The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
As Adaptation speed-runs through the first level of its button-mashing quadrant, there are three reasons why I've specifically chosen to play Super Mario World. 1) This is the game I lost a couple of Summers to in the early 90s (as referenced up there in the introduction), 2) This is the game which introduces Yoshi the dragon, who also appears in the film-version (and so provides the closest chronological influence for the film), and 3) This is the game I've got upstairs with my SNES*1. Hey, path of least resistance and all that...
It's certainly true that the moustachioed plumber was a thing before this particular installment of the franchise, of course. Mario has become to gaming what Darth Vader is to cinema; an iconic figure of the artform, a mainstream touchstone symbolising the progression and durability of the hobby, familiar even to people who've never so much as picked up a game-controller, let alone thrown one down in a fit of pique. The game harks from that golden era where domestically-affordable computing power had raised graphics and gameplay mechanics above the NES and Gameboy limitations, but before the 3D conversion-influx that the N64 inevitably brought.
But Super Mario World. Man, what a game. 96 levels, 24 of which are hidden, and the option of playing through them all linearly or taking secret short-cuts to skip the ones which are stumping you. Much like the London Underground, there's often more than one way of completing your journey (and much like the Underground, the hardened fanatic will take the extra time to visit each station anyway - that's where the fun lies*2). While this isn't exactly sand-box gaming, the ability to hop back through the world-map for power-ups and activate retrospective key-reveals makes the replay value absolutely massive.
Relatively short levels mean a high-level of 'unputdownable' gameplay, as you think 'Okay, I'll just complete this level before going to bed/work/court'. This is the hook of course, as it's rarely that simple. The skills learning-curve is steady, making Super Mario World ideal for younger (and older) players who might find the controller less intuitive. But like all good games, there comes a point where you have to sit up and start really concentrating, or be doomed to fall down the same pit for hours on end.
I've briefly tried other iterations of Mario after this, but the 2D platformer is my preferred format, and the SNES is my preferred presentation.
A fantastic game, as timeless as its hero*3...
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about 1993's Super Mario Bros movie is that at a point between post-production and release, someone watched the whole thing back and still gave it the green light. Bob Hoskins stars as Mario Mario, an American-Italian plumber working out of Brooklyn with his younger brother Luigi Mario (played by John Leguizamo*4). Luigi falls in love with an archeologist named Daisy (Samantha Mathis), and the brothers find themselves on a mission to rescue her when she accidentally falls through a dimensional portal at a dig-site and is captured by the evil King Koopa (Dennis Hopper).
The problem is that other than the character names and a couple of shoehorned references to red/green overalls, the film bears almost no relation to the very property it's shamelessly exploiting as its sole marketing focus. Cinematically notorious as a worst-case-scenario of the game-to-movie genre, it's actually no worse than many other family-oriented adventure flicks of the era. Although they were dreadful as well. And of course the whole world didn't see most of those, since they weren't misguided tie-ins to a globally successful game franchise.
The script is leaden and simplistic (not that it's the worse offender), utilising some manner of 'de-evolution machine' in its story as if the concept of natural-selection had even been in the same room as this screenplay. The way the premise and princess-kidnap-plot are wangled from the pixellated fantasy origins and into 'the real-world' is a bit like when theatre producers go 'yeah, we'll set Hamlet… in space!!', and then leave the original 16th-century dialogue in place so that the whole thing doesn't work. Despite the full-length 99-minute runtime not a lot actually happens here, and what does happen makes little-to-no sense even with industrial amounts of exposition. Oh, and Dennis Hopper's dinosaur-based villain is a actually just middle-age man scowling with excessive amounts of product in his bleach-blonde hair*5. When he's padding around the soundstage representing a filthy, dystopian city, it feels for all the world like Michael Bay got pissed and decided to re-adapt Blade Runner for kids.
Co-directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton have a legally-binding credit in the film's opening sequence (laid over the movie itself rather than an inserted-card), yet are somehow not mentioned one single time in the closing reel. Almost as if the traditional attribution had been removed on purpose so that the audience wouldn't be able to scribble down the names of those responsible. The first words to appear in that end-scroll are a nod to Roxette for the closing music. Imagine being so mortified with your own work that you'd dump Roxette in the shit over it. Well, quite.
On a technical level, the sound-mix on my 'remastered' DVD is atrocious with background noise rushing to fill any auditory gaps and then flopping over the dialogue. I can't imagine how bad it must have been in the vanilla-print (not that I'll be hunting it down to find out). This perhaps wouldn't matter so much if the disc actually had a basic subtitle-track but it doesn't and now I can't believe I'm complaining about this like it would have made the damned thing any more bearable*6.
At any point in this film you can stop and ask "right, what's going on again?", and be sure that there isn't an answer.
Super Mario Bros isn't even "delightful hate-watch" bad, it's just crap. The whole endeavour is based on what-iffery. The title-sequence opens with an entire monologue of it. "What if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteorite created a parallel dimension? And, hey! What if they found a way back?".
Apparently at no point during the creation of this movie did a producer lean forward and say "…yeah, what if we all don't bother though?"
First things first, I watched the cartoon-segments of this. The 'Super Show' consisted of a live-action Mario Bros sitcom acting as a framing device for animated shorts of the plumbers (and The Legend of Zelda in some episodes). Anything which isn't cartoons is awful. All I'm saying is that 'The Super Show' was the scheduling-name for the combination of everything, but when a Best-of DVD was published, someone decided that 'Best-of' didn't go so far as including any of the live-action segments. But hey, by all means see for yourself. Anyway, I watched a couple of hours' worth of the Mario animations. They're uncomplicated but quite a lot of fun, especially for fans of 1980s animation.
Starring Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and little Toad, each episode is self-contained and takes a theme as the basis for the week's story (Jack & The Beanstalk, Aladdin etc). The first chapter on the Best-Of DVD is Star Koopa, which opens with Mario and gang on a spaceship being pursued by Darth Koopa. Cue the Koopa-troopers in white armour, the transparent equivalent of Carbonite and some non-copyright-infringing (and stun-only) lightsabers. If anything, what would normally be a heavy-handed pastiche works more as an actual homage, due to the visual and tonal similarities to Nelvana Animation's Holiday Special and Droids cartoons. This particular episode is the sort of thing I'd usually hate, but the overall charm of the series pulls it off.
Even with the disposable writing-format restricting any kind of development, and its always-changing, context-free location settings, the Super Mario Bros cartoon still makes infinitely more sense than anything in the 1993 movie...
In the game, no (there's no sampled dialogue), in the movie there's not that I heard (although I was just short of screaming inside my head for an hour and half) and I didn't hear one in the cartoon eps that I watched.
Level 1: The game's character-writer Shigeru Miyamoto was a crewmember on Nintendo's 1996 Shadows of the Empire N64 game, whereas the film-version stars one of TPM's Gungan Guards and the cartoon features the voices of Thall Joben and Vlix from Droids.
That's pretty good-going, all things considered.
*1 An actual SNES, as opposed to the recently-released SNES-mini. No snobbery against the new version (I'm all for it, in fact), but there's not a lot of point in me buying one when I still have a functioning, vintage SNES and all the games I want to play on it anyway. [ BACK ]
*2 FYI, I'm not a train geek, I just love that train geeks exist. In all fairness, I suspect I'm not a train geek because Star Wars got its foot in the door first and I've only got so much disposable cash. As a wise man once observed, 'collectors are like freemasons, but without the handshake...'. [ BACK ]
*3 Yeah I know technically it's heroes and Luigi is available as a player as soon as someone picks up the other controller, but it's not called Super Luigi World, now is it? We all know that Mario's brother is the hanger-on in this partnership. While Mario's doing the skilled work of re-plumbing a toilet-main, Luigi's mopping up the sewage with that slack-jawed expression on his face. No, don't look at me like that, no-one likes Luigi. He's basically Scrappy-Doo in overalls... [ BACK ]
*4 Okay, Bob Hoskins may not be entirely Italian-looking, but John Leguizamo is fucking Colombian. What does this suggest about the casting director? Does the film's artistic license extend to the point where the brothers aren't actually from the same continent, never mind the same mother? And let's not go into the dynamics of a family where there's a 22-year age gap between brothers... [ BACK ]
*5 And okay, the fresh-faced John Leguizamo was only 29 with this movie was released, but Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper were actual, established actors by that point. Granted, neither has a perfect decision-making record even outside of Mario Bros (Leguizamo also guilty on that front), but I mean really guys, what the actual fuck? [ BACK ]
*6 The best part? I've actually seen this film before. In 1993. In the cinema. No, really. I don't remember actively hating it, although a nagging disappointment certainly factored into my reactions. But now, enough time seems to have passed that I'd forgotten how bad it could be. Anyway, I am next due to watch Super Mario Bros in 2041. Can't wait. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Jigsaw Cert: 18 / 92 mins / Dir. Peter Spierig & Michael Spierig / Trailer
Seven years? Blimey. It doesn't feel like that long ago that Ian Jigsaw graced our screens each year, even though when the last one was out I hadn't quite started reviewing each film I saw at the cinema. Much like a certain Orwellian house-based show from the same era, what began as an intriguing social experiment (on both the subject and the observers) quickly turned into a freak-show; gruesome attractions put on for gleeful observers*1 with a faux-moralistic slant. As the series continued, the background plot-mechanics grew more contrived and unfeasible (not that this really matters when all you're waiting for is some poor sap get their head cut off, of course). But 'diminishing returns' is a law which applies to the just and the unjust alike, and in 2010 the series was put into stasis*2 as the creators went on to more supernatural pursuits...
But years have passed, the world feels like it's changed, and maybe it's time to feel judgementally superior at watching people be murdered and mutilated for middling misdemeanours again? MARVELLOUS!
…This entry picks up ten years after the Jigsaw Killer's death, with a team of moody cops and morticians frowning against the clock to crack the case of his apparent resurgence. Meanwhile in a remote, undisclosed location, five ne'er-do-wells have unwittingly volunteered to take part in The Crystal Maze For Arseholes. Each of the captives is hiding an awful secret that they're encouraged to confess to gain freedom, and blood, sweat and tears will be spilled for every moment they hesitate. Although mainly blood. But who is really behind the gruelling assault course? Can the bickering strangers really escape by following the rules? And does it even matter when you're waiting for the claret to be spattered up the walls?
…Jigsaw is fine. Really, just fine. Engaging all the time it's running, but ultimately forgettable since the screenplay sticks so closely to the template of its forerunners. This feels like going back to your hometown years later to find that nothing's changed. At first the nostalgia is comforting, then it gives way to a creeping sense of pity. Then again, these movies are ultimately about human nature, and how much does that ever adapt? For all the grandiose posturing in resurrecting the franchise, there's still the feeling that each movie stems from a Friday-afternoon game of 'most creative death-scene' in the pub, followed by a Monday-morning 'now write them all into a screenplay'. As fun as the 92 clockpunching minutes are, I don't think there's really enough here to warrant the series' return. Then again, it's not me who'll be the ultimate judge of who's worthy to see another movie, it's the box office returns*3.
The film is funny, it's gory, it's preachy and it's cruel.
Jigsaw pushes all the right buttons, there just aren't any new buttons…
Well, the rest of the Saw films, frankly.
If you're a fan, absolutely.
Almost certainly; it's the ambition that's in question here, not the achievement.
I haven't had sufficient exposure to them all to say.
Not at all.
Not at all.
Level 2: This film stars Paul Braunstein, who also appeared in 2011's The Thing alongside Joel 'Young Uncle Owen' Edgerton.
*1Which is great, by the way. Absolutely nothing wrong with movies being singularly entertaining on their own terms, so long as they do it well.[ BACK ]
*3 Although with a production-budget of just $10m, this movie will make money hand over fist anyway. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Thor: Ragnarok (2D / first-pass / SPOILER-FREE)
Cert: 12A / 130 mins / Dir. Taika Waititi / Trailer
“You must finish what you’ve started. […] Your ancestors called it magic and you call it science. Well, I come from a place where they’re one and the same thing…”
While nothing is ever truly certain in this world, it would be fairly safe to say that 17 movies into a series that’s less than a decade old, Marvel Studios have turned the magic into a consistent, repeatable science. Even the weakest entries are still pretty good, and the Phase Three behemoth continues its strong form with Thor: Ragnarok, the third standalone entry for the god of thunder.
It’s slightly ironic that 2013’s Thor: The Dark World initially cued up the planet-hopping ethos which James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy perfected, while falling slightly short of the finishing post itself. Because Ragnarok evokes the best of Gunn's work, while owing a debt to 2016’s Doctor Strange for successfully introducing actual sorcery into a cause-and-effect universe. The Thor of the third-coming rides the wave of its siblings, all with a heavy dose of dry humour. There are spaceships, there are spells; there are battleaxes and there are guffaws at every turn.
With Taika Waititi at the helm and a screenplay from Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost (all three of whom have previously worked on Marvel properties), the film is in safe and loving hands from the outset. But that’s not to say that the characters are wrapped in narrative cotton wool. The events in Ragnarok have lasting consequences for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe...
Chris Hemsworth is well in his stride as the eponymous hero of course, as is Tom Hiddleston as his antagonistic brother Loki. Anthony Hopkins’ Odin is back with minimal scenery-chewing, while Idris Elba’s Heimdall plays a key role this time, even if he feels shortchanged in terms of screen-time. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk makes a long-overdue return, playing the role in the way he’s made it his own; furious, petulant and thoroughly endearing. The Warriors Three have a fleeting reappearance, while the post-credits scene from Doctor Strange is given some fleshing out in its own full sequence. New to the cast and thrust centre-stage is Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, a hands-on role for a great performer (even if her character setup becomes lost in the overall noise of the movie).
The most anticipated name on the roster, though, is that of Cate Blanchett as Hela, the goddess of death. An actress who rarely disappoints, she plays true to form here, but never quite manages the true malice her role requires. ‘Revenge’ is a staple motivation for comic-book villains, but it’s really the only card in Hela’s deck, and Cate can’t seem to get past the theatrical posturing of her character and down to business. While it’s certainly an improvement on Christopher Ecclestone’s Malekith from The Dark World, it seems that Marvel haven’t quite solved their villain-problem yet.
But one thing which is in plentiful supply is charismatic supporting players. At one point where Thor awakens strapped into a chair being conveyed to meet ‘The Grandmaster’, a silhouette intro-montage plays on the walls behind him. Suddenly, a lone figure strikes a pose which is held in unmistakable freeze-frame; Jeff Goldblum has entered the screenplay. Every line, every gesture, every mid-sentence pause of Goldblum’s deftly steals the scene it’s in. Luckily for the film he’s used with restraint, but The Grandmaster is an absolute joy to behold.
Coming a very close second place in the attention-grabbing stakes is the mo-cap and voice turn from the director as Korg, arguably the Drax of Ragnarok, with Waititi’s native Kiwi-twang offsetting his fearsome rock-like appearance in deadpan observational comedy.
Mark Mothersbaugh is on scoring duties, and while the soundtrack makes the right noises in the right places, it’s not as thematically strong as previous entries from the likes of Michael Giacchino or Brian Tyler. In fact, other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it snippet, none of Tyler’s work from The Dark World makes a return - especially odd given how much time the film spends on Asgard and in the company of characters we’ve met there before. On a first-pass, the most standout musical moments seem to be where Led Zeppelin are inserted into the mix, which is fair enough.
All in all, Thor: Ragnarok is Marvel Studios rounding off 2017 with the A-game they’ve brought throughout. Fun, exciting battles and bickering, in exotic locations and with lasting character development. Fantastic stuff.
The battle at the end of the universe took place in Screen 5 of my local cinema, and Taika Waititi finished what Kenneth Branagh started. Marvel’s marketing department call it magic and and their effects crews call it science. But from where I sat tonight? They’re one and the same thing…
The business-end:
• Is there a Wilhelm Scream? Didn't hear one this time.
• Is there a Stan Lee cameo? Yes.
• Is there a mid-credits scene? Yes.
• Is there a post-credits scene? Yes.
Well, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, to be fair…
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Strong previous-game all round, but it's a strong contender.
I very well might.
I didn't hear one this time, but hit me up if you did yeah?
Level 1: The voice of Savage Opress is a voice in this.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Before we get started, I saw the new trailer for The Last Jedi today, on the biggest screen in my local. So the afternoon wasn't entirely wasted. Right, then. It's a sad fact of 2017 that Gerard Butler's name on a poster usually points to the production being toward the lower-end of the Tomatometer, but that's where we are. A disaster-flick from the co-writer of two Independence Day movies and 1998's Godzilla was never going to hold any great thematic enigmata, yet this new presentation still manages to disappoint, irritate and bore. That said, it would be unfair to call Geostorm indescribably bad. Not least because I'm about to describe how bad it is...
The plot: The year is 2019 (or thereabouts?), and the Earth's network of weather-stabilising satellites is malfunctioning, causing localised Extreme Weather™, which is killing people. Since Gerard Butler is the one who designed the whole system (no really), he has to go into space to punch things until they all start working again. Meanwhile, his brother Jim Sturgess leads the mission on Earth to uncover the conspiracy behind why it's all happening. Obviously this includes President Andy Garcia Of The USA, because movies. Also, Gerard may be a reluctant-genius, borderline alcoholic insubordinate, but he's got a daughter from a previous marriage because it's important that we know he's straight. That's how I read it, anyway.
Science fact! During inclement weather, buildings and vehicles will explode fierily for no reason…
Our tale begins by having a child deliver a condescending monologue on climate-change and apolitical international cooperation*1. That's how it begins. This narration isn't returned to until the film's final moments when at least the majority of the audience can use their empty popcorn receptacles as sick-bags. The driving force behind the narrative is that humanity (well, Gerard Butler) has constructed a planetary shield of satellites, which end up having the opposite of their intended effect. Which, if you recall, is basically the setup of Highlander II. Imagine how piss-poor your screenplay must be when it essentially rips off The Quickening. Perhaps I'm wrong; perhaps Dean Devlin has directed and co-written an unofficial prequel to one of the worst movies of all time. That would certainly fit.
The film itself quickly sketches in Butler as the put-upon everyman and Sturgess as his put-upon brother, then escalates from one contrived disaster set-piece to the next, like a story written by an 8yr old who doesn't realise this will all need wrapping up at some point. Every other line of dialogue is exposition. Either descriptive of what's happened in the past, descriptive of character motivations or descriptive of the things which are happening in the same room at that actual moment. It's as if Warner Bros have decided to save money by merging the script with the hearing-impaired Audio Description track. All that's missing from this packed barrel of bar-raising Wowshit is an appearance from Morgan Freeman as a respected academic whose role in the film is to scratch his head and not have a clue what's going on for the duration.
Dialogue highlight! I particularly enjoyed the moment when Gerard Butler has to tell his brother of the unspoken code between brothers by speaking it to his brother. #writing
As with all of these things, the point-of-jeopardy isn't the death of the central characters, but the potential extinction of all humanity itself. Although since that would necessarily include the death of the central characters, it often feels like a tempting trade-off.
On the plus-side, the effects work is pretty solid in here, as is Butler's non-region-specific US accent, amazingly. I assume he's been taking extra tuition. Or maybe he's just nowhere near the worst thing in this film. I could write a lot, lot more about Geostorm's flaws, but quite frankly it isn't worth the effort (not mine to write, nor yours to read). Every single scene in this cries out for lengthy and merciless deconstruction, and I imagine that the inevitable CinemaSins takedown will be at least as long as the movie itself.
Verdict! Every bit as lazy, reductive and pointless as the trailer suggests and then some, this is a moral, artistic, categorical waste of $120m. If Dean Devlin is really so concerned about the environment, he can do his bit by ensuring that after its theatrical run, no more copies of Geostorm are produced in any format whatsoever…
This is like someone put Lockout, San Andreas and Armageddon into a blender they found in a skip, and smeared stale piss round the rim of your glass. While you were watching.
I saw this in a cinema where an elderly couple to my immediate right kept sporadically returning to their full-volume conversation, throughout.
It was not the most annoying thing which happened in that room.
I genuinely have no idea what this sets out to achieve.
The only individual to escape this debacle with any shred of dignity is Alexandra Maria Lara, who seems to have been acting for a much better film. She's going to be fucking livid when she watches this back.
You know what? I will, a bit.
Not that I heard.
Level 2: Our Hero Gerald appeared in 2008's RocknRolla of course, alongside Geoff '2nd Lt. Frobb' Bell.
Incidentally, there is also a scripted reference to Rocknrolla in Geostorm, which is delivered with all the consummate artistry of a toddler at a drum-kit.
*1 And bear in mind, I'm already on-side for this. As a Guardian-reading, science-loving, realist, I know that the first step in actually tackling demonstrable climate change is by affecting people's attitudes. And even I found this to be a load of manipulative, sanctimonious old shit, half-heartedly smeared across a two-hour montage of cities collapsing for no explicable reason. It's the sort of thing that makes me want to sit in my back garden, burning old refrigerators full of polystyrene, just out of spite… [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Super Mario World (SNES)
Super Mario Bros.
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
