Monthly Archives: April 2011

The Rock and The Diesel: Titan Clash

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Until about ten days ago I did not give a single damn about the Fast & Furious franchise, having endured the first one several years ago and finding it wanting. It was easy to dismiss yet another ropey Rob Cohen movie, especially one starring Paul Walker and which was so obviously based on Point Break (or Donnie Brasco, I guess someone could argue). Its success just seemed like one of those things that happen in the unpredictable summer season, and at the time – and I stress, at the time – could have been attributed to Vin Diesel’s apparent rise to superstardom. I watched the movie, it fed my brain with vroom for a couple of hours, and then it vanished and I didn’t really think of it again, except as That Movie With Vin That Wasn’t Riddick Or xXx.

The second movie came and went without even disturbing my poorly-styled hair, other than to note that Vin didn’t return – surely a bad sign. Nevertheless his stalled career had caught my attention, and thus the success of the first movie suddenly seemed a little more mysterious. It wasn’t Diesel that audiences flocked to see, so what was it? Paul Walker? That seemed unlikely, especially as the third movie came along, this time without Walker, and still made money. At that point I just figured, well, boys like fast cars and women in short-shorts wiggling away from the camera, so that’s that. They struck me as straight-to-DVD actioners that had just managed to catch a wave of enthusiasm, perhaps from gamers who liked that the movies so often resembled a Burnout sequel with added booty.

Suddenly a fourth movie was upon us, and I briefly considered watching the others and then watching that latest sequel, but time was so tight, what with trying to pack in every other movie going, that I decided against it. Besides, surely this was a last roll of the dice, an attempt to keep the franchise going just a little longer by bringing the full team back from the first movie. It wasn’t worthy of my time, and would merely be the end of a franchise that had commendably defied its critics by lasting longer than expected (though I did recently notice this very astute and accurate article praising the series for its commitment to racial diversity, something that has been sadly ignored until recently but has now been picked up as an interesting critical take on the franchise).

But I was massively wrong, and apparently so were the many others who have mocked the franchise and its fans. Though I will admit I only recently took an interest once my beloved Dwayne Johnson signed on, the appearance of a fifth movie made me strongly question my dismissive attitude. You don’t get to five films in a series these days by barely squeaking into profitability. This series continues because it makes fat cash and is genuinely loved by millions of people, and just treating them like idiots who must have risibly low standards because they like car movies is unacceptable. It’s like the movie equivalent of Top Gear; hated by the monocle-wearing Snootingtons of the critterati but adored by many.

So last week I took advantage of Sky Anytime’s generous streaming of Fast/Furious 1, 2 and 4 (no Tokyo Drift, which I figured was because it wasn’t part of the main plot, though please let me know if I’m wrong) and caught up. The first movie was still nothing special, from what I could tell, but I enjoyed it a bit more this time around, taking time to enjoy Diesel’s performance and the pretty cars. The end still seemed problematic; at the seventy minute mark it suddenly goes, “Heist! Accident! Shooting! Bike chase! Drag race! Accident! End!” for no reason other than those elements were always meant to be in the movie but all of the reaction shots between Brian O’Connor and Dominic Toretto ate up the second act.

It doesn’t surprise me that this mulch of action beats was cobbled together by Gary Scott Thompson, the man who eventually gave us the horrendous Knight Rider reboot that died on its wheels last year, and the amazing 88 Minutes, surely the most entertainingly bad mainstream movie of the past few years. Still, I liked it more than the second, which seemed to lack even the momentum of the first movie, with Diesel’s diverting anti-hero missing and replaced by smartarse Tyrese Gibson. No chemistry between him and Walker plus a very silly final act (featuring a weak and poorly staged resolution that reminded me of Black Dynamite, for some reason) meant I strongly considered not bothering with the fourth.

Thankfully I ignored my better judgement and dived in, and was rewarded with easily the best in the series to that point. Chris Morgan’s plot had numerous inconsistencies, as pointed out here, but it was still noticeably sharper than previous scripts, and was willing to take the main characters seriously, meaning Brian and Dominic’s adventures finally had the heft they had needed in the first movie. Even better was Justin Lin’s muscular direction. He was already in my good books for directing the truly magnificent Modern Warfare episode of Community, where his knowledge of action cinema was apparent.

Fast and Furious showed he could bring the love to the big screen, with numerous superb setpieces worthy of mwahs of affection (especially the opening petrol truck heist-gone-wrong and the mid-movie street race with Brian constantly driven off course while his satnav nags him). If previous instalments had felt a little light on dramatic oomph – often by being primarily about racing/sexy male bonding but with a crime element dolloped on top like some cheap vanilla ice cream – Fast and Furious felt like a consistent film. The fractured relationship between Brian and Dominic breathed for once; even more so than the first movie, I became invested in their reconciliation, and was rewarded with a terrific final scene where Brian finally turns his back in the law in order to help his buddy. Ace stuff.

But Holy Fanbelts, nothing – NOTHING IN THE WORLD – could have prepared me for the absolute bug-shit-nuts insanity and balls-to-the-wall brilliance of Fast Five. It’s surely a contender for action movie of the year, and is so far and away the best movie of the series that everything to this point has felt like a mere pre-amble. I’m as surprised as anyone as my snotty dismissiveness has been transformed into rapturous adoration, and I would actually recommend everyone watch the other movies – even if they don’t really like them – just to get to the point where they can watch and fully appreciate the twists and turns of this berserk epic of melodrama, action, and bromance.

Writer Chris Morgan may have been memorably lampooned by The Onion this week, and again there are a number of times during Fast Five where the only response is befuddlement (one scene shows Dominic escaping some chains by just escaping don’t overthink it OMG look a pretty car!), but credit where credit is due; the decision to make the fifth movie a hybrid of Fast/Furious, Ocean’s Eleven and The Fugitive (or more accurately, US Marshals) was a stroke of genius. The mid-section of the movie – depicting our heroes planning a robbery – is enormous fun, with Diesel and Walker the B-list Clooney and Pitt, Sung Kang as Damon, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Cheadle, and Tyrese Gibson as Bernie Mac. This refocusing is a far cry from trying to find new ways to make Paul Walker fall out with his co-stars before winning them over with that… that… “smile” of his.

It struck me as I goggled in disbelief at this indecently entertaining slice of summer madness that there is no other movie series ever made where the fifth movie was better than the previous instalments, at least as far as I can recall. Even the fifth Bond movie  - You Only Live Twice – is not as good as Goldfinger or From Russia With Love, though it’s still a blast. The Bond series had several high notes later on, but there was a definite sense of fatigue after a while, necessitating a total revamp. The Fast/Furious movies have just hit their fifth instalment and now finally make sense as a whole, using the same cast and plot elements as before, taking the initial concept to its natural conclusion, and basically saying, “Fuck it, it’s kitchen sink time” and ramping the franchise up to heights that are almost epic in scale without abandoning any elements.

For a long time I’ve been increasingly annoyed by the complaints from critics and pop culture pundits when they talk about the lack of new ideas out there. “Too many sequels, too many remakes, too many spin-offs; can no one come up with anything new?”, etc. Yes, I will concede that tired sequels or remakes made with no imagination or no understanding of what worked with the originals – or what didn’t work and needs to be rethought – make me despair as much as anyone. I’m not crazy. When you’re sitting in front of the third Twilight movie and the plot is resolutely stuck in a rut and you can feel your soul turning grey with boredom, it’s easy to think we’ve built a cultural Pompeii on the side of a mountain that will erupt, spewing cliches everywhere and permanently submerging the things that make storytelling matter.

But this ignores the fact – two facts if you count “there are no new ideas, only new variations” – that sometimes, if done right, stories can get better the longer they run. Look at comics; Captain America has been good in the past, but its finest hour is arguably Ed Brubaker’s run, and he’s come in really late in the day. Look at TV shows; Lost had a couple of terrific seasons, admittedly with highs and lows, but the fourth and fifth seasons were incredibly surprising. Look at The Shield or Seinfeld or The Sopranos or The Wire or Friday Night Lights; they didn’t just wow us initially and then burn away because “all the ideas ran out”. They built worlds, filled with characters we knew and understood and loved. We connected with them more the longer we lived with them, and so our interest grew along with the new possibilities being spotted by the creators and then used as narrative fuel.

When lazy critics bemoan this rampant sequelitis, they often judge before they experience. There is always a chance that a creative team will come up with some new twist or idea, or some new possibility based on the seeds sown in previous episodes/editions/movies, that will excite the audience and break new and interesting ground. This should be obvious, but it seems to pass people by, mostly because it’s easy to just get stuck repeating complaints until they eventually become “self-evident”. Fair enough; we’ve all been burned a million times before, and so it’s easy and inevitable that cynicism increases. Some stories work best when told quickly. Not everything needs a million chapters. Some in recent years have been horribly overdone and stretched too thinly (numerous horror franchises or sci-fi epics could be trimmed quite easily). I get that, and in many cases, I totally agree.

However, Fast Five is a perfect example of something that takes a step back, surveys all of the franchise’s elements, and weaves them back together in a new and thrilling way. Perhaps it works better than most because at its heart the series is about artificially created and sustained families, both in terms of the people in Brian’s life and also around the world, as this community nurtures and sustains itself on the fringe of society and protects its members from the disapproving mainstream with mutual respect and codes of honour. This in itself is a fertile ground for stories and continuity, especially as Lin and Morgan have so far proven to be versatile enough to not just make the series about racing.

It also helps that the series has been to so many different locales, with Lin making great use of Rio de Janeiro in this instalment; he stages a rip-roaring chase sequence through a favela that resembles a scene in Louis Leterrier’s Incredible Hulk, except even more exciting. So we see a this template expand in scale, and because we have now arrived at a point where our numerous heroes have become familiar to us over time, Lin and Morgan can get on with setting these characters off against each other in various combinations of friendship, love, antipathy and distrust without the audience having to be led by the hand. The variations would not be possible without this familiarity.

Another beneficial side-effect of adding new chapters onto a story is this removal of set-up; we have about three film’s worth of story in Fast Five because most of the exposition is stripped out, having been dealt with in the previous films. This movie is lean while packed with incident, but – unlike some over-reaching summer entertainments –  is not devoid of emotive impact or dramatic weight (provided you buy into it, of course). The big muscular showdown between Diesel and Johnson is not only a crisply-edited and exciting brawl, it has considerable power due to the deftly-handled in-film build-up, and finishes on a memorable and cathartic moment that has great resonance to fans who have watched the whole series. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

As for the other participants, while Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster still have difficulty generating onscreen sparks, their characters at least matter to Dominic, and therefore to me. I’ve long held that Diesel is a more interesting performer than he’s given credit, especially as he seems drawn to morally diverse characters like Dominic and Riddick, and he does some strong and surprisingly quiet work here. Tyrese Gibson is now designated comic relief and seems to relish it; what had seemed to me to be a casting misjudgement in the second movie really pays off here. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is slowly becoming a much more confident actor the longer he stays in the game, and this movie makes me look forward to more from him.

What about my hero Dwayne Johnson? He is BUILT TO KILL in this movie, having bulked up to terrifying size. His head is bald, his chin is whiskery, and his face is coated in a sheen of freshly-spritzed sweat throughout. It’s fantastic to see him finally play something a little meatier than his recent ill-advised child-placating roles; it’s not like he’s playing anything really shocking, but his character Hobbs is a bit of a sexist, kinda mean-spirited, a cross between Sam Gerard in The Fugitive and Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona. He’s not in the movie enough (an unfortunate consequence of that kitchen-sink spirit), but its obvious he’ll be back, and hopefully he’ll have more to do. As previously mentioned before, the fight between him and Diesel – a fight I didn’t realise I needed in my life until just last week –  is as good as you would hope, but the best thing is the grudging rapprochement between hunter and hunted.

Allow me to explain. If there is any single relationship arc I love more than any other in all of written or filmed storytelling in the history of our world or any other, it’s the eventual thawing of hostilities between two diametrically opposed characters who hate each other or who cannot possibly ever be friends and yet somehow do because that’s how strong their love is. Midnight Run, Heat, the many buddy-comedy-dramas of Shane Black; these movies have moments that absolutely shake me to my core. Nothing makes me happier than seeing enemies become allies, and let’s just say, without spoilers, there is a moment in Fast Five that made me want to take off all my clothes and run around the cinema screaming “YEEEEEESSSSSS!” while sobbing and jumping and generally getting way too excited.

So yes, Fast Five is the business. For my previous ignorance on the Fast/Furious front, I humbly apologise (to no one in particular, as before today no one knew what I thought and will likely never care). The setpieces are amped up a thousand-fold, the bromance is intensified, the cars are still lovely, and what do you know, the final act throws out some major surprises that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling – I strongly advise fans of the series to stay in their seats until the traditional ropey CGI racing credits finish to see a terrific set-up for the next movie. I’d say it’s a guilty pleasure, if I believed in the concept. Screw that; everyone involved can be proud of themselves for making an action classic that gives the audience more bang for its buck than anything else in cinemas right now.

I might – I should stress might – even go so far as to say I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Thor, and I really really really enjoyed Thor, though that might be because I’m still basking in the post-viewing glow, or perhaps the shock that something I had been so sniffy about could be so good. Who knew I would have this good a time just by dropping my sense of superiority and giving myself over to the love of two burly men rolling around on the floor and sweating over each other? Five more movies, please! Ten!

Can Someone Please Buy Kenny Branagh A Spirit Level?

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Apparently, according to professional troll and tired-shtick-purveyor Joe Queenan and mysteriously grouchy former colleague Stephen Evans,  British acting-giant Kenneth Branagh is suffering from terrible career-doldrums, and has seemingly consigned himself to the dumpster. They have a point. Once on track to becoming a national institution a la Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, Branagh has gone from making a few energetic but clumsy Shakespeare adaptations (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing), to the craziest reincarnation-murder-mystery imaginable (Dead Again).

From there he made what is unarguably the most deliriously awful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), to a supporting role in a derided Nazi-riffic thriller with a pre-spoiled finale (Valkyrie), to what is surely, if his critics are to be believed, absolutely the worst thing that could happen to anyone; directing a massive-budget tentpole release at the start of summer, a huge logistical project which stands a good chance of making a shedload of money and is arguably the best thing he has made by a country mile, kicking off the blockbuster season with such a burst of surprisingly confident film-making, crowd-pleasing fun and franchise-ensuring success that he can basically write his own ticket for years to come. Won’t you join me in laughing at the dreadful hubristic failure of that poor loser Branagh?

Of course, there is a chance that it won’t actually make that much money; it has already opened in Australia where it was beaten at the box office by The Fast Five and The Furious Five. Audiences probably won’t recognise the character Thor, and many of them don’t know who Chris Hemsworth is unless they have a special ability to see through the obfuscatory lens flares in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. However, the reviews are rightly positive and this could end up with great word-of-mouth. I await its US opening figures like a child waiting to see how high White Lines by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel will appear in the UK top 40 on a Sunday afternoon in 1983 (true story).

N.B. I would wait to see what the UK figures are like but the damn thing is opening in the same week as some wedding or other; I think Jordan’s marrying Andrew Marr or something. Means it might be worth my while to go see it again on Friday, hopefully in a cinema that is only sparsely attended and where my enjoyment won’t be interrupted by numerous incontinent men, wailing vomity babies, and important people checking for the arrival of important emails on their super-bright phones; three hypothetical irritants that in no way pissed me off this morning, no not at all.

So why is Thor a success, above and beyond any financial concerns? Mostly because it continues Marvel Studios’ streak of good-to-great superhero adaptations, and yes, in that list I do indeed place Iron Man 2 despite the considerable backlash against it for not being explodey enough or whatever the hell crime it committed against humanity. As I said in my end of year poll last year, that loose structure and air of genial knowingness was something that I considered a plus, and having Hott Sam Rockwell along for the ride was even better news.

The complaints about it being nothing more than a set-up for the wider Marvel Film Universe (MFU) concern me not a jot, as that’s something that I want to see, and get actively excited about. I didn’t find it annoying in the slightest, and the same goes for Thor, even though the major Avengers set-up in the middle of the movie – featuring a damp Jeremy Renner on a crane getting cramp in his fingers – looks like it was filmed last week and spliced in during the drive to the big factory where they replicate all of the prints (I don’t know how these things work; I assume it’s done using a big hard-drive and a shitload of memory sticks).

Thor isn’t as smart-arse as Iron Man 2, but then it doesn’t feature Robert Downey Jr., and I doubt Branagh has a sarcastic bone in his body. He’s hyper-sincere, which turns out to be exactly the kind of thing Thor needs. The previous Marvel movies featured a couple of big set-pieces but were mostly conversation-and-character-based; being a bit more of an universe-spanning epic about “gods”, Thor’s big chats take place in gargantuan golden rooms, vast crumbling ice cities, and in a town built (especially for the movie) on the side of a hill looking down at a desert. It has something the other movies lacked; a sense of grandeur.

That’s helped by the use of 3D – a smarter choice than expected, as there are hardly ever more than two planes in the movie; the foreground where everyone is talking, and something else about a mile away. It’s a nifty post-production conversion, and does add a bit to the sense of scale, though the majority of the heavy lifting is done by the amazing FX guys at Buf Compagnie and Digital Domain, and eye-massaging work from ace production designer Bo Welch (who also directed The Cat in the Hat, but let’s just forget about that for today).

Which is not to say Thor isn’t funny. One of the best things about the Marvel Film Universe is that fun is not a dirty word. I’m quite happy to watch a “gritty” superhero tale if the tone fits the character and the movie is good, but too many filmmakers are not willing to expend an effort in making the characters likeable, or their adventures appealing. Iron Man was a perfect opening act for the Marvel Film Universe for a lot of reasons, but most importantly for making sure the audience is having a good time, which has thankfully become the template for the other movies.

I suspect that was originally the plan with The Incredible Hulk but sadly Edward Norton is a weirdly alienating actor at the best of times and much of the light stuff happened between him and Liv Tyler, who was wearing her customary “Did the director just say action?” look of incomprehension. Those jokes landed with an uncomfortable thud. Thor features a number of big laugh-out-loud moments, happily puncturing the pomposity of the genre / the epic scope of the tweaked Norse mythology without mocking it. When you hear critics or film buffs lamenting the passing of the adventure movies that cropped up at the beginning of the summer blockbuster era, the Marvel Studios movies are the kind of movies they’re talking about. Bit of romance (but not too much, and must be untragically unrequited), bit of swagger (but with eventual humility), plenty of derring-do, and a smattering of hearty jokes based around character.

They’re not quite as good yet, but I honestly think of the Marvel Studios movies as being the spiritual descendants of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. The studio has become the 21st Century Amblin. In fact, I’ll go even further, and I expect this will make people think I’ve taken a leap into the crazy abyss: Marvel Studios is the only large, big-budget film-making production company currently making movies with a similar level of consistency and care as Pixar. Now, that’s not to say I think any of the Marvel Studios movies released so far are as satisfying, finely-wrought, or intellectually satisfying as Pixar’s big successes, and I doubt they could ever make a superhero movie as perfect as The Incredibles (or any of their non-superhero movies). However, I honestly believe they’re as safe a pair of hands as we’ve seen in a long time.

Even The Incredible Hulk, which was an entertaining movie but certainly not a great one, was made with care and attention and didn’t feel half-arsed in any way. Iron Man 2 is harder to argue for in that respect, but that supposed demerit – the hints and set-ups for The Avengers – show that it was conceptualised and made as part of a much greater whole. This wasn’t like the G.I. Joe movie, where so many choices seemed to be the easiest options, or the various adaptations of popular YA novels, which are often hamstrung by weak source material (e.g. Twilight). People sweated over those decisions in Iron Man 2, whether the audience liked them or not, and these choices were okayed by the creative collective at the heart of the studio – people who love and understand the Marvel Universe better than anyone, and are making an effort to create an enormous, consistent world filled with thrilling detail.

Who else is stepping up to the plate in an attempt to make a bigger impact on the popular consciousness than a quick first-weekend burst of goodwill? Bruckheimer Productions? Much as I love my boy Jerry, right now he’s in danger of becoming The Guy Who Produces the Pirate Movies, after last year’s failed franchise attempts. Bad Robot? I liked them, but Morning Glory was such a lazy and apocalyptically awful failure that they’ve lost all of my good will in one fell swoop. Di Bonaventura Pictures? Any production company that has made a movie with a first draft script written in a couple of weeks does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Pixar, no matter how many times Michael Bay says he knows that was a bad idea.

This admittedly crazy comparison came to me about twenty minutes into Thor, as our hero (at this point basically a bit of a dick) ignores his father’s advice and zips off from Asgard to Jotenheim alongside his companions – Sif, Hogun, Fandral and fan-favourite Volstagg – via the Bifrost, also known as the Rainbow Bridge. I have no idea what that looked like on the page, but here it is a propulsive and emotionally satisfying thread from Thor’s arrogant dismissal of Odin (perfectly set up in the previous scenes showing him as a brash child) to the manipulation of his friends, and then to an incredible FX blow-out; a sequence of crazed imagination and exquisitely detailed visualisation culminating in an enormous ruck.

For a while there – and at other points throughout the movie – Thor operates for maximum efficiency and effect on every level, adapting the original source material with as much respect and imagination as Peter Jackson brought to Lord of the Rings. If a movie is going to be a big-screen success aimed at a large crowd of people, it needs to wow, and Thor does just that. The clever casting, the narrative confidence, the appealing dynamics between the characters, and the conceptual boldness of the frankly beautiful Bifrost (like a huge golden railgun creating Einstein-Rosen Bridges that propel Asgardians through the cosmos at a terrifying velocity); it was more than I could have hoped for. I was, at that moment, Thor‘s bitch.

Much of the praise for Thor‘s success goes to every writer who has ever tried to bring this larger-than-life character to the screen, a list that includes J. Michael Straczynski, Mark Protosevich and credited screenwriters Ashley Miller & Zack Stentz (from Fringe), and Don Payne (er, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). While many superhero adaptations have featured characters that I’m familiar with, Thor is a bit of an unknown quantity to me, mostly because his world often has so little to do with anything else going on in the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU). Much as Green Lantern has his own thing going on in the DC Universe, Thor has the Nine Realms (from the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology) to explore, and that, along with the large cast of characters, made jumping in seem like a fool’s errand.

My most notable exposure to him came during Kurt Busiek and George Perez’ run on the Avengers (arguably the definitive run), with special mention to his Nuff Said issue in the middle of the Kang Dynasty epic (issue #49, volume three, fact fans!), where Thor screams in horror and pain as his efforts to save Washington fail. Powerful stuff. Bearing my ignorance in mind, the various writers have done a magnificent job in getting the audience up to speed quickly, with information about Thor’s world cleverly parcelled out during the movie’s running time (the mention of Yggdrasill late in the movie, and its depiction in terms of science, is very pleasing).

Even better, any fears that Thor will sit apart from the “realistic” movies in the rest of the MFU are quickly removed; though the comics are filled with magic and castles and suchlike, the Asgard of Thor is a technologically advanced world populated by what is likely an alien civilisation that resembles humanity living in an inter-dimensional city with floating buildings, vast waterfalls, and lots and lots and lots of gold. It’s not said outright that this alien origin is the case, but there is more than enough wiggle-room for any possible interpretation. The result is a surprisingly consistent vision across the MFU, in which we can have a “Norse God” hanging out in a small town and getting pestered by the same vaguely-sinister SHIELD agents that keep bugging Tony Stark and not have this seem like a contradiction or a leap of logic. A small miracle in itself.

Thor‘s most successful stroke of genius might be in the casting; another example of Marvel Studios really taking care to make sure every aspect of their universe works. Just about every character is cast right, with special praise to Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as Thor and Loki. Their disintegrating relationship is the heart of the movie, even more than that of Thor and Odin, and Hiddleston does incredibly effective work as the “betrayed” son who lets his sense of pride ruin his life. He is scarily good in every scene, and promises to be one of the best things about all of the forthcoming stories told in the MFU from this point on.

Also great are Ray Stephenson, here escaping the terrible dark pull of that last, execrable Punisher movie by embodying the burly and voracious Volstagg, and Jaime Alexander as brave Sif – a fearsome warrior who doesn’t need a schoolgirl’s outfit when she fights, cough Zack Snyder cough cough. As for DJ Big Driis, aka Idris Elba, in the role of Heimdall, all I can say is I forgive you for Loofah OMG you are a fucking badass to the max OMG you need a spin-off movie stat holy shit that golden armour and massive sword really look good on you. Sadly, the much-missed Rene Russo gets little to do, but at least she swings a sword at one point. I guess. ::sadface:: Anthony Hopkins makes up for that; he does his traditional Hopkins thing, but for some of us (i.e. me) that’s more than enough. Especially as Asgard doesn’t have as many objects for him to do his trademark lean on, so he has to improve his posture for once.

The human characters are also well-cast, with Kat Dennings being more charming than usual as Comedy Relief Girl (she has a name, but she’s pretty much just Designated Clown Who Mentions Facebook And Abs; luckily she does it well), and Stellan Skarsgård thankfully eradicating the memory of Mamma Mia by being generally funny (and, it seems, playing a more important character in the MFU than I thought; he’s in The Avengers too). Natalie Portman is less noticeable, but then Jane Foster is not the most interesting of characters anyway. Sadly that flatness is a big problem for the final act; some of the choices Thor makes don’t have the impact they should, as it’s hard to really care for his relationship with this earthwoman after just an hour in their presence.

The filmmakers and actors attempt to make the relationship work by taking a few shortcuts, meaning they kind of leap into each other’s arms by the middle of the third act, but the unfortunate side-effect of this is that, as some tetchy Tweeters have already complained, Foster suddenly seems to go all “HE’S SUCH A DREAMBOAT!”, thus eliminating her as a recognisable human being. I’d argue that this weird post-post-post-post-feminist “He’s such a hunk!” swooning is necessary in terms of plot, and is kinda played for laughs anyway (“Look! This guy is just so impossibly hot and heroic that the strong woman lost her cool!”), but yeah, it seemed like a bit of a stretch.

There are other flaws here too. The finale is really hectic, with lots of “Let me explain what the terrible outcome of this action will be if you do that thing!” exposition delivered while various characters hurtle through walls. Loki’s motivation is explained in a single exhale just seconds before everything kicks off, which robs the final showdown of its power. Many of the characters are underused, but that’s inevitable, and just makes me want many sequels so we can see Sif and the Warriors Three at full power. Some of the action sequences are garbled and confusingly edited, which is nothing new, sadly. Many of the scenes on the Rainbow Bridge sadly look like what they are; a bunch of folks arguing in front of a green screen. Things pick up considerably when those incredible sets are used.

Much has been made of Thor’s jump from brat to hero, which does seem to skip a few steps, but it struck me that his initial petulance upon turning up on Earth had more to do with him not really understanding how serious Odin is. His “WHYYYYYYYYY??!!??” of horror wasn’t just Branagh over-egging the drama; it’s the moment Thor realises his pops really did just cast him out of the family home. His immediate reaction is to finally doubt himself, and the subsequent scene is what pushes him over the edge. It’s speedy, but it’s not inconsistent.

Worst of all is Branagh being his own worst enemy, as usual. Though he thankfully allows much of Thor to play out relatively calmly, dialling down the Branaghnian shouting and running until the relevant dramatic scene, he still can’t resist using the most obnoxious Dutch tilts ever committed to film. Much of the movie appears to take place on a severe incline; audiences will more likely suffer neck pains than headaches from the 3D conversion. Still, I’ll take that over his usual style; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the first movie ever made where all of the actors were required to sprint around the set while screaming at each other. Less is more, Kenny.

Flaws aside, this is an immensely entertaining movie, made with love and ready to give the audience the good time for its very very many pounds / dollars / shekels. This is something that is done so rarely nowadays that it’s easy to forget how much fun it can be to sit in a cinema watching a couple of hundred million dollars get squandered just to make you believe a big hollow robot can shoot fire out of its retractable face like Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still (except this time he’s ribbed for our pleasure). The naysayers and haters can back off for now; 2011 summer blowout has arrived with a big, colourful splash. Thank you to Branagh, Hemsworth, and the rest of the cast and crew on this good-time epic because, against all of the odds, it has made a believer out of me, and turned me into a fan of the God of Thunder. HAVE AT THEE!

P.S. Advice for those who have yet to see it; keep an eye out for what I think might be the Eye of Agamotto in one scene, and do stay for the post-credits scene. Instead of just being a tiny hint about the next MFU installment, this actually seems to be a key plot-point for The Avengers. I doubt it’s crucial, but it does give an idea of what is in store.

Sucker Punch: Moulin Rouge + Bayonetta + Inception – Coherence

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Okay, let’s get this post out of the way so I can use my words in more constructive ways. Yes, I just saw Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, and as a member of the nerd community I am therefore compelled to give up my thoughts. These are preliminary conclusions – more reaction than actual concrete theory – but I don’t want to spend too much time on it as America has had a week of arguing about whether it is sexist or the end of cinema etc. and so my wurblings already mean less than nothing. But hell, if I’m going to pay £17 to see a movie (in the afternoon! Not even at night when they jack the prices up!) then I’m going to at least get a blogpost out of it.

First thing’s first. Smarter and nicer people than I have already batted this around a lot, so if you want to understand the current state of play re: reaction to Snyder’s magnum opus, then you need to check out these:

All very good, and very thought-provoking. Which leads me to my first point; Snyder may have made a clunking, clattering, noisy and annoying failure, but he sure as hell got people talking, and I think that was his main goal anyway. Sucker Punch is designed to generate a reaction, though only occasionally does his filmmaking actually generate an emotional response other than numbed gurgling. I’m thinking here of the opening sequence; a dialogue-free and surprisingly nerve-wracking slow-motion prologue that sets out the stakes very quickly. It’s a bit unfortunate that the casting of Emily Browning means comparisons can be drawn to the Lemony Snicket movie (orphans, evil family members, etc), but this distraction means little.

My second point follows on from that. Snyder wanted to start a dialogue, but what was it? Sexism, exploitation, objectification and all that unpleasant jazz. The story is obviously drawing a line from familial sexual abuse, denigration and oppression of women, and the use of barbaric psychiatric regimes to deal with women who cause problems for their men, to the modern gender debate and the continued ill-treatment of women around the world. Snyder’s use of these emotive images and tropes is blunt, but then there is a real sense of anger here. You get the feeling he’s genuinely annoyed about these things, and sure as hell wanted the world to know about it.

So why the hot chicks in the sexy uniforms? Third point: nerd bait. Snyder wanted to give nerd culture a wake-up call about its objectification of women, and knew that we are all such snivelling little children that the only way for us to take the bitter medicine is to dress it up in sweet costumes and such. No nerd worth his salt is going to sit there and get told he’s wrong to have that poster of Megan Fox on his wall, so the Snyder-spider weaves a web and hides it behind a bunch of shots of Browning zipping around in a schoolgirl outfit with a samurai sword, and we multitudinous priapic clowns wander into the cinema and after a really quite boring 90 minutes of clumsy metaphor piled on top of clumsy metaphor… BAM! The equivalent of someone appearing on screen wagging their finger at the audience for being misogynists. I’ll give him this, it certainly wasn’t what anyone expected. Guess that “You Will Be Unprepared” tagline was right.

Point four: Is it gratuitously sexy? Yes, the ladies wander around in their smalls a lot of the time, but some of the money shots are surprisingly ambiguous. One slo-mo shot of the five girls walking in slow motion mimics some titillating Michael Bay-esque shot of models parading towards the camera, but the surroundings are more interesting. It’s the steampunk Nazi robot section of the movie, and they’re walking into a trench populated by “our boys”. What’s telling is that none of them look up, their eyes fixed down or away. As Snyder spends a lot of time focusing on eyes, there’s something being said about the Male Gaze here, perhaps that in Babydoll’s fantasy world she at least can escape that. In fact, the only man who looks at her (who even actually exists) in these fantasy worlds is Scott Glenn, and now that he looks like Leonard Nimoy’s older brother he arguably doesn’t pose a threat. He’s certainly a kindly old soul, though sadly lumbered with the worst dialogue.

In fact, the many tribulations of the five female characters very noticeably happen off camera, just as we do not see Babydoll’s supersexy dancing. All of the female characters who get killed have their moment of mortal wounding occur off screen, and when Babydoll dances we move into her fantasy worlds. Again, not what I was expecting. More to the point, the sexy costumes are less provocative than they seem at first, but as has been pointed out, there’s a difference between cosplay and dressing like a human being. Snyder is still making sure he adds the nerd bait with these costumes, and there’s just no point denying it, seeing as they add precisely nothing except sexiness to the plot. Such as there is one.

Point five: All of the nerd trappings here serve zero purpose, and – as has been pointed out before – are completely incongruous as Babydoll doesn’t seem to be the sort of person with a collection of Manga and video games in her sad room in the evil step-father’s house. They literally have no point whatsoever in the movie, but then the “sexy dancing” level of reality doesn’t either, other than as a way for Babydoll to process her experience in the mental institution. But then does that even exist, as the movie starts with Babydoll on a stage before she later sees the same stage in the institution? Are we just meant to assume that the movie is nothing more than a metaphor on every possible level, with only the wire framework of a narrative to keep us in our seats until the voiceover very bluntly tells the women in the audience to use their “weapons” to fight for themselves? If so, then Snyder’s need to lecture nerds about their unacceptable behaviour and immaturity could just as easily have been accomplished by putting some posters saying, “Don’t be such dicks” all around Comic-Con.

Point six: What the hell is this message anyway? I’m all for someone saying, “women deserve better than to be treated like objects for the sexual or visual gratification of the unevolved male”. I wholeheartedly endorse this message and am pleased to see Snyder is grappling with the way nerd culture has struggled to absorb this very simple idea into itself. Sadly, as Watchmen showed, Snyder can have a thought but have great difficulty expressing it very clearly. His love of Moore and Gibbons’ comic was obvious, so slavish was his imitation. However, the clunky failures of tonal translation were numerous, suggesting that while he loved the comic and wanted to show to the world just how strong that love was, he didn’t actually know why it worked, or why it has resonated with readers for decades. It was all surface. If he had understood it, he would see it needed to be ripped apart and put back together again for it to work. His love got in the way of the storytelling.

Same here. He really really really wants to make a big statement about sexism and objectification, and adds some interesting ideas (the covering and uncovering of female faces, the absence of actual names, the stretches where women are robbed of their voices, the facelessness of the male enemies in the sub-levels, etc.), but he doesn’t know how to put them together properly. It doesn’t help that his nerd-bait imagery gets in the way so much. They look sexy, and yet don’t and yet do. It’s iconography that gets in the way of the message while being necessary for the dissemination of the message and yet is utterly superfluous.

I’m having trouble describing the multiple cognitive disconnects needed to make sense of his haphazard jumble of meaning, but then in a way that perfectly describes it. He’s against the thing he’s using to show how he’s against it, but the reaction of the audience is not under his control. Whether he likes it or not, there are going to be audience members who think the talking got in the way of the hot chicks with the guns and stockings, and so should he have bothered putting it in in the first place? I think this is where Sucker Punch falls down the most. Certainly most of the to-and-fro in the blogosphere concerns the level of exploitation here, and whether it enhances or detracts from the message.

One thing is clear, though. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx, whatever it is, he’s against it. It’s impossible not to see that he’s struggling to say something, but he’s not a strong enough storyteller to get that point across without patronising the audience or realising that he’s muddling things up to the point that it’s impossible to pick through it. Maybe that’s actually intentional and he’s smarter than us: why bother making a clear point when we will do it all for him? Or he’s trying to make something for everyone. Titillation for the troglodytes, “empowerment” for the feminists. If so, he falls short on both counts, which, in the second case, is a shame.

What makes things worse is if we take his metaphors literally. Is he really saying to women that they have the advantages because while men are murderous rapists who treat women like possessions, we’re also so boner-obsessed that whenever the ladies dance all sexy-like, we literally fall into a stupor, enabling the canny women to get their way? There is not enough WTF in a million sub-levels of mental reality to even begin to cover this cheeky and absurd idea that manages to insult both genders simultaneously. Shake that booty, ladies, then pick our pockets! That’s using your “weapons”, all right! What a fucking awful world-view. What a reductive and insulting way to address the gender debate of our time. It’s the sort of fucked-up philosophy you’d hear some “nice guy” coming up with. “You women are so awesome, and powerful, and so in control of your sexuality. Nobody else out there understands how awesome you are. Except me. Now please go out with me.” No no no no wrong wrong wrong please stop.

So is there anything worthwhile in the movie besides the mish-mash of misogyny, misandry and feminism? Abbie Cornish is pretty good (though it’s sad to see her here after being so good in Bright Star), as is Jena Malone, both of whom are better at breathing life into the cyphers they are playing than anyone else in the cast, though Oscar Isaac makes a very hissable villain. Carla Gugino’s accent is… not the worst thing I’ve ever heard. The action scenes are occasionally well-staged, with some being surprisingly clear and others being a headache-inducing barrage of… splarg is the only word I can think of to describe it. The robot level was quite clever; a “single shot” that goes on for a while and flies around all over the place. There was a nice shot involving mirrors at one point, but after Black Swan – surely the most mirrored movie ever made – it was just unnecessary. Scott Glenn seemed to be having a good time. The dragon was pretty. The godawful cover versions of good songs end eventually. Erm… It was fun spotting all of the nerd iconography: steampunk, orcs, single-shot pistols, samurai swords, miniguns, etc. Sad that none of it was there for any reason other than that Snyder wanted to cover all of his bases. There’s a thesis to be written about his use of that iconography, though it would only ever get a C- at best.

The only other thing to praise is its ambition. It fails pretty spectacularly at almost everything it attempts to achieve, but it is trying to do – and say – something. That’s something that it has over just about every movie that will be released for the rest of the year. It’s just a shame that Snyder didn’t sit down and work out exactly what he wanted to say before he made this garish and needlessly complicated nerd epic, a movie that desperately wants to mean something but ultimately means nothing.