Hello, this is your spoiler-break. If you haven't seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, you shouldn't be here. This piece goes into (and underneath) far too much detail of the plot and themes of the film. To the point where it probably won't even make too much sense if you haven't seen the movie, but all the same you can always read my first-pass review to get a general flavour of what's in store (very vague spoilers in there, but nothing too derailing).
It took me far too long to get round to watching Far From Home again, but in the meanwhile I was at least able to marshall my thoughts somewhat. I absolutely love it, that should have been clear last time, and watching a second time allowed me to pick out more specific detail while also having the deeper themes filled in with more texture. I still didn't get quite the buzz that I did from 2017's Homecoming, but this movie is far more than just a flashy ride, as we'll discover.
Anyway, that's enough stalling - proceed with care…
Still here? Smashing. Okay, let's look at potentially the biggest revelation in Far From Home before we get into the meaning of the film. Because while they're certainly linked, they're not the same thing. J.Jonah Jameson appears in the mid-credits scene. Big deal, J.Jonah Jameson is a central player in the spider-specific mythos, and he didn't rock up in Homecoming, either reinterpreted or otherwise, so he fits in well here. But J.Jonah Jameson is played by actor J.K. Simmons here. Big deal, Simmons is an absolutely perfect fit for the bullish newspaper editor. In fact, we know he's a perfect fit because we saw J.K. Simmons play J.Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy from 2002-07.
Wait, what? Oh yeah.
Now, the one point on which Marvel Studios have been consistent over the course of twenty three movies is that the cinematic universe is sprawling yet self-contained. Characters who have appeared in other movies and media previously are not to be taken as the ones in the MCU content, in terms of the story-canon. Many of them will have broadly similar backstories, but characters, events and even actors outside this timeline are not to be taken as historical in their new iterations. That's why Chris Evans was able to portray The Human Torch in a pair of Fox's Fantastic Four movies, and still become the definitive Captain America. It's why Ben Affleck was Daredevil in the 2003 flick, but in the MCU he's played by Charlie Cox, and different things happen to that character.*1
Anyway, the point is that Marvel Studios aren't beholden to the story arcs and casting choices of any 'sub-contracted' movie series*2. So why, after all these years of retooling and re-imagination, has J.K. Simmons returned in the role of J.Jonah Jameson? They could have dropped many other performers into that role. Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tommy Lee Jones, Jenny Agutter, the MCU is full of actors who maybe can't do the action stuff any more, but are still great to have in roles of gravitas. But they chose Simmons again. Rest assured, this was no accident. And the answer, somewhat ironically, lies in last year's Into The Spider-Verse. Sony's non-MCU animated extravaganza deals with the collision of various comic and cartoon versions of the web-slinger, when a dimensional-portal mishap draws all these threads together. And just when we thought the MCU was safely walled off from Marvel's uneven earlier cinematic efforts, J.K. Simmons rocks up as J.Jonah Jameson, reminding everyone of those three Tobey Maguire movies*3. And all of a sudden, it seems like characterisations from elsewhere in Marvel's screen history actually could exist in the MCU after all. Different stories, but same faces.
How? That's not explained. Yet. Doctor Strange spoke of seeing different realities at the climax of Infinity War, his 2021 outing is titled Multiverse of Madness, and Disney's recent re-acquisition of the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters via the Fox buy-out could well point to some mass crossover whereby non-MCU properties are at least accounted for (otherwise it's exposition-heavy reboots all round). Far From Home teases the possibility earlier in its run-time when Mysterio states he's from Earth 813, a parallel dimension to the MCU's 'standard' Earth 616. But as everything else Quentin Beck says here is a lie, presumably we can discount that, too? We can certainly scrub his exact version of events, although the seed has been planted all the same. Hell, Beck's got access to a lot of Stark's old files, and it's possible his own team have made some advancements of their own, he's just rounding it out with bullshit.
But the first shoot to break through the soil comes in the mid-credits scene, and it's something which was there all along - we just hadn't been shown it yet.
J.Jonah Jameson exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the editor of The Daily Bugle, and he's played by J.K. Simmons. And Jameson's still angry. He's angrier than ever, in fact. Because director Jon Watts hasn't stopped with a callback to an old character. In the MCU, The Daily Bugle and its associated website is an opinionated, authoritarian, right-wing, conspiracy-theory-loving news outlet. 2019 (our version) is a cynical place, and not everyone has that 'gee-whiz' trust in the media any more. The Daily Bugle now shadows the likes of Fox News*4 and even InfoWars; Jameson rants and raves across the digital airwaves, so determined to bring viewers The Truth™ that he's prepared to spread lies to do it. And it could be the most real thing that Marvel Studios have done to date.
Which brings us, as they say, to the crunch. The real message, hiding in plain sight throughout Far From Home. That even in fiction, you can't handle the truth…
IT'S EASY TO FOOL PEOPLE
WHEN THEY'RE FOOLING THEMSELVES. Or, as a much wiser man once said, "your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them". That thing you just saw, there. Did you really see it? Really? Okay, but did you also believe it? In 2019? More fool you. And its coming to something when the largest entertainment company on Earth - the one that's been capturing hearts through fiction for just shy of a hundred years - feels the need to dole out that lesson.
The Daily Bugle's paranoid propaganda machine is the final raised-eyebrow, tongue-in-cheek hammerblow in a movie which has spent two hours telling its audience to question everything. From Quentin Beck's fabricated backstory, to the hologram generators he uses to create his attacks, to the con he pulls on Peter to get the E.D.I.T.H. glasses, to the visual nightmare he summons around Spider-Man to paralyse him, to his coup de grace contingency-plan of faking a video then doxxing Parker as revenge from beyond the grave: question everything.
From the double-life that Parker still leads as he tries to complete his education and not assume the full mantle of hero, to pretending he doesn't know why his school tour is being diverted around Europe into the path of attacking Elementals, to the clumsy excuses he makes to MJ as he tries to avoid the subject of his absence without flat-out lying to the girl he's falling for: question everything.
From Happy Hogan and Aunt May lying to Peter about the relationship they're having, to Happy Hogan and Aunt May lying to each other about the relationship they're having, to Happy sending clumsily coded messages to Nick Fury about Mysterio's whereabouts, to Nick Fury pretending he didn't pick those up, to Nick Fury lying to Happy and Peter Parker because Nick Fury is actually Talos because the real Nick Fury is halfway across the galaxy helping the Skrull refugees, to Talos then attempting to play down the absolute shit-show he's created on Earth in the meanwhile: question everything.
PEOPLE NEED SOMETHING TO BELIEVE;
THESE DAYS, PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING. Throughout all of this, Spider-Man: Far From Home is a film about belief. It's about Peter Parker learning how much Tony Stark believed in him, and Parker learning to believe in himself, too. Not so much the cocky, self-assuredness of an athletic teenager with access to a billionaire's vault of technology and the free-rein to use it, but believing - knowing - that he's doing this for the right reasons. That being the hero is just the right thing to do, because not everyone can help themselves. Because being the hero is a privilege.
It's a film about confidence, about trust, about choosing friends you can rely on and about accepting that sometimes you'll make mistakes. It's about accepting that you won't always know what to do - whether you're 15, 35 or 85. And ultimately it's a film about truth. About how damaging the truth can be as well as how liberating. About how we'll often deny the truth in comfort rather than confront it to make things genuinely better, and how when it's taken out of our hands that can cause even more problems.
At the end of Far From Home, the city of New York (and by extension the world) knows that Spider-Man is a kid named Peter Parker. That shouldn't affect him too adversely, Tony Stark outed himself as Iron Man at the end of the first movie, after all. In fact, Spider-Man is one of the few heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who actually has a 'secret identity'. But that disguise wasn't there to help the web-slinger - it was there to help the kid who wears the suit. The kid who knows he still has to finish his education if he's to become the best version of himself. Well, I'm sure the Stark Foundation can stretch to some private tuition because now Parker is in the big-leagues. They're probably going to have to stretch to some protection for May, Ned and MJ too, but that's another story.
Parker will do well, though. He'll grow, he'll adapt.
He'll become the hero he was meant to be.
It certainly deserves to be near the top of the CV of everyone involved.
I suppose we might.
There ain't.
Level 1: Pre Vizsla is in this.
Also, Peter Parker's got a 3¾" scale TIE Bomber in his bedroom, which is exactly the level of in-universe homage I'm after. The Lego Death Star from last time was a bit much, mate.
*1 It's also kind of why Evan Peters is the mutant-Quicksilver in 2014's X-Men: Days Of Future Past, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the "enhanced" Quicksilver in 2015's Avengers: Age Of Ultron. That one is more complicated, in fact - same character, completely different backstory for self-defeating contractual reasons - and I'll be honest I'm regretting bringing it up now. But here we are. Blame Marvel. [ BACK ]
*2 Andrew Garfield did a fantastic job in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Marvel still recast the role to Tom Holland in the MCU. Holland is also fantastic, but that's not my point. [ BACK ]
*3 In fact, Simmons also voiced Jameson in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated TV series, although that's less likely to be in the minds of the casual cinema-going audience. [ BACK ]
*4 While they've kept the newspaper's branding in-universe for obvious reasons, this is a particularly delicious tonal twist as Disney (owners of Marvel) have recently bought the entertainment arm of Fox Corp, leaving its broadcast network and news outlets to fend for themselves financially - ie without being under the larger umbrella that also earns income from licensed Marvel characters such as X-Men. They can basically take the piss out of Fox's shouty bullshit paranoia full-belt now, knowing they're not inadvertently funding it. [ 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.
Well, we're barely half-way through the year and already on to the third entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Far From Home landing in cinemas before Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame have even hit the Blu-ray shelves.
We're in the post-Endgame timeframe, as the world adjusts to life without the heroes they lost fighting Thanos, as well as the odd fact that everyone who disappeared in 'the snap' has returned, albeit five years younger than those who were spared the cull - adressed early in the screenplay and referred to in-universe as 'the blip'. Young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still having to balance student-life with being an on-call Avenger. With an imminent school trip to the cities of Europe, Peter hopes to take a back seat from the costumed life and catch the right moment to tell classmate M.J. (Zendaya) that he's grown increasingly fond of her. But naturally a superhero can't go on vacation in much the same way that Hercule Poirot can't book himself into a Travelodge for the weekend and expect peace and quiet.
And so, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Coby Smulders) enlist the web-slinger to assist the multi-dimensional newcomer Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Beck has come to Earth 616 (ie, the reality we know from all previous movies) from his alternate existence, Earth 813, after it's destroyed by four power-hungry entities known as the Elementals. These aeons-old beasts are attacking major cities with little-to-no warning, and the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. need all the help they can get.
CARD Now, perhaps the strongest card played by the movie is how much surface resemblance it bears to its predecessor, Homecoming. The high-school aesthetic eases us gently back into the levity, and a lot of flippant laughs serve to mask more deadpan humour behind. This is a film very much made for people who bought into Parker's pre-Thanos adventure, and viewers who struggled with certain aspects of that will find little to change their minds here. Those aspects are slightly amplified if anything. Of course, Homecoming's strength lay in how self-contained it managed to be in such a sprawling wider narrative. Far From Home has more threads to pull together in that respect, but still manages to do so with its own voice.
But it's not just a disposable action-jaunt. Peter spends the film struggling to form a romantic relationship while people around him breeze in and out of theirs. He's also sorely in need of a mentor-figure, and the shadow of Tony Stark looms over the story and its characters (in a good way).
The title 'Far From Home' is a callback to the 2017 movie and a descriptor for the 2019 sequel, as well as being a nod to The Wizard Of Oz. And much like that classic, there are themes here about identity, responsibility, trust, social-conditioning and most notably Fake News™. In fact, that latter is presented far too boldly to hold the mantle of subtext, feeling both entirely fitting yet painfully on-the-nose. But it's woven into the fabric of the movie and runs throughout (stay until the end of the credits - obviously).
FEAR Holland does well in the title role, by now embedded as Parker for a new generation of cinema-goers, and is supported well by an extensive cast returning from both Homecoming and the wider MCU. Sam Jackson illustrates that irritated Nick Fury is the best (and the funniest) Nick Fury. There's another layer to this performance, but that can't be discussed without minute spoilers, which we aren't doing here. On the newbie-front, Jake Gyllenhaal is on predictably solid form and deliberately hard to read. But the most pored-over casting choice in the next few weeks will be the one*1 who seems to suggest that the live action Spider-Man universes may well be pulling together in much the same way as their animated counterpart. Exciting stuff.
Marvel continue to soar in regard to choreography, cinematography and spectacle, and a fantastic nightmare-type sequence means this is arguably the most visually ambitious entry to date. Michael Giacchino returns on score-duties, capitalising on his fantastic work from the last outing, yet not adding too much to the overall soundscape. But his work retains the identity of Homecoming without being just a rehash, and that's not to be sniffed at.
The expansion of the mythos is on slightly looser ground however, with the Elementals bearing more than a passing resemblance to Spider-Man's 2007's antagonist, Sandman, and one particular character's backstory seeming to riff on Jim Carrey's 1995 Riddler. The well can only go so deep obviously, but if you were going to deliberately evoke a pair of superhero movies from years past, would Spider-Man 3 and Batman Foreverreally be on on that list?
CHOCOLATE Make no mistake, Spider-Man: Far From Home is an imperfect film, but I love that imperfection. It's easy to make something which looks gorgeous but feels empty, and while this never quite reaches the heights of Homecoming, it's still a two-hour joyride in every sense.
Outstanding work and I grinned throughout.
The business-end (not spoilers, but highlight-to-read anyway):
• Is there a Wilhelm Scream? I dunno. Didn't hear an obvious one? • Is there a Stan Lee cameo? There isn't, those days have now past. • Is there a mid-credits scene? There is - stay for this. • Is there a post-credits scene? There is - stay for this.
MCU movies, but the other Spider-Man flick, in particular.
It is.
It is.
Let's not get carried away.
Although this is still fantastic.
Well I LOVE the movie, so only you know if that's likely to happen.
Not that I heard.
Level 1: Mace Windu is in this.
What's more, he can apparently make references to Star Wars references. Very meta.
*1 I won't name the performer in question this time, but I imagine that by the time this review goes live it'll be all over the internet anyway and you'll know exactly who I'm talking about. Because there's no such thing as accidental casting in a movie aimed in no small part at geeks who obsess over every last detail. [ 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.
Glass (SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 129 mins / Dir. M. Night Shyamalan / Trailer
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is being a reasonably successful film writer and director who put out some strong work early in their career then dipped a bit, so that every time they release a film after this, a thousand articles are written asking if they've still 'got it' even though consistency in art is transient at best, impossible to achieve at worst and the critics aren't even after consistency anyway but instead want each film to be better than the last, which is never going to be plausible given the number and range of critical requirements. I imagine."
~ Oscar Wilde.
And so to the timely return of M. Night Shyamalan*1, bringing us Glass, the third entry in a trilogy which only took form in the final moments of 2017's stealth tie-in, Split. That film's antagonist, Kevin 'The Horde' Crumb (James McAvoy), finds himself incarcerated in a secure hospital having been caught red-handed in kidnapping four teenage cheerleaders. He was nabbed by David 'The Overseer' Dunn (Bruce Willis) from 2000's Unbreakable, who's spent the last 19 years becoming a slightly-infamous vigilante in Philadelphia, brushing up against people in an inappropriate fashion then meting out Rorschach-style justice. But outside of office hours. And because duffing people up in the dead of night without the necessary paperwork is the police's business, Dave's been apprehended in the hospital as well.
Which only leaves Elijah 'Mr Glass' Price*2 (Samuel L. Jackson), now permanently in a wheelchair due to the brittle nature of his physiology, in the slammer for engineering a train crash (among many other things) and resident in the same facility as the other two due his belief that he's a super-villain. Our authority figure in this setup is Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who is more of a mind that our triumvirate of eccentrics are in fact suffering exaggerated and specific delusions of grandeur. Are they superheroes or are they just mental? That should be the tagline on the poster.
TOYS So, Glass toys with the notion of what it means to actually be a superhero, although while Shyamalan delights in archly asking the questions, he also makes it abundantly clear that he's not prepared to commit to any answers. Landing in the same year as Fox's first X-Men movie, Unbreakable deconstructed comic book tropes fairly well considering that wasn't really a thing at the time. But in 2019, that's very much a thing, and Glass doesn't quite know how to deal with it.
The film essentially combines the cast of its predecessors, with Spencer Treat Clark returning as David's son, Joseph (now acting as 'guy in the chair' to his dad's hooded-justice act), Charlayne Woodard reprising her role as Elijah Price's mum*3 and Anya Taylor-Joy coming back from Split to even up the numbers in having each leading character paired with their 'real world' past. This feels like an attempt to give the story more gravity than it ultimately manages. And Shyamalan expects you to have watched those previous entries in the canon, because there's little-to-no concession for anyone who hasn't. Viewers taking a punt on Glass as a standalone flick are likely to spend a lot of the run-time trying to catch up through scripted inference rather than exposition*4.
BEL Bruce Willis is on solid, taciturn form as Superhero Dave, pulling just the right blend of cynicism and confusion into his performance to sell the character once more. And James McAvoy is absolutely fantastic as Kevin of course, playing revolving host to around twenty distinct personalities. He's the gleefully theatrical chef who's been tasked with creating a pudding that cannot be over-egged. Although much like Split, the main thrust of James' screen-time is dedicated to Hedwig, Patricia, The Beast and Kevin himself. Other characters phase in and out, but they feel closer to a quickfire round on Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Samuel L. Jackson on the other hand, is the more interesting player here, as it feels like he's only putting in around 80%, even if the actor's part as Glass is less gung-ho than his other roles. 80% of Sam Jackson is still great fun of course, but he's noticeably reticent in this*5.
As a film, broadly speaking, Glass works very well. It's typical of Shyamalan's preposterous self-indulgence and definitely thinks it has more to say than it actually has, but it's a well-spun yarn nonetheless. But an audience reared on nitty-gritty comic-book detail over the last two decades has learned to read forward, as well as everyone in the room expecting a third-act reveal anyway. And it's that detail where our intrepid writer/director begins to flounder…
IC
And so to the spoilers. No highlight-to-read this time, there are just too many I'm afraid. You read that spoiler-warning at the top, this is your last chance to turn back. The thing is that Dr Ellie Staple is not all she seems. And that's meant to be a reveal as we go on. Except that it's mercilessly telegraphed from the moment she gets Dunn, Crumb and Price*6 into the same secure hospital.
Whereas Price is imprisoned for acts of terrorism and in the special facility for his own care due to his incredibly fragile skeleton, that kind of medical treatment doesn't come for free in America. Who's paying for his? Not revealed, not discussed, not even raised. Moreover, his mum still visits him on a fairly regular basis, so this isn't like some secret black-site where the government will torture secrets out of Price until there's nothing left. Isn't his mum suspicious about why her son is being impeccably looked after in his old age, when Pensylvania State still carries the death penalty for crimes way below the pay-grade of his own?
And then we have David, 'The Overseer'. The police have been after him for some years now, and upon his arrest (when he's taking down Kevin), Dunn is immediately transferred to the same facility. Eventually, David's son Joseph turns up to plead his dad's innocence and ask for his release. But he approaches Dr Staple on a purely moral/sympathetic level, not with any legal challenge. This implies David isn't under arrest at this point, hasn't actually been charged with anything, and also that Joseph knows this. So how has Joseph been informed of this hospital where his dad's being held, and again - who the hell does he think is paying for the treatment of someone who apparently hasn't even been diagnosed with any medical condition by the state?
So let's round out the trilogy. Casey, the young woman kidnapped by Kevin in Split, finds out that her ex-captor is being held in - yes, this same building - and just turns up on the fly to visit him, morbid curiosity mingling with Stockholm Syndrome. And obviously Ellie allows this to happen because she wants to observe the results. Hey, why not just let people in off the street to watch, while you're on? For a secret organisation that's been putting down superhumans for a millennia, you may as well have a fucking flag hanging outside saying "THEY'RE IN HERE LADS".
PHOENIX So when the plot moves forward and Ellie finally lets David touch her hand, that's when we get an insight into her past, and it's revealed she's part of some pseudo-illuminati who hold their meetings in busy public restaurants waiting for the last civilian to finish the cheeseboard while they look at their watches. And again, when we see this it bears all the hallmarks of A Shyamalan Twist™, except that it's been the blatantly obvious solution since act I. Oh, and while we're on the subject, David is only shown up until that point of getting flashes of people's Bad Deeds™. Thieves, murderers and what have you. When he looks into Ellie's past, it's that scene in a restaurant where the waiter is pulling the blind down and she's like "Okay everybody, thanks for coming. Right…". While Ellie knows the group's work is technically unpleasant, she also believes it's necessary and right. Not 'a bad thing'. So why would it show up in Dave's psychometric burst? If this is just going off of things that Dave doesn't like personally, he could end up using his Batman-gig to go round twatting people who heat fish in the canteen microwave at work or enjoy Mrs Brown's Boys. I wouldn't argue with that.
But I digress. At the end of the day, Dave is the only one actually shown to have super-powers. "Mr. Glass" thinks he's a supervillain, but he's just got a crippling disability paired with a high IQ and no morals. Ellie's notes on him even state in huge letters "also known as Brittle Bone Disease". That's not a counter to his genius-nefariousness, just a disability. Similarly, Kevin has a multiple personality disorder, and one of the characters he projects is super-fucking-strong and great at climbing*7. Not like 'Spider-Man' great, he's actually clawing into the concrete to get purchase.
Early in the film, Ellie is speaking to the group trying to dissuade them of their self-imposed special status. And with Elijah and Kevin, she's absolutely right. They're don't have superpowers, they're just clinically insane. Attempts at the science of psychology in Glass come off as cack-handedly as they did in Split. Until we see someone actually performing the supernatural (ie Dunn*8), they are merely mundane. Batshit crazy, but mundane.
When Ellie slyly intones "we can't let them know what they are", this is (for 66% of the subjects) the lie, the part which defies logic and undercuts the rest of the film.
CONCHORDS So despite a hinted showdown at Philadelphia's new tallest building, no one really expected a Marvel Studios-level of finale here. But it appears that the budget didn't even stretch to a group of extras gasping from a distance. And as for the coda, where Mama Glass, Overseer Jr and Mrs Beast sit in satisfied awe watching people's reactions to the wasn't-actually-deleted-aha! CCTV footage of yesterday's superhero battle, I don't think they know how viral marketing works. All that video actually is, is a fight in a hospital car park between two nutters while a bloke in a wheelchair keeps shouting "but COMICS!" until getting punched to death. By this time tomorrow they'll be in the same places, totally enraptured by a video of burping baby or a cat being surprised at its own farts.
Anyway, like I said: I quite enjoyed Glass, because I wouldn't have picked it apart in so much detail otherwise.
But seriously M. Night, if you're going to 'deconstruct' superheroes, we're going to expect to examine the pieces…
It's closest in tone to Unbreakable, even though there's far less to reveal in this chapter.
If you're a fan of the Unbreakable and Split, absolutely.
As above, yes.
Well, let's not get carried away, yeah?
The film's not getting too much critical love, so that's a possibility.
*1 FUN FACT: The 'M', somewhat unimaginatively, stands for 'Monsieur'. [ BACK ]
*2 Mate, come on. 'The Horde', 'The Overseer' and 'Mr Glass' sound like crap wrestler names. [ BACK ]
*3 Now, Charlayne Woodard played Mrs Price (great character naming, M. Night) back in Unbreakable in the scenes where Elijah was a young boy, and again with ageing-prosthetics for when he'd grown up into Samuel L. Jackson. The prosthetics weren't great. In fact, they were pretty damned awful, but the movie was a long time ago and even off the back of The Sixth Sense's success, we don't know what the budged restrictions were for makeup. Anyway, we're here in 2019 now and Sam Jackson is 70 years old. A damn good looking 70, but there we have it. Sharlayne Woodard, the actress playing his mum in Glass, is 65. And I'd like to say she's a damn good looking 65, but I'm afraid I can't tell because the prosthetics she wears in this movie are unforgivably bad. Someone's glued lumpy foam rubber over the bottom half of her face but not the top then gone 'yeah that'll do'. It looks fucking atrocious and is an insult to the performer and the audience alike. There. I said it. [ BACK ]
*4 And fuck it, I'm just going to say it. Perhaps the sole exception to this verbal implication is the cameo appearance by M. Night Shyamalan. He's one of those directors who resolutely can. not. act. and so shows up in his own movies almost wearing a t-shirt of his own face with "LOOK IT'S ME!" printed underneath in 200pt Impact. Not only was his cameo in Unbreakable of the glaringly worst variety, Shyamalan also has an appearance in Glassas the same fucking character, who then talks to Superhero Dave and verbally references his cameo in the first film, practically staring at the audience as he does so. Shyamalan comes in for a lot of flak, and I think most of it is unfair. But for the love of god man, stay behind the fucking camera... [ BACK ]
*5 Even more oddly, he gets a "AND SAMUEL L. JACKSON" credit in the film's opening titles. The "&" is usually reserved for a smaller-role in a film by a more well-known actor, almost like a guest star, in the billing pecking-order. And yet here Jackson is, getting the '&' in a movie which is named after his own character. Bizarre. [ BACK ]
*6 Although our leads' superhero monikers resemble a 1970s club-circuit wrestling troupe, their street-names make them sound like a branch of chartered accountants. Fuck it, I'd be reaching for the lycra, too. [ BACK ]
*7 Oh, and since they're containing Kevin and The Horde (terrible name for a band) with a strobe light by the door to trigger a personality-switch every time he gets agitated, why doesn't he just summon The Beast safely at the back of his cell, then wrap his black jacket (we see him wearing this in there) around his head and charge the door? Once he's on the other side he can make a run/fight for it. Seriously, has this organisation really been doing this shit for a thousand years? Because they seem pretty dreadful at it. I think they're regretting putting Ellie in charge of regional operations.
In that bit at the end where she grandly proclaims "And now, with your permission, we can move on to the next city!", does the scene cut before someone raises their hand and asks "Hang on, are… are you the only one doing this? You've been in Philly for fucking months on this and there were only three of them. There's weird shit going down all over the world and you're here submitting purchase-recs for thousands of dollars worth of disco lights, giving them group therapy and fucking jigsaws when you could just wheel them down to the basement and inject them with floor cleaner? Are we paying you for this? Terry, are we paying her for this? Fu-u-u-u-uck…" [ BACK ]
*8"Oh, but his weakness is water!" everyone goes (including Dave), "it's his Kryptonite!". That's the second time they've tried to pull that one. Apart from the fact that we see Dave punch through an industrial plastic tank while he's submerged in it (so it's clearly not affecting his super-strength too much, even if the tank is worn to begin with), 'water' is the weakness of every land-mammal on the fucking planet. Well done M. Night, you've invented drowning? [ 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.
Well, pre-judge not lest ye be pre-judged. As much as the trailers*1 had led me to believe that Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (look, MPHFPC, yeah>) was going to be 'Tim Burton's X-Men Juniors'*2 with a light dusting of Hogwarts, it turned out to be more a mashup of Goodnight Sweetheart and Nightbreed. Which is far cooler, when you think about it…
When placid outsider Jake receives an ominous message from his grandfather Abe, he arrives at his house to find him murdered. Against the full support of his parents, this leads to an emotionally charged journey to an orphanage in Wales, and the unravelling of a secret Abe had been hiding in plain sight for years…
Even under its 12A safety-blanket, the film is surprisingly dark given that it will be put on the same shelf as its more mainstream contemporaries. In thematic terms this is attributable to the source-novel's author, Ransom Riggs of course, but an equal hat-tip has to go to screenwriter Jane Goldman for translating it so intensely (it was she who adapted the inexplicably-12A Woman In Black, if you remember). But Goldman's natural darkness is tempered by Tim Burton's propensity for kookiness, although this never quite reaches its regular default level because of Goldman's focus.
At just over two hours, MPHFPC is by no means a short film, but I'd have been happy to have an extra half-hour or so scattered throughout, if only to connect me more with Jake. After the cursory Hero's Journey setup in act one, the film spends a lot of time introducing a lot of fantastical elements, and any awe, wonder or fear we feel is most probably our own, not the protagonist's. I was engaged and intrigued throughout, but I wasn't really moved by anything I saw; the pace of the story and rapid world-building not allowing the relationship between Jake and his grandfather Abe to have any real weight*3. Another part of the disconnect was that I could feel Burton struggling to fully direct a screenplay that wasn't his own based on a story he hadn't written. It's not that he hasn't left a stamp on MPHFPC, but Tim's definitely playing in someone else's sandbox, here.
And on the subject of wants-lists*4, I'd have liked the mechanics/limitations of the time-travel and causality looped explained more thoroughly (why/how can Abe make phone calls and send letters to the past, given that he's a spotter, not a time-controlling Ymbryne? Do all loops have to be limited to 24 hours?) Then again, if they'd gone into all of that, I'd probably only have written another couple of thousand words picking it all apart.
Still, the costs of on-set catering were presumably minimised by the scenery-chewing competition going on between Eva Green and Sam Jackson. They're both great (thanks in no small part to Burton's direction, of course), but their constant mugging is definitely A Thing™.
All in all though, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is better than I expected, and a solid effort given its internal struggles.
As above; Harry Potter, X-Men, Nightbreed.
For the visuals, sure.
The story itself will work on any size screen, though.
I think it probably does, just about.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Definitely not.
Level 1: Chancellor Valorum and Mace Windu are in this.
*1 Speaking of trailers, I'm relieved to note that the fucking trailer song (which only has one fucking line, apparently) isn't used in the film. Well, not in the main body, at least, I left before the first song of the credits had ended in case it was going to be in there. I should also point out that I don't dislike the song itself, nor Disa Jakobs' voice. Just the way she keeps truncating the word "coming" as if she's a fucking blues singer or something, her delicate delivery tripping over the word every single time like a member of the aristocracy trying to eat a kebab with a knife and fork. Yeah, it fucking bothers me.
*2 …because a group of gifted youngsters being looked after by an older teacher/guardian and using time-travel to repeatedly evade their predators is the basic setup for X-Men: Days Of Future Past. A film which Jane Goldman also screen-wrote. I'm not dumping the similarity at her door, by the way. Much as MPHFPC is based on the 2011 novel, the X-Men movie sprang out of the 1981 comic series. I'm sure the whole thing is a massive, chronological coincidence.
*3 Also cobbling the emotional-stride of the film is Terence Stamp taking "crazy old man" to previously undiscovered levels. I love the guy to bits, but there are few other performers who can manage to overact whilst being dead on-screen. Oh, spoilers.
*4 And on the subject of non-wants lists, point-deducted for Tim Burton's blink-of-an-eye cameo appearance which still managed to be wall-shatteringly obvious. I wasn't even waiting for it, and he still may as well have been carrying a neon sign...
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.
Robocop (2014)
Cert: 12A / 118 mins / Dir. José Padilha
Like officer Alex Murphy, the initially challenging part of all this is trying to disengage your brain from what went before, and get on with the job at hand; to wit, enjoying an action movie in which an emotionally repressed cyborg shoots the shit out of some bad guys. And how. This is quite a 'hard' 12A, in that lots of people get shot, but mostly at some distance and there's very little in the way of claret; that said, it's really not for the younger ones. I only bring it up because the original is still rated 18 by the BBFC, and although times change, this reboot isn't too far behind in terms of tone and content (although little-to-no swearing, interestingly). In short, if your local cinema ran both films back-to-back, they'd instantly be cutting out the demographic that the new version is aimed at. How's that for moving with the times?
But what you really want to know is, is it any good? Well, yes. Yes it is. If only for the reason that it never tries to be anything more than A Robocop Movie. This telling of the tale still takes potshots at the right and left-wing branches of government and media, but at its core it really just wants to be a dumb action flick; and in this, it succeeds. Sam Jackson completely owns his scenes as an opinionated television news-commentator, and Michael Keaton is having the time of his life as publicity-conscious CEO of OmniCorp, the pleasant conglomerate set to sell robot police and pacification forces to the US government once a plot-centric bill is repealed in congress.
But what you really want to know is, is Joel Kinnaman any good as Robert Coppington™? Well, he makes a reasonable contribution, yes. His Robocop is good, but his Alex Murphy is a little patchy, although he's never substandard; I'm just not sure he's right for the part. The same goes for Abbie Cornish who plays his wife, Clara Coppington™. She's okay, but the role is so sketchily written that anyone could have been okay in it, and I wonder if she was the best choice. But the segment of the film based around their relationship, and how they're each coping with Alex being 90% metal, is largely glossed over because it's more fun when he's Shooting At Things.
But what you really want to know is, is ED-209 in it? FUCK, YES! THROUGHOUT! He/it/they don't have as pivotal a role this time round, but there's a clear fondness there for the bipedal death dispenser, and the new version looks every bit as badass as its predecessor. We also get EM-208, a humanoid law-enforcement robot, which is essentially a person shaped version of 209. They're used heavily in one shootout sequence, then sparingly for the rest of the movie.
So, there's intrigue, suspicion, corruption, politics and robots firing massive guns. Why reboot? Well, while the story is clearly structured around the original, and the tone remains the same, it's varied enough to be its own film (albeit a formulaic actioner), and it's a great way to revitalise the series for a new audience. Opinions will vary (as they always, and should, do), but I thoroughly enjoyed Robocop. Then again, I enjoyed the last Verhoeven Rebranding, too.
There are plenty of references and nods to the 1987 film without it becoming overly reliant on nostalgia, and all the time, it feels like Robocop. Although hold onto that feeling, because it won't leave you with a lot...
While I appreciate that rebooting the franchise might be anathema to some, I don't think we should get too precious about a Paul Verhoeven film which spawned twosequels and an animated spin-off. As a social and political satire, Robocop is a bit of a blunt instrument, but for all-out empty-headed entertainment, you won't go too far wrong here.
It's also good to see Batman and Commissioner Gordon reunited, even if they are butting heads for most of the film. Luckily, Nick Fury's on hand, and in this movie, he's positively livid.
Oh, yes.
I did.
Yes, although not a lot else.
If you like 'em big and loud, this is the cinema-trip for you.
No.
Yes.
I didn't hear one.
The things that you could, and indeed would, buy for a dollar in 1987 seem a world apart from those which you'd be able to purchase for the same amount of money now. Discuss.
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.
