Greatest Hits: A Review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It was only a matter of time until we got a new Star Wars movie, and yet, for those of us who were deeply disappointed pre-pubescents when George Lucas’s prequel trilogy hit theaters in the mid-2000s, the possibility that someone could recapture the magic we felt when we first encountered Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi seemed like a pipe-dream.

Recapturing the magic is the bar that The Force Awakens needed to clear, and I’m here to say that, at least in most ways, it cleared it. The seventh installment in the Star Wars saga is very self-aware. Some people have called it a straight-up remake of the original Star Wars, but it is more like a remix. It is sampling the best moments from the original trilogy and using them to establish a new set of characters. The plot does not develop in the most original and satisfying way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not successful.  If this movie’s main job was to get me excited about Disney’s new trilogy, then it was undoubtedly successful.

Director J.J. Abrams is as big a Star Wars fan as any, and his devotion for the original trilogy informs this movie deeply. The first 30 or so minutes of the movie are blockbuster filmmaking of the highest quality. We meet orphan scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), who lives inside an abandoned AT-AT, and waits for the parents who abandoned her to come back to the desert planet of Jakku. After a long day of work, Rey sits down to eat a meal and look at the horizon, but before she does, she puts on an old Rebel helmet. It’s a moment that directly calls back to Luke’s binary sunset, but is charged with nostalgia for the adventure of the movies we love.

Rey, like Abrams, is a fangirl. She has heard about Luke Skywalker and the Jedi (although she thinks it’s all a myth). She has also heard about the famous smuggler Han Solo, and how he made the Kessel run in *fourteen* parsecs. This is the most effective way in which The Force Awakens rhymes with the original trilogy. It has become, once again, a mythical adventure. Rey, like Luke, is the regular teen who will soon get to part of the battles that fuel her dreams. Abrams goes back to the most elemental fantasy of heroes and villains, and re-invents the original myth in the process.

Rey’s call to adventure comes in the form of a little droid called BB-8, which holds a map that could lead to the whereabouts of the legendary, and disappeared, Luke Skywalker. But Rey doesn’t know about the droid’s importance until she meets Finn (John Boyega), a sensible Stormtrooper who has defected, and is trying to escape the fascistic First Order. The meeting of these new heroes culminates in the movie’s most exciting action sequence. We are re-introduced to the Millennium Falcon, and the myth-making is finally complete.

It’s in the movie’s second act that things start to get a little shaky. This is when we finally see some familiar faces, most notably Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), both of whom join our young heroes in their journey. This is also when Abrams’s remixing of the original trilogy start to show its weaknesses. The callbacks are so evident, that it becomes easier and easier to spot what moment from the original trilogy is being referenced in each scene. By the time we get to the third act -which revolves around the destruction of yet another Death Star-like base- we know exactly what beats the movie is going to play.

Plot has never been Abrams’s strong-suit, but his direction is so strong, and the first act has done such a great job of establishing our main characters, that we can excuse the familiarity. Even if we are familiar with the plot points and story beats of the movie, we can find refuge in the characters’ reactions to everything that is happening around them. This is without a doubt the best acted Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back, and the performances are crucial in getting us invested in the new characters who are going to be at the center of this new trilogy.

Daisy Ridley and John Boyega have fantastic chemistry as Rey and Finn. Ridley is a wonderful discovery, and a great action heroine, while Boyega is immensely charismatic and very funny in what -somewhat surprisingly- ends up being the funniest Star Wars movie yet. But they’re not the only great new characters. I must mention Oscar Isaac, probably the best actor of his generation, killing it as Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. And Adam Driver, who gets to play Kylo Ren, the most complex villain so far in this saga.

Kylo Ren can be summed up as a more interesting version of what Lucas tried to do with Anakin Skywalker in the prequels. He is an overly emotional and temperamental young warrior. He prays at the alter of Darth Vader, and wishes he could be as menacing and evil as his idol. The problem is he has doubt. He is temped not by the dark, but by the light side of the force. There is good in him that he wants to annihilate. The struggle to be evil is one of the few thoroughly original ideas in The Force Awakens, and one that will surely play a big role in the movies that will follow it.

However, if we’re talking about great characters, then we must talk about BB-8, the most miraculous creation of this movie, and a immediate candidate for the best character in the history of Star Wars. An awesome silent robot with all the personality of a great silent comedian, I hope to see much more of him in future movies.

To put the whole thing into perspective: The Force Awakens has some of the most fascinating characters this franchise has ever seen, and they’re stuck in what is not exactly the greatest story. By adhering so closely to A New Hope, the movie gains the power of myth-making, but it loses in originality. Whatever emotion there is to the movie’s last act comes not necessarily from what happens, but from how our characters react to it. I never thought I’d say this about a Star Wars movie, but a lot of the emotion comes from the nuance in these actors’ performances.

I was excited and I was skeptical, but I think J.J. Abrams succeeded. I wouldn’t call The Force Awakens the best movie of the year or anything like that. But it is incredibly entertaining, always fun, often exciting, very funny, and I most definitely looking forward to spending more time with these awesome characters when Episode VIII comes around.

Grade: 8 out of 10

We Never Go Out of Style: A Review of Guy Ritchie’s ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’

The thick air of August is announcing the end of the summer, as will the slowing number of blockbusters that will make their way to our local theaters. Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., based on a television series remembered strictly by people over the age of fifty, sounds like the kind of uncertain hit that could benefit from removing itself from the peak of the summer movie season. It’s hard to figure out why exactly Warner Bros. thinks an overly stylish spy movie set in the sixties and based on forgotten material could be a big hit. Then again, Warner Bros. has historically been the most adventurous of the major Hollywood studios, and deserves a “thank you” for bringing us movies as distinctive as Mad Max: Fury Road and Where the Wild Things Are, and now The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

But before we get wrapped up in praise (which the movie deserves), one must point out thatThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. suffers from considerable limitations that were not present (at least not to the same extent) in the movies I mentioned above. The biggest of these limitations is the disposable nature of its plot, and the weak characterization of its main players. The movie’s main focus is the unlikely team-up of debonaire American agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and practically super-human Soviet spy Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), who must work with Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), the daughter of a German scientist who might be involved in a plot to build and sell illegal nuclear weapons.

It’s typical spy fare done in an honestly unremarkable way. One would have to be joking to suggest the plot is anything more than an excuse for Ritchie to indulge in some of the most lush and stylish images of the year. This is, at its core, a movie about three incredibly handsome people wearing gorgeous sixties fashion and parading all around the most beautiful Italian landscapes. And I have nothing against such a movie, especially when the main trio is played by an endlessly charismatic trio of actors: Hammer is having fun despite being stuck with a bad Russian accent and Vikander is one of the most talented (and beautiful) young actresses working today, but the stand-out of the movie is Cavill, who goes all-in with the suave womanizing nature of his character and breaks my heart by letting me know what he could’ve done with a less dour version of Superman.

It only makes sense that the movie is set in the sixties, because the insanely charismatic work of the main triumvirate -which is only helped by Elizabeth Debicki’s villainous turn as an Italian socialite and business woman- brings us back to an older time when movies were built around the magnetic personality of its stars. But stylish performances are only the beginning of Ritchie’s aesthetic interests which culminate in the movie looking like the most beautiful fashion commercial you have ever seen, paired up with the breakneck pacing, crazy camera angles, and jumpy chronology that tend to accompany the director’s work.

For all of his flair, Ritchie has never been a great action director, and the action sequences in Man from U.N.C.L.E. are no exception. Only in this case, Ritchie seems to have recognized his limitations. There are surprisingly little action sequences in the movie, which consistently opts for the less action-packed narrative option. This is emblematic of one of the movie’s best moments, when an aquatic action sequence is only glimpsed through a character that is sitting down removed from the action. And whenever we do get a more straight-forward action sequence, Ritchie is more focused in stylistic touches such as zooms and cross-cutting, which would be poisonous if it weren’t for Daniel Pemberton’s supreme score, which does wonders to unify the sequences.

“Style over substance” seems to be quite literally Ritchie’s conceit for this movie, and that’s not a bad thing. For all of its narrative shortcomings, the movie is full of interesting bits and clever visuals. For example, Ritchie does a pretty good use of using the background of a scene as a visual punchline in two of the movie’s best moments. The movie’s script might be too weak, and Ritchie’s vision too unfocused, but this is still bold direction, and makes for something much more interesting that we usually get from our blockbusters. If you like pretty people, pretty places, pretty clothes, and lots of style, you will probably like this movie too.

Grade: 7 out of 10

A Review of Christopher McQuarrie’s ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’

In a world of eternal movie franchises that are plotted out to stretch out little bits of story across years (if not decades), and where even James Bond has become needlessly serialized, the Mission: Impossible movies have emerged as the most valuable and enjoyable alternative to an endless parade of generic, low-stakes entertainment.

The secret to the franchise’s success? Tom Cruise. In the most literal and public way, because Mission: Impossible was Tom Cruise’s pet project all along. It was Cruise’s first movie as a producer, and it was personally cultivated to be his trademark action franchise. As such, the Mission: Impossible movies seem to have come out at key moments in which Cruise’s star-power seemed to have been in decline, as if they were there to remind us that he is still a valuable screen presence.

On a not so obvious way, Cruise has helped his franchise by virtue of being Tom Cruise. Not only as far as performance and charisma are concerned (although that plays a part too), but by having an undeniable interest in strong directorial visions. Throughout his career, Cruise has worked with such high-caliber auteurs as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Stanley Kubrick. When it came to finding a director for the first Mission: Impossible movie, he got Brian De Palma. The second entry in the franchise was directed by no less an action movie legend as John Woo, and the third by rising television auteur J.J. Abrams. Each of those movies -whether flawed of not- are showered in those auteur’s thematic and aesthetics interests.

Starting with the fourth entry, which was directed by Brad Bird, but showed relatively little of his auteurist tendencies except for his ability to stage incredible action sequences, the Mission: Impossible movies have become exactly that: a showcase for amazing set pieces directed by highly capable directors. In the case of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, this means Christopher McQuarrie, Oscar-winning writer of The Usual Suspects, who has recently reinvented himself as a frequent Cruise collaborator.

Most of the publicity for Rogue Nation has -rather exhaustingly- focused on the hanging-by-a-plane death-defying stunt that only a person as insane and insanely committed as Cruise could have possibly agreed to perform, but that sequence is only the movie’s cold opening. So, yes, one of the movie’s most impressive feats is not the stunt, but the fact that it doesn’t result in the movie peaking in its first five minutes. And while none of the subsequent action sequences are quite as “impressive” as the plane bit, they are nevertheless some of the very best sequences we’ve gotten all year.

Not to beat the Marvel punching bag yet again, but its movies do seem to be the standard for blockbuster filmmaking right now… In any case, nothing I’ve seen in any Marvel movie comes close to being as tense as this movie’s underwater espionage sequence, or as thrilling as the motorcycle chase sequence that follows. And even then, neither of those fantastic sequences are as perfectly executed and nail-biting as a brilliant set piece that takes place as the Vienna Opera House. In terms of invention, the sequences are not exactly iconoclastic, but their execution is on a level that I wish wasn’t as rare as it is nowadays.

Flawless execution seems to be the M.O. for Mission: Impossible as a franchise. After all, the plot of most of the movies in the franchise can be easily interchanged, and is rarely what you remember once the movie is over. These are slight entertainments, but they do adhere to a certain strict level of craftsmanship (especially in latter years). In this one, for example, McQuarrie (who also wrote the screenplay) toys with the idea of a post-Snowden spy movie, raising certain questions about whether we are right to trust our intelligence agencies. He doesn’t go as far as to turn the CIA and the U.S. government as the villains, but he flirts with the idea, and puts the British government in a rather unfavorable position.

Speaking of British government, let’s talk about the movie’s biggest asset outside of the action sequences. British actress Rebecca Ferguson plays the lead female role, and ends a streak of weak and unmemorable female characters in Mission: Impossible movies that was, frankly, my biggest objection to the franchise before watching this movie. She is Ilsa Faust, a double (or triple? or quadruple? It’s complicated) agent that crosses paths with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, and has far and away the most involving and interesting character arc in the whole film.

It helps, of course, that Ferguson proves herself an invaluable blockbuster performer. She is a surprisingly strong physical performer, running, punching, and kicking ass with the perfect posture and delicacy. The way she positions herself in front of the camera harkens back to the days in which spy movies (and tv shows) were just starting, and the silhouette of a sexy lady was one of the staples of the genre. She also harkens back to a past era in her emotional moments -with a good chunk of the movie taking place in Casablanca and her name reminding us of the classic Ingrid Bergman character- she feels as much of a movie-star as Cruise even though I had never seen her on screen before.

While her character is not quite as instantly iconic as Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, Ferguson, like that fierce Imperator, ends up being the driving force of a movie that was sold on the appeal of the lead male character. On that note, as far as this year’s action movies go, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is only second to Mad Max: Fury Road – considering the latter is one of the most insane and extreme action rides ever put on film, I intend this sentence as very high praise. 

Grade: 8 out of 10

You Know What Really Bugs Me? Insect Puns: A Review of Peyton Reid’s ‘Ant-Man’

A Marvel movie will aways be a Marvel movie. At this point, it’s become pointless to expect, or even hope, that any of their production will ever feel particularly exciting or distinctive. Ant-Man carries the burden of having once been the beacon of hope for people who were wishing Marvel would use the unmitigated success of their movies to experiment and push the boundaries of blockbuster filmmaking, and not to secure the profits of what was becoming one of the most valuable entertainment brands.

At the time it was announced, Ant-Man was to be written and directed by no less of an auteur than Edgar Wright, the beloved British director known for his clever pop culture parodies and audacious commercial bombs. This was the moment of truth. One of the most successful and powerful cultural brands and one of the most distinctive directors in the world would collide, and we couldn’t wait to see what would remain of the two. But it was not to be.

Wright was famously and controversially taken off the project sometime before filming began, and replaced by director Peyton Reed (by no means a slouch, having directed movies as good as Bring It On and Down with Love), and thus, Ant-Man comes into cinemas with relatively muted enthusiasm from those who are sad Wright is no longer at the helm, and others who find Ant-Man to be anticlimactically places as the follow-up to the gigantic Avengers: Age of Ultron. 

Curiously enough, it’s the fact that Ant-Man is so reserved, compact, and modest when compared to most of the other Marvel movies that actually makes it better than your average Marvel movie. It would be foolish to pretend that the movie isn’t trapped by the limitations that the Marvel formula has forced upon its properties, and there is no denying that certain moments make one daydream about what Wright’s version would have been like, but there is a clever simplicity to Ant-Man that makes it stand out in the sea of Marvel’s lackluster product.

The plot of the movie is more similar to that of the first Iron Man than to any of the bigger movies Marvel has made since. Our hero is Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a Robin Hood-type cat burglar who has just come out of prison and is unable to find a job that will allow him to provide for his young daughter Cassie. Luckily for him, an eccentric millionaire and inventor named Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) has decided that Scott is the man he needs to pull off an elaborate heist that will prevent evil executive Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) from using Pym’s technology to arm the world with an army of miniature soldiers.

You see, Pym’s technology is a suit that allows people to shrink to miniature proportions while actually increasing their strength and power so they they become basically human bullets. Hence, the code-name Ant-Man, used by Pym back in the day when he used to be a secret agent for the government and inherited by Scott once he puts on the suit. On this note, the fact that Pym chooses Scott and not his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) as his successor will be frustrating for those of us who complain about Marvel’s lack of female heroes. The movie does promise Hope will put on the suit in the future, but we want our female superheroes now, thank you very much.

The focus on the one white male as the hero of the story is undoubtedly frustrating, but it is almost required when your movie’s story is going to play as safe as Ant-Man does. The plot is overwhelmingly familiar. It goes through the exact peaks and valleys that you would expect and comes out solid and predictable. It says a lot about how many times Marvel has subjected us to giant flying objects threatening to destroy a city that them going back to such familiar and low-stakes story-telling feels like a breath of fresh air.

This is partly because Ant-Man‘s pleasures are nowhere near its plot, but it in a couple key aspects of its execution. The first is the fact that the movie is very funny. Edgar Wright and collaborator Joe Cornish are still credited for the screenplay, alongside Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd, who did some re-writes after Wright left the project. Their material, paired up with Reid’s sense for comedy, do a lot to make the movie as swift and entertaining as possible. Instead of feeling like it’s trapped by its conventions, Ant-Man‘s comedy makes it feel liberated from the fact that it is a cog in a giant machine. It feels like just a movie.

Rudd’s laid-back style of comedy make him a pretty nice addition to the Marvel roster. He seems almost minimalistic when compared to the outsized personality of Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark or the winky goofiness of Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord. Years of working in comedy have allowed Rudd’s comedy to feel effortless, which makes us accept the fact that he will crack some jokes as a given, and not as an act. And even despite Rudd’s solid work, the comedic stand-out of the movie is Michael Peña, so funny as Rudd’s burglar friend that he should be the one to get a superhero franchise.

The other key aspect of Ant-Man‘s execution is, believe it or not, the visual effects. The blockbuster ethos is to always go bigger. To always fight more aliens, and always destroy more cities. By being a hero whose power is to become small, Ant-Man gleefully subverts superhero formula by destroying the model of a building instead of an actual skyscraper and setting its final battle in the a little girl’s bedroom instead of a floating city.

Even though the story is something we’ve seen a million times, the action sequences feel fresh by going into territory that is usually seen in animated film. These sequences, shot from the protagonist’s point of view feel like some of the more adventure-oriented moments of a movie like Toy Story or Ratatouille. Because there is Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but otherwise, seeing a person deal with the dangers of being shrunk to insect proportions is not something we have seen a million times before.

Ant-Man is by no means a great movie, but it is so casually laid-back about its existence that it actually is fun to watch. I tend to advocate for more daring and innovative movies, even when they are not always successful, but sometimes I enjoy a movie just because it was well made and fun to watch, and I’m ok with that.

Grade: 7 out of 10

A T-Rex as Light as a Feather: An Extensive Review of Colin Trevorrow’s ‘Jurassic World’

Being the stubborn jerk that I am, I will probably lie on my deathbed trying to convince whatever nurse is trying to keep me alive that Jurassic Park is the best blockbuster movie ever made. Judging from anecdotally high number of people I noticed are excited for Jurassic World based on their love for the 1993 original, I don’t know if I’ll have to do much convincing. Indeed, not only is Jurassic Park a perfect movie of its kind, but people of my generation seem to know this.

Because we love Jurassic Park, and because we live in this day and age of wanting “more, more, more” of the things we love, everyone got excited for a sequel. However, as Jurassic World‘s very own plot points out (more on that shortly), “more, more, more” is not always a good idea. Case in point, Jurassic World is a huge mess of a movie. A bunch of noise that manages to turn watching dinosaurs fight into a boring activity.

What happened? Well, my first reaction would be to say that it was foolish of us to believe one could replicate the thrills of what is essentially a perfect movie in a sequel, let alone a sequel helmed by someone other than the original’s director (and I’m not even mentioning the fact that Spielberg himself already failed to make a worthy sequel years ago). But that sort of criticism is not constructive. Instead, why don’t we take our beloved Blockbuster Method, and try to figure out what exactly went wrong for Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World.

thE PLOT

Years have passed since the “incident” of the first Jurassic Park. Since then, we have managed to crack the code of how to do a pretty smooth job of running a theme park filled with dinosaurs. Jurassic World is a product-placement paradise that has made a lot of money for a lot of people, but the world is starting to get tired of dinosaurs. The beasts that once made us stare in awe are now so familiar that a teenage boy doesn’t flinch once before turning his back to a T-Rex exhibit when his mom calls him on the phone. The people visiting Jurassic World want “more, more, more” dinosaur action, just like us, the people who have payed money to see this movie.

That’s right, the movie is quickly to point its finger towards the audience that has come to relish in some dino action. The movie sees the audience’s (our) thirst for bigger, faster, stronger blockbusters is seen as a problem. The executives of Jurassic World, led by park director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), have concluded that the audience’s wishes for “more, more, more” will only be fulfilled with the creation of a new, genetically engineered, and man-designed dinosaur called the “Indominous Rex.” This new dinosaur is so big and smart that it doesn’t take long until it escapes its maximum-security cage and starts devouring people. There is also a subplot that includes a secret government plan to train Velociraptors and deploy them into war-zones to take down terrorists.

If we ignore the fact that most of this sounds rather ridiculous, the premise of the movie makes thematic sense. Audiences are hardly impressed anymore, the park executives defy nature by creating bigger, badder dinosaurs, the dinosaur is smarter than they thought, all hell breaks lose. Even the raptor part makes sense, as people get more used to dinosaurs and find new ways to use them to their advantage. I thought this was the movie’s way to set up a premise through which it would somehow manage to make us stare in awe at the sight of dinosaurs once again, but I was wrong. Jurassic World doesn’t even seem to try to inspire any kind of feelings in the audience. It decides to implicitly agree with the executives that believe that more equals better. It scolds the audience for lusting over bigger dinosaurs, then delivers the biggest dinosaur you’ve ever seen. And you feel nothing. Is this summer entertainment secretly a misanthropic exercise?

the action

A lot of Jurassic World‘s ridiculous and dumb plot-lines (and there are a lot, I have just scratched the surface) could be forgiven if the movie ended up being as crazy “more, more, more” action-oriented as the imaginary movie its bloodlust audience is supposedly dying to see. That is why Jurassic World‘s biggest problem is the fact that its action sequences are so terrible.

Many of the film’s detractors have thrown around a statistic that says only 15 minutes of the original Jurassic Park was dedicated to computer generated imagery. A lot of that movie’s most iconic moments were achieved through the use of animatronics. That is one of the reasons Jurassic Park still has some of the best-looking CGI despite being more than twenty years old. As in many behind-the-scenes stories, technology limitations resulted in better (and more creative) execution.

But there is more to Jurassic World‘s inept visual effects than the ubiquitous use of computers. If you want to read a longer and more detailed analysis of the situation, I recommend this piece on Cracked by David Christopher Bell. He wrote it before the movie even came out, but it perfectly points out at the problems that plague most contemporary blockbuster movies, and that were apparent in Jurassic World ever since we got a first glimpse of its trailer. If you don’t want to read the full article (although you should), most of this can be summed up to the fact that the effects in Jurassic World are weightless. The dinosaurs are so fluently animated that we can’t fail to recognize them as anything but cartoons.

The effects look even worse once you pair them up with the visual “look” of the movie. A look which, by the way, is not based on any creative decision, but in the fact that most movies these days are color-corrected to look bluer than they should. The CG effects look too shiny, the movie looks too blue (i.e. fake), and Trevorrrow’s direction (paired with the decisions of the post-production supervisors at Industrial Light and Magic) present the action in the most detached way possible. There are more dinosaurs, more gunshots, more blood, than in any other Jurassic Park movie, but it doesn’t make us feel anything. It is just there. Nothing awes, nothing amazes.

You don’t even have to go back to the original Jurassic Park to find a true sense of awe in blockbuster filmmaking. Peter Jackson managed to transmit how magnificent it was for Sam to see the computer generated Olyphants in The Two Towers, and the Dreamworks animators conveyed the exhilaration of soaring through the air for the first time in How to Train Your Dragon. It was all computers in both cases, but the effects meant something to the characters. There was a reason for us to invest in those images.

There is little reason to anything that happens in Jurassic World. The action sequences are not built around any kind of cause and effect. Once the Indominous Rex escapes its cage, it just prances around the island and encounters whatever character the script requires to have an encounter with it. Even though there are many maps on screen at many points, the movie’s sense of geography is never satisfying.The original Jurassic Park is a flawless example of letting us know what character is where, and who must be concerned about which dinosaur. This time around, there are too may characters to keep track of, and thus, every encounter with the deadly dinosaur seems to come out of nowhere. There is no momentum.

THE HEROES

It’s not a surprise that a movie about fighting dinosaurs will not be particularly interested in its human characters, but considering the CG creations fail to engage, we kind of have no choice but to try to find solace in the human heroes.

First of all, we have a couple of kids who are not only annoying, but terribly defined as characters. At some point, we are introduced to the fact that their parents are in the process of getting a divorce; a piece of information that doesn’t come up later and barely colors any of the kids’ actions during the movie except to maybe give us a simplistic and stupid reason for teenage Zach (Nick Robinson) to put younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins) in danger. And while we’re on the subject, Zach is clearly the worst character in the movie. He is nothing but a jerk the whole time, and none of his actions make any sense, except the fact that he spends most of the time ogling at girls, because he is a teenager. Listen, I’ve been a teenager. I know they do this sort of thing, but is that all you can give your character to do?

Anyway, the kids are just annoying. The character with the closest thing to an arc is Claire, the park director played by Bryce Dallas Howard. However, having an arc doesn’t mean that the arc is any good. She is presented as a soulless businesswoman who doesn’t know jack about dinosaurs (how did she get this job?) and that must learn to understand that there are things more important than her job. Like saving her stupid nephews (the two kids mentioned above) when there is a loose dinosaur that could kill everyone on the island.

The worst thing about Claire’s story is that she isn’t doing anything particularly wrong. Her job is to manage a theme park full of deadly creatures, I understand if she can’t take a day off to hang out with a couple of stupid kids. But the movie tries to shame her for not wanting to settle down and have kids. And what’s more, it suggests she is a terrible person for not knowing how old her nephews are. At no point during my childhood and teenage years, would I have expected my aunts and uncles to remember how old I was, and they’re all pretty good people. Hell, I can barely remember how old I am (although that might just be me). In any case, the movie’s treatment of Claire is horrible, which is a shame, because Bryce Dallas Howard is a very charismatic actress. She could have made a great lead in an action-adventure movie…

Especially paired up with Chris Pratt, who broke through big-time last year with the massive success of Guardians of the Galaxy, but plays a very different character here (probably because Jurassic World went into production before Guardians‘s massive success). Pratt is a tough guy who has managed to train velociraptors to follow his orders. He is the “cool” guy in the movie, and while he does some pretty awesome things, he seems more like a cartoon of a type of manly man than an actual human being. He is so tough and knowing of all things dinosaur that he remains unmoved throughout most of the movie. He always keeps his cool, which results in little tension and little engagement on my part.

the VILLAINS

There are some human villains, but why waste time writing about them? Vincent D’Onorfio plays some sort of army guy who wants to train raptors to fight terrorists. He is evil, that’s kind of it. The real villain of the movie is the Indominous Rex, which is an absolute failure of design. I’m not even kidding, this is one truly bad looking dinosaur. Are any of the other dinosaurs better designed? Well, I think the coloring of their skin makes most of them look too colorful (which makes them look even more fake). There is a giant water dinosaur so massive it got me kind of excited when it was introduced, but the movie doesn’t really spend much time with it. I will just stick with the T-Rex and Raptors of the first movie. Those guys had personality.

REPRESENTATION

There have been complaints about the sexist treatment of Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, but that to me is not as much sexism as the fact that the movie doesn’t even understand what a human being is. And as far as other representation is concerned, why are there American kids working minimum wage jobs in a theme park off the coast of Costa Rica? Shouldn’t most employees in low-level positions be Costa Rican? Because the kids operating these rides look like high school or college age. Are there working here during the summer, or what? It’s not a huge deal, but it makes me wonder if the people behind Jurassic World even cared about the movie they were making.

THEMES

It’s time to put an end to this long review, so let me ask, what is Jurassic World about? What does it have to say? The truth is this is just a mess of a movie. It sets itself up to establish a direct connection with its audience by addressing the very fact that we’ve come to see the movie, but ends up delivering a poor version of what it thinks audiences want. It presents us with a premise that must be disproven, but is instead accepted. How amazing would it have been if Jurassic World had made us relish in blockbuster energy once again? Well, that’s not the movie that was made. The movie that was made says that… Actually I’m not quite sure what it is saying. Is it saying that audiences are wrong to enjoy this? Or is it giving us license to enjoy this kind of mayhem? The truth is that with such a murky message, and such poor execution, there is little to take from the movie. There is always going to be a tiny bit of joy in seeing dinosaurs rumble on the big screen, but for the most part, Jurassic World is just noise.

Grade: 4 out of 10

Forwards, Backwards, and Forwards Again: The “Blockbuster Method” is Applied to Brad Bird’s ‘Tomorrowland’

One of the big struggles of my pop culture life has always been to understand the public’s relationship with the concept of “cool.” That is why, despite my interest in the subject, I’ve never been able to write coherently about music. Popular music, above all other arts and genres, seems to be harshly governed by a distinction between what is and isn’t cool. More often than not, I can identify what people will think is cool and what they will deem uncool. My problem is not recognizing what will people think about a piece of art, but not grasping why they think what they think about it. In my mind, there is no reason why liking Radiohead should be any less ridiculous than liking Taylor Swift (as a matter of fact, I prefer Swift immensely). Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me tell you about Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland.

I’m pretty sure Tomorrowland is the definition of an “uncool” movie. Building off of ideas about progress and invention that could easily be described as old-fashioned, the movie is too optimistic and idealistic for its own good. It is a noble attempt to reach out to the remaining dreamers in an otherwise cynical world that has given up hope, and thus, the incredibly cynical community that is film criticism has dismissed Tomorrowland as sugar-coated cheesiness. That’s all right. Tomorrowland wasn’t made for those critics. It was made for children, and the biggest compliment I can give the movie is that, had I seen it when I was nine years old, I would have been absolutely inspired by it.

Now, it must be said that for all its noble intentions, there are in fact, a number of disappointing flaws in Tomorrowland, and there’s no better way to analyze them than to use our very own “Blockbuster Method“®…

THE PLOT

Tomorrowland is quite obviously gets its title from one of the sections of Disneyland, but the movie isn’t quite based on the theme park. It would be more accurate to say that the movie is based on Walt Disney’s ideas about the future. It’s well known that Disney, especially in his later years, had a fascination for the future possibilities of technological advancement. That is why Disneyland had a “Tomorrowland” in the first place, and why one of Disney’s biggest dreams was the creation of his “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow” (or Epcot), a utopian paradise that would feed the creativity of innovators and inspire amazing ideas. The community never came to be, but the idea behind it lives on in Tomorrowland. 

That is why the movie starts out at the New York World’s Fair of 1964, a time when -the movie tells us- the future was still brimming with possibility. Young Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) is just a boy, but he has already managed to build a jet pack. His invention doesn’t make the cut, but a mysterious girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) gives him a special pin that allows Frank to be transported to Tomorrowland: a futuristic secret world where creative minds live side-by-side and everything’s possible.

It isn’t until that prologue is over and we’re transported to the present day that Tomorrowland really gets going. As a matter of fact, I wonder if that 1964 sequence was designed as a flashback for later in the movie and transported to the beginning after some sort of test screening, because it doesn’t really do much for the movie. If anything, it kind of spoils some of the plot’s secrets even before the movie has properly started. Anyway, that proper start is the moment we meet Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), a high schooler with a thirst for knowledge and invention that finds herself in the position of a magical pin that momentarily transports her to Tomorrowland.

Casey is fascinated by the incredible things the pin allows her to see, and so, she begins a quest to find a way to reach this amazing place of futuristic innovation. Her search brings her to team up with the adult Frank Walker (George Clooney) and the aforementioned Athena as they try to go back and safe a Tomorrowland that was once full of wonder, but has now fallen into uninspired decay. This sounds like a pretty cool premise for a movie, doesn’t it? Well, the problem with Tomorrowland is that by giving you this brief summary I’ve already given away roughly half of the movie.

From there, the movie goes to some interesting places. Casey’s journey is entertaining because it harkens back to the kind of old-fashioned but edgy children’s adventures that were popular in the eighties and early nineties. The kind in which typical American life is interrupted by the sudden and mysterious presence of a fantasy and science fiction element. But once we get to our destination, Tomorrowland doesn’t seem to have enough payoff to serve its own set-up. The movie’s third act provides us with thematic value, but with little wonder and less excitement than the middle section.

The screenplay for Tomorrowland –written by Bird and Damon Lindelof- is quite a mess. Too much time is spent on that ’64 flashback, and there are many aspects of the story (Casey’s family life, for example) that are not only under-explored, but treated with uninspiring laziness. That being said, Tomorrowland is far more ambitious in its themes and ideas than most of what passes for blockbuster entertainment nowadays. It certainly has its sight on a much more grandiose goal than anything Marvel has ever put out. It only manages to reach said goal sloppily, but that’s more than enough to be commended.

THE ACTION

Considering Brad Bird’s previous credits include The Incredibles and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by the fact that there isn’t anything as iconic as the Burj Khalifa scene or Dash’s run on water in Tomorrowland. We do get a couple of great action set pieces. One of them is quite prominent in the trailers. It takes place in George Clooney’s character’s house, and makes good use of the fact that he is an inventor, and thus, has filled his house with booby-traps. It’s a pretty cool scene, but the action stand-out comes earlier in the movie. The fight is set at a nerdy vintage store, and it involves little girl Athena kicking some serious ass.

As is usual with this type of movies, however, the big climactic battle is the least exciting of the action sequences. But this is in large part due to Tomorrowland not wanting to be an action movie as much as it wants to be a children’s science fiction movie. Despite the well-choreographed scenes that come before the finale, Tomorrowland‘s biggest successes are neither its plot nor its action, but its themes.

THE HEROES

The actors who play the three main heroes do a good job of working around the movie’s limitations. Britt Robertson does well considering how, despite being the lead of the movie, Casey has by far the least developed backstory of the characters. She is introduced to us a “special” genius, but we see relatively little of her intelligence, since it’s more about her having good ideas and being an optimist than about her *doing* stuff. She is a thinker, not an inventor. Similarly, most of her motivation comes from innate thirst for knowledge, which is really nice to see in a girl character, but is not enough for the filmmakers, who tag in a relationship with her father that ends up being more cliched than meaningful.

Meanwhile, George Clooney proves to be invaluably cast as Frank Walker. He has the looks of a classic matinee star (the kind that would have graced the screens of 1964), but he plays a cranky curmudgeon who has lost the ability to dream. Frank is more of a grandpa than a movie star, but by casting Clooney, we can imagine a future in which Frank is not an isolated pessimist, but a handsome hero. It works pretty nicely, and Clooney’s game delivery of the movie’s comedy certainly doesn’t hurt.

The clear standout among our heroes, however, is Raffey Cassidy as Athena. I already talked about the awesome action sequence at the shop, but Athena has so much more going for her than being a little girl with amazing fighting skills. She is the most original and exciting character in the film because she, rather surprisingly, has the most poignant backstory and the clearest emotional arc. Athena is also a triumph of casting. Cassidy is not only a very charismatic child actor, but she has the look and attitude of a young Angela Cartwright, which makes her completely believable as a product of the 60s.

THE VILLAINS

Hugh Laurie plays the bad guy, but he doesn’t get much to do. If we’re being completely honest, Tomorrowland‘s real villain is not a person but a mindset. The movie is trying to fight against the inertia that comes with the cynicism of thinking the world is doomed. This movie argues -rather validly- that we have come to just accept the fact that the earth is doomed. That the fear of the future has made us stop dreaming, and stop fighting to make it better. If anything, Tomorrowland is designed as a call to arms, as a form of inspiration for a generation of young children, telling them that they can -and should- try to make the world better.

THE THEMES

Tomorrowland has a noble message, no doubt about it. But how does the movie go on about spreading said message? Ever since The Incredibles came out, a lot has been said about Brad Bird perhaps being an objectivist. The idea of a fantastical land where great minds are free to do whatever they want surely sounds objectivist on paper, but while Bird’s vision clearly starts with a little of Ayn Rand, it goes into far more socialistic directions. The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Tomorrowland all end with collaboration. With people not being able to do it alone, but with the world collaborating and doing their part in greatness. Such views might not be that popular in our inclusive age where every child gets a prize just by participating, but it is realistic. Some people are more exceptional than others, and that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our part to play.

This is a good place to point out how Tomorrowland‘s message can hinder the structure of the movie. By trying to be a movie about collaboration, Tomorrowland sacrifices the clarity of Casey’s hero’s journey. She is initially presented as “special”, as the one who will change the fate of Tomorrowland and the world. By the end, she has worked together with Frank and Athena to enact change, but she hasn’t been your typical chosen one. It’s an interesting discrepancy that is wrongly accentuated by the movie’s messy script. The movie could’ve done much better with Casey’s uniqueness being tossed out completely. Making her just one of many exceptional minds would’ve been the more coherent -and valuably original- way to go.

As for the movie’s ultimate message, many critics have decried the film’s sermonic approach and its hokey optimism. I find those qualities appropriately cheesy. This is, after all, a movie about caring. About taking things seriously, and about being an optimist. It’s quite telling that the movie harkens back to ’64, because while the sixties provided the culture with innumerable valuable social changes, they also ushered in decades of cynic coolness. Ever since I can remember, caring has always been uncool. Tomorrowland asks us to care. It asks us to be bright and shiny instead of dark and gritty.

The thing about Tomorrowland is that its message is far too ambitious to be perfectly supported by its execution. There is nothing particularly bad about the movie, but there is the feeling that such grandiose themes could have only worked within an equally superb product. At this point, it’s not worth it to think about what could have been. What we have, is a plucky, if imperfect, movie that spends all of its energy (and it has lots of it) trying to communicate with its audience. Tomorrowland is not only earnest, but it is proud of it. It might be old-fashioned, and it might be uncool, but its ambition is so big and its intentions so noble that I can’t help but admire it.

Grade: 7 out of 10

A Long and Winding Review: The Blockbuster Method is Applied to ‘Mad Max Fury Road’

Before I saw Mad Max: Fury Road, I had only seen three George Miller movies in my life, and none of them belonged to the Mad Max series. In fact, domestic drama Lorenzo’s Oil, which features amazing performances by Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte, it’s kind of the complete opposite of a Mad Max movie. In any case, the reasons I was unfamiliar with this franchise is the fact that Miller has spent the last ten years of his life dedicated to the dismal Happy Feet movies, the first of which inexplicably earned him an Academy Award despite being a very mediocre piece of family entertainment. The fact that his last two movies had been these penguin adventures had me very weary of the fact that, despite a pretty crazy trailer, Mad Max: Fury Road could be any good…

Then the reviews started coming out, and it was clear that the world -or at least the small percentage of the world that lives on the internet and obsesses over movies- had fallen in love with the fourth entry in Miller’s post-apocalyptic saga. Having seen the movie, I should have known better. This isn’t the George Miller that makes dancing cgi penguins, this is the George Miller that came with the expressionistic fantasy that is Babe: Pig in the City. The sequel to 1995’s Babe, which Miller produced, wasn’t very popular upon release, but must be revisited by any film-fan who appreciates a filmmaker with a crazy imagination.

Crazy imagination is only the appropriate way to refer to a movie like Mad Mad: Fury Road. How a movie as insane as this one got made in the first place is one of the great mysteries of our times. My guess is Miller used the fact that his movie was based on a pre-existing franchise to somehow get Warner Bros. to give him 150 million dollars to go crash cars and explode trucks in the Namibian desert. The origin might be dubious, but the result is invigorating. Mad Max doubles down on extreme weirdness, and runs over the CGI apes and comic-book properties of recent blockbusters. If this were a perfect world, Mad Max: Fury Road would usher a golden age of big-budget action filmmaking. In reality, it will probably end the weekend outgrossed by Pitch Perfect 2.

At the end of the day, it’s not a huge deal. No matter what happens in the future, we will always have this movie. But don’t just take my introductory word for it. Accepting Fury Road at face value might be fun, but what we -and action filmmakers- need to do, is understand why it is as good as it is. Well, since it seemed to work pretty well when I reviewed Age of Ultron, I’ve decided to apply the Blockbuster Method® (which is what I’ve decided to call the six-step analysis I developed to judge the merit of Hollywood blockbusters) to Mad Max: Fury Road. 

The Plot

A lot of people would say there isn’t much plot to Mad Max: Fury Road. And they’re kind of right. The movie is practically made up of one long, massive chase sequence, but while the particulars of the plot are not essential to one’s enjoyment of the film, the larger ideas behind the plot had me as excited for the existence of Fury Road as its wild action sequences. Now, “larger ideas” is not something you might have expected to find in Fury Road, and to be totally honest, said ideas are not all that complex. Which doesn’t mean they’re not exciting. Because if you get right down to the core of it, Miller has made one of the most badass feminist movies I’ve ever seen.

I’ll get more into the “themes” and “representation” of the movie later in this review. Right now, let us concentrate on the practical mechanics of the plot. Turns out Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), although a constant and valued presence during most of the movie, isn’t really the protagonist. He is just trying to make it out of this ridiculous adventure in one piece. The real character arc belongs to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a one-armed female warrior trying to lead a group of young concubines in an intricate plan to escape the oppressive regime that has developed in the wake of the apocalypse.

This new society is totalitarian, based on the scarcity of basic living resources and, of course, dominated by men. Most specifically, it is dominated by a grotesque warlord by the name of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). The details aren’t fully explored, but from what I can infer, Joe is one of the few males that have the privilege to procreate, or at least, to engage in sexual activities indiscriminately. It’s also pretty clear that it’s really hard to bare healthy children in this dystopia. That is why Joe is particularly upset that one of the runaway concubines is pregnant with his child.

Under Joe’s rule, women, depending on their age and attractiveness, are either his concubines or used to harvest breastmilk out of their bodies. And that’s if you’re lucky. Women among the masses are just dirt poor malnourished beggars. The one exception seems to be Furiosa, the lone female that has somehow risen into the upper echelon of the warrior class. It’s understood that Furiosa has done some pretty terrible things in order to become an “Imperator”, and her escape plan to help the young maidens, is fueled by an inner search for redemption. 

The Action

But enough about the plot, let’s talk about the action! Because, let’s face it, most people will go into Mad Max: Fury Road to see some death-defying stunts and explosions. Those people will not be disappointed. Case in point, when we got out of our screening, my girlfriend told me this was the first action movie in a long time that had earned raw emotional reactions from her. This was very illuminating for me in understanding the movie’s strengths. I agree with her. I last time I felt truly exhilarated by an action movie was last year’s Snowpiercer, which shares a lot of similarities with Fury Road in the action department.

First of all, there is very little use (or at least noticeable use) of CG in the movie. You can be amazed by the sequences in Fury Road, because despite how batshit insane they are, you recognize that these are actual cars driving through the actual desert and performing actual stunts while surrounded by actual explosions. It is pure madness of a tactile variety that will actually make you feel the thrill of the chase. And the thrill of action is one of the most primal elements of cinema. It is a true illusion. It is why watching Buster Keaton driving a locomotive in The General will always be infinitely more thrilling than the CG-infused finale of any Marvel movie.

The second big aspect is in the stakes of the action. Both Fury Road and Snowpiercer can be very violent movies, but they are also movies that have a meaningful engagement with their action. Action in these movies isn’t airless and shiny as in most of Hollywood’s four-quadrant-blockbusters, even when it is overtly cartoonish and over-the-top, the violence is colored with an uncomfortable sense of dread. Missing limbs, gross scars, deformed people, they are all present to point out the nightmarish results of a system built around the exercise of violence.

And while we’re on the topic of color, we must talk about the aesthetics of the movie. Instead of the usual monochrome grey of most dystopian stories, Miller saturates his movie in a way that seems designed to parody recent action movies. You know how mainstream action movies tend to build their visual style around the juxtaposition of teal and orange? Well, Miller and cinematographer John Seale take it to the point where the color palette becomes ridiculous, with long stretches of the movie completely ignoring the rest of the color wheel. The result is not only cheeky, but highly effective. Seeing something green becomes a luxury.

As for the design elements, the movie seems deeply indebted to the spirit of the eighties, when two thirds of the original Mad Max movies were made. More specifically, though, Fury Road looks like a world designed by an eleven year-old who has just discovered crystal meth. Who else, in his right mind, would include a mutant guitarist hanging on wires and a wall of amps as part of the design of one of these battle cars? And this crazy design actually ends up being a thematic strength. It becomes part of Fury Road‘s feminist bend the moment it presents us with a group of women trying to escape the oppression of a world designed by a pubescent boy.

The Heroes

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: the star of this show is Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa. Not only does she own this movie, but she is perhaps the greatest female action hero of my lifetime (for context, I was born in ’92). With Furiosa, Miller and Theron have struck a beautiful balance in terms of how the phrase “strong female character” should be understood. Furiosa is not there to serve as the initially awesome, but ultimately secondary helper to the protagonist hero (think of Trinity in The Matrix, or Wildstyle in The LEGO Movie), nor does she sacrifice emotional complexity for physical strength (it’s not he best example, but right now I can only think of Lucy).

The most pleasantly surprising thing about Furiosa, is that you can see how she has not been designed to satisfy men (as in male audiences). She has designed to be a great character. The movie might bare Max’s name, but it understands who the star of the show is. This doesn’t mean that Max is not a valuable part of the movie. In fact, Hardy’s performance as Max might be one of the best performances he has ever delivered, and a surprising one in that it reveals him as a truly gifted physical and comedic performer.

The beauty of Fury Road is that it is willing to share the wealth among its two heroes. If everyone’s talking about Furiosa coming out of the movie, it’s because her character is a unicorn; often impossible to find in mainstream entertainment, whereas we have seen a couple of Maxes before (I mean, he did headline three movies before this one). In praxis, they make a delightful duo. One of the movie’s biggest feminist statements is that Max and Furiosa are equals, as exemplified in an awesome moment when Max wants to shoot a distant enemy and hands the gun to Furiosa, knowing she will do a better job.

The villains

But let’s talk about Fury Road‘s other, more subversive, feminist statements. Before we do, however, we will have to talk about the movie’s main villain, Immortan Joe, and how he plays into the movie’s themes. He is, after all, the man who has created this oppressive universe. And even though he derives his power from the possession of water and other resources, the real fuel of his world is testosterone. Joe’s is a deeply religious warrior society, primitively based on the idea that the strongest man must rule, and were fanaticism supplies the Immortan with an army of younger fighters willing to die for him, as expressed in their battle cry “I live, I die, I live again!”

What exactly is Miller’s critiquing through this depiction? Well, religion has been a historic oppressor of women’s rights, but I think the most important element of Miller’s critique is the dogmatic nature with which the people under Joe’s rule -especially the warriors- have bought into his discourse. These are all blood-thirsty men who have bought into Joe’s masculine ideals. He has presented them with an idea of what it means to be a man, and with a path that will let them live forever (not unlike the idea of righteous honor and legacy that fuels the military). Joe’s society is presented as oppressive and perverted, but it is closely based on some of the core ideals that men have turned into the pillars of our own.

THE representation and themes

In this case “Representation” and “Theme” go hand-in-hand, as Mad Max: Fury Road presents us with one of the most appealing and refreshing messages of any blockbuster in a long, long time. Miller presents us with a dystopian world created by the brute power of man, and argues that the way to fix such a twisted reality is to give the power to women. Very importantly, while Furiosa is the central and most powerful of the women, she is not alone in her fight. Other women fight beside her. Mad Max: Fury Road might very well be the best piece of publicity Hilary Clinton could’ve asked for.

If there is any representative element that made a little uncomfortable is the movie’s depiction of people with disabilities. If only because I am not quite sure how the movie feels about this. On the one hand (no pun intended), you have a character like Furiosa, who is a fearless military leader despite missing an arm. On the other, you have a number of characters among Joe’s allies that are presented as “deformed” (possibly inbred) grotesques. I would have to watch the movie again before making any conclusions about this aspect, but I think raising these types of flags about representation when talking about major mainstream pieces of media.

Putting that question aside, though, Mad Max: Fury Road is a fantastic and far more thoughtful experience than I was expecting from a movie about cool cars driving through the desert. It’s hard to imagine there will be a better, more exciting, and more thematically satisfying blockbuster coming out of Hollywood in the near future. And even if it never comes, we will always have Fury Road. 

Grade: 9 out of 10