't exactly bother to explain how the Quantum Realm has endowed her with these powers, instead contenting themselves with just asserting that she has them, and they both drive the plot forward and even resolve it in the end. Apart from that, these astonishing abilities are basically played, in the case of Paul Rudd doing his best Michelle Pfeiffer impersonation, for laughs.
The thing is, these powers are, in a word, awesome, and quite unlike anything else in the entire MCU, short of Thanos' near-omnipotence. There is incredible potential for what can be done with her powers. A sympathetic character with healing powers? A telepath (albeit one with apparent conditions) without the X-Men? Janet is the second hero (after Guardians of the Galaxy's Mantis) to have powers in the MCU that don't involve fighting with someone, and there is a heck of a lot they could do with what she's got. I wonder if they realize this. Honestly, Janet Van Dyne has got to be one of the gems of the MCU right now, or at least, she will be, once she's been reconstituted from a pile of ash.
Saturday, July 7, 2018
A Stinging Senation: A Review of Ant Man and the Wasp
directed by Peyton Reed
written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari
Following the cataclysmic events of Avengers: Infinity War, a lighthearted romp through the world of Ant-Man is basically just what the doctor ordered, especially considering that he is joined here by the Wasp.
Following the events of the first movie, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who had previously thought his wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) to be dead, after she shrunk herself down to subatomic size to stop a missile in the 1980s, now believes it's possible she's alive somewhere down in the Quantum Realm, after Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) went subatomic and managed to return to full size. Now, he and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) have built a "Quantum Tunnel" which is basically a rig that will enable them to shrink down small enough to travel to the Quantum Realm and find Janet. When Scott, who has been under house arrest following his participation on the events of Captain America: Civil War, suddenly has a strange dream about someone he thinks is Janet and gives Pym a call, Hank and Hope, thinking it's more than just a dream, decide they need Scott's help to find Janet as well. There are a number of things that could get in the way, though: 1) the fact that Scott, who is under the watchful eye of the FBI, specifically Agent Woo (Randall Park), is not supposed to leave his house until his house arrest is over, which is only a matter of days, 2) the fact that one of their black-market tech suppliers, the sleazy Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), is on to them and wants to steal their tech, and 3) the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) also seeks to unlock secrets to the Quantum Realm and is willing to steal Hank's tech to do it. As much as Scott wants to do right by his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Forston) and stay out of trouble, he also realizes that Hank and Hope, who were both compromised as a result of his adventures in Germany, really need his help, and may well need the help of his old crew Luis (Michael Pena), Dave (Tip Harris) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian) as well.
The first Ant-Man was a pleasant little hoot, one I welcomed after Avengers: Age of Ultron disappointed somewhat back in 2015. This film, which has the distinction of being Marvel's first film with a female co-lead, captures the spirit and energy of the first film, with a lot more besides. It helps that the cast, most of whom return from the first film, have fantastic chemistry together. The humor is still front and center, and unlike Avengers: Infinity War, which seemed to be tonally muddled at times considering that the grim subject matter was often peppered with jokes, this film breezes through. Of course, Rudd, who shares scriptwriting credit, is at his comedic best here and really does the perfect "everyman" for this role, while Lilly and Douglas get considerably more screen time than last time out. John-Kamen, who was delightful as a bad guy in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, again shines here as the fiercely driven Ava Starr, whose very life may depend on Pym finding the Quantum Realm. Laurence Fishburne has a brief, somewhat unremarkable turn as Pym's former S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague Bill Foster. Pfeiffer is less a character here than she is a driving plot point and, ultimately, a sort of deus ex machina, but I hope she shows up in the inevitable sequel with more to do. And of course, no Ant-Man film would be complete without a narration from Michael Pena's Luis, who gladly obliges us about halfway through the movie.
The action scenes are quite imaginative, with Pym's shrinking technology being put to good use in not only the hand-to-hand fighting, but also in the most engaging car-chase sequence set in San Francisco since the one in Bullitt. It's also interesting to see how someone who can shrink at will fights someone who turns intangible at will.
It really is an enjoyable time at the movies, though of course, as with any movie involving science or pseudo-science, which, as usual, becomes the script's magical tool to explain what happens, no matter how illogical, it does feel a bit goofy at times. Director Peyton Reed does well to keep the action moving briskly so we don't find ourselves asking too many questions.
As an aside, and this isn't really a major issue, I have to say I wasn't too thrilled that Jimmy Woo, the rare Asian Marvel character, was portrayed as a complete goofball in the film considering the pedigree of his comic-book counterpart. Still, Park was a lot of fun in the role.
As MCU offerings go, this was a great way to cap off what's been a banner year for the ladies and gentlemen at Marvel.
7.5/10
written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari
Following the cataclysmic events of Avengers: Infinity War, a lighthearted romp through the world of Ant-Man is basically just what the doctor ordered, especially considering that he is joined here by the Wasp.
Following the events of the first movie, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who had previously thought his wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) to be dead, after she shrunk herself down to subatomic size to stop a missile in the 1980s, now believes it's possible she's alive somewhere down in the Quantum Realm, after Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) went subatomic and managed to return to full size. Now, he and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) have built a "Quantum Tunnel" which is basically a rig that will enable them to shrink down small enough to travel to the Quantum Realm and find Janet. When Scott, who has been under house arrest following his participation on the events of Captain America: Civil War, suddenly has a strange dream about someone he thinks is Janet and gives Pym a call, Hank and Hope, thinking it's more than just a dream, decide they need Scott's help to find Janet as well. There are a number of things that could get in the way, though: 1) the fact that Scott, who is under the watchful eye of the FBI, specifically Agent Woo (Randall Park), is not supposed to leave his house until his house arrest is over, which is only a matter of days, 2) the fact that one of their black-market tech suppliers, the sleazy Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), is on to them and wants to steal their tech, and 3) the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) also seeks to unlock secrets to the Quantum Realm and is willing to steal Hank's tech to do it. As much as Scott wants to do right by his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Forston) and stay out of trouble, he also realizes that Hank and Hope, who were both compromised as a result of his adventures in Germany, really need his help, and may well need the help of his old crew Luis (Michael Pena), Dave (Tip Harris) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian) as well.
The first Ant-Man was a pleasant little hoot, one I welcomed after Avengers: Age of Ultron disappointed somewhat back in 2015. This film, which has the distinction of being Marvel's first film with a female co-lead, captures the spirit and energy of the first film, with a lot more besides. It helps that the cast, most of whom return from the first film, have fantastic chemistry together. The humor is still front and center, and unlike Avengers: Infinity War, which seemed to be tonally muddled at times considering that the grim subject matter was often peppered with jokes, this film breezes through. Of course, Rudd, who shares scriptwriting credit, is at his comedic best here and really does the perfect "everyman" for this role, while Lilly and Douglas get considerably more screen time than last time out. John-Kamen, who was delightful as a bad guy in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, again shines here as the fiercely driven Ava Starr, whose very life may depend on Pym finding the Quantum Realm. Laurence Fishburne has a brief, somewhat unremarkable turn as Pym's former S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague Bill Foster. Pfeiffer is less a character here than she is a driving plot point and, ultimately, a sort of deus ex machina, but I hope she shows up in the inevitable sequel with more to do. And of course, no Ant-Man film would be complete without a narration from Michael Pena's Luis, who gladly obliges us about halfway through the movie.
The action scenes are quite imaginative, with Pym's shrinking technology being put to good use in not only the hand-to-hand fighting, but also in the most engaging car-chase sequence set in San Francisco since the one in Bullitt. It's also interesting to see how someone who can shrink at will fights someone who turns intangible at will.
It really is an enjoyable time at the movies, though of course, as with any movie involving science or pseudo-science, which, as usual, becomes the script's magical tool to explain what happens, no matter how illogical, it does feel a bit goofy at times. Director Peyton Reed does well to keep the action moving briskly so we don't find ourselves asking too many questions.
As an aside, and this isn't really a major issue, I have to say I wasn't too thrilled that Jimmy Woo, the rare Asian Marvel character, was portrayed as a complete goofball in the film considering the pedigree of his comic-book counterpart. Still, Park was a lot of fun in the role.
As MCU offerings go, this was a great way to cap off what's been a banner year for the ladies and gentlemen at Marvel.
7.5/10
Sunday, June 24, 2018
So...How About Those Twists? (Incredibles 2 edition - HEAVY SPOILERS)
While The Incredibles 2 didn't really lean heavily on story twists, there is quite a bit about it that's worth discussing from a thematic perspective, and yes, this discussion does involve spoilers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(SPOILER ALERT)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay, you've been warned. When The Incredibles 2 introduced a "mystery villain" in the form of Screenslaver, it was pretty obvious from the word "go" that he was going to be one of the two new characters introduced, either Winston Deavor or his sister Evelyn. Brad Bird managed a bit of a fake-out by revealing him to be a mind-controlled pizza delivery man, but there never was any doubt that it would have been one of the two siblings. Winston was played a bit too obvious, making Evelyn the likelier candidate for villainy, as she in fact was.
The predictability of the twist wasn't really an issue for me, though I confess I kind of rolled my eyes at the "angry at superheroes" motivation that drove Evelyn, who for some reason reminded me of Helena Bonham-Carter, to concoct her scheme to destroy them, as it felt like a variation on the motivations that drove Jason Lee's Syndrome to murder just about every known superhero except for Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone from the first film.
I found it curious considering that neither of the "big bad guys" that the Incredibles have fought are actually "villains" per se. They're not out for world domination, or even something more mundane like grand larceny. They simply hate superheroes, for one reason or another, and set out to destroy them. That's basically their sole goal, and they're willing to inflict considerable death and destruction to achieve it.
The Incredibles 2 presents a more interesting spin on the concept than its predecessor, which simply presented a spurned fanboy. While Evelyn is similarly angry with superheroes, she's also angry with the way people have come to depend on them, which sounds like a pretty reasonable gripe with superheroes if you ask me. The argument, if I'm honest, was never fully debunked, and Evelyn's line when the police are hauling her off at the end--"just because you saved me doesn't mean you're right"--actually rings somewhat true.
I mean, there is something to be said about the argument that people shouldn't count on "heroes" to save them; it actually applies directly to our global politics right now. Countries all over the world are caught in the grip of a new wave of authoritarian rulers because voters have been embraced the ultimately false notion that these "strongmen" could "save" them from all of their problems. There's a distinct failure to realize that if anyone is to save us from our problems, it's us.
It kind of makes me wonder if The Incredibles isn't a surreptitious critique of the entire superhero storytelling genre; in this world, it's the superheroes themselves who, however inadvertently, create their biggest villains. And then, of course, there's that scene in which the Parr family are shown their new house, which suspiciously resembles a certain billionaire philanthropist playboy's former Malibu mansion, and Violet comments on how ridiculously exposed a self-confessed superhero living in such a house would be.
Of course, there have been comments on how Brad Bird's personal philosophy of Objectivism plays into the narrative, but really, neither Syndrome, who wanted to "democratize" being "super" by selling everyone high tech weapons, nor Evelyn Deavor, who wants to "cure" people of their dependency on superheroes to solve their problems, sounds like a particularly bad person; it's only their chosen means (assassination, mayhem) that ultimately make them bad. But I'll be darned if they aren't SPOT ON in their disdain for superheroes in general, at least in the context of the stories that are told.
I'd like to see Brad Bird explore this thought process further, and I'm fairly sure he'll get the chance. The thing is, even though he's presented villains with cogent arguments against the so-called heroes, he has yet to have the villains win the argument, the way Erik Killmonger did in Black Panther, and to a lesser, less-commonly-acknowledged extent, the way the Vulture did in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
I really love this world that Bird has created, and even though it's nowhere near as expansive as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its scope, thematically it's got a richness to it that the first two films have only just begun to explore.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(SPOILER ALERT)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay, you've been warned. When The Incredibles 2 introduced a "mystery villain" in the form of Screenslaver, it was pretty obvious from the word "go" that he was going to be one of the two new characters introduced, either Winston Deavor or his sister Evelyn. Brad Bird managed a bit of a fake-out by revealing him to be a mind-controlled pizza delivery man, but there never was any doubt that it would have been one of the two siblings. Winston was played a bit too obvious, making Evelyn the likelier candidate for villainy, as she in fact was.
The predictability of the twist wasn't really an issue for me, though I confess I kind of rolled my eyes at the "angry at superheroes" motivation that drove Evelyn, who for some reason reminded me of Helena Bonham-Carter, to concoct her scheme to destroy them, as it felt like a variation on the motivations that drove Jason Lee's Syndrome to murder just about every known superhero except for Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone from the first film.
I found it curious considering that neither of the "big bad guys" that the Incredibles have fought are actually "villains" per se. They're not out for world domination, or even something more mundane like grand larceny. They simply hate superheroes, for one reason or another, and set out to destroy them. That's basically their sole goal, and they're willing to inflict considerable death and destruction to achieve it.
The Incredibles 2 presents a more interesting spin on the concept than its predecessor, which simply presented a spurned fanboy. While Evelyn is similarly angry with superheroes, she's also angry with the way people have come to depend on them, which sounds like a pretty reasonable gripe with superheroes if you ask me. The argument, if I'm honest, was never fully debunked, and Evelyn's line when the police are hauling her off at the end--"just because you saved me doesn't mean you're right"--actually rings somewhat true.
I mean, there is something to be said about the argument that people shouldn't count on "heroes" to save them; it actually applies directly to our global politics right now. Countries all over the world are caught in the grip of a new wave of authoritarian rulers because voters have been embraced the ultimately false notion that these "strongmen" could "save" them from all of their problems. There's a distinct failure to realize that if anyone is to save us from our problems, it's us.
It kind of makes me wonder if The Incredibles isn't a surreptitious critique of the entire superhero storytelling genre; in this world, it's the superheroes themselves who, however inadvertently, create their biggest villains. And then, of course, there's that scene in which the Parr family are shown their new house, which suspiciously resembles a certain billionaire philanthropist playboy's former Malibu mansion, and Violet comments on how ridiculously exposed a self-confessed superhero living in such a house would be.
Of course, there have been comments on how Brad Bird's personal philosophy of Objectivism plays into the narrative, but really, neither Syndrome, who wanted to "democratize" being "super" by selling everyone high tech weapons, nor Evelyn Deavor, who wants to "cure" people of their dependency on superheroes to solve their problems, sounds like a particularly bad person; it's only their chosen means (assassination, mayhem) that ultimately make them bad. But I'll be darned if they aren't SPOT ON in their disdain for superheroes in general, at least in the context of the stories that are told.
I'd like to see Brad Bird explore this thought process further, and I'm fairly sure he'll get the chance. The thing is, even though he's presented villains with cogent arguments against the so-called heroes, he has yet to have the villains win the argument, the way Erik Killmonger did in Black Panther, and to a lesser, less-commonly-acknowledged extent, the way the Vulture did in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
I really love this world that Bird has created, and even though it's nowhere near as expansive as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its scope, thematically it's got a richness to it that the first two films have only just begun to explore.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Worth the Wait...Mostly: A Review of The Incredibles 2
written and directed by Brad Bird
When Pixar released The Incredibles back in 2004, it knocked my socks off. Having grown up with Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, the original squabbling family of superheroes, I found much to love about these charming but wildly dysfunctional new animated heroes, Silver Age superheroes who'd been forced into retirement by a disillusioned populace and who found themselves grappling with middle age and suburban ennui. At a time when the superhero fare in cinemas was limited mainly to Sam Raimi's Spider-man and Bryan Singer's X-Men films, the original Incredibles provided a refreshing take on the genre that endeared it to both critics and audiences, including this particular viewer.
The Incredibles 2 arrives in a somewhat more heavily-populated cinematic superhero landscape, and while Brad Bird and Pixar still manage to deliver a quality film, one which, from a technical perspective, is leaps and bounds above its predecessor, it doesn't have quite the same impact.
The film picks up directly where the first one left off, with Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) his wife Helen, aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), their super-powered kids Violet (Sarah Vowell) and Dash (Huck Milner) and their old friend Lucius aka Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the menace of the Underminer (John Ratzenberger). While the assembled superheroes save City Hall from destruction, the chaos wrought by the Underminer (who has escaped with a bank vault full of money), coupled with the fact that superheroes in general are still illegal, causes them headaches as they are detained by the police, who let them off with a warning. The Parrs are at the end of their rope; not only was their house destroyed at the end of the last movie, but they soon learn from their old government liaison Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks) that the government has shut down the program for keeping superheroes underground, meaning that they need to find work soon or they'll be out on the streets.
Fortunately, Lucius approaches Bob and Helen, having been contacted by the affluent Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) a wealthy telecommunications magnate and fan of superheroes whose father adored them and supported them back when they were legal, and who wants more than anything to make that happen. His grand scheme, which he plans to implement with his tech-genius sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) is simple: to put people right in the seat of what superheroes do by implanting cameras into their suits, so that they can see how hard they work to save lives. Deavor chooses Elastigirl to spearhead the program, as she has, in her career, been the least destructive of the three superheroes. This puts Bob, to his initial annoyance, on stay-at-home dad duty with Dash, Violet and their infant Jack-Jack who is about to manifest a whole host of his own superpowers.
No sooner does Helen get back into action, however, than a new threat, the mysterious Screenslaver, emerges.
From start to finish, the movie is a joy to behold. Having just re-watched the original film on DVD before taking my family to see this, I was struck by how much the technology has advanced since then. Helen has considerably softer and warmer features than her more plastic-looking previous incarnation, while Bob's hilarious transformation from superhero to sleep-deprived superdad is vividly depicted with eyebags and five o' clock shadow. The movie does a bit of gender-swapping from the last one, with Helen flexing muscles doing the superheroics, while Bob handles the challenge of looking after three kids, who consist of a lovelorn teenager, a tweener struggling with his math lessons, and a baby, who'd be challenging enough without the superpowers. In that sense, the film does feel a bit familiar after awhile. Fortunately, the antics of the multi-powered Jack-Jack infuse a bit of welcome freshness into the film, especially as the terrified Bob tries to figure out how to handle his tiny little powerhouse.
If there was any particular letdown about this film, it had to be the villain, who, upon scrutiny, is surprisingly similar in motivation and, to some degree, in method, to Jason Lee's Syndrome from the first film. I appreciate that Bird gives the bad guys nuance and a driving force beyond just the desire to rule the world or enrich one's self, but there was too much similarity between this and what came before to ignore.
I was also overjoyed to hear Michael Giacchino's familiar brassy, retro-jazzy tunes once more. He's come full circle; after kicking off his film career with the first Incredibles movie, he's since gone on to write music for not only movies from Pixar and mother company Disney but also giant film franchises like Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and Jurassic Park. More than just rehash his original themes, though Giacchino infuses this score with just about every trick he's picked up since the first film. It's not unlike hearing how much richer Alan Silvestri's Avengers: Infinity War score was than his original Avengers music.
As satisfying as I found the film to be, though, I really couldn't shake how familiar everything felt. Everything looked and sounded great, to be sure, but really, it's was like a shiny coat of paint on basically the same car. Don't get me wrong; I am a huge fan of sequels that basically lean on formula, like the Marvel films and even the Jason Bourne series, but considering the narrative triumph of the first film, I had somewhat high expectations of a sequel fourteen years in the making. Perhaps too high, it seems.
The good news is, it's still a rip-roaring good time at the movies. It looks to be a smash hit, too, so I know I'll be back for the almost inevitable sequel.
I just hope it doesn't take another fourteen years for them to make one, and that they try for something a little different next time.
8/10
When Pixar released The Incredibles back in 2004, it knocked my socks off. Having grown up with Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, the original squabbling family of superheroes, I found much to love about these charming but wildly dysfunctional new animated heroes, Silver Age superheroes who'd been forced into retirement by a disillusioned populace and who found themselves grappling with middle age and suburban ennui. At a time when the superhero fare in cinemas was limited mainly to Sam Raimi's Spider-man and Bryan Singer's X-Men films, the original Incredibles provided a refreshing take on the genre that endeared it to both critics and audiences, including this particular viewer.
The Incredibles 2 arrives in a somewhat more heavily-populated cinematic superhero landscape, and while Brad Bird and Pixar still manage to deliver a quality film, one which, from a technical perspective, is leaps and bounds above its predecessor, it doesn't have quite the same impact.
The film picks up directly where the first one left off, with Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) his wife Helen, aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), their super-powered kids Violet (Sarah Vowell) and Dash (Huck Milner) and their old friend Lucius aka Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the menace of the Underminer (John Ratzenberger). While the assembled superheroes save City Hall from destruction, the chaos wrought by the Underminer (who has escaped with a bank vault full of money), coupled with the fact that superheroes in general are still illegal, causes them headaches as they are detained by the police, who let them off with a warning. The Parrs are at the end of their rope; not only was their house destroyed at the end of the last movie, but they soon learn from their old government liaison Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks) that the government has shut down the program for keeping superheroes underground, meaning that they need to find work soon or they'll be out on the streets.
Fortunately, Lucius approaches Bob and Helen, having been contacted by the affluent Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) a wealthy telecommunications magnate and fan of superheroes whose father adored them and supported them back when they were legal, and who wants more than anything to make that happen. His grand scheme, which he plans to implement with his tech-genius sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) is simple: to put people right in the seat of what superheroes do by implanting cameras into their suits, so that they can see how hard they work to save lives. Deavor chooses Elastigirl to spearhead the program, as she has, in her career, been the least destructive of the three superheroes. This puts Bob, to his initial annoyance, on stay-at-home dad duty with Dash, Violet and their infant Jack-Jack who is about to manifest a whole host of his own superpowers.
No sooner does Helen get back into action, however, than a new threat, the mysterious Screenslaver, emerges.
From start to finish, the movie is a joy to behold. Having just re-watched the original film on DVD before taking my family to see this, I was struck by how much the technology has advanced since then. Helen has considerably softer and warmer features than her more plastic-looking previous incarnation, while Bob's hilarious transformation from superhero to sleep-deprived superdad is vividly depicted with eyebags and five o' clock shadow. The movie does a bit of gender-swapping from the last one, with Helen flexing muscles doing the superheroics, while Bob handles the challenge of looking after three kids, who consist of a lovelorn teenager, a tweener struggling with his math lessons, and a baby, who'd be challenging enough without the superpowers. In that sense, the film does feel a bit familiar after awhile. Fortunately, the antics of the multi-powered Jack-Jack infuse a bit of welcome freshness into the film, especially as the terrified Bob tries to figure out how to handle his tiny little powerhouse.
If there was any particular letdown about this film, it had to be the villain, who, upon scrutiny, is surprisingly similar in motivation and, to some degree, in method, to Jason Lee's Syndrome from the first film. I appreciate that Bird gives the bad guys nuance and a driving force beyond just the desire to rule the world or enrich one's self, but there was too much similarity between this and what came before to ignore.
I was also overjoyed to hear Michael Giacchino's familiar brassy, retro-jazzy tunes once more. He's come full circle; after kicking off his film career with the first Incredibles movie, he's since gone on to write music for not only movies from Pixar and mother company Disney but also giant film franchises like Mission Impossible, Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and Jurassic Park. More than just rehash his original themes, though Giacchino infuses this score with just about every trick he's picked up since the first film. It's not unlike hearing how much richer Alan Silvestri's Avengers: Infinity War score was than his original Avengers music.
As satisfying as I found the film to be, though, I really couldn't shake how familiar everything felt. Everything looked and sounded great, to be sure, but really, it's was like a shiny coat of paint on basically the same car. Don't get me wrong; I am a huge fan of sequels that basically lean on formula, like the Marvel films and even the Jason Bourne series, but considering the narrative triumph of the first film, I had somewhat high expectations of a sequel fourteen years in the making. Perhaps too high, it seems.
The good news is, it's still a rip-roaring good time at the movies. It looks to be a smash hit, too, so I know I'll be back for the almost inevitable sequel.
I just hope it doesn't take another fourteen years for them to make one, and that they try for something a little different next time.
8/10
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Thank You, Fox, for Letting Comic Book Blockbusters in 2018 Breathe a Little
At one point, we were slated to have as many as TEN comic-book based films this year, three from Disney, two from Sony/Columbia, three from Fox and two from Warner Bros. Some online pundits were predicting doom and gloom for the box office, asserting that all of these aspiring blockbusters (which, apart from comic-book movies, included sequels galore to properties ranging from the Ocean's 11 franchise to the Incredibles) would cannibalize one another.
Well, so far, the good news is that with few exceptions, the movies that were expected to succeed have done exactly that.
When the trailers for Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped this past week, I realized, however, that they were opening within one week of each other, and that Bumblebee was actually opening against Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman, which meant that the prognostications of doom and gloom for the overall Hollywood box office (which, let's face it, is a globally consumed product), may yet prove accurate by the end of the year.
Bearing this in mind, then, I remembered Twentieth Century Fox's decision to postpone till 2019 the release of two of its three Marvel-based movies originally scheduled for release this year namely, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants. The decision to postpone the latter film was genuinely surprising considering that a trailer had already been released several months ago.
Now, there could have been a number of different reasons for the postponement, ranging from the old "troubled production" dilemma to poor reception by test audiences, but whether or not these films were taken off the table because they were turkeys or because Fox simply didn't want to enter too crowded a market, at the end of the day they made the right move, and did everyone, them AND us, a favor.
After all, if the movies are bad, then they'll simply add to the superhero blockbuster glut and maybe even help induce the "superhero fatigue" that pundits have been predicting for years (which has yet to happen, incidentally). Conversely, if they're good, they may simply disappear amid the crowd of "great" films peppered all throughout the year. After all, neither X-Men: Dark Phoenix nor New Mutants carries with it the "event" status of Avengers: Infinity War or cultural milestone status of Black Panther (unless Fox wants to market New Mutants as the first superhero film with a Native American lead, but given that it's an ensemble piece that's not likely to work), or even the long-awaited-sequel status of The Incredibles 2. Deadpool 2 was a much easier sell, being the follow-up to a box-office juggernaut, but after X-Men: Apocalypse underperformed and given that New Mutants is a completely unknown commodity, caution was warranted. Was it a result of the planned Disney buyout? That seems unlikely, given that there's still a fair chance that Comcast may snatch up Fox instead of Disney.
Are the movies most likely to be bad, given extensive reports of reshoots? Well, reshoots aren't always a bad thing; Rogue One: A Star Wars story underwent quite a few reshoots and turned out pretty good. Even World War Z, an infamously troubled production which had to undergo reshoots for nearly the entire third act, opened to boffo box office all around the world, so it's early to say that all is lost for Fox's non-Deadpool Marvel movies. I, for one, remain cautiously optimistic.
In the end, postponing the movies, whether it was to avoid the crowd or to undergo reshoots, was really the best thing for the movies themselves and the viewing audience. And it was gratifying to know that Fox execs didn't rush the movies into theaters just to make sure they could claim their bonuses (coughcoughJUSTICELEAGUEcoughcough). What ultimately matters is that when the movies do hit theaters, they prove to be products that were worth the wait.
Well, so far, the good news is that with few exceptions, the movies that were expected to succeed have done exactly that.
When the trailers for Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dropped this past week, I realized, however, that they were opening within one week of each other, and that Bumblebee was actually opening against Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman, which meant that the prognostications of doom and gloom for the overall Hollywood box office (which, let's face it, is a globally consumed product), may yet prove accurate by the end of the year.
Bearing this in mind, then, I remembered Twentieth Century Fox's decision to postpone till 2019 the release of two of its three Marvel-based movies originally scheduled for release this year namely, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants. The decision to postpone the latter film was genuinely surprising considering that a trailer had already been released several months ago.
Now, there could have been a number of different reasons for the postponement, ranging from the old "troubled production" dilemma to poor reception by test audiences, but whether or not these films were taken off the table because they were turkeys or because Fox simply didn't want to enter too crowded a market, at the end of the day they made the right move, and did everyone, them AND us, a favor.
After all, if the movies are bad, then they'll simply add to the superhero blockbuster glut and maybe even help induce the "superhero fatigue" that pundits have been predicting for years (which has yet to happen, incidentally). Conversely, if they're good, they may simply disappear amid the crowd of "great" films peppered all throughout the year. After all, neither X-Men: Dark Phoenix nor New Mutants carries with it the "event" status of Avengers: Infinity War or cultural milestone status of Black Panther (unless Fox wants to market New Mutants as the first superhero film with a Native American lead, but given that it's an ensemble piece that's not likely to work), or even the long-awaited-sequel status of The Incredibles 2. Deadpool 2 was a much easier sell, being the follow-up to a box-office juggernaut, but after X-Men: Apocalypse underperformed and given that New Mutants is a completely unknown commodity, caution was warranted. Was it a result of the planned Disney buyout? That seems unlikely, given that there's still a fair chance that Comcast may snatch up Fox instead of Disney.
Are the movies most likely to be bad, given extensive reports of reshoots? Well, reshoots aren't always a bad thing; Rogue One: A Star Wars story underwent quite a few reshoots and turned out pretty good. Even World War Z, an infamously troubled production which had to undergo reshoots for nearly the entire third act, opened to boffo box office all around the world, so it's early to say that all is lost for Fox's non-Deadpool Marvel movies. I, for one, remain cautiously optimistic.
In the end, postponing the movies, whether it was to avoid the crowd or to undergo reshoots, was really the best thing for the movies themselves and the viewing audience. And it was gratifying to know that Fox execs didn't rush the movies into theaters just to make sure they could claim their bonuses (coughcoughJUSTICELEAGUEcoughcough). What ultimately matters is that when the movies do hit theaters, they prove to be products that were worth the wait.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
So...How About Those CAMEOS?!? (MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR DEADPOOL 2)
SPOILER ALERT for Deadpool 2.
Last chance to back away...
Okay, here we go.
Deadpool 2 is not a movie that relies on twists for its narrative. It's a straight-up action comedy that is practically predictable by design and doesn't really go for any emotional punches, nor does it particularly mess with its audience. In short, it doesn't really go for any of the usual beats that characterize a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, almost as if to emphasize just how different Deadpool is from his estranged cousins at Disney.
One thing this movie does traffic quite a bit in, however, is cameos, and I'm not just talking about regulars, or people who would normally show their faces in a superhero/comic book based movie. The cameos here are so wild and wacky, in fact, that I've taken the liberty of categorizing them according to type. In order of appearance, they are:
1) The "We've Arrived" cameo: As before, Deadpool is joined by X-men Colossus (again played by Stefan Kapicic and terrible CGI) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and as before, Deadpool makes one of his patented 4th-wall breaking quips about how "the studio" can't even spare more X-Men. Behind him, however, quietly closing the door is no other than Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult. Beside him are virtually the entire cast of the last X-Men movie, including James MacAvoy as Professor X, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Evan Peters as Quicksilver to name a few. This is their only appearance in the film, but it is a nice nod from Fox to acknowledge the simple mathematical fact that Deadpool is, hands-down, their most financially successful property, and by God they can certainly spare some X-men for him. They just won't, because Deadpool is an idiot.
2) The "HOLY COW, THAT WAS HIM?!?" cameo: When Josh Brolin's Cable teleports to the past from the future, he lands near two rednecks who are discussing, of all things, toilet paper. It's a moment that stands out for its bizarre but genuinely funny dialogue about which brand of toilet paper offers maximum comfort, and is cut short when Cable tranquilizes the two rednecks and steals their pickup truck. One of them, it turns out, the guy with a lot to say about quality toilet paper, was Matt Damon, under heavy make-up. The other one, with less dialogue was character actor Alan Tudyk. I watched the whole movie without knowing this and basically only found out when I Google-searched another cameo in this film. This may not have been one of the flashier cameos, but in retrospect it was, for me anyway, the funniest. So Matt Damon's got two Marvel movie cameos under his belt (having had a much more visible cameo in Thor: Ragnarok), albeit not from the same studio, and it'd be interesting to see if this becomes a semi-regular thing for him.
3) The "I Was Expecting to See More of This Guy" cameo: comedian/character actor Terry Crews is perhaps best known to audiences for lip-syncing to Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in the Wayans Brothers' comedy film White Chicks. Personally my favorite Crews role is his little-seen turn as the wrestler-turned-president Camacho in Mike Judge's tragically prophetic Idiocracy. Either way, he featured heavily in the marketing materials and so I figured I'd be seeing quite a lot of him. As it turns out, the film's very best scene, when he and the other members of Deadpool's newly-assembled team X-Force parachute into heavy wind, turns out to be his last as nearly every member of the newly formed team dies horribly: the preposterous-looking Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, splattering green blood, with his only remains being his ridiculous braid, the acid-vomiting Zeitgeist is sucked into a wood cutter and pulped, and Crews' Bedlam smashes headlong into a bus. It was completely out of left field and an utter laugh riot, so even though Crews had no further participation in the film, his cameo was a damned good one, but it wasn't even the most striking one in that madcap sequence, which brings me to...
4) The "IS THAT WHO I THINK IT WAS?" cameo: when the members of X-Force who aren't named Deadpool or Domino meet their grisly demise, one member, the Vanisher, who up until this point has, well, basically vanished, lands on some electric wires and is predictably fried to death, at which point he is, for a split-second, revealed to be Brad Pitt. Now, when I saw this, at first I thought I was seeing a lookalike, like Karl Urban or something, but later the end credits revealed that it was, actually, Brad Pitt, and a quick Google search (which also turned up the aforementioned Damon cameo) confirmed it. It was quite a coup; Pitt may not be quite the A-lister he once was, but he's never appeared in a comic-book based movie before and considering that he was one of the actors approached for the role of Cable but had to turn it down, it was nice that Fox was able to at least get an entertaining cameo out of him.
5) The "Best Use of Recycled Footage" cameo: By now, I think Fox has all but given up on their X-Men timeline making any sense, so when Deadpool walks onto the climactic scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine meets the 'Dead Pool' for the first time, and shoots the godawful version of himself in the head, there's no point in asking if it makes any sense. What matters is that it's hilarious, though it was a shame they couldn't have filmed any new footage with Hugh Jackman.
6) The "Erasing Bad Decisions" cameo: It's certainly a stretch to call an appearance by Ryan Reynolds in a movie starring (and written by) Ryan Reynolds a cameo, but really, when "Ryan Reynolds" eagerly sits down to read a little script called "Green Lantern" only to be shot through the head by none other than Deadpool, it's a truly epic moment, on par with Thor arriving in Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (Well, not really, but it was really funny).
Truth be told, Deadpool 2 may have waxed cliche on more than one occasion, but it really was a brilliant move to work all those cameos into the film; they gave it yet another bit of quirkiness that no other superhero/comic-book based movie can claim to have.
Last chance to back away...
Okay, here we go.
Deadpool 2 is not a movie that relies on twists for its narrative. It's a straight-up action comedy that is practically predictable by design and doesn't really go for any emotional punches, nor does it particularly mess with its audience. In short, it doesn't really go for any of the usual beats that characterize a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, almost as if to emphasize just how different Deadpool is from his estranged cousins at Disney.
One thing this movie does traffic quite a bit in, however, is cameos, and I'm not just talking about regulars, or people who would normally show their faces in a superhero/comic book based movie. The cameos here are so wild and wacky, in fact, that I've taken the liberty of categorizing them according to type. In order of appearance, they are:
1) The "We've Arrived" cameo: As before, Deadpool is joined by X-men Colossus (again played by Stefan Kapicic and terrible CGI) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and as before, Deadpool makes one of his patented 4th-wall breaking quips about how "the studio" can't even spare more X-Men. Behind him, however, quietly closing the door is no other than Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult. Beside him are virtually the entire cast of the last X-Men movie, including James MacAvoy as Professor X, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Evan Peters as Quicksilver to name a few. This is their only appearance in the film, but it is a nice nod from Fox to acknowledge the simple mathematical fact that Deadpool is, hands-down, their most financially successful property, and by God they can certainly spare some X-men for him. They just won't, because Deadpool is an idiot.
2) The "HOLY COW, THAT WAS HIM?!?" cameo: When Josh Brolin's Cable teleports to the past from the future, he lands near two rednecks who are discussing, of all things, toilet paper. It's a moment that stands out for its bizarre but genuinely funny dialogue about which brand of toilet paper offers maximum comfort, and is cut short when Cable tranquilizes the two rednecks and steals their pickup truck. One of them, it turns out, the guy with a lot to say about quality toilet paper, was Matt Damon, under heavy make-up. The other one, with less dialogue was character actor Alan Tudyk. I watched the whole movie without knowing this and basically only found out when I Google-searched another cameo in this film. This may not have been one of the flashier cameos, but in retrospect it was, for me anyway, the funniest. So Matt Damon's got two Marvel movie cameos under his belt (having had a much more visible cameo in Thor: Ragnarok), albeit not from the same studio, and it'd be interesting to see if this becomes a semi-regular thing for him.
3) The "I Was Expecting to See More of This Guy" cameo: comedian/character actor Terry Crews is perhaps best known to audiences for lip-syncing to Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in the Wayans Brothers' comedy film White Chicks. Personally my favorite Crews role is his little-seen turn as the wrestler-turned-president Camacho in Mike Judge's tragically prophetic Idiocracy. Either way, he featured heavily in the marketing materials and so I figured I'd be seeing quite a lot of him. As it turns out, the film's very best scene, when he and the other members of Deadpool's newly-assembled team X-Force parachute into heavy wind, turns out to be his last as nearly every member of the newly formed team dies horribly: the preposterous-looking Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, splattering green blood, with his only remains being his ridiculous braid, the acid-vomiting Zeitgeist is sucked into a wood cutter and pulped, and Crews' Bedlam smashes headlong into a bus. It was completely out of left field and an utter laugh riot, so even though Crews had no further participation in the film, his cameo was a damned good one, but it wasn't even the most striking one in that madcap sequence, which brings me to...
4) The "IS THAT WHO I THINK IT WAS?" cameo: when the members of X-Force who aren't named Deadpool or Domino meet their grisly demise, one member, the Vanisher, who up until this point has, well, basically vanished, lands on some electric wires and is predictably fried to death, at which point he is, for a split-second, revealed to be Brad Pitt. Now, when I saw this, at first I thought I was seeing a lookalike, like Karl Urban or something, but later the end credits revealed that it was, actually, Brad Pitt, and a quick Google search (which also turned up the aforementioned Damon cameo) confirmed it. It was quite a coup; Pitt may not be quite the A-lister he once was, but he's never appeared in a comic-book based movie before and considering that he was one of the actors approached for the role of Cable but had to turn it down, it was nice that Fox was able to at least get an entertaining cameo out of him.
5) The "Best Use of Recycled Footage" cameo: By now, I think Fox has all but given up on their X-Men timeline making any sense, so when Deadpool walks onto the climactic scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine meets the 'Dead Pool' for the first time, and shoots the godawful version of himself in the head, there's no point in asking if it makes any sense. What matters is that it's hilarious, though it was a shame they couldn't have filmed any new footage with Hugh Jackman.
6) The "Erasing Bad Decisions" cameo: It's certainly a stretch to call an appearance by Ryan Reynolds in a movie starring (and written by) Ryan Reynolds a cameo, but really, when "Ryan Reynolds" eagerly sits down to read a little script called "Green Lantern" only to be shot through the head by none other than Deadpool, it's a truly epic moment, on par with Thor arriving in Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (Well, not really, but it was really funny).
Truth be told, Deadpool 2 may have waxed cliche on more than one occasion, but it really was a brilliant move to work all those cameos into the film; they gave it yet another bit of quirkiness that no other superhero/comic-book based movie can claim to have.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)