Listmania ’11! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Three
Oh blogging. You are the occasional pastime that makes me absurdly unhappy, for the most part. That’s because I don’t do it as often as I would like, and so when I do I over do it and write posts large enough to choke Cthulhu. And this last post in Listmania metastasised as soon as I started complaining about something; griping posts tend to run out of control. Friend of the blog @Beggarsoshat said to me after my Listmania! Crew Contributions post that he looked forward to me listing my favourite dolly grip of 2011, and after I had stopped crying because of how much he had cut me to the core, I wondered if there was maybe something in that. Why not keep spinning this out? I’m scratching my blogging itch even though all I’m doing is lazily transcribing the thoughts I’ve had lying around in my “mind palace” for months anyway.
But how could I? How could I keep talking about last year’s movies when I’d only seen 120 of them? Simple; why not talk about movies released in 2010? People love reading reviews of movies released 14 months ago. I traditionally do this during Listmania! season as an aside in the last post, but as this post had already gone all top heavy, why not post this section on its own without all of the other photo-heavy stuff I had planned on posting (and which will turn up in Listmania ’11: Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Four, and probably Five, Six and Seven too)? And so here we are, with a couple of thousand words on three movies that I’m sure only a handful of people have already talked about. After all, the first movie here was a pretty obscure little number.
Best Film(s) From 2010 That We Saw In 2011: True Grit / Tangled
Both of these movies were released in the UK just after SoC finished its last Listmania (which was done a lot quicker and with less baloney than this one, I can tell you), but would have radically changed the state of my Best Movies of ’10 completely. Both would have breached the top ten, with True Grit possibly making it into the hallowed and legendary top five of that year. The Coens were coming off the back of one of their least accessible — but most highly regarded — films with A Serious Man, and True Grit represents one of their “crowdpleasers”, if that’s the right word, as they did with No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading. This is a slightly different beast, too dramatic to qualify as one of their comedies, but too funny to be a tragedy. It’s the most successful blending of their two different “flavours” to date.
The pleasures of this magnificent Western are numerous, but the best thing about it is the precise dialogue, which evokes the Wild West in a way only David Milch has ever come close to achieving. This poetry — so often evident in their writing but at its most striking here — is matched by the photography by Roger “King” Deakins, who does career best work with shadows and darkness; the night-time ride to save Mattie is one of the most haunting scenes in recent cinema, a dream painted almost solely with black. Hailee Steinfeld shines in her first role, perfectly riding the line between charmingly forward and obnoxiously precocious. I can picture her playing The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen far more readily than Jennifer Lawrence — an actress I admire but who is too old for the character, as are co-stars Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson.
She’s matched by Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, who both have their own balancing acts to do, between humour and drama. While Bridges has the flashier character to work with, Damon has a harder job, playing a dandified and ridiculous ranger LaBeouf who wins over Mattie and the audience despite being an awful blow-hard. Obviously, he succeeds; with each performance SoC realises how lucky we all are to have such a thoughtful, charming actor working today. This is not to take away from Bridges, though, who is as good here as he is in The Big Lebowski. This was already a late-career classic from the Coens, but his vastly entertaining turn pushes True Grit up there with Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, and A Serious Man.
But I’ve had trouble figuring out whether I love it more than Disney’s Tangled, which so completely fried my brain at IMAX that I became a fervent and boring proselytist for it for months after. If you’re a 3D sceptic, this is the movie to change your mind. Seeing this in 3D, on that vast screen, was a memorable, tear-inducing experience I shall cherish forever. The whole film is great fun and filled with lovable characters (none more so than defiant horse Maximus), but the most memorable scene is also the single greatest use of 3D I’ve ever seen. Being in that room, dwarfed by the vast IMAX screen, was the most immersive cinema experience I’ve ever had. The illusion of being surrounded by floating lanterns was utterly convincing; when I wasn’t distracted by wiping tears from my eyes, that is.
The songs by Alan Menken feature lyrics from his sometime collaborator Glenn Slater; a happier fit than Stephen Schwartz, at least on this small sampling. They’re rich and funny and charming, reminiscent of his best work with the late, much-missed Howard Ashman. They’re the cherry on top of a superbly well-designed movie, that matches its symbolism (the light motif is present throughout) with its story so deftly that I wanted to applaud throughout. I’ll even go so far as to say… ::deep breath:: …I think I like it more than Beauty and the Beast, and I really loved Beauty and the Beast. It’s a triumph for Disney; a thrilling modernisation of their animation technique that pays humble tribute to the studio’s history, and possibly a portent of great things to come. SoC can’t wait to see what comes next.
Worst Film From 2010 That We Saw In 2011: Morning Glory
Until last year it looked like the movie output of Bad Robot Productions was going to be less diverse than their TV division, which has tried (and failed) to tap non-nerd audiences with Six Degrees and What about Brian? It’s worth praising them for adding Morning Glory to a roster that so far contains only sci-fi and spy movies (not counting Joy Ride), but the addition of something this unchallenging makes you wonder if Bad Robot’s other movies are as cynically produced as this. Even with a terrific cast (including Harrison Ford, in his liveliest performance since The Fugitive) and an interesting director, it has an enormous handicap: a rote script by dreaded screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.
If Michael Bay is a cinematic villain for aiming all of his movies at the same Mountain-Dew-drinking, FHM-absorbing, Call-Of-Duty-playing fratboy demographic, then can we add Brosh McKenna to Hollywood’s rogues gallery for making numerous movies from the same template in which a doofy woman — with work skills so brilliant and yet so poorly depicted that she almost appears to have mystical powers — has trouble finding a man due to a habit of occasionally bursting with an emotion-geyser like all the normal people don’t. So far ABM has churned out 27 Dresses, The Devil Wears Prada, I Don’t Know How She Does It, and now Morning Glory; it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between them as they come tumbling down the conveyor belt like malformed Barbie dolls.
Among its crimes: trying to make us believe that Rachel McAdams’ awkwardness is representative of some large cross-section of the female audience, and that bagging Patrick “Saintly and Uncomplicated Love Interest” Wilson is some kind of victory for these mythical klutzy women; making Diane Keaton rap with 50 Cent in a display of cinematic desperation unmatched by anything else released in the past four years; punishing McAdams by making her run in high heels in almost every scene, which just makes her look like a lunatic with superhumanly strong ankles; inadvertently making Anchorman — a Dada-esque comedy — the superior comment on the treatment of women in the TV industry; setting up Harrison Ford as a villain with the AWFUL crime of criticising McAdams’ fringe/bangs; making me pine for another Bridget Jones sequel just to stop Brosh McKenna from going back to that dried-up well.
Worst of all, it attempts to make a case for breakfast news as something worthwhile, something as necessary as serious investigative journalism. Ford’s Mark Pomeroy is portrayed as a conceited horse’s ass who has a snooty attitude to the fripperies of breakfast TV, objecting to the clowning of Daybreak’s jokiest segments. We’re meant to be excited when he abandons his serious self in order to make a frittata in an effort to magically summon McAdams from her job interview with NBC (because all job interviews are done in the morning while you’re supposed to be at work).
This character moment, which shows what he is willing to sacrifice in order to placate his producer McAdams, softens him — a nice twist on the romcom trope where a romantic interest humbles himself in order to win the girl. And yet no matter what side-effects this final act has, we can’t escape the fact that this is a betrayal of a good point personified by the grizzled old news hound pining for his old career. All the way through the movie he’s right about the importance of investigative journalism, and McAdams is so averse to his philosophy that he has to lie to her to get her to cover the scandal story he’s been trying to tell her about for weeks, and only seems to recognise its value for the sake of plot convenience. And to stop her looking like a complete idiot.
This is similar to the scene in Devil Wears Prada in which Meryl Streep defends fashion from criticisms that it isn’t important. It’s a very well-acted speech by a great actress, but her claims that high fashion is what eventually trickles down to the lowest forms of clothing — that the Cerulean blue she celebrates in haute couture one month becomes the blue that everyone wears later — isn’t really the answer to the question “why should we care about fashion”, because if we weren’t wearing that shade of blue we’d just wear another. What she’s arguing for is the influence of fashion journalism, which is fine, but it’s a bit disingenuous to assume that without Vogue we wouldn’t know how to dress ourselves. Though I will say InStyle is a fine publication (one for @Ms_RH there).
So here we’re meant to swallow the line that breakfast TV is an essential component of the news cycle, that it acts as the “sugar” that sweetens the “fibre” that constitutes news. As if the world isn’t awash with sugar, while fibre is rarely present in our news diet. Anyone who watches, say, BBC Breakfast (which SoC has railed against before), will note that what little serious news is shown inbetween puff pieces and appearances by the magnificently oleaginous Chris DeBurgh is poorly researched, biased, and revealing of the presenters’ poor preparation. Any time the show covers matters of popular culture more racy than Midsomer Murders, or youth issues, will know that this is less fibre, more asbestos.
So to see a movie attempt to make excuses for something inconsequential, when in actual fact it’s salty and challenging investigative journalism that needs to be celebrated, is like hearing the self-defensive and unconvincing justifications of someone caught watching something frowned upon by others — say for example, a cliche-ridden Aline Brosh McKenna movie that sets back gender politics about 20 years. If you want to watch a breakfast show that spends more time covering Al Roker being a clown than it does serious issues, that’s your prerogative. If you want to argue that this is important, do it by making your case, not by belittling serious journalism. And Bad Robot? Stick to what you know best (i.e. lens flares).
Will this ever end? Can I keep this going forever? If not, I’m taking a break from it as soon as Listmania! is finally brought to heel, which will either be by mass reader apathy or a typing coma.
Can Someone Please Buy Kenny Branagh A Spirit Level?
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.
It’s Trek Day!
At the beginning of the year, in my Shades of Caruso Listmania quadrilogy of obsessive list-making, I gave Cloverfield the Best Marketing Award. Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures did a fantastic job of generating interest in their film, and by giving nerds at the Nerd Mecca of the Alamo Drafthouse a chance to see the first public screening of the new Star Trek film, complete with guest appearance by Leonard Nimoy, they’ve done it again by putting those relentlessly hatey buzz-killers on the back-foot, if only temporarily. Even with the release of a bunch of exciting trailers, old-skool Trek fans have been deeply upset about the franchise revamp, and this resistance has been the focus of much of the online coverage. With one fell swoop they put that on hold, and managed to generate far more enthusiasm about the movie than with the usual round of premieres and what-have-you.
They’ve also made me, and a lot of people, very very jealous. Just the act of scheduling a screening of Wrath of Khan, with Kurtzman, Orci, and Lindelof in attendance, and then bringing on Nimoy to announce a sccreening of the full movie, shows they care about the franchise and the reaction of the fans. How cool would it have been to be there? How playful an act? It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I think Damon Lindelof is a great humanitarian, but knowing he was involved in a trick this cool makes him even more awesome.
Of course, when the movie comes out there will be even more back-and-forth about whether the film is any good, and if it is a big success (which seems guaranteed by now), there will become a bizarre schism between old and new fans that will generate so much online debate that it will make all who stand on the sidelines wish that we could tap the wasted energy pouring off outraged and entitled fanboys when they get pissy. Whatever. I just hope it’s better than JJ Abrams’ directorial debut Mission Impossible The Third, which was technically proficient and featured a McKee-tastic plot constructed with the best punch-card computations money could buy, and yet felt like the most expensive episode of Alias ever. As much as I enjoy Abrams’ shows, they can often feel like lucite sculptures instead of flexible armatures. (This metaphor makes perfect sense to me. Sorry if it doesn’t translate.)
The enthusiasm during that screening has proven to be infectious. As a result of the numerous online reviews, I am now totally psyched about the forthcoming release, even more so than I already was. My childhood love of Trek was obsessive, and even after I stopped watching the TNG spinoff series (due to being at university in a series of pokey rooms without TVs), that affection remained. One of my most cherished childood memories was of the day my mom came to my primary school to take me home because of an unnamed family tragedy.
But there was no tragedy! It was a cunning ruse to get me out of that hellhole and take me to the first screening of Star Trek: The Motion Picture at our local cinema. How cool is my mom? Of course, I was pretty unhappy about the pace of the movie (the image used above is the one of the most exciting scene in the film, which tells you all you need to know), but even so, I tripped out on Doug Trumbull’s amazing effects, and at least wasn’t traumatised like this poor viewer. I also still remember the first time I saw Wrath of Khan. Best major character death in nerdfilm history? Very possibly.
So, today has become Trek Day, thanks to multichannel TV. Search For Spock was on Sky Movies this morning, and even though it’s not my favourite Trek movie, it was just the tonic. Though it’s far too uneventful, especially coming after the rightfully beloved Khan, there are some wonderful moments (the death of Kirk’s son, and the destruction of the Enterprise), some great FX work from ILM (especially the lovely matte paintings of Vulcan at the end), and some classic Shatner acting. Knowing that Trek is liable to be found everywhere on satellite TV, I went from there to Virgin, where they were showing the Voyager episode Warlord, which was notable for its creative use of nose/forehead prosthetics and some flirting with girl-on-girl lip-action (not consummated, those cowards).
Aired right after that was the second half of the final episode of Deep Space Nine. I had never seen past the end of the fifth season of DS9, so I was in two minds about watching it, but hell, this is Trek Day, so I left it on while I trawled Wikipedia and Memory Alpha for information about what the hell was going on. Gul Dukat looks like a Bajoran? Garak is in charge of the Cardassian Resistance? Ezri Dax is involved with Bashir? Hell, anyone at all is involved with Bashir? It was a lot to take in. And what the fuck? Sisko “dies”? Screw that. Nobody messes with Ben Sisko.
Still, it didn’t seem as contentious an ending as that of Battlestar Galactica, even though comparing the two is unfair due to BSG‘s greater ambition. Plus, this is an unfair criticism, but DS9, for all its strengths, looks horribly dated compared to Ronald Moore’s later series. Anyway, it was nice seeing it, but it pales into insignificance next to the original series. It’s an amazing coincidence that Sci Fi (or should I say SyFy) was showing one of my “favourite” episodes from TOS: the Trek-Meets-Taming-Of-The-Shrew craziness that is Elaan of Troyius.
It’s not particularly exciting, or thought-provoking, or performed well in any way, but my God it’s spectacularly, almost wilfully wrongheaded. As an insight into Kirk’s deeply worrying attitude to women, and his occasionally out-of-control machismo, not to mention how women were portrayed on US TV in the 60s, it is essential viewing.
Later on today Virgin is showing an episode of Enterprise, which I suppose I should watch in order to “catch ‘em all” even though I have no enthusiasm for that show whatsoever. Of all of the various incarnations of Trek, that is the one with the most depressing Good Character / Gupta ratio. I’ll get to that in a moment, but firstly, I have to unleash a howl of outrage from the depths of my nerdcore. There is no way – NO WAY! – that Captain Sam Beckett deserves high ratings like these compared to the feeble, barely above average scores given to Sisko in the card shown above.
Sisko would fuck you up six ways to Sunday! Archer was even crap at being captain of an intergalactic FAILcake. Anyway, that’s not the main problem with Enterprise. All of the later shows had some excellent characters – Picard and Data, Quark and O’Brien, Tuvok and The Doctor (the last one being my favourite modern Trek character of them all) – and a few total Guptas – Riker and Troy, Kira and Bashir, Neelix and Tom Paris – but Enterprise had almost no characters I liked at all. Only Trip caught my imagination in any way; the rest might as well have not been created at all. I only remember the weapons officer being a hostile British jerk, and there was a sexy Vulcan in it. A sexy Vulcan? There’s only one of those, thank you very much.
He’s fighting to gain access to your lovebits, you know.
Virgin is now showing a Q episode of Voyager (Yay Q!!!), followed by some TNG, which means I’ll have experienced all of the Old Trek (yes yes, I’ve not read any of the comics or books, or watched the animated series, but let’s just move on). After that I might stick on Wrath of Khan, if I can make it to the end without sobbing bitter nerd tears all over the laptop. All of this has been made possible by the recent screening of the film, so thank you, Bad Robot, for totally distracting me from doing far more important things.
ETA: Nice! The TNG episode is Redemption, one of Ronald D. Moore’s amazing Klingon episodes. He writes Klingons better than anyone. These were the highlights of the 1990s Trek renaissance, I reckon. Gowron is my bug-eyed hero, you know.
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Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
