...Where I Try To Defend Michael Bay, And Can't Even Convince Myself

Canyon once asked me if I defend Michael Bay just to be difficult and controversial, and I admitted that the most all-caps-boldiest exclamations that I trot out are just nonsense. If I were to rank directors in a huge list from good to bad (don't tempt me to do that. I probably would if prompted), he'd be nowhere near the top, but more importantly he'd be nowhere near the bottom either. He's lazily blamed for everything that is stupid and awful about spectacular Hollywood product, and for tainting the cultural well so much that the whole world suffers. The hatred aimed at him is startling. I halfheartedly defended him on the AV Club once, and was told by another commenter that I obviously knew nothing about cinema, and should keep my opinion about everything else to myself. I'll admit I'm no Bordwell or Thompson, but my opinion on Bay is a little more nuanced than, "Me like when hot broads dance and the house blow up".


Any filmmaker who becomes successful enough to achieve name recognition status is bound to attract critical dismissal, and that will intensify if the filmmaker has annoying quirks that are overused. For example, Paul Haggis' inability to keep subtext subtextual, instead making his characters voice motivation or revelation out loud, drives me up the wall. Even his rewrite work on Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace makes that mistake. Tarantino's magpie tendencies irk a lot of critics, especially when he steals from disreputable pop culture artifacts that they already dislike. Spielberg has had his knocks many times in the past. I can imagine he's never going to invite Henry Jaglom around for dinner, as the guy has been bitching about him being a poor filmmaker for decades now.


Bay is a different beast altogether. He's directing movies by a set of rules he has made up for himself, and that style bears only a passing resemblance to the work of others. As if brought up watching nothing but early Tony Scott movies, he seemingly has no idea of how the big picture will flow, choosing instead to focus on each individual shot, making them pop as much as he can. As a result, it's not just the whole movie that doesn't flow. Even relatively short scenes are haphazardly paced. This car chase from The Rock has great individual moments, but stops and starts with no understanding of how jarring that must be for the viewer.



I would never think to defend Bay as a man who makes great films in entirety. Even my favourite Bay movie, Armageddon, is full of embarrassing, and indefensible, flaws. Even so, he's no Robert Luketic, or Shawn Levy, or Jon Avnet, three directors right off the top of my head who have never been responsible for even a single memorable shot, let alone scene or film. Of course, he's also not James Cameron (I make this point because True Lies is on ITV2 right now, and, as shaky as that film is, the action scenes are almost perfection). I think Bay's movies are fascinating, and with regards to the criticism he draws, Drew McWeeny brilliantly (and, obviously, accidentally) summed up how I feel about him in a Tweet I just spotted.

[To another Twitterer] How can you rail against the excess? Bay is what we have PAID Hollywood to evolve into. We reward the escalation of the absurd, then cry about it when it reaches its logical conclusion.

In the interest of not misrepresenting McWeeny, I'll point out that he later adds that he doesn't think he's the best action director in Hollywood. Neither do I, but he is the most spectacular director in the whole world, a Cecil B. DeMille with subscriptions to Guns & Ammo and FHM. When Bay gets to do his thing right, you are getting to see something that no other filmmaker on Earth would or can do. He shoots fast and loose and spends his money on the outrageous stuff, and can conjure up images that sear themselves into your brain.


As McWeeny says, this is not the same as saying he's a good filmmaker. He's just a unique one, and I feel an obligation to articulate my conflicted feelings, especially considering almost all critics are dismissing his movies with such kneejerk vehemence that they're not even bothering to fact-check, which is often a sign that the reviewer considers the movie beneath contempt. I've reviewed films in an almost professional capacity before, and I've had press packs, so I know most of these errors can be avoided*. (Though being annoyed by overly complex plots that make little sense are another thing: see below for my own problems with T:ROTF.)


So I was desperate to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, mostly because I was hoping he would get right the things he got wrong in the first one. As those flaws were the usual things (pacing mistakes, clunky humour, Jazz being a terrible racial stereotype, etc.), I was basically hoping that this would be Bay's best movie, removing some of the clutter but keeping the crazy. That's the key: keeping the stuff that he does better than anyone. Even though I want other filmmakers to create coherent movies with a steady, escalating pace, I want Bay to do what Bay does best. The worst thing he could do would be to play into the hands of those critics who say his movies are all BOOM and no plot, racing from one scene to another without a pause, doing nothing more than amping up every moment with no concern for character development. Sadly, that's exactly what he has done with T:ROTF, and the result is a deeply frustrating experience.


For the first ninety minutes, I was absolutely amazed at what I was seeing. Even more so than the shocking and ramshackle Bad Boys II, Bay is throwing the kitchen sink at the audience (and then shooting it with a sabot round). The first scene in the movie features a tribe of Cro-Magnon fighting early Cybertronians, for crying out loud. Okay, so they look more like they should be hanging out with Zoolander than hunting bison, but still, kudos to the man. For the next section of the movie, the film throws so many peculiar and outrageous visuals and concepts, that I drove Canyon crazy with my various quiet exclamations of joy. By the time Megatron and Starscream hang out on one of the moons of Saturn (seriously), I was convinced that this was going to be my favourite movie of the summer.


And then it all goes horribly wrong. The moment that the action abruptly shifts to Egypt, the movie slams into neutral, with scene after scene falling flat. The novelty of the early scenes disappears, replaced by a tedious crawl across numerous deserts, seemingly to showcase the cars that have been mostly missing by this point. Several scenes could be excised completely, and should have. It was nice to see Deep Roy as the ha ha ha so tiny border guard, but the movie would have been so much better without it. This is not the first time he's made this mistake, but usually he doesn't put so many of these extraneous and excruciating scenes in the final hour.


In fact, the endless trek from Egypt to Jordan and back again (I think that was the route) seems to only be there because, for some baffling reason, Bay and the writers thought that having the characters just appear at the Pyramids for the big finish would somehow be unbelievable, so we have to see their full trip. Why is he getting squeamish about this now? I don't care how they get there, especially if the trip seems to have been filmed in real time. If I want a travelogue, I'll watch a Michael Palin show. This is a Bay movie. If you're going to use a "Space Bridge" to teleport the main characters to Egypt, then teleport them to the exact spot needed to maximise the action. And yet no. Because audiences have been clamouring to see National Lampoon's Egyptian Vacation.


The desert setting also steps on the toes of the earlier film. Transformers had a perfectly fine and short action scene set in a desert, as the survivors of the opening base attack fight against Scorponok. It was about five minutes long, had Tyrese bellowing "BRING THE RAIN!" into a walkie-talkie, and featured a bunch of exploding buildings. Those wide open spaces worked well for a mid-movie action scene, and made the final city scenes even more exciting, as we got to see a bunch of robots fighting in contrasted dark and cramped streets with no respite. That scene remains one of my all-time favourites.


The finale of Transformers 2 just looks like a bigger version of that desert scene, with little of the original's intensity, though it does have some fun stuff involving the Pyramids¹. Sam and Mikaela make their way very slowly through a village, with intercutting of Josh Duhamel looking frustrated. No one says BRING THE RAIN!, though it does crop up on a napkin or something earlier on. Everything seems to move at normal film speed, which is like half Bay-speed. At this point in the movie my ass was really hurting from sitting in the crappy Waterloo IMAX seats, and instead of being riveted I just kept fidgeting. Yes, I use my ass as a guide to how exciting a movie is.


More exasperating than the inappropriate locale, even though Bay's movies have not been known for their well sketched character arcs, the finale is littered with momentum-robbing scenes such as the whole "I love you" thing between Sam and Mikaela (really? This is a big deal?), Kevin Dunn telling his son to go and do the right thing (an emotional beat that makes no sense as Dunn, at the start of the film, couldn't care less about his son leaving), and Sam's "death", which reflects the big "death" midway through the movie (I won't spoil it). Why does Bay suddenly care about these things? I can barely remember The Island, and maybe there was an arc in that, but I don't even think there was one in Pearl Harbor, the most conventional movie he has made. I expect tonal errors from Bay, but this was worse than usual.


Only after leaving the cinema with a deflated heart (it sounds like a deadly condition, but the only symptom is whining on the internet) did I realise that there was a lot more wrong with the movie than just the broken finale. McWeeny recently hinted that the first sentence in his forthcoming HitFix Motion/Captured review would be, "I have never felt more like a third nipple than I did, as a screenwriter, while watching Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen." I can't wait to find out what he means by that, though I think it might have something to do with how the excessive plot -- and I do mean excessive -- is crammed into about three five minute-long scenes filled beyond breaking point with insane amounts of exposition, while huge stretches of the movie would probably, on paper, look like a list of fight scenes. It's that rare kind of movie that is simultaneously overcomplicated and embarrassingly simplistic.


Instead of just trying to come up with a simple way to orchestrate some robot fighting, we get tons of backstory. Cybertronians have visited Earth before, and one of them was going to destroy us in order to harvest energy, but a civil war broke out and then there were a bunch of Primes, and they are magic or something, and the All-Spark is in Sam's head, or it's something else, and there is a key, and a cipher, and a Matrix of Awesomeness, and an afterlife, and probably a bunch of elves, and... It's absurdly complicated stuff, with one very silly plot-thread (Megatron demanding the world hand over Sam so he can extract his brain, or something) that takes over the latter half of the movie. For every quirky moment and fun concept, there's ten stupid complications that mean nothing. By the time Jetfire turned up for his shot at the Exposition Of The Year award, I had completely lost the plot, not helped by my efforts to guess the identity of the British actor playing the elderly robot².


To me, these are big problems, even when taking Bay's singular style into account. However, it's becoming clear that the biggest problem people are going to have with the movie are Mudflap and Skids, the comedy relief duo who shuck and jive through much of the finale. Why am I using this outdated African-American phrase? It seems apt considering that these two robots are the most startling racial stereotypes I've seen on the big screen since Crash, only this time they're meant to be funny and not "educational".


While sitting in the cinema I had huge difficulty reconciling what I was seeing with what I thought Bay was trying to do (have a couple of affable idiots break up the tedium of the cross-country trek with their wacky exploits), and for a while after I wondered if they were meant to be a spoof of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence from Bad Boys (a Bad Boys II poster is on display in one character's room, and their banter is as forced as that between Smith and Lawrence). Now, with hindsight, that I realise that's even worse than just two racist caricatures. Is he personally attacking two people he has worked with before? And the guy doing the voices for them is white? We're talking about Jar-Jar Binks-esque wrongness on an epic scale.

The disconnect I suffered during the movie was similar to the shock I felt during Star Wars: The Clone Wars when Ziro the Hutt appeared, but my overall opinion of that character is astonishment that Lucas could have thought that was all right. With Mudflap and Skids, I was uncomfortable during the movie, and now I'm outright pissed off. It's made the dreadful caricaturing of Jazz in the first movie (a black Transformer that breakdances and then gets ignominiously killed in the final act) seem even more glaring. Bay deserves the shitstorm that's heading his way.


I mean, it's becoming fairly obvious that he has a real problem with women, so much so that you could almost forget it's happening until the camera shoots so far up plastic "hottie" Alice's skirt that it qualifies as a proctological exam. Megan Fox does little more than pout and get dragged around the desert by LaBeouf and Duhamel, not even getting a hero moment like she did in the first film³. Other than Fox and Isabel Lucas, the only other female characters with any dialogue are the holographic women on the transforming motorbikes (ZOMG is Bay saying women are bikes?), and Sam's mother, played by Julie White.


Being the only non-simpering non-hottie in the film, she has to do several unglamorous things, usually involving pratfalls. One scene with her getting high on hash brownies is particularly uncalled-for. Nevertheless, she deserves all the credit in the world for managing to make these stupid moments work. She might give the best performance in the film. Maybe, in future, Bay should consider giving more roles to women who have talents beyond looking orange and pouty.


So, it was a washout, right? Except that for a while, as I said earlier, the film flies. Even with the inclusion of the awful Alice subplot, and lots of shenanigans involving kitchenbots, there is a lot to enjoy. The new set-up for the Autobots, working in conjunction with the humans to fight rogue Decepticons, is hugely promising, and the opening in Shanghai is astonishing and ambitious. Even better, the forest fight between Optimus and three Decepticons is one of the film highlights of the year, especially as it is filmed in full IMAX.


Seeing Optimus to actual scale is something I won't forget any time soon. Much is made of Bay's direction of action, and how the rapidly moving camera and quick cuts serve to render all of his scenes incomprehensible, but there are many worse action directors out there. Considering how overwhelmed I was by the terrible action in Eagle Eye, or by the much better but still swooshy Star Trek (both of which I saw on IMAX), this didn't upset me at all. That was something I was not expecting.


There is even some evidence of playfulness from the notoriously grouchy man. Considering his parodic sense of patriotism, it amuses me greatly that he manages to destroy Paris again (the first time was at the end of Armageddon, a scene that got a cheer here in England each time I saw it on the big screen), and I can imagine all sorts of noses being put out of joint by his destruction of a library about an hour in. If you're responsible for some of the most successful movies of the past fifteen years, you can afford to poke fun at your image like that.


As I've said, I did like a lot of it. I saw one person lazily Tweeting this morning that they thought this was as bad as Batman and Robin. Don't believe it for a second: this has much much more to recommend it, even if just as an occasionally exhilarating aural and visual assault. Also great: Glenn Morshower returning, this time as General Morshower (seriously); Tony Todd doing some great voicework as The Fallen, a robot with a fantastic gangly design; trying to catch sight of the cast on poor Shia's hand in early scenes; terrific sound editing, far better than critics are saying; a greater sense of the robots as actual characters, especially Starscream and Megatron. Plus, even if the finale is not perfect, it does feature some mind-boggling moments. I'm really hoping that the previous Academy snub of the Transformers effects team is not repeated. They've topped themselves this time out, especially as they're operating in IMAX for some of the most complicated moments.


Even so, it's a movie that wouldn't let me like it as much as I wanted to. If I'm going to defend Bay in future, the guy has got to meet me halfway. The awful Ebonicbots and the Auton women have got to go. Right now, I'd rather he tried to make another movie in the more sober style of The Island than keep this lower-than-lowest common denominator stuff going. It's becoming hard work waiting for him to grow up, but then, if we lose the racism and misogyny (which I'm sure he doesn't see as such), will we lose the rest? And is "the rest" worth keeping if the man is going out of his way to perpetuate bullshit jock philosophy like this? All of a sudden those Bay films in my collection look a little less appealing. Let's hope his next movie is either an adaptation of The Beauty Myth or a remake of Amistad.

* In fact, one of the first movies I ever saw at a press screening was Bad Boys. Maybe that's why I'm forgiving of Bay's films.

¹ Full disclosure. As soon as I saw the first trailer with shots of the Pyramids, my heart sank. A project I have been working on for some time had a big finale in the shadow of the Pyramids, and so I guess I have to scrap all of that. A shame, as it would have been so awesome that brains would have melted while watching it, even though the project involved a C-list comic character that no one likes. Nevertheless, my disappointment with the finale was not rooted in this, as I got over that frustration a long time ago.

² Amazingly, it's Jon Turturro.


This means he spends a lot of his screentime arguing with himself.

³ Though, to be honest, LaBeouf gets little more to do other than run into danger and get blown up. Another flaw of the film: adding human characters and not really knowing what to do with them, which particularly irks when you like LaBeouf, as I do.

ETA: Here is McWeeny's review of T:ROTF. Of all the reviews I have read in the past few days, this might be the only one that actually addressed specifics of what the film is like. Trust someone as perceptive and fair as McWeeny to watch the movie and review what he is seeing instead of just scribbling "Michael Bay is a douchebag" in his Moleskine a thousand times.

What's So Great About The Dark Knight?

It's been over a week since I saw The Dark Knight, and yet I have not blogged about it, mostly because of the bizarre reactions to the movie as expressed all over the internet. It's the fastest backlash I've ever seen, which garnered an equally fast backlash against the backlash. As of now, with a worldwide box office gross that stands at the approximate figure of $597,387,000 after seventeen days (after being released in only a few countries), and IMDb users voting it the best movie of all time (as of today's date), there are seemingly only two available opinions about it: "it's a masterpiece", and "no it's not".

Warning to the four people who have yet to see The Dark Knight: Spoilers ahoy!


From my obsessive trawl through the heated debate which is popping up everywhere like weeds in a poorly tended garden, the opinion of the blogospherical joint consciousness seems to be bouncing back to an overall negative view of the movie's merits. Over the last couple of days I've seen The Dark Knight lambasted for not featuring enough Joker, for showing too much Joker and not enough Batman, for rushing Harvey Dent's transformation, for being too violent, for not being violent enough, for spending too much time on Dent at the expense of the Joker, for being too long, for not developing its ideas far enough, for not explaining the Joker properly, for smelling of rotten eggs, for being too loud (because Christopher Nolan is going from screen to screen adjusting the volume), for being badly lit (!!!!!), for not generating genital-obliteringly powerful spontaneous orgasms in those who see it like we were all promised, etc. etc. etc.

As a result of the excitement and enthusiasm of the fanboy massive, the drubbings have been especially vicious. Armond White's increasingly notorious panning (during which he suggests only 21 year olds could be enthusiastic about it, and compares it poorly against De Palma’s vapid and messy Black Dahlia, of all films) and Kevin Uhlich’s dissection of the film are especially forthright, coming early and thus gathering the majority of internet hatred like some much hatey pollen to a bee’s leg, much of which is so knee-jerk and poorly written that it does the fanbase a terrible disservice. There was more to come; Patrick Goldstein from the LA Times comments on the rapidly growing phenomenon here, and this Cinematical article followed the growing online controversy here, at the bottom of which you will find comments from critic David Edelstein, commenting on being flamed by many Batfans. It’s all depressing, but, as Cinematical points out, at least there’s this excellent response to Keith Uhlich and Stephanie Zacharek's reviews at Only The Cinema. It is possible to engage with the critics in an intelligent, non-flamy manner, and that proves it.

The question I pose myself, though, is can I do that? If some critics had an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the movie, then that's the experience they had. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that. And yet, my gut response to these criticisms, from paid reviewers and unpaid bloggers, is "What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's a work of unbelievable integrity, vision, and genius!!!" I'm not leaving insulting and poorly written comments on people's blogs, but still, I've been pissed. It's only once I've stopped gripping my Batman action figures with all the force of my frustration that I realise I've gone fucking crazy. What is going on here? Why have I taken leave of my senses in the same way that the Batman fanbase has? And why would I do that when Batman isn't even my favourite superhero? Or even in my top ten? It's deeply worrying, and a few days ruminating on it leads me to believe we (the fanboys) are all being silly, losing our perspective, but that we do have reason to be irked by some of the negative remarks, i.e. those that have been made from either a position of ignorance or snobbery. The problem with that is, how can I tell genuine, justifiable dislike from expressions of that critic's bias against movies of this type?

First, I'll address my craziness. One of my fears (an unprovable one) is that the negativity is just a reaction to the crazy praise it was getting prior to release. If this is one explanation, I understand, considering Peter "Shill" Travers was first out of the gate with the line "the haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination", which is beyond parody. The IMDb vote craziness certainly justifies a slapped forehead of horror, even if you really loved the movie. Not that it matters much in the scheme of things, but it can make a viewer predisposed to disliking the film just because the fanboys are crazy (I gather this is one of the reasons people reject Joss Whedon; his fans are often seen as too enthusiastic). As I say, there's no way I can prove this, but it happens.


Another part of my frustration is definitely rooted in my nerdiness, and the reflexive defensiveness I have towards myself and those of my ilk (I make it sound like we're a put-upon ethnic group, for crying out loud), hoping for some validation from the critical establishment that the superhero genre (or the sci fi genre, or the horror genre, etc.) that I love so much is not just treated as the low-quality flotsam and jetsam of modern culture, that they are understood to be tools and canvasses for telling stories and exploring modern life, and not just whizz-bang-zoom spectacles that overload the eye but avoid the heart and brain. I realise that that defensiveness is my problem, not anyone else's. However, how can I take the thoughts of a critic seriously is his or her dislike of a genre is not backed up by anything other than a sense that it is not worthy of serious appraisal?

I get that critics might have biases against filmmakers; hell, I get angered to the point of localised space/time warpage at Lars Von Trier's experiments in audience baiting. But an entire genre? Canyon and I once had a long conversation about romantic comedies, and she made me see how crazy it is to dismiss every movie in a genre just because it doesn't appeal to me. She was right. We both think the genre has been ill-served over the last few years, but that's not the genre's fault. The movies have just often been uninspiring. That's not a criticism that can be levelled at the superhero genre (which bleeds into the action and sci fi genres, or the crime genre as in The Dark Knight). This year has already seen the vastly entertaining Iron Man and the bold failure Hancock (which tried to approach the genre from a different angle, though it didn't really succeed the way I had hoped), though the unambitious but amusing Incredible Hulk didn't help my argument. Luckily, The Dark Knight reaches higher than all of them. Which is where the difference of opinion seems to fall most often.

Sure, a lot of people are down on the movie for the filming of the action. To be honest, I only had a problem in the hostage sequence toward the end of the movie, though that could have been because I was trying to get my head around the moral quandary at the heart of the scene and I was freaking out a little (because, emotionally, I'm like a small child). Others think some actors didn't get much to do (I'd say Gyllenhaal definitely got the short end of the stick), and that Batman was sidelined (I'm not sure about that, but if that's your take on it, then... well... that's your take on it, I guess). Some hated the palette (totally! It really needed some garish reds and oranges and maybe some lemon yellows!). I'm sure someone out there hated it because the Scarecrow didn't get enough to do, or Killer Croc wasn't introduced, or because Batman contradicted something he said in a Denny O'Neil issue from the 70s. I would be crazy to have a problem with any of that opinion (except the palette criticism).

That’s not the kind of thing I want to rail against, though. I don’t agree with much of that, but it’s someone else’s opinion. However, what really does gall me is that UK critics seem to hate the movie mostly for trying to expand its ambition beyond the parameters of the superhero genre that they have decided upon, thinking it incapable of being more than a reductive and nuance-free depiction of a black and white battle between opposing forces. If you think no critic would ever dismiss an entire genre like that, read this wilfully nasty and unfair review by Michael Atkinson.

Somehow the entirety of American culture, young and middle-yeared and old, is embracing the childish universe of superheroes – which is structured around the easily-distracted worldview of kids, not around the reasoned, complex worldview we would hope children would grow into. Does America need that badly a post-post-9/11 big Daddy to vanquish danger so we can slumber in our cradles? The much-lamented infantilization of the mass populace continues, and at what cost?

As you can imagine, I have no truck with that opinion, nor with the rest of his pissy review, especially his comments about there being no story there, which baffle me. He must have been scribbling “HATE HATE HATE” in his notebook during it and forgot to watch it. That said, fair play to him for nailing his colours to the mast. UK critics exhibit similar bias, but don’t go as far in expressing their hatred. Superhero movies represent the most obvious example of dumbing-down in modern culture? Is he serious? The wish-fulfilment aspect of the genre is definitely an important part of it, but it’s not the most important, especially when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along and challenges that specific notion. Is he angry because once the genre is legitimised by this and, hopefully, Watchmen, he will have to go to the trouble of finding a new knee-jerk enemy of culture to hate on (I doubt this would happen, somehow)?


If you have read this blog before, you'll know that I have a bee in my BatBonnet about possible bias against genre movies (and all of the Shades of Caruso team has a problem with the possible bias against genre TV). I had hoped that The Dark Knight, directed by a Brit, would avoid that kind of thoughtless dismissal, but sadly not. I'm not saying the UK reviews are proof of a definite bias, and I'm certainly not saying it amounts to any more than a hill of biased beans in this crazy mixed-up world, but if I'm ever going to take the work of a critic seriously, I don't want to have to work around their preconceptions about an entire genre. Michael Atkinson in particular is someone I cannot bring myself to read again, not because he insulted me and my brethren, but because he is incapable of seeing the merits of a large proportion of popular culture, the best examples of which often become cultural signifiers or benchmarks of artistic quality over time. It’s not I'm having a hissy-fit just because his worldview doesn’t tally with mine 100%; whose does? It’s that he refuses to grapple with these pop-culture phenomena in a serious manner. I may not like comedies that do little more than spoof other movies in the most flat and obvious way possible, but I’ll at least engage with them, a position that once led to an unexpected fit of giggles experienced while watching Scary Movie 4 (bravo, Anna Faris. Bravo).

Anyway, here are some examples of what I see as an obnoxious bias against the superhero genre in the UK press, which was far more negative than the US press. Sukhdev Sandhu, in the Daily Telegraph, liked the movie, and yet still had to get a dig in [from this point on, italics mine]:

anyone who prefers their entertainment with less rather than more of a message may wish to shield their ears during the dialogue about the "cost of power"... Other reservations: shouldn't Nolan, marvellous as his directing here is, be creating original films rather than rebooting and retooling franchise fare? Why can't Hollywood put a tenth as much of the craft and vim into its average releases as it does into what is ultimately only a superhero movie?

Philip French seemed to like it more than most, but also said:

The Dark Knight is a clever, loud, technically brilliant film, superbly designed by Nathan Crowley and dramatically lit by Wally Pfister. Whether such a movie can bear the increasing moral weight imposed upon it is another matter.

Peter Bradshaw, whose Iron Man review annoyed me earlier this year, seemed to thoroughly enjoy The Dark Knight, but even so, is under the impression Christopher Nolan is doomed to do nothing but make nothing but summer superhero movies for the rest of his life:

Nolan has made an enormously profitable smash with the Batman franchise, but at the risk of sounding priggish, I can't help thinking it may be a bit of a career blind-alley for the talented director who gave us brilliant and disquieting movies like Following (1998) and Memento (2000), whose inventions still linger in the mind. The Dark Knight's massive box-office success has surely given Nolan the means to write his own cheque, and in addition something sweeter still - clout. I hope that he will use it to cultivate movies that are smaller and more manoeuvrable than that great armoured Batmobile.

Anthony Quinn thought it average, but when he gets the chronology of the film wrong you tend to think he wasn't really paying attention:

Art and entertainment feel locked in a deadly struggle, which accounts for the movie's peculiar schizoid personality. Just when it poses its most heart-stopping question – how do you tell a loved one facing imminent death that "everything's going to be all right"? – it swerves into a maniacal car chase, with our hero now hot-rodding a vehicle known as a Batpod, a kind of monster-truck tyre with a seat. The ear-lacerating volume and the automotive mayhem that attend these action sequences seem to be doing everything possible to shake whatever subtleties that may have entered one ear straight out of the other.

Dude! The shots of the BatPod racing through the streets are not part of a chase, but a tension-cranking cross-cut between the imminent death of two characters and Batman's attempts to save one of them. Surely this is self-evident, unless you're trying to score points against it. Fellow Independent reviewer Jonathan Romney also seems to have not been paying attention:

Played again by Christian Bale, he now speaks, when masked, in a gravelly synthetic bass; he also has an eerie habit of suddenly appearing out of and vanishing into shadows.

He now speaks and hides in shadows? What was he doing in the first movie, then? His comments about the Batmobile in the next paragraph suggest he didn’t see Batman Begins at all:

This is an impressive film in many ways, and Nolan directs with real confidence, yet the overall result feels cumbersome. The tenor is set by Nolan's conception of the Batmobile – a clanking all-terrain engine of war, a chunk of brutalist engineering that manifestly weighs tons. There's something comparably tank-like about the film, and despite several genuinely head-spinning moments, it all comes to feel grimly overwhelming, a vision of total war you fear will never end.

For goodness' sake, no one expected a return to Adam West and bad puns, but this cocktail of ultraviolence, artillery and pessimism makes for a gruelling, even depressing experience. Perhaps Warner Bros could offer the next episode to Werner Herzog, just to cheer things up a bit.

We see a genre damned for being fluffy, or damned for trying to do something more ambitious. Why did Nolan bother? Especially when Britain has its very own Michael Atkinson, except with a tiny IQ and a fear of the modern. Christopher Tookey, you win some kind of horrible internet award for being an out-of-touch Toryboy waggling a miserly fist at a world you can’t even be bothered to try to understand:

You can take a character out of a comic-strip, but you can't take the comic-strip out of the character. Batman is not a tragic hero at all, but an adolescent action-figure with the kind of problems most of us can only dream of having. This may make him good box-office - especially among males who feel ineffectual, impoverished and lacking in even one personality - but it doesn't give him the depth of Hamlet.

Oh Tookey, you little bitch!

This summer blockbuster explores grand themes: whether it can be right to use torture on terrorists; the conflict between public and private morality; and whether the public prefers to be told lies rather than deal with the truth. The Nolan brothers are clearly determined not to be confused with the Nolan Sisters [ZING!]. I appreciate their ambition, but they've over-reached - and lost their sense of humour... Their film is compromised by the perceived demands of its audience. It's grimly sadistic. It doesn't fight terror, it embraces it. Ledger becomes, in a curiously twisted way, the moral centre of the film, and this makes The Dark Knight an unintentionally sick spectacle, pretending to justify law and justice, but in reality celebrating violence and chaos.

Perhaps when you're a critic sitting in the dark with a bunch of similarly disgruntled men and women whose heads have been filled with talk of movie genius, it's easy to think that, but how does that account for the reaction of the audience I saw it with, comprising a demographic of men and women of differing ages, ethnicities, and cultural expectations, who reacted most strongly to Tiny Lister's disposal of the detonator during the ferry scene. I know I choked up at his decision, and the room erupted into applause and cheering. Sorry, Tookey. The Joker actually lost completely, both in Gotham and the real world. Rail against the Hypothetical Idiot all you like, but he/she is HYPOTHETICAL! Get used to it.

It wasn’t all bad. While this incoherent rant on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section does little to dispel the suspicion that CiF is The Great Blogging Graveyard, this blog from The Times is endearingly nerdy and filled with good points . In fact, James Christopher is the only UK critic that seemed to really love it, though Cosmo Landesman's point-missing Sunday Times drubbing made up for that. The FT’s magnificent critic, Nigel Andrews, wasn’t crazy about it either, but at least his review was well-written and contained many good points, as always.

So is it just a knee-jerk dismissal of the genre? Surely something like that would have been universally applied across transatlantic lines, and while I’ve linked to some reviews that have just sneered, “superheroes are for kids”, most critics embraced the film for taking the genre seriously and showing what it is capable of illuminating. Jenny McCartney, who also rails against its rating in a dramatic piece full of Daily Mail-esque "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!!?? panic, also says in her dismissive review:

This is essentially an adult action thriller, in which the action itself is often difficult to discern from the darkened screen, a roaring tangle of crashes and explosions and muttered imprecations. Added to this is a jumbled sprinkling of philosophy on the nature of heroism, villainy and the necessary lies it takes to keep the public believing in something grander than selfish survival.

If the meaning behind the mayhem is difficult for an adult to perceive, it would be well nigh impossible for a child. But then, despite the heavy marketing and the almost inconceivably indulgent 12A rating (meaning that any under-12 can see it with an adult) this is not a film that pre-adolescent children should watch.

The Independent ran a piece about the rating that put the BBFC's decision in a clearer light, but I'm still pissed that the BBFC chose to do that (either in a fit of liberalism or due to pressure from Warner Bros.), if only because this adult movie now ends up being treated as Public Enemy No. 1 Child Corrupter (knocking Grand Theft Auto IV off its perch of evil) when it is plain to see it is not a movie for children. It's an adult movie dealing with adult themes (in a manner I found easy to follow, UK film critics, and I'm not alone in that judgment, I'm sure), and that it came during the summer months, when film critics froth at the mouth at the lack of substance to Hollywood movies, has served to confuse panicky critics who were expecting nothing more than BOOM BANG.


Yet what do we get? Relief that it is possible to fuse serious subject matter with the expected number of WOW moments? Of course not. Just anger that something from such a tawdry genre, designed merely to appeal to children, would be crazy enough to try to address a serious subject in a thoughtful manner, when it should only be full of explosions and bright colours and two-dimensional motivations and not be seen by anyone who has the complete Bergman collection at home, because liking genre movies means you are a simpleton and emotional retard who is incapable of seeing more than two sides to a conflict.

Of course, if The Dark Knight was like that it would be hated for not having any ambition, but what are you going to do? American culture is morally corrupt and intellectually dead, anyway. Oh, if only Christopher Nolan could return to the country that recognised his talent and threw money at it all those years ago! Then he could make another version of Northanger Abbey or Jane Eyre! Or a comedy about two mis-matched Islington professionals trying to find love in the middle of a multicultural city that conspicuously fails to show any significant characters of non-white ethnicity! Or Happy-Go-Fucking-Lucky!

Even worse than all of that, some writers are reading the film as a pro-Bush, pro-rendition, pro-phone-tapping argument. It's not pro-phone tapping or rendition. These actions undertaken by Batman are shown to have negative effects. Lao, captured by Batman and dragged back to Gotham to testify against Maroni, is brought into immediate danger and killed by The Joker. Batman raises the game with his bold actions and loses the love of his life, the way out of his psychic torment (though he was deluding himself all along with that), and even his support from the world, having to paint himself as a villain, a martyrdom that must have been borrowed from the little bits of messianic symbolism left over from Wall*E.

Yes, Batman prevails, but the Joker is still around, and to just capture him he has to betray himself and isolate himself from everyone, symbolised by the switching off of the phone-tapping program (which I thought was a nice nod to Brother Eye). If it is a straight reading from this to America and the War on Terror, it's saying, "if you're going to play as dirty as the bad guys, you're going to have to give up everything that you are and everything that you have, and even then you're not going to win. The only way the battle can be won is if we all agree to not lose our heads, to remember on an individual level that we are human". The battle rages between two men high above the city, but it is won with two simple choices by two "mortal" men, one “evil”, one “good”.

That's how it is done. We're not meant to approve of Batman's actions; Morgan Freeman, as the audience surrogate, proves that with his displeasure over "Brother Eye". Critics seem to have missed that point, thinking that because it's a superhero, he is the one we should be automatically applauding, which means the Nolans are expecting us to accept his immoral tactics, but that's not the case. We're meant to be horrified. Considering all of this talk about the movie not being as deep as people thought, it seems it was too deep for those who couldn't appreciate that glaringly obvious fact. The only writer who seemed to understand that the movie was loosely playing with War on Terror tropes without actually transposing them directly from our world to the world of Batman was Moriarty’s customarily excellent take from AICN. Some of the other cultural commentators would do well to read that.


Why should I care what anyone else thinks? Why would I get so monstrously obsessed with the experiences of people I'll never meet, and I regularly both agree and disagree with? And, perhaps most pertinently, why would I doubt the opinions of others, thinking them the product of some innate snobbery or inherited bias, and not just their actual opinion made from a point of view that is merely different from mine and not caused by some form of voluntary cultural myopia? Possibly because of all of the films I've seen recently, this was the one that moved me the most, more than almost any movie I have seen in the last few years. Believe me, I was as annoyed by the relentless hype as anyone, and tried to keep as open a mind as possible, fully expecting to like the movie but not love it, especially after a pre-Dark Knight viewing of Batman Begins revealed that I had increased reservations about it since it was first released.

Those efforts were futile. The Dark Knight amazed me more than I could ever have hoped, leaving me emotionally drained even before the final, heartbreaking scene. The escalation of The Joker's campaign of psychological torture, the city's response to it, and Batman's final sacrifice shattered me. Is that merely because I love superheroes and superhero movies? Maybe, but for the most part I forgot I was watching one. It was more like watching L.A. Confidential than a "popcorn flick".

Was it because I saw it in IMAX? Possibly. We were lucky enough to see it at the Leows IMAX in New York, with a mostly fantastic audience (except for the shrieky woman sitting in front of us who refused to turn off her phone and tried to kill the guy who asked her). Every big moment in the movie was greeted with laughter or applause; the pencil trick, the BatPod, the end of the big chase sequence, The Joker shuffling out of the hospital, and best of all, Tiny Lister and the detonator. I'm not ashamed to say that made me cry. What I suspect would have already been an overwhelming moment was made even more moving by the elation around me.

While critics have carped about the action scenes and what they consider to be faux-profundity, the only flaw in the movie that I could see was that Heath Ledger’s performance was of such an otherworldly nature that it overshadowed Aaron Eckhart’s excellent work as the inspirational Harvey Dent, and the twisted psychotic Two-Face. In the middle of a superb cast taking the subject matter as seriously as possible, he was a stand-out. Even better, those incredible IMAX shots of Gotham, shot with glorious precision by Wally Pfister, took our breath away. On that vast screen it was like looking through a window at a real world (I know it was filmed in Chicago, but surely there were buildings added in post-production). As we left Loews and walked around New York, it felt like we were still in the movie, so much so that I expected Batman to zoom past at any moment.


That feeling lasted all day, keeping the movie running through my head long after we left, riding past a construction site covered in signs featuring the word Gotham, and on to the Lincoln Tunnel, with its art deco spires. I didn't just see a movie; I had an amazing experience, and New York was only half of it. I've proselytised about IMAX before, and been obnoxious about it on message boards, but really, if you want to see The Dark Knight in such a way as to make it hard to care about the flaws or shortcomings of the film, you need to see it on a bigass screen. Maybe it won't work for me on a small screen. Maybe in time my high opinion of it will fade over time just as it has for Batman Begins. Perhaps critics who were agnostic about it would love it in IMAX, seen with an enthusiastic audience, especially one that isn't baying for blood like The Hapless Tookey imagines. Who can say? All I know is that for now at least, it might not be the best film I've ever seen, but I can't imagine 2008 offering up anything superior. It was everything I had hoped for and much much more. Now we have to see if it holds up to further viewings, as soon as IMAX Waterloo has some tickets spare.

Speed Racer Vs. Total Critical And Popular Apathy

Perhaps it was always going to be a hard sell. With the fanboys turning their noses up at what looked like a candy-coloured movie for babies, critics followed their cue, leaving a handful of cinema-goers excited about the film and feeling like pariahs (yes, poor me). Genre movies (by which I mean sci fi, fantasy, or horror) always get a hard time from critics, and while I'm not crazy enough to suggest that any film that fits the category is automatically worthy of praise (there's a lot of genuine shit out there), I would hope critics realise they are all worthy of serious attention. I get that it's hard for a critic to really give all of their attention to every movie released each week, but even so, any movie that fits the bill described above (and often any movie that can easily be sneeringly dismissed as "typically Hollywood") will be the one to fall by the wayside.


That I expected. The UK reviews of Speed Racer have been horrible, a litany of horrified complaint about the subject matter, the performances, the plot, the running time, and most often, the visual style. "A movie of such garishness and impenetrability as to test the stoicism of any audience member older than 14," says The Independent's Anthony Quinn! "I can’t begin to describe how creepy this futuristic movie is," says James Christopher of The Times! "You have to be 12 to like it, and I have to say there is little or nothing here to remind us why we were all quite so excited about The Matrix," says Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, who also describes Lost as "interminable," and as a result is removed from my Love List and placed on my Shit List (he was already on probation for that appalling Iron Man review last week).

In fact, the only mainstream critic who liked it was Sukhdev Sandhu of the Telegraph, who still had reservations but seemed to get that it was for kids and not think this was a terrible strike against it. James Christopher seemed to think that it was a kids' film by accident. I won't even begin to point out the laziness of Anthony Quinn's review, which led me to believe he had lost his press pack and couldn't be bothered to even Wikipedia the source material; he also missed vital plot points that were not that hard to spot and then bitched about subsequent "illogicalities" (his comments about Speed's race up a cliff-face are the ones that made me mad, if you're curious).


I would have liked to have seen Nigel Andrew's review, as he usually responds positively to films that are a bit out there, but he appears to be missing in action at the moment. The most positive review I've read so far is from Moriarty from Ain't It Cool News, and he did what the "respectable" critics couldn't be bothered to do: forget his prejudices and watch the movie on its own terms. You could say he only gave it a chance because he's a nerd critic, but even now, with the film about to be released, nerd opinion is massively critical of it. "It's too garish, it's too childish, it looks stupid, I hated the cartoon, it's got a chimp in it, it's too colourful, it's too fast, it's too weird, it's not violent enough, it's not The Matrix." The Wachowskis seem to have made a movie that no one wanted to see. And they say Hollywood only panders to its audience.


From all of that it should be apparent that I have a huge chip on my shoulder about this, and not just because I regularly get annoyed when critics dismiss genre movies, an annoyance that has been exacerbated by my current reading material, Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures. It's a hugely entertaining read, and Biskind is a terrific writer, but it is laced with snobbery about Hollywood product, even -- at one point in the introduction -- claiming that its subject matter, independent film, appeals to "real people" in contrast to mainstream populist fare. So is the usual mass audience not made up of people? What are they then, figments of his imagination? Pod people? Androids?

Ridiculous. And insulting. There are millions of people out there (REAL people, even), that will happily watch a movie as transcendently beautiful and moving as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring one day, and then watch Pirates of the Caribbean the next day and have a different experience but one that is no more or less real than the previous one. One isn't better than the other because it does certain things that the other doesn't even attempt. If one has to be judged better than the other, let it be by internal criteria. Which one of them succeeds best at doing what it was made to do? Otherwise we're just going to be bitching at every movie that isn't Citizen Kane for not doing the things Citizen Kane does. That way lies misery and madness.


Sorry, I digressed. As I was saying, I do have an inherent bias towards Speed Racer that makes me touchy about it, and that's down to my love of The Matrix. It's my favourite film, one I can watch over and over again and never get bored of. I still remember the first time I saw it, and the shellshock I felt. I've heard the criticisms of it, and the carping about the sequels (one of which I liked), and I'm not interested. If a movie or book or song is meant to touch the viewer and move them, that's exactly what The Matrix did to me. It was as if the film I had been waiting all my life to see had finally arrived, and it was better than I had hoped for.

So I'm defensive about the Wachowski siblings, and get tetchy when their work is criticised, especially because experience has taught me that film critics will happily dismiss genre work rather than engage with it, as if by dint of its mere existence it is not worthy of the effort. The reviews have focused on two things that are cardinal sins of that enemy of quality that is glossy Hollywood product: how little the story matters, and how emotionally empty the movie is because of the technology used to create the film.


I'll grant that these can be valid criticisms, but only if they are used against films that fail in those respects (and many do; I'm not crazy!), and not just as a kneejerk response against that nasty Hollywood product. Well, I risked breaking my own brain with fatigue and sensory-overload by seeing Speed Racer yesterday, and I can give you my opinion on these most pressing of questions. Does Speed Racer fail in telling a story? No. Is it emotionally empty? No. Here are some other questions that are less important than those, but need answering nonetheless. Is it perfect? No. Does it matter? No. Is it impossible to follow what is going on during the races? As long as you're not sitting in row H of the London Waterloo IMAX or lower, no. Will it make any money at the box office? Probably not, no. Should it? Unequivocally, yes.

Here's a litmus test for anyone watching the movie, and that includes critics. The film starts pretty much in the middle of a race, during which we flash back and forth between the race and Speed Racer's childhood, where he bonds with his brother and idol, Rex, played by Scott "Whiny Jason on FNL" Porter.



The race continues for a little while past that clip, with Speed attempting to break the record set by his brother, who we learn died in disgrace many years later, an event that shaped the lives of the entire Racer family, who are gathered together in the stands watching Speed racing. It's a busy few minutes, setting up the bizarre palette (which you will grow accustomed to much quicker than you might expect), the otherworldly future physics of the race cars (all impossible spins, leaps, and crazy drifting), the family dynamic, the history of the Racer family, their triumphs and failures, and the sadness that haunts them.

If you've gone in expecting a garish, empty movie for kids, the sophistication of the criss-cross narrative format might throw you (there's a particularly bold time-shifting moment in the middle of the film I liked), but there's nothing there to convince you of any emotional depth, until the very end of the race. What Speed does as he's about to cross the finish line is a marker for whether the film is for you. If you don't notice or care about his decision, you're not going to care enough about the characters to give the film a fair shot, and you might as well walk out of the room. If Speed's decision makes you grin, and you understand exactly what his motivation is and admire the character for making that choice, then you might end up liking the movie a lot more than you would have expected.


And I did. A lot. For the majority of the movie I was very happy, if not overjoyed, by what I was experiencing. After a few minutes of discombobulation, the visuals made a lot more sense to me once I had figured out what the Wachowskis were trying to do with them -- i.e., they weren't building a multitude of 3D environments to place the green-screened actors in, and they chose instead to create a number of photographic backgrounds and use them the same way backdrops in animation are used, to slide past each other in a parallax effect.

The only time the environments look fully rendered is during the race scenes, with the tracks featuring a more conventional perspective. The other trick used throughout is the scrolling of talky-heads across the screen, just as in anime. I made my peace with that a lot faster, as it's a technique used so often in Japanese animation that I've become inured to it, though I had a moment of WTF, simply because I'd not seen it used in live-action before. It's a terrific effect, carrying us through expositional dialogue (of which there is quite a bit) without sacrificing pace.


In fact, the dialogue delivered during races, often as a form of flashback, barely alters the pace of the action, so completely does it add energy to what would normally be dreary. A lot of people have said the races are confusing, but I thought they were pretty clean and edited with plenty of clarity, though perhaps if you're not used to the floaty heads it might cause problems (plus, if you're invested in the narrative, they carry plenty of dramatic kick, contrary to the opinion of the critics, at least IMHO).

Those races would mean nothing if they were not surrounded by solid performances and a carefully crafted narrative, and the one we get, concerning the struggle of the little man to succeed in a world where the monolithic nature of The Market stands in the way of artistic expression or freedom of the spirit, as well as the value of teamwork and learning from your mistakes, is immensely satisfying, so much so that the final race, which is already overwhelmingly filmed, achieves a kind of emotional warp factor as dialogue from the previous two hours slides past the camera, and you see just how important it is that Speed wins that race.


The hapless Christopher Tookey of the Daily HateMail stated that the film is meaningless and soulless, but if you've been sucked in by the carefully constructed narrative, the committed, irony-free performances, and the emotionally resonant conflicts and tribulations of our heroes (all of which he missed, instead carping about not knowing what was going on and hating the commercialism of it), the final ten minutes are filled with significance. As I said earlier, for the majority of the film I thought it was very very good. However, my final verdict was boosted by the brilliant, resonant, and totally satisfying finale, where my "overall grade" leapt up about three notches. All of this is code for "I cried at the end." Laugh, you doubters! I don't care.


And yes, it is resolutely a kids' movie. The majority of the humour lies in the actions of Spritle, played by Paulie Litt, who has annoyed some critics but cracked me up consistently, and his simian buddy Chim Chim. They pretty much spend the whole film eating candy, getting into trouble, and throwing Chim Chim cookies around (and I'll let you see the movie and discover what they are). Maybe it's not as "sophisticated" as Jacques Tati and his pipe-smoking japery, but it works and fits the tone of the movie perfectly. However, the plot itself, though featuring a manichean battle between a big corporate scumbag (played to perfection by Roger Allam) and the innocent small guy Speed, is filled with corporate intrigue, reflections on achieving an almost artistic perfection through sport, and what it is to be free to do what you want. That it touches on some of the themes of The Matrix (purpose, free will, self-belief) came as a surprise even to a fan like me. There's even a shot of stock-market notations scrolling across the screen that echoed Matrix Code, a nice little touch that made me smile.


One of the criticisms I saw thrown around (particularly in Bradshaw's review and the AV Club's withering dismissal) is that the film is anti-corporate and yet, hypocritically, is a heavily marketed and expensive big-budget money-making machine unleashed by the Warner Brothers monolith. I'll be honest, I was very worried about that, and reckoned I might have trouble reconciling it with any possible enthusiasm I might have for all the whiz-bang. Again, the Wachowskis surprised me. Roger Allam's Royalton is obviously an unscrupulous bounder and cad, uninterested in racing as sport (or art) and only concerned about how he can gain a monopoly over the production of a revolutionary engine by manipulating the outcomes of races. However, his enthusiasm for the machinations of The Market (revealed in a brilliantly demented monologue about share values) is just as complete and almost childlike as Speed's obsession with racing, even if it does involve ruining the tiny, independent Racer family. Other CEOs featured in the movie do unscrupulous things too, but end up siding with Speed at the end, realising that he is blessed with true talent and artistry in a way that moves them.

Glenn Kenny of Premiere says in his review that, "the narrative of Speed Racer, such as it is, is one of the more blatantly anti-capitalist storylines to come down the cinematic pike since, I dunno, Bertolucci's 1900," which is not what I took from it at all. It's made clear that the Racer family is a business, one that thrives on making cars that will be used by Speed to win races, mostly for the love of the game. But as long as they are allowed to participate on a small level within the financial framework of their world, keeping their aims low, and not worrying about being swallowed up by big business, then they're fine. They don't opt out of the capitalist system at all. They just want to play the game on their own terms, using their talent and ingenuity to make a living. Surely that's at the heart of the capitalist message, something Anthony Lane should keep in mind as he delivers paranoid and inaccurate comments about the film being nothing more than "Pop fascism" (because it features crowds cheering at a sport, for crying out loud). Why doesn't he rail against actual crowds cheering actual sport? Why is it only bad in the context of a movie? Gah!!!


If anything, the film is merely anti-monopoly, anti-greed and anti-corruption, showing how a single spanner in the works of The Market can crush those who abuse their position of power, thus turning the pursuit of prosperity into a game on a level playing field, with room for monoliths and minnows, both aiding each other and prospering from that cooperation and mutual respect. Isn't that what Thomas Friedman naively thinks The Market already is? Of course, we're meant to side with the Racer family exclusively, but it's clear that, just as The Matrix Revolutions ended with a detente between the machines and the humans, Speed Racer finishes with a respectful distance left between his family's independent company and the almost benign Togokhan Racing. At least, that's how I saw it. I will admit I was more interested in the story as parable about one man chasing his dream, doing what he is built to do, and not letting anyone talk him down, but that's just where my head is at right now.


But enough of this. I want to lavish more praise on it. I've never really been a huge fan of John Goodman unless he's in a Coen Brothers film, but this is my favourite non-Lebowski performance by him. His sincerity won me over totally, as he screws up with one son and is given a chance to get it right with Speed. It's a testament to the skill of the Wachowskis that the scene where he attempts to bond with Speed at his lowest ebb is one of the best in the whole film, a finger in the eye of the doubters who insist the film is hollow.


Even better than Goodman (and I know Canyon will be pissed at me for saying it again [You are right. Foxy must be destroyed! -- Canyon]), Foxy is terrific as Racer X, playing it cool and mysterious for the most part, before opening up in two scenes towards the end that rank as my favourites in the whole film. He's come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and here he's in top form. Plus, he gets to beat up ninjas! Seeing him do some Neo moves on a bad guy made my nerd chip overheat. Also, much love to Owen Paterson, whose production design is a delight from start to finish, and Michael Giacchino, who delivers yet another wonderful soundtrack.

So yes, since seeing it, I've had images from the film popping up in my field of vision like a fever dream; the undulating desert landscape rolling behind Speed, the Eadweard Muybridge homage in the final race, cars exploding into flame and glitter, camera flashbulbs changing into love hearts, highways seen from a distance as glowing ribbons of light, oversaturated colours glowing during the single shootout, and, best of all, a Chim Chim cookie in a bad man's face. Even though I've been happy to rail against what I see as a dismissive critical attitude to it, at least some writers have been eager to point out how gorgeous the whole thing, and it is. It's new. It's something you've seen before done in a completely new way, and as such is a triumph of design, vision, and uncompromising chutzpah. I'd hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly, because it's obvious it's not going to be for everyone (and I have a terrible feeling it will lose out at the box office to both Iron Man and What Happens In Vegas, which would hurt my feelings as I cannot stand Kutcher or Diaz), but try it out, and maybe apply that litmus test. It might surprise you. Bravo, Wachowskis! Bravo!

Iron Man FTW!!!

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.


Though it might seem like these newly unpretentious storytellers have become blasé about the war, I see it as artists now attempting to figure out ways to live in this world instead of trying to figure out what went wrong and who we should blame, which gets us nowhere. Iron Man concerns one man willing to take responsibility for the way the world is, and tries to right that wrong. It's fair to say Ayn Rand would be disgusted with it.


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.


Peter Bradshaw, in a review I think was written moments after he stubbed his toe, so needlessly dismissive is it, carps that...

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.