The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014)
It’s a little presumptuous isn’t it, inserting adulatory adjectives like ‘Amazing’ into your movie title, it’s almost tempting the celluloid digital gods in a suicidal act of hubris. Starting as we mean to go on I’m sorry to say that the only ‘amazing’ element of this sequel to 2011’s wall scuttling superheroics is just how resoundingly tepid this film is, like its predecessor it’s not necessarily a bad film but it never fully swings into action, another flatline in the recent annals of Hollywood blockbuster boredom. In that sense its an ideal companion piece to the first film which was similarly average, a few moments of fun dialogue and fan service nesting among the digitally crafted tedium, again not a terrible film per se but certainly a picture which swiftly evaporates from the memory banks upon exit from the theatre like a casually dislodged cobweb. I’ve never bothered to go back to the first issue for another look and can barely remember any details (wasn’t there a over-acting lizard? Some silly ra-ra America fuck-yeah with some cranes?) and that speaks volumes as I do tend to give movies another shot on the small screen, somehow I don’t think I’ll bother giving this sequel another sticky screening. There will be some spoilers in a clearly marked section as there is one place that the film went which I was neither expecting and which almost pulled the film up from the doldrums, but first lets set the comic book scene.
With the origin story of Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), a young orphan in New York city infected by a radioactive spider bite and enhanced with an arachnids strength, agility and dexterity out of the way in the first movie then the path should be clear for some carefully arranged super-heroics. Spidey is now an established figure in the big apple, the masked vigilante dedicated to fighting crime, righting wrongs and honouring the memory of his male role model Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen seen only in a wordless flashback). Juggling his secret identity with his domestic arrangements with Aunt May (Sally Field, tolerable for a change) and a strenuous romance with his sweetheart Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, poorly sidelined) young Peter is in electrifying trouble again when a new villain Electro (a spectacularly mis-cast Jamie Foxx) materializes on the scene, and his resumed friendship with OsCorp inheritor Harry Osbourne (Dane DeHann), a corporate takeover plot-line that may well reveal some clandestine details of his mother and fathers (Campbell Scott) abandonment of him as a child…..
It’s difficult to get your webslingers aligned on exactly what the problem is with this franchise but overall it’s simply so flat, framing the film with Peters parents mysterious flee from some unspecified retribution certainly doesn’t help as an opening act prologue, especially when this scene is coded with a frankly laughable scramble to download a computer programme as a dramatic lever – welcome o the 21st century. The film spins out far too many competing storylines across a web which seems beyond the filmmakers prowess, as ambition to stick the competing arcs together in a final resolution, leaping from one scene to the next with little of the central characters legendary dexterity – didn’t they learn the lesson that three, yes three bloody villains is what also sunk Raimi’s atrocious Spiderman 3? Much of the gliding and acrobatics stretch CGI credulity to breaking point when they should really be punching your eyeballs into the visual shock and awe territory, and alas I just can’t quite accept Garfield as our wisecracking and ineffectually tortured hero. Some early reports praised Emma Stone’s role in the script as a modern, intellectual agent of her own not just some screeching damsel in distress, but it’s mere lip-service as she is still situated in the attractive hostage guise – a script defect scribed by our old nemesis Alex Transformers Kurtzman Roberto Cowboys & Aliens Orci. What should be charming, amusing character banter scenes meekly lie mutilated on the screen, if this was the best the editor could select from reputedly the films heavy improvised shooting then the mind boggles at what was omitted at the quality control threshold.
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ome of the action set-pieces do stretch toward blockbuster brilliance and inject the picture with much-needed fun and pyrotechnics, but they swiftly scuttle into the web of the uncanny valley where you’re swiftly aware that everything was rendered in a super powerful computer. Whilst I can give some praise to the films noble attempt to maintain the ethos of Spidey as portrayed in the originating sequential graphic universe – a young man juggling the plate spinning domestic concerns of paying his rent, maintaining personal relations with his remaining family and a complicated romance with saving the city every month – these threads simply do not hold together and the films narrative web doesn’t stick . Worse still they give one of the main villains an utterly unprovoked and ridiculous narrative drive to loathe Spidey, and then in an utterly redundant crowbarring in of an airplane collusion menace which is headslappingly stupid, not to mention a moustache twirling evil doctor called – and not I’m not fucking joking – Dr. Kafka. Around the mid-point these errors hurl the picture from the disappointing into the realms of the actively insulting, and whilst yes its comic book movie where physics, physically reality and deep character introspection can and should be butchered at the altar of entertainment we’ve seen how these movies don’t have to be so lazy, so scattered and diffused, all crowned with an ultimately depressing moment of a young ‘inspired’ kid sans Spidey costume engineering his own Tiananmen square stupidity.
SERIOUSLY SEVERE SPOILERS SECTION – I must have missed it from the rarely glimpsed marketing material so the actual birth of the Green Goblin was unexpected, I kinda assumed they would be leaving that for the next issue in the franchise. Having read many of the golden age classics in my misspent youth I was fully aware of Gwen Stacy’s legendary fate in a hugely beloved and for its time daring story development, so when they actually got around to slaying the broad I was relatively shocked in perhaps the films only genuine moment. But then director Mark Webb evaporates any earned kudos by having Parker overcome this trauma within five minutes of screen-time, go back out on the prowl for a final showdown with yet another unnecessary villain which gets the picture on swiftly curtailed whimper rather than a bang. I’m becoming a little frustrated at the Executives beliefs that these franchise films can cut to end titles in the midst of the action, presumably secure on the knowledge that the fans will be back for the next picture regardless, each movie simply a instalment rather than a self-contained story in and off themselves. There is narrative closure in the Captain America films and in each instalment of the Nolan Batman films which leave speculating enticement for the next movement in the sequence, so it’s not impossible to have the character go through a trial, to best opponents and grow as with any usual movie story-arc, and still leave feverish anticipation open for the next instalment – I honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck about Spider-Man 3 and the rumoured Sinister Six pantheon. Finally, if anyone can explain to me how you can possibly make a Spidey picture and have no appearance of the ferocious J. Jonah Jameson then I’m all fucking ears…SERIOUSLY SEVERE SPOILERS END
The overriding problem with this movie and the franchise as it stands is this – Peter Parker, as Spiderman does nothing daringly heroic other than apprehend a few muggers, all the great arcs of his existence and his decision-making matrix have resulted in violence and chaos, as to date he’s done little more than get those close to him into lethal trouble in a economic four hours of screen-time – perhaps he should have simply donated his body to the vivisection division of OsCorp and actually made some contribution to society. You’re probably heard by now that as is the fashion a post first tranche credits sequence gives a glimpse of the upcoming X-Men picture but it’s really not worth sticking around for, although seeing the final trailer on the big screen certainly clobbered my fanboy anticipation despite the recent disturbing and curiously timed allegations. Just to be clear I’m not suggesting these allegations aren’t necessarily accurate – speaking from the UK and our recent horrifying revelations from the entertainment industry I’m thoroughly acute on the over-riding need to treat every allegation with the utmost seriousness – and it’s not the first time that Bryan Singer has attracted such allegations (remember the Apt Pupil controversy?) plus there has been speculation on his behaviour roaming through the industry for years (some of the stories about the Superman reboot he helmed are particularly ugly), but maybe it’s simple homophobia and/or a chance to extract a lavish settlement from a wealthy man just as his biggest production to date hits screens – I guess we’ll see in the coming months. In any case this is the second of this years tetrad of superhero pictures and I suspect it will be judged as the worst, Winter Soldier has gone gangbusters with critics and the box-office whilst Guardians Of The Galaxy has fans positively salivating in expectation. The Amazing Spiderman 2 is not necessarily the atrocity of Rami’s Spider-Man 3 but its pretty darn close, the most feeble and fecund superhero picture since, well, The Amazing Spiderman;
Captain America – The Winter Soldier (2014)
Of all the vast Marvel pantheon of comic book characters one of my least favourite, at least in printed form, has to be Captain America. Clean-cut uber-patriot Steve Rodgers is a fossil in many ways, not just from his chilly and incapacitated history, but also his stirring and unquestioning devotion to flag and country seems as outdated as his ludicrous costume, his pantheon of villains wasn’t exactly terrifying, and his constant shivering behind his vibranium shield makes me immediately shriek ‘COWARD’. It was a surprise then to report how much I loosely enjoyed the first film of this franchise strand, it was no classic but as a superhero movie had a slightly different tangent to the death defying derring-do, relying a little more on establshing a robust back-story and sketched character relations rather than investing alone on pixel embolded explosions and CGI pyrotechnics. The announcement of a second film The Winter Soldier was met with a raised eyebrow, but gosh-darn it Bucky if I didn’t feel the urge to raise both eyebrows when I caught the opening ten minutes of the picture ahead of 300: Rise Of An Empire a couple of weeks ago, this was a superbly mounted action set-piece which actually got me pretty darn pumped up for another issue of Marvel mayhem. The presence of Robert Redford was also a terrific casting touch, the WASP prince of 1970’s paranoia reprising his role in a 21st century scandalised with NSA infiltrations and the shredding of privacy considerations, political issues and clandestine concerns which the film has bubbling under the redacted narrative.
Following on from Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) spirited defeat of the Red Skull back in the preceding issue, this film opens with a spirited assault as defrosted 1940’s super-soldier Captain America leads a secret nautical infiltration of a hi-jacked vessel out on the high seas. His sultry partner Black Widow (Scarlett Johnansson) has been given an alternative list of mission objectives much to Cap’s subsequent concern, she being more attuned to downloading the ships computer banks for some unspecified reason rather than liberating the hostages, an order which has been issued from no less a authority than the head honcho of SHIELD Captain Nick Fury (Samuel muthafucking etc.). Meanwhile the shadowy cabal of the World Security Council seen in The Avengers is scrutinising the successes and failures of the organisation with their usual political impatience, forcing Senior Committee member Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) to fight a rear-guard action as he prepares the deployment of a new lethal fleet of heavily armed Helicarriers. A conspiracy soon begins to coalesce as senior figures are attacked, and Cap is solemnly warned he can trust no-one, forcing him to go off the grid and try to unearth the mystery behind the deadly Winter Soldier…..
This thoroughly entertaining and exciting movie comes across as more a special Marvel tie-in movie than a one-shot with Cap, as both Nick Fury and Black Widow get plenty to do although it does stretch potential to breaking point with the introduction of yet another draftee to the Mighty Marvel Multiverse© pantheon which really wasn’t necessary. It is however thrilling with a fine algorhythm of action set-piece spectacles, all clearly delineated, devilishly designed and highly polished, interspersed with a few fan-boy surprises and more twists than a Chubby Checker convention. These films do struggle with maintaining a coherent universe, paying lip service to the lack of assistance from previous colleagues – where’s Stark as Washington turns into a battleground for example? Is Thor still so smitten with the dreamy Natalie Portman’s that he doesn’t realise that the very principle of American Democracy is at sake? – as the stakes that Steve and his compatriots face is higher than the trailer suggests, and it should be interesting to see how the rest of the franchise and a certain tedious TV series respond to the cataclysmic and unexpected conflict. Evans and Johansson acquaint themselves as usual by taking the material just as seriously as it requires, with a little sexual chemistry crackling between them on screen. I’ve never taken to Samuel J Jackson as Fury but I acquise that he’s not terrible in this movie, at least he gets to actually do something for a change with his own private narrative arc and a heart thumping combat sequence. But it’s Redford who gives the film a seniority and prestige you don’t normally get with this rank of movie, his presence enhances the political elements of the story, plus he gets to utter one quip which trust me is worth the price of admission alone, sparkling with that old blue-eyed charisma and wit which I’d just love to think was ad-libbed on set as that what be simply delicious.
What distinguishes this dossier is that political subtext as themes of government oversight, personal freedom, terrorist smokescreens civil rights and digital profiling scrolls through this picture like a old-fashioned teletyper, That’s not to say that this is po-faced political drama as it very clearly isn’t, its a rollicking, action packed superhero movie which has clearly lavished its phenomenal budget on the action melees and CGI wonder, but as a treacherous nod back to the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970’s punched into a 21st century you have to admire directors Anthony & Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen Feely’s confederate chutzpah. As always with superheroic fare the film relies on a astonishing manifesto of coincidences and plot illogicality which are waved away with a quick burst of exposition laced dialogue, but it keeps its telescopic sight firmly trained on momentum and powers on through sheer force of will, right through to the inevitable final conflict which suffers a little in insisting in cutting between three separate campaigns in order to shoe-horn in a little side-kick shenanigans. Now soldier I don’t need to instruct you to remain at your post following the initial title crawl (which is beautifully rendered in pop-art perfection by the way) for a little sneak peak at upcoming issues to come, this is the most satisfyingly magnanimous Marvel Movie since The Avengers, which bodes well for next years titanic & tumultuous team-up – Excelsior;
Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) Trailer
The first tranche of blockbuster trailers are starting to drop, and this could be fun;
The only thing that interests me is the presence of James Gunn, he of Super, Slither and the writer of the Dawn Of The Dead remake fame, I like his warped sense of humor so hopefully he’ll do something interesting with these rather self-important Marvel pictures….
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Trailer
So how are things going gentle reader? I have been mostly considering economic and intellectual decay, the discovery of the most remote galaxy known within human existence, and the unsurprising revelation that the powers that be are religiously scrying our ‘Allies’ alongside neutral and antipathatic nation states – but it’s OK though, Cap will save us;
Redford as a cloaked villian I reckon, that could be a fun inversion. My mild prejudices of this character were assaulted by a reasonably entertaining origin film which balanced fun and flags – that’s what a solid journeyman director like Joe Johnson managed to rally – so I think I’ll give this a chance. As for Thor II which opens here in the UK tomorrow, well I guess I should see it to keep abreast of all the cross Marvel movie circlejack references and post coitus stings, but that red shift revelation of the infintite pointlessness of existence makes me wonder…..
The Wolverine (2013)
In his sixth big screen outing as the tenacious self-regenerating ‘Weapon X’ Hugh Jackman must be pondering the vagaries of fate, as this was never supposed to be his part. Through fortune and circumstance he speared the role when the schedule on 1999’s Mission Impossible 2 shoot was extended, meaning that the originally cast Dougray Scott couldn’t fulfil his commitment to Bryan Singers X-Men project, the roulette of show business handing Jackman an iconic role which he has come to own over a series of varying in quality movies, in which he always survives as a stirring embodiment the hugely popular comic-book character. Unfortunately the first iteration of standalone pictures X-Men Origins: Wolverine was as depressingly dire as its clumsy title, with only a few set-pieces and pugilistic contortions to spice up a throughly tedious and committee crafted comic book snorefest, so the news that Darren Aronofsky was stepping into the directors chair of raised expectations for the comic book aficionados as well as wider cinema fans – what could an innovative director of his calibre produce within the confines of the superhero genre? Expectations were reduced when he walked in early 2011 and the studio quickly established a shortlist of potential new helmers, with James Mangold cresting high on the $260 million spinning commercial success of his Knight & Day caper embezzling the project from the likes of Doug Liman, Antoine Fuqua and Mark Romanek.
Nagasaki, 1945, the dying gasps of the Second World War. After saving a young officer by shielding him from the scorching blast of the Fat Man our grizzled hero Logan (Jackman) secures a lifelong friend and benevolent benefactor in the form of Shingien Yashida (Hiroyuki Sanada). Slash-cut to the present day, and beset by nightmares of his dear departed love of his life Jean Grey the hirsutely shaggy Logan has ensconced himself in the Yukon wilderness, locked away from the world and writhing in soul-searching agony. After some asshole hunters kill one of the local bears our hero is tempted back into the civilisation to avenge the death of the magnificent beast, coming to his aid in a hilariously one-sided barroom brawl is Yukio (Ria Fukushima) an asskicking ninjaette whom has been on the Wolverine’s trail for some months. As a senior assassin/advisor of the all-powerful Yashida clan she has come to convince our hero to travel to Toyko and finally receive his reward at the behest of her Shogunate, as in the intervening years the man he saved back in 1945 has built one of the most powerful corporate clans in modern Japan. Reluctantly honouring the blood-oath Wolverine is soon drawn into a nefarious turfwar between the corporate dojos and the embittered Yakuza, a deadly civil war with the serpentine Yashida clan and all resting on the fate of Shingen’s granddaughter Marika (Tao Okamoto) who is now the heir to one of the most powerful empires in contemporary Japan…
I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this film, it’s no classic to be sure but as a self-contained story it has flair and character, like an independent six issue run it breaks from the main mythology and carves up a occasionally exhilarating, competent couple of hours of super-entertainment. It was quite refreshing not to be beset with a gargantuan world threatening supervillain, with apocalyptic superweapons or to be subjected to yet another tearful intangible sacrifice which is always surpassed with a final resurrection, it’s a much more character based tale which scythes efficiently through its faintly exotic oriental environment. That said some reviewers have bemoaned the abrupt tonal shift from a surprisingly detailed character based criminal thriller into the usual final act pixel pulsing kinetics of 21st century tentpole product, I for one didn’t mind as when’s all said in done I did want to partake in some eviscerating antics, and the finale does remain fairly low-key and when compared to the holographic hallucinations of The Avengers or Iron Man 3. Jackman certainly brings his muscular, brooding intensity to the part, lingering on Logan’s spectres and his current struggle for redemption, rather than just which scythes these movies from one set-piece to another – it’s no Oliver or Brando performance but just enoigh to get you engaged in the story, and to see where his foray with the Japanese crime syndicates will cleave to next. Mangold and his crew have dropped the ball however with a lack of a credible nemesis for our muttonchopped bladesmith, as the slithering supervillan Viper – the scrabble bustingly named Svetlana Khodchenkova – her motivations and frankly her role in the whole movie is never clearly defined, a fault which much of the central portion of the films suffers with a veritable platoon of disgruntled ronin and seething Calvin Klien suited samurai in a rather confusing melange of snaky plots, schemes and Machiavellian corporate fecundity.
The set pieces are effective, clearly defined and pulse pounding – the bullet train scrap is probably the stand out from a simple CGI perspective – and the film has plenty of ninjas and who doesn’t love those swift-footed, silently shorn psychopaths? The Nagasaki detonation is appropriately horrific and apocalyptic in one of the ‘best’ nuke representations I’ve ever witnessed, with a truly disquieting sense of intense, end-of-days carnage which is oddly reverential for this kind of picture. It was quite interesting to see a funeral explode into a maelstrom of martial arts melees which subsequently spills out into the Shinjuku megalopolis in a broad coruscating daylight, as directors generally want to shoot such locations at night to make the most of the neon drenched atmosphere. – it also made me quite homesick for my Tokyo holiday from a few years back. The Wolverine is a solid example of screenwriters really laying the foundations of a potentially successful collaboration, as scribes Christopher McQuarrie has earned his kudos with the dexterous feint of The Usual Suspects and Scott Frank was engaged on the fondly regarded Elmore Leonard adaption Out Of Sight, both are regarded as character motivated genre technicians, rather than the incompetent Philistines behind the likes of the Fantastic Four pictures or (grimaces) the Daredevil and Elektra embarrassments where clearly the writers think that stringing ponderous action scenes with juvenile speechifying is all the depth that the material deserves. Inspiration could well have been provided by the Mitchum starring The Yakuza although officially the film is lifted from the highly regarded 1982 mini-series that Frank Miller and Chris Claremont brought to Marvel comics, whatever the genesis this is a fun couple of hours at the cinema and a superior self-contained genre picture, a solid late bloomer as summer season shadows begin to lengthen and Autumn peeks furtively round the corner. As you’d expect from the Marvel product yes there is a post primary credits sting which sets up the scenario for next years Days Of Future Past project, with Bryan Singer back on board anticipation is solidly building for that given the crossover with the successful X-Men: First Class franchise entry, I don’t know about you but I for one can feel my hackles expectantly rising;
Iron Man 3 (2013)
As the dying embers of Sundance recede into the distance we turn our attention back to more pressing concerns, as we did manage to insert a bulky Hollywood tentpole into the festival schedule amongst all the independent activity. This comes at an interesting time given the traction that this little speech is getting in certain corners of the Internet, Soderbergh might be burning his bridges a little here and I don’t completely agree with all his assertions, but as a snapshot of the American (and by association) global cinema market this is faintly depressing fare. Whist we know it was ever thus, that Executives and Producers would flog genres and tropes to death, that characters would be exhausted in sequel after sequel, that formulas are championed and market testing & focus group screenings occurred as early as the Thirties this usual hand-wringing and moaning is validated by the aligned by the spiralling costs of global production and marketing. I have to say I’ve noticed the almost total triumph of sequels and franchises which now have almost obliterated (pun intended) original fare, given the astronomical production figures which are now the norm and the need for a safer bet with a pre-generated audience, this has resulted in the virtual extinction of the mid range $20 – $60 million feature, and this is not healthy for the industry from an aesthetic or productive level. I’ll give you one disturbing example that occurred to me last year, the $75 million budget quoted in the press pack for Frankenweenie, just how the hell did that cost so much? There was no up-front bidding war for the rights to some expensive novel or character, it has no major ‘stars’ to speak of (at least no-one commanding a seven-figure salary) and whilst we all know that stop motion animation is labour intensive with a lot of boffins I fail to see how the hiring of a couple of hundred professionals, ensconced in their studio facility (thus no location costs, no logistics or travel or accommodation fees) for maybe a year could cost so much? Well, that is until you realise that half the budget is marketing, of blitzing the planet with images and trailers and billboards and posters, but here’s the issue which I cannot parse, and that is of course that the technique works and it works beautifully. Even if the final film is actively terrible as in any of the Transformers or Prometheus or high-class mainstream fare with technique and talent to spare (Dark Knight, Lord Of The Rings) the audiences churn out regardless, so the financial death knell for Hollywood seems absurdly premature, especially when you consider that three of the highest grossing films of all time were released just last year, or five of the top films released in the past two years., or indeed that of the top thirty only three were released prior to the millennium – so someone knows what they’re doing., right? The patients status when it comes to innovation, and originality and aesthetics? Well, there the prognosis isn’t as good.
All of this brings me to Iron Man 3 of course, the latest in the extraordinarily profitable Marvel Superheroes movie sequence. I’m a little ambivalent to this run of the wider superhero sequence, I never particularly cared for the character back when I was reading comics and whilst the first film was more fun and lightly entertaining than expected the second was a fairly dire effort, all adhering to the standard issue character protagonist / antagonist / inciting incident / three act structure which can be affective but is usually narcoleptic. As with The Avengers I am flabbergasted at the films initial box-office haul, accruing a staggering $200 million in its first weekend but here’s the killer, it hasn’t even opening in North America yet. Now we all know that box office does not equate to quality, but this release in tandem with Soderbergh’s speech is certainly food for thought, the same identikit style is mixed with recent success in other franchises for the Shane Black directed Issue 3. A brooding Tony Stark is musing on the mortal threats he faced in New York last summer, ploughing his intellectual and physical resources into refining his battle suits at the expense of his waning relationship with the alliterative Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). A new villain is on the horizon who doesn’t bear a single resemblance to OBL, known as The Mandarin (a drawling Ben Kingsley) this pseudo-foreign Asian warlord threatens to unleash his incendiaries on the infidels of America, whilst the likes of Tony’s old flame Dr. Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) a regenerative and charismatic physicist protegé Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) are wrapped up in some conspiracy to harness their scientific breakthroughs for superheroic splendour.
Like Iron Man’s distributed and fragmented armour the film is a hodgepodge of a movie, at some points a meta-superhero deconstruction then a brooding Dark Knight drama, then it’s a broad comedy then an Eighties inflected thriller, not to mention a thundering action piece, – its got more personalities than a schizophrenic goldfish. Whilst that could be interpreted as praise Iron Man 3 is never more than the sum of its parts, a malfunctioning genre piece which judges that a kid sidekick isn’t an exhausted and irritating element (and no, dressing this cliché up by having RDJ deploy his irreverent schtick doesn’t succeed) and a plot twist which many would have gleaned from the trailer. The villains as a holistic threat never provide the required sense of threat or peril, and with many of its characters split across the films narrative by the beginning of Act 2 it takes a long lonely trek to assemble them in all the right places for the inevitable and serviceable final confrontation Now to be fair there are some moments, as you’d expect from jock-director Shane Black some of the meta-commentary is exceptional, with a few good henchmen gags to alleviate the boredom. The final set-piece when it arrives is reasonably innovative, even if the final showdown of the final showdown doesn’t particularly get the heart pumping. For many Kingsely’s turn will entertain and amuse and to say anymore would be spolierific, and as someone who quite likes Robert Downey Jr. in most of his films his cheeky arrogance has worn completely thin, and you might secretly wish that the rich fucker gets vaporised before the next inevitable instalment. It does depart from trope with the women get a fair shake in this movie in numerous ways which I also won’t spoil either, heck it might even pass the standard Bechdel test as they’re certainly not just eye-candy and/or damsels in distress.
The most interesting element of Iron Man 3 is the news that specific scenes and characters have been procured for the Chinese cut of the movie, a trend which seems to be gathering increased traction, and the impact of this on a films political and cultural dimensions in both its numerous domestic and international editions should be amusing to dissect, one wonders what changes they may have made to the Mandarin character and omitted any reference to Tibet. Does this sprawling post have a purpose, a central proposition? I think what I’m trying to say is that the business is full of contradictions, I may come off as a snob who is slightly sneering at people flocking to formulaic, predictable, cookie cutter stuff and maybe I am, but you only need to peruse the archives to see that I loved Avatar, the Batman films and other blockbuster fare usually barges its way into my top ten lists, and I’m anxiously awaiting Pacific Rim, Elysium and the second Hobbit film comes December. They are all just as valid and entertaining in different ways than the usual suspects at Cannes or Sundance, it’s just the emphasis on advertising and seduction rather than the quality of the intrinsic piece of cinema as an artefact is a dangerous road to continue, from both an entertainment and production perspective, with incrwasingly risk averse studios and executives pushing the industry and art form into two remaining tiers of production – garguantian nine figure budget behemoths that are market diluted to redundancy and miniscule seven-figure scraping projects which struggle to even get distribution or exhibition – although I guess it’s a sign of the times with the same divisions along the mega wealthy 0.1% and the disintegrating Western middle class. I guess I should close with some general Iron Man 3 comments, yes there is another post credits sting, but it wasn’t as fun as I’d anticipated, and I think I’m safe in asserting that this is the first $250 superproduction that has ever referenced the city of Croydon…..
Iron Man 3 (2013) Trailer
And so the inevitable march to summer season begins. I liked the first one which I quite rarely saw on a Saturday night with a full crowd, the second was a badly tuned mess, only the presence of Shane Black on helmsman and scribe duties can save this franchise, critically speaking;
Anyone else really getting tired of Bob Downey Junior’s schtick? This looks pretty standard issue identikit Hollywood trailer circa 21st century, complete with Final Act spoilers, and with a Iranian suggestive villain to boot (sighs)….
After a tough day at work with some fairly depressing news I was glad to see this to raise my flagging spirits, some exemplary, best of it’s kind craft there….
The Amazing Spiderman (2012)
Given that it has been a mere five years since the last Spider Man film installment it was somewhat surprising to hear in January 2010 that the series was being re-booted so soon after the final entry of the successful Sam Raimi written, produced and directed series. Although the franchise severely lost its way with a confused, bloated marketing tie-in mess of a final movie which was loathed by critics and many of the sticky fanboys it still netted a cool $891 million at the international box office, making another entry in the series or a swift revaluation of direction and design an absolute certainty. Then the business attuned entertainment press asserted that due to the byzantine legal copyrights and agreements that Hollywood excels in propagating the rights to everyone’s favourite webslinger would revert back to Marvel and their parent company Disney unless Sony / Columbia rushed a new picture into production, a fairly common practice in the industry where entire films can be greenlit, shot and then suppressed, merely to maintain the licence for future or alternate products – see also the Fantastic Four debacle. Being a cynical, sarcastic and mocking sort I therefore assumed that this new re-imagining, reboot or refucking-transmogrifiication of the series was little more than an urgent effort to retain the copyright, a project where callous producers would cleverly hire a hip new director with little experience of the studios Machiavellian politics (in this case Marc Webb of 500 Days of Summer fame), cast parade of ‘hot’ yet affordable young starlets, throw some money at some hacks to produce a perfunctory script and finally mix in some mid level CGI and hey presto – a new Spider Man for the tweens. Other industry observers were rather more charitable (despite the poor quality initial trailers) and were quietly assimilating some early buzz from industry and test screenings, leading them to quietly predict back in March that this could be the sleeper hit of the year, the little arachnid that could take on the behemoths of The Avengers, Brave or The Dark Knight Rises and still stand tall, establishing a new lease of life for the franchise and achieve that always elusive word-of-mouth credibility. The truth as always hangs somewhere in-between….
Surely you know the drill by now, after fifty years (next month) of comic books, TV series, computer games and successful movies? The slightly nerdy, promising photographer and science student Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and develops the superhuman powers of an arachnid of identical mass, able to climb walls, swing from building to building with enhanced speed, strength and stamina, our unlikely hero separates his attention between fighting crime and managing his complicated personal life, and often the two intersect in a tangled web of teenage neurosis and heroic duty. Where does Spider Man 2012 deviate from the established canon? Well, this time around Peter has vivid childhood memories of his mother and father urgently spiriting him to the safety of his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben’s (Martin Sheen) after a break-in at the family apartment, after abandoning him to their care both parents perish in a terrible air crash the following day. Growing up to be the lanky, nervous and slightly frizzled Andrew Garfield our adolescent adventurer has a requited crush on fellow science student Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) and a curious interest in OSCORP, the bio-tech company that she is interning at since his father was also an employee of the firm before his mysterious death. Parker senior was a core colleague of Dr. Curt Conners (a restrained Rhys Ifans), the worlds premiere authority on reptiles and reptilian physiology who now heads up the firms R&D division, true to form of any comic book scientist the good Dr. just happens to be developing a super-secret-super-serum© to regenerate amputated limbs via regenerative cross species gene splicing, in an effort to help mankind and also restore his missing right arm. Peter gets bitten, Conners go saurian with a messianic complex to boot, and soon our friendly neighbourhood arthropod is battling both the cops and his furfuraceous nemesis in order to uncover the truth of his fathers work and make amends for his guilt wracked conscience….
Whilst the film feels redundant from its opening frames as it hesitantly retraces identical ground to its 2002 twin The Amazing Spider Man somehow ambles on with some legitimate charm, and by the closing fisticuffs I was just about beaten into submission. There is nothing particularly new here apart from a stronger emphasis on character development and motivations that previous installments snared and then mostly overlooked, preferring to visually overwhelm the tale with some essential SFX derived ocular fondling. Garfield is well cast and convincing as both the wise cracking Spidey and his clumsy adolescent alter-ego, and Marc Webb’s (heh) relationship experience from 500 Days of Summer is effective with the vaguely touching relationship that builds between Peter and Stacy whom Stone confidently plays as a resourceful but slightly love-struck independent young woman. But the story beats we’ve seen before are mentally erected and consequentially knocked down over the customary arc and structure, from the original bite sequence to the humbling of the school bully, from the dispatch of a mentor figure to the inevitable high altitude denouement your attention may wonder, and the ugly transition between certain scenes could have been evaded with a more skillful editing pattern. For the fanboys there are a few nice flourishes, including a small nod back to an early wrestling story from the comics original run, Stan Lee gets his usual cameo (probably the most amusing yet, nuff said) and there’s the obligatory post credits sting to see which villain will be up next – it’s a mystery to me. Overall it’s far superior to Spidey 3 with its ridiculous confusion of villains (I’ve never even bothered to revisit it since seeing in Hollywood back in 2005) but the benchmark remains Spidey 2 with its multi-tentacle thrills and classic villain, although Rhys Ifans Lizard is a scaly CGI achievement his plot and arc is so brutally obvious (witness some particularly dire foreshadowing) that not even the impressive digitally rendered 3D canyons of New York can eclipse what is a rather perfunctory and predictable plot. Spectacular? No. Amazing? Hardly. But as light summer fare, with a welcome emphasis on character over pyrotechnics, you could do worse than get caught up in this summers most underestimated web;
The Avengers (1978) Trailer
Well, if you able-bodied nerds think I’m jealous that you’re going to see the first big movie of the summer tomorrow which apparently is a rocking good blast of heroic nonsense invested with a generous proportion of geek attuned hilarious quips then think again, I’ll be settling into my original 1978 version of the premiere Marvel adolescent power fantasy cluster-fuck – Excelsior!!;
….besides, seventies movies are much better than these contemporary omni-dimensional, primary colour, mind-bleeding CGI infested eye-rapes aren’t they? I also found some exclusive footage of Iron Man III so screw you guys;
And there was me thinking that Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce were supposed to be starring in it…
The Avengers (2012) Trailer
OK, OK, I’m finally convinced – happy now? Some of this trailer – a marked improvement from the other glimpses – had me giggling like a teenager;
I still have some severe reservations about Loki though, he was a fucking terrible wet drip of a villain in Thor, but this might just be terrific and dumb, stupid-ass fun, and that’s enough for me. Plus Scarlett of course….it’s gonna be an epic summer.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Truth & Justice = The American Way? Is this concept an anachronism in the wake of the wars that our colonial cousins have waged during the intervening chasm between the noble Second World War and today’s resource driven mêlée? When you consider Mỹ Lai, Guantanamo, Fallujah and Sarah Black’s Friday will the full horror of their war crimes forever tarnish the noble principles of the founding fathers? Well, the answer to that won’t be found here as this is a film review blog, you’d best bugger off to Time or The Economist as we’re here to talk about Captain America: The First Avenger, the last superhero blockbuster to invade the silver screen, and the final pinch of ingredients prepared in the formulation of next years much anticipated Avengers tent-pole movie. The trailer for The First Avenger didn’t leave me inspired and frankly Captain America has always struck me as a particularly dull superhero (what kind of weapon is a shield eh? Typical American cowards hiding behind their superior technology perhaps?) but what else are you going to do on a Sunday afternoon? In tandem the film had got some reasonable nods of a popcorn fodder variety – ‘nothing special but there are worse ways to past a couple of hours’ – so after the pleasantly entertaining X-Men experience I thought I’d take another gamble. Whilst that movie still remains the best of the recent crop of stupidly garbed, adolescent, Nietzschean power fantasy movies I’ll concur that Captain America was actually OK, whilst you won’t exit the theatre fist-pumping your friends (that sounds ruder than I meant) and yelling ‘U S A, U S A’ you won’t be hailing a cab to nearest bookstore to acquire a copy of Das Kapital either……
A contemporary prologue amidst a frozen tundra begins our tale, it seems that a group of Arctic scientists have discovered a mysterious vessel cocooned in the ice. Sent
in to investigate a local government squad penetrates the craft and makes a hesitant scan of its interior, unearthing an enigma – a strangely garbed figure, entombed in the ice. Back to 1941, Brooklyn, New York City and local boy Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) has once again failed a medical test that he needs to surpass in order to join the marines and serve his country in its greatest hour of need. Rodgers, instantly recalling one of the those adverts that you used to get in US comic books of the quivering weakling getting sand kicked into their faces on the beach by the muscular jock is a walking medical dictionary of ticks and deficiencies, but his soul is strong and his unswerving patriotism and tenacious character is spotted by government scientist Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who recruits Rodgers for a secret project. Prompted by an imbalance to Hitler’s secret weapon and technology division known HYDRA the allies are developing a counter weapon of their own, a super soldier through the secret use of a super secret super soldier serum, a risky enterprise using technologies that Erskine stole from the Nazi’s when he defected back in the late thirties. Before he fled the shadowy clutch of the Aryan state rising party member Johan Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) had submitted himself to the same treatment with terrifying results, prompting grandiose visions of..erm…grandeur he roams occupied Europe in search of ancient magical Teutonic artefacts that can potentially be aligned to the war effort – and it looks as if he has found something more powerful than even the Führer had imagined. These combatants come into conflict after Rodgers endures an embarrassing stint as a patriotic puppet who tours the country to promote war bonds (quite why he isn’t sent straight into battle is not explained), abandoning this mission he violates orders and penetrates a Hydra base to rescue his friend ‘Bucky’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan) whose unit has been captured by the forces of darkness, a group whose stature in the hierarchy of evil is growing so swiftly that their plans for world domination are already accelerating past the Third Reich’s….
Here is a superhero film that is half as better than I thought it would have been, but still not half as good as it could have been. After an interesting, well conceived set-up to Cap’s genesis the second act falls apart with a string of ill conceived, unconnected action scenes as if the suits were demanding some more explosions to keep the punters happy, some tiresome character moments are then inflicted upon us before the film somewhat redeems itself with a vaguely exciting denouncement and final show down with the Red Skull aboard his flying strato-super-duper-fortress. Chris Evans as smiling Steve Rodgers makes up somewhat for his appearances in the Fantastic Four movie fiascos and he’s just how I remembered Cap from the few comics of his I read during my ill-spent youth – chisel-jawed, quietly noble, humorless and actually pretty insipidily bland. Hugo Weaving as usual does good Übermenschen with the silver screens best Werner Herzog impression yet, I mean when you’re kicked out of the Nazi party for being too evil then you really must be pretty darn evil indeed. Support from the likes of Toby Jones as Red Skull henchmen #1 Dr. Zola recalls a more snivelling Toht and Stanley Tucci produces ze verst Jerman Aczent I hev herd in ajes, as the faltering love interest the delectable Hayley Atwell smoulders in her 1940’s figure hugging uniform (she’s a rising starlet who’s going to go far, believe you me) and Tommy Lee Jones evidently has a new farm in Montana to he wishes to acquire. One frankly embarrassing development is the formation of Cap’s super-combat super-support super-team which is so blatantly market researched that a Microsoft Window’s 7 advertising executive would be ashamed, including as it does the token black dude, a stiff upper lipped British officer, an American oriental chap (hello, can anyone spell internment camp?) and Band of Brothers star Neil McDonough as the shotgun wielding Timothy ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan. It’s fairly exciting stuff once some of the cartoonish character building stuff has been surpassed, SFX whiz Joe Johnston (he worked on the likes of Empire, Jedi, and Raiders which the film has a couple of amusing references too which I won’t spoil here) handles the pyrotechnics well, the early scenes of Evan’s head bolted on to the body of a puny weed’s slumped frame is particularly eerie but convincing, and he certainly gets the 3D effects right with a few moments where you will be ducking in your seats as a spinning stars’ n’ stripes emblazoned Vibranium cylinder is hurled toward the screen. Full marks for also having the guts in making this hero a soldier who doesn’t shy away from killing his enemies, not merely rendering them unconscious in a gentlemanly fashion, this was during a war after all and the films kid friendly rating doesn’t cause the filmmakers to shy away from some amusing abrogations during the final conflict. Throwaway pap of an entertaining type Captain America is worth a look as a fore-runner to next years Avengers movie which I admit I’m now beginning to feel some faint stirrings of excitement about, so be sure to stick around for the end credits to see a tiny glimpse of what may be in store. EDIT – all geopolitical and international relation considerations aside this is fascinating and controversial – the inevitable film has Greengrass written all over it….
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