Milius

Milius (Zak Knutson, Joey Figueroa, 2013) The title would be referring to John Milius of the notorious USC Brat-pack, pal of Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese, Zemeckis, and writer/director/producer of some good films—like Dillinger, The Wind and the Lion, Big Wednesday, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, Farewell to the King—those he directed. He wrote (or co-wrote) 1941, Jeremiah Johnson, Dirty Harry and Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now, and contributed to little projects like Jaws (the U.S.S. Indianapolis speech) and The Hunt for Red October (Sean Connery liked him, which makes me suspect he worked on The Rock, too). One suspects he was the model for Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski—even this documentary does—but, that might just be speculation.

 

I was recording a commercial once with a football player and he said he'd just come back from making a movie. "Which one?" I asked. "Conan The Barbarian," he replied. "Oh, I want to see that one," I said. "Oh, good," he smiled. "You a Conan fan?" "Not particularly," I said. "But I really like John Milius' movies." His smile tightened. "Man," he said. "That guy's nuts."

 

Maybe. He is certainly a maverick in every sense of the word. A burly, gun-loving raconteur who talked big and loud and often preposterously, but with a twinkle in his eye. He is a romantic who hates love scenes, a historian of the John Ford school ("If the legend becomes fact, print the legend"), and has a fine sense of the absurd. 

He doesn't make little movies. The ones he makes are about brio and talking big and having big dreams. His movies swagger, but his characters don't, and they have an old-fashioned movie-showman sense to them that bring a smile to the face, even if you're shaking your head at the loutishness of it. He wanted to do Apocalypse Now because Orson Welles had tried (and failed) to make a movie of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." As a script-doctor, he was more of a script-puncher, pushing movies places that they'd might not intended to go. But, one could ignore the theatricality...or avoid the temptation.

The movie takes a look at Milius' career—the tag-line "Man/Myth/Legend" is appropriate—with his film-making compatriots, all of whom have obvious affection for him, even if it's a rueful "That's John" smile. At the time of the film—2013—Milius was battling back from a debilitating stroke that had interfered with his speaking—the brain was functioning but he was having difficulty speaking and writing—which leaves you on a tragic note. Spielberg almost breaks down: "That's the worst thing I could imagine happening to a story-teller."

 

One wishes him well. One does not want the story to end.

The Golden Compass

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return"

Genesis 3:19

Oh, there have been howls in the wilderness over the film The Golden Compass, and not the kind you'd expect from anything like armored polar bears. 

No, indeed. The Catholic Church (which's taken a few knocks lately) and the Catholic Legion of Decency have awakened like vampires and condemned this film, based of Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels (under the title "His Dark Materials" published between 1995 and 2000)--though the Legion is remarkably silent over the Church's own trespasses. 

Then there are those fans of the books who are beating their breasts with their Anniversary Editions saying that it doesn't do "justice" to them.

Well, checking my own personal Alethiometer, I can say they're both wrong, if not downright irrelevant in their arguments. The Catholics' stance won't do anything but help the movie.* If they really wanted to prove they meant business they could excommunicate Catholic Nicole Kidman, but I think that would generate so much sympathy that folks might even forgive her for Bewitched! And the "chapter-and-versers" will just have to live with the fact that "books is books" and "movies is movies", and both media have their story-telling strengths that are oftentimes incompatible with each other.**

Enough of the controversy, how's the movie? Immensely satisfying for a first chapter (and half-a-movie). There are unresolved issues galore, confused motivations, and the lurking feeling that things might have played out a bit faster than the time it takes to say "To Be Continued" three times fast. But the production design is killer, the performances are good (though Daniel Craig has little to do, or offer, as Lord Asriel), and the effects work is exemplary. The Golden Compass takes place in a world not too unlike our own, except that, instead of souls, people have "daemons," animal-like wraiths who shape-shift until maturity sets in for the host. 

The academics are attempting to trace the cosmic origins of "dust," a move frowned upon with great furrows by the Magisterium (headed by Derek Jacobi and...Christopher Lee, so you know they've got to be bad!) As is shown often in the film's many scenes of combat, when a person is killed their daemons go *poof* into little whisps of CGI powder with the "glimmer" program turned on "HIGH." It is this "dust," which The Church...sorry...Magisterium wants to suppress all knowledge of, despite the fact that it's right there before your very eyes. Evidently, this "dust" is a threat to the Magisterium's political power in this World. Hence, the conflict between them and the "academics." Lord Asriel has photographic evidence of this dust falling from the heavens and entering humans through the daemons--so our link to the cosmos is via "dust-bunnies" of a sort.

That's the background dust...er, stuff.

Our heroine, Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), is a headstrong urchin of an orphan living at Oxford as the ward of Lord Asriel, an explorer-adventurer of some note and seeker of the truth about this "dust" business, the mention of which is considered heresy by (and produce much paroxysms in) The Magisterium. Lord Asriel goes off adventuring and Lyra is entrusted with an Alethiometer, a Golden Compass, which will tell her the truth of a subject if its asked in precisely the right way--not unlike a Press Spokesman. She also comes under the slinky thumb of Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, in full "evil-squint" mode), who does "official business" for The Magisterium, whom, she explains, "tells people what to do...but in a nice way...to keep things working." 

Lyra is always being told to behave, yet, she has, as her two mentors, two head-strong people who like to say "no one tells me what to do." So, soon Lyra is rebelling, and escapes from Mrs. Coulter (in a scene that, in all the discourse, is given dramatically short-shrift) and embarks on a series of adventures that entails the kidnapping of two of her friends, a hook-up with a band of the takens' parents, a countrified aeronaut (Sam Elliott, never more twinklingly courtly), and a displaced prince of a polar bear playing "Hamlet."

It's this section where the film really shines. The bears are marvels of CGI animation with wonderful actors like Ians McShane and McKellan (What? Him...again? Can they make a fantasy film without this guy?) breathing life through their vocal performances. One sight that made me laugh was during the Big Fight for "Polar Bear King," when Iorek Byrnison (McKellan's bear) has his armored head-piece knocked off and the camera (computer?) follows it to the edge of the ring, where the spectator-bears stare curiously dumb at it. The film is awash with pictorial touched like that, that fill in and make this world real whenever the story-telling turns miserly.

Performances are uniformly fine--though Craig under-performs. Perhaps he'll be given more to do later, although it's pretty apparent who of the characters you're supposed to be rooting for early on. Time will have to tell. But it's quite good for being half-a-movie. Certainly it makes you anticipate the sequels.

It has been reported in the news that the Vatican has been "consoled" by the film's less-than-golden opening receipts. But probably less than they were when "Deliver Us From Evil" or Spotlight underperformed.

HBO is doing a marvelous 3 season series of Pullman's books, with lovely detail to the material.

* Showing off my talents as a prognosticator, the film did poorly at the box office and plans for other films in the series were canceled by NewLine. The entire series of films is being done—and done quite well—for HBO, which has so much money from "Game of Thrones," they can afford to offend the Catholic Church. By the way, with my margin or error, I have the makings to be your average pollster!

** Trouble is NewLine Cinema, which was perfectly alright with 3.5 hour versions of Tolkien, but did not want this one to be 3 hours long and so they took back the film from Chris Weitz and cut a great deal of material from it, rendering it a bit hedgy in the exposition and transition department.

Up in the Air

The Economy and how it grinds up people has been on my mind of late. Here are some movies I've written about in that subject matter. 

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Passing Over"

Down in the lower right hand corner of this review (and every review on BXC) there's a space for meta-data to help readers find similar personnel, year of release, director, major stars—basically general stuff.

But I also like to put the genre of where the film would fit, say, at the video store—nothing too specific. Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air is the first one to have me stumped. I lean towards "drama," but it's too clever and funny to meet that description. It's not a "comedy" as it deals with pain and contemporary issues that most comedies (most modern comedies, at least) steer clear of—although it's tempting to say that it's a "Judd Apatow comedy" for adults, taking on his basic "growing up" arc, but with a more mature, melancholy overtone. Yet it made me laugh out loud fairly regularly. And it made me think of what a sorry mess we're in.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate hit-man for hire. His company (run by a tight-smiled cut-throat Jason Bateman) provides a termination service for struggling companies. Bingham flies to the home-offices and fires the people the weasley exec's are too cowardly to break the news to face-to-face. And business is booming.

"This is the biggest financial melt-down in our nation's history" crows Bateman's CEO. "This is our moment." And to make the most of it, he's hired a new 23 year old tyro named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who gets perpetually lost in the lunch-room in the "Twilight" movies*), who hopes to streamline the down-sizing process by doing it over the internet, rather than in person.

This throws the well-managed world of Bingham into a tizzy. No more frequent flier miles which he collects like office-absconded paper-clips. No more stipends and luxury cars for hire, and platinum service lounges. He'll be flying coach rather than first-class. Worse than that, he'll be stuck in a cubicle going nowhere, considerably worse than coach.

Not only will he have to get his own drinks, he may have to get a life. Bingham is in a groove, as personal and as transitory as the swipe of a card-reader. He is constantly between Point A and Point B and prides himself on finding the most efficient route. His life is reduced to a minimum of baggage—carry-on's with wheels that don't squeak, a packing ritual as choreographed as a Fosse number down to the split-second, and little contact with family. He knows the airport routine cold. And as a sideline, he gives lectures on travelling efficiently in the air and in life. "Our attachments weigh us down," he intones to his conference rooms of drones. "The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. We are not monogamous swans. We are sharks."

Clooney's in full smug mode—a variation of his divorce attorney Miles Massey from Intolerable Cruelty played straight—he practically marches to the beat of "Come Fly With Me" and his smile is as practiced and measured as his patter...with everyone, business associates and family. His character has a part to play and when the show's over, it's "me" time, like the "James Bond" fantasy of living the high life while doing dirty jobs. Everything is first-class and preferred customer, his one goal being a targeted accumulation of miles over a life-time—his own personal best. He has an apartment, but he's never in it and it has the same empty utilitarian ambiance of a Ramada Suite. He's the personification of "fly-by-night" in slip-off shoes.

So are his relationships, such as they are. At the same time that he is forced to show Natalie "the ropes" of the "down-sizing" business, he's established a "ships that pass in the night" fling with fellow traveller Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga, finally getting a role that has more heft than "girlfriend"). Natalie, who probably has a Power-Point presentation for how her life is going to go ("I should be driving an Explorer by 23"), is horrified at the casualness of it all. She's just out of the starting blocks and doesn't know the pit-falls of the track ahead, with all the confidence and brashness of someone who doesn't know what she doesn't know, and how theory reacts when it collides with reality. It's a crash-course in transitioning, on the job and in real life, and the two veterans try to bring the kid down easy—at least to get her to remember to lock her wheels.

There'll I'll leave it, for to tell too much will ruin it. But I admire any movie that acknowledges the mature adult, that attempts to show that a life is segmented, complicated and compromised, where dreams could come true, but mostly don't, where decency is its own reward and the idea of "soul-mates" is a lot of hooey. A lot of hooey to sell soap.

And movies.

Jason Reitman grew up in movies—his father is Ivan Reitman—and with his first three films (the others being Thank You for Smoking and Juno) he has shown himself all too willing to throw sabo's into the gears of the Hollywood Dream Factory,** making contemporary movies of stylish form about tough choices and compromised principles in today's America, while still keeping them highly entertaining and unpretentious. One hopes he can sustain that promise and not flirt with issues of the elite, as so many of his peers have in the past, and buy into the fairy tale myth of mainstream Hollywood.

One hopes he can keep his feet on the ground.

* Kendrick is great, no doubt about it, but one hears a whine of feed-back in the false amplification of her performance. It is nuanced and studied, alright, and just a tinge robotic. The joy in the performance is watching the gears seize, the plugs mis-fire, and the LED's in her eyes dim. It's like watching a puppet turn into a real live girl. But she doesn't blow the other stars away, or "steal the movie." There's just a whiff of Dream Factory hype in this talk. As long as it stays in the publicity and stays off the screen, I'm all for it.

** If you do want an unequivocal happy ending and an example of dreams coming true, stay to the end of the movie. Reitman is a very generous man. And the song manages to perfectly distill the movie.

The Good Dinosaur

Dinosaurs Should Be Pleistocene and Not Heard
or
Bronto's/Meet the Bronto's/They're an Altered Timeline Fantasy

Disney/Pixar's The Good Dinosaur has had a troubled history. Originally intended for theater release November 27, 2013, it was only sent out this Thanksgiving, after much tinkering, the dismissal of the original creator/director, and some extensive re-working. With Pixar, that's usually not a bad thing. In the past—specifically, the excellent Ratatouille and Brave—the results of the re-working have been spectacular. 

Here, not so much.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong. Technically and aesthetically, there is a sizable leap in the results. The movie LOOKS spectacular. It is as if the Pixar animators plunked goofy looking dinosaurs in the middle of a "Nature" documentary—evidently the big digital break-through here is multi-layered clouds and getting them "just-so"—so impressive is the mock photo-realism of the landscapes. And landscapes are a big part of the story as they have to be traversed and conquered throughout the film.

It's just that the story isn't that great. Maybe it wasn't that good to begin with. Maybe it was "improved" and "re-thought" into a a messy goo. Whatever the reason, it's just not that fine a concept, it's just not that good an idea. From any other studio (like Dreamworks, or, god forbid, Nickolodeon) The Good Dinosaur would be a prestigious effort (if only because it wasn't going for the "laff" factor). But from Pixar, which, just this year came out with one of their best films, if not exactly in the animation department, the wise, imaginative Inside Out, this one is a disappointment. Not in the Cars 2 type of balderdash, but in the Monsters University realm.

The idea is that we're in an alternate Universe where the asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago did not do so, saving the indigenous dominant life on the planet—that supposedly being dinosaurs—from extinction. After millions of years of evolution, the dinosaurs have now developed societies and language. We first meet a family of brontosauri (they might be apatosaurs for all I know, because they've been cartooned into having the look of Albert the Alligator from the old "Pogo" newspaper strips). The bronto's, being vegetarian, are farmers, and we see Poppa (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) plowing his plattes with his nose to make a new corn crop for his growing family—his wife (voiced by Frances McDormand) and their new hatchlings Libby, Buck and Arlo, the runt of the litter.

I don't know what I am, but that's probably a stegosaurus

Arlo may be the runt, but he's the one with the most potential—he, after all, hatched from the biggest egg. But he's scrawny, the smallest of the kids, and is always being picked on...by his siblings, and even by the pre-historic chickens on the farm (would they be called Jurass-chicks?). His slight nature makes him capable of only the lightest of farm-work, while his bigger brother and sister are digging and irrigating and irritating each while other doing so. Arlo's good for moving sticks. And moping. And being afraid of...just about everything.

This being "Little Dino on the Prairie," the only way for Arlo to grow as a character is to leave home and get stuck in his own adventure, but that's not going to happen unless disaster strikes. When it does, leaving Arlo alone in the wilderness, he must learn to deal with the greater world and its natural and unnatural dangers. It's a bit like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin-back" but with a lead character who doesn't exhibit much will, which is, frankly, not very interesting. "Huck" is capable, but directionless with no moral compass. Arlo has no compass, either, but he's never needed one because he's quite incapable of surviving on his own. If there's going to be a movie at all—besides 90 minutes of dino-bones bleaching in the sun—this "Huck" needs a mentor. He needs a "Jim."

 "Jim" comes in the form of a lost human child that Arlo dubs "Spot" and that immediately establishes the dynamic—"Spot" is the pet, but, at the same time, he is also more capable than Arlo and is someone that Arlo can learn from and, simultaneously, be responsible for.  

"Bam-Bam"

This makes The Good Dinosaur much more than a creationist's validation—altered timeline, people, remember—but it also makes it the flip-side of "The Flintstones" (that other creationists' validation) where the lizards are the dominant species and the humans are the co-habitant workers ("Eh, it's a living...")—"The Flintstones" once removed. Where the story is at its wisest is the infrastructure, the skeleton of the story. The dinosaurs carve out their little corners of the world as to their natures—as I mentioned before the brontos, being vegetarians, are low-impact farmers. But, it goes beyond that as dis[played by the limited number of other dino-types Arlo meets on his journey home: the Tyrannosauri Rex, being meat eaters, are ranchers (and when they're about the film takes a decidedly "western" turn—"Papa" T-Rex, Butch, is voiced inimitably by Sam Elliott); the pterodactyls (the head of whom is voiced by Steve Zahn, as a messianic cult leader) are scavengers, picking the bones of any carcass—alive or dead—they can find.

The VERY old West: T-Rex's 'round the camp-fire; 'dactyls acting like rustlers

That part is entertaining-and shows the potential of the story showing what might have happened if dinosaurs ruled the Earth. But the rest of it is less compelling. The pterodactyls are a constant threat and they wear out their welcome quickly. One finds oneself drifting off, admiring the scenery, which is not what you want to do in an animated movie, or a movie about dinosaurs. You want to say "grow up, already" to Arlo, but the best the filmmakers can come up with is a variation of "there's no place like home." But, the lesson is learned more in wanting to leave the theater and be home, rather than in the telling of the tale.

And, there's something else that bugs me: a lot is made of the concept of "family"—at one point, Arlo teaches Spot about it and how important it is and why he mopes because he's away from "the herd" (which makes me think that a really good animated film could be made of the dynamics of elephants rather than dinosaurs). One could make a good case for going the "Huck Finn" route of embracing of the opening of the closed circle Arlo uses to illustrate the "family" concept and accept a not-one-of-your-kind," such a non-lizard like Spot into the fold. There's a good lesson there, a universal one—Twain published his in 1884—and any parallels making the dinosaurs less prone to tribalism than the human inheritors of the Earth might have been a good contrast and object lesson to those familiar with how things are.

But, no, the movie doesn't go there, replacing that lesson with a "you go your way and I'll go mine" ending that only encourages segregation of the different. That left me scowling and thinking Pixar's dinosaurs were no better than us in our "you're okay as long as you're in your place" prejudices. "There goes the neighborhood" and NIMBY-ism are just as at home in the domiciles of this parallel Universe, and left me more than happy that the dinosaurs became extinct, if this is how they evolved. If only xenophobia and tribalism had gone extinct, too.

Arlo, like the story, is stretched a little thin.

Maybe I'm expecting too much deep-tissue philosophy from a cartoon (although I don't think so). But, I do expect more from Pixar, which for the last couple of decades have been expanding my mind, not only with movie-making and story-telling techniques, but also in the concepts that they employed those methods to tell. The Good Dinosaur is a little narrow-minded in that regard. Maybe they'll find their way back on track with Finding Dory.

Countdown to Avengers: Age of Ultron—Hulk/Thor

The latest "Avengers" movie comes out on May first.  For this month of Fridays before the premiere, we'll be re-running reviews of the movies that formed the stepping stones for this latest one, this time two outliers: the first, the subject of the fourth Marvel comic character adapted for the big screen (after a popular TV series in the 1980's) which failed to light up the box office, but whose appearance in the first "Avengers" film was considered the most successful version of the character; and another of Marvel's "major" characters, who had previously not captured the imagination of the movie-going public, but who really only hit his potential (and comic possibilities) in that same "Avengers" movie.  

What links these two characters is they are probably better as supporting characters than they are as the focus of a complete two hour narrative.  Certainly, they were never better than they were in the first "Avengers" movie.

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Hulk (2003) A director of many different genres, this is The Ang Lee superhero movie. Lee, fresh off Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (his tribute to wuxia martial arts films) went full Hollywood with Hulk, with an interesting cast (with less-than-interesting results, but I'm sure they all wanted to work with Lee) of Eric Bana (who can be terrific—but, alas, he's just not here), Jennifer Connelly (just not here), Josh Lucas (ditto), Sam Elliott (never less than interesting, even here) and Nick Nolte (so over-the-top crazy, that he's a bit of a relief). The problem here is tone: Bana described the set as being "ridiculously serious and morbid"—Lee wanted to avoid any sort of light-heartedness and went for superhero tragedy, with ten screenwriters (a lot of good ones, too) tackling the movie in various stages adapting the Hulk origin-revision "Monster" (Incredible Hulk #312, Oct. 1985) showing that the young Bruce Banner was a victim of child abuse from a brutal alcoholic father, setting the psychological stage for his latent reluctance to express emotion and his hidden rage. 

That might have been good if Bana found a sympathetic way to portray it and gain some audience sympathy. The only time the movie takes off is when The Hulk appears (Ang Lee himself did the motion-capture work), and that's a bit too-little-too-late to keep the movie from seeming like the downer it is intended to be. Best thing about the movie: Lee's elaborate work with split-screen to simulate a comic book's fractured story-telling techniques.* The movie could have used more of that inventiveness, as well. The next Hulk movie would have a different cast and a different "take."

* It's a noble experiment, but frankly works at cross-purposes from the intent.  The problem is split-screen does something other than what comic-book panels do: the graphics in comics separate action into different progressing time-frames; split-screen shows simultaneous action occurring in different spaces.  One involves and transcends time; the other involves and transcends space.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The "Maybe-Not-So-Much-Incredible-But-Certainly-An-Improvement-Over-The-Last-Time" Hulk

Don't get me wrong. I admired what Ang Lee tried to bring to the, by now, here-to-stay "Superhero" sub-species (meta-species?) of action-adventure films. Taking his cue from Bryan Singer's "no, it's really about something" furrowed-brow approach to the "X-men," Lee (no relation to Smilin' Stan) made an examination of the rigors of the scientific mind, battling inner demons brought on by a repressed memory of child abuse, and made manifest in the form of a big green berserker id, The Hulk, equal parts Mr. Hyde and the Frankenstein monster.

Good thoughts. But we're talking The Incredible Hulk here. These films should take their cues from the "Superhero" epithets espoused by the characters, like Superman's affirmative "Up, Up and Away" or Batman's introspective "criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot" (these days he just says "Hrn."). "The Hulk" (in one of his incarnations) never got beyond "Hulk SMASH!" He's not the most sophisticated of heroes,* he's as pure a power-fantasy for nerds as can be—a three-year old with super-strength. So to pile on the daddy-complex psychology, when what people basically went to see was the Big Guy punch holes in things, was putting a lace doily on a trash-compactor. Lee had fun bringing back split-screen to simulate comic panels (which was nifty), but Hulk was depressing...and not in a good way, like the "Batman" films. If you want angst, best take it only as far as The Seven Samurai.

So, three years later, with "Marvel Studios" in control of (most of) their characters, and an eye towards creating an "Avengers" film in the future, comes a re-vamped "Hulk," with Ed Norton replacing Eric Bana, Liv Tyler for Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt (made ruddy and silver-maned) for Sam Elliott. As good as those previous performers can be, the substitutions are all improvements. And this "Hulk," has no other agenda than to be a chase-and-fight film, and succeeds quite well in its humble goals.

Hulk's a little trimmer and hunkier than Hulkier.

Some Hulking thoughts:

The credit sequence re-writes the Hulk's origin-story (always a drag on these films, and is patterned after the TV-series), and gets going with Banner on the run. He's hiding in Brazil, working at a bottling plant in the densely populated box-city of "Rocinia Favela," in computer contact with a research scientist, and working on breathing disciplines to make sure he "don't go changin.'" It makes Banner a less helpless character than the last film, and gives him a goal.

This is not Eric Bana; this is Edward Norton

Norton's re-write of the script (by Zak Penn--who wrote the last two "X-men" films and Elektra and gets full script credit on the film), is clever, detailed, and plays to the actor's calculating strengths. Plus, his Bruce Banner is a sickly-thin, not buff, scientist—in good shape, but not super-hero material. Nice contrast with the uber-defined Hulk.

The cameos all work terrifically, are integrated well, and show obvious affection for their subjects: Stan Lee (though not a drooling fan of his, one has to admit this is his best cameo, and he's terrific in it), Lou Ferigno (he looks great!), and, in an "Aw!" moment, the late Bill Bixby. Plus, Robert Downey, Jr. makes an appearance as Tony Stark (Iron Man).

Tyler and Norton do wonders with the stormy (heh) Betty Ross-Bruce Banner romance. Connelly and Bana never seemed to connect in the first film, and seemed quite diffident to each other. Not here.

These are not Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliott
(They are Liv Tyler and William Hurt, and that's different)

Hulk does more than roar and punch. Here he is quite capable of using collateral damage as a defense and weaponry (and kudos to the sound design team for the police car sequence). There is one scene of Hulk being attacked by "sonic-blast" weaponry that is as enjoyably "comic-booky" as in any of these films. Tim Roth makes a very effective villain, green with envy for The Hulk's power, and the simple monster against monster plot is stream-lined and moves along while not feeling very draggy (as the battle sections of Iron Man did).

Director Louis Leterrier keeps the pace going, as one would expect of a director of the "Transporter" films, and there are extended chases through that Brazilian slum-town that recall the run-downs of the "Bourne" series and the parkour scenes of Casino Royale.

Leterrier also treats the Hulk like the shark in Jaws (or "Batman" in Batman Begins); we only get glimpses of him in the dark, as big pieces of machinery go hurtling through the air, placing the audience in the same disoriented mode as the "wet" squad sent to capture him.

Bruce Banner has a Blue Heeler like I do. How cool is that?

It made me happy, right? I enjoyed myself, right? So, why not as high a rating as, say, Indiana Jones? Because, as fun as it is, the effects scenes tend to look a bit shoddy on the big-screen. The Hulk, himself, looks a bit too much like one of those plasticene statues of "the Hulk" you see at comic-shops, and things like helicopter inserts have a video-game quality to them. Everything about it is fine, but I don't think the film will suffer on the small screen. You don't need to spend full-bore on The Incredible Hulk to get the most out of it. The decision is economical, rather than artistic, and for that, The Incredible Hulk goes down a notch.

"Hulk...SMAAAASH!"

* Face it, "The Incredible Hulk" is "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (in the comic book and the first film, the transformation is accidental, while in the TV series and this film, Banner does it to himself). And it's always creeped me out a bit that you could make a "hero" out of "Hyde." But combined with the "poor, poor monster" aspects of Frankenstein (Kirby's early flat-topped Hulk looked an awful lot like Karloff), and the TV series' driving it further, by using "The Fugitive's" running victim conceit, you could tame the brute.

 

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"Thor Thubject  (It's Hammerin' Time!)"
or
"Natalie Portman's Post-Oscar Slump, Part 2"

Never having been a fan of the comic, I could therefore approach the introduction of Thor to the movies without bias—I couldn't argue about the graphics on the hammer, or whether they followed the comics-mythology well, whether the casting was appropriate (they do well with what they got for material, and star Chris Hemsworth does a fine bellow just this side of Brian Blessed in his early, primal days).

But, as a movie, there's nothing too fresh about Thor, in fact, it reminded me a lot of Superman II, but with better architecture (designed by the amazing Bo Welch) with its super-beings walking through a hick-burgh doing derring deeds (in this case, battling a Gort-like robot with a furnace grate for a face-plate—it's one of the genuinely cool things about this one), some dicey flying sequences that look a little flat and the big plot-holes in story-logic (if he could do that THEN, why couldn't he do it before?), and a little too much Unexplainium in how things happen and why.

By now, the Marvel films have become formulaic, let me count the ways: 1) love interest—which feels a bit tacked onto Thor (shouldn't there be an Asgardian demi-goddess he should be attached to?); 2) Stan Lee cameo (mercifully short); 3) cross-characterizations and Marvel Universe details (S.H.I.E.L.D. is back with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and a post-credits sneak with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (which doesn't amount to much, as there aren't any other super-heroes in it, and seems bottled up as it involves Stellan Skarsgård's research scientist and Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston), Stark Industries is mentioned a couple times and there's an intriguing sneak peak of another Avenger in the film, (played by an Oscar nominee) and three action set-pieces that involve a lot of hammering, lots of ice-giants who all seem instantly shatterable and not much of a threat, despite some gratuitous growling (Colm Feore is pretty much unrecognizable as the King of the giants), and a lotta leaping with single bounds.

Kenneth Branagh directs with an emphasis on swoops over spires for 3-D effects, ornate throne rooms full of pixelated somethings or other, and a curious propensity for dutch angles (I don't believe there's such a thing as Norse angles).  When Thor is at his most boastful, there is a tinge of Branagh's own Shakespearean projection, and Thor's brother Loki serves as an Iago-like presence throughout. 

But, it ain't Shakespeare. The script wheels between the flat-nothing desert of New Mexico that seems to attract a lot of things falling from the Heavens (make that "The Seven Realms"—one of which is called "Anaheim") and the castles built on nothingness of the Asgardians, ruled over by Odin Allfather (played by Anthony Hopkins in his "elderly King" mode, although he has flashes of interestingness here and there). Natalie Portman tries her best with the romantic sub-plot, but it's a "nothing-girl-friend" role and her sections have a slight "blah-ness" to them, though they do try to punch it up with some wacky banter from a wacky intern (Kat Dennings). Thor feels like a second-rate Marvel movie, like the "Hulk" movies or the "Fantastic Four" films (but several steps above Howard the Duck*). Try as they might to make it relatable, the scale just fails to register as something that humans have any business being a part of...or even caring about. I found myself uninvolved and not caring. Thor might be a hit this weekend, but it's more of a myth.

* Ya know, I'm amazed that George Lucas hasn't done a CG overhaul of HTD.  Yeah, it wouldn't make it any better, but at least it wouldn't look so clunky. 

Update to the above: George Lucas isn't doing one, but evidently Marvel Studios is thinking about it —Howard showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy.

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"I Really Don't Understand What All the Fuss is About"
or
"Is There a Point to All This, Because There Needs to be a Point!"

Marvel's Thor was a necessary part of The Avengers puzzle—the Norse God is a little minor-ish when compared to A-listers like "Spider-man" or "Captain America" (in the comic world, anyway, where the same "minor-league" status could be said for Iron Man) and is usually relegated to second row in group shots. That first movie was a bit "iffy" despite a Shakesperean director (Kenneth Branagh) and a rather breath-taking conceptualization of Vanaheim. It took Joss Whedon, though, to throw a couple of good lines into Thor's mouth (without him turning into a jokey punster) and making a grand villain out of Tom Hiddleston's Loki—so grand, in fact, that they brought him back for the second Thor movie, Thor: the Dark World.

This film is part of the "Marvel: Phase Two," which I translate to "We take advantage of The Avengers success by trying to make hay on individual characters until The Avengers 2 comes along." Good strategy, that. But there's the danger of watering down any anticipation of that next film if they don't show some promise in the second installments, which already showed signs of rust in Iron Man 3. Even if you're Thor, lightning doesn't always strike twice in the same franchise.

Thor 2 (if we can call it that) is quite a bit lighter in tone than the first film, the first one being rather stuffy, as if  any humor would possibly blow the Norse mythology segments away in a puff of whimsy. No, it was taking its playbook from Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy where the heroes are rustic and the villains are really vile looking and the violence is over-the-top, but not so over the top as to risk an "R" rating.

In lieu of a program, clip and save this
 handy diagram of the Thor Universe

It also compares to TLOTR by sharing the propensity for using the first six minutes or so of the film to shoe-horn as much detailed exposition intoned with doomed gravitas as can be wedged in before the title card. "Long before the birth of Light," Anthony Hopkins' Odin informs us, "there was darkness. From the darkness, came the dark elves." That's quite a jump, but then, we have to find out about the Aether (everything in the Marvel Universe seems to be a common term spelled wrong), the Kursed on Svartalfheim, and the 5,000 year configuration of the nine Realms, at which point evil with a capital "E" can take out all nine of them without having to make it a bank-shot. Malekith (because everybody needs to have a name that sounds like a lisp) and who is played by an unrecognizable Christopher Eccleston* is the leader of the Dark Elves and wants the Aether all for himself, so that he can destroy the nine Realms because...well, I don't know why, it seems like a really dumb thing to do, akin to crapping where you eat.

And at that point, I didn't care. I just wanted something familiar so that I could stand any chance of following the movie. Now, the last time I saw the Thor character, he was in The Avengers movie, and some mention is made here of "New York," especially by gal-pal Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who uses it 1) as part of a "why didn't you write me for two years?" hectoring of Thor (Chris Hemsworth, not so stodgy this time) and 2) a chance to lash out at Loki (Hiddleston) as if he personally took out her favorite pizza cart on Fifth (and he gets a chance to do his version of the line from The Dark Knight: "[She's got some fight in her]. I like that."). Plus, Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgaard) has been acting strangely—making international news by stripping naked with some sort of stick-devices at Stonehenge that are supposed to do some sort of astral plane alignment or some sort of something, or maybe nothing as he's a bit of a raving lunatic at this point (His excuse: "I've had a God in my head. I don't recommend it" Geez, Doc have you watched TBN lately?).

Meantime, the already-mentioned Loki is imprisoned in As-Gitmo, where, when he isn't using his quick-change ability, he's sulking and throwing illusory daggers at people, babbling contradictory dialogue ("You know, I've always loved our little talks because...actually I haven't"). That's some trickster. As with Hensworth's Thor, Hiddleston's Loki actually had become an interesting character in The Avengers movie, and although he's still a little devil, you begin to think that his motivations, if not his brains, are a little scrambled. He does provide a couple of little quick-changes in a walk-and-talk out of Asgard, one of which might be considered a cameo appearance. He also provides the big "question mark" of the film, that is one of those things that the film-makers will either resolve, or, if they have bigger flounder to fry, will just dismiss with a line somewhere down the road.

Speaking of which, there could be considered three "stingers"—the convention of mid and post-credit "tags" in the Marvel super-hero films—in Thor: the Dark World, that have decreasing importance, but increasing complexity (how many of these things are they going to have, not that Brian Tyler's score isn't rather fun to listen to, but sometimes I have better things to do than watch all the credits). There is the "stinger" that ends the film, and confuses the issue of what was going on; there is the second "stinger," after Blur Studio's main credits, that serves as a preview for another Marvel production**—in this case, Guardians of the Galaxy with a look at Benicio del Toro's "Collector" (and we'll just say two words: "tonal shift"); finally, a third stinger at the very end of the movie that's purely for "shippers" and has an "after-thought" joke, much like the "shawarma" scene from The Avengers. There's nothing essential to wait for, if you have a ride waiting or a train to catch.

Throw in some ramps and Asgard could look like one of Carmine Infantino's futuristic cities.

So, summing up, Thor: the Dark World is generally more entertaining than the last one, but not entertaining, realm-changing, or artistic enough to make it rise above the Rental category. Characters are born, characters die, and the Universe is returned to the same point it was at in the beginning of the movie, not unlike episodic TV. Nothing major is going to happen until somebody's contract runs out. In the meantime, it looks good, fulfills the action quotient, without going over the line (Hello, Man of Steel) to the point where you think it might be better not to have superheroes "saving the day" when they're destroying the infrastructure. It does suffers from the Marvel "I-don't-know-but-it-sure-is-big" syndrome, where there are no rules, and merely randomness in phenomena that just show up, make a big noise and then *poof* go away, leaving us to mull over our shawarma or bowl of "Shreddies." There is no order to the Marvel Universe (as much as the tick-tock clockwork of the art direction says there is), and it's easier to take a page from "The X-Files" and just leave it unexplained. Or come up with a convenient new super-power like "amnesia kiss" to take care of it. Sometimes, rather than thinking through a problem, it's just better to hit it with a hammer to make you think it's getting better.

"I've won an Oscar; why am I in this Moooo-viiiiie?"

The comics Malekith

* Actually, I recognized him as Eclipso, a character from the DC Universe.  And you'd never recognize him as the Ninth Doctor. "Doctor who?" you ask.  "Exactly," I say.

** Although that's completely arbitrary, nothing is set in celluloid stone, and the solar wind is more stable than the tides of movie marketing—the cosmic villain Thanos appeared in The Avengers, may appear in Guardians of the Galaxy (he did) and definitely won't be in Avengers 2.

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Now that that's done, one is worried about how to write about super-hero movies in the future. There is a sameness to them that creeps from film to film—the mythos, the "givens" of selfless good and illogical (and often impractical) evil, the unquestioning quest for revenge, the brooding sky-scapes, the heavy air of portent, and the elaborate CGI. One feels like they're in the process of grading different brands of chocolate. They may be bitter or sweet, but they're all chocolate.

So, in the future, as the tent-poles of the franchise circus increase in number, we're going to do reviews of super-hero movies with a basic form—a Comic-Book Movie Matrix, that should distill what the movie's about, where it fits in its own little universe, and how successful it is—as a movie-movie, and maybe as a representative of that character.

Take a look at the list, and if you have any suggestions for what might be a critical consideration, drop a comment.

1) Is the movie version of the character recognizable from the graphic/comics version?

2) Is the plot something that someone who doesn't know the comic can come in and still understand?

3) If not, how complicated is the back-story that is provided in the movie?

4) What's wrong this time, plot-wise?

5) Is the story important enough to deserve its own movie, or is this one just "marking time?"

6) In relation to 5): Major villain or minor villain?

7) Is the back-story and motivation the same as in the graphic/comics version?

8) How radically different is the setting of the movie version to the graphic/comics version?

9) What compromises have been made to the comics version to make it "play" on-screen?

10) Is there a "Noooooooo!" moment? Yes? No?

11) Any easter-eggs for the true fans?

12) Is there a stinger? Is it worth waiting for?  Where does it occur?

 

Really, this is just to increase my Internet "hits"
Jaimie Alexander as Sif in Thor: The Dark World