Category: Movies

From the moment the Bourne Legacy began it was clearly evident where the budget for the film went: location, location, location. The film begins with a mysterious man surviving in the Alaskan wilderness, and we are treated to expansive helicopter shots of rugged mountains, lonely snow-laden forests, and stunning beauty. But that I can get from a National Geographic special. From the moment the main title flashes across the screen, I want something more than a pretty view. This is a Bourne movie. Bourne movies reinvented the spy genre. They gave us a spy with a conscience who could become an intense weapon in an instant. Bourne visited exotic locations, but the focus was always on him, his mission, his pain, his fight for survival. For most of the first half of Bourne Legacy, the focus is on an unnamed man and Alaska.

At the same time, somewhere else in America, Edward Norton is awoken. He is going to wish for the rest of the film that he stayed in bed because he is the most powerless and inept CIA coordinator in the history of the Bourne franchise. The story, what bare scant bones there be, is that while Jason Bourne is making his way from Russia (as seen in the end of the Bourne Supremacy) and makes his way through New York City on a vendetta against Treadstone/Blackbriar (as seen in the Bourne Ultimatum) Edward Norton’s character, who oversees the operation of several Treadstone splinter programs, is racing to erase all evidence that he ever did anything illegal.

While our unnamed hero fights off a few wolves and hikes through some snow, Norton has several other top level assassins elsewhere in the world assassinated by making them take a suicide pill (no, really). This works because in this version of the Bourne saga, all the agents are only special because they are highly drugged up, mentally and physically, which means as they are used to taking their blues and their greens (pills, that is) you can give them a yellow pill, tell them it is better, and wait for them to drop dead (no, really) and they won’t question you. Except for our ruggedly handsome hero, who is in Alaska (we learn) because he questioned something and as a result, the CIA punished him by making him hike through Alaska.

Because our hero is inconveniently in Alaska (an unavailable for suicide pill) the CIA attempts to kill him with a drone plane and a bomb. He survives the bombing and shoots down the plane with some trickery involving a tracking device and a wolf. However, once the CIA realizes that they missed, they try to kill him again. But, because for some reason Edward Norton’s CIA is underfunded and ignored, they can’t even get real time satellite imagery or advanced tracking data. He must rely on Canadian weather satellites and thousands of traffic cam pictures to try to locate the car they think our hero is driving. I’m not making this up, there is an entire five minute segment of all of Norton’s underlings shouting into phones about the make and model of the car and if anyone has seen it, could they please call back and let them know. At this point, I should mention that at no time during the film does our hero ever seem to be in danger.

The subplot revolves around a medical researcher who was involved in making the drugs that make this new batch of CIA operatives special. She survives a completely inexplicable and horrific massacre at her lab to survive an assassination attempt by a CIA psychiatrist only because our hero magically managed to show up to her remote house and save her. Because. The audience is never told that our hero is even trying to find this medical researcher, or what his goals are prior to this scene, but after he saves her, he interrogates her about drugs. Our hero is only actually concerned with one thing: his next fix. And for good reason, as we now learn that our hero, and Bourne replacement, was an idiot prior to recruitment. No, really. His IQ was below the ARMY recruitment minimum, and the flashbacks/video of his entrance interview into Treadstone show a man barely above the level of a third grader, mentally.

Our drugged up hero then forces the medical researcher to accompany him to the factory in the Philippines where his drugs are manufactured so that she can cook up a mega dose of meds and make him permanently strong and smart.

At the same time, Edward Norton, who has done nothing but be inept, finally discovers (almost by accident) that our drugged up hero is in Manila and he sends a newer and even more lethal drugged up assassin after him. Is there just a factory where all of these new assassins magically appear from? The tagline from this film is “There Never Was Just One” and by that they must mean “There is an endless supply whenever/wherever we need them”.

Anyway, we never actually get to see this newer and more lethal drugged up assassin fight our drugged up hero as all he can manage to do is chase our protagonists around Manila on a motorcycle before our very weak female researcher kicks his motorcycle and he crashes into a pole and dies like a wimp. No, really.

And that’s all they wrote, or could afford to, because the movie ends with a majestic helicopter shot of the South Pacific and a remix of Moby’s “Extreme Ways”.

The myriad weaknesses of the Bourne Legacy should be obvious by now, but to sum up: the audience follows a hero we don’t know and that we are never made to care about, who is chased by a threat that isn’t real or threatening, and there is something about drugs. There was no personal story, no character moments, no depth or emotion. There was no higher purpose, no commentary on the inherent evil and danger of blackops and unsanctioned operations. There was no human cost or soul searching. In short, there was nothing that made the Bourne Trilogy what is was, none of the things that made the Bourne films worth watching.

The whole time I was in the theater, I couldn’t figure out why I watching this movie. I felt like I was watching a movie about 003, Bart Bond, and that I should have been watching a movie about the real 007 instead.

Bottom line: Jason Bourne deserved a better legacy.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The film was good, for what it was.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was released in 2009. By this time, Sam had entered college, the Autobots, having vanquished (but not destroyed) the Decepticons are partnering with the American military to hunt down and destroy any remaining enemy robots. Unbeknown to them, an ancient evil robot called the Fallen has been waiting in stasis on a broken starship. He returns to earth hoping to find an ancient tomb of powerful dead robots and reclaim a powerful object that will allow him to harness the sun’s power, but destroy earth in the process. The Autobots, and Sam, rally with the US military to overcome this new, and more dangerous, threat.

The second Transformers film had much more action, a little more emotion, and a lot more things exploding. It was as good of a story as the first film, but suffered from an unrestrained Michael Bay. There really is a certain level of over-the-top filmmaking that Bay can get away with, but T2 really pushed that boundary.

Hype: I was expecting another solid entry in the Transformers franchise with Dark of the Moon. Early trailers showed some sort of NASA coverup involving more alien robots on the moon, which seemed like an interesting plot device. Trailers also showed completely absurd action sequences inside of falling building. I was at once intrigued and dismayed.

Megan Fox, who had played Sam’s love interest in the first two movies, had been replaced for the third movie. While Fox has sex appeal, she seemed increasingly bored in her scenes, and her contempt for Bay and Shia off camera oozed into palpable distaste for Sam on camera and I was glad to see her go. I was hoping for a stronger female character to counteract Sam and the rest of the male characters (ie, every other character). Mostly I was wishing that the story would be strong, and the action restrained to normal Bay amounts.

The Good: Alan Tudyk was in this movie. He had a bit part, but it was a hilarious part, to me anyway. I know Tudyk from Joss Whedon’s TV shows Firefly and Dollhouse. In Firefly he played a space ship pilot who was a funny, wacky, oddball. In Dollhouse he played a psychotic serial killer named Alpha who had multiple personalities, some of which were funny, oddball, wacky, creepy, weird, hilarious, or pyschopathic. In this film, he seemed to be continuing his performance as Alpha, albeit reformed somewhat. Whenever he talked, I totally lost it. There was one scene in a bar when Tudyk’s character, for no reason whatsoever, snaps and does some awesome kung-fu and snatches a few guns away from some bad guys only to suddenly “wake up” and mutter “Sorry, that was the old me” and that was pure Alpha. I wonder if the writer’s did in fact rip off the Whedon character, but even if they didn’t, Tudyk was funny as hell.

Oh yeah…the good. Hmm. Megan Fox was not in this movie. Some of the action scenes were restrained and more on par with T1 than T2.

I’m still thinking.

Oh, the recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing was fantastic. I loved seeing that intercut with archival footage and recreations of JFK in the White House. Best cinematic opening sequences and the movie only went down from there into a deep, dark, hellish abyss from which there was no escape.

The Ugly: The first hour of the movie consists of Sam living with a Victoria Secret model who works for a car museum and who totally despises him for not having a job. Sam then whines about not having a job despite having marginally helped to save the planet twice and having got a medal from Obama. Sam whines a lot. And then he meets a totally psychotic John Malkovich who has no reason to be in the movie. At all. There is some very unfunny stuff in the first hour with employees at a place where Sam does some stuff. I seem to remember something about the color red. Oh, and a murder that involved a man flying out of skyscraper window which the writers tried to make quite a few jokes about, but the scene was played sort of seriously, but then they also tried to make jokes. It was awkward and wrong and bad and clunky and completely unnecessary.

After Sam stopped whining about not having a nice car and a job working with the Autobots, the Autobots find the alien robots on the moon which nobody thought to mention to them, and then they find this ancient robot who they revive thinking he will be nice and helpful for them in their fight against the Decepticons, except that this guy made a pact with the evil robots back in the day and he totally betrays everyone and goes to the dark side.

Then for no reason he and his Decepticon pals destroy Chicago (for no reason) and demand that Earth expel the Autobots. The Autobots then leave on a special space shuttle (despite the fact that they themselves can fly into space or transform into space flying robots) which the Decepticons then destroy. But not to worry, because right as Sam is infiltrating Chicago basically on his own to rescue his uncaring girlfriend, the Autobots return, declaring that they allowed Chicago, and millions of humans to be murdered horribly, simply to show the Earth that the Earth really needs them…to save millions of humans from being murdered horribly.

Then some action happens, none of it believable, which is par for the course on a Bay film except that half the time it seemed like Bay was directing normal Bay scenes and someone else was directing totally-off-the-charts scenes. Seriously, this movie felt like it had 3 directors all fighting with Bay who was trying to make a T1/Armageddon scale movie.

Eventually, the incredibly evil former-good guys and the criminally inept US military win the day, and Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, stands as victor over his original enemy, Megatron, and his new enemy, Sentinal Prime. Both surrender, and Optimus Prime pulls the spine out of Megatron and shoots Sentinal Prime in the head execution style. After both surrendered to him.

The story was good, except for the bits where Sam whined about being unemployed for an hour, the irrelevant characters, and, oh yeah, the events of the first two films being completely invalidated because if the facts of this film really were known by people during the first two films, then the first two films would not have happened like they did. This was one of those sequels that makes the prequels incomprehensible.

The Personal: I didn’t connect with this film at all. Sam whined like a bitch. One of the heroic soldiers from the first two movies transformed into a coward. And the heroic leader robot turned into an accomplice to mass murder before he summarily murdered two of his enemies who had just surrendered to him.

Final Thoughts: Sentinal Prime, the new villain, was voiced by Leonard Nimoy, Spock from the Original Star Trek. The writers used this as an excuse to steal Spock’s most famous lines from Wrath of Khan and completely misunderstand them and misuse them, which in addition to making the writers look stupid, also made them look completely lazy.

Sam whining about a job seemed selfish in the wake of massive national unemployment, especially when he had a few good job offers that he completely pissed on because he felt he deserved better. When millions are out of work, it makes your writers look like douches when their “hero” character won’t work available jobs.

There is a low standard for Michael Bay films, and this film worked way too hard to not meet that standard. This film could have been as “good” as Armageddon but whatever was happening with the especially horrible writing and inconsistent directing made this movie so much worse. All the way through, it seemed like there was a Michael Bay Transformers movie in there somewhere, but it kept getting interrupted by someone else’s idea of what would make a funny, or cool, or something scene, most of which didn’t belong or have anything to do with anything else in the film. Shia Lebouf has said that he is done making Transformers movies, and I hope that Bay is too. I think that someone else could bring a fresh vision to Transformers, but hopefully not for 20 years. We need more original stories right now and we need to forget about giant fighting CGI robots for a while.

Final Score: 1.5 of 5 transforming car robots (entirely due to Alan Tudyk’s presence and Megan Fox’s absence and the uber cool recreation of Apollo 11 and a cameo by the real Buzz Aldrin).

X-Men: First Class

The movie sought to answer one question: what would a mutant do with their powers? Would they seek to overthrown humanity? Would they seek to hide from ridicule, hate, and prejudice? Or would they work for world peace? Two of the most powerful, and oldest, mutants were Erik Lehnsherr (Sir Ian McKellen) and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), the former a manipulator of metal and a Holocaust survivor, the latter an English professor and a telepath. Erik was Magneto, and due to his personal trauma and superiority complex he sought to rule over mere humanity. Xavier took the high moral ground and worked his entire life for mutant and human peace.

The first film revolved around Magneto’s plot to induce mass mutations in the world’s leaders at a peace summit on Ellis Island, and his nefarious scheme to use Rogue to do it, an action that would result in her death. As an incidental figure, Wolverine moved from a life of personal exile on the fringe to a member of a group larger than himself. The film was a little campy, but it had its humor, emotional impact, and solid character development.

X2, released in 2003, was about one man’s vendetta against the mutant community with a side lesson in accepting people for who they are coupled with Wolverine’s search for his past. Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox), a long time military man and hater of mutants, hatches a plan to wipe out all mutants everywhere using Xavier and his immense telepathic power. Wolverine discovers that he was once a mutant experiment of Stryker’s while a new mutant character, Bobby Drake aka Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) deals with “coming out” to his family about his being a mutant. X2 was solid. It had the best opening sequence of any X-Men film, and of most films, and the character development continued from the first film and set up the third one nicely. It had plenty of good action, but I feel that the plot to use Xavier to kill all the mutants was a little thin.

X3: The Last Stand, released in 2006, was about a final battle between Magneto and humanity over a new cure for mutantism. Xavier’s students get caught in the middle as some are desperate for a way to be normal and some offended by the very idea of a cure. A massive subplot of the film focused on the resurrection of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) as the most powerful mutant alive, Phoenix, and her place as an force of nature while both Xavier and Magneto try to control her to their own ends. Wolverine completed his story arc from loner to leader and became a full-fledged member of Xavier’s school. Overall X3 rushed its way through a story that should have been handled with care and relied too much on mutant power eye candy instead of real story to drive the film. Bryan Singer had handed over directing duties to Brett Ratner and the film suffered for it.

Staying on pace with a release every three years, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released in 2009. This film went back to basics, literally, to tell the story of the first ever mutant (as far as anyone knows): Wolverine. Logan’s back story was explored extensively throughout the trilogy, but only so far as his interactions with Colonel Stryker were concerned. Little was shown or told about this life before the 1970s, mostly because at some point Wolverine had contracted a little amnesia.

Wolverine focused on Logan, obviously, and his half brother Victor Creed aka Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), who were children in 1845 era Canada. Following a drunken outburst and a case of mistaken identity, young Logan murders his father and he and Victor go on the run. Through the decades the duo fight in, and survive, every major war from the American Civil War through Vietnam due to their shared mutation of claws, and the ability to endlessly regenerate. Throughout their history, Victor shows tendencies of becoming more and more violent and animalistic, as does Logan, though Logan resists his darker impulses. During Vietnam, Victor loses control and kills and officer and both are condemned to death. Surviving their execution, they receive an offer from young Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston) who admits them into his mutant black ops team. The story then follows Wolverine as he quits, sickened by the killing, and Stryker who endlessly experiments on mutants, ultimately trying to create the perfect mutant killer who is a combination of the most powerful offensive mutations he can identify. Along the way he conns Logan into an experiment which results in the grafting of an indestructible metal called adamantium onto Logan’s skeleton. Eventually Logan hunts Stryker down and tries to kill him, but the Colonel manages to shoot Logan in the head with adamantium bullets, which erase his memory but fail to kill him.

Wolverine excelled in that it focused on three men fairly exclusively and kept the mutant eye candy to the peripheral. Logan’s character arc was good, but a bit quick, in my opinion; I loved the brother dynamic between Logan and Victor. The acting was good, and the action was even better.

Hype: With all the past 9 years had produced, I was looking forward to a second origin story in First Class, this time focused on Xavier and his school and Magneto. All new actors for the two mutants were introduced, James McAvoy for Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. I had seen McAvoy before, and was having trouble accepting him as Xavier. Fassbender was new to me, and he seemed to at least look the part. It wasn’t until I started seeing previews that I began to see the potential genius in the new casting choices. Centering the story around the Cuban Missile Crisis made me nervous as Hollywood movies which make money on glitz and action rarely pay the proper respects to history.

Also, I was looking, as always, for character development over mutant flash.

The Good: The casting was the most excellent part of First Class. McAvoy and Fassbender absolutely nailed their roles, paying homage to the performances that Stewart and McKellen gave the world without actually copying them. They both made me believe their passions and struggles were real. McAvoy’s talent for portraying emotion is on a very high level. The villain of the film was Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and the casting choice there was brilliant. Bacon was able to make his villain suave, ruthless, gentlemanly, and completely insane without ever breaking the camp barrier.

The movie revolved primarily around Xavier and Magneto, with most other mutants barely tripping the radar. The title became a bit of a misnomer as the entirety of Xavier’s first class with his mutants was relegated primarily to a montage of scenes with a strong musical background, but I loved seeing how Xavier was able to personally connect with each person and help them find their calm centre, and the secret to controlling their mutations in beneficial ways. I especially loved the few educational interjections Magneto made along the way, which gave the audience a chance to see the future villain contributing in benevolent ways to other people.

The action was good, but mostly only were necessary and never too much out of control. Also, despite the superhero nature of the film, the CGI was kept as unobtrusive as possible. I always appreciate a director who can keep the computer in the back room.

Finally, while Bryan Singer did not return as director, he did produce the film and engineer the story, which is part of why I think this film succeeded where X3 and Wolverine suffered.

The Ugly: For me the failing of this film was setting the action around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Shaw personally meets with key members of both the American and Russian governments and threatens them into the series of actions which became the Crisis in an attempt to start World War 3. I found this scenario extremely unlikely, and it was also unfair to the historical period, which was one of extreme paranoia and not at all as simple as the film made out.

I just couldn’t see one mutant, no matter how flashy or persuasive, being in a position to influence governments to that degree, and, if he could, I fail to see why he couldn’t have simply pushed the launch buttons himself. Ultimately, I wondered why he even bothered with an extremely clumsy plot to try to force two superpowers into a reluctant war when he could have started one singlehandedly without any coercion at all by utilizing just a little misdirection. When one has a teleporter and a telepath as one’s friends and collaborators, one usually doesn’t need to muck about with bureaucratic and governmental middle-men.

The Personal: As Professor X says: “I believe the true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.” This film gave me a chance to understand and explore the power both rage and serenity provide and understand a way to incorporate both into my psyche. Being a human is all about balance, and while society, religion, or culture might want to eradicate evil and darkness entirely, I think that humanity would be incomplete without both sides of innate natures. Ultimately, that is what the X-Men franchise is all about: everyone has the power to do great things, and the question is, how do we handle that power? If X-Men: First Class achieves anything, it is that it makes that dilemma accessible to its audience by cloaking it in mutant struggles, bypassing mental defense through the guise of entertainment, and that is what art and film should be all about.

Bonus:
Xavier: “Want to see another parlor trick?”
Man in Black: “Sure!”
Xavier (exerting telepathic effort): “Get in the car.”
Man in Black: “What a great idea!”

Final Score: 3 out of 5 Jedi mutant mind tricks.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates was cast very well with Johnny Depp as the perpetually drunk and crazy Captain Jack Sparrow, Geoffrey Rush as the villainous and classic pirate Captain Hector Barbossa, Orlando Bloom as the naive, pirate hating Will Turner, and 17 year old Keira Knightly as pirate loving, society restrained Elizabeth Swann. Rounding out the cast, Jonathan Pryce as Governor Swann, Jack Davenport as Commodore Norrington, and Kevin McNally as Joshamee Gibbs all were perfectly cast for their characters. Pirates was full of colorful, well rounded, and excellently performed characters.

The story was straightforward and filled with extremely humorous dialogue and plenty of rousing, swashbuckling action. The film also knew when to be silly and when to be serious, and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa was often at the heart of the most emotionally heavy scenes. He revealed the full extent of the curse of the Aztec gold to Elizabeth in dialogue and gripping story before the effects revealed his skeleton form. He brought the sword fighting to a stand still when Jack’s last pistol shot echoed through the Isla de Muerta cave and he realized he could feel, but only until death took him.

Pirates was such a risky venture at the time that they did not plan on sequels, and thus when it exploded at the box office and the studios revealed that they could make more films that would be profitable, everything made for the first film had to be recreated for the sequels, down to ships and Captain Jack’s wardrobe, none of which had been saved.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, the second and third films in the franchise, formed a single storyline and were filmed concurrently. It was an epic four hour adventure on the high seas that advanced the character arcs of all of the major characters and quite a few of the minor ones. The film introduced the character of Davy Jones, played by Bill Nighy, as well as brought to the story Will’s father (only mentioned in the first film) Bootstrap Bill, played by Stellan Skarsgård.

The humor of the first film remained, as did the fun and adventure, but it took a back seat to heavy, epic story lines and character development. The scope of the films expanded to Lord of the Ringsesque territory, as did the action and CGI sequences, though the effects didn’t ever completely overwhelm the storytelling. Despite that, many people didn’t like the “complexity” of the plot twists. Personally, I absolutely love the films, and think that the plots are still actually fairly simple and easy to follow, though why who is doing what sometimes gets a big tangled, but Gore Verbinski, director of the first three films, did a magnificent job of keeping track of and paying off almost every single plot point.

Also of note, Hans Zimmer created perhaps one of the most iconic film scores of all time as he overproduced Klaus Badelt’s score of Black Pearl and completely took over the musical parts of Chest and End. His music is fun to listen to completely outside of the movies, the scores being every bit as fun and epic as the films they were written for.

Hype: As a huge fan of the Pirates films, I was excited for a fourth movie, but given the way that At World’s End sort of brought the sea-faring house down, I wasn’t entirely sure how a fourth film could find an authentic way to continue.

The third film left off with Captain Jack half-heartedly pursuing his beloved ship and also contemplating a quest for the mythical Fountain of Youth, so it was pretty obvious what the story would be, and also given the completed story arcs for Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (also given the actors themselves bowing out of the franchise) it was clear that any further movies would be mostly about Jack and probably Barbossa.

Once more of the story was revealed, mainly through trailers, and the new character of Black Beard the Pirate was announced, along with mermaids and a privateer version of Barbossa, I was definitely intrigued and excited. Most of all, going in, I was curious as to the tone (as it was still unclear) and I also wanted answers as to why Barbossa seemed to have unilaterally given up the pirate life in exchange for formal employment by the King of England. I also wanted good treatment given to the Fountain and the mermaids.

The Good: Once again, the casting was spot on. In addition to the returning cast, Ian McShane was cast as Black Beard and there could be few other more perfect actors to play the notorious, and for once, completely historical pirate. Black Beard could have been over the top, or completely lame, but he was chilling, mysterious, and evil, and all of that is due to the great acting of McShane. Penelope Cruz was cast as Angelica, a former lover of Captain Jack, and she brought the character to life and played her well, despite being very pregnant during most of the shoot.

Once more, the effects were great, but not overwhelming, and Hans Zimmer continued his strong tradition of great scoring. The locations were picturesque and the story was simple and easy to follow.

I won’t spoil the plot points of Barbossa’s decisions, but suffice to say that the man has been and always will be the classic pirate in every way. His story arc was perhaps one of the best parts of the plot. As promised, more of Captain Jack’s sordid past was revealed and explored, and his character development, begun in Dead Man’s Chest is continued in this film in different, but still progressive ways, as compared to At World’s End.

The Fountain, and its rituals, were written well: it was everything that an Indiana Jones quest is all about, and just as legendary. The mermaids were handled very well, and actually contributed to the film in several significant ways, and weren’t just eye candy. Also, suffice to say, don’t ever make mermaids angry. Ever. “All I hear is the nesting of seagulls.”

The Ugly: For me, On Stranger Tides lacked something and it took me a while before I was able to put my finger on exactly what was missing, but I eventually realized that this film was not fun. It was enjoyable, satisfying, and well done, but it was not fun. I had watched each of the three films in the days leading up to my excursion to the theater, and I had honestly forgotten how hilarious Curse of the Black Pearl was, and even the other two, while epic and heavy, never forgot the mad-cap fun that was Pirates. While Tides tried a time or two, the only moment in which it came close was when Jack [did something daring at the beginning of the film which is slightly spoilerish]. There was no clever and humorous back and forth dialogue that was the heart, and bread and butter, of the first three films, and there was hardly any levity at all. For a film franchise built on a theme park ride and birthed in fun and humor, this fourth film was quite a departure.

The Personal: I love pirates and the sea, and one of the best parts of the entire seafaring saga for me was the attention to detail that the creators paid to their art. Very many allusions and references are made to classic pirate lore, literature, and legend, and in the fourth film that continued. Black Beard was shown to be a practicer of Voodoo, and though this is not historical, it was accurate in how it was portrayed and how it functioned, even down to the original idea of a zombie. Everything else about Black Beard was fairly spot on to the historical accounts of him. Even the mermaids were closer to their original origins in the different myths about them and classic stories (being man eating, vicious and tricksy creatures) than to modern ideas. For me, all this depth and detail is part of the immense attraction of the pirate films, and On Stranger Tides certainly delivered.

Final Score: 2 and 1/2 out of 5 really angry mermaids

Thor: God of Thunder

Hype: I really enjoyed Iron Man, and Iron Man 2 to a lesser degree, but once I heard that Joss Whedon, master of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, was to write and helm Avengers, I have grown interested in all of the Avengers, and not just Iron Man. I re-watched the Hulk movies (and was disappointed that they weren’t much to write about), but this summer was very excited for Thor and Captain America. I went into the theater expecting the same level of writing, effects, and sense of story that Iron Man had delivered.

The Good: Casting. In a word, the casting of Thor was excellent. You could not ask for a better All-Father Odin than Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth was fantastic as Thor, Tom Hiddleston was excellent as Loki. The supporting cast was well chosen, with veteran presence coming from Stellan Skarsgård, and Natalie Portman playing a fairly easy role as the scientist girlfriend. Even Rene Russo’s fleeting screentime as Frigg, wife of Odin and mother of Thor, fit well. Everywhere one looked in this film one saw quality actors.

Overall, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki stole the film. He was fantastically devious and totally realistic/consistent. It took me half the film to remember that Loki was pretty much orchestrating everything, but because of the way things were set up, Thor really made it easy for him to do pretty much everything he did. I liked him way better than Thor, and the fact that I liked the villain more than the hero says something about how badly this film was written.

The Ugly: Plenty. I wanted to like Thor so badly, but I just couldn’t. The budget for this film was very small, and it seemed like most of it was spent on making it 3D. I have said it many times, but special effects, especially these days, can more easily ruin a film than anything else and modern studios just don’t get that effects DO NOT make a movie. By now the CGI thing is so tired that the audience just doesn’t care and isn’t wowed, but the execs continue to push for big effects because they think that is what will draw audiences. Unfortunately, they are right, but only if they want a big opening day payday and don’t care about anything after that (which, sadly, is also often the case with execs). An audience will pay for the spectacle once, but will pay several times for story. Case in point: Titanic and Dark Knight both had effects but also had much stronger stories, the former appealed to the romantic in every housewife and the latter appealed to pretty much everybody as it broke Titanic’s records. Exceptions do exist, but my point remains: story will trump special effects, and Thor would definitely have benefited from better story.

Lack of proper character exploration was another weakness in this film. Natalie Portman is some sort of scientist studying some sort of phenomenon, but we are never really told what or how or why it matters. She is all excited about her research and notes, but the significance is lost on the audience. Second, pretty much as soon as Thor dropped to Earth, she started going all gooey over him, and it completely contradicted her strong scientist character to have her all gaga over his well defined physical appearance. On the other side of the strange love coin, I have an extremely hard time figuring out why a god such as Thor would immediately become enamored with the first human female he encounters on his exile. Thor strikes me as the kind of dude that has several girls on several planets.

Furthermore, scope killed this movie where it stood. Everything that happened on Earth happened in a sleepy western town in the desert. Everything that happened in Asgard happened in the transporter room or the throne room, or on some ice planet that no one cared about (even the characters in the movie didn’t care about it). The movie felt restricted and small. Iron Man traveled the world twice in as many movies; Thor was cast down to exactly one spot on Earth.

Given the fact that this movie was supposed to be about a god learning humility, it could have been perfectly justified and probably a bit more likely to have Thor quest around the Earth learning humility from the down and out and the wise gurus of the Earth. Instead, he acted like a jerk and hung out in a coffee shop, a pet store, and a scientist crash pad.

Speaking of Thor acting like a jerk, that is pretty much all he did. He was a jerk in Asgard and jumped at the weakest incitement to try to start a war. And then he was a jerk to his dad when he was called on his arrogance. And then he acted like a jerk on Earth by beating up nurses and doctors (honestly, that was the exact moment when I started to not like Thor) and few soldiers. And then he did one semi heroic act (I say semi-heroic because he supposedly sacrificed himself to save everybody, but there were only about 10 people in the little diner that the old scientist evacuated, and the rest of the people who were “in danger” were his god-pals and Foster, so I didn’t really see the peril inherent in the situation), was killed for it, was reinstated as a god, and then continued to pretty much act like a jerk. I really didn’t see any character development in what was supposed to be film entirely about his character’s development.

Lots of other things made this film superfluous, for instance, the annoying intern who managed to have the best line in the film. No, not the one about “pretty cut” or “freaking me out” or “Facebook” but: “I’m not dying for six college credits”. Also there was the whole thing about Thor sneaking into the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s desert compound to try to recover his hammer and basically beating up a bunch of people for no reason (not to mention endangering Jane Foster for no reason). Finally, there was Thor’s total bewilderment of some Earth things but not others (ie, pet stores but not cars). It was inconsistent. Either he is a god or he isn’t, but he couldn’t be that selectively clueless.

Finally: the whole thing with the ice planet and stuff, I don’t get it. I know that Thor has to be shown being completely reckless and arrogant, but the ice planet ended up somehow being a part of the plot and it seemed odd and out of place. It was one thing too many in a film that was already going many different directions and it didn’t seem necessary at all.

At that is just the few things I have highlighted that made Thor a less than stellar outing. There were many more.

The Personal: I barely connected with this film. I should have been able to connect much more strongly. A movie about intense and fundamental personal change within a strong character should have been a movie to connect with and project oneself into, but this movie was so poorly done it was like watching a gaudy spectacle happen with detached interest at best.

In the final analysis, Loki was more relatable than Thor because he was the non-favored son who was stolen from his real parents and was lied to all of his life. He radiated real confusion, pain, suffering, and a loss of identity, all of which are visceral and human emotions that one encounters all to often. I connected with his pain, and understood his conflicts. I think he should have reacted better, but he in fact acted according to character, and thus was devious and angry. Also, he was actually somewhat cathartic as a character: I am a younger brother who many times has wished I could take my favored older siblings down a notch or two in the eyes of my parents. Loki actually succeeded, so I like him for that, despite the fact he was sort of evil.

Final Score: 1 out of 5 thunderous Viking hammers.

Fast and the Furious: Fast 5

The success of the first film was followed by a sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, which showcased the return of Paul Walker but not Vin Diesel. This movie tried hard to duplicate the first film, exhibiting fast slick cars, street racing, and underworld glitter, but it tried too hard. Without Diesel around to inject hard hitting emotion, the film floundered with more of a buddy cop/Miami Vice feel and didn’t grow the story or the characters. For all its NOS powered flash, it felt like an extended race scene that was deleted from the first film.

Despite the relative failure of the second film, the franchise continued with Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift which centred around a completely new cast and the new country of Japan. Dom Toretto cameos at the end, claiming to be a friend of one of the film’s protagonists, a car criminal named Han (Sung Kang) who is hiding out in his version of Mexico. Tokyo Drift‘s story was one of a son’s reunion with his father, and was a coming of age tale, and while it heavily featured underground street racing, it returned to the first film’s success of story powering the cars, albeit in drift races instead of the franchise’s traditional drag races.

The fourth film, which premiered in 2009, returned to both the original cast and setting. Fast & Furious also moved backwards in time from Tokyo Drift, showing Han at work in Dominic’s crew, while O’Conner worked in a special task force at the FBI that specialized in fighting crime centered around street racing. This story had cars and story in spades. Dominic was forced to confront the consequences of his crimes, which included the death of his girlfriend. At the same time, O’Conner’s struggles focused on which side of the law he really belonged. Both characters took separate, but parallel, paths to the same truth: that together they are stronger. The film ended with Toretto choosing to stand trial for his crimes. When the justice system worked against him, O’Conner broke him out of prison. By the end of the action, the two characters had moved through each other’s worlds and into a new synthesis. Again, the growth of the characters and the story made this film more about people than engines, and was the strongest outing yet for the series.

Hype: Honestly, I wondered how the franchise could stay fresh. Before going to the theater to see Fast 5, I watched the previous films (except Tokyo Drift), and tried to imagine how things could advance forwards. Most long running film series tend to duplicate themselves endlessly, relying on formula and fan base for success (such as Indiana Jones and James Bond), or are a continuation of a single general storyline (such as Star Wars and Star Trek). Even from the trailer, it seemed like the writers and makers of the F&F movies were intent on taking this new sequel, and future films, in a decidedly new direction. I had read that Fast 5 was going to take the main thrust of the movies from street racing to heists. That seemed like a stretch to me, as the major crime in the previous movies was either perpetuated by an uber evil bad guy, or was undertaken by a protagonist trying to grab a little extra, usually for understandable reasons. I had a hard time seeing the car crew/family as criminals in it for the crime. Finally, while street racing isn’t exactly boring if filmed dynamically, it was, ten years removed from the original, worn out as a plot device. I was unsure of its ability to keep an audience, or even myself, interested.

I was interested in strong character development and an evolution of the devices in a fast and furious car series that had proven in could do the former and was shaky in modifying the latter.

The Good: Fast 5 proved that evolution is possible. Honestly, I have never seen a film franchise so completely reinvent itself. It was as if established characters were lifted from an established premise and put into a completely different genre. In my mind, this was like James Bond being extracted from a spy film and being put into a sci-fi thriller with aliens. Such things shouldn’t work. Such things are never done. (I can think of one exception: Star Trek IV, the one with the whales, which was bookended with traditional Star Trek memes, but was a Star Trek film without a starship or outer space, taking place on pre-space flight Earth.)

But Fast 5 worked, and worked extremely well. The brief glimpses of street racing were mere homages, or internal references. There was only one drag race, and it was played for humor, not as plot advancement. Each character stayed true to himself (or herself), and thus cars were involved, but only in the way that James Bond would involve his PP7 in a science fiction film: as a convenient way to shoot aliens. The film spent most of its time off the asphalt, and in the character’s lives. The first big chase scene was a chase on foot, and completely devoid of cars. The biggest, flashiest car featured in the film spent most of its screen time either being taken apart or put back together, not being driven at insane speeds through flashy nighttime streets. The characters didn’t really drive cars, or use cars to solve their problems. They used their non-automotive skill sets instead (talking, infiltrating, cracking, monitoring, etc). The big heist felt like something out of Ocean’s 11 or Kelly’s Heroes, involving cars only because they are convenient, and not really as a showcase for the cars themselves (which separates this film from the Italian Job, where Minis drive the plot).

Fast 5, of course, had fast cars and a car chase, but the film wasn’t really about cars. For the first time in ten years, it was blatantly obvious that the titular words were not descriptors for the cars, and never were: fast and furious are schemas through which to understand Dominic Toretto, Brian O’Conner, and their car enthusiastic team.

Finally, Fast 5 was able to connect all the major players from four previous and mostly unconnected films in way that made Ocean’s 11’s way of bringing together a huge cast seem like an amateur effort in collaboration. Fast 5 felt more organic, more real, than the Ocean’s films ever did.

The Ugly: Some of the action seemed implausible. That really is about my only complaint. View the trailer for the film and you will see Dom and Brian towing a safe through the streets of Rio de Janeiro with two Dodge Chargers. I am not sure I entirely buy that, but I allow it because, after all, Fast and the Furious is a summer action blockbuster. Despite the character growth and drama, this is not supposed to be a hyper realistic film in which everything matches the real world, so I don’t really care.

Also, I suppose that if you watch the Fast and the Furious only for the car bits, and tend to hate plot and character development, then you (probably) really won’t like this film.

The Personal: Over ten years and four films I had become invested in these characters. I wanted to know where they went next, and how they solved the problem of being highly wanted fugitives who themselves desperately wanted normal lives free of complications and the threat of 25 to life.

I’d also connected with O’Conner, adrift in a life I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The trust and the love shown across such an incredibly diverse group of people who accept former traitors and cops is moving, and, it must be admitted, personally challenging. Fast 5 allowed me the time and space to project into that sort of dynamic and explore it for a couple of hours. For that, I find Fast and the Furious 5 to be a great film.

Final score: 4 out of 5 supercharged, NOS injected Dodge Chargers.