As gaming technology progresses ever closer to full immersion, with HD graphics and motion recognition tech like Microsoft's Project Natal pushing the boundaries of what games can represent, we have seen an explosion in abstract gaming genres, more concerned with telling convoluted and compelling narratives than merely giving the player an avatar to guide through a series of environments. This attempt to match established storytelling media such as books and films might be misguided. Arguably, games can do certain things that other media cannot, so why not continue to do those things instead of trying to imitate old media like movies? However, this has not dissuaded games developers, and the latest release from game developer Wes Anderson, in association with Tweesoft Games, is a notable progression in this abstract-narrative sub-genre.
The Darjeeling Limited is Anderson's first project since the critical failure of his first-person shooter / marine exploration simulator The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. After sales failed to materialise, Anderson split from long-time collaborators RagnarokRain, a move that shocked the gaming community. The success of their previous games -- Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums -- cemented their reputation as purveyors of eccentric gaming experiences, with Anderson's fertile mind served by RagnarokRain's incredible coding prowess.
Nevertheless, it was risky to change their style from increasingly complex Sims-style strategy game -- with Rushmore allowing you to manage Max Fischer's career at school, and The Royal Tenenbaums expanding your responsibilities to controlling a large family in a New York brownstone -- to a peculiar cross-breed of other genres. Regrettably their gamble failed terribly. The character of Steve Zissou was promoted as being the next Master Chief or Gordon Freeman but, with the traditional macho couture of the first person hero abandoned in favour of a wetsuit and red bobble hat, Zissou failed to convince. To make things worse, the underwater sections were poorly designed and overlong, until eventually fatigue set in for most players, ditching the game before completing the fabled Jaguar Shark Forgiveness achievement. Not long after the game was released, it was Anderson who ditched RagnarokRain.
Following the acrimonious split, RagnarokRain's head project developer Colt Wendell moved on to collaborating with French game desginer Jean-Luc Godard on the heavily guarded project Weekend. Godard has confounded expectation in the past, which is a reassuring thought to hold onto after initial rumour hinted that it was merely some form of 2-D side-scrolling driving game. Anderson, meanwhile, teamed up with Tweesoft Games, in a move that surprised all of us. Tweesoft's projects to date have been the amusing on-rails shooter Snakes on a Plane, which featured infamous voicework from Samuel L. Jackson, and the diverting Singstar-esque Hustle and Flow. Though those games sold well, neither hinted that Tweesoft was a good match for the ground-breaking intellectualism of Anderson.
Thankfully, for the most part, The Darjeeling Limited is a return to form for Anderson, and a notable leap for Tweesoft after the choppiness of their previous projects. The player takes control of three self-obsessed brothers -- Francis, Peter and Jack Whitman -- as they search India for their estranged mother in order to connect with her following the death of their father. The majority of the game takes place on the train of the title, switching from first-person to third-person and back again, as you interact with a selection of beautifully written NPCs, with occasional excursions off the train providing some much needed variety. These adventures usually end with a mad dash, either on foot or by taxi, with a countdown clicking off the time until the train departs. Though most of the game is leisurely, these sections definitely get the pulse racing. (Click on screen grabs for greater detail.)
As you progress through the game, your primary goal is to monitor two variables: Frustration With Brothers and Obliviousness To Others, both measured as percentages. The first measurement must be kept as low as possible, a task hindered by the insufferable selfishness of all of the main characters. As you hop from brother to brother, you see terrible behaviour from each of them, bringing that frustration level to the boil several times. Only by acquiescing to their neediness will your frustration level drop, but this will stop you from progressing through the game, meaning you have to balance your frustration, and your efforts to bring your siblings closer, with the need to get to your mother's abbey to reconcile with her. If you fail to keep your frustration tempered, and the percentage counter goes past 90%, the game momentarily changes to a first-person shooter mode, with your currently controlled character attempting to incapacitate the other two brothers using pepper spray.
The second measurement, Obliviousness To Others, has to remain high. Any other gaming designer would require you to keep that level low, but this appears to be Anderson's satirical take on the selfish and clueless behaviour of American tourists around the world. The higher this level, the greater the chance you will be thrown off the train, which allows you to progress deeper into the game. This counterintuitive choice is one of the many delightful Andersonian details that have made him such a star of the gaming world, and belongs with other memorable game moments as the failure of Max Fischer to win the heart of his teacher in Rushmore, or the death of the father figure triggering the reconciliation of his family in the final level of The Royal Tenenbaums.
Once off the train, the rules change, and you are required to keep the Obliviousness meter as low as possible, which triggers the River Rescue level. Again, Anderson plays tricks with the player by making the level impossible. Controlling Peter Whitman, you attempt to save a boy from a raging river, sadly to no avail. No matter how many times we restarted the level, the outcome was always the same. Though the consequence of this failure is continuation to the Funeral In Two Timezones level, it might frustrate many players expecting some kind of heroic catharsis, and could lead to the same kind of protests that followed the unavoidable death of Ned Plimpton in the helicopter level of The Life Aquatic.
Hopefully gamers will see past this and continue onwards, as the final levels of the game feature a race against time to reach the sanctuary of the Abbey, all the while chased by a man-eating tiger. This antagonist is as relentless as Nemesis from the third Resident Evil game, and can only be distracted with the use of pepper spray, cobras, and bottles of perfume. After this exhausting series of challenges, the brothers finally reach the Abbey, where they attempt to reconcile with the mother, who has absolutely no interest in making nice and instead just vanishes. Again, this could alienate the gamer as much as the lack of Jaguar-Shark-killing action in The Life Aquatic, especially as the game doesn't finish there, and doesn't give you any hint of what to do next. At least an hour was wasted walking the characters through the halls of the Abbey, with the same five phrases being spouted by the other brothers over and over again (we never want to hear the line about Peter stealing a belt again), before we realised that we had to leave the Abbey to head back to the nearby train station. A comment on the lack of tidy resolution in real life? Or crappy quality control by the game-testers? Who can say?
Throughout The Darjeeling Limited are littered a number of mini-games, each one specific to a certain character:
Jack:
I Want That Stewardess: Can Jack seduce Rita while avoiding her angry boyfriend?
Hotel Chevalier: Here comes Jack's ex-girlfriend. Can you activate your iPod in time for her arrival?
Francis:
The Search For Brendan: Find your assistant and get him to laminate all of your itineraries before he gets sick of your nonsense.
Dinner Time: Can you order dinner for each of your brothers before they get a chance to interject?
Those Are $3000 Loafers!: Chase the young urchin through the streets to get your shoe back.
Peter:
Is This Meant To Be Sad?: Finish reading Jack's short story without anyone seeing you cry
We Think A Snake Might Have Gotten Onboard!: Hunt the cobra.
Are These Dad's Keys?: Find all of your father's belongings, which are littered throughout the train and the Indian countryside. Hint: The final suitcase is hidden in the Funeral In Two Timezones level.
While these distractions are enjoyable, they tend to get in the way of the central narrative, diluting the effect of all of the rug-pulling mentioned earlier. It's hard to become completely affected by the emotional rollercoaster of the Whitmans' reconciliation when you're interrupted constantly by crude racing simmulators. Another annoyance is the poor choice of unlockables, which are mostly songs by The Kinks. For some reason Anderson seems to think that gamers are only playing his games in order to access songs by British bands from the 60s, and has added Kinks unlockables to all of his games. Time to move on from that particular peccadillo, especially as there are very few unused Kinks songs left.
These are small quibbles. Technically the game is a marvel, with excellent motion capture of the main actors throughout. India is atmospherically rendered, especially during the final scenes as the characters beccome more in tune with their surroundings, meaning the avatars become smaller and smaller in the frame. Narratively, the game is unusually complex, easily surpassing the inexplicably lauded driving game Little Miss Sunshine and its gimmicky colour-blind level. After a disappointment, Anderson is back, and Tweesoft have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with. We look forward to their forthcoming collaboration with Alexander Payne on the wine-themed platformer Sideways.
Some quick thoughts on Dave Filoni's Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Episode Two and Three Quarters: Battle Of The Space Wars: In Space, which I just saw along with a lot of old people and their grandkids.
It's not terrible.
It's not particularly brilliant either.
I appreciate that this could have something to do with me having a baseline level of nerdery that means I get something out of even the most wretched sci fi movies, but seriously, this is not a catastrophe. It's a leaden but passable kid's film with a couple of fun action scenes. I'm glad I saw it, but I probably won't ever watch it again.
The animation is quite stiff; characters move less fluidly than most in CG animated movies, but it's not a deal breaker. It might account for all of the cut-scene comparisons the film has been getting, though.
I did like the character designs, though. Screenshots made their stylised features look silly, but seen on the big screen you can see lovely details. They look like moving clay statues that have been roughly painted, and as such almost have an analogue charm to them.
The clouds of the various planets also look painted, resembling the slowly morphing backgrounds in the superb Xbox Live Arcade game Braid, though they are not as expressionistic. It's not a spectacular visual orgasm or anything, being made for TV and therefore being cheaper than Pixar movies, but the budget constraints haven't stopped Filoni and his animators making the most of what they've got in order to create something that looks interesting.
The dialogue is quite dreadful, mostly comprised of flat exposition, bland jokes, and first draft clunkers, which is a very clever move on the part of the writers, as it exactly matches the dialogue in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. I have a feeling that a lot of the vitriol poured on this movie for having dialogue that works on a Age 5-8 level is that it reminds the audience that the prequel films, heavily anticipated and watched avidly by original prequel fans, were meant for kids first, adults second. Fans probably don't want to be reminded that they had invested a lot of energy in something that was not meant for them.
Disclaimer: I was one of those fans. I'm right there with you, nerd brethren, but I'm over it now, thank God.
All of the nerd-hatred poured out about Ziro the Hutt (i.e. the hatred not inspired by his perceived sexuality) might be justified if you are steeped in Star Wars continuity and are furious that he is meant to be the uncle of Jabba but ZOMG Hutts procreate asexually and only have one child each so how could Jabba's father have a brother?!!!?11!!?1!!@/@1!#???!! However, it's a really accurate impersonation of Truman Capote, which has struck many as a derogatory statement against homosexuals, but besides that is so out-of-place and eccentric (actually, "demented and immune to logic or rationality" sums up Lucas' decision-making processes) that it momentarily transcends sexual politics and ends up getting an astonished laugh from the audience (well, me, anyway).
Ziro is a godawful and poorly-judged caricature, though. What the hell were they thinking?
Lucas is apparently quite insane, and I think the Star Wars movies and forthcoming TV show would benefit from other celebrity impersonations, especially if it stops him creating characters that sound like awfulracialstereotypes. Why not have a Neimoidian who sounds like Ed Sullivan? A Mon Calamari who sounds like Bette Davis? A Kaminoan who sounds like Groucho Marx? The Star Wars movies would have been so much more entertaining with more of these inexplicable whims from Lucas, the beardy-weirdy.
Hey, Lucas, Amidala was boring, is boring, and always will be boring. Plus she gets rescued by C3PO. Space fail!
Too! Much! Boring! Plot! (Again, keeping in line with the other prequel movies.)
The biggest crime of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, one that I can't blame the actual filmmakers for, is that it is not Star Wars: Clone Wars, which, if you are filled with nerd blood, makes more sense than it seems. This movie, The Clone Wars, is unremarkable and overplotted (though watchable), while Clone Wars, directed by the incredible Genndy Tartakovsky, was magnificent. It moved as fast as a rocket, almost entirely eschewed lumbering plot discussions, and featured many of the most innovative and exciting sequences of the entire filmed Star Wars series.
In fact, this might rank among my favourite moments of nerd cool ever committed to film and accounts for why my favourite Jedi ever is Mace Windu (well, that and the casting of Samuel L. Jackson, who I won't hear a bad word said against). Whenever people complain about ADD editing in action movies, complaining about Michael Bay and his ilk, I want to show them that clip to prove that there are still people who understand how to construct, block, and edit an action scene so that it not only makes sense but also generates the majority of its emotional charge through rhythm and escalation.
There is nothing even vaguely as cool as that in the new movie, and by the end of the film I was falling asleep from the repetitive fight scenes, but early on there are some fun moments. As I said, I probably won't ever rewatch this, but I keep watching the Tartakovsky version over and over again because it is so unbelievably cool and fun and fast-paced and even, at times, epic in a way even the live-action movies forget to be. It's kind of an insult to the great man that Lucas never thought to bump his work onto the big screen, but was happy to do that for something that is bland and underachieving in comparison.
It struck me mid-way through the current Clone Wars movie that it's very odd to be watching a story told in this order. First the last three films, then two prequels, the previous Clone Wars series, the last prequel, and now another story set between the series and Revenge of the Sith. As a result we've had to deal with a lot of cognitive dissonance as we are expected to feel empathy for a bunch of Clone Troopers we know have been subconsciously programmed to kill Jedi on command, and overlook the fact that the hero of The Clone Wars, Anakin, has been given a Padawan trainee, the obnoxious Ahsoka Tano, who is only a little older than the "younglings" he massacres in Sith. I doubt that introducing a young character is a way to foreshadow that, as the film never hints that that is to come, and she seems merely to be an audience surrogate for the kids the film is aimed at, but it did make me a bit uncomfortable.
Nice touch getting Christopher Lee back to play Count Dooku. He added some class to the proceedings. Sam Jackson, on the other hand, got to say nothing particularly interesting. Wasted opportunity.
The conversations between Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are endlessly dull, going around in circles and never containing even an atom of wit. Midway through one of these seemingly infinite back-and-forths (many of which repeat information from earlier on, betraying its multi-episode TV origins), I realised that if the terrifying hyper-sensitive Political Correctness Gone Really Mad future world of Demolition Man ever came to pass, Lucas-style banter would be what replaces humour. It was an epiphany that chilled me to the bone, and made me want to see Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder even more than I already do (i.e. a lot).
Clone troopers know martial arts? Whuh?
Er...
That's it.
Oh, and Moriarty continues to be the best thing about Ain't It Cool News. Lucas should send him a bunch of flowers or a few hundred thousand unsold action figures for treating with such childish disdain. Lucasarts, though it might occasionally strike gold, has no class. ::Prepares for hissy fit from visionary director of THX 1138::
On Saturday a group of intrepid cinemagoers, comprising myself, Canyon, baggylettuce and decca (these are all our real names, btw), risked brain death by seeing The Happening, the last installment in M. Night Shyamalan's Career Destruction trilogy. If I had to judge between them, it was not as horrible as Lady In The Water, which was deranged and mean and vindictive and crushingly stupid, whereas The Happening was just bad and silly. As a former fan of Shyamalan, it was kinda bittersweet to see this nonsense play out in such an insipid, half-hearted fashion, and I have to admit I'm worried that my feelings about it have been coloured by the outpouring of negative reviews since its release (I gather press screenings were rare to non-existent). I mean, I really liked the premise, and remember getting excited about it a while back even though I had recently seen Lady In The Water and had been appalled. Sadly, that premise might be great, but really it's only as good as the execution, and that is where the pain comes in. Pain like this.
I'll be going into spoiler territory from now on, so back away if you don't want to know what happens, but believe me, the movie doesn't actually go anywhere. Here's a quick unspoilery wrap up. The principals are all terrible. There's less blood than in most 12/PG-rated movies. It's short but feels long. Nothing much happens. Tak Fujimoto takes some nice shots of trees under an oppressive pale sky. Respected Broadway actress Betty Buckley turns up in the final couple of reels and gives a memorable performance with almost Fiona-Shaw-in-The-Black-Dahlia levels of WTF. It's great. Nothing else is. It just sort of runs out of energy at about the 80 minute mark, and wraps up not long after that.
---------Here be spoilers------------
So why does it go wrong? It's mostly the direction, though the script squanders that terrific premise at every opportunity. I'm not a knee-jerk hater of Shyamalan, though. I have greatly enjoyed some of his movies, and even his failures often have something to like (Lady In The Water's photography by Christopher Doyle is stunning, and Shyamalan's compositions are lovely). He can do mood very well, and he can do suspense, and he can do dread. In fact, at some points of The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable (my personal favourite Shyamalan movie, a film I absolutely adore), there are moments that are as creepy and unsettling as anything Hideo Nakata has put on film.
I think even The Village approached that kind of calm fear, but sadly by then he has begun to drag the timing of those moments out too far. It's all in the amount of time you leave the audience dangling, and while comic timing relies on microseconds of pause, horror deals in seconds approaching minutes, and Shyamalan started making the audience wait way too long for release. The longer you have to look at people standing stock still with a goofy look on their face while a man in a red cloak with twigs for fingers wanders around in the background (for example), the fear turns to laughter, and by now Shyamalan has accidentally reset the timer in his head so that he can't judge where the horror/accidental humour line is.
In The Happening, nothing is scary. The timing is utterly haywire, and even if it was working, the scary elements are already too dumb to work with. I salute the man for being willing to risk ridicule to create his weird vision, but sadly it can go horribly wrong. The doofy looking alien getting killed with water and baseball bats at the end of Signs, the Menacing Cloakman from The Village, and my favourite of all, Freddy Rodriguez With A Rubber Arm in Lady In The Water; they all go just a little too far and end up looking silly. Add to that the unfortunate slow pace, which also makes Shyamalan's movies look pretentious and self-important, and it's impossible to take them seriously, especially when he seems to give his characters Stephen-King-style mannerisms and phrases, of which the best has to be Wahlberg's self-immolating "Be scientific, douchebag!"
While Lady In The Water is worse because it is also a temper-tantrum disguised as a kid's movie, The Happening is sillier and funnier because Shyamalan has created a movie where the characters are scared of the wind, and where 20% of the movie is shots of trees being as threatening as, well, trees. And not even creepy trees, just normal trees. It's just not scary. I live near trees and a large patch of grass (which is apparently endangered, so we're talking about potentially angry grass), and yesterday it was windy. I walked to the shops yesterday, and did I suddenly think, "Oh God, please don't kill me, foliage!"? Nope. Litmus test failed.
Yes, if you've not heard already, the central idea is that Gaia is pissed at humans, and its minions, aka plants, are trying to send a warning to us to straighten-up and fly right by using deadly suicide-inducing toxins to kill off large groups of people in order to make us think twice about polluting the planet. Or something. As the toxins only appear on the US East Coast and, at the end of the movie, Paris, it's possible they also hate liberals, museum-goers, and people who eat croissants. Does this mean that people living in desert countries are safe? Considering how bad the pollution in Texas is, it's not the most verdant of states, and so it might be left off the hook. And what if Al Gore was visiting New York? Stupid plants!
As we're talking about a completely different species here, one that cannot communicate with us, the motivations are unclear, which works on one level, and fails on another, namely that the film seems to think that because science cannot answer everything, it's not really the answer to our problems, that some things are bigger than us. I'm not sure that was Shyamalan's goal, though his reliance on wishy-washy spiritualism tends to suggest he does. The finale, which features a scientist on TV having his theories of deadly plants dismissed by some gobshite pundit, was especially annoying. It's fair to say that it would be pretty easy to prove plants did it, but instead Shyamalan has a heavy-handed point to be make about post-9/11 paranoia and how it is making people irrational (a point made with much greater effect in The Mist).
So, that's silly, but what about the chilling effects of the toxin? There was real potential there for some creepy moments, but they only work once or twice (the weird headbutting attacks of the crazy old lady at the end of the film were half-horrible, half-hilarious). Some have asked why the toxins make people kill themselves and not just go on a rampage, which is more dramatic, but Shyamalan has to maintain that deathly pace, and 28 Days Later-style chaos would not work (plus we've seen stuff like that before, as far back as early Cronenberg and Romero films). The very very slow suicides we see here are in keeping with his usual style, even though his much-vaunted R-rated horror events translate into a bit of blood-spurting and quick cuts away from the actual moment of death, just in case we get mortally upset by the sight of nasty things. While I'm not saying the movie would have been improved by gore dripping from the lens, the cowardice of it seems to hint that Shyamalan has lost the ability to deal with adults and adult themes.
Compare the squeamishness here with Unbreakable, which featured a violent, murdering sadist, as well as a nausea-inducing scene with Samuel L. Jackson breaking most of his bones as he falls down a flight of stairs. That moment, with the brittle-boned Mr. Glass tumbling down an endlessly long staircase, was preceded by a shot of his glass cane hitting the floor and breaking into hundreds of pieces, and I suspect the current Shyamalan would have just shown that. An admittedly elegant way to avoid nastiness, but the original scene is incredible, horrifying, utterly visceral. Going with the single shot of his cane might let the scene work on the nerves of the audience by making them imagine it, but could they come up with anything as horrifying as what actually happens in the scene? It's something that critics agonise about, whether it's right to show the horror or not, but certainly in the case of The Happening, it really needs something more than the vanilla violence we get. Without a frisson of menace in the movie, a sense of the scale of what is happening and the toll it is taking on everyone, there is no movie there. The odd shot of corpses dangling from trees aside, it's devoid of power. Plus, the sight of groups of people walking slowly backwards would destroy even Hitchcock-level suspense.
Unbreakable also featured moments of relationship drama that seemed kinda stilted (in the way that Shyamalan's conversation scenes often do) and yet still real, as Bruce Willis' superheroic character tries to reconnect with his son and wife. The new Shyamalan now has Zooey Deschanel inexplicably being seemingly autistic, and having a torrid affair behind Mark Wahlberg's back with someone called Joey that drives her almost insane with guilt. Well, I say "torrid affair", when actually I mean "innocent meeting which involved eating some tiramisu". That's the extent of her infidelity. Oh, and who plays Joey? His one word of dialogue, on the phone, is spoken by Shyamalan himself. So, not only is he the most important writer who ever lived in Lady In The Water, he's also hott enough to make Zooey "Blank" Deschanel consider straying from Mark Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg, people! That's some hottness Shyamalan's got right there.
So it's bad. It's really really bad. But I still like that central idea, and think it could, somehow, have been turned into a better movie if not held back by the hubris and self-regarding idiocy of its creator. After seeing it, we ate some sausage and mash and came up with some ways in which it would have been a better movie, and this is what we reckon.
At several stages throughout the movie, Mark Wahlberg rattles on and on about his mood ring, which is what he used to woo Zooey all those years before. It goes nowhere, except to give them something to talk about later when reconciling. Instead, considering the plants are silently trying to kill humanity, Wahlberg could try to communicate with them by putting the ring on a tree branch and asking it what it wants, with the colours of the ring being the responses. (I actually thought this would happen, so clearly was it telegraphed).
When people get encrazied by the toxins, they sometimes repeat things or say nonsensical phrases, of which my favourite was, "Calculus! Calculus!" At the end, I was really hoping the French crazies would refer to, "Le Calculus!" Instead, Shyamalan uses his first grade French to have the guy say, "Mon bicyclette", which is not as surreal, and not in keeping with the film's peculiar anti-science slant (ironic considering Wahlberg saves everyone by using science, the douchebag).
Only one plant wants to help humanity; marijuana! The crazy old lady is growing it under hot lamps in her basement, and our heroes smoke up a big bag of it, thus making them immune to the toxins.
The weird hotdog man has hotdog trees in his greenhouse, like in Pee-Wee's Big Top.
Change the title to "Did Gaia Just Fart On My Face?"
As soon as Wahlberg has decided it really is the plants killing humans with deathcooties, he should liberally use the word "Grassassins".
Trees and shrubs = boring. Ents and triffids = awesome. More of that, please.
Zooey Deschanel's reveal of her "torrid affair" with Joey and his elaborate desserts is obviously meant to be a big deal, though all it does show is that our heroes have the emotional maturity of Smurfs. Wahlberg's response to her reveal, that he had recently bought cough syrup from an attractive woman in a pharmacy even though he didn't even have a cough, is cloyingly vanilla (certainly in the middle of a ZOMG R-Rated movie!!!), so it might have worked better if, when Zooey Deschanel asks, "Is that true?" Wahlberg said, "No. Actually I went back behind the counter and banged the shit out of her for three hours straight, and it was awesome, and then we covered ourselves with cough syrup, and we was humping and just rollin' around in 'Tussin! It was so much better than all that cuddling we do. However, ironically, I've had a cough ever since."
Most importantly, what about explaining why John Lequizamo hates Zooey Deschanel so much. He's relentlessly nasty and hostile just because she's a bit distant? I can agree, it annoyed us a lot, but still, we wouldn't be nasty to her. She has such a lovely singing voice, after all.
That said, why were her pupils so small? Canyon wondered if she has glaucoma or something. Hopefully she'll have that seen to.
The actual Happening itself ends with the plants deciding to stop being deadly at a specific time, thus making the events of the movie nothing more than a warning, a prelude to another, deadlier attack. That only even slightly works because our heroes, who are separated from each other in different buildings but able to communicate thanks to a tube running between them (a tube that is mentioned earlier with the clumsiest exposition of the year), decide to end it all by walking out into the deadly grass, even though they have an innocent child with them, only for the Happening to stop happening, thus saving them at the last second. Bullshit. If I'd made this movie, an enormous rock head would have risen from the ground, a manifestation of Gaia that just happens to look exactly like James Lovelock, and as our heroes watch, terrified, its huge stony mouth opens, and says, "Don't tread on me, man!' Whoa.
I also thought about creating a Happening drinking game, but it seems Film School Rejects has beaten me to it, but there is scope to expand it a bit. Take a gulp of booze whenever:
Tree moves (two gulps if it is plastic and inside a house with no visible draft).
Someone is improbably mean to someone else for no reason (two gulps if no one does anything about it). This includes Deschanel's relentless snippiness towards Wahlberg.
A vaguely scary moment gets dragged out too long and ruins the suspense (two gulps if someone half opens a door and waits to open it the rest of the way, just to drag it out longer).
Someone unleashes a stream of ugly exposition because the writer/director has forgotten how to tell a story visually.
Mark Wahlberg uses science like a douchebag (two gulps if no one listens to him).
Someone is about to die horribly, and the shot cuts away right at the last second (four gulps if you actually see something unpleasant).
Someone says they can't contact anyone anywhere, which is a great trailer shot that makes it seem like the world is ending, but in actual fact the majority of the world is just fine and contact is re-established in the next scene.
Mark Wahlberg says, "Event," or, "Happening" in a sentence (this might actually overload your liver).
Three gulps if:
Mark Wahlberg's voice goes weirdly high for no reason.
Hotdogs are mentioned.
John Leguizamo uses math, douchebag.
A child talks like an adult.
Someone on TV overacts terribly.
Finish your drink if:
Someone screams at the camera and waves their fist at it.
You realise you could be watching The Birds or Spielberg's War of the Worlds instead, as this is practically the same film, except neutered and stupid.
A character, who knows plants are deadly, has plants in her house just so there can be some contrived tension in the final scene.
You realise Stephen King has written a dozen books that are just like this, but you enjoyed those even with his weird authorial quirks.
You expect that the negativity surrounding this film severely dents the chances of Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of the novel Blindness making money in the US as it's kinda similar.
Finish all the drinks in your house if:
You find out that even though it has a terrible reputation, and people thought it would fail horribly, it's actually well on its way to becoming profitable, mostly because it's relatively cheap for a summer film and groups of people are going to see it because they heard it was this year's Wicker Man. Which it almost is. Though there are a notable absence of BEES! BEES IN MY EYES! GRARGLE BLURG FLUMF!
That's right, people. Looks like we'll still be getting a very very slow-moving version of Avatar: The Last Airbender after all.
This morning, prior to seeing Iron Man, we caught a Sky Movies preview show that featured Robert Downey Jr. (who we love) commenting on how bloggers can wreck a $165m movie if they disapprove of how comic characters are portrayed. Well, luckily for Marvel Studios, this is merely one of many blogs that adored Iron Man, not only for its fealty to the subject matter, either introducing elements straight from the comics or cleverly redefining them, as with Jarvis (wonderfully voiced by Paul Bettany) or the Ten Rings of The Mandarin, and not only because the cast was uniformly wonderful, and yes, not only because it was an absolute hard-rocking blast of an action movie, perfectly mixing humour and drama, but also for making something both light and dark, entertaining and serious, and all of it based around the main character arc and laced with real-world relevance.
I was impressed that the film is set in a world where the War On Terror has occurred but the conflict is something that informs the overarching story, is an element that is a fact of life and not a metaphorical touchstone in place of a story (which is something that has threatened to overwhelm a lot of recent fiction). We've finally moved on from pointing out that we are in a new century with a new kind of war and then patting ourselves on the back for it, and are now telling stories that are set in that world without making a big deal about it. It's a lot easier to swallow and, even though this film touches on serious issues, is a lot more fun as well.
All of this would mean nothing if the film was trying to address these issues metaphorically, so we're lucky that Jon Favreau and his team of writers are willing to do that old school trick of making the surface story and character arc reinforce each other, which all stories should do, but often don't nowadays, and yes I realise that makes me sound like David Thompson or Leslie Halliwell or something. Sorry.
The core of the story is something universal: coming to a realisation of what it is to be heroic, and then flying in the face of universal disapproval in order to be a hero when all around you are threatened by your idealism. In the face of values so distorted that expansion of territory, exploitation of resources, and dominance of worldview can be spun until they appear to be heroic endeavours, Iron Man dares to say that's bullshit. It can be something as simple as saving people from murderous bullies, especially when they are empowered by the byproducts of our society, and if we don't even do that, then we really are lost.
As I've said before, in superhero movies there is not enough heroics, with heroes fighting supervillains because of some disagreement between them instead of being super-citizens improving our world. In Iron Man Stark sets out to improve the whole world, to right a wrong that he had never noticed before, and for which he felt a responsibility. It's a character story brilliantly realised on a global scale, a fight to save a soul that, as the opposite of collateral damage, might save the world.
I loved one small scene in the middle of the film, with Stark flying to Afghanistan to save the village of his own saviour, Yinsen (played by Shaun Toub, given much better material here than in that most mealy-mouthed of worthy movies, Paul Haggis' Crash). His interest is in destroying his own weaponry, which has fallen into the hands of the Ten Rings terrorists, but while doing that he saves the villagers from forcible relocation and murder and repays his debt to his murdered ally. In one of the few moments that might be seen as being a message related to the War on Terror, Stark disarms one of the Ten Rings lieutenants, and instead of dealing with him himself, leaves him to the villagers and flies away.
Certainly that could be seen as a comment on the Iraq situation, but it's also a moment that originates in who Stark is. He won't kill an unarmed man, and the outcome of that stance is that he will leave the situation to be dealt with by those who should deal with it. Perhaps once the playing field is levelled by taking away the weaponry made by the powerful who have a vested interest in maintaining conflict, then we might be able to truly step back from these international conflicts instead of making them worse. That said, I really don't think the Ten Rings terrorist was easily forgiven for his sins and then let go. Which sucks, but apparently freedom is messy! (And yes, hopefully that's the last time I'll ever quote Donald Rumsfeld.)
Not only does he save the villagers, but he also saves a pilot endangered by his own clumsy mid-air antics, again taking responsibility for what he does (another great visualisation of the arc Tony moves along). I'd have liked more of that random heroism, but there's a lot to get through, and the point is made. He is a real hero trying to help everyone. Marc Guggenheim and Paul Gulacy's excellent Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk mini set in the Sudan might have been a more realistic portrayal of what happens when superheroes get involved in real world troubles (in that complex geopolitical issues cannot be resolved by people who merely have the ability to punch things very hard), but Iron Man is smart enough to avoid having our hero attempt to stop the war altogether. He can only deal with the terrifying weaponry he has built, which, as I said above, might be good enough, certainly for his own redemption. And yes, in our world that might seem idealistic and naïve, but in the world of the film, it echoes and reinforces that character arc from ignorance and arrogance to humility and responsibility, which is very satisfying.
Iron Man, for all its disposability, makes a cheerful and unpretentious change to the current crop of war movies. At least at first. But I am sorry to say that it is guilty of the sneaky chauvinist trick of making the ultimate villain an American: a mannerism common to many Hollywood movies that cannot quite bring themselves to accord foreigners the status of effective enmity.
But the whole point of the movie is that Stark is responsible for the warfare he grows to despise, and that is dramatised in the conflict with his other half, Obadiah Stane. Making the villain an outsider would dilute the arc to pointlessness. Besides, the scene is set for blowback in the second movie, with The Mandarin seeking revenge for his betrayal by Stane. Maybe then Bradshaw will be happy.
Of course, this is all well and good, and is merely my way of saying how pleased I was that the film feels like it was crafted from the ground up and not just cobbled together. Marvel Studios doesn't need my praise, as figures just in show that the film is an enormous hit, earning $200m worldwide since Thursday. That it didn't earn as much as the appalling Spider-Man 3 is the only bad thing about that, but then let's hope that this marks the beginning of a trend, with superhero movies made by people who understand how the genre works and funded by those same people. Or course, Iron Man's huge box office is good news for the studio, but this Financial Times interview with Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel shows that this hopefully fruitful period of nerdvana might still not last long.
Most studios in Hollywood have offset the risks of film production by raising money from private equity groups and hedge funds. Marvel has taken a different route, using the film rights to its characters as collateral for a loan without forsaking any equity in its films.
Since Marvel tends to be a “fiscally conservative company”, Mr Maisel had to work hard to come up with a financing package that did not expose the comics group to undue risk. After convincing Marvel to launch the studio in 2003, he spent two years structuring a $525m loan financing deal, which was underwritten by Merrill Lynch and secured against the theatrical rights to films that would be produced by the studio.
The financing covers Marvel’s releases until 2012 but does not give the banks any equity in the films. Instead, the banks will receive the capital plus interest and will have the right to make future films using the 12 comic-book characters included in the deal in the event of the company defaulting on its payments. The financing structure guarantees the release of Marvel’s first four films and will be followed by an evaluation period. Assuming the films have performed well, Marvel will retain the theatrical rights to the 12 characters.
The message is, even if the trailer for The Incredible Hulk looks really boring, we fans have a duty to see it at the cinema. Why? Because if you've not yet seen the film, the final pre-credits line of the film and the post-credits cameo appearance by Sam Jackson will make your head explode with pure nerd joy. At our screening, the nerds who stayed behind for that final scene burst into applause at it, even though they knew what was coming. Marvel Studios must succeed, and keep hold of those twelve characters. Our nerd dreams depend on it.
Released with no press screenings and a flurry of newspaper ads and billboards, Jumper was rushed into cinemas in these often cinematically dead weeks of February a day earlier than usual, possibly in a cynical effort to make its weekend gross a little bigger. Pity for Fox (something not often said) that this year February sees the UK release of Cloverfield Monster Movie and National Treasure: Bag of Cakes for the casual cinema-goer and There Will Be DRAAAAIIIINAGE! and The Diving Fly and the Butterbell for more committed filmbuffs. With those powerhouse movies filling London screens, what chance does Jumper have? I recall seeing the trailer a while back and thinking it looked amazing, and then watched as the consensus turned against it for no reason that I could discern other than residual bitterness over Darth Vader: The Whiny Teenage Years.
Well, I'm not going to be told what to think by a bunch of bitter talkbackers who still blame the shittiness of the "first" three episodes of Star Wars on Hayden Christensen (here playing Jumper David), and want to see this fail just because he's in it. It's by Doug Liman! The script was written by David "Blade trilogy" Goyer! And Jim "Fight Club" Uhls! Oh, and Simon "X-Men: The Last Stand, xXx: State Of The Union" Kinberg. ::sigh:: And it's got Samuel L. (for Lovable) Jackson as a white-haired bad guy called Roland like some nod to Childe Roland! And Rachel Bilson as Millie, hopefully matching her adorableness with some audible dialogue for once! Oh, and Teddy Dunn as a jock idiot. And Jamie Bell as crazy Jumper Griffin. ::supersigh::
::Quick synopsis::
David is a loser kid, until he finds out he can teleport. He teleports a lot and leaves his old life behind, though bad re-editing means it's unclear whether people think he's alive or dead. He steals money from bank vaults and leaves IOUs because he's not all bad, but when he regrettably gets older and the likeable Max Thieriot is replaced by a particularly smug Anakin Skywalker, he is found by Roland, played by Mace Windu (moving up from killing motherfucking snakes on motherfucking planes to killing teleporting teenagers). He's the top psycho of the mysterious Paladins, who hunt and murder Jumpers because something something. David escapes, and finds his childhood sweetheart, played by the lovely Summer Roberts, and selfishly gets her involved with him, and makes a bunch of really bad choices that get her hunted by the Paladins as well (ETA: Capone agrees with me on that one). This thankfully damages his smugness chip, bringing his penitence and fear circuits into play. He also comes across another Jumper called Griffin, who is really obnoxious and has terrible facial hair. I mean seriously bad. Ratty, even. It will annoy you. They reluctantly team up to kill Roland, but after lots of objects and vehicles and places get teleported around the globe in thrilling style, Diane Lane turns up as the most pointless and least effective deus ex machina ever and brings about an unconvincing happy ending that probably sets up a sequel that will never be made, or is just a really rushed reshoot that means nothing and was imposed by an oblivious and narrative averse bunch of blank-brained moneymen from 20th Century Fucks.
The End!
It's the first time in a long time that I've seen a movie before reading any press reviews, and it does not bode well for my career as a pop culture blogger that I'm not sure what to think of it. I definitely enjoyed much of it, and think the bad reviews are mean-spirited and missing the mark quite widely (and are possibly biased as this is a mere genre picture and not worthy of critical attention), but it's a mess, and some of the performances are horrible (you can guess who the culprits are), and it's obviously been reshot to the point of incoherence.
Whether that's by Liman is debatable. He is notorious for reshooting his own movies in order to get them right, and his jitteriness was apparent early on when he recast the role of David, taking Tom Sturridge off the film and handing it over to Christensen. From that link I also notice the script featured him looking for the killers of his mother. I've not read Steven Gould's original novel, so I don't know if that was from that, but it certainly isn't in the finished film either. In a series of scenes that hint very strongly at some last minute tinkering, David's mother (played by Diane Lane) is alive and well and apparently leading the Paladins (or at least heavily involved). Her scenes look shoe-horned in, and late references to her (especially during the Egypt lair fight scene) come out of nowhere.
The final scene, in which David finds her house and she tells him he's getting a head start is especially bad. As a happy ending it makes no sense (he seems remarkably chipper even though he's still being hunted by murderous killers), and as I said earlier, might be seen as a lead-in to a sequel. I know Liman intended for the story to continue, but I really hope he had nothing to do with the stupidity of this final conversation, which answers no questions and leaves everyone's fates uncertain. People got mad at the end of Matrix Reloaded and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 because they were left up in the air, but at least the next installments were being made. Jumper ends with pretty much no resolution, and we probably won't ever get any. That's not cool to leave us hanging like that, filmmaking dudes. Look at how pissed off everyone was about Doc Savage and Buckaroo Banzai not getting the sequels we were promised. (Here is a visual representation of the cognitive dissonance I felt upon walking out of the very lovely Apollo West End, the nicest cinema in London.)
Even worse is the casting, though some of this is a purely personal thing. I really don't like Christensen or Dunn, who was so bland on Veronica Mars. Even worse is the appearance of Jamie Bell, whose presence grated in King Kong and yet is even worse here. Perhaps I only think that because of this interview with the Times, during which he bitched about working with Peter Jackson, and then uncharitably complained about being in Jumper.
Bell seems remarkably frank about the cold reality of his ascent. He says that, fundamentally, he’s drawn to playing losers and oddballs in esoteric, low-budget movies, and finds blockbusters painfully limiting. His role, for instance, as a cabin boy in Peter Jackson’s King Kong was: “Not really acting, but just saying lines.” Even worse, the time he spent on Jumper was “soul-sucking. It just destroys you. It’s terrible. I didn’t learn anything about myself on that movie, about my technique or anything."
Shame you didn't learn how to be a likable and charismatic presence onscreen. I suggest you do more stage work. Very educational. Still, at least he registers. Christensen is that most amazing of things; a pure void, like the Lack from Jonatham Lethem's superb novel, As She Climbed Across The Table. There is nothing going on in his eyes, which apparently worked well for him in Shattered Glass. Here, it helps in his portrayal of someone who has no personality (according to Canyon, who has seen the movie and says Christensen is great, that's pretty much what he was like in Glass), as he has spent much of his life avoiding contact with anyone (or anything; I like the moment when one getaway fails because he's forgotten how to open doors). That's great, but how much of that is intentional, and how much of that is down to his shortcomings as an actor? I need more proof of his talent; Jumper does not provide this evidence. Plus, it makes it hard to care for him in later scenes, and Millie is so poorly sketched that you shouldn't care for her either. There is almost no suspense at all, or at least there wouldn't be if the vicious nature of the Paladins didn't raise the stakes so high.
Luckily, Rachel Bilson, while still not exactly a master of enunciation, is wonderfully charming, and her pointless damsel in distress character works simply because you don't want anything bad to happen to her. There are some really weak scenes carried just by her performance, so thank God for her. Also wonderful is Jackson, who, I'm sorry, can do no wrong, so please don't try to debate this. He's pure misguided evil in this. That the Paladins would seek to kill these miraculous individuals instead of harnessing their powers for good genuinely made me furious. Man, considering I'm in two minds about this movie, the Paladins sure pissed me off. Oh, and as I said before, Diane Lane was in it too. As Canyon pointed out when I told her about the movie yesterday, she keeps getting wasted in these shitty movies. She's right. She's grafted in at the last minute and gets nothing to do. It's a terrible waste of a compelling actress.
Other choices smack of cowardice. The opening of the film packs in a lot of event that could probably turn up later, which means you get a hectic opening followed by a really long and boring section as David finds Millie and takes her to Rome (by plane) and slowly seduces her. The first few scenes also feature lots of expositional voiceovers that disappear later in the movie, and are especially frustrating as a cold open with young David's discovery of his powers would work perfectly fine without Christensen's affectless voice straining to sound lively over the top of it. It especially exasperating as so much of the movie is left for the viewer to figure out, so perhaps some Fox suit didn't notice that some scenes of the movie asked something of the audience, and so didn't feel the need to jump in and fiddle with it.
In addition to that regrettable move, some shots from the trailer are missing, and a late action scene in Griffin's Egyptian lair not only replicates some shots of a flamethrower, but is edited so badly as to render the proceedings meaningless. Considering Liman has never had this problem before, it suggests someone else tampered with it.
That said, the action scenes are as frenetic as possible, but are clearly edited (for the most part). Once the powers of the Jumpers are shown often enough, you are able to deduce what their limitations are, as well as the side-effects, and taking that knowledge into the fight scenes, they become quite easy to follow even though they move at a million miles an hour. They're incredibly exhilarating, and like nothing else you have seen before. People flash through the frame in ways you've never imagined, randomly flashing back and forth, blurred by teleport disturbances. When the film concentrates on the mechanics of teleporting it is breathtaking. Plus, if you get annoyed by superhero movies where the powered characters never use their metahuman talents, you will LOVE Jumper. They're teleporting constantly, even when it's not necessary. It never gets boring, either.
Some of the effects are shaky, though when the film is moving at a clip you don't have time to notice. When people are matted into shots of scenery they look awful, like they've been added using MS Paint. That's right! Not even Photoshop-level quality! The teleport effects themselves, though, are wonderful and exciting. Jumpers affect their environment when they teleport, leaving behind Jumpscars that glitter in the air for a few seconds. When jumping to places they know about or are in view, they disturb the air a little, but when teleporting at random they shatter walls and floors, bursting air outwards and blowing things around. It's a violent visual, and deeply thrilling.
I'm a big sci-fi nerd, so I got off on the world that was invented, with such attention paid to working out the way teleporting works. Jumpers like to have Jumpsites memorised so they can zoom from place to place without trouble, and when they can't picture it in their minds eye will look at locations either in their line of sight or in photos. Also great are the scary weapons of the Paladins; tasers, electrified nets, grapples that restrict the Jumpers' teleport range. None of that is explained; they just appear in the movie and are shown working. Aaaah! Show, don't tell! I love ye!
Perhaps the most curious thing about the movie is how far Liman and Kinberg have taken that philosophy of excising exposition where possible (and where left alone by the studio). In an interview conducted during the making of the movie, they discussed some of their intentions of the movie, some of which give a hint as to what was changed during reshoots, and whether they were their choices or those of Fox.
“Comic-book movies like Spider-Man have a pretty specific formula,” Liman says. “Somebody’s determined to destroy the world, and the hero has to stop them. At some point the villain grabs the love interest of the hero, and there’s your third act. We don’t have that. In our movie the main conflict is never explained.”
[Side Note: The third act of the movie features Millie captured by Roland, prompting David to rescue her from the murderous Paladins and Griffin, who plans to blow the Paladins up without caring if she gets hurt in the process. So that didn't work. Reshoot?]
Kinberg adds, “We’re deconstructing a genre that usually presents this black-and-white universe of good guys who have the superpowers, and bad guys who are trying to kill them. In Jumper, as soon as you start to feel comfortable with that moral paradigm, we unravel it.”
He partially succeeds. Both David and Griffin are deeply unlikeable, and it should be hard to root for them. David is a selfish pompous thief, and Griffin is transparently psychotic, which is a fantastic and original way to approach these characters. If you had the ability to be anywhere in the blink of an eye, who would be able to resist the temptation to abuse that power? And if someone tried to stop you doing it, you'd respond pretty damn negatively. Seriously, many kudos to all involved for making their "heroes" so prickly and, in Griffin's case, homicidal.
Sadly, the Paladins are so obviously vile that you end up rooting for the Jumpers anyway. The first time you see Roland and his Paladins take down a Jumper, I had a bizarre, visceral response to their cruelty and violence as they trapped, tortured, and killed a terrified young boy who seemed to not have even done anything wrong by that point. There is no way you can have an ambiguous reaction to it. They're utterly badass bad guys and they are never presented with a morally grey palette.
Even worse, even though Liman had intended to leave the goal of the Paladins as a mystery, Oni Press released a graphic novel by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weird and Brian Hurt which explains the history of the Paladins. Such a choice would annoy purists like John Patterson, as I have moaned about in earlier posts, though I enjoy such extra-curricular projects. However, Oni Press screwed up by only releasing the damn thing yesterday in the US and today in the UK. So I didn't get to read it before. Good for Liman and Kinberg's plan to keep things loose, I guess, but useless as a promotional tool.
If you didn't know about the existence of that book, fear not. A clumsy bit of dialogue from Bell (which seems to have been very poorly looped in) explains that they are religious fundamentalists who have been hunting down Jumpers since the Middle Ages as they are, in their eyes, an affront to the supremacy of God. If you're an athiest, that's another pretty hefty strike against the moral ambiguity. Anyway, they had even greater ambitions.
Both filmmakers studied semiotics at Brown, and they enjoy layering their popcorn movies with subtexts. “We respond to genre films that are actually metaphors for something else,” Kinberg says. “Instead of making a literal movie about ordinary people with a bad marriage, suddenly they have guns in their hands and you have Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Jumper is about somebody who’s running away from his problems and his past. By giving him this superpower we basically just explode that onto a larger stage.”
I can see that, and it works very well. However:
Liman says he wanted Jumper to reflect the “ambiguity of conflicts in the Middle East. Our minds were occupied with that when we were working on the script. If I were Iraqi, I don’t know if I’d think of the Americans as liberators or as occupiers. I don’t really know why the Sunnis and Shiites are fighting.”
Kinberg chimes in: “Your average person on a Friday night probably will not be thinking Middle East when they watch Jumper at the multiplex, but then, no one thought Iran Contra when they saw Bourne Identity.”
Liman completes his friend’s thought: “Hopefully Jumper will feel honest and relevant and people won’t even know why. It will just be: ‘Oh, this movie’s sort of cool and it feels real.’ ”
I guess they were hoping for some kind of "Bring your own metaphor" approach, which would, if this had any realistic chance of being a success, mean that viewers could debate the significance of this fantasy world enough to keep it in viewers' minds long after seeing it. Unfortunately, it also leaves the movie thematically blank. I accept the approach can bring dividends, and as a fan of Lost who is willing to think a million possibly contradictory things about what it means I can't exactly criticise the movie for this. However, does it deserve to be picked apart in this way? Is it so thematically loose that there is no point trying to assign meaning to it? Here are a few of the thoughts I had while watching it:
The Paladins are the American Army occupying Iraq and trying to bring Western values to the country by force, and the Jumpers are the Iraqi citizens forced to fight to maintain their own way of life.
The Paladins are the murderous "insurgents" trying to repel the forces of modernity represented by the Jumpers, aka the American Army.
The Paladins are religious fundamentalists resisting the forces of reason and science, and the Jumpers represent atheism, as they have effectively "killed" God just by existing.
The Paladins are religious fundamentalists resisting youth culture and its corrupting ways, and the Jumpers are cool kids who just wanna drink Red Bull and have fun, yeah? Yeah!
The Paladins are strict parental figures who want their kids to settle down and get solid jobs, and the Jumpers are the late teens who want to go travelling in their gap year and then study something other than engineering.
The Paladins are shareholders in the London Transport PPP and are protecting their profit margin, and Jumpers are fare-dodgers.
The Paladins think Family Guy is the best animated show on TV, the Jumpers love South Park.
The Paladins want to flouridate water supplies, the Jumpers think that's just crazy.
The Paladins are pro-bangs, the Jumpers think an exposed forehead is much more attractive.
The Paladins think people should up their iron intake using vitamins made by GlaxoSmithKline, the Jumpers think people should eat more broccoli.
You could make it anything you want, which is often the case with thematically rich material, but Jumper is so devoid of hints as to what it wants to be that it is a big empty space on the screen, and what makes it worse is that the tinkering makes even that possible jug of lemonade go wrong. I could just accept the movie as blank entertainment, but the people involved are too smart to make something empty, even though Liman has called this the last part of his sell-out trilogy (I may not have liked Mr. And Mrs. Smith but I appreciate that it was trying to say something about relationships even though those ideas were submerged under a lot of nonsense). I'd love to know more about what Liman, Kinberg, Uhls and Goyer were trying for, and how much of their work got screwed with by Fox, because right now it's very hard to judge their level of success, but I doubt there'll be a director's cut boxset coming out any time soon. Ugh, wishing for something like that is the kind of thing that can turn into an obsession. I need to keep an eye on that.
So, I greatly enjoyed it on an emotional, "OMG so cool!" level, was frustrated by the failure to reach its intellectual aspirations, and annoyed deeply by the studio interference (if indeed that's what it was. Remember this is the studio that screwed Mike Judge so badly over the satirical classic Idiocracy). Perhaps my critical judgement was altered by recently withstanding the incredible emotional one-two punch of the aforementioned Diving Bell and Blood, both of which are absolutely phenomenal. Even though Jumper had a lot to like (and some visual sequences that will scorch your corneas off), it pales compared to those.
Maybe that's unfair of me, but we're talking some serious filmic genius in those, and though I really like Doug Liman's work and look forward to all of his films, this is hampered so badly by interference that it would only ever win out on a nerdy "I love teleportation movies!" level. I guess for now the best cinematic representation of cool teleporting remains Bryan Singer's kickass opening to X-Men 2, with Nightcrawler bamfing the shit out of some Secret Service chaps. Ignore the rock music added to this, and revel in the coolness.
A content-lite week, thanks to Canyon being inundated with work, and me getting dragged into the office for a useless absence management course as well as travelling to Ikea again and again in my miserable quest to replace a broken sofa. Something so simple is actually horribly time-consuming and depressing. Who knew?
So desperate was I to get something on here, I took inspiration from the last 15 minutes of Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight (a film that truly exasperates me, what with the terrific script and the inept direction), and decided to do a quick post about cinema's best explosions, with the help of YouTube. However, instead of finding footage of the outrageously large final explosion (a very effective pre-CG FX sequence by Jeffrey Okun), I instead found out that the 9/11 conspiracy types think the film predicted the World Trade Centre bombing.
Who would have thought that multi-millionaire screenwriting supergenius Shane Black knew so much about CIA plots to screw Congress out of funding? I can't wait to read Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes now. I bet there's a whole chapter on that! Bear in mind Long Kiss was made in 1996. The fact that Evil Patrick Malahide is referring to the previous WTC bombing, the one that happened in the car park beneath the building, seems to have escaped many of the theorists on there. It's as if they're not really thinking this whole thing through and are just rushing to insane conclusions based on hearsay, bias, paranoia, and terribly flawed science. A mad idea, I know, but it bears considering.
To cleanse the crazy-tainted palate, here is one of the best scenes from Black's magnificent directorial debut, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, in which the only thing you learn is that if you meet Val Kilmer pretending to be a gay detective, you should not throw his expensive ceramic gun into the lake next to the crashed car or he will hurt your feelings with pithy insults.
And yes, I probably will do the explosions post at some point. It's either write about that or gibber, "Halo 3! Halo 3! Halo 3!" And you don't want that. Though I'll probably do that too. Sorry.
