Tag: Movie Review

Movie Review: The Avengers, Endgame.

So which did you like better, ‘Avengers, Endgame’ or ‘Game of Thrones, The Long Night’. If you think about it they have a lot in common. Both are the climax of story lines that have been developed over a decade or so. Both have had major subplots. Both have introduced major characters along the way. Both wind up in tremendous battles between the forces of good and evil. I could go on but I’ll just add one more because both include the loss of several characters that we have all grown to care about over the last ten years! No spoilers here, I promise!

Poster for ‘Avengers, Endgame’ (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

However this post is about the ‘Avengers, Endgame’ the 22nd movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Now while ‘Endgame’ is a direct sequel to ‘Avengers, Infinity War’ each of the previous 21 movies have contributed to the overall story arc if only, as in the recent ‘Captain Marvel’ by adding a new character who plays a role in ‘Avengers, Endgame’.

The First ‘Iron Man’ movie is considered the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) (Credit: Marvel Disney)

‘Endgame’ starts where ‘Infinity War’ ends, with the bad guy Thanos triumphant. Thanos has managed to possess all six infinity stones and used their power to eliminate half of all life in the Universe, which he thinks is a good thing to do. (The motive of Marvel villains may be strange but they are rarely just purely black.)

Obviously our heroes aren’t going to just let Thanos win. So ‘Endgame’ begins when the remaining Avengers, who happen to be the original six, are joined by Captain marvel and together they go after Thanos to get back the infinity stones in order to use them to bring everybody back. Unfortunately Thanos has used the stones to destroy the stones and I’m not going to go any further, you’ll just have to go see the movie!

And plenty of people are going to see ‘Endgame’. As I write this it’s just been announced that the movie is now the second highest grossing movie of all time, and it’s only been out for ten days. It seems to be only a matter of time until ‘Endgame’ takes the top spot from 2009’s ‘Avatar’.

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ currently holds the record as highest grossing film of all time. But for how much longer? (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Without giving too much away I would like to mention a couple of the subplots within ‘Avengers, Endgame’. The first concerns the relationship between Iron Man and Captain America, arguably the two most central members of the Avengers. (Thor is an alien with his own home planet and Bruce Banner doesn’t want to be The Hulk). From the first time they met these two superheroes have had a bit of a completion over just who was the group’s leader. Steve Rogers (Captain American) is the old fashioned kind of commander, all courage and an iron will while Tony Stark (Iron Man) is a modern leader, all brains and technology.

The conflict became open war in the movie ‘Captain America, Civil War’ and ‘Endgame’ is in fact the first time the two have been together since then. Their first meeting is tense but later on the two are forced to go off alone together for 15-20 minutes and almost without their even noticing it they settle their differences and become comrades once again.

The conflict between Captain America and Iron Man came to a climax in ‘Captain America, Civil War (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

The second subplot is the whole question of whether a superhero can have a personal life. In previous movies in the MCU the superhero Hawkeye had basically retired to be with his wife and children, he was the only original member of the Avengers not to appear in ‘Infinity War’. Hawkeye returns in ‘Endgame’ only because Thanos’ use of the infinity stones has eliminated his family.

So not only is Hawkeye fighting to get his family back but during the course of ‘Endgame’ Iron Man, Captain America and Black Widow are all faced with the effect being a superhero has had on their personal life. This subplot is particularly poignant today because our society is wrestling with the problem of how much we demand from the members of our military and police, the cost to their personal lives for protecting us.

Members of the Military are often separated from their loved ones for long periods of time. This is a sacrifice they gladly accept to serve the greater good! (Credit: Military One Source)

This layer of real life social and psychological conflict has always been a hallmark of Marvel. Whether it be superheroes who don’t want to be superheroes or those whose flaws make them seem more human than superhuman. ‘Avengers, Endgame’ may really be just a comic book made into a movie but somehow the Marvel characters seem like normal, relatable people despite their comic book superpowers.

Movie Review: Captain Marvel

Well the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) is alive and well with its latest installment, Captain Marvel. After its second weekend Disney’s latest superhero movie has raked in about three quarters of a billion $USD worldwide and seems poised to go over the billion mark very soon.

Captain Marvel Poster (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

Captain Marvel is important to the Disney / Marvel Comics collaboration for several reasons beyond just money however. Recently several of the actors who portray some of the most popular superheroes have publicly announced that they are growing tired of their rolls, Robert Downey jr. / Ironman and Chris Evans / Captain America being the two best known. That means that the MCU is going to need a new franchise superhero to pick up some of the slack.

The Original Avengers (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

Then there’s the gender issue, Captain Marvel is Marvel’s first attempt at a superhero movie centered around a female character. Now Marvel has tried to develop several female superheroes, Scarlett Johansen / Black Widow and Elisabeth Olsen / Scarlet Witch for example. However neither of these characters has proven to be strong enough for a stand alone movie, they are really second tier superheroes, and I really hate to say that about Scarlett.

The MCU has really been built on a foundation of four very male characters: Ironman, Captain American, Thor and the Hulk and now adding in Spiderman, Doctor Strange and perhaps most importantly Black Panther. Captain Marvel represents Disney / Marvel’s best shot at a stand alone female world saver who can also hold her own with the boys!

Captain Marvel looks like she’s ready to do just that. The story is set back in the 1990s with Carol Danvers (Actress Brie Larson) training to become one of the US Airforce’s first female pilots. Without giving away too many details of the plot she looses her memory and becomes a warrior for an alien race called the Kree. While chasing the enemy of the Kree she is stranded on Earth where she meets Shield Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Together they recover Danvers memory, rescue a source of immense power and beat the real bad guys, all while releasing the powers of Captain Marvel that the source of power has placed in Danvers.

Brie Larsen as Captain Marvel (l.) and Carol Danvers (r.) (Credit Disney / Marvel)
Samuel Jackson as a young Nick Fury in Captain Marvel (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

As in any Disney / MCU movie the special effects are state of the art, even those that make Jackson look 20-25 years younger. The acting is also quite good; although of course superhero movies don’t require Oscar caliber dramatics. The focus in Captain Marvel obviously is on Larson who does manage to stand out amongst more experienced actors like Jackson, Jude Law and Annette Benning. Throughout the movie Larson has a nice way of showing determination rather than rage that to my mind makes her a stronger image than some male actors who think that roaring like a gorilla is the best way to show their emotion, think Sylvester Stallone in Rambo.

And that’s important because remember this is Marvel’s first female centered superhero movie; they need to get it right. O’k DC got it right with Wonder Women, but one example of a women centered superhero movie could just be a fluke, a token female success.

DC has had better Success with its Female Superhero, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, than their men (Credit: Warner Bros. / DC)

And there is one scene in particular where Captain Marvel really does get it right. Early on in the film we are shown a bit of Carol Danvers childhood. We see her getting knocked down at the plate by a pitched ball, see her having an accident while driving a go-cart, see her loosing her grip while climbing a rope. Then, at the movie’s climax the bad guy gets inside Captain Marvel’s head, reminding her of all of her failures, telling her she can’t hack it, that she isn’t strong enough, isn’t good enough.

But in Captain Marvel’s mind we see that after each of those failures little Carol Danvers got right back up and tried again. That’s the message of Captain Marvel; when you get knocked down get back up! And it doesn’t matter what sex you are; get back up!

O’k, this is just a superhero movie, it’s not meant to be profound or to try and change the world, but a lot of young woman are going to go see this movie and I think that they’ll get the message.

Movie Review: Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom

Anyone who is even an occasional reader of this blog knows that I love Dinosaurs, always have. I’ve also always loved monster movies, probably because many of them (Godzilla, Gorgo) were take offs on dinosaurs. I freely admit that when I was a kid I dragged my dad to more than a few lousy movies because they had dinosaurs or something that resembled a dinosaur in them.

Godzilla (Credit: Toho Pictures)

 

Gorgo (Credit: MGM)

So as you might imagine I had to go see the latest edition of the Jurassic Park franchise Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. I’ve seen all of the Jurassic Park movies and even if the plots are convoluted, the characters rather one-dimensional and the endings really just a setup for the next movie in the franchise, they’ve got dinosaurs!!

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom (Credit: Amblin Entertainment)

So let me start by discussing the parts of Fallen Kingdom that I liked. First of all I’ve always like the way the Jurassic Park series has included some animatronic dinosaurs rather then just relying on CGI. In the dinosaur movies I saw as a kid the actors could never actually interact with the dinosaurs because they were actually guys in rubber suits like Godzilla, or small claymation figures like in ‘King Kong’ or they were blown up film of real life small lizards as in ‘The Lost World’. Either way it looked hokey to even a dinosaur loving kid like me.

Another good part of fallen Kingdom is the two stars, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom are easy to like and who seem to like each other, which is good because half of the movie is them interacting. In fact my favourite scene in Fallen Kingdom is when Pratt and Howard are trapped inside a shipping container with a sedated T-rex who starts to wake up. Here we have the two principals acting together and with something that, even if it isn’t really alive, still looks like a dinosaur, one they can touch and which can touch them back! Pratt and Howard are acting to a real thing, not just acting to a green screen on to which the computer guys will add a dinosaur.

Bryce Dallas Howard (Left) and Chris Pratt (Right) posing with T-rex (Credit: Daily Wire)

Now if you think that sounds like I’m not a fan of CGI, you’re mostly right. I think that too much CGI starts to look more like a cartoon than anything else. Now I know that sometimes the producers have no choice, the things that they want to show simply don’t exist. Still, the less CGI, the more special effects consist of real objects, the better as far as I’m concerned. And that’s the way Amblin Entertainment, the studio that produces the Jurassic Park franchise, does things!

Sedated T-rex (Credit: Amblin Entertainment)

Now just a few criticisms. The movie is really two stories combined, and not too well. In the first story a volcano on the island where the dinos are is about to erupt, killing them all. So a rescue is setup. The second story concerns that fact that the people who rescued the dinos are badies! Ho hum!

Also, in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom James Cromwell plays Benjamin Lockwood, a partner to Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond from the original Jurassic Park. Obviously they wanted Attenborough’s original character but Attenborough had died since Jurassic Park so they created a new, virtually identical character out of nowhere who doesn’t really do much anyway. They really should have gone with a completely different character.

Still, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is an entertaining thrill ride, which is what any summer blockbuster is supposed to be. But best of all, it’s got Dinosaurs!!!

 

TV Movie Review: Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451 (Credit: Ballantine Books)

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn and of course it is also the title of the classic novel by Ray Bradbury about a future society where books are burned as a way to keep the populace happy, and dumb, and controlled. Now HBO productions has released an new, updated version of Bradbury’s tale for our divided and angry age.

For the most part the HBO version sticks to the original. Guy Montag is a fireman who doesn’t put out fires, he starts them in order to burn books but in keeping with our modern age he also burns VHS tapes, DVDs and even computers with literature on them. Legally allowed entertainment in this age consists of lame, interactive videos and games, a lot like what we do have.

One mistake HBO makes right from the start is eliminating Montag’s wife who Bradbury used to good purpose in illustrating the vapid, lifeless. anti-intellectual life in the society of Fahrenheit 451. Indeed the only characters we meet in the new version are either book burning firemen or book reading criminals. We never get any feel for the vast majority of the people in this society.

The HBO version also tries to make itself more exciting by adding a healthy dose of violence. Right at the beginning we see a boxing match between Montag and his fire chief, a couple minutes of action that has nothing to do with the plot. Cutting out a few scenes of firemen hitting book readers could have freed up some time to show how censorship is used to control people.

Montag, with flame thrower, and his Chief (Credit: HBO)

Going by the sets and visuals either the producer or director, probably both, are big fans of Blade Runner because there are a lot of shots of tall skyscrapers with videos being shown on their sides. Also everything is very poorly lighted and has a high-tech but still grimy feel to it.

A couple of the most memorable scenes from the novel are shown pretty much as Bradbury wrote them. Probably the best known scene is when the fireman burst into a house with huge library of books, maybe even more than in my house. After the firemen have doused all of the books with kerosene the little old lady whose books they are refuses to leave. Instead she sets the books, and herself alight with a match.

Ready to Burn (Credit: HBO)

Scenes like that are powerful, they are the reason why Fahrenheit 451 is still such a good read after 65 years. However instead of just sticking to their source material the script writers decided to ‘improve’ Fahrenheit 451 by adding Omnis. What’s Omnis you ask? Well I don’t like to give away too much so let’s just say that Omnis has something to do with the recent discovery that you can store data, even a book, on DNA.

With the addition of Omnis the writers are then able to drop Bradbury’s quiet, yet very profound ending and replace it with five minutes of pyrotechnics. It’s an ending that disappoints at best.

While HBO’s version of Fahrenheit 451 isn’t great, it isn’t bad either. The cast and crew obviously realize that Bradbury had something important to say not just for the McCarthy era when he wrote the novel, but something that applies to today’s world as well.

 

 

Movie Review: Avengers, Infinity War.

 

Poster: Avengers Infinity War (Marvel / Disney)

How many superheroes can you cram into a single movie before it becomes an unwieldy mess? That was my fear before I went to see the new Avengers movie from Marvel / Disney Productions.

I’m happy to report that my worries were groundless. Even with by my count twenty-one superheroes, Avengers Infinity War is both a very exciting and actually very well constructed story. Not only did the writers and production crew manage to give all the big named stars at least a few scenes where they get to say some important lines. They also succeeded in keeping the story flowing along without making it look like they were giving all the big named stars etc. etc.

Part of the secret is just following the old formula KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). The plot is really simple. The bad guy Thanos is on a mission to acquire (i.e. steal) the six Infinity Stones that will give him infinite power. Can’t get much simpler than that.

Thanos The Bad Gut (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

Another trick is to break your twenty-one superheroes into separate groups. Thor meets up with The Guardians of the Galaxy, the God of Thunder and Rocket the raccoon actually work really well together. Then Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Spiderman are on a spaceship toward the Bad Guy’s home planet while Captain America is back on Earth getting everybody else organized for the big battle at the end. It’s important that the writer’s keep the scenes moving back and forth seamlessly between these groups but if they can do so it can actually keep the audience from getting confused, or bored.

Thor with Rocket and Groot (Credit: Marvel / Disney)
Iron Man with Spiderman and Doctor Strange (Credit: Marvel Disney)
Captain America Takes Command (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

One thing you can’t make simple is the characterizations and that’s one of the advantages of a series of movies like the Marvel Universe. With one exception all of these actors have already played their character several times and hence knows how to play the character and how the public expects their character to behave.

The one exception is the bad guy Thanos; he may have made a couple of brief appearances in earlier Marvel Movies but this is the first time he’s a major character so it’s important that Thanos doesn’t become just a cardboard villain. Once again the writers have done their job by making Thanos crazy, psychopathic and absolutely certain that he’s the good guy!

Now I’m not going to give away too much of what happens in Avengers Infinity War but I will say that the ending was quite unexpected. I will give away one little secret however. Marvel movies often have a short scene either during or at the very end of the credits. This scene gives a clue to what’s to what’s going to happen in a future movie. Well in Avengers Infinity War you have to wait until the very end of the credits if you want to see it!

Avengers Infinity War was undoubtedly a difficult movie to make, there really is just a lot going on. However, it is definitely a success both as a story and as a spectacle. If the writer’s, producers and production teams at Marvel / Disney keep up the quality it seems to me as if the Marvel Universe will be turning out the blockbusters for quite a few more years to come.

 

Movie Review: Annihilation. H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour out of Space’ updated with a lot of Unnecessary Emotional Baggage.

Annihilation (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

At the beginning of Paramount Pictures new Movie ‘Annihilation’ we witness a meteor streaking through the atmosphere to wind up crashing into a small lighthouse. A little while later we learn that the lighthouse has become the center of an unearthly ‘shimmer’ that is slowly growing and that anyone who enters the shimmer never returns.

After several failed expeditions a team of five women enter the shimmer to discover that the plants and animals are all mutating. It was at this point, not quite halfway into the film that I said to myself: ‘this is the Colour out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft’. Actually ‘Annihilation’ would have been better if it had just stuck to being an update of Lovecraft’s story.

For those who haven’t read Lovecraft, in the ‘Colour out of Space’ a meteor lands on a New England farm and a strange unearthly colour (Lovecraft was thinking of something like Ultraviolet or Infrared light but somehow alive) begins to spread. The colour proceeds to suck the life out of every living thing on the farm.

O’k so in ‘Annihilation’ the meteor lands in a lighthouse instead of a farm, it generates a shimmer rather than a colour and causes mutations instead of sucking the lifeforce but those are just details. It’s really the same story plot.

Some of the Mutations in Annihilation (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

The only part of ‘Annihilation’ that is different is an idea that gets mentioned along the way that anyone who volunteers for a suicide mission must have something terribly wrong with their life. The main character Lena, played by Natalie Portman certainly does. Her husband joined an earlier mission into the shimmer because he found out she was having an affair and now she feels guilty about him so she volunteers for the next mission. Much too much of the movie is taken up with this pointless subplot.

Oh, I know. Nowadays when you tell a story you simply have to have well-developed characters that your readers or viewers can care about. You can take it from me however, there’s no one in this movie to care about. Also you can add the fact that the ‘surprise ending’ simply wasn’t.

Now Annihilation wasn’t all bad, the special effects were good and the basic idea of something really alien coming to our world on a meteor is intriguing. In fact it is revealed later in the movie that the shimmer isn’t causing mutations so much as mixing the DNA of different creatures.

Then when Lena finally reaches the lighthouse we see things like glass trees along the beach. Since glass is made out of sand I started to wonder if the shimmer is now mixing life and non-life! That would have been cool but nothing is done with the concept!

Glass Trees that nothing is done with! (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Really, eliminating the trite infidelity subplot and putting a lot more thought into the Science Fiction elements would have made Annihilation a much better film. As it is we never learn anything about why this ‘Shimmer’ came to Earth or where it came from or what it is trying to do.

Annihilation is based on a novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer (who also wrote the screenplay with director Alex Garland) and is the first part of a trilogy. Maybe in the other novels we get some of the answers but frankly I don’t know if I’m interested. I think I’ll reread ‘The Colour out of Space’ instead.

The Colour out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft (Credit: Classics Illustrated)

 

Movie Review: Thor: Ragnarok

The Fenris wolf fights The Incredible Hulk!!! In my opinion that alone was worth the price of admission. The new movie Thor: Ragnarok from Marvel Studios is a nice mixture of ancient and modern mythologies.

Back when I was in grade school I much preferred the Marvel Comics to DC, Superman was especially lame and Batman was a joke. Then in high school I got interested in Norse mythology so I guess I was predisposed to like the new Thor movie. The image below is a poster for the movie Thor: Ragnarok.

Poster for Thor: Ragnarok (Credit: Marvel, Disney)

For those who aren’t familiar with the ‘Fate of the Gods’ or ‘Twilight of the Gods’, we’re not quite sure which Ragnarok means, let me give you a little background. In Norse mythology Ragnarok is the final battle between the forces of good and evil. Most mythologies predict some such conflict in the future but unlike the Christian myth of Armageddon where the good guys just win and Satan in cast into the bottomless pit the battle of Ragnarok is a lot bloodier for both sides.

Three winters without a summer herald the attack on Asgard, the home of the Gods by the Giants (Jötnar) of Jötunheimr. The giants are led by Surtr the fire Giant. The Fenris wolf breaks free of his bonds and devours the Sun while Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent rises from the depths of the ocean causing violent storms. Even Loki breaks free of his chains to join the war on the Gods.

The Aesir assemble for battle led by one-eyed Odin (Germanic Woden which is where we get Wednesday), his sons Ty’r (Tuesday) and Thor (Thursday) along with a fertility God named Freye (Friday) and the ever faithful guardian of the bifrost bridge Heimdallr. Below is a woodcut by the artist Otto Spamer of Odin in his full splendor.

Odin by Otto Spamer

In the battle the wolf swallows Odin alive but is killed by Ty’r, Freye and Surtr kill each other. Thor slays Jörmungandr but takes only nine steps before dropping dead from the monster’s poison. In the final act only Heimdallr and Loki remain to face each other, faithful against faithless and die by each others sword. A later Christian addition has a new world being reborn out of the ashes as Odin’s dead son Baldr the beautiful rises from the realm of the Goddess of the Dead Hel (Who gives us the word Hell) and rules a world without evil.

So much for the ancient myths, Marvel studios has now given us a new take on the myth in their current movie Thor: Ragnarok. Unlike the original myth Thor: Ragnarok is a part of the ‘Marvel Universe’ so the good guys have to win without too many losses. Obviously they aren’t going to let Thor die because he has to appear in the next Avengers movie. Nevertheless there is plenty of mayhem on both sides.

Most of the original cast is here. Hel, now called Hela and played by Cate Blanchett, is the chief evildoer but she’s joined by Fenris and Surtr. The images below show Hela the Goddess of Death and the Fenris wolf.

Hel (Cate Blanchett) (Credit: Marvel, Disney)
The Fenris Wolf (Credit: Marvel, Disney)

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is joined by Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and Heimdallr (Idris Elba). In the movie Loki has his mischievous moments but in the end becomes a good guy probably because Tom Hiddleston has done such a splendid job with the character that Marvel doesn’t want to lose him, or make him into a real bad guy. (Hint to Marvel studios: What about a Loki movie. Of course he’d have to be an anti-hero but how about a Marvel remake of something like a fistful of dollars?)

An addition to the story from elsewhere in the Marvel Universe is The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) who gets to fight the Fenris wolf as I mentioned earlier. A five minute long cameo is also provided by Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the movie but which introduces Thor to Doctor Strange.

Now I’m not going to give away any of the major plot points, O’k I did mention that the Hulk fights the Fenris wolf, but I will make a few criticisms. I do think that Hela (Hel) could have been more effective if she’d actually had fewer lines. As death personified she should have been something more like a walking plague, killing by simply a thought or glance. Also the section on Jeff Goldbloom’s landfill planet either needed to be explained better, or reduced, and less Jeff Goldbloom is always a good thing to me.

Another thing before I forget, Hela uses Odin’s eternal flame to animate a lot of dead warriors to be her Zombie army but then Thor and the Hulk just knock’em all over like bowling pins. I’ve seen this before, the good guys have to fight their way through a big mass of nobodies before they face the real bad guys. It’s really just padding the film and it’s boring. Try using a little more imagination.

Nevertheless I certainly enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok although you may have noticed that the serpent Jörmungandr didn’t appear. Since he the one who kills Thor in the ancient myth I guess Marvel is saving him until Chris Hemsworth is tired of the role and they start planning on a reboot. Below are a few images of artwork that have been inspired by the myth of Ragnarok.

Thor and the Midgard Serpent by Emil Doepler
Ragnarok by Otto Spamer

Movie Review: Blade Runner 2049, the Original was more Original.

Based upon the Philip K. Dick science fiction novel ‘Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?’ the first ‘Blade Runner’ movie was one of those films that under performed at the box office back in 1982. Even at the time however the film had a large number of genuine admirers both for the originality of the novel’s plot and director Ridley Scott’s gritty vision in filming it. Today Blade Runner has achieved much better reviews and a growing number of fans.

Original Blade Runner Poster (Credit: Warner Brothers)

For those who don’t know or remember the original movie, in the post-apocalyptic year 2019 humans are busy developing “the outer worlds” and are using ‘replicants’, human appearing androids as a slave labour force. Some of these replicants have escaped and come to Earth where they are hunted down and eliminated by ‘Blade Runners’ like Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford in both the original and the sequel. The original film ends with Deckard and a replicant named Rachel leaving together as lovers. The entire film, and the novel before it were a comment on what it really means to be human. Blade Runner was just one of those movies some people loved because it was so different, while others just didn’t understand it for the exact same reason.

So it was inevitable that sooner or later someone would get around to making a sequel and we now have Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve with executive producer Ridley Scott. The fact that Ridley Scott had a major role in the sequel ensured that ‘Blade Runner 2049’ has much the same gritty feel as the original.

Blade Runner 2049 Poster (Credit: Columbia Pictures)

Without giving too much away the sequel’s plot concerns the hunt for a child that the human Deckard and the replicant Rachel had after the end of the original. It’s the job of the new Blade Runner ‘K’ played by Ryan Gosling, to hunt down this impossible child. By the way ‘K’ is himself a replicant!

That’s one problem I had with “Blade Runner 2049′. In the original film replicants were eliminated just for being on Earth but now there are replicants everywhere, replicants are even hunting other replicants. As an explanation we’re informed that most replicants are a newer, obedient model. I might have accepted that explanation if at the end of the movie we weren’t introduced to a waiting rebel army of ‘obedient’ replicants. In other words the movie changed its own rules in the middle of the story and that’s never a good thing in science fiction.

The bigger problem however is simply a lack of anything really new. If the original Blade Runner was so original that many people couldn’t accept it, the new Blade Runner 2049 certainly doesn’t have that problem. In fact Blade Runner 2049 just a rather obvious take off on the first film.

So much for the bad parts, this film does have a few good things in it as well. As I already mentioned the new Blade Runner maintains much of the same feeling, the same atmosphere as the original but with improved special effects. The effects themselves are very good being a nice mixture of real sets and CGI images. (I think some films just use too much CGI and end up looking like a cartoon.) The two images below allow a comparison of the design of the two films.

Los Angeles in the Original Blade Runner (Credit: Warner Brothers)
Los Angeles in Blade Runner 2049 (Credit: Columbia Pictures)

My favourite part of the film however was that of K’s computer generated girlfriend Joi, and not just because the actress playing the role, Ana deArmas was quite pretty. To me the technology of Joi, both hardware and software were the most original part of the film. When we first meet Joi her image is being generated by a projector in K’s apartment. The projector runs along a railing mounted on the ceiling allowing Joi to move around but only inside the apartment.

K brings Joi a present, a handheld projector that enables her to go outside, even with him on his missions. In terms of hardware that made me wonder how a handheld projector could generate a stable image, especially when K kept putting it in his pocket. More interesting however was the idea of a computer program, however sophisticated, developing a truly individual personality, and Joi had as much personality as any character in the film.

What I would have liked to have seen would have been a couple more computer generated people like Joi. Since these image people would all be developed from the same program could they really be individuals, really be different from one another? Exploring that idea could have been original!

On the whole Blade Runner 2049 wasn’t a bad movie, but with all the money and effort that went into it, it could have been better.

 

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2

I know, I know, Guardians of the Galaxy is really more of a roller coaster ride than a science fiction movie but it does have spaceships and aliens and while it may just be a distraction from the real world it is a well made distraction.

Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (Credit Marvel Studios)

Guardians of the Galaxy is a part of the “Marvel Universe” produced by Disney and which includes Iron Man, Captain America and etc. and which may very well become the most successful movie franchise in history. Disney / Marvel is building this universe by combining individual superhero movies like “Doctor Strange” with ensemble movies like “The Avengers” and now “Guardians of the Galaxy”.

In vol.1 of Guardians we were introduced to our group of heroes as they were introduced to each other. Peter Quill is a Earthling who was kidnapped by alien “ravagers” as a child, the ravagers are a collection of outlaws / pirates. Quill is joined by Gamora, an alien woman who was raised to be an assassin but to wants to escape that life along with Rocket, a genetically engineered intelligent raccoon and his friend Groot, a semi-intelligent tree-man. Rocket and Groot are bounty hunters. The final member of the Guardians is Drax, a powerful fighter.

For a moment can I just stop to ask why our culture at present seems to connect to the idea of pirates and assassins and bounty hunters as being saviors of galaxies??? Seventy to eighty years ago the heroes were like Superman or the Lone Ranger, so perfectly upstanding and morally virtuous that they were boring!

Then, when I was a kid there were superheroes like Spiderman, a typical teenager who didn’t really want to be a hero. Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four also did not want his superpowers. Nowadays it seems like you had to have been a bad guy before you can become a good guy. This may make for more interesting characters but to my mind it doesn’t make them any more realistic. I’ll stick with the Spiderman type, just a normal person who is a reluctant hero.

Anyway, back to the Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2. In this story Peter Quill meets his mysterious and very powerful father EGO. I don’t want to give away any of the plot but let’s just say that EGO’s desires for his son’s future are not quite paternal.

That’s just the main plot, there are complications aplenty. With a race called the Sovereigns pursuing the Guardians because Rocket stole some of their batteries while Gemora’s sister Nebula is trying to kill her, to say nothing about the mutiny of Yondu the Ravager’s crew there are fights galore. There are several times during the movie when it’s hard to keep track of who’s on who’s side or not but you know that in the end Quill, Gamora, Rocket Groot and Drax will all stick together.

During the fights there are more than a few “Come ‘on” moments, like when Gamora picks up a cannon from a broken spaceship and starts firing it at her sister or when Drax ties a rope around himself and jumps out of the Guardian’s ship to shoot at an enemy.

Despite it’s drawbacks the movie is well made with easy to like characters. Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 isn’t thought provoking science fiction, it’s a roller coaster, but it is a good one.

Movie Review: Passengers

To start with “Passengers” is a certainly a visually attractive film, and I don’t just mean Jennifer Lawrence. It’s true, the best part of the film are the special effects and especially the set design. The starship Avalon is the starship you dream of being on.

Passengers. Maybe they could have shown the starship in one of their posters?

The biggest problem with this movie is the plot, it’s sooooo slow and so predictable, especially the love story. The movie begins as the starship Avalon is about a third of the way through it’s 120 year journey to the colony Homestead II when the ship has a collision with a rather large asteroid. The ship’s deflector screen prevents the ship from being destroyed but there is some damage, the first instance of which is when passenger Chris Pratt is awoken from hibernation much too early. For the next half an hour we are treated to watching Pratt learn he is the only person awake, watching him try wake up members of the crew and otherwise try to find a way out of his problem as he slowly goes a little crazy. This is the worst part of the film.

The story gets a little better when Jennifer Lawrence wakes up (I’m trying not to give away too much of the plot here). At least now we have two people trying to figure out what they can do. As Jennifer and Chris fall in love and then break up we occasionally are shown small parts of the ship beginning to malfunction as Cleaning robots, visual displays and other systems run into walls or flicker on and off.

Here we have the biggest plot hole in the story. As the failures begin to cascade we are shown the ship’s computer keeping tract of all the breakdowns but for some reason it hasn’t been programmed to wake up any of the crew to fix the bloody problem. At the same time boy engineer Chris is so engrossed in Jennifer he doesn’t notice the accumulating malfunctions. If fact we have to wait for crewman Lawrence Fishburne to be awakened before anybody says “Hey we gotta fix this”!

Now, since three’s a crowd, Fishburne has suffered internal damage during his revival and literally only lives long enough to get Chris and Jennifer off their well exercised butts while giving them his authority to access sections of the ship they hadn’t been able to get into and control the computer systems in ways they’d never been able to. Then he dies leaving Chris and Jennifer to risk their lives saving the ship while falling in love again.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie isn’t bad but it is slow and predictable. As I said earlier the set design does have a real feel of what we imagine a starship passenger liner to be and the story does take the effort to think about why people would ever consider leaping 120 years into the future to begin a completely new life on a new world but hey, isn’t that kinda just the story of our country.

I guess if you like Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence, or if you really like starships you’re like “Passengers” otherwise this movie will probably leave you feeling a little flat.