I’m going to try an
experiment. I’m going to see if I can
write reviews in less than 1,000 words.
As you’ve doubtless noticed, it typically takes you as long to
read my review as it does to watch the damn film. So I’m going to see if I have any talent for
(relative) brevity.
And the first film I am going
to try this on for size with is The (so-called) Amazing Spider-Man.
First off - and just to
get this off my chest – I don’t like origin stories. If origin stories were so important, then
every movie would be one. By which, I
don’t just mean every superhero movie
… I mean every movie. But they aren’t,
are they? The rom-coms or zombie
holocaust movies you watch don’t spend their first hour telling you the entire
life-story of every character, do they?
No. In fact, most movies don’t bother with being an origin story, it’s something
that's almost unique to the Superhero genre.
Makers of other genres have
realised that we are sophisticated enough to understand and identify with
characters without having to sit through their home movies and baby photos.
Now, I appreciate that
sometimes you need to see scenes from a character’s past to understand their
personality, motivations, background or whatever … But a pre-title prologue or
a couple of informative flash-backs should cover that – if a few simple lines
of dialogue won’t.
(Hm. 250 words and I haven’t
even got to the film yet. Not looking
good.)
Tobey or not Tobey ... Erm ... Not Tobey.
So, when they announced that The ‘Amazing’ Spider-Man was a re-boot and an origin story, my heart sank. It’s only ten years since we had to go
through all this with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire. Do we really have to sit through the
bullying, the spider-bite, Uncle Ben’s death and yacketty-schmatty,
blah-blah-blah all over again? Yes, it
seems we do and we can’t even do it quickly.
We have to spend fully half of this two and a quarter hour movie
revisiting familiar ground.
They’ve taken much of their
inspiration from Brian Bendis’ ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ reboot of the comic which
began to be published in 2000, rather than the Stan Lee / Steve Ditko original
which dates from 1962. Raimi very-much
cleaved to the original in terms of tone, so to go elsewhere was a sensible way
to push the franchise forward. Except,
since the differences are mostly cosmetic, why bother going back to square one? That still makes no sense to me. Can you tell?
Andrew Garfield’s rendition
of Peter is quirkier and more physical than Maguire’s. He’s more temperamental and more
argumentative and, therefore, possibly more convincing as the sarcastic
wise-cracking Web-Head. Maguire always
seemed too sweet and earnest to do the trade-mark Spidey one-liners I grew up
reading in the comics. But you only get
a couple of examples of this humour in this film. So, not really The Amusing Spider-Man, then.
When he is learning to use
his new powers and dealing with his sometimes-sticky, sometimes-not fingers and
proportional-strength-of-a-spider (as they used to call it) Garfield is very
funny – He obviously has a gift for physical comedy, even if he is a bit to
lanky and good-looking to prat-fall convincingly. But his emotions are on-and-off so quickly,
it is difficult to become emotionally involved in him. This is not necessarily a fault of the
performance so much as the frantic pace of the editing and the brevity of such
scenes.
Gwen Stacy ... She loves a man to have his heart on his sleeve ... And his blood too.
Then you’ve got the fact that
they have decided to have Gwen (played by Emma Stone) be the focus of his affections
instead of Mary-Jane. This is being true
to the original 60s comics that they are, otherwise, ignoring. So why bother making the change? To be fair to Stone – her rendition of Gwen is
far less annoying than Bryce Howard’s was in Spider-Man 3 (2007). The
lengthy scenes with them stumbling through their courtship … Just don’t
sparkle. There is no spark between the
two characters. I didn’t care about
them, or their relationship.
Visually, the film is quite
dark, shot mostly at night with deliberately subdued colours … Which are even
dimmer in 3D, of course. I presume this
palette and shooting style was part of abandoning the light-hearted tone of the
Raimi films and an attempt to make this new rendition seem grittier. More ‘street’. However, the frankly lame story contrives to
make that seem foolish.
Where the first half was
unnecessarily long-winded, the second half leaps from half-formed plot-point to
plot-point with scant regard for logic or continuity. Plot-lines are abandoned or just plain
forgotten about, time-jumps occur without warning (Connors all-of-a-sudden has
a lab in the sewers) and major details are skated over in a montage (such as
the creation of the web-shooters and the creation of the costume and the
existence of the Spider-Sense).
Youth perfects world's least impressive high-wire act.
But, beyond that, there are
the frequent plot contrivances. If this
is supposed to be Spider-Man re-imagined for a more sophisticated twenty-first
century audience, why are we insulted by the sort of lame co-incidences and
conveniences that we might have expected to have seen in the 70s TV version of
Spider-Man?
Plot Contrivance #1: Peter investigates Connors, who just happens
to be his father’s ex-partner and, it is strongly hinted, is the reason for his
father’s disappearance.
Plot Contrivance #2: Gwen just happens to be Connor’s Intern
(that’ll come in useful).
Plot Contrivance #3: Peter just happens to bump into Mr. Ratha,
who just happens to drop a folder containing papers which just happen have the
00 logo Peter is investigating from his father’s notes.
Plot Contrivance #4: Peter’s father bred the spiders that will
turn him into a super-hero.
Plot Contrivance #5: Connors just happens to have a ‘Ganali
Device’ designed to distribute drugs through the air over an entire city. Well that
won’t be turned to nefarious ends at the end of the film!
I could go on and so, since
my 1,000th word happens to be this
one, and I have therefore failed, I shall
go on!
You've got to hand it to him. What? What? As jokes go, that was fairly armless.
Rhys Ifans plays Connors. He’s not the most endearing of actors … His
characters always seem to be cold and emotionless and that stops you liking them
(unless they’re in grubby Y-fronts, of course).
He is to-all-intents-and-purposes playing the same role as Willem Dafoe in
the 2002 Spider-Man and Alfred Molina
in the 2004 sequel – the scientist driven mad by his own creation. Boiler-plate Jekyll-and-Hyde stuff, in other
words!
His motives are, essentially,
noble, although he has clearly made the old deal-with-The-Devil, in the form of
the afore-mentioned Mr Ratha who represents the unseen Norman Osborn. The Connors of the comics was always a tragic
character rather than out-and-out evil.
There is the merest hint of that here, given that his research is
primarily a way for him to grow himself a new arm. Which it does. But that, of course, is not all he
grows. The first transformation into The
Lizard is dealt with well, in the traditional Jekyll-and-Hyde manner, but the
creature into which he changes reminded me of nothing so much a Ray
Harryhausen’s Ymir from 20 Million Miles
to Earth (1957).
The first time he and
Spider-man meet – on the bridge – is the stand-out sequence in the film and is
the only time Garfield has the on-screen soul that Maguire so effortlessly
demonstrated.
So, there are one-or-two
laugh-out-loud jokes for the humorously-challenged (the teenagers sitting
around me were laughing like drains … I smiled occasionally), there are
impressive visuals and one-or-two moments that set the senses buzzing. But there is also a lot of padding, a lot of
problems with tone, a lot of insulting the audience’s intelligence and memory
and, ultimately, far, far, far too much time spent showing us scenes we can
vividly remember from last time round.
We were promised ‘The Untold
Story’. What we got instead was ‘The
Oft-Better-Told Story’. What they should
have done (had they but asked my advice) is go with the Amazing title (rather than Spider-Man
4), cast a new director and a new actor, but carried on. Sure, change the tone, that’s fine … That
happens in the comic every time a new creative team takes over, that’s to be
expected … But going back to square one and starting again? That was unnecessary and foolish … And
boring.
"Cowabunga, dude". Oh, sorry, wrong reptile.
And so, finally, we get to my
favourite bugbear … The 3D. Well, given
that the colours were washed out and the night scenes were distractingly dim …
I took my 3D glasses off, which immediately improved the colour and brightness
I was seeing. But, interestingly, for
the vast majority of the film, this made no difference. When you watch a 3D film without glasses, it should be blurred. Unwatchable.
Yet The (self-styled) Amazing Spider-Man wasn’t. The long-shots were a bit blurred, the
fight-scenes and web-slinging scenes were extremely blurred (I put the glasses
back on for these) but I’d say that, for a good 80% of the film, watching
without glasses made absolutely no difference.
So much for expensive, cutting-edge 3D technology.
There has already been some
very detailed analysis of this film and I would point you to the piece, which
deals with some of the plot-threads that were left dangling from the film, and
uses some of the footage released in the trailers to illustrate that this
material was shot, but obviously chopped out.
(Which makes one wonder if we’re going to be treated to a three-hour
‘Director’s Cut’). Anyway, it is on Badass Digest and you’ll find it here.
Then the second piece I’d
like you to read is one of Cinema Blend’s
excellent ‘To 3D Or Not To 3D’ columns where they spell out far more
methodically than I, what’s wrong with the extra dimension in this film. You’ll find that piece here.
Right, well that’s 1,600
words of my first 1,000 word review.
Bugger. Must try harder!
Now the photos of The Dwarf Company have been revealed, you can see them all here, Peter Jackson's Hobbit Facebook page follows with a third production video - hot on the heels of the second.
Here we see all the Dwarves in action. It's important to get used to them because there are thirteen of them! They've succeeded in giving them all a different look, I have no doubt they will all have their own distinct personalities.
And then you get Rivendell.
And a shot of the actors with their diminutive doubles.
And John Rhys Davis.
And make sure you stay to the end for a special treat!
Be careful, though, there's at least one moment when Aiden Turner is caught smiling. And the fabric of the Universe was not rent asunder.
It's nice that Jackson himself can't quite believe his luck, to be re-visiting Middle Earth ... Looking at it from the perspective of a mere mortal, I know how much I want to go there!
Don't know about you but I didn't think I could be any more excited about this film ... Turns out I was wrong - I can!
AND THIS JUST IN ...
They have now released the Photoshop fix-up of all the individual photos gathered together as one group. Nice.
Back in March, I wrote here about how good Peter Jackson is at keeping his fans informed through excellent video blogs. He gave us unprecedented access to King Kong - too much access, in my opinion - but he seems to have moderated that here. He has released two videos, some ten weeks apart - one just as production was getting under way and another as the first block of shooting comes to an end.
Of course, as with any endeavour involving the vast sums of money in question, the film had a rocky development. A few months before the deals were signed, there was a very real chance that the movie wouldn't even be shot in New Zealand ... Which was a horrible prospect because every lover of Lord of the Rings KNOWS that New Zealand is Middle Earth. Nowhere else would do! The Prime Minister eventually had to step in to make it happen - but here is a report when the result was still very much in the balance:
Interesting friction between New Zealand and Australia there! Anyway, we now know it all worked out for the best... And the evidence is available in these making-of videos.
In between the two videos we have had various nuggets of information revealed - for example, there will indeed be dividing the book over two films, not one. The first will be called:The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, due for release on December 14, 2012. The second will have the original novel's subtitle: The Hobbit: There and Back Again and will be released a year later, on December 13, 2013.
We've also had our first glimpse at some of the characters.
Empire magazine has been given its traditional exclusive first look at Gandalf. You can read the details here.
Is it just me, or does the wizard look older? I understand that McKellen is ten years older ... But the character is getting on for a century younger, isn't he?
The interwebs have also been abuzz this last week with these images of the first (of many) new dwarves:
Firstly we have Moe, Curly and Larry ...
... Followed by Stan and Ollie!
And, of course, there are THOSE all important videos. Initially, the first video kept being taken down, but it seems fairly stable now, so you can watch it here:
Then instantly fast-forward three months to this fascinating view of the process. I confess the imagery, the landscapes and Howard Shore's music gets me quite emotional. I am SO excited about these films ... And, after you've seen this, you will be too:
ADDENDUM:
The drip-drip of information continues - we now have another couple of Dwarves, including the reason Mitchell the vampire won't be in series four of Being Human - Aidan Turner. Actually ... Thinking about it ... Since The Hobbit crew are on sabbatical for a couple of months, I suppose he could shoot some scenes while he's back home. Hmm. Anyway, here they are - Dean O'Gorman as Fili and Aidan Turner as Kili.
Followed by Stephen Hunter as the voluminous Bombur, James Nesbitt as Bofur and William Kircher as Bifur:
Butch and Sundance, maybe?
Definitely Hewey, Dewey and Lewey!
FURTHER ADDENDUM:
The final couple of photos have appeared, completing the Dwarf Fellowship ...
Grandad and Del-Boy
... Including the image that Hobbit-fans have been waiting for: Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the Dwarves:
The King of The Dwarves ... is a Klingon!
And while we're on the subject ... Here's the photo of them all gathered for the first time, before shooting began. Not surprisingly, Aidan Turner already looks miserable. It's not like this film is going to make him an international movie star and sex symbol, or anything ...
As soon as I saw the first trailer and realised that this film contained Anthony Hopkins as Odin, chewing up the Asgardian furniture, I knew they had chosen not to follow the path laid down by J. Michael Straczynski’s reboot of Thor.
That had Thor beginning with nothing and building up Asgard, and its pantheon of gods, from the ground up. It would have lent itself perfectly to filmic adaptation. But the trailer had Odin, and Odin didn’t appear in JMS’s version of Thor, so I knew that’s not what they were doing.
And that was a concern!
It turns out they have taken some of Straczynski's ideas, but they're mostly the earthbound ones.
We begin, instead, with the en-vogue start half-way through with something exciting then rewind to see the events that led to the exiting thing structure which is, I think, lazy script-writing but I understand that producers are frightened their audiences won’t have the attention-span for introductions and character development without having had an exciting carrot first.
After this whizz-bang intro, we then get a good twenty minutes of Asgardian doings, involving Frost Giants on other planets, and a football team of new characters, all in Jack Kirby’s trademark architectural hats, with which we must quickly become familiar.
That's one bad hat, Loki ...
Asgard itself looks lovely, but there’s no obvious structure to it, it looks more like a mad castle than a city. It’s gorgeous, to be sure, but the camera swoops over it so quickly that we do not get time to give it a good look. There is little sense of coherence about the city. Unfortunately, that stands as emblematic of the film as a whole.
None of which is helped by the dim, fuzzy and entirely pointless 3D process. As usual, this adds nothing, but takes away the vibrancy of the colours and the clarity of the hi-def effects work. But I’ve not been shy with my thoughts on 3D, so we’ll move on …
Chris Hemsworth finally gets his teeth into the role when he has crash-landed on Earth and conveniently meets some non-specific scientists out in the desert studying Non-Specific Sciencey Stuff. He very quickly comes across as a personable chap who is, I am reliably informed by my beloved, ‘well fit’. Well, he did work out for several months before filming began but I don’t think that’s what she meant.
Hemsworth gets his tits out for the lasses. As my partner helpfully suggested: “This should have been called Phwoar, not Thor!”
I feel that these scenes would have been more successful if they had been the introduction to the film – if we had become invested in the character before all that show-boating in Asgard and points north. As in JMS’s take on the character, this gradual process would have helped the audience along by gently introducing them to the idea of ‘gods’ and built-up to the reveal of The City of the Gods in all its glory.
There is a fair bit of slapstick in these ‘getting-to-know-you’ scenes, involving Hemsworth doing little more than prat-falls, but this is genuinely amusing and certainly breaks the emotional ice, but it jars when played so soon against all the thee-ing and thou-ing upstairs.
Of course, Hemsworth is required to play these scenes differently because he has to learn not to be the spoiled, arrogant brat he was at the film’s beginning, in order to worthy of his god-like hammer Mjolnir (It’s pronounced “Muh-yoll-near”, by the way … I’ve only been reading these comics for about thirty years and I didn’t know that!)
It's hammer time! ... What? What?
Now, what is interesting, is the way the film rationalises the ‘gods’ by borrowing Arthur C. Clark’s ever-reliable Third Law, to wit: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. It suggests that they aren’t Gods at all, just ‘advanced beings’ which the primitive Norse worshipped as Gods. Good little ‘No Prize’ for that one. Maybe that explains the presence of Tadanobu Asano as Hogun – a Japanese Norse God?
Also, The Frost Giants are from the ‘realm’ of Jotunheim, which is clearly a planet – which leads me to think that the fact that there are nine realms suggests there’s one per planet in our Solar System … Or am I thinking about that too much?
Portman is fine as the ditzy genius and expert on Non-Specific Sciencey Stuff, but she is pretty much acting on auto-pilot here. Still, now she has a gold doorstop, it’s not like she has anything to prove.
As for the other actors, Tom Hiddleston does a fine job with Loki, but then, he has the best material. Rene Russo makes a good fist of the All-Mother, Frigga, especially since she is given sod all to work with. But Idris Elba (who is deemed of such consequence he is sharing poster-space with Hemsworth, Hopkins and Portman); is all-but unrecognisable under bad hat and contacts and is given very little to do.
He is the guardian of The Bifrost, which is, essentially, a teleportation device for dumping gods in New Mexico (where else?) Thing is, this gadget is of key significance to the movie and yet its powers and function are never clearly explained.
The film is just uneven. What’s with Jeremy Renner and his bow? His cameo as Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) goes without introduction or explanation and he doesn’t even get to fire his arrow, before disappearing again. Literally pointless!
The Destroyer as depicted in the film -
- and as originally depicted back in April 1968. Pretty close, guys!
The fight-scenes seem shoe-horned in, such as the one Hawkeye watches, but doesn’t participate in. The arrival of The Warriors Three (well, Four since they bring Lady Sif along) doesn’t propel the story along much, save to give an excuse for The Destroyer to be sent earthward to … destroy. It is worth it, mind, since this is the best single conflict in the movie, even if it is lifted from Superman II (1980) and a million comic books.
Interestingly, seen from the perspective of Thor (sorry, ‘Donald Blake’) and his new mortal Scooby Gang, SHIELD are very much set up as the villains of the piece, but that, of course, distracts the unwary viewer’s attention away from the real bad-guy.
It is easy to see why Marvel thought to hire Branagh to direct this, as Stan Lee’s original Thor dialogue tended to wax Shakespearean and, if you’re thinking Shakespeare, you are inevitably thinking Dear, Dear, Sir Kenny. Thing is, surprisingly, the dialogue is delivered with more conviction and makes the film all-the-more watchable during the conversational earthbound scenes.
The Asgardian sequences, on the other hand, might not have the acting, but they have a grandeur and visual splendour that manages to be both super-futuristic and impossibly ancient, with set and prop design to die for. They either built some gigantic sets or the actors spent a lot of time standing on green boxes looking at wonderful things that would be put in later.
See, the sets are jaw droppingly detailed - even more so in 2D because then, at least, they are in focus.
Click to enlarge and have a proper look!
Nice to see that Kirby and the other creators who have immortalised the character over the decades, get a mention at the end – even if it is merely a catch-all “Oh, and by the way …” type of credit. The way Marvel dealt, particularly with Kirby, back in the 1980s is now a matter of common knowledge. The legal wrangling still, sadly, rolls on, but a particular take on the origins of this struggle for recognition and reward can be found in this fascinating article.
Yes, you do have to sit through the rubbish rock song over the credits, in order to get to the inevitable cameo at the end … But it is worth the wait!
I make it a rule of thumb that any film with more than three writers is lucky to make sense … Thor has five credited writers – including Straczynski – and the result is a mushy, convoluted, unconvincing mess which has gorgeous visuals but which are entirely buried beneath a gloomy fuzz of half-baked 3D processing.
So go see it, by all means, but save yourself some cash and a headache and seek out a 2D performance!
But, before you do; you know I can be merciless with the marketing of some movies, well Marvel have actually excelled themselves here – demonstrating a humour which I thought they’d lately lost … This ad is official, it's modelled after the Darth Vader ad VW recently did. Enjoy:
Dir: Dear, Dear, Sir Kenny Branagh
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston
You will have noticed I don't dedicate this weblog to posting the latest gossip and guesswork from Hollywood. No point, there are gazillions of websites doing that already.
But today is an exception because today a matter of great consequence happened with regard to a film that isn't out yet: Peter Jackson posted the first 'vlog' from the set of The Hobbit.
Peter Jackson, barely half the man he was ten years ago, making Lord of the Rings ...
So, apart from my own considerable excitememt about this film, why is this worthy of note? Well, because of the incredible level of access Jackson granted us - the wide wired world - during his last big movie, King Kong (2005).
The website Kong is King posted 'Production Diaries', sometimes several a week throughout the entire production process from pre to post. There was no aspect of the film that these Diaries did not delve into, no job on the movie set that they did not spotlight. These Diaries were - and remain - an unprecedented education in how big-budget movies get made.
They weren't just hand-held goofing-about slapped on the net as though by accident; they had proper production values and stand as mini documentaries, produced to a very professional standard.
The post-production diaries are still available on-line, here, for you to watch for free. Meanwhile, the shooting diaries were packaged up and sold as a DVD seperately from the film and, if you have any aspirations to work in the film industry or just have an interest in knowing what it really takes to make a movie - they are a must see!
But, here's the problem: Those documentarians had such unrestricted access that no aspect of the production went unreported ... Which meant that the film had no surprises left by the time it was released.
So, the video below is a wonderful appetite-whetter, you get to see Martin Freeman, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott and a very-different-looking Aidan Turner blocking out a scene. You get to see the production being blessed by a haka - after all, The Hobbit is crucially important to New Zealand's economy, so no wonder the locals are glad to see production getting under way.
But, as I watched the video ... Part of me was thinking "Don't show me too much". I love learning how films are made, but only after I've had chance to see the finished product and let it weave its magic spell over me.
I'm not sure if I'll watch more of these videos as they appear. I might save them up and watch them at the end ... But that's gonna be three years away so ... I dunno.
Anyway, it is viewable on his Facebook page which is here, so make your own mind up.
So, I have been fairly unambiguous with my opinion of 3D. I consider it to be a gimmick, a smoke-and-mirrors trick that merely allows Hollywood to continue foisting sub-standard work on the world by disguising it with cosmetic glamour.
My reasons for this are based on a cold assessment of the films burdened with the 3D logo. I watch them in 2D and, therefore, am not distracted by the jazz-hands of 3D effects, so I can follow the story, assess its structure, evaluate the quality of the writing and acting and, ultimately, decide if it is any good. None of that is quite so easy when one is having sharp pointy-things constantly thrust at one.
I have discussed the costs/benefits of 3D with professional cinema projectionists and they share my reservations. 3D keeps reminding you you are watching a film. Far from creating the suspension of disbelief and total immersion for which most film-makers strive, 3D keeps thrusting things out of the screen at you and thus reminds you you are looking at a screen.
You may argue that bad 3D does this and, to be fair, I couldn't argue with that, because I can't say whether the 3D is good, bad or indifferent. But the evidence would suggest that most 3D is bad 3D. Come on, was anybody impressed by Green Hornet?
Now, in the interests of total disclosure, I don't watch films in 2D just to be awkward or to make a point, I do so because I don't have a choice. I have a condition which my optician refers to as 'a squint'. This doesn't mean my face is screwed up all the time (unless I'm watching an Adam Sandler film, obviously), it means that my eyes don't converge like yours (most probably) do.
Here's the science bit: Because your eyes are on the front of your head (not the side like, for example, most birds) and are separated by your nose, they each see the same things from a slightly different perspective.
These two images are then projected over the top of each other in your brain and that creates the illusion of 3D. This is called 'stereopsis' and is a natural evolutionary development of having two eyes on the front of your head. When the object you are looking at moves closer, your eyes converge - tilt inwards to move your pupils fractionally closer together. Well, my eyes don't do this very well, consequently I have no stereo vision. Evolutionarily, I'm a huge leap backwards.
I get around, I can't play tennis or football because I have rubbish depth perception and constantly miss the ball, but I don't walk into things very often and, y'know, I can hit my mouth with my fork (probably more than I should). It's okay. Don't be setting off and running any marathons for me.
The point is, I can't see 3D. Back in the bad old days of red and blue Anaglyph glasses I ended up watching the film with one eye - either in red or in blue - because, otherwise, it was blurred. Nowadays, thankfully, with grey Polarised lenses, I can at least see the film in focus. But it's still 2D.
But, here's a thing - It seems that I am far from alone in having biological problems with 3D. I was looking, last night, at a very fine filmy website called Obsessed With Film (go and have a wander around here but be careful, you might become obsessed) and they published an article based on an open letter from Film Editor and Sound Designer, Walter Murch, about why 3D doesn't now and never will work.
This letter was originally published by the inestimable Roger Ebert and makes fascinating reading. Why? Because Murch is very well informed about the technology of film production and exhibition. He has a shelf full of shiny gold awards reflecting his technical abilities and know-how. He has also worked in 3D, so he knows what he's talking about!
It makes fascinating reading, I think, and there is, inevitably, a very heated comment exchange afterwards. Have a look at Murch's letter here ... Then lemme know what you think. .
Six weeks before Avatar was released, it’s a fair bet that no one outside the SF and film nerd communities had heard of it. Until the posters and trailers appeared at the cinemas, its existence had been hotly anticipated on websites, weblogs and in the occasional magazine, but nowhere where civilians would see it. That was the marketing approach Cameron and Fox used: A last-minute unleashing of blanket coverage. History indicates it was a strategy that worked, especially in persuading people that the film was an event that had to be experienced in the new Holy Gimmick of 3D.
Well, Disney decided to use a similar approach for their 3D ‘event’, Tron Legacy. About a month from release, it was appearing on the covers of magazines like Empire, Total Film and, inevitably, Wired. A storm of trailers were unleashed spoiling, seemingly, every detail of the film and, of course, the all-important ‘3D’ logo was wheeled out at every opportunity (indeed, Dazed and Confused magazine’s Daft Punk themed cover was itself in 3D)! It seems to have worked. As I write this, the film has been on world-wide release just over a week and it is already set to cover its huge $170 million production budget.
That, of course, is despite the fact that the film – like Avatar – received almost uniformly lukewarm reviews with the most oft-evoked word being ‘disappointing’. Makes a reviewer think he might be wasting his time. Sigh.
I decided I was going to see the film in optimum circumstances … So, as soon as I had the chance I took myself off to the IMAX at Bradford because that’s how you experience an event!
There’s no denying the excellence of the work done by the design and effects people. The world inside The Grid is overwhelmingly complex and detailed and beautiful. But it’s very dark, almost monochrome, where the original Tron (1982) was vividly colourful. It was, and remains, a visually unique film. There really isn’t anything out there that looks quite like it. Not even this sequel. But, the darkness is a bit of the ole pathetic fallacy, where the environment metaphorically represents the tone of the piece. The world of The Grid is once again under the boot of an oppressor (a sort of re-boot, I suppose … hah … heh … sorry).
If people are as disappointed by the film as the reviews indicate, I feel that this is where that disappointment begins: Tron Legacy is essentially a remake. Yes, the film-makers have made big noises about not simply re-making the film but, by having the oppression of the MCP and Sark reproduced, albeit by a new bad-guy, that is, in essence, exactly what they’ve done.
The film begins well enough, concentrating on the son of Jeff Bridges – Sam – who is conveniently almost as old as the first Tron film. His dad has been missing for over twenty years meaning Sam is, to all intents and purposes, an orphan. Now, if a little alarm bell is ringing and you’re wondering “Hang on, are they doing The Hero’s Journey?” I can, sadly, confirm they are!
As with the first Tron, young Flynn breaks into Encom, the evil electronics empire, plays with the computers and gets himself digitised and uploaded onto The Game Grid. He gets to play Frisbee with his identity disc, he gets to ride a Light Cycle. So far so just like the first film. But I was okay with this because, I reasoned, they are re-familiarising us … It has been 28 years, after all.
But then there is very little progress made beyond that. Just like last time, the world is contained in a stand-alone computer, just like last time, the ‘elixir’ is contained on a data disc and, just like last time, there’s a long chase involving elegant and fragile flying machines. Whilst I realise that they have deliberately left a few loose ends in this film for any possible sequel, I feel that not employing any of the concepts and terminology that people these days use in relation to computers, gives the film an oddly anachronistic feel. There is no reference to viruses or fire-walls or search engines or any of those phrases that even compu-luddites like me use on a daily basis. This story should have been about unleashing The Grid onto the internet. The world of computing has transformed beyond recognition in the three decades since the first film and this second film, if only to justify the ridiculously long wait, needed to acknowledge and employ that.
It’s not like the film-makers were unaware of the world of web 2.0. Legacy’s first act shows Sam working as a ‘white hat’ hacker leaking Encom’s new operating system to the world, just to annoy them; yet this particular first act gun just isn’t used in the third act. That’s a problem. Indeed all the first act stuff with Encom and its new board, and its chief programmer (one Ed Dillinger) is a red herring since, once Sam enters The Grid, there is no reference back to the real world at all. That’s also a problem; it’s sloppy structure and lazy script-writing.
In the middle act there are several lengthy exposition scenes after father and son are reunited (I don’t think that’s giving anything away too spoileriffic) and, moving past the fact that clustering too many lengthy dialogue scenes together is, again, lazy script-writing; one of these exchanges details the emergence of ‘isomorphic algorithms’. Now, while the film is quite vague about what these are, it does make it clear that they are a sort of software 2.0, a huge evolutionary leap in computing. It is their arrival that sparks the political oppression which Flynns Snr and Jnr must combat. Now, to me, this isomorphic story was far more diverting and filled with dramatic possibility than the chase movie we have here and, since it’s about software evolving and improving, it would have handed on a plate the narrative the film-makers needed to introduce The Grid to our modern wired world. I’m just saying.
Finally, one of the eccentricities of the first film is that, for no clearly discernible reason, it is not named after the main protagonist - the character who we follow into The Grid - but rather one of the programs he meets in there. This gives Legacy another imbalance: They needed to continue with the Tron name for brand recognition, which means they have to find some active role for the Tron program. So they’ve got him playing Bobba Fett. Yes, really. Then, in the last few moments, they give the character a pointless epiphany in a sequence which feels like it was assembled in the edit-suite as an after-thought.
So, it’s fair to say that there are problems with the script but, as I mentioned at the beginning, there is nothing wrong with it visually. Director Kosinski is another graduate of high-concept CGI-heavy commercials (if you’re interested in knowing more, have a look at his website here) which means he has a great grasp of visuals but, as with so many directors who make their way into big movies through that route, this doesn’t prepare you to control a full length film nor, for that matter, does it ensure you can get a great performance out of an actor.
This is why, I suspect, recent Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges gives two completely by-the-numbers performances: One of them in person, in his Jedi pyjamas as Father Flynn and the other, over on the other side of the Uncanny Valley, as his much younger self via the miracle of motion capture. I didn’t mind that Clu comes across as one-dimensional, nor that his CGI face was as fake and dead-eyed as one of Zemeckis’ cyber-puppets because, after all, he’s a piece of software. It’s entirely appropriate for him to look manufactured. But to make his character and his motivation so clumsily one-dimensional is unforgivable!
So, is there anything to enjoy here? Actually – yes - quite a lot. The film is gorgeous and absolutely worth seeing on as big a screen as possible. The design and execution of the world and the vehicles that travel around it is a constant delight although, I concede, this may be partly because it reminds one so much of 1982’s other great Syd Meadathon: Blade Runner. The Light Cycle sequence is mind-blowing (even if I did have a bit of a grumble about them no longer going in straight lines) and the Light Dragonfly Flying Thingy chase is, if anything, more so. Possibly because it really needs a quick “Don’t get cocky, kid” to make it complete!
Of course, everyone looks ravishing in their skin-tight, fluorescent costumes and heavy pan-cake make-up, particularly Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett who, despite being required to do nothing more than function as one-dimensional ciphers, manage to give their programmes a certain sass. One imagines that they must have been ravenous after being unpeeled from their costumes because they certainly wouldn’t be able to eat while wearing them!
Garrett Hedlund does fine work as Sam, giving him just enough maturity to deal with all the gosh-wow visuals. It must be very difficult to make a vanilla good guy stand out in such a gigantic movie, but he manages. The ever-reliable Michael Sheen (presumably on his days off from working as the wabbit on his other Disney flick, Tim Burton’s Alice in Underland) also shines (literally and figuratively) in a wonderfully camp turn as a sort of Aladdin Sane cum Jimmy Saville nightclub owner. But what ties the whole package together wonderfully and dramatically is the music by Daft Punk. Yes, it was leaked all over the interweb months ago; but listening to some dodgy MP3 divorced from its proper full-screen context is, well, unsatisfying.
I might even be persuaded to make the case for this being the soundtrack of the year. For a sample of what I'm wittering about have a quick click of this:
Despite all of the problems with script and direction, I genuinely do feel that this is a film worth watching on as a big a screen as you can manage. Further, it’s worth watching twice! Why twice? Well, because that dry-mouthed sense of disappointment that may mar your first viewing will be gone for the second, and you can get on with just basking in the visual and auditory glory of it all.
Anthony Burgess reputedly said that there is no such thing as ‘reading’ a book, there is only ‘re-reading’ it. The first time you read it you are merely getting to grips with the characters and the story. The second time you can appreciate the art, the craft and the love that the author put in the book. Only with a second reading can you fully appreciate and understand a book. Well, I firmly believe the same is true for (most) films. I genuinely feel that, especially when a film has failed to live up to often unrealistic expectation, a second, more level-headed viewing of it can be a revealing and intensely pleasurable experience. So, yes, I will be going to see Tron Legacy again and I expect to see more, understand more and enjoy more than I did first time. (And no, before you ask, this doesn’t mean I’m going to re-evaluate any Adam Sandler films … One has to draw a line somewhere!)
Dir: Joseph Kosinski Stars: Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner Dur: 127 mins Cert: PG .
So here it is, a film that bears a greater weight of self-appointed responsibility than any since … well, ever.
Fox’s publicity machine has been slowly, carefully building the awareness of this film by claiming it is going to change the future by revolutionising the cinema-going experience. We have been led to believe that the world will be redeemed by someone with the initials JC for the second time! So, no pressure, Jim.
The first question this raises is a simple one: Will Avatar change the world? No, of course it won’t, don’t be silly. But the supplementary questions are less easy to dismiss: Is it a good film? Is it a film to which, in the future, others will be compared? Finally, for James Cameron, was it fourteen years well spent?
Let’s find out, shall we?
Avatar begins with something we’ve seen before in a Cameron film: His protagonist, a space marine, emerging from cryogenic sleep on a space-ship. It’s twenty-three years since he introduced us to his Colonial Marines and their employer, the Weyland Yutani corporation, in exactly this way in Aliens. He wants to evoke that much-loved film in our minds, so he can show us how far beyond that he has moved in the intervening quarter-century.
Cameron played no small part in introducing CGI into film-making with his next two projects, The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), both of which showed Hollywood what was now possible and therefore led directly to Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) from which point there was no turning back.
So, you see, although he may not be widely credited with it, Cameron has already changed the course of the movie-going experience once; Fox were banking $300 + million in production budget (and about the same in marketing) in the hope that he could do it again.
Anyway, back to our protagonist. He is Jake Sully, paraplegic ex-Marine, arriving at the far-flung Pandora to take part in the seemingly not-at-all secret Avatar programme. The first glimpse of Pandora we get is of it reflected in the space-ship’s massive solar panel array. This is a subtle and satisfying fore-shadowing of a film which will blur the line between the real and the appearance of the real.
Before I dig too deeply into the substance of the film, let’s look at the surface: These opening moments are not the only aspects of the film we’ve seen before … and every element we recognise is another obstruction to the film being as ground-breaking as the hype led us to expect. For a film to be ‘game changing’ it has to create its own terms of reference, not borrow someone else’s or, as in the early scenes, the film-makers’ own.
All of the Marine scenes deliberately evoke Aliens, with their macho posturing and fetishistic hardware. Michelle Rodriguez has been cast as the feisty pilot, Chacon in a deliberate echo of the equally butch, equally Hispanic Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein).
The giant walking AMP Suits the Marines wear outdoors are a logical way of taking heavy artillery through a jungle environment, but they are also one part Aliens’ Power Loader to two parts machines we’ve seen in sources as various as the animated TV version of Starship Troopers, called Roughnecks (1999) to the Matrix sequels (2003) to the video game Lost Planet (2006).
James Horner, of course, can always be relied upon to re-hash his Star Trek II score from 1982, he’s recycled those horns for practically every action movie he’s scored since then (including, of course, Aliens), they have become his signature and I suspect Cameron will have specifically asked for them.
Further, the story of a disenfranchised American going native is a story we’ve seen many times in movies, from A Man Called Horse and Little Big Man (both 1970) through to Dances With Wolves (1990) and The Last Samurai (2003), but the influences go further: The jungle setting and outsider-rises-to-be-king narrative reminds me of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (story published in 1912, loosely adapted into the Johnny Weissmuller movie version in 1932) while the six-legged Direhorses immediately suggest Thoats, the mounts ridden by the Martians in Burroughs’ Barsoom books and the size of the Na’vi (a word clearly derived from ‘native’ or possibly ‘naïve’) cannot help but remind one of the twelve-foot-tall Green Martians from the same books.
I have also found several interesting articles (the first of which is here) which highlight considerable similarities between Avatar and Poul Anderson’s 1957 novella Call Me Joe.
Finally, can I be the only one who can see a very different and rather worrying reference in the story of a tribe of ‘primitives’ living in a giant tree and using cunning, guile and bows and arrows to defeat a heavily-armed, vastly superior force … on a forest moon? Think about it.
Then there are the real-world influences: The battle between jungle-dwelling tribes-people armed with the afore-mentioned bows and arrows facing up to an American military-industrial complex, descending from the skies in helicopters, draws obvious and immediate parallels with our mediated image of The Viet-Nam War (comparisons Cameron encourages by referencing Apocalypse Now [1979] in calling his helos ‘Valkyries’), whilst the RDA corporation’s motives for invading their land in the first place (For the precious mineral resources buried beneath it) reflect America’s reasons for the present on-going unpleasantness in The Middle East. Is it worth mentioning that the given name of this mineral – Unobtanium – is itself borrowed from the 2003 film The Core? Possibly not, because the makers of that film will have taken the word from the same place that Cameron found it – a 1950s engineering colloquialism for, well, the unobtainable.
So, the perceptive viewer will be carrying all of this baggage with them. Then, in addition to this burden, there is the structure of the narrative as a whole, which is a simple, traditional Hero’s Quest, with all of the traditional elements and character types that I teach my media students about every year. This became the de rigeur story structure when George Lucas employed it with unprecedented success in Star Wars in 1977, and it is now taught to script-writers as the only structure that will get the studios to buy your script. But, is that really true of a script written by James King of the World Cameron? Really? Would he really have difficulty selling a script of which McKee and Meier would disapprove? No, of course not; but he has elected to use it anyway, presumably to make the story universally acceptable to the vast market he would need to reach to recoup that astronomical budget. Yet, taking a narrative framework which stretches all the way back to primordial campfire stories is not a good way to innovate. If this film is truly showing us the way forward, why is its story so tired and trusted (sic)?
So, there are some significant problems with both the surface and the underlying structure of the film. But these aren’t what the masses are coming for … They want the long-promised spectacular visuals and, in this regard at least, the film absolutely does not disappoint.
What you are watching is, for about three-quarters of its screen-time, a wonderfully detailed cartoon. (The official figure is 60% animation to 40% live-action but, in the watching, the amount of CGI seems greater). Everything about the Na’vi and their home world is CGI and, for the first few minutes, this becomes a distraction … but such is the strength of Cameron’s vision and his control of his resources that you very quickly forget this – in no small part because of Zoë Saldaña’s quite extraordinary motion capture performance as the Na’vi princess, Neytiri.
An aside: I have a serious problem with Robert Zemeckis’ mo cap movies, The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and this year’s A Christmas Carol. He is attempting to create CGI which is so utterly convincing it is indistinguishable from real life. Moving past the sheer foolishness of this project (surely, if it looks real it would be easier to shoot it for real, CGI is there to help film-makers explore the un-real and the un-realisable) I consider all of his animated films failures because, no-matter how realistic the hair, no matter how convincing the flow of the materials and the flickering of the lights, the eyes of his characters – and therefore their whole faces – are dead. Every close-up just pushes me back out of the movie and back into my seat. Every facial expression tells me “It’s only a movie!” I’m not alone in this reaction, it seems and a bit of research tells me that the technical term for it is ‘The Uncanny Valley’, coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori to explain the revulsion people feel towards robots the more humanoid they become. Essentially, the more real simulated people appear, the more artificial we perceive them and the more disturbed our reaction to them. The ever-reliable journal of record (ahem) Wikipedia, details it here, if you’d like to know more.
All of Zemeckis’ recent forays into animation fall straight into that valley for me. Avatar does not. From the first close up of Neytiri’s face, she is so is utterly convincingly alive, facial expressions so recognisably human, performance so rich with nuance and personality. Finally someone has created a CGI character more convincingly real than Gollum.
But then, the bulk of the CGI work here was provided by WETA digital, the people who created Gollum! They also undertook a lot of the design work relating to the Na’vi which will also go some way to explaining why their culture seems so fully evolved.
Indeed, I would go as far as to say that the CGI Na’vi are more engaging, more convincing and more human than the humans playing the Marines and corporate stooges. Even Sigourney Weaver is more prepossessing in her CGI form than as the intemperate Dr. Augustine.
Cameron and his team of advisors have put an extraordinary amount of work into developing the Na’vi culture to make these creatures a fully-formed and utterly believable race. The Marines (particularly in the person of Stephen Lang’s Colonel Quaritch) come across as one-dimensional ciphers by comparison.
Similarly, while the artificial habitation created by the humans is as characterless as it is familiar, the eco-system outside is utterly original and – importantly – seems to make perfect sense. The inter-dependent balance that exists between flora and fauna in our own environment, is reflected in the elegant beauty of the balance that exists on Pandora.
This balance, this unity, is held together by the quite brilliant notion of the neural queue, a sort of biological USB cable that sprouts from the back of their head, insulated by a woven pony-tail of hair. This connection allows the Na’vi to ‘plug in’ to the ecosphere around them, be it the direhorses they ride, the banshees they fly or the trees beneath which they live. This simple notion – which itself mirrors the way Sully is himself plugged into his avatar, holds the eco-system together and provides the MacGuffin the plot needs to explain why Sully can so quickly adapt to their way of life.
Yes, Cameron will have gotten the idea for the forest becoming bio-luminescent at night from his regular forays underwater, but why not? Bio-luminescence is, apparently, the single most common form of communication between life-forms on our planet – why shouldn’t Pandora’s exquisite plant and animal life have it too!?
The scenes where Sully is getting used to the world are fascinating and I wanted to seem much, much more of them. Pandora is a fascinating place, what a shame we couldn’t have spent two and half hours just exploring its wonders … why did that pesky plot have to get in the way?
So, anyway, about that plot. Sully arrives in his wheel-chair to take his now-dead brother’s part in the Avatar Programme, an undertaking designed to give humans the opportunity to ‘pilot’ genetically engineered Na’vi clones, Na’vitars if you will, out into the jungle to meet with the locals on their own terms. Given how narrow-minded and profit-motivated the only representatives of RDA we meet are, it makes you wonder quite why they suffer this scientific exploration to continue. Property developers here on Earth have to put up with the slow progress of archaeologists because we’re constantly being supervised in a developed country bound by the rule of law; RDA is working in a hostile environment six years’ travel away … who would know if they shut the scientists down? But they don’t. They haven’t for years. Presumably because Quaritch was waiting impatiently for someone like Sully to arrive, someone he could get on his side with the old ‘Semper Fi’ routine, someone he can use as a spy in the scientist camp.
But, before he can do that, Sully has to adjust to his out-of-body-in-a-different-body experience. He lies in a cradle, is plugged in and wakes up in a twelve-foot tall blue body … with legs that work. His first instinct – and this seems so human, even if the body doesn’t – is to break out of the medical facility and run … just run and run and run.
He does the same on his first foray into the jungle, gets chased, turns tail (literally), runs, gets lost, gets attacked and gets rescued by the beautiful, fearsome and damn-near-nekkid Neytiri. She looks at the way he blunders around the jungle and calls him a child. Watching him play the glowing leaves of various giant plants like a drum-kit, you can see her point.
Neytiri can, conveniently, speak English (because Dr. Augustine taught a few Na’vi some time in the past) reducing the need for those annoying sub-titles that certain cinema-goers don’t appreciate (if I wanted to read I’d open a book). She takes Sully to her village and, for no clearly discernible reason (other than narrative necessity), he is accepted among them and trained up in their ways.
It is during these second-act scenes, where we see time and again the Amerindian influences on their culture, cemented into place by the casting of Wes Studi as the voice of tribal chief, Eytukan.
As these scenes proceed we become aware of the mirroring and the blurring of the line between Sully’s two worlds. When his Na’vitar falls asleep, his real body wakes up, to a constant state of culture shock. The Na’vi sleep in cocoons made of reed, he sleeps in a cocoon of metal and plastic. Gradually, the far-more-compelling world of the Na’vi seduces him. It is at this point that we finally see what Cameron saw in leading man, Sam Worthington. Although as blank and humourless through the film’s first half as he was in Terminator Salvation, his experiences with the Na’vi nation make him more animated, bringing forth smiles, jokes and, finally, some spark of humanity.
We’ll ignore the unlikeliness of a field-grunt with no apparent education learning an entire alien language and culture in just three months, and instead concentrate on the beauty of the landscapes Cameron’s vast team of artists have created. I particularly love the Hallelujah Mountains, giant slabs of weather-beaten rock which hover like something off a Roger Dean album cover (I’ll leave it to minds greater than mine to figure out how and why) which are joined together and held stable by a vast network of vines. Once again, an example of the Pandoran eco-system working collaboratively.
Unfortunately, the real purpose of these beautiful and delightful middle-act scenes are not imply so we can revel in the magic of the world-building that the film-makers have practiced. No, every single lesson Neytiri teaches him, every single skill he develops and every single experience he goes through is for dramatically expedient reasons. Everything will come in useful in the big battle at the end. The script is disappointingly economical in that sense.
When Quaritch is giving his pep-talk to the newbies, he tells them that Pandora is worse than any Hell they could imagine. But we have no idea what leads him to this assessment. The place we see is no more dangerous than any jungle when approached by the ignorant. However, Quaritch is an impressively ignorant man. Blinded by this, his fear of the planetoid has become a rage that is his only defining characteristic. He is completely one-dimensional character, driven to do one thing and one thing only: destroy everything beautiful.
Where the Na’vi are unambiguously a perfect good, he is the perfect evil, with the scientists trapped in the grey-area in-between. This is a very traditional arrangement, which requires no thought to understand and that, again, is a disappointment.
The film has such a complex, detailed, rich texture and yet, when your mind bites into it, it finds the taste very familiar and disappointingly bland.
The film’s greatest success is that it is, by far, the most spectacular, visually compelling, exotic fantasy released since The Lord of the Rings. It cements WETA’s reputation as the go-to people for special effects which are both very special and deeply affecting.
So, is it a good film? Visually it is stunning and watching it is certainly an experience that everyone must treat themselves to on the biggest screen they can. There is no denying the epic sweep of the simplistic themes the film deals with and thus, even for this cynical old hack, the confrontation at the end is as exhilarating as it is heart-felt.
Is it a film to which, in the future, others will be compared? For the quality of its visuals and the depth of the thought that went into the world-building, yes. No one will be able to get away with bodging together disparate alien-seeming elements on a suck-it-and-see basis ever again. Someone will have to think about what works. Just like proper science fiction writers do. But it will also be a touchstone for script-writers whenever they want to think about great lost opportunities of our time.
Finally, for James Cameron, was it fourteen years well spent? Well, if he’d released it even two years earlier, the world would not have been ready for its 3D sophistication and would have seen it for the gimmick 3D, at heart, really is. If he’d released it five or six years earlier, the special effects would not have been achievable for even this extravagant budget. If he’d released it ten years earlier … it would have been compared unfavourably to the still very conspicuous Titanic. So, 2009 was the perfect year to release this film. He had to wait fourteen years. His efforts would have been less impressive, less acceptable and, if the first week’s box-office is any guide, less lucrative.
Further, for a fascinating and entirely dispassionate review of the science of the film, explored, evaluated and converted into a reasonable facsimile of easy-to-understand English by an actual, proper, white-coat wearing scientist, look no further than the Ain’t It Cool article here.
To look at the ‘scriptment’ Cameron wrote in the mid-nineties, which many commentators consider to be superior to the script we ended up with, you can find it in its entirety on docstoc here.
Writer/Director: James Cameron Stars: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoë Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Dur: 14 years and 162 mins Cert: 12A
