Promising Young Woman (a movie review post)

 

I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that the greatness of a movie can be judged by how long it lingers in your mind after you've watched it. How much time you spend ruminating over what you watched and, possibly, what it means. Unless you're talking about Christopher Nolan. No one should spend any time thinking about his movies after the fact, especially Inception. When the man admits that the movie ends ambiguously because he couldn't make a decision about how to end it, it doesn't deserve any thought. That's just sloppy bad writing.

However, with other movies, how much time you spend thinking about them is a totally valid measure of how good they may be. Promising Young Woman hung around in my mind pretty steadily for days. Not in a way that would probably make you want to watch it again, because I'm pretty sure it's not a movie I really want to watch again, though that might not be true. It's that kind of movie.

I'm betting you want to know what kinds of thoughts I was having, but I'm not going to tell you because there's not really a way to do that without being spoilery. I am going to say, though, that this is currently my pick for Best Picture this year. It's a powerful movie and deals with a powerful subject. If you're a man watching this and not uncomfortable, minimally, doing so, there is something wrong with you. And you're probably part of the problem. If you're angry about the movie, you are definitely part of the problem.

And if you make comments about how Carey Mulligan is not pretty enough to be believable as a rape victim, you are more than definitely part of the problem and you don't know how rape works.

Don't be part of the problem.

Speaking of Carey Mulligan, she's fantastic. She more than adequately carries the movie, which is significant, because the whole plot rests on her and her believability. She gives the role a nuance that still has me wondering about some things here and there, which is why I possibly might would watch it again just to see what I thought after a second viewing. But it's a hard movie to watch, especially the ending.

Emerald Fennell, the writer/director, probably also deserves the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. It's very difficult to have a powerful movie without a powerful script, and this one is powerful. Not to mention the creeping dread the movie causes as you hope what's going to happen isn't what's going to happen. You don't find people who can create that kind of feeling very often.

I think this is a must-watch movie, especially if you're a white male. Or just white. Women participate in rape culture, too, because, well, just gonna say it: Patriarchy and "christianity." Get rid of those two things and rape culture would probably just go away.

Vice (a movie review post)

I wanted to see Vice as soon as I saw the trailers for it, and I'm not going to lie: That was mostly because of Sam Rockwell. Rockwell as W.? I'm in! Despite Rockwell's Oscar win last year, he tends to be pretty underrated in Hollywood. And, since we're on the subject of Rockwell, he was great. I'd say he nailed W. and was very enjoyable to watch; however, his performance pales in comparison to Bale's.

I feel compelled to point out here that I am not a Christian Bale fan. On a personal level, and I say this without ever having met the man, he seems to be an asshole. One of the flaming types. And he was a pretty crappy Batman, though that may have been more Nolan's fault than his. In fact, based on Bale's apparent level of skill, I'm going to have to say that his failing at being Bruce Wayne has to have been bad directing, because Bale is an acting genius.

People always talk about Daniel Day-Lewis and his ability to disappear into a role, which is not not true, but he has nothing on Bale, and Bale doesn't take three to four years between roles because he has to recover from being someone else. Look, knowing that Bale is playing Cheney doesn't help you to see him in his performance of Cheney. For all intents and purposes, Bale was Cheney. It was pretty amazing and, at this point from what I've seen, he deserves the Best Actor Oscar. As much as I'd rather see Bradley Cooper get it.

Then there's Adam McKay, the writer/director. Also the writer/director of The Big Short, which also starred Bale and Steve Carell. McKay's origins doing goofy comedies with Will Ferrell is evident in these more serious movies, but I think it makes them more accessible. Or maybe it doesn't. I don't know. What I do know is that I loved The Big Short. I don't think Vice is quite as good or enjoyable, but I think it's vastly more important.

So, yeah, I don't think Vice is quite Best Picture material -- though it deserves the nomination -- but it may be the most important film of last year. If you want to know how and why we got to where we are today, especially the part where Trump (#fakepresident) got elected, you can see an awful lot of that road in this movie. Now, if McKay will do a movie on Newt Gingrich, you'd be able to see the other part of that road.

Of course, that brings up the question of whether the movie is credible or not and all of the accusations that the movie has a liberal bias. I'm actually not going to get into that. For one reason, McKay closes the movie by... well, not dealing with that question exactly but, certainly, bringing it up. For another, it doesn't matter. Which is the sad thing and part of what the movie is about. The facts don't matter. Just saying the word "facts" at this point is confirming that you have a liberal bias. Like facts are some construct of liberalism while conservatives live in the real world of "truth," or whatever it is that they think of it as, where science is evil (of the Devil) and the destroyer of all that really matters. At any rate, we don't have the whole picture because so much of what Cheney did was in secret. You want to talk about emails...

Oh, no, you really don't, because the email thing was just an excuse.

One way or the other, though, if you want a peek, a tiny brief peek, behind the curtain of subterfuge, you should see this movie, whichever side of the divide you're on.

Venom (a movie review post)

Where do I even start with this? I mean, a Venom movie without Spider-Man? How do you even? Just the idea sounds insane. And with Tom Hardy... I'm sure I've mentioned how not a fan of Tom Hardy I am.

But it's Venom, so I went to see it. Which is not to say that I'm some huge Venom fan, at least not of what he grew into, but, back when he was first introduced, he was a pretty cool and innovative character.

So let's start there, at the beginning. Which is to say that Venom has a very... problematic... origin.

An origin that I'm not going to get into, right now, because it has nothing to do with the movie. I only bring it up because when Venom was first introduced as a character outside of the comics (back in one of the animated Spider-Man shows from the 90s), they needed a non-Secret Wars origin for the symbiote, so they chose to have it be from outer space. Which you can't really argue, anyway, because when the "suit" was first introduced, no one knew it where it came from other than that it was on the Beyonder's war planet.

All of that to say that the origin in the movie is derived less from the comic books and more from a previously established pop culture origin story that more people are probably familiar with than the number of people who know that actual origin of the alien symbiote. That part of it, I can give a pass.

I'm less comfortable with the part of it where Venom is part of an alien invasion force. That coupled with the human names for the symbiotes (oh, yes, there are more than one!) gave that aspect of the movie a bit of a Transformers feel.

And I miss the spider on Venom. That feels to me as if it is part of the character and leaving it off (because in this origin without the involvement of Spider-Man, why would there be a spider?) takes away somewhat from the character.

Overall, though, they did a fine and decent job with coming up with an origin for the character, and I do hope Venom and Spider-Man end up in a movie together... Well, this Venom and the current Spider-Man under Marvel's control, because I think that would turn out to be... great? Yeah, probably great.

Which brings me to Tom Hardy. He was surprisingly good. They made the Eddie Brock character a bit more... I don't know. In the comics, Brock was a loser. Just a loser. A wannabe. He had a beef with Parker because Parker wouldn't work with him, which was because Brock was a no-talent loser. This iteration of Brock starts him out at the top, not just competent but exceptional, then they bring him down and make him a loser. Washed up. Hardy played both ends of that spectrum believably, so I have to give him kudos for that. And he pulled off playing against a disembodied voice, so I have to give him credit for that, too. Maybe Hardy just needs to quit working with Nolan, because Nolan seems intent on making Hardy into nothing more than a mumbling pair of lips.

Then there's Michelle Williams who is a bowl of boiled noodles. Just the noodles with nothing on them. Not even butter. I suppose there are some people out there who like plain noodles, but they don't taste like much and have no flavor or character. Neither does Williams. She's good at delivering her lines, but there's nothing much to her. She's always the same, and she felt more like a placeholder here than anything else.

It was, however, nice to see Jenny Slate, who was so... normal in this role that I kept questioning whether it was really her.

My final analysis is that this movie is better than every single DC movie that has come out. Hands down. In fact, the DC movies don't even get close. No, it's not as good as the Marvel Studios movies, though I'd say it holds its own against Fox's X-Men films, but the only DC movie that's even on the same playing field is Wonder Woman. So, yeah, I'd go see another Venom movie -- and they teased one in the clip in the credits -- though it's unclear whether it will get a second one since it seems to be under performing a bit. Well, you know, you leave out Spider-Man and it loses a lot of its draw. Tom Hardy isn't a big enough name to get people into the theaters on his own, and most people's only experience with Venom is Spider-Man 3.

All of which is to say that you're not going to be missing out if you don't watch this. Unfortunately. It's a pretty standard superhero kind of movie even if this particular "hero" does have a taste for eating brains. But it doesn't tie into anything else, not at the moment, anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens with Sony's non-Spider-Man Spiderverse to know if this is a critical movie or not.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall (a book review post)

All right, this will probably be the last Tepper novel I do for a while. Not because I've grown tired of her books or anything but because I'm out of all the ones I have and I don't plan to go book buying any time soon. Not until I finish some of the other books I have sitting around. Or unless I decide I just need the sequel to Grass.

That said, overall, I didn't enjoy this one as much as her others, and I'm going to tell you why, which means, yes, there will be spoilers, so, if you plan on picking this one up, you may want to bypass this. Not that I think any of you are making that plan because, if you were, you would have picked up The Gate To Women's Country, which is something you should certainly do.

Let me give you some context:
The book was published in '96 and is set in '99. The coming millennium looms over the events of the novel though it actually has little to do with the action. When it came out, it was a contemporary novel, though the present that Tepper shows is a bit removed from ours. Chimpanzees, elephants, and many other species are extinct in the wild. Prisons are full of pods that they sentence people to sleep in. Far Right groups roam the streets... Wait, that doesn't sound too far off.

Basically, Right-wing groups of fanatics of every flavor around the world are making their presence known in violent ways, mostly against women but, really, against anyone who doesn't agree with them. They've taken over the politics in the United States and, really, everywhere else, too. People who do not belong to these groups have fewer and fewer places to turn for help.

The beginning third of the book actually felt very prescient.

The action of the book revolves around the disappearance of one of the women the book is about. At least, that's the only theme that carries all the way through the book as the conflict is rather fluid other than that. That's all stuff I'm not going to get into. Why spoil everything, right? The supernatural element that Tepper so likes plays into this, and it's ultimately what ruined the book for me. Or what it leads to, which is an actual deus ex machina ending.

Let's just say I'm not a fan of having a god step in at the end to save everything, especially when that god was a character in the novel beyond a mere spoken about concept.

However, the real problem area for me was the antagonist. In a general sense, the antagonist is "men" and their antipathy toward women, or, at least, their antipathy towards women's rights. The unifying factor among all of the far Right groups in the book is their belief that women should get back in the kitchen, so to speak. They should be no more than baby makers and food preparers and house cleaners. The book deals a lot with how shitty men can be and how they systemically undermine women and their potential roles in the world.

And we're all good as far as that goes, because all of that is true. However, Tepper then sabotages her point by having the main villain, Webster, be an interstellar entity that is causing men to be the way that they are. Well, maybe he doesn't cause it, but he exacerbates and intensifies it, so, really, except in a few cases, it's not really their fault.

This is a problem because the men she portrays in the book are not caricatures or exaggerations. They are exactly the way men are. But Tepper gives them, gives us, an out: Oh, really, men, they're not that bad; it's just all of these really bad outside influences that make them that way. I really don't understand why she chose to go that route. It pulls the teeth out of any social commentary she was trying to make.

Not to mention the unresolved nature of the denouement. Or, rather, the fact that the resolution is unrevealed to the reader. This is a tactic that would work if Tepper had left the reader with a question which the reader needed to answer for himself, but that's not the nature of it as none of the choices the protagonist is given are choices any of us can actually choose, so we're just left to wonder what choice she made and that's the end of it. It was... unsatisfying. And it left with the feeling that Tepper herself didn't know how she would choose so just left it hanging. Rather like the end of Inception where Nolan left the ending hanging because he didn't know which way to go with it.

So... yeah... brilliant beginning, but she failed to nail the landing. It's not a book I would recommend. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy it -- it was certainly much better than many other books I've read -- but, again, I'd say go out and get a copy of The Gate To Women's Country.

Dunkirk and the Slow Death: A Movie About Nothing

Christopher Nolan proves once again how easily dazzled people are when something seems deep, because, I suppose, Dunkirk seems like a deep movie, all about the desperation of war and whatnot; but, really, Dunkirk is a movie about nothing. It is a movie that says nothing. It is a movie that does nothing. Well, nothing other than lazily follow the pseudo-protagonist around as he spends the movie running away.

In fact, nearly the whole movie is about running away. It's a movie about running away that is capped off by Winston Churchill's famous we-will-fight-them-everywhere speech.

I know. That's so deep. Except that it's not.

It also contains a bunch of purposeless non-linear elements. And don't get me wrong; I have nothing against non-linear story telling... as long as it serves the purpose of the story, but this felt more like it was there because people expect it of Nolan. You know, it's his signature thing so he has to include it even if it doesn't belong in this movie. So what we get is incongruous shots of a mid-day dog fight cut with scenes of a ship sinking in the middle of the night.

Oh! But maybe that's deep!
No, not really. It's just sloppy, bad story telling.
And that doesn't even touch on how we cut back to the same dog fight toward the end of the movie but seen from a different character's perspective.
Basically, the whole movie is out of sequence. None of it serves the story. And some of it is actually conflicting.

But, you know, Nolan is so deep.

I'm not even going to talk about the acting. Generally speaking, the actors all seemed bored. I think Nolan wanted them to seem bored, so I suppose that's good acting, but it makes a movie that comes in at only about one hour and forty-five minutes feel like you were watching it for three. But, maybe, my problem was that I didn't watch it in the theater. I wasn't fully immersed in the bigness of it.
Except that it's really a small movie.

Look, let's use the potty meter to measure this movie. In a good movie, you don't want to have to get up and go to the bathroom because you're worried you might miss something but, in this movie, you could have gone to take a nice long dump and come back to find that you missed... nothing at all. Maybe some more guys died, because people keep dying all around the pseudo-protagonist, but it's almost certain you wouldn't have missed any important dialogue because there's really not any. Hmm, now I'm wondering how long the movie would be if you kept only the bits with dialogue. 20 minutes?

The biggest issue with the movie is that it is very unclear about who the enemy is. Or any context about what's going on at all. Sure, maybe Nolan just assumes that everyone should know enough about World War II to supply that for themselves, and maybe everyone should, but it's abundantly clear that a vast amount of people don't know anything about World War II and have no context for what's going on. Shithead Nolan couldn't even identify the Nazis as the enemy in the opening text. No, he just says, "They're surrounded by the enemy."

What the actual fuck, Nolan? You can't do better than that? What enemy? Aliens? Goblins? Ravaging hordes of barbarians? No, it was Nazis, and you should have been clear about that.

But, then, it's painfully obvious that this was your go-to for trying to win a best picture Oscar after losing with Interstellar, an artsy movie about WWII. But this movie shouldn't have been nominated at all. It's just a hollow piece of chocolate that is ultimately disappointing because it has no substance. Bad chocolate, at that.

Interstellar (a movie review post)

I'm going to go ahead and lead with the fact that Christopher Nolan is overrated. Way overrated. Prior to Interstellar, The Prestige was the last above good movie Nolan made. The Dark Knight was merely good owing largely to the fact that it's a total bore upon any re-watching. That said, Interstellar is easily the best movie of Nolan's career, which, actually, isn't saying much in comparison to his career, so I'll say, instead, Interstellar is a great movie. I will be very surprised if it doesn't pick up a best picture nomination. It deserves, at least, to be nominated.

The one positive thing you can pretty much always say about Nolan is that he knows how to make a visually appealing movie, and this one may be his best effort yet. It was amazing. It can be summed up in the scene with the frozen clouds.

The story is good, too, which is a place Nolan is often weak but not this time. Well, the only thing that's an issue is the blight that is evidently killing all plant life on the planet. That and the "science" behind how people don't belong on Earth because of the nitrogen atmosphere. That was a bit of logic that didn't make any sense, especially considering that if oxygen levels were higher than they are, the atmosphere itself would be flammable. However, if you just buy into the part where there aren't any plants left -- especially since all of that is just a metaphor for how humans are destroying the Earth -- everything else is fine. Mostly. I mean, it is, but I can't elaborate without spoilers, so you'll just have to take that as it is.

The most interesting point raised by the movie is the conflict within our society between ideas and the things those ideas produce. And the resulting desire for consumption driven by all the things. There is definitely an unstated answer to the unstated question: Ideas are good, but we have to learn how to control our drive to consume before we reduce the Earth to a giant dust bowl. Or some other equally inhospitable result.

Even with everything else being topnotch, probably, the greatest strength of the movie is the acting. There's not a single weak link. John Lithgow is wonderful. Michael Caine is... well, he's Michael Caine. Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway are both incredible. Mackenzie Foy and Timothee Chalamet are both great as the kids, especially Foy. There are too many to mention. I mean, I haven't even gotten to Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, or Jessica Chastain, yet. All of that said, TARS may have been my favorite character.
Coop: What's your trust setting, TARS?
TARS: Lower than yours, apparently.
He had all the best lines, and he was just a big box that walked and talked.

That said, the design of TARS was fascinating. Most unattractive robot I've ever seen, but completely cool and incredibly functional. I'll be surprised if we don't eventually see something like this.

Interstellar is definitely a movie worth seeing at the theater. It's a BIG movie and won't be the same on a normal TV screen. Or, maybe, people don't have normal TV screens anymore? I don't know. It's a movie that satisfies on pretty much every level, definitely worth seeing.

Bait and Switch

Back in the summer of 1989, I was walking out of the most ginormous superhero movie ever made. Actually, it was the most ginormous movie release ever, at the time, bringing in $40 million its opening weekend. All of my friends were ecstatic and cheering, and my cousin wouldn't shut up about how the Joker had pulled that three feet long pistol out of his pants and shot down the Batwing, a moment I'd thought was especially stupid, and I wasn't really happy.

Yeah, I know. I hear all of you out there being oh so shocked.

But, see, the thing I kept thinking, the thing I still think today, was, "Maybe, if Burton had just been honest and called the movie The Joker, I would have liked it." [And I could go into a whole thing of all of the things wrong with having Burton make that movie to begin with and how the Joker was the only character he found interesting and how he didn't (and doesn't) like the movie nor, even, the idea of making it--he just wanted to be a part of what he expected to be a vast pop culture phenomenon. But all of that is for some other time.]

And that's how I feel about Man of Steel. If Nolan wanted to make a movie about General Zod, he should have just called it General Zod. As it is, I'm left with feelings of dissatisfaction because Superman was only included as what amounts to an afterthought. He's the guy that's going to defeat Zod, and there's only just enough information in the movie to let us know who he is.

Which brings me to what I think is the biggest issue with Man of Steel, which includes Nolan's abuse of the title (and let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this was not Nolan's movie, even if Snyder directed it. The story and style was Nolan's, which makes it his). Nolan exploits our outside knowledge of who and what Superman is to skimp on the origin, which he then changes. It's sloppy storytelling. Worse than sloppy. And I don't like feeling exploited. The truth is, if I didn't already know Superman's background, I would have had a difficult time with the movie.

For instance, my sister-in-law is a Marvel girl, so she doesn't really know about Superman, not the details, anyway. Her entire exposure to Superman was the godawful Superman Returns, so there were parts of Man of Steel that she didn't get. Like why we should care about Perry White. Within the context of the movie, the fact that we spend so much time watching Perry and friends run away from falling buildings makes no sense. We have no reason to care about that character UNLESS we already know about who he is from the comics (or previous movies or whatever). And she didn't feel any real connection to Clark because the whole reason we care about Clark is we know the Kents took him in and raised him as their own. They accepted him. But what we get from the movie is Jonathan Kent constantly telling Clark what an outsider he is. And don't get me started on the ridiculousness of Jonathan sacrificing himself to the tornado to "protect" Clark's secret. All of this includes the lack of context for calling the movie Man of Steel, which does not come from the movie. Unless you know that Superman is called the man of steel, there's no reason to understand the title, so, again, outside knowledge. Also, the name the "Man of Steel" was given to Superman when humans thought Superman was actually human. They never think that in the movie, so that particular moniker becomes inappropriate, so, in effect, it's a stupid title for the movie and something only chosen to distinguish it from the other Superman movies. He should have just gone with Superman or, even better, General Zod.

So, with all of that in mind, no, I did not like the middle of the movie. I thought the origin part of the origin story of Superman was very poorly handled. We have no idea of who this new guy is, no idea of the strength of his character, no idea of why we should trust him. Other than, well, he says we should, and that after trashing Metropolis (at least, I suppose it's Metropolis--the movie wasn't explicit with that). What we do know is that, when he was a kid, he saved a busload of kids and got in trouble for it. Later, after having a fight with his dad, he allowed his dad to be killed by a tornado.

Also, the idea of Clark having spent 15 years as a drifter while looking for his origins is... well, it's dumb. Why didn't he ever stick that key into the spaceship in the barn? The technology should have been exactly the same. Or is it that the spaceship was "broken"? I'm just not buying that explanation. And why would he even expect to find anything else on Earth from wherever it was he was from? There's no good logic for any of that. It's just a contrived way to bring Lois into contact with Clark and not a very good one at that. And I have nothing to say about the "symbolism" of having Clark be 33 when Zod comes to Earth. That, also, was just dumb. As was Clark learning to fly, basically, because daddy left him a super suit. For which, by the way, there is no good reason for it to have been on a spaceship buried under arctic ice for 20,000 years.

The beginning of the movie, though, I liked. Mostly. It was good to have a back story for Zod beyond "space criminal." The swimming scene and the codex being a skull, though, was, again, dumb. As was depositing the codex within the body of baby Kal-El. The rest was pretty cool, even if it was rather like watching Star Wars what with the big battleships while Jor-El flew around on some kind of giant insect. Yes, I'm overlooking the part where, basically, the entire population of Krypton chooses to stay on Krypton and die rather than evacuate despite having the technology to do so. [I'm also overlooking the fact that, evidently, every single Kryptonian colony failed despite having huge world engine terraforming machines.]

So... we open the move with Zod, and we end the movie with Zod. It was a movie about Zod. And the end of the movie just went on and on and the destruction was beyond my ability to accept. See, here's the thing, we, as viewers, accept that Superman is a good guy, because, well, we know he's a good guy. We have 75 years of prior knowledge that tells us he's a good guy. But the people of Earth in the movie have no such prior knowledge. They don't know who Superman is any more than they know who Zod is. What they do know is that two aliens showed up and destroyed a major city and tried to destroy the world. But, yet, they just accept that Superman is a "good guy," and Nolan gets away with it because he bases that on our knowledge of the character, not what's revealed of the character in the movie (who, remember, allowed his human father to die because of an argument).

But how was Zod? So much of the focus is on him, so how was he? Michael Shannon was, actually, very excellent as Zod. If you've seen him in Boardwalk Empire, it's apparent why he was chose, and it was a good call. He brings just the right amount of zeal to the role to make it believable.

Russel Crowe, whom I generally dislike, was pretty good in his role as Jor-El. Well, except for the hide-and-seek bit in the spaceship, but that was hardly his fault. Seriously? The virtual Jor-El is going to play hide-and-seek with his son upon being uploaded? Another bit of contrivance to get Clark out of the way so that Lois could injured. [And, um, just why didn't Clark hear her coming down  the tunnel? It's not like she was being quiet. Or that that should have mattered at all.]

Henry Cavill was adequate as Superman, although I think he really got the part due to his resemblance to Tom Welling from Smallville. They have the same "farm-boyish" grin. I liked Costner as Jonathan, even if I didn't like the part, much, as it was written. I don't have, however, have strong positive feelings for Diane Lane as Martha. I also thought Amy Adams was good in her role. The rest were non-spectacular.

The final result is that I have a lot of mixed feelings about this newest Superman, which is a far cry better than how I felt about the last Superman. This new one is just too much Nolan for me, who seems to be more concerned on an ongoing basis with what seems cool rather than what makes a good story. Seriously, I didn't need more of the Inception-type building collapses. I am interested to see where Nolan is going to take the story, unless this just ends up being a setup for the JLA movie that DC and Warner Brothers are still trying to get off the ground, at which point, I will decide that DC needs to scrap all the previous movie history it's developed and start over, just like they keep doing with their comic book world. Maybe, someday, they'll get it right.

Nolan Again Impresses...

...with his ability to obfuscate.

I do realize that I'm going to be in the vast minority with my stance on The Dark Knight Rises, but I'm used to that, so I'm just going to go with it.

I have one thing to say for Christopher Nolan: he's a magician when it comes to making movies. I mean that in a very literal sense. He uses flashy action to distract us from the holes he leaves behind in the story. We can't see them, because we're too busy looking in the other direction.

Or maybe it's just that Marvel has set the bar so high with their string of excellent adaptions that I'm just no longer satisfied with interpretations. Maybe if it was more explicit that these are interpretations, I'd be happier. DC/Warner Brothers could just slap their Elseworlds label on  these things, and I might be more accepting of them. As it is, though, there are so many things that aren't Batman in these movies that I have a hard time dealing with it. Like in Burton's Batman when Alfred brings Vicki Vale down into the Batcave. What?

Unfortunately, Nolan has plenty of those moments himself. Like in Batman Begins when Wayne allows Lucius Fox to know that he's Batman. Whereas that was almost acceptable in that movie, those inconsistencies with the source material have continued to snowball to the point that by the time we get to Rises, I can't accept them. I mean, by the end of The Dark Knight Rises half of everyone knows that Wayne is Batman. And we're just supposed to believe that some random cop walks up to Wayne and just knows? Seriously. I get that Nolan needs that for his story, but, give me a break, he knew because he saw it in Wayne's face? At least Tim Drake did the research to figure out that Wayne is Batman. And I don't want to give spoilers, but having his actual name be Robin? It just makes me cringe.

However, the big issue for me, the thing that set the big disconnect for me, is that we're supposed to believe that this is 8 years later. That Bruce Wayne just quit being Batman and went into seclusion. I get that Nolan is trying to give us a sense of Miller's Dark Knight comics in which Batman had quit and was in seclusion, but that was because he got old. He even gives us a cane like Wayne uses in Batman Beyond, but, again, in those he got old; Nolan wants us to believe that Wayne just quit. I can't buy it. I absolutely can not buy it.

This is where I understand the difference between me, someone that grew up reading Batman comics and was heavily invested in Batman lore for...well, longer than I should have been, and the vast majority of people out there that don't have that same investment. These details aren't important to them. I get that. I also get that I am not really the target audience for the movie. I was the target audience for Batman Begins, because that one was more focused on the fans of the comic, but these last two, after hooking everyone in, have been focused on the general consumer.

Even so, the idea with Nolan's Batman is that he is set in the "real world," and, as such, I still can not accept this 8 year hiatus. He wants us to buy into too many unrealistic ideas:
1. After 8 years of no Batman, people are still talking about him. Give me a break. Culturally, we barely hold onto anything for 8 days, and Nolan expects us to believe that people are still saying, after 8 years, "is he coming back?" Not to mention the fact that he has kids, like 10-year-old kids, talking about Batman as if he's a reality to them. Or was a reality to them. Yes, all of this bothers me, because none of it's how the real world works.
If he'd made it a year after the events of Dark Knight, maybe even two, it would have been plausible.
2. There's a Harvey Dent Day and people care about it. See point 1. No one would care after 8 years. Well, they wouldn't care beyond the fact that it was a day off from work. And it's not clear that they, the common people, do get a day off from work.
3. After 8 years, Wayne just puts the suit back on, and it's like he never quit. There are so many problems with this:

• There is an implication, a strong implication, that Wayne has been doing nothing to "stay in shape" during his seclusion (except, maybe, shooting some arrows). He's just been sulking about. Bodies deteriorate pretty quickly. After just a few months, he would have lost his edge and begun losing muscle mass. After a year, it would have taken considerable training to be able to get back into shape. After 8 years? 
• Aside from the staying in shape aspect of it, Wayne has definitely not been sparring or doing any kind of combat training in those 8 years. As an example of what not sparring can do, you can look at the Foreman/Ali championship fight. Foreman was unable to spar for the entire month leading up to the bout due to an eye injury, and just that one month of not training threw his fighting off so much that he couldn't compete. (Ali won and refused to ever allow Foreman a re-match.)
• On top of all the not staying in shape and not sparring, Wayne has suffered some sort of debilitating injury that has caused him to need a cane to walk. His body is in bad shape. No, it's in horrible shape. So... 8 years of lounging in seclusion and he can't even walk under his own power, but we're supposed to believe that a high tech knee brace returns him to fighting form? Are you kidding me?

While it is true that Alfred voiced concern over these issues, it was given in the sense that it would be a "bad idea" to get back into costume. In truth, it would have been an impossibility. Not to put the costume back on but certainly impossible to be Batman again just like that.

If Nolan wants us to believe that this is a Batman that could be in the real world, he needs to keep him in the real world. And don't get me started on the "fusion bomb," because all of that was just bad science. I'll buy into Wayne creating a fusion reactor, but not turning it into a "time bomb" in the way it was done in the movie. They're equating it to a meltdown in a nuclear reactor, and those things just don't happen on a schedule. Not to mention the last minute save after 5 months. It just doesn't get more cliche than that.

Nolan also uses sleight-of-hand to hide facts from us. I don't have an issue with this in a general sense, but it takes away from the enjoyment of watching it again. He did this very successfully in The Prestige, because, in that one, he gave us the clues to figure out what was going on so that when the reveal happened it was your own fault for not figuring it out. I like that kind of cleverness, and doing it that way does make for good repeat viewing, because you can go back and see where the clues were that you missed (like in The Sixth Sense). I dislike, though, when not only is the information hidden but the fact that there is information hidden is hidden. Of course, then, when you do see that coming because you have more lore than the average viewer, there's no surprise, so that twist didn't throw me at all, and that made the viewing experience... less than it could have been.

Having said all of that, don't take it that I'm saying that it's a bad movie. It's not. It's a good movie, and I'm glad I saw it in the theater. The acting is good (Oldman is still great as Gordon, Hathaway was good, Gordon-Levitt is quite good), and the action and fight sequences are spectacular. But the movie, if you look beyond those things, is not great.

Here's the way I look at it:
After I saw The Avengers, I wanted, immediately, to see it again. After seeing it the second time (opening weekend), I wanted to go back and see it again. I still want to see it again. I have no desire to see Rises again.
I had the same experience with The Dark Knight when it came out alongside Iron Man. I saw Iron Man three times in the first week and still would have gone back to see it. I could barely sit through my second viewing of The Dark Knight because I got bored even though I'd been on the edge of my seat during my first viewing. After 4 years, I barely want to re-watch Dark Knight and that desire is only related to the release of Rises (in fact, I have not seen Dark Knight again since I saw it last in the theater even though I own the movie). I've seen Iron Man numerous times in the intervening years and talking about it makes me want to go put that one in right now. That, to me, is what makes a movie great, the desire to watch it over and over again. I just don't get that from Nolan.

I've said that I'm not in favor of re-boots, and I'm not, but I would certainly be in favor of a Batman re-boot. As long it's more in line with the comics. I really don't want someone coming along and trying to continue on from the point where Nolan left things. Of course, that's part of why Nolan left things the way he did (by his own admission).

I'd say that maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age, but that's just not it. In truth, I've always been like this. Even in high school, my friends would be upset because I'd point out inconsistencies in movies. I'd enjoy them just fine anyway, but, then, I'd pop their bubbles of the movies by pointing out the flaws, and they would lose enjoyment of them. So... I like Rises. It was a good movie, certainly big enough to be worth seeing in the theater. It just wasn't great, and it wasn't great because it lacked in the story department. Anyway, I'm not trying to make anyone else not like the movie, but I would like to peel back the whitewash of "greatness" that has been slapped onto it so that people can see past the action smokescreen.

[And, remember! I have a contest going on! Check out yesterday's post for details.]

Amazing Vs Spider-Man

Spider-Man has always been my favorite super hero. Always. I'm pretty sure I was born with an awareness of Spider-Man that persisted throughout my life. Sure, I watched Super Friends when I was a kid, but it was nothing when compared with Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or any of the other Spider-Man cartoons. And nothing beat the theme song from the original animated series from 1967. I even loved the cheesy, live action, TV series from the 70s. Why? Because it was Spider-Man. At 7, I just didn't care how bad it was.

And, then, I waited... and waited... and waited for the movie. I grew up with the promise of the movie always. Seriously. The Spider-Man movie went into pre-production in the late 70s and just stayed there and stayed there spinning and churning, but something would happen every time they thought they were going to get started on it.

Superman had a movie. And then more movies. And they all sucked.

Batman got a movie, and it sucked, too. Not like Superman, but Burton butchered it. And those movies just got worse and worse.

And, still, Spider-Man didn't get made. It was horrible.

I'd waited nearly my whole life for the announcement that production was actually slated to begin on a Spider-Man movie in 2001 (after hiring Sam Raimi as director in 2000). I was more excited for it than I had been about the Star Wars prequels, if you can imagine that, although I was more than a little concerned over the choice of Raimi as director. I mean, when you look at what Raimi did before Spider-Man, it doesn't inspire the greatest confidence that he'd be able to handle a super hero movie. So, metaphorically speaking, I held my breath and waited.

Spider-Man was my first favorite super hero movie. That sounds a bit wrong, because if there are super hero movies, by default, you have to have a favorite, but, trust me, it's not the same thing. As much as I loved the first X-Men movie (and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine (he was/is perfect for that role)), it didn't quite rise to the level of what I would call a favorite even if it had been my favorite. Yeah, see, just trust me.

Here's the thing, Raimi made a near perfect adaptation of the Spider-Man comics and everything I'd always loved about Spider-Man. It took me back to being 4 years old and reading The Amazing Spider-Man #15 for the hundredth time (that was the first appearance of Kraven the Hunter, for those of you that don't know, and it was my favorite issue for years and years (a near-mint copy is currently worth $2000, and my copy was "donated" to something or other without my permission when I was kid (not that mine was mint, but, still...))). Raimi captured the essence of Spider-Man and put it up on the movie screen for us to see. Even though not quite all the facts were correct (there was Mary Jane instead of Gwen Stacy, for instance), he bounded up the heart of Spider-Man and made it into a movie.

In making adaptations, that's a difficult thing to do. It just doesn't happen all that often, and I can name the movies on one hand that have pulled it off: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, The Avengers, and The Lord of the Rings (yes, I know it was three movies, but it was only three movies for the same reason that it was three books). So, even though everyone says Spider-Man 2 was the best of the Spider-Man movies, I don't believe it, because Spider-Man came to life in the first one.

As you might have guessed, all of this is leading to the newest Spider-Man offering. I finally managed to go see The Amazing Spider-Man this past weekend (actually, the weekend before (this review got delayed a week)). I was... unimpressed.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, and I loved (finally!) seeing The Lizard onscreen. I've been waiting for him to show up for, well, years, especially since Connors has been bouncing around in the background of the other Spider-Man films. However, it should have been Spider-Man 4, not a re-boot. In starting over, they failed to recapture the essence of what is Spider-Man, instead giving us some new version that gets (most) of the facts straight but doesn't give us the heart and soul that Raimi did. In short, they gave us a good movie but a poor adaptation.

And, for the second time in one weekend (see my review of Brave), I walked out of the theater from a good movie completely unsatisfied.

I hear people saying that this new one is better than the other one, but I don't think I believe that even just measuring them movie for movie. Sure, the special effects are slicker in this one. The movie is flashier. The Lizard looks great. But, beyond that, the movie is just formula. I think people are tricked into believing this one is better because it's darker and prettier, so to speak. But the characters, with the exception, maybe, of Gwen are less developed, so it's a story that's hard to get involved with.

I didn't care when Ben died because we don't really see Peter care. We know, intellectually, that he cares, but we never feel it. And the way that he died felt pretty contrived. The whole movie is like that. We know how we're supposed to feel about various things, because we know the Spider-Man mythos. The producers or the director or writer or some combination of them know we know these things, and they rely on our pre-knowledge to give us access to the feelings that the movie ought to be evoking so that they can actually gloss over all of that stuff. In truth, I feel sort of gypped.

Perhaps the movie's biggest failure, however, is the reduction of Peter's motivation to being Spider-Man to one of revenge (or "getting even" as Uncle Ben says) and guilt. This is the same thing that Nolan did with Batman in Batman Begins. It's as if there can be no other motivation for a super hero. This is where the heart of Spider-Man is lost in this new movie. Spider-Man is not about revenge. It's all about "with great power comes great responsibility," and it's the absence of this one line from the movie that may be it's most egregious error.

The reason for the success of the comic book was that it asked the question of what a normal kid would do if he got super powers and answered it in a realistic way. Peter's first motivation was to use his new power for fame and fortune. The introduction of tragedy into his life becomes not a motivation for revenge but a reason to look at himself, see where he failed, and become a better person. Spider-Man becomes a character that is motivated to do good because it is the right thing to do not because he's seeking revenge against criminals or wallowing in guilt. Sure, those things come up, but they are not the motivating factor. [Later, Marvel would decide to give us a character motivated by revenge, so they gave us the Punisher.]

The new Webb movie (I know, ha ha, right?) reduces all of the complicated emotional trauma of being a teenager into one driving emotion, getting revenge against the people that have done Peter Parker wrong. Starting with Flash and moving through his vendetta against long-haired, blond criminals. He morphs that with guilt over the fact that Peter feels like he created The Lizard, and that whole thing about the heroes creating their villains is also something I'm rather tired of seeing used; it gave me flashbacks to Burton's Batman, "You made me!" So, yeah, I came away unimpressed.

Which is not to say, again, that it's not a good movie. It's totally enjoyable and exciting. The Lizard looks awesome and the CG work is excellent. They use a number of iconic Spider-Man poses in the movie, which was nice to see. Denis Leary and Emma Stone are both great. Sally Field was out of place, although Martin Sheen was pretty good. There was nothing to distinguish Andrew Garfield other than his build, though. He did an adequate job, but he didn't really pull off the nerdy, awkward teenager thing. If you like exciting super hero movies, it's certainly worth seeing in the theater.

But it's not my Spider-Man movie. Sam Raimi made that one 10 years ago, and Sony would have done better to just carry on with the new cast and director building off of what Raimi started rather than trying to start over.

DC vs Marvel and How It Relates to Writing (pt. 1): Green Lantern

What's the first really bad movie you ever saw? Did it scar you? I was pretty young, 14, when I saw my very first horrible, rotten, stupid movie. Stupidest movie ever. Seriously. I'll tell you the name, but there's a good chance you won't be able to even look it up anywhere. It was so bad, it has 3 or 4 other names besides the name I saw it as: The Dungeonmaster. To my knowledge, it has never been made available on DVD. That's the closest I ever came to getting up and walking out of a theater. At 14. If that tells you anything.

Um, wait a second, the closest I ever came to walking out of a theater was Highlander II: The Quickening. All it took was that first few minutes where they start in with background narration or scroll or whatever it was and reveal that they were really aliens from the planet Zeist rather than the immortals that they were in the first movie. To this day, I'm not sure why I didn't get up and leave other than the fact that I was with my cousin. We got to see that movie for free, and I still felt ripped off. However, it's not quite as bad as The Dungeonmaster. Close, though, but it doesn't quite fall that far.

Green Lantern gave me flashbacks of Highlander II. From the very beginning. The opening sent me right back to that same place as watching the opening to Highlander II. Maybe it's because I already know the history of Green Lantern and  the Green Lantern Corps, or, maybe, it's because it was just bad. Based on the performance of the movie, I'm going to guess it was because it was bad.

I was hoping for good things from Green Lantern. He's one of DC's more significant heroes. Part of the Justice League. Has a cool gadget. And I love Ryan Reynolds. Admittedly, that's because he looks a lot like a good friend of mine. The two could almost be twins. I did think Bradley Cooper would have been better for the role, but, in retrospect, it's probably better for Cooper that he got passed over. Despite the good I was hoping for the movie, from the release of the first trailer, I was scared of what they were doing with it. As it turns out, I was right.

I hate to talk about rules, but the writers broke seemingly every rule there is for telling a good story. Let's see, do they have a prologue? Check. To make it worse, it's a non-essential prologue since they repeat every piece of information later in the movie as Hal Jordan discovers the story. So they have a prologue and they have needless repetition. I bet the script was full adverbs, too. Maybe it was one of those too many cooks in the kitchen scenarios, since there are, like, half a dozen people credited for the script.

They introduce at least half a dozen characters that serve no purpose within the actual plot. Yes, these are characters from the comic book, but they don't do anything. In fact, the whole point of introducing the rest of the Green Lantern Corp and the little blue guys that founded the organization is so that they can do nothing.

>sigh<

I could go on about all the things wrong with the movie, but it would be rather pointless, I suppose. Yes, I know what I would have done differently, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there saying what should have been different, so that would be rather pointless, too.

What we have, when we boil it down, is a company, Warner Brothers, trying to make a blockbuster. Oh, and just by the way, Warner Brothers owns DC. They're not trying to tell a good story, they're only interested in tapping into the blockbuster formula, and, with the exception of Batman, they are failing miserably. And, I have to say, Batman has been an exception because they have Christopher Nolan doing those, and he is interested in telling a good story. For crying out loud, Warner Brothers, basically, fired Joss Whedon from the Wonder Woman project because his story didn't fit their blockbuster model. Seriously, what are these guys thinking? I can tell you... they're thinking about money not about telling stories.

This behavior is just like the big publishers work. They give you a list of things they want from novels that fit the formula of the blockbuster. They don't care whether there is an actual story there. They don't care that Harry Potter doesn't actually fit the criteria of what a blockbuster should be, they just want to duplicate the experience. But not the experience of Harry Potter, the experience of the money pouring in from Harry Potter. In our efforts to be published, we writers often spend our time scrambling after these rules and lists and trying to make everything we do fit into them. And we get are things like Green Lantern. Yes, it got made, but, really, would you want to be remembered for that?

Is there anything good to say about Green Lantern? Not much, but I'll give it a go.

Blake Lively was adequate. The role didn't require much, but she did deliver it. She came across to me as too pretty, really, to be believable. Hmm... maybe not too pretty but too dainty. She played the part well enough, though.

Tim Robbins was almost good, even great. His part was just too small to not like him to the degree that we are supposed to not like him. He puts as much into it in the time we have with him, but it's just not enough.

Peter Sarsgaard had glimmers of being really great. Unfortunately, as his condition worsens in the movie, so does his ability to play that part. He starts out as being sympathetic, but he's supposed to turn evil. We're supposed to not like him in the end. Instead, he just becomes pathetic. I think it wasn't his fault. I think he did what he could with a bad script.

I'd like to say Ryan Reynolds, but I can't. There is never any connection with Hal Jordan, because the script is just all over the place. We never care what happens to him. During the big fight climax at the end of the movie, there was no tension because, honestly, I didn't care if he died. I'm sure the writers thought that it being Ryan Reynolds would be enough, but, for me, it wasn't. Sure, he's his typical charming, roguish self, but it serves to distance us from the character, not tie us to him.

The Oath:
In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might,
Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!

However, saying the oath during the moment of crisis should not make you able to defeat the bad guy. Yes, it was dramatic, but it was also totally ridiculous.

So, yeah... I couldn't really think of anything that's completely positive about the movie. I can't believe Warner Brothers is going forward with the sequel.

We got to see the movie for free. It's a good thing, too; if I'd paid money for it, I would have felt ripped off. Like with Highlander II some 20 odd years ago, that was 2 hours of my life I'd rather have back. Even my 10-year-old didn't like it. he told my daughter that she should be glad she didn't go with us. At 10, he already has 2 movies that he's seen that are so bad, he would have walked out if he could have. The other one was Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. It's easy to like things when you're 10. Looking back, I can't believe some of the things I liked at 10. It seems wrong to me that stuff this bad is coming out. Stuff that not even a 10-year-old can get behind.