Isn't it a Wonder

Wonder Woman isn't crap!

*cheering*

Better still, while given DC's run so far, not being crap is an achievement in itself, this goes the extra mile and is actually good!

Not great (as several reviews have been rating it), but while not one of its compatriots is good enough to be ranked alongside even the worst of the MCU so far, Wonder Woman sits comfortably up there with Iron Man, Thor and Doctor Strange, and is certainly better than The Incredible Hulk and The Dark World.

The cast is bang-on.  I balked at the announcement of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, as I'd only seen her in the Fast and Furious franchise, in which she was about as Amazonian as a willow tree:

She is now literally twice the woman she was

Hopes were raised when a mid-training pic was released, and she'd already bulked significantly, and when BvS finally rolled around, she proved to be an island of awesome in a sea of regurgitated pigswill.

And Wonder Woman shows she doesn't just shine by comparison to a dreary mound of bilge, but can carry an entire, enjoyable film, portraying strength and naivety, humour and pain, and convincingly kicking a significant amount of arse.

Chris Pine, too, shines in his sidekick/romantic interest roll, that manages to be more than you might expect from those things.  Steve Trevor has passion, wit and agency, and while the romance is a little rushed, there is chemistry between the two leads.

The supporting cast - from the residents of Themyscira to Steve's eclectic entourage - are also strong, and the whole ensemble interacts well, though as a result, it's a shame we won't get to see any of these characters again.  The DCEU could do with some likable supporting characters outside of the super-humans to flesh things out.

Unfortunately, the film is not without its (sometimes significant) issues; most of which are now staples of the DCEU.  While Wonder Woman is a lot sunnier and more colourful than previous entries, there is still overuse of a high-contrast filter that makes everything look garish, and makes any special effects scenes - whether they be using CGI or blue-screen - look amateurish.

A particular scene early on, that shows Steve Trevor bombing a weapons factory, is cringe worthy.

Speaking of special effects, it's refreshing to see CGI used so sparingly.  But when it is used, it's terrible, most notably in the climactic battle that devolves into the same muddled, phony, crappy-video-game-cut-scene mess that we suffered through in the previous two films.

The pacing is also off.  The opening 20 minutes is one long, boring exposition dump (albeit broken up by a decent battle on a beach).  The whole thing could've been done with a two-minute voice-over, interspersed with footage of Diana's training, and hints that she's not like the rest of her people.  You then have the beach battle, quick catch-up on the War, and off she goes to save the world.

That, or you spend more time on Themyscira, properly developing the characters and back-story, and showing instead of telling, rather than rushing through it like a history lecture even the teacher doesn't want to sit through.

Fortunately, once they're off the island, things pick up.  The interaction between our leads is playful, and humorously awkward, Gadot's wide-eyed, fish-out-of-water - yet smartest person in the room - routine is perfectly pitched, and there's plenty of fun to be had with Steve's secretary, Etta, played by the always brilliant, but unrecognisable (until I just looked her up on IMDB to see who it was) Lucy Davis.

One of those Oh yeah, it's her from that thing... actresses

Then it's off to war, and it's here where the film really rises up.  In the comics, Wonder Woman's origin was set during World War II, and she spent much of her time - like many super-heroes of the era - punching Nazis in the name of freedom.

The film, however, is set during World War I, where the 'bad guys' could not be so clearly defined.  This means that, not only could they show Diana's innocence being torn to shreds by the horrors of war - and it very much is in a couple of particularly effecting scenes - but also her naivety about good vs. evil, and man's capacity for both, how ever noble or well-intentioned they may be.

Things do slow down again, after a tremendous battle that stretches from No-Mans Land to an occupied village, but not for long, and not without purpose.

Alas, this being a DC film, the great cast, enjoyable characters and depth of writing can't save it from the clumsy, childish hand of Warner Bros. execs.  Now, I don't know for certain that it was they who demanded yet another CGI shit-fest for the climax, but it reeks of the same studio intervening I smell at the end of both Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad.  And as all three films have had different writing and and directing teams, it's a safe bet that these ill-thought-out, unconvincingly explosive finales are corporately mandated.

While occasionally imaginative, it's slow, distractingly fake, often difficult to follow (thank Christ we didn't see this in 3D), and has a few slow-down moments meant to emphasise some kind of inner-turmoil, or big crescendo, but evoke only an eye-roll at dragging out the tedium.

It doesn't ruin the film, by any means, and the ending does have its brave, heartfelt and well-executed moments, but it does lessen what could have been a strong, poignant climax.

Wonder Woman shows that DC still has a lot bugs in its formula it needs to iron out, but it's a confident stride in the right direction.  Let's just hope things don't regress with Justice League (at least the trailer has jokes).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Filler

Agents of SHIELD is apparently tanking in the States, thanks to an already flagging viewership, causing its creators to sideline interesting plot in favour of uninteresting relationships in an attempt to at least hold on to the lowest common denominator, thus ensuring numbers flag further.

Full disclosure at this point: this is another post inspired by ol' MovieBob (but isn't all about this):



It's a shame because, slow as it was to start, I still enjoyed season 1 from the get-go thanks to the characters and general set-up. Once it really got going and went all-out in season 2, it was genuinely great, and I was excited to see where it all went in season 3 (though because I live in the UK, and didn't realise till last week it was on E4, I've been awaiting the opportunity to binge it elsewhere).

That said, I was perhaps fortunate in the fact I watched it on Netflix: I didn't have to wait a week at a time to see the overarching plot slowly develop amidst all of the slow, less interesting stuff. This is yet another in a long line of American series that are far too long. 24, Lost, Arrow, Dexter, House, Breaking Bad, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer: in the best of them, the characters and eagerness to see the plot develop keep you hooked, even during the many filler episodes, while the worst of them are an endurance test, if you stick with them at all (looking at you, Heroes).

I get it: the whole point of a 'season' is that it runs for a season, and there's less pressure on the various networks to keep coming up with new things to fill the airwaves, but when was the last time any show had enough plot to remain interesting over its entire 24 episode run? Even season 2 of Daredevil had to pad its run-time with the tedious and ill-conceived Elektra stuff, and that was only 13 episodes!

And the issue extends beyond drawing out a potentially interesting narrative until it becomes too thin for a Michael Bay movie. Though there's less pressure on the networks themselves, there's a lot more on the shows' creators to keep things interesting, and if interest flags just a bit, then the network will be less willing to commit another 24 weeks of scheduling to a follow-up season.

I'm not saying American shows should go the way of British shows, that only stick around for 6 episodes a year (or 3 every 2 years, in the case of Sherlock), but there's surely a happy medium.  

Take Game of Thrones: while not without filler (how many people watched the first 3 seasons eager to see what happened next to Sansa?), nor is it long enough to out-stay its welcome. At only 10 episodes a season, it's required by design to stay on point, without too often meandering into needless sub-plots (Dorn notwithstanding), or pulling the inane trick of having characters act completely out of character just to create conflict and drag a small idea out to a whole episode (Dear Arrow, there's a big difference between layering or evolving a character, and having them randomly act like a douche just to force an artificial epiphany later in the episode).

Another advantage is it opens up the schedule to more shows. How many ideas fall by the wayside because networks are handing out 24-week slots, rather than 10 or 12? How many shows could have been given a second chance? How many shows wouldn't have seen a dramatic drop-off if they weren't dragging on for the better part of 6 months?

Civil War

When it was first announced that the Russo Brothers were being handed Avengers: Infinity War, I was a tad worried. Yes, Winter Soldier was awesome - one of the best Marvel films up to that point - but their inability to frame an action scene and KEEP THE SMEGGING CAMERA STILL put them in my bad books, and I envisaged big, explosive, overblown action scenes with Transformers level clarity. 

Civil War has put those fears to rest (and not just because they apparently bought each other steady-cams for Christmas). 

Every character is as well-played as they've always been. After 12 of these things, that's hardly surprising - I think RDJ's been playing Iron Man about as long as June Brown was Dot Cotton - but the level of performance extends to the recent additions. Paul Rudd is having as much fun playing Ant Man as his character is meeting Steve Rogers, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Betany have more chemistry after 2 minutes on screen together than Ed Norton and Liv Tyler manager through the entirety of Incredible Hulk (did you even remember they were in that?), I cannot wait for the Black Panther film, and Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man... 

Sam Raimi directed 3 Spider-Man films: one good, one great and...another one. Marc Webb directed 2 Spider-Man films, and we're all trying to forget (especially Sony). The Russo Brothers directed 5 Spider-Man minutes and I'd take watching them on a two-hour loop over watching four out of five of the previous films. 

But, for me, the most notable thing about Civil War is that it clocks in at just under two and a half hours; about the same length as Batman v Superman. The difference is that, while the plot is by no means simple - featuring twists and turns and characters old and new with shifting loyalties and complex motivations and a core moral dilemma that is in no way easy to reconcile - there was no point in Civil War where I thought, 'Wait, why's he doing that? That's stoopid!' 

As Mark Kermode said: "It's film you're meant to enjoy rather than endure." 

It makes sense, moves at a well-measured pace, features some of the best action of the entire series so far, and manages to be deep and meaningful without sacrificing fun.

A Brief Re-Re-Introduction

Blimey, it's been a while.

Do people still do these things, or are they just for us camera-shy lot?

Oh well, here we are, and here I go...

Hello!

Let's see, the last time I tried this, Labour were losing their grip under the leadership of Gordon Brown, Obama was America's big hope, everyone was questioning whether Marvel could actually pull off their crazy Avengers idea, Facebook was still in competition with MySpace, Twitter was the eager newbie trying to get a foothold, and YouTube was predominantly the domain of the musical kitten.

Now we have a majority Tory government trying to privatise the entire country, the US is set to elect an unqualified twit from the world of showbiz as their Commander in Chief, there are wars in the Middle East, a big debate about our European membership, union strikes, a resurgent Communist power, Prince dominating the charts and Star Wars dominating the box office.

WELCOME TO THE 1980s!

For my own part, I was working through my first year at university in Cheltenham and still dreaming, starry eyed, of becoming a writer.

I've since graduated with a 2:1, returned to Sunderland, failed to find work, returned to Cheltenham, found a job, lost a job, found another job, found another job, and done precious little writing in between.

Will leave it there for now as 'tis a busy day.  More to follow...

In the mean time, check this out for a slightly more extensive catch up: