Captain America: Brave New World

Re-Heated Leftovers

or

The President's a Red Hulking Jerk (So What Else is New?)
 

The new Captain America movie—Captain America: Brave New World—has been the #1 movie of the past three weekends, so it was about time I checked it out. It's the first new "Cap" movie with the retirement of the Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) character in Avengers: Endgame, and after a Disney+ series try-out, Anthony Mackie gets to stop being called The Falcon and being called Captain America in an actual movie from Marvel Studios. 

 

Too bad he feels like a co-star in his own movie, as the character flails around trying to solve a government conspiracy involving the big dump of adamantium that's been sitting in the Indian Ocean since The Eternals (and that was—what?—four years ago?), while at the same time a villain from the past (2008, specifically, but from another Marvel movie series from a previous studio), who has supposedly been rotting in a secure jail-cell somewhere apparently isn't and has his own plans for—muah-ha-ha—revenge. Already the "Brave New World" title of the movie feels like a stretch as it seems to be recycling old dangling plot-threads from the less-than-successful Marvel movies of the past.

And speaking of recycling, Harrison Ford takes over for the late William Hurt (who took over from Sam Elliott) playing General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, who has previously been a thorn in The Avengers' boots and has parlayed that into becoming President of the United States (Ford is President again? Man, we ARE recycling). And as much as Ford tends to dominate the proceedings of the film, he overshadows Mackie's Sam Wilson/Cap and (I think) to the film's detriment.

So, the film begins after the events of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" (which I never saw, but it apparently doesn't matter much) where Cap and the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) take part in an undercover operation in Mexico to stop a mercenary named Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), who works for "Serpent" guess they're bad guys—to recover some MacGuffin (which turns out to be refined adamantium that the Japanese government had secured from that Eternals thing which has now been called "Celestial Island"). Don't worry if all of that sounds new, because it is, and no, you haven't missed anything.

Anyway, mission accomplished with the help of Cap's new, improved vibranium-infused wings from Wakanda and a lot of gee-whizardry. Despite doing well in Mexico, Cap insists that Torres train with one of America's super-soldiers, one Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, always enjoyable), who was introduced in the Disney+ series. Long story short, he was a super-soldier in Korea, but had been imprisoned by the government for the past 30 years...but isn't now. Cool.

After the successful mission, everybody gets invited to the White House to meet the President (both the U.S. and Japanese variety), but while Ross is giving a presentation on how the world should be safe-guarding and sharing adamantium for the world's benefit (unlike those Wakandans!) and doing one of those "it's-for-your-own-good" speeches that American Presidents do, phones start erupting with a song by The Fleetwoods, which turns some in the audience—including Bradley—into "attack" mode (actually, The Fleetwoods aren't that bad!) and they start firing on the President. A big melee happens and Bradley is taken into custody even though he can't remember anything about trying to shoot the President. It's back to prison for Bradley, and Cap is on the "outs" with Ross because Cap's friend tried to shoot him.

Anyway, you get the gist. An international plot (that may involve World War III!) with personal repercussions for our Captain, and it just gets so complicated with mind-controlling cell-phones, nobody trusting anybody, Ross' potential heart-problems, on top of the lamest of character motivations at this late date—how  now-President Ross feels so bad that he's estranged from his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler) because he tried to kill her ex-boyfriend, Bruce Banner, The Hulk (back before he was Mark Ruffalo) making everything a bit of a mish-mash.

That last bit—the daughter thing—undercuts the movie quite a lot, and although Ford plays it gamely, it's a bit of weak tea for motivation, especially given the higher stakes globally, and finally makes President Ross a bit of a lame character, where his ambitions as President pale to his "just wanting to get along" with his own kid. If it was really such a big deal as the movie makes it out to be, it wouldn't be resolved so soporifically as it is in the movie.

But what am I complaining about, nobody cares much for all that thin "character stuff," as what they really want to see is Ross turn into The Red Hulk because it's promised in the poster and the previews. Given the character's history with the Green Hulk, this is irony with a capital SMASH! and, frankly, has nothing to do with the rest of the movie other than that the same bad guy responsible for all the mind-controlling has been setting up the Third Act Hulkitude as well, just so that...Ross can look bad in front of his daughter, frustrating him into full chili-pepper berserker mode. Oh, and cause all sorts of damage to prominent monuments...and cherry trees.

One senses in that final Cap vs. Red Hulk confrontation that a lot of screenplay back-filling was done in order to bring it about (there are five credited screenwriters), but even given the cheesiness that goes into a lot of the funny-book verisimilitude, the  efforts here strain the goodwill needed in order to accept it. I mean I know it's based on comic books and superheroes, but it takes a Hulk-style leap of faith to accept the ways and means it takes to get there. It takes a lot of the geek-fun out of it to know you're being played. Still, it IS good to see Tim Blake Nelson come back. He's a good actor, a good director, and a heck of a nice guy. He plays evil good, too. But, just as he was ill-served in The Incredible Hulk movie so many years back, he's ill-served by this one, too.

So, it's disappointing, especially because it's Anthony Mackie's first Captain America movie and I've always liked him. And because...legacy. Of all the Marvel properties, the Captain America series was the last of the "majors" to come out before the first "Avengers" movie, and the studio managed to work with its old-fashioned and, frankly, jingoistic tendencies and make it work well. In fact, they did their job so well that the Captain America series was the one trilogy of movies in the Marvel stable that didn't falter in any of its three films. 

 

Now, it has. And that leaves me feeling a bit sad...and disappointed.

Doctor Sleep

Well, We All Shine On (Like Moon-light and The Stars, and You)
or
Wait'll the Talent Scouts Get Wind of Him

There was no reason for there to be a sequel to "The Shining," either the book or the 1980 film adaptation. It told its story and ended. Each told it differently, but there was no ambiguity to either one. King ended his story by having the Overlook blow up in a boiler-room conflagration. And Stanley Kubrick's movie kept the Overlook in one piece, but put the story to an end.

There ARE no reasons to make sequels of any of Kubrick's films—he ended his stories, having said all that needed to be said, even if the ending was ambiguous. There was no next chapter because there was no point. And if you did do a "sequel"—like the ill-considered 2010: The Year We Make Contact—you basically cheapen the story with considerations that are not central to the first conceit and the whole thing gets watered down. "Oh, yeah, and by the way, this could happen tangentially...only it's not as important as the first story, but...blah blah blah—people will have jobs so let's make a sequel."

And so..."Heeeere's...Danny!"

Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor), of Jack (E.T.'s Henry Thomas) and Wendy Torrance (Alex Essoe), is not doing well. One could say he's following in the family tradition—a victim of PTSD from his experiences when his parents were caretakers at the haunted Overlook Hotel, he is drinking and drifting, short-time jobs, the money of which he'll squander on booze and start the cycle again to losing the work and moving on. But, Danny (as we know) has been gifted—or cursed—with "the shining," a psychic ability of some indeterminence, but which played a large part in saving the life of himself and his Mother when father Jack became swayed by the spirits haunting the Overlook. A "very willful boy," he has lost his will since his Mother's death and shines far less brightly these days, the booze having doused it, like water to flame.

For Danny has been plagued by nightmares. Not just nightmares, but the returning spirits of the Overlook, who have followed him and his Mother to Florida—they never wanted to see snow again—and beset Danny until one day he's given a coaching by Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbley), his friend "in shining" at the Overlook, who teaches him about what he used to do as a boy, a trick taught to him by his grandmother. If one of those old spooks comes back to haunt you, you think up a box and just lock them in it, and they'll never bother you again.

Now, for fans of the original Shining—book and/or film (and they're not exactly a group that like both), you know there's an issue: Halloran appears in the book of "Doctor Sleep" because he survived in the book of "The Shining." But, (can it be a SPOILER ALERT for a movie that's 39 years old?), in the movie, Halloran gets cleaved by an ax in an attempt to rescue Danny and Wendy from their predicament. And yet, he appears in Mike Flanagan's movie of Doctor Sleep, to give little Danny that advice about the mental boxes. Flanagan does a bit of finagling to do justice to both book and film, and satisfy the expectations of both (which is no small task) but he does a fairly good job of keeping his feet on both banks of the river simultaneously, but in the process, he kinda hasta change what "the shining" actually is—not that we knew in the first place.*

Problem solved, and if I remember correctly (and I probably don't because I couldn't get through King's novel), that happened in the first twenty pages. Now, Danny may be able to box those demons, but he can't box the ones inherited from his father. And so he spends most of his life wasted and drifting, until he comes to one town, Frazier New Hampshire, where under the stewardship of Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis) he gets a job, a room of his own, and starts going to A-A where he meets Dr. John (Bruce Greenwood), who becomes impressed with Dan and offers him a job as an orderly at a hospice that seems to suit him.

That's where the cat comes in.

The hospice has a therapy cat, who has a strange ability. At night, when everything is quiet, the cat will wander the halls of the hospice and open a door and jump on the bed of one of the patients. The cat, named Azrael, has a reputation among the internees—when the cat visits you at night, it means you're about to die. Despite this, the cat seems to be popular and not kicked off beds right and left. Soon, Danny starts to follow the cat on its rounds, and comforting the about-to-die, giving them peace in their last moments.

And he gets a nickname—"Doctor Sleep." Roll credits.

All well and good, if that was all there was to it. Danny finds peace giving peace, his "shining" bringing comfort like a spooky version of Last Rites. But, there are other shiners who don't give comfort at all; they're The True Knot and over the years—and there have been many, many of them—the Knot led by its cult leader "Rose the Hat" (a particularly on-point Rebecca Ferguson) have been luring children with shining abilities and ritualistically killing them...slowly, so as to absorb their shining abilities like a life-force, that manifests itself as a mist, giving them rejuvenation and renewed life. They're like vampires, but for shining, not blood. This is a new wrinkle, that the "Shining" has a physicality, that—with an expanded range of abilities—makes it feel more like George Lucas' midichlorian-based "The Force."

The activities of The True Knot psychically alerts a shining adept teen, Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who is traumatized by the murder of a child (the always amazing Jacob Tremblay) by the group. Abra has been in psychic contact with Danny, the way a HAM radio operator talks with other stations around the world. But the night of the boy's murder, Danny is blasted by Abra's terror and the blackboard the two have used to communicate is covered with the word "MURDER" which Danny first sees in a mirror as an all-too familiar word—"REDRUM"

The movie then turns into a three-way struggle between Danny and Abra and the Knot, and particularly its leader, Rose, a fight that escalates from merely invading each other's thoughts to more murderous physical contact. Pretty soon, everybody is tracking the movements of everybody else and Danny decides to take Abra and stage a last stand at the one place that might be suffused with enough evil energy to defeat Rose—the Overlook Hotel, containing all the ghosts and memories that have haunted Danny's past, including the restless spirit of his father. 

Director Flanagan has done a very creditable job of directing Doctor Sleep, making an intriguing film that stands on its own without depending on the very heavy shadow of Kubrick's film (although he does fall back on it a lot—which we'll talk about later). If there are gripes, they can be directed at King's novel, which gives far more substance (literally) to The Shining ability, which now allows astral projection, mind and body hijacking—"pushing" to use King's phrase from the book and from his novel "Firestarter"—and the capacity to get into people's heads, even those that shine, and messing around with their "files." 

That's a big jump from the psychological manipulation and thought-reading that had been the extent of the earlier versions. Think about it: if the shining ability was originally presented the way it now is, little Danny wouldn't have had to do what he did in the original to spare himself and his Mother. All he would have to have done is take over Daddy Jack's mind. Problem solved.

That aside, there is a bit of diffusion of the original story—the True Knot is too big a group that has lasted too long to not be noticed, even at the time of the first book. In a way, it overshadows the first story, even threatening to swamp it.

Flanagan ignores that, giving the Knot its due, and deftly combining both versions of The Shining, book and film. He takes a lot of tricks from the Kubrick film, not just in creating a near duplicate of the Overlook sets—that was probably a chore—using key images, like the swooping Main Title sequence, digitally altered for effect, recreating the "Here's Johnny" sequence that is so spot on, you will initially think they used the sequence with Shelley Duvall, but, no, that's Alex Essoe playing it perfectly. The film is also bracketed with the same music (Wendy Carlos' distortion of "Dies Irae" and the old tune "Midnight, the Stars and You") as well as the thumping heart-beat Kubrick used to underscore tension.

But, his best weapon is employing the same creepy technique Kubrick used in The Shining, which is purely cinematic—the framing. Kubrick imbued his film with his usual trope, the one-point perspective.** But, with The Shining, he gave it an extra element—nothing. For much of the film, Kubrick centers his one point on a negative space, giving the film a vertiginous depth despite its horizontal perspective.

Most of the time it works, but there are moments when it's jarring—like a shot of Greenwood's Dr. John in his office that is so influenced by Kubrick's shots of the Overlook's manager, Ullman, in his office—in the Overlook Hotel, mind you—that for a moment it took me right out of the movie. That seemed a bit slavish...and unnecessary—an irrelevant echo that is a complete mis-match, despite its adherence to the original.***

But, we can overlook that as maybe taking a good idea too far. For the most part, Flanagan has taken an old haunt and managed to bring it back to creepy life.

Maybe Kubrick was right—how could The Shining be a down-beat movie when it suggests there is life after death? Perhaps there's a corollary of that thought to sequels, as well.

* I suspect it has something to do with midichlorians, but I might be confused...

**

*** That's what I'm talking about