Well, this is definitely a film. (Warner Bros, you can have that one for the back of the DVD cover if you like). DC's cinematic interpreters bring their equivalent of Phase One to a head with the long awaited Justice League, featuring Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman and Ben Affleck's Batman saving the world from a horny god with three evil boxes*1 by recruiting The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and concocting a plan to exhume and resurrect Superman (Henry Cavill) to lend a hand. There will be scenes.
First things first, Justice League is disposable, undemanding fun. Mostly. Gadot and Miller are by far the standout stars, the former arguably bringing the film's only real sincerity to her role, the latter some much needed humour. Cavill is on slightly shakier ground, although that's largely down to how the Man of Steel is treated in the film, and Batfleck still doesn't get his moment in the spotlight, sadly*2.
Things get off to a staggered start as the team are introduced one by one, as well as the threat they'll be facing, and it's there we begin running into problems (see footnote 1). With the best will in the world, the whole thing reeks of its re-writes, asking more questions than it attempts to answer*3. The customary act-three carnage begins in act-two, followed by a dip that's far longer than the breath-catching pause needed. The resulting finale is a brightly-coloured CGI panic-attack, with the team becoming little more than NPCs in a game you're watching someone else play. I didn't not-enjoy the film, but I have to admit to not actually caring about a single character, situation or plot point therein. And that's not a good sign.
Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon try to show DC's world in chaos, and succeed better than I think they meant to. Much like Superman's upper lip, Justice League is an imperfect oddity that's making the best of a troubled production, but never quite convinces…
^^ I found this amiable enough to be a 5/7 movie, but I'm taking a point off for Superman's CGI'd upper-lip. A ridiculous situation with an inexcusable outcome*4.
*1 Probably best if you don't ask. Much like David Thewlis' Ares from Wonder Woman, Steppenwolf is a CGI'd one-dimensional baddie with only half-dimension of actual character (think of a crossover of Malekith and Apocalypse), chasing a trio of macguffins whose only purpose is apparently to evoke memories of Marvel's Infinity Stones and Tolkiens's Rings. Without going into any detail, let's just say that his eventual defeat is brought about by a crisis in the writers-room when they realise that they aren't allowed the cojones to have any of their Heroes™ actually deal a killing blow to a sentient being (man, beast, god, or otherwise). It's an insult to not only the audience, but also DC's flagship characters. Well done, guys. [ BACK ]
*2 Although he's off again in Justice League. If you remember, Bruce Wayne's raison d'etre for killing Supes in Dawn of Justice was that, and I quote, "if we believe there's a one percent chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty". Which is clearly mathematical (not to mention moral) horseshit. This time round he's learned his lesson of course, and during the discussion of digging up the body of Kal El with a view to bringing him back to life (don't ask), proffers: "If there's even a fraction of a chance it could work-". It's just as well Bruce inherited his fortune off his old man, because he sure as shit wouldn't win anything in a casino with that grasp of probability…
[ BACK ]
*3 To wit, and in no particular order of importance:
Q. Bruce Wayne and Alfred have quite a nice conversation near the start of the film about being left behind by a changing world. Was this going to be a running subtext at one point in the screenplay's development? Because it doesn't rear its head again.
Q. If Wonder Woman can move faster than bullets (shown in this film) and Superman can move faster than bullets (pretty much known anyway, I think), what exactly is The Flash bringing to this party other than sarcasm and millennial-angst?
Q. Why has Aquaman - the superhero who lives in the sea - got that straggly hair and beard? The barnet's not practical for swimming with, and he's getting out of the sea/river and just air-drying. He's going to smell like a wet dog most of the time.
Q. What the hell is Cyborg's dad playing at? Given that he's Miles Dyson out of Terminator 2, you'd think he'd know better than to arse around with robotics, 'trying to help'.
Q. Given that even the trailer throws in that gag about Diana Prince doing "nothing interesting" at the weekend, and the fact that the Bat-Signal can only realistically be used at night, why didn't Steppenwolf attack at 10:30 on a Monday morning? Or better still, during prison visiting-hours? The Justice League wouldn't be about, it'd be a piece of piss…
Q. Does… does Amber Heard think she's doing A British Accent™? Oh, mate… [ BACK ]
*4 Much like Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, it looks absolutely fine until the shot requires actual movement. Then it's like watching that devil-kid off the AA adverts all over again… [ 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.
Wonder Woman (2D / Spoilers in the footnotes)
Cert: 12A / 141 mins / Dir. Patty Jenkins / Trailer
Well, the long-awaited day arrived, amid a flurry of media hype and no small amount of subsequent expectation. And so it was that a respectably-sized audience*1 gathered to see if Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie could live up to the buzz which threatened to overtake it.
Mythology meets alternate-history when the studious life led by a tribe of Amazons on the island of Themyscira*2 is interrupted when an escaping American WW1 pilot (Chris Pine's Steve Trevor) emerges through a dimensional portal, followed by a German battleship and its full contingent of furious Axis footsoldiers. Carnage ensues*3, leading to Diana (Gal Gadot) venturing back through the aperture in a bid to find and kill Ares the god of war, ending the global conflict. As her weapons, she has the purity of innocence, the conviction of righteousness, The Bulletproof Bangles™, The Sword of Omens™ and The Lasso of Overacting™. One of these gets used to the point where it's almost worn out. There is sass, there is action and there are big decisions to be made along the way, as well as a few laughs.
I'm quite surprised the Daily Express haven't made more of this movie, actually. It's literally Princess Diana vs The Evil Germans. All that's missing is a subtext on house-prices and they'd be frothing at the press...
But anyway, yeah, it's a pretty damned good film. Although if you've got a hunch that it sounds like half an hour of Thor, ten minutes of fish-out-of-water jokes, then an hour and a half of The First Avenger*4, with a few beats thrown in from X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy and Inglourious Basterds, you'd be absolutely right.
Gal Gadot does well in the lead role here, but she has a lot of cinematic-lifting to do. While we certainly get a refreshing central female-focus from director Patty Jenkins, there's no escaping the fact that the film was written by three guys*5. After the opening act on Themyscira where the women drive the narrative, the story reverts to more or less standard superhero form once Diana is over the threshold and into the First World War. Other than Lucy Davis in a small comic-relief role and Elena Anaya being wasted as an enigmatic and thoroughly underused Axis weapons scientist, it's just Gal Gadot surrounded by cardboard cutouts of gawping Boys Own heroes and villains*6.
Wonder Woman is good fun and a step back to form for Warner/DC, certainly their most focused and relatable timeline-movie since Man of Steel. But the feeling never left me that rather than figure out their own way to tell stories, DC are still trying to be Marvel Studios*7 - and that's not their race to win…
Update: After sleeping on it*8, I have some final thoughts. With the best will in the world, I'm probably not going to see Wonder Woman again in its theatrical run, so I've updated the post to add them here.
The amount of online discussion and media-buzz prior to this release means it feels like one of those movies you should have a strong opinion on either way, and if the end result lands somewhere in the middle you end up wondering 'have I understood this properly?'. Truth be told, there's not that much there to understand, and that's absolutely fine. But who wants 'absolutely fine' as a pull-quote on their poster? After watching Wonder Woman, I think I certainly like it more for socio-political reasons than dramatic ones. Because at the end of the day, I don't really give two fucks about DC characters, and there's very little the film can do about that…*9
Wonder Woman is absolutely fine.
Well I think I've covered that already…
For big-and-loud, yes. It's a fine looking movie.
It does
Although I'm less convinced about what it sets out to do than whether it achieves that.
For Gal Gadot, possibly the best so far.
For everybody else, no.
Nope.
There isn't.
Which is bloody ridiculous as there are many, MANY perfect spots for one.
Level 1: Bern Collaco's in this.
Me neither, but he's Indian Regiment Soldier in Wonder Woman and he was Stormtrooper in Rogue One andFirst Order General in The Force Awakens. I genuinely hope he gets a character name next time around. Like, in anything. Seriously, look at the dude's IMDB page, it's a litany of anonymous sorrow. He's been in Eastenders twice and only got "Police Detective" and "Pharmacist".
*1And of for all those sitting in the room that night, only five of us hung around for the after-credits scene; there isn't one. Fair enough…[ BACK ]
*2And really though, imagine making a mythical island full of actors speak with a heavy eastern accent, just to explain away the suspicion that Gal Gadot can do no other…[ BACK ]
*3And while I'm very aware that this film is a certificate 12A, the beach-battle between a crew of fully armed soldiers and a tribe of expert archers and swordswomen is glaringly blood-free, other than a nasty scratch on Diana's arm in its final moments (the resulting scab/scar of which we don't see again throughout the film, but given she's a super-heroine that's understandable)[ BACK ]
*4To the point where, after recruiting a side-crew of international heavy-drinking misfits in a London boozer, Noble Captain Steve sacrifices himself by flying off in a German plane full of super-bombs intended to kill millions, and all his superbly capable brunette love-interest is left with is a sepia photo and memories of the brief time they shared. No, seriously, they did that.[ BACK ]
*5And Diana was not, I repeat not - I repeat NOT - wearing her armour under that blue dress. Those writers put her in the figure-hugging blue dress because they wanted to see Gal Gadot in a figure-hugging dress. Don't care about the back-scabbard, wasn't happening mate. If she'd have been wearing the armour underneath it, it would have looked like she'd turned up to the gala dinner party just to smuggle out the cutlery…[ BACK ]
*6And the next time I'm on complaining about Marvel's track record with slightly sub-standard movie villains, please please remind me that none of them have been as resoundingly shit as David Thewlis being Palpatine with a moustache and tweed overcoat. His performance in this film is nothing short of fucking excruciating. To the point where Richard E. Grant's Dr. Rice looks positively nuanced by comparison. Thewlis is better than this, and I just ended up feeling embarrassed for Patty Jenkins having to direct such utter, utter drivel. There. I said it.[ BACK ]
*7You would of course be perfectly justified in asking me "Oh, why do you have to compare DC films to Marvel?". Well, I'll stop doing it when DC do…[ BACK ]
*8Of course it'd be lovely to be able to ponder and sleep on everything I watch, before writing a balanced and intricate review of the film probably while sitting on a veranda in the mid-morning sunshine in a light flannel shirt and sipping an espresso. But my brain doesn't work like that. The stream of jumbled praise and nitpicking you read above the edit-point is what's in my brain as I get home from the cinema. If I don't write that down before I go to bed, it's lost like the contents of an unsaved file when you power off a computer. There might be an auto-backup, but you can't rely on it containing everything you need. All you'd get the next day would be "Yeah, it's pretty good I suppose, apart from David Thewlis". If I take notes in the screening (yeah I'm sometimes that guy) then I've got that dark-room-scrawl as well I suppose, but it all just increases the gap between me watching a film and posting a review. I'm not made of time y'know, I've got a day-job in which to be unfulfilled...[ BACK ]
*9That said, Man of Steel was the first movie to make me actually interested in Clark Kent as a character, so maybe Diana could have done with more emotional conflict rather than physical. But not with Gal Gadot driving, one suspects...[ 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.
The third time may be the charm but before that, the second is confirmation. A confirmation that I enjoyed Dawn of Justice. A confirmation that it's got some great characters, great performances and great moments. And a confirmation that the film is still an undisciplined, almighty mess. A mess which held my attention for its two and a half gruelling hours, but only as my brain picked holes from scene to scene (far to many to list here, unfortunately)*1.
Much has been said and written about Batman v Superman by now of course, and even I have to concede the validity of most of the sniping (although not the petition-raising by entitled fanboys who don't seem to be able to differentiate between a director and a writer). But today, I found that the key to enjoying Dawn of Justice is trying one's damnedest to ignore Jesse Eisenberg and his part in it. A repeat viewing only reinforces how much he's clearly not Lex Luthor, to anyone with even the most civilian knowledge of Superman's nemesis.
But what we really get here is the combined fragments of a great Batman film, a mediocre Superman one, and a dreadful Justice League setup. The former shows great promise (although I still hold deep reservations about Jeremy Irons), and as much as I'd like to see Affleck direct Batman's next outing, I'd love to see Kevin Smith helm it more. Superman's a little trickier as he has far less story-time here (which considering the film is about him seems odd), and the scenes we do get are hampered by the Daily Planet drudgery that should really be sidelined into a weekly TV show. And the less said about the DC extended-universe being pimped by having characters watch clips of superheroes on a laptop, the better.
White Dawn of Justice is by no means one of Snyder's best films, I can't hold him responsible for the film which came out of the editing suite. The jumbled storytelling smacks of mid-production and last-minute re-writes, studio hesitation and focus-grouping.
And as fascinating as I find the final product, a movie that cost a hundred million dollars for each hour of screen-time should do more than leave me interested…
Oh, and it's also a hell of a lot easier to watch in 2D.
Oh, 'DC things'…
By this point, I imagine you either already have or definitely won't.
Not likely.
Not nearly.
Nope.
There is indeed.
Level 2: Ben Affleck was in 2003's Daredevil (lest we forget) alongside Jon 'Pre Vizsla' Favreau.
*1 Although two things:
1) That 'mark of the bat' thing being a death-sentence in prisons is fucking bullshit for a start. Those institutions run on reputation; a brand that says "I'm such a badass I could only be taken down by the Batman" is going attract attention, but hardly mark someone out as an easy target. Those two blokes that the news report says were killed were doing time as p*edos. I suspect that would have been the real cause?.
2) How long have Gotham and Metropolis been that close together? When the bat-signal goes up and Lois Lane's on top of that building in Metropolis, it's like less than two miles away. I know they're on the edge of town, but are you really telling me that the combined size of these two would be smaller than London? Really? Or are they more like Newcastle and Gateshead? That could explain the initial animosity between the heroes, actually. It's not until Doomsday shows up (from Sunderland, I imagine) that they can put aside their differences…
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, that's a change of gear. Or rather, Dawn Of Justice is a change into several gears, all at once, for two and a half hours. Riding the cinematic clutch towards the Justice League, DC bring us a whole bunch of ideas and origins, all crammed into one 150 minute rollercoaster. And before I get properly started, I'll add here that the film kept me entertained throughout. Okay, it also kept me bemused and thematically motion-sick from time to time, but on the whole I enjoyed it*1.
The main stumbling block is that the story's trying to be in too many places at once and ends up flitting all over the place, even once the main plot-thread has kicked in. In trying to set up Batman, Superman's story falters and Wonder Woman's falls at just about every hurdle (and we all know Batman, of course, just not this Batman. Even if he's remarkably similar to Batman). Structurally, the film's a mess, and I don't know if that's down to re-shoots, re-writes or just taking two potentially great movies and cramming them into one which is less so. The film either needs to be much shorter or about 45 minutes longer, either would ease the strain.
There are also a few directorial issues that didn't seem to happen in the previous film. Laurence Fishburne is over-acting a cartoon version of the newspaper editor he played perfectly sensibly three years ago; Jeremy Irons forces himself to grimace through a wisecracking version of Alfred The Butler which suits neither the actor nor the character; and I've no idea why Jesse Eisenberg seems to think that the best portrayal of Lex Luthor would be channelling Jim Carrey's Riddler into the role, but Snyder appears to have agreed and has just let him get on with it, anyway*2.
Between the hyperactive story-threading, the shoe-horning of other DC properties and Bruce Wayne's anxiety daydreams, there's far too much going on here. Dawn Of Justice is not a great film, although there are great things within it. It's really a good second-draft which needs tightening up and trimming down.
Perhaps most ironically, DC have brought us a film which doesn't really do justice to the Superman we know, and certainly doesn't do justice to the Batman we don't.
Okay, it may not be Zack Snyder's Watchmen, but at least it's not Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch. We should all be grateful for that, if nothing else...
All of the superhero movies at once, I think.
Go big or go home.
Sadly, I don't think it does.
And it does pain me to say that, even as a Marvel fanboy.
Not nearly.
Not at all.
There only bloody IS, yes!
Level 2: This film's got Scoot McNairy in it, and he was in Killing Them Softly with Ben Mendelsohn, who'll be in Star Wars: Rogue One later this year. Actually they were in Black Sea together as well, which is why my brain struggles to separate them since those films were where I saw both of them for the first time. Even though there's like this ten year age difference between them.
Anyway yeah, that. Look, I've been awake for 22 hours as I write this and I'm still too buzzed to sleep...
*1 I pretty much have to say this because I'm going to go on and pick it apart. But ultimately, it's a film I'll gladly watch again, even if that's just in prep for the sequel. I can see why the critics are mauling it, and as much fun as I had, I'd be hard pressed to actually disagree, put it that way.
*2 Oh, and further to Superman having My Two Robin Hood Dads, it turns out that Batman's parents are Maggie out of the Walking Dead and The Comedian out of Watchmen. Which explains a lot, when you think about it…
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.
