I've always had a thing for heroines. When I was growing up, male heroes were everywhere: He-Man, Action Man, Transformers, Star Wars, Superman. Every franchise was built around its male heroes.
As a result, the heroes of every franchise bored the piss out of me. They were great for what they were, and made for some awesome toys and occasionally aspirational figures, but I found them all narratively tedious.
I was instead fascinated by the female equivalents / members of the male-dominated teams: She-Ra, Arcee, Supergirl, Cheetara. And that was all before I was old enough to see them as anything other than arse-kicking heroes.
Nor was this strictly down to their rarity: female-led stories have always had something more to them. While Hercules was about some noble buff dude punch bad-guys and throwing them around like unconvincing rag-dolls, Xena was about a violent warrior maiden looking to atone, and taking on a sidekick who represented those she was desperate to view her in a different light.
I have never been so eager to read a comic as when I first discovered X-23. And they all do pretty much the same thing, but just look at how a-typical Van Helsing or the Beaumont boys are compared to the complexity of Buffy.
And this love of the heroine can be traced right back to Princess Leia. A supposed damsel-in-distress, the first thing she does when being 'rescued' is insult one of her assumed captors, take the piss out of her "heroes'" poor excuse for a plan, then save them all herself, while proving a better shot than the experienced smuggler, the child of prophecy, and an entire battalion of empirical troopers.
Think about that: the Empire tortures her to discover the location of the rebels' base, and she resists; they threaten her entire planet, and she sends them to the wrong location; she sees her entire planet - including her mother and father - blown to smithereens, and the moment a pair of blundering wannbes get her out of her cell, she assumes command, questions one's ability to look after himself, and casually refers to a 7ft roaring beast with a high-powered crossbow as a 'walking carpet'.
One of her heroes sees his mentor - an old hermit he was casually acquainted with - sacrifice himself, and despite all Leia's been through, *she's* the one comforting *him*! When she should have been: "Bitch, I've just lost my family, my people and my entire fucking planet! Grow a pair and go shoot some Tie Fighters!"
She outwits the Empire's highest ranks, and without pausing for a much-deserved nap after all she's already been through, she takes command of the rebellion and helps lead them to a decisive victory.
AND THAT'S JUST IN THE FIRST FILM!
By the time of episode VII, her son's turned to the dark side, her husband's pissed off to look for his ship, her brother - the JEDI MASTER - has disappeared because it's all too much to handle, and she's COMMANDING A NEW REBELLION AGAINST AN ORDER ARISEN FROM THE FALLEN EMPIRE, LED BY HER OWN HOMICIDAL OFFSPRING!
And only someone like Carrie Fisher could have brought that to life. Only someone with that vivacity, that self-assurance, that strength and certainty of character.
Though to define her by that character is to undermine who she really was: an author; an activist; a paragon for equality. She was the go-to script-doctor for many of Hollywood's big-name screenwriters. She was an avatar for facing and owning one's emotional demons and sexual identity, and for not being defined by any of it.
Carrie Fisher was a true great of Hollywood and beyond, and a sad loss to us all.
Tuesday, 27 December 2016
Saturday, 17 December 2016
That's no Mufasa
For me, one of the most surprising things about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - which fills the gap between Episodes III and IV - is that there is so much to spoil, so I will say right off the bat that there will be none of those shenanigans going on here (those who spoil should have their fingers removed and mouths sewn shut).
Another big surprise was how both like and unlike Star Wars it felt. There's no bombastic John Williams opener, no scrolling text, and barely a Jedi in sight. This is not a hero's journey from simple every-man ignorant of his destiny, to kick-arse battle-mage saving the galaxy: it's a far more intimate tale about a plucky band of rebels coming together and risking it all for what they know is right.
And, sweet salivating monkey-nuts, does that allow it to bring the feels.
Star Wars has always had its moments in that regard, but because everything's so big, and the characters, while not simply 2-dimensional caricatures (in IV-VII at least), are nevertheless broad (gung-ho rogue; boisterous princess; farm-boy with a dream and a destiny), it's difficult to relate to everything on a personal level.
In Rogue One, the characters feel more grounded; more real. When they laugh and cry and throw a tantrum, it has significance because the reasons for those reactions are often personal to the characters, rather than funny thing was said so everyone laughs, or bad thing happens so everyone cries.
Even the main bad-guy has nuance. Not that he ever waivers in his convictions, but unlike Tarkin or Palpatine, he does show fear and uncertainty - even desperation - as well as an arrogant wit.
Paradoxically, however, the main issues I have with the film also stem from the characters. This being a stand-alone with an ensemble cast of newbies to the series, certain things feel rushed or underdeveloped. Why was that person a prisoner? How did these two meet? Why's he such a mess? Every one has a history that is only hinted at, and it makes me wish that, rather than a single film, the studio had followed through on that long-promised live-action TV show, with this as the template.
Fortunately, the performances are strong enough that, even without their histories being fleshed out, the characters are still well-rounded and interesting; the stand-outs being Alan Tudyk's K-2 - a hilariously sociopathic droid - and Donnie Yen's Chirrut Îmwe - an admittedly clichéd, but still awesome wise old blind badass, with a lighthearted humour I wouldn't have expected from the usually stoic Yen.
If there's one weakness - and I can't believe I'm saying this - it's James Earl Jones. It's no secret that Darth Vader makes an appearance, but the appearance he makes is...weird. The voice sounds like an impersonator trying too hard, the suit looks ill-fitting - as if made by a cosplayer in a hurry - and the physical performance is far too fluid, lacking David Prowse's almost robotic steadiness and menace. Even the CGI face-mapping of certain characters is more convincing.
And he makes a pun! What in the name of holy smegma is Darth Vader doing making a pun?!
He does get a little redemption later on, but his main scene is an awkward one that simply does not work.
Of course, this being a Star Wars film, we're not just here for strong characters in a great story, and when it comes to outer space shooty epicness and Storm Troopers being used as cross-eyed cannon-fodder, Rogue One delivers in spades, with a particular moment with a pair of Star Destroyers being up there among the entire saga's all-time greats. Gareth Edwards may have bored us all gormless with Godzilla, but he did at least prove that he could do grand-scale action when (finally) called upon to do so, and that eye for the epic set-piece is exercised with aplomb against the backdrop of space.
In terms of where the film as a whole stands within the Star Wars ranks, I find that difficult to gauge. As I said, this is a different type of film to the main saga, and it's fitting that it's titled A Star Wars Story rather than Star Wars episode III.V. And I also hesitate to rank it along side Empire Strikes Back as others have done, as I don't see this achieving that level of classic status; nor did it enjoy so many iconic, unforgettable moments. That said, it is certainly on a par with The Force Awakens in terms being both new and feeling like a strong continuation of the saga. It too outshines the prequels on every level (including its continuity), and would make a fitting start to any Star Wars marathon.
**UPDATE**
I follow a lot of reviewers with diverse opinions, and no film has shown that more than Rogue One; and in a surprising way. Those I'd expect to love it were underwhelmed (one downright devastated), and others I'd expect to be more critical have actually found far more to love.
Because of the way this film is put together, and its story is told, it lives and dies by its characters: those who were put off by the thinness of their backstories, or found them dull or one-note, seem to have been bored by the film as a whole, while others (like me) who could look past the admittedly thin back-stories, and could engage with the characters through the actors' performances (which I personally found universally fantastic (Donnie Yen especially)) loved the film, sometime to a near-Empire-Strikes-Back degree.
The opening act is rushed, every character could have done with more fleshing out (I still feel like this would have made a better mini-series than a film), and that first Darth Vader scene was terrible, but I love the cast, I love the story, the action was phenomenal and the climax had me physically shaking.
Another big surprise was how both like and unlike Star Wars it felt. There's no bombastic John Williams opener, no scrolling text, and barely a Jedi in sight. This is not a hero's journey from simple every-man ignorant of his destiny, to kick-arse battle-mage saving the galaxy: it's a far more intimate tale about a plucky band of rebels coming together and risking it all for what they know is right.
And, sweet salivating monkey-nuts, does that allow it to bring the feels.
Star Wars has always had its moments in that regard, but because everything's so big, and the characters, while not simply 2-dimensional caricatures (in IV-VII at least), are nevertheless broad (gung-ho rogue; boisterous princess; farm-boy with a dream and a destiny), it's difficult to relate to everything on a personal level.
In Rogue One, the characters feel more grounded; more real. When they laugh and cry and throw a tantrum, it has significance because the reasons for those reactions are often personal to the characters, rather than funny thing was said so everyone laughs, or bad thing happens so everyone cries.
Even the main bad-guy has nuance. Not that he ever waivers in his convictions, but unlike Tarkin or Palpatine, he does show fear and uncertainty - even desperation - as well as an arrogant wit.
Paradoxically, however, the main issues I have with the film also stem from the characters. This being a stand-alone with an ensemble cast of newbies to the series, certain things feel rushed or underdeveloped. Why was that person a prisoner? How did these two meet? Why's he such a mess? Every one has a history that is only hinted at, and it makes me wish that, rather than a single film, the studio had followed through on that long-promised live-action TV show, with this as the template.
Fortunately, the performances are strong enough that, even without their histories being fleshed out, the characters are still well-rounded and interesting; the stand-outs being Alan Tudyk's K-2 - a hilariously sociopathic droid - and Donnie Yen's Chirrut Îmwe - an admittedly clichéd, but still awesome wise old blind badass, with a lighthearted humour I wouldn't have expected from the usually stoic Yen.
If there's one weakness - and I can't believe I'm saying this - it's James Earl Jones. It's no secret that Darth Vader makes an appearance, but the appearance he makes is...weird. The voice sounds like an impersonator trying too hard, the suit looks ill-fitting - as if made by a cosplayer in a hurry - and the physical performance is far too fluid, lacking David Prowse's almost robotic steadiness and menace. Even the CGI face-mapping of certain characters is more convincing.
And he makes a pun! What in the name of holy smegma is Darth Vader doing making a pun?!
He does get a little redemption later on, but his main scene is an awkward one that simply does not work.
Of course, this being a Star Wars film, we're not just here for strong characters in a great story, and when it comes to outer space shooty epicness and Storm Troopers being used as cross-eyed cannon-fodder, Rogue One delivers in spades, with a particular moment with a pair of Star Destroyers being up there among the entire saga's all-time greats. Gareth Edwards may have bored us all gormless with Godzilla, but he did at least prove that he could do grand-scale action when (finally) called upon to do so, and that eye for the epic set-piece is exercised with aplomb against the backdrop of space.
Quick side note: due to issues with Cineworld's projector, I got to see this
in IMAX 2D, which was awesome!
In terms of where the film as a whole stands within the Star Wars ranks, I find that difficult to gauge. As I said, this is a different type of film to the main saga, and it's fitting that it's titled A Star Wars Story rather than Star Wars episode III.V. And I also hesitate to rank it along side Empire Strikes Back as others have done, as I don't see this achieving that level of classic status; nor did it enjoy so many iconic, unforgettable moments. That said, it is certainly on a par with The Force Awakens in terms being both new and feeling like a strong continuation of the saga. It too outshines the prequels on every level (including its continuity), and would make a fitting start to any Star Wars marathon.
**UPDATE**
I follow a lot of reviewers with diverse opinions, and no film has shown that more than Rogue One; and in a surprising way. Those I'd expect to love it were underwhelmed (one downright devastated), and others I'd expect to be more critical have actually found far more to love.
Because of the way this film is put together, and its story is told, it lives and dies by its characters: those who were put off by the thinness of their backstories, or found them dull or one-note, seem to have been bored by the film as a whole, while others (like me) who could look past the admittedly thin back-stories, and could engage with the characters through the actors' performances (which I personally found universally fantastic (Donnie Yen especially)) loved the film, sometime to a near-Empire-Strikes-Back degree.
The opening act is rushed, every character could have done with more fleshing out (I still feel like this would have made a better mini-series than a film), and that first Darth Vader scene was terrible, but I love the cast, I love the story, the action was phenomenal and the climax had me physically shaking.
Tuesday, 8 November 2016
Feverishly Elective: US Edition
Hoist the bunting, pop the champers and crank up Kool and the Gang: the US election is finally coming to an end!
And what a tragic indictment it has been of what US politics has become.
I've mostly avoided writing about his election because, really, what's to say? Clinton is your typical Wall Street shill, as entrenched in the politics of greed as anyone else in Washington, but at least she's not Donald-Smegging-Trump!
Trump is not only every bit the typical Wall Street shill Hillary is, despite protests to the contrary (how else is he going to hold on to what little fortune he has left?), he's a sad, thin-skinned, neurotic, spineless, witless, crooked, cowardly, racist, misogynist hypocrite, who has survived his myriad failed business ventures through tax evasion and his sole talent of selling his own name.
And that's really all there is to it: one candidate who isn't great, and one candidate so pathetic, his own party have abandoned him.
So how has this even become a race?
Many have been citing what happened in the summer with the Brexit vote, suggesting people are voting against the status quo because of how ineffectual and unrepresentative it has become. 'Business as usual' hasn't been working for a while, so regardless of what the anti-establishment vote is, at least it's anti-establishment.
Unfortunately, much like the Brexit vote, this misguided 'protest' hurts only those already let down by the establishment. Okay, Brexit got rid of Cameron and Osborne, but their legacy is being carried on by their like-minded peers, and the only change on the horizon is that lot gaining unfettered control of our rights, while having to think up new ways of directing funds into the pockets of them and theirs.
By the same token, Trump in the White House is going to in no way upset the status quo. Perhaps if he had any savvy about him, he could enact some genuine change (though the change he'd enact is, in itself, a troubling prospect), but the reality is he's nothing but a spoiled, petulant child, wanting a go at being the big boss. Handing him the presidency would be equivalent to handing him a toy phone and telling him the cow, sheep and chicken at the other end are Congress, Fox News and the Pentagon.
"When cow says 'moo', you've enacted a bill! Isn't little Trumpy-wumpy clever?"
Meanwhile, the Republicans in office can finally do whatever they like without the president keeping their scumbaggery in check.
Make no mistake, how ever many Republicans have come out against the hamster-haired tangerine, you'll see few willing to vote against him. They'll call him a disgrace, and unrepresentative of the party, but at the end of the day, they'd rather be answering to a weak-willed ignoramus, mistaking their empty platitudes for loyalty, than one of their opposite number seeing through every vapid grin, and kicking them in the nuts till they do as they're told.
And so they trot out the usual batch of braggarts, buffoons and blustering cretins, whose political careers are long-past ruining, to mindlessly defend every moronic soundbite he comes out with, while the rest can try to claim the 'Country Before Party' moral high-ground in an attempt to save their own seat, while secretly hoping the majority of voters really are that gullible.
The sad thing is, Trump really was one of the best candidates the Republicans put forward. Chris Christie is a fat, simpering nobody, so lacking in self-worth and future prospects, he was the ideal first sacrifice to be thrown on the Trump dumpster fire. Debating Hillary, Marco Rubio would've come across as a scared little boy getting a spanking form mother. Ben Carson is so befuddled and out-of-touch, he'll be in a nursing home by this time next year, trying to rally the political support of his apple purée. The majority of Ted Cruz's supporters would think today better spent in church, praying to God for the win, rather than actually voting. And by the time of the third primary debate, the rest had already become 'the rest'.
Ironically, much like Ron Paul before him, the only candidate who'd have stood any chance of drawing some liberal support away from the Democrats, and making this a fight of principals and policies, rather than personalities, was John Kasich; the one candidate too sensible for the party base to ever accept.
Despite fears of Trump bringing the apocalypse down upon us all, I see very little being changed by this election. This time tomorrow, the US will prove to be either not quite as stupid as we thought they were, or that mentally-deficient little nation that was big in the '80s, but now spends its time getting fat, ranting about greatness and shouting at a wall.
And what a tragic indictment it has been of what US politics has become.
I've mostly avoided writing about his election because, really, what's to say? Clinton is your typical Wall Street shill, as entrenched in the politics of greed as anyone else in Washington, but at least she's not Donald-Smegging-Trump!
Trump is not only every bit the typical Wall Street shill Hillary is, despite protests to the contrary (how else is he going to hold on to what little fortune he has left?), he's a sad, thin-skinned, neurotic, spineless, witless, crooked, cowardly, racist, misogynist hypocrite, who has survived his myriad failed business ventures through tax evasion and his sole talent of selling his own name.
And that's really all there is to it: one candidate who isn't great, and one candidate so pathetic, his own party have abandoned him.
So how has this even become a race?
Many have been citing what happened in the summer with the Brexit vote, suggesting people are voting against the status quo because of how ineffectual and unrepresentative it has become. 'Business as usual' hasn't been working for a while, so regardless of what the anti-establishment vote is, at least it's anti-establishment.
Unfortunately, much like the Brexit vote, this misguided 'protest' hurts only those already let down by the establishment. Okay, Brexit got rid of Cameron and Osborne, but their legacy is being carried on by their like-minded peers, and the only change on the horizon is that lot gaining unfettered control of our rights, while having to think up new ways of directing funds into the pockets of them and theirs.
By the same token, Trump in the White House is going to in no way upset the status quo. Perhaps if he had any savvy about him, he could enact some genuine change (though the change he'd enact is, in itself, a troubling prospect), but the reality is he's nothing but a spoiled, petulant child, wanting a go at being the big boss. Handing him the presidency would be equivalent to handing him a toy phone and telling him the cow, sheep and chicken at the other end are Congress, Fox News and the Pentagon.
"When cow says 'moo', you've enacted a bill! Isn't little Trumpy-wumpy clever?"
Meanwhile, the Republicans in office can finally do whatever they like without the president keeping their scumbaggery in check.
Make no mistake, how ever many Republicans have come out against the hamster-haired tangerine, you'll see few willing to vote against him. They'll call him a disgrace, and unrepresentative of the party, but at the end of the day, they'd rather be answering to a weak-willed ignoramus, mistaking their empty platitudes for loyalty, than one of their opposite number seeing through every vapid grin, and kicking them in the nuts till they do as they're told.
And so they trot out the usual batch of braggarts, buffoons and blustering cretins, whose political careers are long-past ruining, to mindlessly defend every moronic soundbite he comes out with, while the rest can try to claim the 'Country Before Party' moral high-ground in an attempt to save their own seat, while secretly hoping the majority of voters really are that gullible.
The sad thing is, Trump really was one of the best candidates the Republicans put forward. Chris Christie is a fat, simpering nobody, so lacking in self-worth and future prospects, he was the ideal first sacrifice to be thrown on the Trump dumpster fire. Debating Hillary, Marco Rubio would've come across as a scared little boy getting a spanking form mother. Ben Carson is so befuddled and out-of-touch, he'll be in a nursing home by this time next year, trying to rally the political support of his apple purée. The majority of Ted Cruz's supporters would think today better spent in church, praying to God for the win, rather than actually voting. And by the time of the third primary debate, the rest had already become 'the rest'.
Ironically, much like Ron Paul before him, the only candidate who'd have stood any chance of drawing some liberal support away from the Democrats, and making this a fight of principals and policies, rather than personalities, was John Kasich; the one candidate too sensible for the party base to ever accept.
Despite fears of Trump bringing the apocalypse down upon us all, I see very little being changed by this election. This time tomorrow, the US will prove to be either not quite as stupid as we thought they were, or that mentally-deficient little nation that was big in the '80s, but now spends its time getting fat, ranting about greatness and shouting at a wall.
Saturday, 5 November 2016
Bay's Nostalgia Films Suck: Why I Care
Transformers is silly.
Not just the Bay films, or the shoddy attempts at more animated series, but the entire franchise is silly. Christ, the animated movie was (and by some (including myself) still is) adored, but even that featured this!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was even worse! Setting aside the fact their primary antagonist was a nasal hentai off-cut riding around in an '80's sex doll, with a pig, a rhino and Uncle Phil as his sidekicks, there were the musical specials, the live-action TV show, the second and third live-action movies...look, just watch this:
(or, for something far more in-depth, this)
The swaths of silliness that permeate these franchise and others - be it He-Man, GI Joe or the myriad comic-book franchises with adaptations old and recent - are often brought up in defence of some of the adaptations that spawn from them:
"You think Devastator's scrotum's bad, you should see the episode of the cartoon with the golden pond!"
"What do you mean the new Shredder's stupid? Don't you remember Super-Shredder?"
"How can you think Duke in a super-suit's daft when the toys included a heavily-armed windsurfer?"
The argument being that, if we could put up with the weirdness of the source material and still love it, why is it such a big issue that they completely changed the Turtle's origins?
For me, the problem is one of potential. The Transformers lore is rich and epic, and packed with some awesome characters, yet when given the go-ahead and budget to finally bring it all to life on the big-screen, we got a relatively small-scale, earth-bound shoot-out, focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the towering, warring robots to the background. Where the cartoon gave us a transforming city, an underwater battle with robotic piranhas and a planet-devouring monster, Bay gave us Skids and Mudflap.
As for the Turtles, while the 2nd and 3rd live-action movies were pants, the first did a great job of not only bringing the characters to life, but of creating an atmosphere that settled nicely between the cartoon and the early comics. The only real issue with it (aside from a spot of slow pacing) was technological restrictions: impressive as the costumes were at the time, they haven't aged well, and in retrospect, encumbered the ninja action.
To revisit the property with the benefit of today's technology could have resulted in something fun, fast-paced, and visually unique and spectacular. Instead we got some generic rip-off of Amazing Spiderman (of all things), focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the weird-but-badass ninjas to the background.
The reception of these films is also a problem. Bays Transformers films are crap, but because explosion-porn makes money, we're stuck with his take on the franchise for the foreseeable future.
On the flip-side, the last Turtles film bombed, and so we're due a reboot. On the surface, that should be great news, but for all the problems with the films, they did at least get the Turtles right (love-or-hate visual design notwithstanding), but current Hollywood reasoning dictates that if a film doesn't do well, it's because everything about it was wrong, and the only way to save it is "gritty realism".
Just look at Superman Returns: a half-arsed attempt at recapturing the magic of the first two Christopher Reeves films it might have been, but for all its problems, Brandon Routh was an inspired casting choice, not only looking the part, but also able to give two distinct and convincing performances as both Clark Kent and Superman.
Contrast that with the dour, miserable, misguided Zack Snyder films, and poor Henry Cavil who is mostly unconvincing as either.
Okay, the gritty reboot thing worked for Batman following the horror of Joel Schumacher, but the reason it worked for Batman is because it's freakin' Batman! A gritty reboot of Superman makes about as much sense as one for the Fantastic Four.
But I digress: the point of all this is, yes we still have the cartoons to watch; yes they had their silliness and spawned some utterly baffling off-shoots; yes there was a moment in our naive youth when it was just about acceptable to randomly have Vanilla Ice rapping about ninjas, but they had the opportunity to do something great! To finally bring these memories from our childhood to life in such a way that was new and spectacular, while still paying homage to the best of what they were, eschewing all of the unnecessary baggage that had built up over the years.
And instead we got Bumble Bee pissing on a Fed, Devastator balls, a mech-suited Shredder, a crappy rip-off of a crappy reboot, Skids, Mudflap, Shia le Boufant, Megan Fox, Marky Mark and the Wooden Bunch, and Michael fucking Bay.
Not just the Bay films, or the shoddy attempts at more animated series, but the entire franchise is silly. Christ, the animated movie was (and by some (including myself) still is) adored, but even that featured this!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was even worse! Setting aside the fact their primary antagonist was a nasal hentai off-cut riding around in an '80's sex doll, with a pig, a rhino and Uncle Phil as his sidekicks, there were the musical specials, the live-action TV show, the second and third live-action movies...look, just watch this:
(or, for something far more in-depth, this)
The swaths of silliness that permeate these franchise and others - be it He-Man, GI Joe or the myriad comic-book franchises with adaptations old and recent - are often brought up in defence of some of the adaptations that spawn from them:
"You think Devastator's scrotum's bad, you should see the episode of the cartoon with the golden pond!"
"What do you mean the new Shredder's stupid? Don't you remember Super-Shredder?"
"How can you think Duke in a super-suit's daft when the toys included a heavily-armed windsurfer?"
The argument being that, if we could put up with the weirdness of the source material and still love it, why is it such a big issue that they completely changed the Turtle's origins?
For me, the problem is one of potential. The Transformers lore is rich and epic, and packed with some awesome characters, yet when given the go-ahead and budget to finally bring it all to life on the big-screen, we got a relatively small-scale, earth-bound shoot-out, focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the towering, warring robots to the background. Where the cartoon gave us a transforming city, an underwater battle with robotic piranhas and a planet-devouring monster, Bay gave us Skids and Mudflap.
As for the Turtles, while the 2nd and 3rd live-action movies were pants, the first did a great job of not only bringing the characters to life, but of creating an atmosphere that settled nicely between the cartoon and the early comics. The only real issue with it (aside from a spot of slow pacing) was technological restrictions: impressive as the costumes were at the time, they haven't aged well, and in retrospect, encumbered the ninja action.
To revisit the property with the benefit of today's technology could have resulted in something fun, fast-paced, and visually unique and spectacular. Instead we got some generic rip-off of Amazing Spiderman (of all things), focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the weird-but-badass ninjas to the background.
The reception of these films is also a problem. Bays Transformers films are crap, but because explosion-porn makes money, we're stuck with his take on the franchise for the foreseeable future.
On the flip-side, the last Turtles film bombed, and so we're due a reboot. On the surface, that should be great news, but for all the problems with the films, they did at least get the Turtles right (love-or-hate visual design notwithstanding), but current Hollywood reasoning dictates that if a film doesn't do well, it's because everything about it was wrong, and the only way to save it is "gritty realism".
Just look at Superman Returns: a half-arsed attempt at recapturing the magic of the first two Christopher Reeves films it might have been, but for all its problems, Brandon Routh was an inspired casting choice, not only looking the part, but also able to give two distinct and convincing performances as both Clark Kent and Superman.
Contrast that with the dour, miserable, misguided Zack Snyder films, and poor Henry Cavil who is mostly unconvincing as either.
Okay, the gritty reboot thing worked for Batman following the horror of Joel Schumacher, but the reason it worked for Batman is because it's freakin' Batman! A gritty reboot of Superman makes about as much sense as one for the Fantastic Four.
But I digress: the point of all this is, yes we still have the cartoons to watch; yes they had their silliness and spawned some utterly baffling off-shoots; yes there was a moment in our naive youth when it was just about acceptable to randomly have Vanilla Ice rapping about ninjas, but they had the opportunity to do something great! To finally bring these memories from our childhood to life in such a way that was new and spectacular, while still paying homage to the best of what they were, eschewing all of the unnecessary baggage that had built up over the years.
And instead we got Bumble Bee pissing on a Fed, Devastator balls, a mech-suited Shredder, a crappy rip-off of a crappy reboot, Skids, Mudflap, Shia le Boufant, Megan Fox, Marky Mark and the Wooden Bunch, and Michael fucking Bay.
Wednesday, 26 October 2016
Doctor Standard
Another year, another Marvel origin movie.
And, I'm sorry to say, the old formula is showing its age: here's a snippet of your bad-guys; this is your good-guy with a lot to learn (boy-oh-boy, isn't he arrogant); here's his perfunctory love-interest; Look, Avengers Tower! Eegads, drama! Journey starts here, folks! Ooh, this one's about this stuff... Training. Struggle. Conflict. He's catching on... Midway fight! Now he has purpose. Now he's a badass! Climax! Ooh, sequel bait.
This being Avengers XIV: Quick, We Need Something New to Show! it's hardly surprising the strain is beginning to show Even with the introduction of magic and the multi-verse, we're given the same old beats; the same old leaning toward style over substance; the same old stock characters for our hero to bounce dialogue off of. And what's frustrating is they've already found new ways of tackling the origin story. Guardians of the Galaxy got away with it through humour, a brand new setting, and being about a team rather than a singular hero. And despite being about a team, the writing and performances were strong enough to convey the background and character of every player. Even Ronan the Accuser - typical flash-in-the-pan bad-guy that he was - benefited from a memorable design and performance, and having his stoicism contrasted against the 'hero's' general silliness.
Ant-Man too, though it followed the more established formula, managed to stand out by being on a much smaller, more intimate scale.
Unfortunately, Doctor Strange feels a lot like a return to the old. Mads Mikkelsen does what he can with the villain, but we see so little of him, he joins Yellowjacket, Iron-Monger and Malekith (remember him?) in the category of, 'Well, they were knida interesting... Moving on.'
Similarly, Rachel McAdams gets to be little more than space-filler. There's chemistry; he rejects her; he needs her; they reconcile; she's gone. They do change things up slightly by not quite having the two get together (as if to say 'See, she's not really a love-interest! Aren't we original?'), but you could still replace her with Jane Foster and not notice the difference.
The action is also disappointing. Not that it's not imaginative and well executed, but it's shot so poorly. Scott Derrickson seems to have come from the same school of action directing as Paul Greengrass and the Russo brothers, thinking shoving the camera in an actor's ear and swishing it from side to side makes for an immersive set-piece, rather than a confusing blur of colourful nonsense. And it isn't helped by an over-reliance on CGI sets and models. Okay, when you're doing the Inception building-folding thing with an entire city, practical effects aren't really an option, but having a pair of actors brawl in an actually-rotating corridor was still far more impressive-looking than some green-screen wire-work and bandy-armed character models.
It also doesn't help that the action peaked with a mid-film confrontation, while the climactic fight was a much more brief, small-scale and uninteresting affair (and aesthetically reminiscent of Suicide Squad).
And though the final final face-off was a genuinely cool idea, the design of Dormammu, who should look something like this...
...was pants.
All that said, however, it's still good.
It's an almost frustrating trend with Marvel that even their somewhat throw-away films have plenty about them to enjoy, whether it be the action of Incredible Hulk or Iron-Man 2, or the character interaction and universe development of Thor: The Dark World. Even Age of Ultron, despite more-or-less being a retread of The Avengers, was packed with enough awesome that it didn't matter.
Doctor Strange, despite being part of the MCU, could probably be most closely compared to Green Lantern in terms of structure and unoriginality. But while Green Lantern lacked any semblance of effort, depth or excitement, Doctor Strange is what happens when you do all that same stuff (for the most part) well. The cast are invested, the action (what we can see of it) is imaginative and the writing's sharp.
As a rich, arrogant, goatee-wearing genius at the pinnacle of his field, it would be easy to shrug Stephen Strange off as a Tony Stark clone, but the similarities are superficial at worst, and Benedict Cumberbatch covers the journey from top-of-his-game to despair, to out-of-his-depth, to getting-the-hang-of-things comfortably, while also delivering on the humour and action. If there's one chink in his armour it's the accent. Hugh Laurie's in House may have taken some getting used, but at least it was consistent, and I otherwise can't think of a single example of an English actor struggling with an American accent. Cumberbatch's goes from passable to jarring, and even his weapons-grade cheek-bones couldn't distract from it.
As mentioned, Mikkelsen and McAdams are given very little to do, but they do it well, with both given a solid minute-and-a-half each to show some emotional depth, and even a couple of comedic moments.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is also a little short-changed, but he brings gravitas to what could have been a token side-kick, and offers just enough to hint at Mordo's inevitable (if you've read the comics) arc.
The biggest surprise for me was Tilda Swinton. Obviously she gives a good performance - she's one of those actors who apparently can't do otherwise - but I was among those who cried foul at the casting of a white actor as an Asian character. I'm not going to go into the whole white-washing debate here - Hollywood has a problem and it knows it does - but given the already lacking diversity among its heroes, this felt like a missed opportunity for Marvel to (at least in part) redress the balance. However, in a film so lacking in originality, there was something refreshing in the wise old sage being a (more or less) quite ordinary white English woman. It would have been easy to make the character the typical Dali Lama knock-off - all wisdom and enlightenment, with a touch of wise old wit - but instead The Ancient One is flawed, uncertain, occasionally vulnerable, and is shown to be mostly just doing their best. That's not to say the character shows all that because she's a woman, or that an older male or female Asian actor couldn't have portrayed all those things, but the character's gender and ethnicity helped subvert expectations and add something new. On top of that, Swinton is also given the opportunity to do a bit of arse-kicking, and managed that with aplomb.
I still feel they could've found a happy middle-ground by casting an Asian actress, but it wasn't as embarrassingly tenuous as I expected it to be.
Still, strong as the rest of the cast is, no-one steals a scene quite like Strange's cape - it reminded me of Carpet from Aladdin - and if there isn't at least one shot of it flirting with Thor's cape when the two inevitably meet, I'll be disappointed.
So, in summary, it's all business as usual for another MCU origin: strong cast playing mostly filler characters, a strong hero, strong action, and some interesting universe building.
And, I'm sorry to say, the old formula is showing its age: here's a snippet of your bad-guys; this is your good-guy with a lot to learn (boy-oh-boy, isn't he arrogant); here's his perfunctory love-interest; Look, Avengers Tower! Eegads, drama! Journey starts here, folks! Ooh, this one's about this stuff... Training. Struggle. Conflict. He's catching on... Midway fight! Now he has purpose. Now he's a badass! Climax! Ooh, sequel bait.
This being Avengers XIV: Quick, We Need Something New to Show! it's hardly surprising the strain is beginning to show Even with the introduction of magic and the multi-verse, we're given the same old beats; the same old leaning toward style over substance; the same old stock characters for our hero to bounce dialogue off of. And what's frustrating is they've already found new ways of tackling the origin story. Guardians of the Galaxy got away with it through humour, a brand new setting, and being about a team rather than a singular hero. And despite being about a team, the writing and performances were strong enough to convey the background and character of every player. Even Ronan the Accuser - typical flash-in-the-pan bad-guy that he was - benefited from a memorable design and performance, and having his stoicism contrasted against the 'hero's' general silliness.
Ant-Man too, though it followed the more established formula, managed to stand out by being on a much smaller, more intimate scale.
Unfortunately, Doctor Strange feels a lot like a return to the old. Mads Mikkelsen does what he can with the villain, but we see so little of him, he joins Yellowjacket, Iron-Monger and Malekith (remember him?) in the category of, 'Well, they were knida interesting... Moving on.'
Similarly, Rachel McAdams gets to be little more than space-filler. There's chemistry; he rejects her; he needs her; they reconcile; she's gone. They do change things up slightly by not quite having the two get together (as if to say 'See, she's not really a love-interest! Aren't we original?'), but you could still replace her with Jane Foster and not notice the difference.
The action is also disappointing. Not that it's not imaginative and well executed, but it's shot so poorly. Scott Derrickson seems to have come from the same school of action directing as Paul Greengrass and the Russo brothers, thinking shoving the camera in an actor's ear and swishing it from side to side makes for an immersive set-piece, rather than a confusing blur of colourful nonsense. And it isn't helped by an over-reliance on CGI sets and models. Okay, when you're doing the Inception building-folding thing with an entire city, practical effects aren't really an option, but having a pair of actors brawl in an actually-rotating corridor was still far more impressive-looking than some green-screen wire-work and bandy-armed character models.
It also doesn't help that the action peaked with a mid-film confrontation, while the climactic fight was a much more brief, small-scale and uninteresting affair (and aesthetically reminiscent of Suicide Squad).
And though the final final face-off was a genuinely cool idea, the design of Dormammu, who should look something like this...
...was pants.
All that said, however, it's still good.
It's an almost frustrating trend with Marvel that even their somewhat throw-away films have plenty about them to enjoy, whether it be the action of Incredible Hulk or Iron-Man 2, or the character interaction and universe development of Thor: The Dark World. Even Age of Ultron, despite more-or-less being a retread of The Avengers, was packed with enough awesome that it didn't matter.
Doctor Strange, despite being part of the MCU, could probably be most closely compared to Green Lantern in terms of structure and unoriginality. But while Green Lantern lacked any semblance of effort, depth or excitement, Doctor Strange is what happens when you do all that same stuff (for the most part) well. The cast are invested, the action (what we can see of it) is imaginative and the writing's sharp.
As a rich, arrogant, goatee-wearing genius at the pinnacle of his field, it would be easy to shrug Stephen Strange off as a Tony Stark clone, but the similarities are superficial at worst, and Benedict Cumberbatch covers the journey from top-of-his-game to despair, to out-of-his-depth, to getting-the-hang-of-things comfortably, while also delivering on the humour and action. If there's one chink in his armour it's the accent. Hugh Laurie's in House may have taken some getting used, but at least it was consistent, and I otherwise can't think of a single example of an English actor struggling with an American accent. Cumberbatch's goes from passable to jarring, and even his weapons-grade cheek-bones couldn't distract from it.
As mentioned, Mikkelsen and McAdams are given very little to do, but they do it well, with both given a solid minute-and-a-half each to show some emotional depth, and even a couple of comedic moments.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is also a little short-changed, but he brings gravitas to what could have been a token side-kick, and offers just enough to hint at Mordo's inevitable (if you've read the comics) arc.
The biggest surprise for me was Tilda Swinton. Obviously she gives a good performance - she's one of those actors who apparently can't do otherwise - but I was among those who cried foul at the casting of a white actor as an Asian character. I'm not going to go into the whole white-washing debate here - Hollywood has a problem and it knows it does - but given the already lacking diversity among its heroes, this felt like a missed opportunity for Marvel to (at least in part) redress the balance. However, in a film so lacking in originality, there was something refreshing in the wise old sage being a (more or less) quite ordinary white English woman. It would have been easy to make the character the typical Dali Lama knock-off - all wisdom and enlightenment, with a touch of wise old wit - but instead The Ancient One is flawed, uncertain, occasionally vulnerable, and is shown to be mostly just doing their best. That's not to say the character shows all that because she's a woman, or that an older male or female Asian actor couldn't have portrayed all those things, but the character's gender and ethnicity helped subvert expectations and add something new. On top of that, Swinton is also given the opportunity to do a bit of arse-kicking, and managed that with aplomb.
I still feel they could've found a happy middle-ground by casting an Asian actress, but it wasn't as embarrassingly tenuous as I expected it to be.
Still, strong as the rest of the cast is, no-one steals a scene quite like Strange's cape - it reminded me of Carpet from Aladdin - and if there isn't at least one shot of it flirting with Thor's cape when the two inevitably meet, I'll be disappointed.
So, in summary, it's all business as usual for another MCU origin: strong cast playing mostly filler characters, a strong hero, strong action, and some interesting universe building.
Monday, 24 October 2016
Lukewarm Cage
Hmm...
I find myself overall underwhelmed by Luke Cage: great characters in a dull story, with boring action and an at-times jarringly lazy script.
The supporting cast are great: diverse, unique, relatable and/or understandable. The bad-guys (and there are a few) are mostly nuanced, and with arcs, while the female good-guys are assertive, interesting and never in the damsel-in-distress role (one does need saving at one point, but it doesn't really count).
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Luke himself. Unlike the supporting cast - and more notably, unlike Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones before him - there's no agency about him. Everything he does he has to be pushed and prodded into doing (with the exception of a quick heist he does for the lols). He crumbles under the mildest pressure, shows little wit or imagination, and too often suffers from momentary idiocy syndrome when the plot requires him to.
At one point, he's about to pack up and leave town because of a mild threat, is told off for being a bitch by one of the series' intelligent characters, and decides, 'Oh, okay, guess I'll stay then'.
The action, when it happens, consists almost exclusively of him walking into a hail of bullets and throwing people around like a Kevlar Mr. T, and the one time we do get a fist-fight, it consists of the two characters trading blows like they're taking turns on a heavy-bag, while the crowd chants as if they're watching a crap Rocky knock-off.
It does have its moments (though they mostly come when Luke's off screen), and there is a polemic through-line reflecting the state of American politics and race-relations, but everything seems short-changed.
The first few episode hint at a character's racism, but that's forgotten before we're halfway through, it briefly tries its hand at being a police procedural, but the mystery is limp and quickly given up on, and the good ideas it does stick with tend to crop up in visual metaphor throughout the series, but are never explored in any depth.
There are good ideas beneath the surface, and the cast for the most part (particularly the bad-guys) are engaging, but this is easily the weakest of the MTVU so far.
I find myself overall underwhelmed by Luke Cage: great characters in a dull story, with boring action and an at-times jarringly lazy script.
At one point a character is called through a police line to be told 'You should stay back'... :/
The supporting cast are great: diverse, unique, relatable and/or understandable. The bad-guys (and there are a few) are mostly nuanced, and with arcs, while the female good-guys are assertive, interesting and never in the damsel-in-distress role (one does need saving at one point, but it doesn't really count).
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Luke himself. Unlike the supporting cast - and more notably, unlike Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones before him - there's no agency about him. Everything he does he has to be pushed and prodded into doing (with the exception of a quick heist he does for the lols). He crumbles under the mildest pressure, shows little wit or imagination, and too often suffers from momentary idiocy syndrome when the plot requires him to.
At one point, he's about to pack up and leave town because of a mild threat, is told off for being a bitch by one of the series' intelligent characters, and decides, 'Oh, okay, guess I'll stay then'.
The action, when it happens, consists almost exclusively of him walking into a hail of bullets and throwing people around like a Kevlar Mr. T, and the one time we do get a fist-fight, it consists of the two characters trading blows like they're taking turns on a heavy-bag, while the crowd chants as if they're watching a crap Rocky knock-off.
It does have its moments (though they mostly come when Luke's off screen), and there is a polemic through-line reflecting the state of American politics and race-relations, but everything seems short-changed.
The first few episode hint at a character's racism, but that's forgotten before we're halfway through, it briefly tries its hand at being a police procedural, but the mystery is limp and quickly given up on, and the good ideas it does stick with tend to crop up in visual metaphor throughout the series, but are never explored in any depth.
There are good ideas beneath the surface, and the cast for the most part (particularly the bad-guys) are engaging, but this is easily the weakest of the MTVU so far.
Too Broke to Better Myself
As may be apparent from previous posts, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by science as I’ve gotten older, and appreciative of its impact on our lives.
Our last significant evolutionary step was our increased capacity for intelligence, which contributed to a shift from physically adapting to our environment, to adapting our environment to us, and developing the ways and means to cope with environmental shifts: we made clothes and lit fires to protect us from the cold; made clubs and spears to help us ascend the food-chain; learned to cultivate the land to improve and broaden our access to food; erected shelters so we no longer had to rely on caves.
Unbound from a limited number of natural shelters and uncultivated food sources, we were able to spread far and wide, seeking out better land and better hunting grounds, and ultimately to diversify our species through interaction with those who’d developed elsewhere.
We navigated the oceans, the skies, and even space!
Our progression as a species is tied directly to the progression of our knowledge and understanding of our environment, and of the wider universe; and to study science is to be an active part of that progression.
It’s infuriating, therefore, that such a high barrier of entry is placed on studying anything in this country. Privileged scumbags, who had their education paid for by the rest of the country, decided this generation shouldn’t be granted such a free-ride, and so introduced tuition fees.
Even more privileged and scumbaggier scumbags (backed by a bunch of feckless, two-faced, ineffectual twerps) then decided the barriers weren’t quite high enough, and trebled said fees.
It’s a sad pattern that has been repeated throughout our history: those in charge doing what they can to ensure the continued ignorance of those beneath them; whether it be religious leaders persecuting anyone who dares question their sacred texts, or politicians distracting us with spectral enemies to shift focus from their own incompetencies and inadequacies, the stupider we are, the easier we are to manipulate, and the less likely to ask awkward questions.
The last thing any of them want is the expansion of knowledge and understanding, and their reluctance to allow it is made loud and clear by the (at least) £27,000 worth of debt they want every student lumbered with when they graduate.
And if, like me, you’ve already accumulated said debt, and no longer qualify for the loans, then any desire to return to studying can be put on the shelf of unlikelihood next to being debt-free, being a home-owner, and being an astronaut.
Between the ongoing work at CERN, the potential of the FAST and James Webb telescopes, and Elon Musk’s ever more ambitious plans, I should be more excited than ever about where we’re potentially headed as a species.
And I am, as far as I can be. But at the same time, it’s devastating not to be able to be a part of that progression.
Our last significant evolutionary step was our increased capacity for intelligence, which contributed to a shift from physically adapting to our environment, to adapting our environment to us, and developing the ways and means to cope with environmental shifts: we made clothes and lit fires to protect us from the cold; made clubs and spears to help us ascend the food-chain; learned to cultivate the land to improve and broaden our access to food; erected shelters so we no longer had to rely on caves.
Unbound from a limited number of natural shelters and uncultivated food sources, we were able to spread far and wide, seeking out better land and better hunting grounds, and ultimately to diversify our species through interaction with those who’d developed elsewhere.
We navigated the oceans, the skies, and even space!
Our progression as a species is tied directly to the progression of our knowledge and understanding of our environment, and of the wider universe; and to study science is to be an active part of that progression.
It’s infuriating, therefore, that such a high barrier of entry is placed on studying anything in this country. Privileged scumbags, who had their education paid for by the rest of the country, decided this generation shouldn’t be granted such a free-ride, and so introduced tuition fees.
Even more privileged and scumbaggier scumbags (backed by a bunch of feckless, two-faced, ineffectual twerps) then decided the barriers weren’t quite high enough, and trebled said fees.
It’s a sad pattern that has been repeated throughout our history: those in charge doing what they can to ensure the continued ignorance of those beneath them; whether it be religious leaders persecuting anyone who dares question their sacred texts, or politicians distracting us with spectral enemies to shift focus from their own incompetencies and inadequacies, the stupider we are, the easier we are to manipulate, and the less likely to ask awkward questions.
The last thing any of them want is the expansion of knowledge and understanding, and their reluctance to allow it is made loud and clear by the (at least) £27,000 worth of debt they want every student lumbered with when they graduate.
And if, like me, you’ve already accumulated said debt, and no longer qualify for the loans, then any desire to return to studying can be put on the shelf of unlikelihood next to being debt-free, being a home-owner, and being an astronaut.
Between the ongoing work at CERN, the potential of the FAST and James Webb telescopes, and Elon Musk’s ever more ambitious plans, I should be more excited than ever about where we’re potentially headed as a species.
And I am, as far as I can be. But at the same time, it’s devastating not to be able to be a part of that progression.
Tuesday, 27 September 2016
Harry Potter and the Redundant Exposition
Before I get into this, a couple of qualifiers: Firstly, I realise that I am not the target demographic for this series, and haven't been for a little over two decades; and secondly, I acknowledge these books were designed to be read with about a year between each, rather than hammering through the entire series in a couple of months.
However, them's the circumstances, so the best I can do is make you aware of that from the off.
And them's being the circumstances, my quick caption review of the original Harry Potter saga is...*pausefordramaticeffect*... It's alright.
In brief:
- Philosopher's Stone is good, but the ending sucks
- Chamber of Secrets is better, but only by merit of being Philosopher's Stone with a better ending
- Prisoner of Azkaban is the same again with a smattering of character development
- Goblet of Fire is the same again, only now stretched out to twice the length and with some forced character conflict. Though it does have some awesome bits
- Order of the Phoenix is where we're finally given something kinda new within the same old setting, but it is still just the same old setting, and things are really becoming a slog
- Half Blood Prince is, again, far too long, but it does feel like the over-arching plot is finally going somewhere, and the climax is fantastic
- Deathly Hallows wastes the awesome climax of Half Blood Prince by turning into a tedious camping trip for over half of its excessive length, but eventually turns the former's ending up to 11...irritatingly broken up with acres of exposition, then dying a death with a rubbish epilogue
A big issue I have with this entire series is the repetitiveness. While the over-arching plots in each book are different - and actually very interesting in their own right - their connective tissue is exactly the same for the first four volumes: Harry's having a shitty time with the Dursleys until he goes to Hogwarts; Malfoy's a stereotypical cartoon bully; Snape's a petty prick; Dumbledore's unnecessarily ambiguous; there's a bit of quidditch, some holiday celebrations, someone says Expelliarmus, Harry faces down a big bad, and everyone goes home for the summer.
Even Order of the Phoenix, despite the introduction of Delores Umbridge, can't help settling into the same old beats once she's established.
Each book reminds me of an American TV show: intriguing plots marred by tedious and repetitive sub-plots there purely for the sake of dragging out proceedings. In the first four books especially, there is maybe enough plot for two.
The characters are also problematic, mostly there to fill specific roles and enjoying zero development throughout the series. The elder Dursleys are a perfect example of this: introduced from the off as reluctant and abusive guardians, they fulfil exactly the same role in exactly the same way throughout the entire series. Dudley is the only one to enjoy any kind of development, but he gets so little page time, and is ejected from the story so abruptly, it's rendered moot.
Not all characters require development - McGonagall, for example, never wavers from her role as austere matriarch, but we're given enough glimpses of her underlying personality (especially during exchanges with Umbridge) that keep her interesting - but there are key characters throughout who supposedly have a huge impact on proceedings, but remain paper-thin.
Take James Potter: school bully, turned hero of The Order of the Phoenix. Why the personality shift? 'He grew out of it'. How'd he win over Lily? 'She saw something in him'. What did he do that was so heroic? 'Stuff'.
For those who do get a spot of fleshing out, any 'development' or back-story is generally withheld for Dumbledore's annual exposition dump in the final act, when we're asked to retroactively sympathise with and/or be horrified by a character's behaviour.
I feel none suffer this more than Snape. It's no spoiler at this point to say he risks life, limb and sanity in the course of spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore, attempting to atone for the guilt he feels over Lily Potter's death. Noble as that may be, it doesn't change the fact that he's a prick. For all his supposed love for Lily, it's evidently nothing compared to his loathing for her husband; a loathing so deep he projects it onto Harry, grudgingly protecting him when he has to, but otherwise going out of his way to make Lily's orphaned child's life a misery for six years.
That's not to say the character's necessarily bad - in fact he's quite entertaining, in a pantomime villain sort of way - I just struggle to reconcile the sympathy we're supposed to feel for him with the wilful arseholeishness he consistently demonstrates. Heroic as he may ultimately prove to be, for the most part he's a petty, prissy and vindictive man-child.
Though when it comes to unsympathetic characters, few hold a candle to Harry himself. Though he starts out wide-eyed and innocent, and his consistent mistakes can easily be put down to child-like naivety, by the time of Goblet of Fire it becomes apparent that he is immune to learning from his mistakes, and come Order of the Phoenix, it's difficult to see him as anything more than a thin-skinned, belligerent twat. And this is no way helped by the praise constantly being heaped upon him by half the Order, insisting he's intuitive, intelligent and brave, while he's acting like a prickly, ignorant, highly-strung dipshit. It might make for an accurate representation of a hormonal teenager, but a likeable protagonist he is not.
It would justify Snape's attitude towards him if Snape wasn't so petty in his attacks.
Fortunately. there are some strong characters amidst the weak. Ron and Hermione are a good double act, and despite what Rowling has said on the matter, I thought their relationship developed well. Ginny enjoys a solid arch from mute, love-struck ten year-old to boisterous, self-assured young woman with an adventurous and mischievous streak. Even Fred & George - the perennial pranksters - grow from childish japery, to savvy business men.
None, however, see quite the development of Neville Longbottom. From simpering mouse, to sword-wielding badass. From frightened little flower with a love of botany, to laughing off torture and attacking people with man-eating off-cuts. One second he's screaming in fiery anguish, and the next he's decapitating a giant snake.
"You think I've got time to stop and recover from all-consuming agony when there are still bitches to be spanked like an E.L. James heroine? What do I look like, some kind of girly-girl? I'm Neville Fucking Longbottom! I came here to chew bubblegum and to kick ass. And since I'm all out of bubblegum, the still beating hearts of my fallen enemies will have to do!"
Overall, I find myself frustrated with the series: The over-arching story isn't exactly original, but it is solidly handled in an at-the-time somewhat unique setting; and the plots of each novel are strong, and entertaining, when Rowling finally gets around to them. Unfortunately, there is far too much chaff to wade through to get properly invested in the stories, the strongest characters are sidelined in favour of unlikable gits, there's far too big a reliance on exposition to fill the gaping holes in the plot, and I haven't seen so slack and unsatisfactory an ending since Bioware's first swing at Mass Effect 3.
Saturday, 24 September 2016
I Don't Believe in Gravity...
In a previous post, I suggested the Big Bang may not have been the almighty universe-spawner it’s made out to be (if the universe did expand from a single point, wouldn’t it have done so in a uniform fashion, rather than bits of it clustering together to form galaxies and nebulae and whatnot?). For the latest episode of Bollocks My Scientifically Illiterate Brain Comes Up With During Its Downtime, I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t believe in gravity… Buckle up, kids!
As I said previously, such nonsense is not born from - or backed by - any cold, hard scientific knowledge; it is merely how I interpret what little I’ve picked up from what little I’ve read and watched on the subject. This particular theory spawned from an interview Prof. Brian Cox gave with Robert Lewellyn, when he mentioned massless particles are always moving at the speed of light. Not from any outside influence (unless one considers the (or a...) Big Bang the initial ‘push’); it’s simply what they do (28m22s):
(the whole thing’s worth watching)
One thing that has long bothered me in physics is how light appears to be affected by gravity. Light bends around planets, supposedly diverted off course by the planet’s gravitational pull, but if the strength of gravitational attraction is determined by mass, how can something massless be affected by it at all?
It depends on how you view gravity. The idea of gravity as an attracting force between objects of mass was initially (supposedly) put forward by Newton, and was the established view for centuries. Then Einstein came along:
So the fact that light is always moving means it isn’t attracted to the object at all; it just follows the curve of the object’s impression in the fabric of space-time.
This also helps answer another query: A black-hole is an object of such dense mass that even light can’t escape its ‘pull’. However, a black-hole is (at least initially) no more massive than the star that formed it - it’s simply more compact - so why is its gravitational pull apparently so much stronger, to the point that even light can’t escape? Stars come in a range of sizes, from those smaller than our own sun, to those that could swallow our entire solar system as an appetizer. And yet, no matter how big, all stars emit light, while, no matter how small, all black-holes swallow it.
Going back to the demonstration above, if you were to compact the weight in the centre of the sheet to a fraction of the size, it would sink just as deeply into the fabric (as it’s no lighter or heavier than it was), but the diameter of its impression would be smaller, and so its sides steeper. In terms of a black-hole, its mass is packed so tightly that the ‘sides’ of its impression become sheer. Therefore, regardless of how massive (or not) the core of the black-hole is, the shape of its impression on space-time causes anything caught in its ‘pull’ - no matter the speed it’s travelling, or its angle of approach - to be diverted directly to its centre.
But what about objects of mass themselves? They certainly appear to be attracted to each other, but are they really? What if, like light, everything in the universe is moving at its own pace, relative to its mass?
Well, everything is. Supermassive black-holes drift through the cosmos, orbited by stars, that are orbited by planets, that are orbited by satellites; the smaller objects moving at the speed of the larger, plus their own orbiting speed.
So, if everything from light to black-holes is moving at its own pace, and its path through the universe is only interrupted when it hits the space-time impression of another object, then where does gravity come into it?
It’s like a shadow. A shadow isn’t a tangible thing; it’s simply the effect of blocked light. It seems to me that gravity isn’t an attracting force at all; it merely describes an object’s interaction with another object’s space-time impression.
In the next episode: what if light is space-time?
As I said previously, such nonsense is not born from - or backed by - any cold, hard scientific knowledge; it is merely how I interpret what little I’ve picked up from what little I’ve read and watched on the subject. This particular theory spawned from an interview Prof. Brian Cox gave with Robert Lewellyn, when he mentioned massless particles are always moving at the speed of light. Not from any outside influence (unless one considers the (or a...) Big Bang the initial ‘push’); it’s simply what they do (28m22s):
(the whole thing’s worth watching)
One thing that has long bothered me in physics is how light appears to be affected by gravity. Light bends around planets, supposedly diverted off course by the planet’s gravitational pull, but if the strength of gravitational attraction is determined by mass, how can something massless be affected by it at all?
It depends on how you view gravity. The idea of gravity as an attracting force between objects of mass was initially (supposedly) put forward by Newton, and was the established view for centuries. Then Einstein came along:
So the fact that light is always moving means it isn’t attracted to the object at all; it just follows the curve of the object’s impression in the fabric of space-time.
This also helps answer another query: A black-hole is an object of such dense mass that even light can’t escape its ‘pull’. However, a black-hole is (at least initially) no more massive than the star that formed it - it’s simply more compact - so why is its gravitational pull apparently so much stronger, to the point that even light can’t escape? Stars come in a range of sizes, from those smaller than our own sun, to those that could swallow our entire solar system as an appetizer. And yet, no matter how big, all stars emit light, while, no matter how small, all black-holes swallow it.
Going back to the demonstration above, if you were to compact the weight in the centre of the sheet to a fraction of the size, it would sink just as deeply into the fabric (as it’s no lighter or heavier than it was), but the diameter of its impression would be smaller, and so its sides steeper. In terms of a black-hole, its mass is packed so tightly that the ‘sides’ of its impression become sheer. Therefore, regardless of how massive (or not) the core of the black-hole is, the shape of its impression on space-time causes anything caught in its ‘pull’ - no matter the speed it’s travelling, or its angle of approach - to be diverted directly to its centre.
But what about objects of mass themselves? They certainly appear to be attracted to each other, but are they really? What if, like light, everything in the universe is moving at its own pace, relative to its mass?
Well, everything is. Supermassive black-holes drift through the cosmos, orbited by stars, that are orbited by planets, that are orbited by satellites; the smaller objects moving at the speed of the larger, plus their own orbiting speed.
So, if everything from light to black-holes is moving at its own pace, and its path through the universe is only interrupted when it hits the space-time impression of another object, then where does gravity come into it?
It’s like a shadow. A shadow isn’t a tangible thing; it’s simply the effect of blocked light. It seems to me that gravity isn’t an attracting force at all; it merely describes an object’s interaction with another object’s space-time impression.
In the next episode: what if light is space-time?
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
A Somewhat Late-In-The-Day Review
Way back when, in a bygone age, when kids were doing normal kids' stuff, like playing Playstation and Gameboy, and trading Pokémon, a brand new craze was sweeping the nation in the form of these clumps of pocket-sized paper, bound in cardboard and full of words, that made sentences, that made paragraphs, pages, chapters and, when taken in their entirety, whole stories!
Many, including myself, saw it as a bit of a fad, but one of these clumps in particular caused it to catch on. It was about a scrawny little orphan with bad hair, living with his aunt and uncle, who finds out he's destined to be a great magician, and with the help of a doddery old man and a pair of companions - a stuck-up little princess a little more gung-ho than she seems, and a pragmatic boy just out for the easy life (though hiding a brave, loyal heart) - he takes on a powerful dark lord and ultimately triumphs through a mixture of ingenuity, luck and trusting in himself.
And that story was called Star Wars: A New Hope.
Or, at least, the remastered, cinematic release was: the papery version was titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (I assume for copyright reasons).
Two decades, a few more books, an entire film franchise, a theme park and now a stage production later (as well as a pound or two flooding the bank account of its author), and the thing is such a British institution, I figured it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about.
This isn't the first time I've picked up a Harry Potter. I did give it a try back when it was just becoming a thing, but I failed to get beyond the first two pages. When I was the target age for Potter, I was reading Roald Dahl, and I found Rowling's writing to be a bit too amateurish and patronising in comparison, but I was still a precocious, pretentious, high-strung teenager at the time, so what did I know?
Now that I'm a precocious, pretentious, high-strung adult, I find it easier to detach myself from those earlier misgivings and (paradoxically) appreciate her style for the audience it's aimed at. In that, I find myself wishing Rowling had picked up her pen ten years earlier, though I also question whether her, frankly, higher-brow stories would have distracted me from the whimsical ease of The Witches, The BFG, George's Marvellous Medicine and The Twits.
The big problem with reviewing this now, of course, is it is such a part of our social identity, it's impossible to view it through the eyes of someone introduced to this world for the first time. The Hogwarts Express left me at the station, with my nose in a copy of The Hobbit, long ago, and I've only ever been aware of it on the periphery; observing its growing popularity, cultural integration, and critical and public acclaim as one would the impact of the Tomb Raider franchise from the perspective of someone who believes entertainment peeked around the time of E.T., and even I was well aware of what 'Muggle', 'Golden Snitch' and 'The Boy Who Lived' meant.
Still, outside of someone twice my age, who thinks fantasy's for five year-olds, I'm about as detached and objective as it gets, so here goes...
It's rather good.
I'm not going to bother regurgitating the plot as those who don't already know are either too young to be reading this (go to bed!), too old to care or haven't yet evolved far enough up the ladder to understand the concept of language; suffice to say, these days at least, it isn't particularly original. However, it is worth noting that, back in 1997, the concept of a child of destiny taken from his mundane, everyday existence to learn about his true power at a school for other gifted youngsters was a tad rare (lest it was run by a bald, crippled mind-reader with severe split-personality issues).
The writing itself is breezy and whimsical, though while clearly aimed mainly at 8-12 year-olds, there's enough colour, depth and darkness to engage older readers. It moves at a good pace, has enough twists to keep the narrative involving, and is set in a well-constructed universe just close enough to reality to be relatable, while still incorporating every fantasy trope under the sun. In fact, one of the biggest strengths of the novel is how many of these tropes are effortlessly subverted by their mere presence in this particular world; whether it be giants getting tipsy with goblins in their favourite local, or the arrival of ancient, mystical centaurs getting on a character's nerves because they're too distracted by the state of the planets to answer a simple question.
What I found most surprising was how well the ending worked. It has been many years since I watched the film, and I wasn't particularly engaged with it when I did, but I do remember the ending encompassing all of my worst fears about the franchise.
*SPOILER ALERT* (for the ancient cave dwellers among you who might not know)
After going through a bunch of trials to reach the final confrontation, Harry looks in a mirror, finds he actually has the plot's MacGuffin in his pocket, and the bad-guy dissolves on contact with our 'hero' because of his love for his parents.
Blech!
I found it so sickeningly saccharine and toothless, any vague interest that may have lingered to see how this thing played itself out was wiped clean from my mind.
I can't say whether my reaction was due to my already dismissive attitude and fleeting interest at the time, or simply poor film-making (I'd have to re-watch it to find out), but I found that same ending as played out in the book far more satisfying. As far as I recall, the final confrontation in the book is far more drawn-out and graphic than it was in the film, ramping up the excitement, as well as giving a stronger sense of catharsis when it was all over. And Dumbledore's explanation for why everything played out as it did seemed to make more sense, and didn't feel at all (or as much) like a Dues Ex Machina ending, as the film's did.
My one concern about the series going forward is the length of each subsequent novel. Philosopher's Stone was a good length; packed with plenty of goings on, without feeling bloated or outstaying its welcome. Before the series reaches its conclusion, the individual novels grow to Lord of the Rings scale, and I struggle to imagine these characters engaging me for so long a stretch in a single story.
Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed book 1, so I now head into the rest of the series with an open mind.
Many, including myself, saw it as a bit of a fad, but one of these clumps in particular caused it to catch on. It was about a scrawny little orphan with bad hair, living with his aunt and uncle, who finds out he's destined to be a great magician, and with the help of a doddery old man and a pair of companions - a stuck-up little princess a little more gung-ho than she seems, and a pragmatic boy just out for the easy life (though hiding a brave, loyal heart) - he takes on a powerful dark lord and ultimately triumphs through a mixture of ingenuity, luck and trusting in himself.
And that story was called Star Wars: A New Hope.
Or, at least, the remastered, cinematic release was: the papery version was titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (I assume for copyright reasons).
Two decades, a few more books, an entire film franchise, a theme park and now a stage production later (as well as a pound or two flooding the bank account of its author), and the thing is such a British institution, I figured it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about.
This isn't the first time I've picked up a Harry Potter. I did give it a try back when it was just becoming a thing, but I failed to get beyond the first two pages. When I was the target age for Potter, I was reading Roald Dahl, and I found Rowling's writing to be a bit too amateurish and patronising in comparison, but I was still a precocious, pretentious, high-strung teenager at the time, so what did I know?
Now that I'm a precocious, pretentious, high-strung adult, I find it easier to detach myself from those earlier misgivings and (paradoxically) appreciate her style for the audience it's aimed at. In that, I find myself wishing Rowling had picked up her pen ten years earlier, though I also question whether her, frankly, higher-brow stories would have distracted me from the whimsical ease of The Witches, The BFG, George's Marvellous Medicine and The Twits.
The big problem with reviewing this now, of course, is it is such a part of our social identity, it's impossible to view it through the eyes of someone introduced to this world for the first time. The Hogwarts Express left me at the station, with my nose in a copy of The Hobbit, long ago, and I've only ever been aware of it on the periphery; observing its growing popularity, cultural integration, and critical and public acclaim as one would the impact of the Tomb Raider franchise from the perspective of someone who believes entertainment peeked around the time of E.T., and even I was well aware of what 'Muggle', 'Golden Snitch' and 'The Boy Who Lived' meant.
Still, outside of someone twice my age, who thinks fantasy's for five year-olds, I'm about as detached and objective as it gets, so here goes...
It's rather good.
I'm not going to bother regurgitating the plot as those who don't already know are either too young to be reading this (go to bed!), too old to care or haven't yet evolved far enough up the ladder to understand the concept of language; suffice to say, these days at least, it isn't particularly original. However, it is worth noting that, back in 1997, the concept of a child of destiny taken from his mundane, everyday existence to learn about his true power at a school for other gifted youngsters was a tad rare (lest it was run by a bald, crippled mind-reader with severe split-personality issues).
The writing itself is breezy and whimsical, though while clearly aimed mainly at 8-12 year-olds, there's enough colour, depth and darkness to engage older readers. It moves at a good pace, has enough twists to keep the narrative involving, and is set in a well-constructed universe just close enough to reality to be relatable, while still incorporating every fantasy trope under the sun. In fact, one of the biggest strengths of the novel is how many of these tropes are effortlessly subverted by their mere presence in this particular world; whether it be giants getting tipsy with goblins in their favourite local, or the arrival of ancient, mystical centaurs getting on a character's nerves because they're too distracted by the state of the planets to answer a simple question.
What I found most surprising was how well the ending worked. It has been many years since I watched the film, and I wasn't particularly engaged with it when I did, but I do remember the ending encompassing all of my worst fears about the franchise.
*SPOILER ALERT* (for the ancient cave dwellers among you who might not know)
After going through a bunch of trials to reach the final confrontation, Harry looks in a mirror, finds he actually has the plot's MacGuffin in his pocket, and the bad-guy dissolves on contact with our 'hero' because of his love for his parents.
Blech!
I found it so sickeningly saccharine and toothless, any vague interest that may have lingered to see how this thing played itself out was wiped clean from my mind.
I can't say whether my reaction was due to my already dismissive attitude and fleeting interest at the time, or simply poor film-making (I'd have to re-watch it to find out), but I found that same ending as played out in the book far more satisfying. As far as I recall, the final confrontation in the book is far more drawn-out and graphic than it was in the film, ramping up the excitement, as well as giving a stronger sense of catharsis when it was all over. And Dumbledore's explanation for why everything played out as it did seemed to make more sense, and didn't feel at all (or as much) like a Dues Ex Machina ending, as the film's did.
My one concern about the series going forward is the length of each subsequent novel. Philosopher's Stone was a good length; packed with plenty of goings on, without feeling bloated or outstaying its welcome. Before the series reaches its conclusion, the individual novels grow to Lord of the Rings scale, and I struggle to imagine these characters engaging me for so long a stretch in a single story.
Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed book 1, so I now head into the rest of the series with an open mind.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Hate to Say I Told You So
It has been well established by now by every review out there - whether positive or negative (and I’ve seen plenty of both) - that Suicide Squad is a mess. Personally, I had fun with it, but the issues are far too jarring for me to recommend it, or argue with anyone who thought it was utter dog-shit.
The issues are glaring from the off, with the film opening with not one, but two scenes of Amanda Waller explaining her plan to a room of military officials; with the first interspersed with a few quick character bios almost as clumsy and forced as Batman’s Justice League email in BvS. The trailer featured a line from Rick Flag describing the characters - “Shoots people; burns people; eats people… Crazy person” - that does a far better job of establishing the characters than the opening ten minutes of the actual film.
This clumsiness is prevalent throughout film, with poorly placed and repetitive flashbacks, nonsensical character beats there purely for the sake of plot movement, lazy exposition, terrible pacing...and so on (it’s like a bad Arrow episode).
The list of problems is long and, as I said, already well-established, but I’d like to highlight one in particular. It’s something I’ve previously mentioned, that I’ve been concerned about since the film was first announced, and a prime example of which we saw in BvS: Who are these people?
Way back in the days when The Dark Knight had just been released, and Marvel’s Avengers experiment was just starting to come together, Warner Bros. announced they would be making a Justice League movie: not kicking off a Justice League cinematic universe - establishing the characters and the world they inhabit - but jumping straight in with Justice League, complete with new versions of all your favourite characters.
It was a terrible idea, and it wasn’t long before internet backlash seemingly made WB see sense, shelve the project and instead allow Christopher Nolan to finish off his Dark Knight trilogy, before bringing him on to oversee a new Superman film that would set the stage for the rest of the Justice League, just as Iron Man did for the Avengers.
Unfortunately, under the hamfisted fan-boy direction of Zack Snyder - that had served him and us surprisingly well on Watchman and 300 - Man of Steel was a dour, tedious, inconsistent, underwhelming mess.
Rather than scratch this off as a false start and hope for better from new Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman origins, WB panicked and jumped straight ahead with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
And we all know how that turned out.
One of the few highlights (and possibly the biggest surprise) of BvS was Ben Affleck as Batman - contrary to fan-boy fears the world over (including my own), he proved a good fit for the roles - but that didn’t mean the character himself wasn’t weakly established and poorly represented. This was a bitter, angry Batman, pushing his violent nature to the extreme, to the point of no longer caring whether he kills. In one scene, we’re shown a Robin suit, apparently graffitied by the Joker, suggesting Batman’s anger and bitterness stem from the death of the Boy Wonder, as in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns - an idea confirmed (to some extent) by the presence of the anti-Superman Batsuit from said book - but even in that, when Batman is at his most detached, desperate and willfully violent, he never crosses that line.
Not that you can’t have Batman killing people - if anything, showing the Dark Knight pushed over the edge to a point where he’s perfectly willing to break his one golden rule is an interesting piece of character development - but the issue in BvS is it is not shown. Yes, we’re given a glimpse of the reason behind his mindset, but how much did that event really change him? Has this always been a more violent Batman? Was he closer to Tim Burton’s version, Joel Schumacher’s or Christopher Nolan’s? Did Robin’s apparent death push him just an inch too far, or completely flip his personality?
The same is true for every character in Suicide Squad. Amanda Waller calls them ‘The worst of the worst’, but that doesn’t hold up. All we see of them in the movie is Deadshot is an assassin-for-hire who loves his daughter, and never kills women or children, Killer Croc lives in the sewers, and seemingly only attacks people who attack him, El Diablo is a pacifist,Captain Boomerang is a bank robber and Harley Quinn is a mentally-ill gymnast with Stockholm syndrome. Hardly the worst humanity has to offer.
In fact, other than Enchantress - an evil spirit awakened from a 2,000 year imprisonment, so understanderbly miffed - the only character who truly shows themselves to be a cold, calculating sociopath is Waller.
The most glaring example of this lack of background, however, is Jared Leto’s much-touted Joker. After all of the behind-the-scenes reports of how scarily ‘method’ he got with the role, the Joker’s entire on-screen character is that of a violent, but strategic gang boss with a weird growl and an obsession with Quinn. The elements are all there for this to be an interesting new take on the character - how did he establish himself? what’s he done to earn his reputation? why is he so obsessed with Quinn far beyond the simple pleasure the character’s previously taken in having a loyal attractive pet around to play with and abuse as he fancies? - but we get none of this, and as a result, he’s little more than a caricature.
Leto has stated that a lot of his scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor, but no matter what’s in them, I struggle to see how a few deleted scenes would cover the gaping holes in the character.
Again, this isn’t just an issue with Suicide Squad. We’re now three movies into the DC Cinematic Universe, and the only character with a true origin story is the one character who, not only everyone knows - comic-book fan or not - but whose entire character relies on being consistent and immovable. In other words, the only character in this whole enterprise who doesn’t need an origin story.*
*I realise we also get Batman’s (wholly unnecessary by now) origin story, but that’s just
why he became Batman, not what turned him into this version of Batman.
In WB’s rush to catch up with Marvel, they’ve completely missed what has made the MCU so successful: namely the balance struck between staying true to the characters’ comic-book origins, while making them accessible enough to a new, cinema-going audience.
That said, at least Suicide Squad has added a sorely-lacking element of fun to the franchise.
Monday, 25 July 2016
Teetotality and Transitions both Terrible and Tremendous
By the balmy bloated ball-sack of Beelzebub, it's been warm!
Rather difficult to concentrate on any form of work or writing when the inescapable heat is causing one's head to throb like the temple vein of an anxiety sufferer caught stripping by their in-laws.
Fortunately, clouds have returned to our scorching British skies, so let's talk cinema.
Absolutely Fabulous (on the slim off-chance you don't know) was a truly inspired show of the nineties and naughties that saw Jennifer Saunders as Edi, a middle-aged woman-child, getting up to all kinds of slapstick debauchery with her best friend, Patsy; a drunken fag-hag and relentless cougar played to gut-busting perfection by Joanna Lumley. At its best, it was awesome: slick, sharp, acerbic, well observed, geniusly performed by main and supporting cast alike, and with a hit-rate Morcombe & Wise would've been proud of.
Alas it does not translate to the big screen.
To be honest, the show has been flagging for years, since it ran its course over three or four series, before the set-up got tired and attempts to keep it fresh - mostly in the form of cameo-ridden specials - got desperate, but even the last brief TV run had its charm. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the feature-length format: the comic timing's off, set-ups are lazy, too obviously telegraphed and/or lacking in pay-off, the characters - always the driving force of the show - have become obnoxious to the point of being insufferable, and the only thing about the whole affair that works - and will always work - is Lumley (because, let's face it, how ever shoddy everything else might get, Patsy is one of the all-time great comedic creations, and will never cease to be magnificent).
Happily, something that did translate well to the big screen was The BFG!
The BFG was by no means the first of the 'spunky little orphan taken on a mystical adventure by a fantastical being' genre, but it remains one of the all-time greats and most beloved, so it was always going to be a risk.
Riskier still in the fact that not a lot happens in the story: it's essentially about the friendship of a little girl and an doddery old man, and what thrills there are mostly don't come until the very end. As a book, this wasn't much of an issue due to the brilliance of Roald Dahl's writing: his wit and whimsy kept readers hooked, regardless of what was (or wasn't) happening, and managed to be perfect for a pre-teen audience, without ever being patronising to older readers.
Without this luxury on film, even a colourful whimsical setting, and the presence of giants, will only get you so far. A slow-burn character piece - regardless of setting - must be carried entirely by the cast: in this case, Mark Rylance - seasoned veteran of stage and screen - and Ruby Barnhill - a twelve year-old girl.
Even as a Shakespeare vet., Rylance can't have had an easy time of it, not only having to spend much of his time reacting to nothing but a ball on a stick, but having to deliver an almost alien language and speech pattern as if he'd been using it for millennia. And it would have been all for nought, of course, if he'd been playing against a bland, obnoxious and/or unconvincing Sophie.
Fortunately, they are both superb; with Rylnace both funny and forlorn; wise, yet oblivious; and Barnhill mixing child-like wonder with a far-beyond-her-years maturity that at no point felt fake or forced.
Couple that with some seamless CGI, an entertaining and colourful supporting cast and Steven Spielberg bringing his '80's A-game, and you get something that had Rhiannon - a devotee of the story in her youth - weeping tears of joy for the best part of two hours.
In other movie news, DC have released a couple of trailers, and, boy, has the reaction to the miserable dross they vomited up a few months back put the shits up them!
First, Wonder Woman:
Along with Batfleck, Gal Gadot was one of the pleasant surprises of BvS. When she was cast, all I'd seen her in was the Fast and Furious films, where she appeared to lack the muscle mass to lift a tooth-pick. For her to not only turn up in BvS looking the part, but be the only one of the 'holy trinity' to show some balls against the Incredible Doom Troll was almost as welcome a surprise as the former Mr. JLo's turn as Bruce Wayne.
Her solo outing - by evidence of the trailer, at least - looks to build on the badassery, not just in terms of kicking arse, but in the character's attitude and the way she caries herself.
My one concern is how long that final moment with the secretary is drawn out, but I'll get to that in a sec...
I will say from the off that, yes, this does look better than Dawn of Justice - the new Flash is funny, Mamoa looks like an interesting Aquaman, and DK appears to be less of a right-wing douche - but I have some serious concerns about this 'footage'.
The first is the same concern I have with Suicide Squad:
Who are these people?
Okay, I know who they all are, and anyone who doesn't can look them up on Wikipedia, but this is the first cinematic outing for most of these characters, and brand new interpretations of others, yet we're supposed to care about a history that will likely be dumped on us in exposition.
Whether it be Flash and Cyborg, or Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang, we're being shown these characters for the very first time (BvS's bullshit flash-drive preview does not count) and are expected to give a rat's hairy left bollock about their thoughts, feelings and motivations.
My other concern is the same I have with the end of the Wonder Woman trailer: there is an emphasis on humour (yes, there is in the Suicide Squad trailer, too, but at least there it doesn't feel out of place).
Don't get me wrong, after the previous two outings, this series is clamouring for some levity, but there's a desperation in how hard they're pushing it here, as if WB, in their typical accountancy approach, has looked at Rotten Tomatoes and said:
"Jokes! We need more jokes!"
"How many more jokes?"
"Well, we're averaging 46%, so 54% more jokes!"
It reminds me of Microsoft's furious back-peddling following their horrific pre-release promotion of the Xbone.
Again, the trailers don't look bad, I just have concerns about WB trying too hard and heading too far the other way.
In other non-movie news, I'm off the booze for a while. It's been apparent for some time that I drink too regularly, but I generally don't binge. On Saturday, however, I purposefully only wanted to have a few, but then mixed that with too much wine, and realised afterwards that I am rubbish at restraining myself after a certain point (you can see it in my gut). So, I'm giving it a rest for a while.
Until Halloween, in fact (save for a friend's birthday in September).
Wish me luck!
(I'm gonna need it)
Alas it does not translate to the big screen.
To be honest, the show has been flagging for years, since it ran its course over three or four series, before the set-up got tired and attempts to keep it fresh - mostly in the form of cameo-ridden specials - got desperate, but even the last brief TV run had its charm. Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the feature-length format: the comic timing's off, set-ups are lazy, too obviously telegraphed and/or lacking in pay-off, the characters - always the driving force of the show - have become obnoxious to the point of being insufferable, and the only thing about the whole affair that works - and will always work - is Lumley (because, let's face it, how ever shoddy everything else might get, Patsy is one of the all-time great comedic creations, and will never cease to be magnificent).
Happily, something that did translate well to the big screen was The BFG!
The BFG was by no means the first of the 'spunky little orphan taken on a mystical adventure by a fantastical being' genre, but it remains one of the all-time greats and most beloved, so it was always going to be a risk.
Riskier still in the fact that not a lot happens in the story: it's essentially about the friendship of a little girl and an doddery old man, and what thrills there are mostly don't come until the very end. As a book, this wasn't much of an issue due to the brilliance of Roald Dahl's writing: his wit and whimsy kept readers hooked, regardless of what was (or wasn't) happening, and managed to be perfect for a pre-teen audience, without ever being patronising to older readers.
Without this luxury on film, even a colourful whimsical setting, and the presence of giants, will only get you so far. A slow-burn character piece - regardless of setting - must be carried entirely by the cast: in this case, Mark Rylance - seasoned veteran of stage and screen - and Ruby Barnhill - a twelve year-old girl.
Even as a Shakespeare vet., Rylance can't have had an easy time of it, not only having to spend much of his time reacting to nothing but a ball on a stick, but having to deliver an almost alien language and speech pattern as if he'd been using it for millennia. And it would have been all for nought, of course, if he'd been playing against a bland, obnoxious and/or unconvincing Sophie.
Fortunately, they are both superb; with Rylnace both funny and forlorn; wise, yet oblivious; and Barnhill mixing child-like wonder with a far-beyond-her-years maturity that at no point felt fake or forced.
Couple that with some seamless CGI, an entertaining and colourful supporting cast and Steven Spielberg bringing his '80's A-game, and you get something that had Rhiannon - a devotee of the story in her youth - weeping tears of joy for the best part of two hours.
In other movie news, DC have released a couple of trailers, and, boy, has the reaction to the miserable dross they vomited up a few months back put the shits up them!
First, Wonder Woman:
Along with Batfleck, Gal Gadot was one of the pleasant surprises of BvS. When she was cast, all I'd seen her in was the Fast and Furious films, where she appeared to lack the muscle mass to lift a tooth-pick. For her to not only turn up in BvS looking the part, but be the only one of the 'holy trinity' to show some balls against the Incredible Doom Troll was almost as welcome a surprise as the former Mr. JLo's turn as Bruce Wayne.
Her solo outing - by evidence of the trailer, at least - looks to build on the badassery, not just in terms of kicking arse, but in the character's attitude and the way she caries herself.
My one concern is how long that final moment with the secretary is drawn out, but I'll get to that in a sec...
I will say from the off that, yes, this does look better than Dawn of Justice - the new Flash is funny, Mamoa looks like an interesting Aquaman, and DK appears to be less of a right-wing douche - but I have some serious concerns about this 'footage'.
The first is the same concern I have with Suicide Squad:
Who are these people?
Okay, I know who they all are, and anyone who doesn't can look them up on Wikipedia, but this is the first cinematic outing for most of these characters, and brand new interpretations of others, yet we're supposed to care about a history that will likely be dumped on us in exposition.
Whether it be Flash and Cyborg, or Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang, we're being shown these characters for the very first time (BvS's bullshit flash-drive preview does not count) and are expected to give a rat's hairy left bollock about their thoughts, feelings and motivations.
My other concern is the same I have with the end of the Wonder Woman trailer: there is an emphasis on humour (yes, there is in the Suicide Squad trailer, too, but at least there it doesn't feel out of place).
Don't get me wrong, after the previous two outings, this series is clamouring for some levity, but there's a desperation in how hard they're pushing it here, as if WB, in their typical accountancy approach, has looked at Rotten Tomatoes and said:
"Jokes! We need more jokes!"
"How many more jokes?"
"Well, we're averaging 46%, so 54% more jokes!"
It reminds me of Microsoft's furious back-peddling following their horrific pre-release promotion of the Xbone.
Again, the trailers don't look bad, I just have concerns about WB trying too hard and heading too far the other way.
In other non-movie news, I'm off the booze for a while. It's been apparent for some time that I drink too regularly, but I generally don't binge. On Saturday, however, I purposefully only wanted to have a few, but then mixed that with too much wine, and realised afterwards that I am rubbish at restraining myself after a certain point (you can see it in my gut). So, I'm giving it a rest for a while.
Until Halloween, in fact (save for a friend's birthday in September).
Wish me luck!
(I'm gonna need it)
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