RobeDiSimo

Film reviews, photo albums, nerdy opinions.

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The Disaster Artist [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003) is widely cited as the worst movie ever made. I don’t know whether that’s necessarily true, but it is, without a doubt, the most popular bad movie ever. Its charm comes from a place of utter incomprehensibility: there may be movies out there that suck worse than The Room, but no movie sucks better. It is the perfect, quintessential example of a film in which nothing went right: every single scene is catastrophically, unexplainably backwards, and no amount of dissection can get to the bottom of what happened – never mind why and how – to produce such a result.

Much like the actorial talents (or lack thereof) of Christopher Walken or Nicolas Cage, The Room exists in a sort of Hollywood uncanny valley: you can’t believe what you’re seeing, but disbelief isn’t an option. Is it intentional parody, or unintentional, awful perfection? Could such terribleness ever have been achieved without a calculated intention to do precisely that? But on the other hand, could someone, anyone, really be that great at being utter crap?

A (rather loose) adaptation of the book by the same name by The Room co-protagonist Greg Sestero, The Disaster Artist tries to answer at least some of those questions in the only way possible: trying to unravel the greater mystery behind the film itself, that is to say the enigmatic figure that is Tommy Wiseau. A compulsive, peculiarly defensive liar whose real wealth, nationality and even age remain unknown to this day, Wiseau’s bizarre – and often grotesque – persona is a large part of The Room’s enduring fame, and something worth a lot of looking into.

Those are the questions that Sestero’s book concerns itself with. This film... not quite as much. Produced, directed and headlined by James Franco, The Disaster Artist is almost as much a vanity project as The Room originally was – if less misguided – concerned as much with adapting the source material as it is with showcasing Franco’s unsettlingly accurate impression of Wiseau’s outlandish mannerisms both on- and off-set.

Indeed, The Disaster Artist only partially adapts its literary namesake about Sestero’s initial meeting and subsequent, increasingly worrying relationship with Wiseau, while its other half effectively features a scene-for-scene remake of The Room, recreated in most of its most memorably, painstakingly appalling detail. It’s entertaining as hell; but at a meagre 100 minutes of runtime, you can easily understand why there’s little room (pun unintended) for actually getting into what made the book such a surprisingly insightful look into not just the cult film’s production but also and perhaps especially the odd, flawed people behind it.

Franco’s version of the story doesn’t really delve into the depths of darkness, delusion and complete detachment from reality that Wiseau is capable of. Instead, it chooses to cast the tale in a benevolent light, presenting it – and this is an undeniable truth, however partial – as one of friendship and unwavering commitment to chasing one’s dreams: the result, a funhouse-mirror crossover between La La Land and Beauty and the Beast, could (but shouldn’t) single-handedly kickstart the Stockholm-syndrome bromance genre.

Making it all about the James/Dave Franco couple proves to be an eccellent choice, in that regard. The two brothers have undeniable natural chemistry, and while James demands most of the viewer’s attention his younger sibling does a similarly admirable job of slipping into Sestero’s much more relatably (and biologically) human skin. What the two can’t quite convincingly sell is the actual age gap between Wiseau and Sestero; indeed, it’s rather bizarre that the film lampoons The Room for the risible choice of casting a 25-year-old actor in a 15-year-old’s role, when The Disaster Artist opens with the younger Franco (32) playing a then 19-year-old Sestero.

Nitpicks aside, their charms shine through... perhaps even too much for the source material. What The Disaster Artist lacks is a deeper insight into Sestero’s internal struggle and doubts, both about The Room’s production and his ongoing personal involvement with Wiseau, something which the book provided in abundance. More of his thoughts on the situations portrayed in the film needed to be exposited either through narration (I know, I know) or by having him talk to other characters... which just doesn’t happen, really: there’s barely any scene in the movie in which he’s not with Wiseau, and almost all of his dialogue is directed at him.

Ultimately, Franco’s film is more about introducingThe Room to people who are not familiar with it than it is about deepening its understanding for those who are. It still treats Wiseau’s film as the centrepiece in his story, when in truth it’s just the tip of the iceberg. More than anything else, it left me with an unresolved question: is this Hollywood finally embracing Wiseau, affectionately celebrating his spirit over his (non-existent) talents? Or is it just allowing him a place in the limelight, provided that he doesn’t protest against the obvious mockery levelled at him? The portrayal of the man is certainly unpalatable, and while I believe it has every reason to be so, there’s something to be said for the fact that Sestero’s literary memoir had the benefit of subjectivity, whereas cinema has a way of lending a misplaced patina of objectivity to often-fictionalised accounts.

In the end, for all its undeniable qualities, The Disaster Artist can’t be the cult it lampoons. It’s made by richer, better-looking, much more competent people: it is, in one word, more ordinary, and therefore more mediocre. If you are interested in the story behind The Room – and trust me, you should be – then the book is still the place to look.

[Verdict: MOSTLY POSITIVE]

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Avengers: Infinity War [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

Ten years and nineteen movies ago, then-newborn Marvel Studios three-point landed onto movie screens with Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, kickstarting an unprecedented multi-franchise experiment. Four years later, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers borne that experiment to fruition in an unlikely triumph of marketing and planning. Since then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe never stopped growing, changing, and churning money; however, nothing it did since that first fateful team-up – despite some of the intervening movies topping it in terms of narrative quality and spectacle – ever came close to the same kind of game-changing, industry shaking novelty.

All that sort of changes with Infinity War, directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s first-act climax to the first decade of Marvel’s magnum opus. A crossover film on a scale hitherto undreamt of, it’s not hard to see why some of its marketing referred to it as “the biggest movie ever made”: boasting over twenty household-name actors each capable of headlining their own franchise (which, indeed, they do), there simply has never been anything like it when it comes to sheer star power. It’s a dazzling feast of thespian charisma... which, unsurprisingly, becomes the source of the film’s main problem.

There’s no getting around it: Infinity War was always going to be a million-ball juggling act. When making a crossover of such proportions, quantity can smother quality and become downright overwhelming. Creators are faced with an impossible task: managing a monstrously large cast, leaving no single character out – every one of them is someone’s favourite, after all – and, to top it all off, finding a way to reconcile a number of different visual and narrative styles into a coherent whole.

If each solo franchise can be seen as a music album, made up of a series of songs all sharing a cohesive sound and genre, a movie such as this needs to make them fit together, with their different sounds, moods and rhythms. And, ideally, the result should not be a compilation mixtape, with no connection between the different songs in its selection; on the contrary, it should be a full-blown musical, in which the different song styles interweave to create a superior harmony.

Infinity War tries to do all that with admirable good will, and succeeds more often than not, despite having to accept a number of compromises. The film’s humour, for example, bears a uniform signature more in line with Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok than with earlier, less zany Marvel films. Similarly, the script prioritises certain characters over others, with a clear slant towards those the two directors hadn’t yet had the chance to play with: Thor himself gets a much larger role in the plot than others, for example – a welcome reversal of his sidelining in Age of Ultron – and the Guardians themselves, having never had the chance to cross over with the rest of the Marvel family, get much of the attention when it comes to character interactions.

Needless to say, there’s a lot going on. For that reason, it was perhaps inevitable that, even with a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, not all characters involved would end up properly getting a chance to shine in terms of personality and plot relevance. Luckily, the Russos are savvy enough to at least give everyone their time in the spotlight during action scenes, however briefly. And there’s a lot of action throughout Infinity War, in between a hail of (often hilarious) jokes and a number of intense, surprisingly poignant emotional moments.

In such a whirlwind of a script it would be easy for the film to lose its focus, or to never have one to begin with. That’s where the choice to make larger-than-life villain Thanos the centre of its story pays off in a major way. Arguably the main reason Joss Whedon’s first two Avengers didn’t work equally well was that the first had the luxury of a previously-established antagonist – a scarce resource to this day in the villaincide-happy MCU – whereas the second did not. Ultron, being literally born on-screen before our eyes, had no in-franchise history, and not enough of the script was devoted to exploring his psyche or motivations, whereas Loki’s were already clearly defined and at the ready for a new story arc.

That’s not to say that effective villains cannot come out of the blue. Thor: Ragnarok introduced Hela’s backstory with remarkable economy. Black Panther’s Killmonger was equally memorable, and much less one-dimensional, if definitely less entertaining. Both antagonists served their stories’ purpose, but both were constrained by the confines of their feature-length celluloid prison. Thanos, true to his comic book counterpart, cannot be shackled by such restraints: with six years of build-up and a wealth of accumulated narrative connections – both to previously-established characters and events throughout the Marvel movie saga – the character finally delivers on the “villain as protagonist” promise that was once the cornerstone of Ultron’s marketing, to much less impressive results. Infinity War is Thanos’s movie, and nobody else’s.

Luckily, his shoulders are broad enough to carry the whole thing, and then some. Amidst a flurry of charismatic characters and memorable zingers, Thanos stands as a stoic, grim monolith whose relentless will drives the entire story with remarkable intensity. Much of the credit for that goes to Josh Brolin’s performance, bringing to life a version of the character that’s definitely distinct from his traditional comic incarnation but nonetheless starkly memorable, with the potential to leave a mark as one of the great, classic villains in pop cinema.

That’s the good. The bad? Well, the movie’s very fast, very full, and very funny. In that last respect, your mileage may vary: the amount of humour, and its general nature, might be excessive for some viewers’ tastes, especially with how dark the film gets, which is a lot. This is by far the darkest the MCU has ever gotten, at times defying its PG-13 rating. For what it’s worth, the Russos – – and writers Markus and McFeely – show better big-picture awareness that Gunn or Waititi, using comedy as a counterpoint to drama rather than a substitute: for how many jokes get cracked throughout the script, they never undercut the weight of the emotional hits landing along the way.

That, and as usual the CGI isn’t always at its best. Up close, Thanos is a fantastic visual effect; in non-closeup shots, he does occasionally look like the digital puppet he is. For the most part, however, the film holds up fairly well in the visual department, with the usual great action choreography under the Russos’ direction and – in a strong departure from their mostly-grounded work in The Winter Soldier and Civil War – greater-than-ever emphasis on otherworldly powers, giving characters such as Doctor Strange and Thor a more spectacular on-screen presence than ever before.

So, to sum it up: Infinity War is big, bold, and brutal. It’s also a bit of a mess, but it’s a very memorable mess if nothing else. Don’t be fooled, though: despite Marvel’s decision to drop the “Part 1” from its title in favour of a different name for the upcoming Avengers 4, this is unmistakeably – while it does tell a tale with a definite beginning, middle and end of its own – only half the story. Whether this whole thing will truly prove as revolutionary to blockbuster filmmaking as the first, much simpler Avengers will only be clear once both halves are on the table. For the time being, this first chapter is most definitely the biggest Marvel movie ever... but not quite its best, for all its efforts. Consider the bottom-line verdict a profession of hope. We’ll know for sure in twelve very long months.

[Verdict: VERY POSITIVE]

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Black Panther [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

So, it’s been a while since my last review and, to be completely honest, I didn’t expect Marvel’s Black Panther to be a hard one to come back on. I went into this movie expecting to enjoy it thoroughly, and in many respects I did, just... not as much as I thought I would. To cut a long story short, I spent the better part of a week trying to make up my mind about whether I walked away from this movie impressed or disappointed. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

First of all, let’s address the mini-skirted elephant in the room: in more than just a few coincidental ways, Black Panther is a retread of last year’s Wonder Woman. Both films star characters who were introduced as supporting players in a previous movie, in both cases big tentpole cross-over films – Batman v Superman and Captain America: Civil War, respectively – revolving around a conflict between the two main figures within the respective mega-franchise universes. Both act as more self-contained tales, in terms of cross-franchise elements, than previous movies in their narrative universes, and both feature different but thematically contiguous settings in the shape of secluded, secretive, mythology-laden kingdoms ruled in utopian perfection by a fictional society reflective of one of America’s mistreated social minorities.

On the production side of things, both were surprisingly helmed by directors known for poignant, socially-involved projects – Monster’s Patty Jenkins and Fruitvale Station’s Ryan Coogler – and, on the promotional side, both sailed towards theatres on a wave of sheer hype, being hailed as the beginning of a new era for Hollywood blockbusters and propelled forwards by baffling headlines – born, I assume, either out of stunningly poor memory or else a frankly understandable wish to forget that Steel, Supergirl and Catwoman ever happened – about how they were the first female-led, or black-led, superhero movie ever made.

Neither film, it goes without saying, rises to meet those unrealistic expectations. Though entirely enjoyable in its own right, Wonder Woman was an uneven and ultimately formulaic film that tried to juggle too many things and be too many different movies at once, and Black Panther certainly falls into the same category to a lesser degree. Part James Bond instalment, part Lion King and in part also Thor rerun, what we got on our hands in the end was a fairly mundane genre flick with a number of highs but also a handful of lows.

The good: the film looks amazing. Where its DC equivalent was content with just a few opening minutes of generic pseudo-Greek utopia, Black Panther instead realises its fictional setting to a much deeper, richer degree, to often impressive results. The mythical kingdom of Wakanda is most definitely a kind of spectacle not before seen in theatres, a bold vision of African futurism that meshes hi-tech sci-fi with tribal spiritualism in oftern stunning fashion. Its setting is easily the film’s best aspect, brought to life on the shoulders of the great conceptual design work done by Marvel’s art team.

On top of that, Black Panther is energetic and well-acted, perhaps with less overt humour than most recent Marvel projects but certainly fast and action-y enough to satisfy genre fans. The story is emotional and poignant, and Michael B. Jordan definitely shines – although I feel a pang of white guilt in reporting that Andy Serkis, for once appearing with his own tribal mask of a face, steals away the trophy for most enjoyable performance in the film – as one of the MCU’s most complex theatrical villains to date... if not, like Cate Blanchett’s Hela before him, one that truly and definitively manages to buckle well-established Marvel villain trends.

The soundtrack – if a touch obtrusive at times – is another of the movie’s high points, way less hip-hop-heavy than trailers suggested and much more genuinely African in its tones and beats. For a film that’s obstensibly about identity, the fact that its visuals and acoustics come together to form such an original, easily-identifiable cinematic brand is certainly Coogler’s, and everyone behind him, greatest achievement here.

The bad: the film looks amazing, except when it doesn’t. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is definitely developing an overreliance on CGI lately, and even Black Panther’s rather sizeable budget can’t do much to distract from some of the film’s worst effects – no spoilers, but you’ll know when you see it – and its general overabundance of green-screen shenanigans, especially in the cliché-laden climax.

The action itself isn’t especially praise-worthy either, despite a couple brief highlights: much like in Creed, Coogler blows his best action scene midway through the film and it’s all downhill from there, with a few missed opportunities along the way. The film’s focus on hi-tech gadgets, for example, sort of fizzles out without much fanfare after a while, with the same two or three tricks being repeated throughout the movie.

Other issues may be found in certain aspects of pacing, although in that area your mileage may vary. Black Panther starts off a tad slow, and then unfolds as a series of self-contained vignettes that take too long to develop a coherent throughline. When the plot finally kicks in it works in fairly satisfactory fashion, but there’s one big twist that honestly could’ve been dropped earlier in the film’s generous runtime and, generally speaking, I feel that the script could’ve stood one more round of polishing.

So make no mistake: on my personal scale, as far as enjoyment of my theatrical experience is concerned, the verdict at the bottom of this review should not rise above “MOSTLY POSITIVE”. It gets knocked up a peg for two specific reasons:

Black Panther’s impact on the American public is undeniable. In the United States, the film’s themes resonate in a way they simply can’t anywhere else, and as such this is the one Marvel movie that is perhaps the least designed for, and the least accessible to, foreign audiences... even if it is frankly quite mystifying that Wakanda’s core values would end up being framed in the context of the plight and struggle of people of colour in America, rather than pretty much anywhere in the surrounding African continent. Ultimately, I think, it’s not even a matter of said themes being satisfactorily addressed or resolved, and indeed Coogler’s film presents challenging ideas that are entirely unexpected from a superhero movie, but – partly because the script starts dealing with them too far into its runtime, as I mentioned – there’s not really the proper time for them to breather. Other critics have written that Black Panther is more interesting to think about than it is to actually watch, and I tend to agree: the ideas behind this movie are impressive, but their execution is not always the best. Despite that, Black Panther most definitely is an important film, at least in the here and now. Its missteps are easily overlooked in light of that, just as I imagine Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historical speeches would’ve still be commended for their convention-buckling message even if the reverend himself had been saddled with a comical stutter. This movie’s heart is in the right place, and it’s easy to see why that is being rewarded above all else.

From a purely technical standpoint, my viewing of this film was crippled by an adequate, and just adequate, Italian dub. I’m perfectly capable of recognising when a mediocre localisation gets in the way of a film’s original underlying richness and this was most certainly the case, with the whole English-language cast providing an array of diverse – and, I’m sure, memorable – performances, many of them in fictional African accents, that got “flattened” to an unvarying standard inflection in the version I got to see. At least in that respect, I expect a second home-video viewing in the original language to elevate my opinion of the performers’ work.

So in the end we’re left with a pretty tough question on our hands: is Black Panther a movie that exploits the genre to draw attention to relevant political themes, or one that exploits those political themes to justify its run-of-the-mill script? It is perhaps both, and that becomes a rather large problem when the film can’t make up its mind as to which of its two identities deserves its full commitment. Nonetheless, I’m eager to see how this franchise, and the larger Marvel machine whose gears grind around it, carry forward what’s been put in motion here. For the time being, Black Panther is perhaps not as good as it could’ve been... but even then, it seems to be good enough.

[Verdict: POSITIVE]

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Upcoming releases, January to June 2018

Here’s the new instalment of my schedule of potential theatrical viewings for the next six months. As usual, most of what I don’t actually end up seeing in theatres I’ll likely review at a later date once it hits the home video market.

2018 has a very busy schedule in terms of the kind of spectacle-heavy films one would be inclined to watch in theatres.

As to when you can expect me to review some of the movies listed here, keep in mind that some of the Italian release dates (i.e. those that simply read as “one day before it hits US theatres”) are a bit suspicious and may be adjusted as we get closer to the actual release.

ONGOING EDITS: God Particle has now been pushed to an April 20 US release. The tentative Italian release date is to be considered similarly affected.

The Disaster Artist’s Italian release has been pushed to February 22.

The Shape of Water will now release in Italy one day earlier than previously announced, on February 14.

Paramount Pictures will now release Alex Garland's Annihilation in theatres only in the United States, Canada, and China. Distribution in all other territories, including Italy, will now be handled by Netflix on a streaming-only basis starting on March 12.

Similarly, Netflix has announced its acquisition of distribution rights for Duncan Jones's Mute, available on streaming starting on February 23.

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The Last Jedi: six observations and four questions [MAJOR SPOILERS]

[WARNING: the following contains HUGE PLOT SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Please proceed at your own discretion.]

It has been a strange, busy year for franchise sequels. Between Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, Thor: Ragnarok and now The Last Jedi, a lot of what has graced our screens has been saddled with a lot of different expectations, and with more than a little anxiety concerning its relationship to vast pre-established canon. In my opinion, all four films handled that task well; however, each of them approached the matter in a very different way.

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel embraced and expanded its predecessor’s style and themes, for example, while Ragnarok upended pretty much everything in its franchise so far with maniacal glee and an irrevent attitude bordering on outright mockery. Covenant also played fast and loose with established lore, but unlike the third Thor it did so without acknowledging it, “pretending” – thanks to original creator Ridley Scott being at its helm – to perfectly fit into everything that preceded it.

At its heart, The Last Jedi has more than a little in common with the latter two. It – literally, in certain cases – sets fire to certain aspects of the Star Wars canon to make room for a newer iteration of the franchise, but it does so with respect and love, pruning selected parts of the property to allow it to flourish. Its mockery seems instead aimed at its direct predecessor, The Force Awakens, which director Rian Johnson appears to retroactively adjust in order to steer the saga towards his own vision.

That attitude is nowhere more apparent than in the outright derision of Kylo Ren’s mask, which “makes him look like an idiot”. The meta-textual jab at J.J. Abrams’s aesthetic sensibilities betrays a ballsiness bordering on arrogance, as does the U-turn on Snoke’s characterisation, going from grave, sombre Palpatine wannabe to sneering, opulent Bond villain.

Whatever the reasoning behind The Last Jedi’s changes to the franchise, in my eyes the overwhelming majority of them was for the best. But did Johnson’s film really change everything, or was it more of a balanced mix of old and new? Following is a brief list of things that didn’t go as we might have expected and things that most certainly did, as well as some that still may or may not in the near future.

1. Subverted expectations

Leia’s death Given historic Star Wars precedent, it was very reasonable to expect Leia to not survive Episode VIII’s events: Kylo Ren was on a stated mission to forcibly (har har) eradicate his family ties, “mentor”-like characters have a track record of not surviving long into a new trilogy and, well, Carrie Fisher won’t be around for Episode IX. And indeed, The Last Jedi does give Leia a swift and dramatic death scene... only to reverse it immediately by virtue of a plot twist hinging on the character’s previously-undisclosed Jedi training, in a textbook example of a trope which I’m sure must be already defined somewhere on the Internet but which I’m personally more than willing to dub “Secretly Jesus”. It’s a stunning sequence and one that’s proving quite controversial with fans, setting the scene for the no-holds-barred approach to storytelling showcased throughout the movie.

Finn’s sacrifice I’ve written at length about how Finn is the best candidate for Sequel-Trilogy replacement to Han Solo, and so there was good reason to believe that, as he threw himself into a First Order super-weapon, we were in for a rerun of Han’s heroic surrender to frozen doom – I don’t think anyone was expecting Finn to actually die, but by that point The Last Jedi had certainly demonstrated that it was down for pretty much anything – at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Once again, that didn’t end up happening but the spirit was certainly there: just like Han, Finn had spent the whole film – and the whole franchise up to that point – torn between his own good heart and an individualistic penchant for self-preservation; by the end of their respective second chapters, both characters finally embrace their heroic streak. Ironically, whereas Han sacrificed himself to save Leia – culminating in the saga’s first explicitly-stated romance – here it’s the girl who ends up in suspended animation instead, after saving the day and declaring her love.

Rey’s parentage The most (apparently) outrage-introducing aspect of Johnson’s film is also the most interestingly handled. After two years of speculation regarding Rey’s true parents, and a number of increasingly far-fetched theories – Rey is Luke’s, Obi-Wan’s, Qui-Gon’s, Palpatine’s daughter – in The Last Jedi she was finally revealed to have been just a regular Jane Doe all along, an outsider to the Skywalker family saga. Some fans have met this with outcry, partly because they don’t seem to understand that the Sequel Trilogy is still part of the Skywalker arc through Kylo Ren, and partly because of precedent. The reveal of Luke’s parentage in The Empire Strikes Back is the single most iconic moment in the entire franchise, and quite a few people were expecting a direct retread of that. Except a direct retread is precisely what they got. Even without getting into the fact that Kylo could’ve simply been lying, the scene plays exactly how you’d expect: the bad guy extends his hand to the hero, offering a place beside them on the Galaxy’s throne after dropping the unexpected bombshell about their parents’ identity. The scene is almost exactly the same, but in reverse: for starters, the hero has just been in a fight involving the film’s villain; but unlike in Empire, Rey comes out of the fight victorious and having fought on the same side as the villain, not against him. Similarly, the biggest reversal comes in the fact that the bombshell shock doesn’t come in the shape of a twist reveal but rather in the absence of one. The Last Jedi – something it has in common with another piece of oft-maligned fiction that I happen to love, but that’s a story for another time – trades a twist for an anti-twist: “I am your father” becomes “Nobody is your father”. Which isn’t just poetic, it also works on a number of levels. Rey doesn’t have to be connected to everything else in the saga, just like Finn doesn’t have to be Lando’s or Mace Windu’s secret son. In The Last Jedi we finally get to know and love these characters for who they are, not for who they could be. This moment in which the saga is freed from the weight of its own legacy is as earth-shattering and franchise-changing as the ending to Empire was; if not more, because this time around we were prepared for it but were still surprised. We were prepared for anything, and they surprised us with nothing. You can call that cheating. I call that clever.

2. Confirmed tropes

Luke’s goodbye While Luke’s final act of heroism in The Last Jedi is breathtaking in its unexpectedness, his ultimate fate is as traditional as they come. Right after re-enacting Obi-Wan’s “strike me down” scene, Luke pulls a Yoda and peacefully joins the Force. It’s something that by all logic should’ve been reserved for the first half of Episode IX – just as Yoda’s death signalled the beginning of act 2 for Return of the Jedi –, but then again I did mention in my review that The Last Jedi is a bit of an episode-and-a-half kind of deal. Narratively speaking, the film could’ve ended on an Empire-like note right as Rey manages to escape after her lightsabre-breaking, parentage-revealing confrontation with Ben. Instead, Johnson took things one giant step beyond. And that’s a good thing, fortunately: had this movie closed on yet another cliffhanger, we wouldn’t have had the chance to conveniently explain away Leia’s departure from the franchise by means of a – all but inevitable, now – time skip between Episodes VIII and IX.

Snoke’s death Unexpected as it was in its timing, Snoke’s demise was anything but in terms of pure narrative structure: he was set up to be defeated, and he most certainly was. Not just that, but he was defeated in what’s arguably the most traditional way to be found in Star Wars canon: an apprentice turning on his own master when he’s instead supposed to finish an incapacitated opponent. It happened to Palpatine in the Original Trilogy, and it happened to Mace Windu – in a direct reversal of that same scene – in the Prequels. Snoke may not have been an actual member of the Sith order, but his fate certainly conformed to that of historic Dark Side practitioners. What’s more, his efforts to turn Ben Solo into a new Vader definitely paid off... perhaps even too much for his liking.

DJ’s betrayal Benicio Del Toro’s character is more a walking, talking plot device than anything, but he’s an undeniably charming addition to the franchise. Still, for anyone who thought he didn’t get enough development on his first time on the Star Wars scene, his return is pretty much a given. His potential for a face-turn in Episode IX, combined with his introduction as a shifty but useful ally to our heroes, only to grievously betray them while maintaining a measure of relatability, paints a very clear picture: DJ is, quite simply, the Sequel Trilogy’s Lando. There’s probably no easier cross-trilogy comparison in all of The Last Jedi, in my opinion. And to be frank, it’s a pretty entertaining one.

3. Still-dangling plot threads

What role do Luke’s relics play? The Last Jedi includes more than a few deep-lore easter eggs, many of them hidden on its characters. Snoke, for example, wears a golden ring whose stone – as one can read in the Visual Dictionary companion book – comes directly from the Dark Side pit originally lying beneath Vader’s fortress first glimpsed in Rogue One. Luke carries not one but two of these significant relics. The first is a Jedi compass, a MacGuffin introduced in the recently-released Battlefront II video game whose exact purpose wasn’t really disclosed, although one might speculate that it’s through it that Luke managed to find the ancient Jedi planet of Ahch-To. The second is Luke’s pendant, apparently housing a red crystal of unspecified origins. This particular object became the centrepiece of a fascinating fan theory in the months preceding the film’s release, and while that specific scenario didn’t pan out, the pendant itself did get a suspicious close-up shot which went entirely unexplained. The Visual Dictionary lists it as an ancient “Jedi Crusader” trophy, sparking rumours about the renewed canonicity of fan-favourite Knights of the Old Republic character Darth Revan. Could that be it, or is there more to Luke’s story between trilogies that we have yet to see? And if so, will that be addressed in Episode IX, or is it something that’s bound to be left to exploration in New Expanded Universe material?

Who was Snoke, exactly? Easily the second most controversial bit in the movie, Snoke’s sudden death left a lot of questions hanging. Who exactly was this guy? Where did he come from? Why was he so strong in the Force, and how did he know so much about everyone involved in the previous two thirds of the saga? The fans’ frustration about these unresolved plot points is understandable, and it’s undeniable that Johnson has left quite the hot potato in Abrams’s hands. Still, one must never forget that Emperor Palpatine was just as much of an unknown quantity in the Original Trilogy: character-wise, he was very little more than a cackling, mugging “evil incarnate” trope, blandly intimidating up to the point where his right-hand man killed him by essentially pushing him down a flight of stairs. It wasn’t until the oft-maligned Prequels that good ol’ Sheev took on a personality all his own. On the other hand, that sort of undefined mystery just isn’t viable in the franchise’s current state. After forty years of accumulated, obsessive exploration of the narrative universe’s every nook and cranny, fans are no longer willing to put up with not knowing. And, to be completely fair, relegating Snoke’s backstory to Expanded Universe novels or comic-book series would be a disservice to the portion of the audience that only watches the film instalments – whereas Phasma’s mostly-perfunctory role in the movies is more acceptable, vis-à-vis her much more in-depth characterisation in ancillary material – and a general faux pas from a narrative standpoint.

What about the Knights of Ren? Speaking of dubious narrative choices, another unexpected element in The Last Jedi’s standalone-but-not-standalone structure – the movie works extremely well in isolation, but it’s also perhaps the most interconnected to previous lore that Star Wars has ever been – was the total absence of Kylo Ren’s eponymous Knights, teased in Rey’s “Force Vision” sequence halfway through The Force Awakens. From a purely in-universe standpoint, their uninvolvement with the film’s proceedings makes sense: Episode VIII takes place over a short period of time immediately on VII’s heels, and as such it would’ve been strange for the Knights to come running as a sort of bad-guy cavalry, especially if it were for the sole purpose of being anticlimactically slaughtered barely halfway through the trilogy at the hands of a still-inexperienced Rey. Narratively speaking, however, what we got was a full movie – and two more years of endless wait – going by without the characters being addressed, which is pretty frustrating. So much so, in fact, that some fans have already begun speculating that the Knights actually were featured in The Last Jedi as none other than Snoke’s Praetorian Guards, a truly awful theory that presupposes a shockingly appalling grasp of storytelling on Rian Johnson’s part. One can only hope that with Kylo now positioned as the trilogy’s Big Bad, they’ll serve as the mid-boss-level characters our heroes will have to get through if they want to face the ultimate evil... potentially resulting in the most spectacular lightsabre battle ever witnessed in Star Wars canon.

Where are the other Force ghosts? The question of where Yoda’s Force ghost has been all these days as Luke – and the Galaxy – needed his guidance is easily answered by The Force Awakens, in both title and dialogues: there has been an “awakening” in the Force, at least the Cosmic side of it, with Rey’s and Kylo’s mounting powers. So it’s not hard to imagine that the world of spirits has been a lot less in touch with that of the living over the past thirty years. Nonetheless, that dry spell is now decidedly broken. Obi-Wan whispered in Rey’s ear at least once in Episode VII, and Yoda’s appearance in The Last Jedi showed us a Force ghost with more power and influence over the physical world than ever before – although that may have to do with the peculiar Force-attuned nature of the planet Ahch-To –, and that’s a pretty hard can of worms to re-seal. So the big, looming question right now is: where is Anakin Skywalker’s ghost, and why isn’t he giving his grandson a piece of his mind about his hare-brained scheme for galactic annihilation? Should we expect Hayden Christensen to make a Vader-y return in Episode IX, or will Abrams’s apparent loathing for the Prequels rob us of that long-delayed rehabilitation of his take on the character?

Other questions loom large over the next (and final) episode in the Skywalker saga, of course. Did Kylo lie about Rey’s parents? Will Snoke still exert some sort of influence on the Galaxy’s fate, even after death? How exactly will Leia die? How will the Resistance turn things around to win the day? Will Rey and Poe start a surprise romance? And how will Phasma have ludicrously survived this time?

We’ll just have to wait, I guess. In the meantime, I’m sure Solo: A Star Wars Story will give people a lot more to complain about.

[robedisimo]

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

If you were to ask me which franchises I consider myself a fan of, it would take some time for Star Wars to cross my mind. Not because I’m not a fan – trust me, I am – but because loving Star Wars just goes without saying. If you’re asked what your defining personal skills are, you don’t reply that you’re able to articulate sounds in such a way as to form meaning. It’s an incredibly specific skill and only 0.00001% of animal species on Earth possess it, but it’s kinda implicit in the fact that you’re having the interview, isn’t it?

My point is, if you’re a “fan” of any kind, you’re a fan of Star Wars. Call yourself nerd, geek or pop-culture freak, for those of us worshipping at the altar of fiction there’s probably no more widely beloved embodiment of what makes telling ourselves stories so damn enjoyable. It’s been the foundational myth of modern geekdom for three generations now, and I doubt it’s going away anytime soon.

Two years ago, writer/director J.J. Abrams tried to recapture that magic in The Force Awakens, a long-awaited seventh episode which – in my opinion – got a little more praise than it actually deserved... mostly out of everyone’s desire for it to succeed, if I had to hazard a guess. It was an entertaining nostalgia-filled romp and a fantastic technical feat of filmmaking, but it left us wondering: was there anything more to the saga’s future than just a warm cup of yesterday’s excitement, served in a shiny new packaging?

As it turns out, yes. Yes there was.

Holy crap.

Enter writer/director Rian Johnson, best known so far for the 2012 critical hit – and moderate box-office success – Looper, picking up where Abrams had left, grabbing the wheel with both hands, and leaning on the gas pedal as hard as he can. Handing what was supposed to be a cohesive trilogy arc over to a completely different author could’ve easily ended in a tailspin, but the franchise’s engines come out of it roaring. For the first time in a really long while, Star Wars is back, both narratively and creatively. And, most importantly, it’s back at the top, setting the high mark for the rest of the blockbuster field.

There’s too much to say about The Last Jedi and too little one can really touch upon without indulging in spoilers, so let’s get past the technical aspects first. Johnson’s film is a feast for the eyes, and I honestly can’t recall another Star Wars instalment so absurdly rife with stunningly iconic moments of visual creativity. I can guarantee that at least five scenes from this movie will be permanently seared into your personal mental library of great franchise-defining moments on visual merits alone, without even starting on those that are equally memorable from a narrative standpoint. Meanwhile John Williams’s score, it goes without saying, is as majestic as ever, and helps keeping things familiar even when they occasionally breach into surprisingly new territory for the franchise.

Indeed, Johnson’s almost alarming confidence in steering the ship leads to an episode that’s structured in a very unusual way for a Star Wars film. Rather than a sequence of events, The Last Jedi feels more like one single, prolonged scenario fracturing into an elaborate series of subplots, not unlike what you’d expect from an especially expansive episode of today’s long-form television. It’s an odd approach and it does result in occasionally uneven pacing, but the upside is that Episode VIII just doesn’t let up, ever: it’s a breakneck rollercoaster run from beginning to end, containing the full spectrum of what viewers can get from the Star Wars brand. It’s tense, it’s action-packed – the space battles and lightsabre fights are absolutely amazing –, it’s emotional... and often surprisingly hilarious, too.

As other reviewers have noted, The Last Jedi hits a number of comedic notes of a sort that’s pretty unfamiliar for the franchise, but the great news is that it works. All jokes land, and some of them land really hard. As a matter of fact, here’s the one “spoiler” I’m willing to throw your way: you know those “Porg” creatures we watched fill our holiday toy aisles, threatening to turn the galaxy far, far away into a Minions cartoon? Forget about those: they’re not a concern. Johnson’s Star Wars isn’t afraid to indulge in the more kid-friendly aspects of the saga, but – and here’s the catch – there’s balance to it.

A balance which seems to pervade all elements of this sprawling new chapter, 152 minutes – now the longest Star Wars ever, beating Attack of the Clones by a good ten minutes – encompassing everything about the franchise: the classic narrative archetypes and the surprise plot twists, the epic drama and the silly creatures, the practical effects and the all-you-can-eat CGI buffet. Where Abrams seemed to be looking firmly backwards to the Original Trilogy, Johnson appears to look both ways: to the old and the new, keeping the best of the classics while moving ahead at full steam.

Perhaps the most trivial but telling sign of that attitude is the almost total abandonment of classic Star Wars wipe transitions, here at the franchise’s lowest in a numbered episode – Rogue One dispensed with them entirely, along with the traditional opening crawl. This mixture of old and new breathes through every single one of the film’s structural elements, carrying forward Abrams’s work especially when it comes to the use of practical sets and – were possible – practical effects. One scene in particular – I won’t say anything more, it’s absurdly good – is actually pretty shocking in how much it serves as a defiant middle finger to Lucas’s CGI overdose in the Prequel Trilogy.

Okay, well, maybe not a middle finger per se, but certainly a conscious effort to fix what hadn’t been done so greatly before: an effort which Johnson actually delivers towards Abrams’s treatment of characters as well, retroactively making a couple of The Force Awakens’s weakest aspects more interesting for fans. There definitely is a certain desire to be in charge reflected here, culminating in the fact that The Last Jedi, long and story-packed as it is, feels more like two episodes in one... or one and a half, at worst. In a way, it’s as if this film wanted to be its own end to the trilogy, tying things up in such a way as to render future developments irrelevant to Episode VIII’s narrative.

And if you ask me? That’s a good thing. Will the next Star Wars be just an Ewok-filled appendix to a spectacular second chapter, or will it actually surprise us all with an explosive epilogue once Abrams hits us with Episode IX: Return of the J.J.? As far as I’m concerned, that not longer matters: the Sequel Trilogy has already delivered, and delivered in spades.

But I’ve kept you waiting long enough. What about the cast? Well, I’m happy to report that Daisy Ridley is a lot more convincing – and noticeably at ease – in her role as Rey than the first time around. John Boyega’s Finn is entertaining as ever, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe finally gets a lot to do in this new instalment, which is great because that man deserves a leading role in a franchise all his own. Everyone else does great in their respective roles – keep an eye out for Laura Dern in an especially hard-to-forget new addition to the saga – and both Adam Driver and motion-capture veteran Andy Serkis rise to new heights of villainy, finally freeing the Sequels from the gaping void left by Vader.

It’s the returning cast, however, that truly allows The Last Jedi to shine. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better return to major-league acting for Mark Hamill, nor of a better return to pop-culture prominence for Luke Skywalker, a legend reinvented for a whole new generation of adoring fans. Yet for all that Episode VIII devotes so much time and love to the aging Jedi Master, it finds enough in its story not to leave Carrie Fisher’s beloved Princess behind. Leia is perhaps the biggest surprise in Johnson’s film; if this is how we were fated to see her for one last time... well, what a send-off. What a wonderful send-off.

In a year that already gave us War for the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner 2049, this is incredibly the most satisfied I’ve been upon exiting a theatre over the past twelve months. Go see The Last Jedi as soon as you can: it’s fun, it’s huge, it’s a new generation-defining classic. It’s warmly nostalgic, yet boldly new. Above all, it’s a work of love of the highest order. It’s the best Star Wars film ever made, even if it can never hope to recreate the groundbreaking impact of The Empire Strikes Back’s small-budget wizardry. If your inner child has been good this year, this is the gift it deserves for the holidays.

[Verdict: EXTREMELY POSITIVE]

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART III]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

[ PREVIOUS – Thematic classes and the Sequel Trilogy ]

8. The Last Jedi: what do we know?

The promotion machine for The Last Jedi has been remarkably coy so far. The trailers have shown quite a bit, but there’s been a mounting sense among fans that most of it may have been intentional misdirection. Here’s what the trailers seem to tell us:

Finn is infiltrating the First Order as an undercover agent;

Luke has lost faith in the Jedi way, and appears reluctant towards the idea of training Rey;

Rey will head into direct confrontation with Snoke;

Kylo Ren will be involved in a space battle in which he may get the chance to kill Leia, severing another of his blood ties;

Rey, having either abandoned Luke’s tutelage or been abandoned by him, will seek Kylo Ren as her new tutor in the ways of the Force.

While the first three points are pretty much certain at this point, the latter two are very suspicious. The trailers appear purposely edited in such a way as to create the illusion of correlation between shots which may very well come from entirely different scenes in the actual film, such as Rey’s plead for a guide being met by Kylo’s outstretched hand.

Leia’s fate, on the other hand, would make sense for a number of reasons, not last of them Carrie Fisher’s unfortunate choice to become one with the Force. But would Rey really seek out the help of someone who just killed his own parents, both of whom she also happened to like? Something doesn’t quite work there: it seems to me that either scenario could pan out, but not both at once.

Yet, the more interesting topic at hand might be Luke Skywalker’s ongoing role in the saga. Will he be the paragon of virtue we have known for the past forty years, or will things change in unprecedented ways? A two-pronged path opens before us, and might lead us to some unexpected answers.

9. Luke Skywalker: Schrödinger’s knight?

For obvious reasons, Luke has been a huge part of the Sequel Trilogy’s marketing. His pull on the franchise’s fanbase is so extreme that his absence from the Force Awakens trailers was the most talked-about topic before the film’s release, and his in-story absence the driving force for the film’s whole plot.

The Last Jedi has proved no different, playing on audience expectations to create a renewed shroud of mystery around his aging figure. Will his character be – rather unrealistically – unchanged like Han’s or Leia’s, or will he be radically different from what we expect?

The most obvious, vanilla scenario is plainly the following:

Here Luke takes on the role that was once Yoda’s, and trailers so far seem to suggest that no matter what further complications may arise that’s still going to be the case in at least some respects. For instance, Yoda was explicitly shown as being against training both Prequel-Trilogy Anakin and Original-Trilogy Luke, contrasting with the less-skeptical opinions of his fellow masters. Sequel-Trilogy Luke seems similarly withdrawn when it comes to Rey’s training.

There is an alternative, however; or rather, there may be more to Luke’s role in the Sequels’ narrative, as some of the promotional material seems to allude to by putting him on both the Light and Dark side of the cast. While the most widespread fan theory is that Luke will embody the first film iteration of the so-called “Grey Jedi” – favouring a neutral approach to the Force spectrum – one other “what if” scenario I’ve seen float around the Internet during the past couple months is way more intriguing, stemming from the yet-unconfirmed piece of information according to which The Last Jedi’s Luke wears a kyber crystal around his neck, of the same sort used in the construction of lightsabres.

Very recently, the Star Wars canon was introduced to the notion of “bleeding” kyber crystals: that all kybers form with a natural attunement to the Light Side of the Force, and that the only way for Dark Jedi to use one is to forcibly bend it to their will, causing the crystal to turn to the agonising shade of red traditionally associated with Sith lightsabres. What if, after Kylo Ren’s betrayal and extermination of the New Jedi Order, Luke attempted to rebuild his sabre only to be faced with a crimson blade, corrupted by his own rage and despair? What if his self-imposed exile weren’t just out of shame and defeat, but rather self-imprisonment and punishment for his own fall to the Dark Side?

That is a really interesting possibility, especially if – this is just a bit of additional speculation on my own part – Kylo Ren’s oddly unstable red blade were revealed to be produced by only one half of a cracked kyber, originally from Luke’s green sabre. Luke's fall from the Light would then be framed as a parallel to his father’s, causing him to take on some of the aspects of the Dark Knight story role. Which leads us to scenario number two:

This would be extremely interesting for two interconnected reasons. The first and most important being that it frees Kylo Ren from the role of the trilogy’s central antagonist, allowing us to view his character in a different light: that of the Sequel Trilogy’s second protagonist.

10. The Sequel Trilogy: two stories in one?

Once we start viewing things in this new light, suddenly a few analytical avenues open up which actually make quite a bit of sense. The Sequel Trilogy appears to have the potential to feature certain characters occupying two roles at once, leading in turn to certain roles being split between two characters.

Thus Rey and Ben/Kylo can both be the Sequels’ main character: one on the Light Side, one on the Dark. For all that The Force Awakens seemed to willfully ignore the existence of the Prequel Trilogy, there’s no denying that Kylo Ren is more than a little (intentionally) reminiscent of Prequel-Trilogy Anakin, both thematically and aesthetically. At the same time, Rey is decidedly an OT Luke pastiche. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that this third – and apparently last – chapter of the Skywalker saga could be trying to bring together the Original Trilogy’s “Light Side” storyline and the Prequels’ “Dark Side” parable into a combined epilogue that finally balances the Force?

Compounding this theme of duality, Luke could – in our hypothetical scenario – be both Sage and Dark Knight, espousing the “Grey Jedi” theory. And not just that: in this split-narrative system, he could also occupy two thematic classes... depending on whether Rey turns out to actually be his daughter. In that case, Luke would play the role of the abandoning Dark Father to her and of the – tentatively and vainly – nurturing Good Father to Ben, while at the same time Han plays the same, reversed roles to Rey in a perfect instance of the previously mentioned duality between biological and adoptive father figures.

Still in the thematic classes department, we could simultaneously cast both Rey and Finn as the Youngster, while role-wise Ben/Kylo would take on aspects of both the Mentor-killing Dark Knight and – if his eventual arc ends up being redemptive – the ever-changing Rogue. At the same time, Poe would exhibit aspects of both the Veteran and the Older Man classes, the latter – with a focus on the positive camaraderie between the two character categories – in relation to Finn’s Youngster; just as Ben/Kylo would, conversely, play the rivalry-centric Older Man to Rey’s Youngster.

Depending on whether his screen time and personal plotline is significantly expanded in The Last Jedi, one could even argue for Poe being framed as the Hero in his own smaller story, with Leia – if trailers are to be believed – fittingly playing the part of his ill-fated Mentor. Which, incidentally, would finally find a place for her on our chart, since the fact that she didn’t die between trilogies – unlike Padmé – puts her in the awkward position of being an “extra” character... which kinda explains why her role in The Force Awakens was little more than a Sequel equivalent to Mon Mothma.

We would then end up with a trilogy featuring two Heroes (Rey and Poe) and two Rogues (Ben/Kylo and Finn), balanced by two Mentors and two (potential) Dark Knights. In terms of trilogy-to-trilogy cascading, the scenario would look like this:

This is all speculation, of course. We’ll have to wait a few more days to know whether this approach holds ground, and two more years to finally have the full picture in hand. Will the Sequel Trilogy stick to the saga’s rails, or will it deviate into its own novel path and finally break new narrative ground? All we have right now are questions, but answers won’t be a long time coming.

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART II]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

[ PREVIOUS – Narrative roles in the Star Wars monomyth ]

4. Thematic classes and pairings

Just because the plot of a Star Wars trilogy – or any piece of fiction, really – hinges on story roles which need to be filled by characters in order for the narrative to advance, it doesn’t mean that the characters themselves are merely functions of the plot with no life of their own.

Star Wars isn’t the deepest or most nuanced of stories, but its core themes are demonstrably resonant. And just as the plot is carried through by the cast, so are the thematic arcs upon which the plot is built: in parallel to their narrative roles, the characters also inhabit certain “thematic classes”, for lack of a better label.

To illustrate a couple:

the Youngster – Like the “Hero” role, a fairly self-explanatory category. Young and inexperienced, they act as the primary audience vehicle: the viewer learns about the world and story just as this character does.

the Older Man – Or, if you prefer, the Mature Man, the Experienced Man, or the Role Model. The Youngster’s counterpart and deuteragonist, on his own character arc but on an arguably secondary plane.

The existence of the Youngster class is the reason why the Hero role isn’t necessarily the protagonist of the trilogy he inhabits. Original-Trilogy (OT) Luke and Prequel-Trilogy (PT) Anakin are respectively a Hero and a Rogue, but they’re both tier-one protagonists because they’re both the Youngster. Star Wars is a franchise primarily aimed at a young audience, and the Youngster is invariably the “face character” of their trilogy, the one most likely to get the central spot on a promotional poster.

It’s important to notice that the Youngster relates to other characters in different way. They act as the Rebellious Youngster towards the Older Man, with whom they have a relationship built on a mix of jovial camaraderie and confrontational rivalry – see Anakin’s strained apprenticeship under Obi-Wan, and Luke and Han’s initial competition for Leia’s attentions. Conversely, they act the Naïve Youngster towards the characters inhabiting the Mentor and Princess narrative roles (more on this later).

This sort of interdependence and interrelationship between thematic classes allows us to introduce yet another concept: thematic pairs. These pairings are formed between complementary thematic classes, with the Youngster/Older Man pair being the first to arise.

Other pairings include:

the Good Father / Dark Father – Both come to the main character with a call to destiny: see Obi-Wan’s support of the “Chosen One” narrative for Anakin, and Vader’s offer of father-son Imperial rule to Luke. The protagonist turns to these characters to find aid in his search for identity, to understand his place in the universe, and for emotional validation. Taking the Youngster under their wing, they often appear to be genuinely invested in his well-being.

the Good Master / Dark Master – Both come to the main character with an offer of power. These are the characters to whom the protagonist turns to find the means to achieve his goals, to acquire the strength required to accomplish his destiny. They are often duplicitous and manipulative – see Yoda’s trickster act, and his omission to Luke of both Vader’s and Leia’s true nature – treating the protagonist as an unfeeling instrument to be bent towards a higher purpose.

If you go back to the difficulties we had pegging PT Palpatine as either the Dark Knight or the Dark Lord, you’ll find that the same duality is mirrored in his split role as both the Dark Father and the Dark Master: his Senator Palpatine persona treacherously poses as a supportive paternal figure to Anakin – in direct and intentional contrast to Obi-Wan’s more stern and demanding tutelage – while his Sidious persona is blatantly interested in nothing more than using the kid as a blunt instrument to attain his goal of galactic domination.

An additional and rather peculiar point of interest: the Good Father – that is to say Obi-Wan, in both the Original and Prequel Trilogy – is consistently shown as a surrogate paternal figure, whereas the Dark Father is either the protagonist’s actual biological parent or – if you follow the Prequel Trilogy’s implications in this regard – acts as such, by having had a direct role in influencing his conception.

5. Character arcs and moral alignment

Now here’s where things get interesting. As we’ve seen, narrative roles define a character’s function in the plot, while thematic classes define their relationships with other cast members. Considered in conjunction, these two aspects come together to determine their overall character arc.

I’ve stated before how the Rogue is a role defined by change; the same is true of the Youngster class. The Hero’s morals are a constant, while the Rogue’s shift; the Youngster is in search of an identity while the Older Man’s is mostly already defined by the time he’s introduced to the viewer.

Thus Luke (Youngster/Hero) is a consistent force for good throughout the Original Trilogy, but his identity goes from rebellious – culminating in his disobeying Yoda’s instructions in The Empire Strikes Back – to disciplined. Borrowing terms from Dungeons & Dragons parlance, he’s consistently good but his alignment undergoes a gradual shift from chaotic to neutral.

Conversely, Han’s (Older Man/Rogue) personality remains consistently authority-defying and individualistic (chaotic), but his morals evolve from bad – he’s a pirate, a thief, and a cold-blooded murderer (who most definitely shot first) – to decidedly good by the time he sacrifices himself for the Rebellion, again near the end of Empire; clearly a good spot for culminating arcs.

For a couple more examples of different combinations of narrative roles and character classes:

PT Obi-Wan (Older Man/Hero) is consistently and dependably rule-abiding and noble (lawful good)

PT Anakin (Youngster/Rogue) goes from obedient disciple to rebellious traitor (lawful → chaotic) and from fated saviour to ultimate villain (good → evil)

Again, I’m not claiming I’ve cracked some sort of magic formula here... but it does seem to work fairly well in explaining the character dynamics in Star Wars past and present. With all these ingredients, it’s actually fairly easy to apply our recipe and reverse-engineer a hypothetical “prequel’s prequel” trilogy, with Qui-Gon as the Youngster/Hero, Count Dooku – his once-tutor, destined to gravitate towards Dark Knight territory as he cascades into the following trilogy – as the Older Man/Rogue, a young Palpatine as the Dark Knight and Darth Plagueis as the Dark Lord.

Now that (almost) all the elements are in place, we can finally get closer to engaging in some fairly well-informed speculation as to the saga’s future.

6. The Star Wars sequels: an ongoing puzzle

Drawing a coherent map of the new trilogy’s character roles is a bit hard for a number of reasons. First and foremost, well, we only have one movie to go on so far, and unlike A New Hope it wasn’t one designed to convincingly pass for a self-contained story in case its success wan’t enough to warrant a sequel.

The Force Awakens very much feels like a “chapter one” deal, so much so that it concludes with an actual “to be continued” cliffhanger, something the franchise had never done before – the end of Empire doesn’t count, Return of the Jedi didn’t pick up directly where the previous chapter had left off; as a matter of fact, it actually started with a time skip, which is pretty much the opposite of a cliffhanger.

Another issue arises from the fact that this is the first Star Wars trilogy not to have one cohesive story architect, instead being kicked off by one set of director and screenwriter and then brought forward by another. I’m sure there was a vague, general plan for where the story was going to head since day one, but I also think it’s safe to assume that a number of choices are being made on the fly.

The third and perhaps most tricky speed bump resides in the fact that the Sequel Trilogy is a more modern affair, built by more modern authors, for a more modern audience. Its character archetypes are deviated towards more contemporary sensibilities, and drawing a direct connection between them and the cast from the saga’s previous two chapters is definitely a less-immediate exercise than it was between the Original and Prequel trilogies.

Still, we can certainly try. Our first anchor point is the Mentor role, which is as cut and dry as they come: in accordance with our “cascading roles” model, Han falls into this spot like a pear from a tree. Within the context of The Force Awakens, this also clearly paints Ben Solo/Kylo Ren as the Dark Knight, though his enduring tenure in the role is debatable, as we’ll see in greater detail.

Rey is a little harder to categorise for the simple reason that she’s a bit of a mystery: since we don’t know all there is to know about her true parentage, and therefore about where her actual story arc might be headed in future instalments, we’re pretty much in the dark about her character’s actual nature. Still, if we just put aside all the theories and speculation, on its face her role is pretty blatant: she’s a true-blooded Hero, and a Youngster to boot.

Finn is a bit trickier still, but I think the clues are there. He comes to the Resistance from the bad guys’ side; he initially sides with the heroes out of personal interest, only to complete a definitive face-turn by the end of the film; and – this may be a minor thing, but it helps – he’s definitely the funniest character in the entire movie. Granted, he’s no Han Solo... but could Finn really be the Sequel Trilogy’s Rogue? That’s where what little we know for certain about The Last Jedi starts coming in handy.

Amidst a lot of potential misdirection, one thing we know for sure from trailers and other promotional material is that Finn will go back to the First Order as part of an undercover infiltration mission of sorts; here he will again come face-to-face with Captain Phasma, who I think we can all agree is the badass-on-paper, underwhelming-on-screen Sequel Trilogy reincarnation of Boba Fett.

Amusingly, this also seems to be a recurring traits for Rogues in the Star Wars monomyth. Each Rogue ends up revisiting his shady original environment in order to confront his past, embodied by one or more figures representing the character’s dark reflection: Han confronts Boba and literally buries his residual darkness; Anakin confronts the Sand People and instead succumbs to it. Now Finn has to stop running and face his past, too.

So that leaves us with Poe. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with him?

7. The Princess’s new clothes

In the context of our little matching game, Oscar Isaac’s dashing X-Wing pilot remains a bit of a square peg. That’s not at all surprising, considering how he came to be: Poe was originally supposed to be a total non-character, killed after his very first scene. He was only saved because Isaac is just too good to die, which is great for my ever-deepening man-crush on him but frankly throws a wrench into our whole experiment... or so I initially thought.

Indeed, Poe’s existence throughout The Force Awakens remains largely extraneous to a lot of the story, more an occasionally-there plot device than an actual character. In that respect, you would be excused for thinking he’s best explained as the Lando of the Sequel Trilogy. His role will no doubt be expanded in The Last Jedi, but I believe it can already be figured out by talking about the one thematic class I purposely left out of my analysis back in section 4.

I call this class “the Veteran”.

When I explained my idea of narrative roles in the Star Wars canon, I made intentional use of fantasy-like terminology to connect each role to a classic mythological archetype. Lucas makes no mystery of this: the Jedi are a monastic order of knights, and both the Original and Prequel trilogies open with our heroes rescuing the heir to royal house. Still, when you come down to it, the “Warrior Princess” doesn’t have to be a princess at all. Their role does, however, seem to require that they be rescued, and so they definitely are a Warrior Damsel.

The other side of that coin is that, in order to start their story arc as a captive, the Damsel has to be neck-deep in the plot right from the start. When their trilogy begins they’re already occupying a position of power and authority within the good guys’ camp, and they have something – be it information or physical assets – which the bad guys require, leading to their imprisonment. Furthermore, the position they occupy is tied to past history: Padmé embodies Naboo’s tradition and has dealt with the Federation in the past, while Leia is both a long-standing asset to the Rebellion and the adoptive heir to a family sharing a similar history of anti-Imperial activity. The Veteran, so to speak, is the protagonist with a pedigree.

The direct consequence of this is that the Damsel/Veteran sits at the opposite end of the exposition spectrum when compared to the young protagonist. Remember what I said about the “Naïve Youngster”? Where our main character is lost and confused about what’s going on, the Veteran is worldly and in-the-know, often explaining plot beats, political connections, and hidden agendas to other characters and, by extension, the audience.

Does Poe fit this category? He certainly does in the first case: his role in The Force Awakens starts with him getting captured – after hiding vital data inside a droid, in a blatant replay of Leia’s first appearance – and then rescued by Finn. So he definitely fits the Damsel’s description; but is he the Veteran? That’s where the additional material found in novels and comic books once again comes to our aid: both of Poe’s parents were members of the Rebellion and heroes of the Battle of Endor, and so his standing as Resistance aristocracy is all but confirmed.

As an odd bonus coincidence, in both previous trilogy it’s always the Rogue who “gets the girl” by forging a romantic involvement with the Damsel... which is honestly a pretty humorous set of circumstances when you consider the fandom’s fondness for the Finn/Poe pairing. Not that their undeniable on-screen chemistry couldn’t be explained by the already-mentioned Youngster/Older Man camaraderie, which is most definitely at play there.

So here’s how our general picture of the Sequel Trilogy shapes up so far:

But wait, I hear you say: why is that spot there blank? Isn’t it obvious that Luke is going to be the Sage? And what of Leia? Also, isn’t it weird that the new protagonist trio is so unusually disconnected, with Poe and Rey sharing no interaction whatsoever throughout The Force Awakens aside from BB-8 acting as an obvious trait d’union between them? And how can Rey and Finn both be the Youngster, or Poe be both the Veteran and the Older Man at the same time?

For that we need to start speculating, I’m afraid: it’s not as if we have the complete picture yet, after all. So speculate is exactly what we’re going to do.

[ NEXT – Cracking the sequels’ future: an exercise in duality? ]

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART I]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

1. Modern fiction and the monomyth

When questioned about the repeating themes and story beats in his two Star Wars trilogies, George Lucas once famously replied: “It’s like poetry; it rhymes”.

View it as a statement on conscious creative methodology or as a middling excuse for predictability, the result doesn’t change: the Star Wars franchise is a creature of recurring plot points and character types, echoing from one iteration to the next in a never-ending cycle of repetition. Which isn’t really surprising when you take into account Lucas’s outstated inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a 1949 400-page essay on the nature and journey of the archetypal hero throughout ancient-world mythologies.

The so-called “monomyth” outlined by Campbell’s influential study hinges on simple narrative categories so engrained into our collective fiction-churning society that we instinctively recognise them wherever they’re used, whether we realise it or not: if a piece of modern fiction incorporates these elements its flavour and texture are those of a “classic”; if it doesn’t, they aren’t. Simple as that.

It’s not even a matter of quality, either. Have these narrative elements endured the test of time because they’re demonstrably better than others? Are they incessantly repeated because they’re iconic, or are they iconic because they’re incessantly repeated? Whatever the case, we’ve seen them so many times in so many different – yet not-so-different – permutations that each new iteration feels like coming back to the same, familiar story, the One Grand Tale mankind has been telling itself for the past four millennia at the very least.

Virtually all pieces of contemporary fiction that proved able to take root in our collective subconscious – what we call “pop culture” – share these same archetypal themes, story arcs and character moulds: properties such as the original Matrix, the Lord of the Rings books and films and the ongoing myth-spinning relay that are superhero comic-books all tapped into that same potential for endless recycling of pre-existing narrative categories.

Yet none leaned into it so hard, and so successfully, than the Star Wars franchise. Its staying power as a modern mythology for the 20th century and beyond is peerless. Is its adherence to the formula uncovered by Campbell a stroke of foresight-imbued genius, or the lucky side-effect of a pedestrian imitation game? I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure, but the results are so self-evident as to make that point entirely moot.

2. Narrative roles in the Star Wars mythology: the Original Trilogy

What’s most interesting, however, isn’t just how Star Wars recycles age-old narrative tropes, but rather how those tropes cascade from one trilogy into another. The now three-trilogies-spanning franchise has shaped into a monomyth all its own, built on a singular story being told and re-told multiple times through a specific set of internal rules.

The first of those rules – I use the term loosely; I’m not trying to pass my musings as exact science here, merely pointing out patterns where they seem to arise – concerns the story and the narrative categories that allow it to function. These categories were established in the Original Trilogy comprised of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but as you’ll see they can be readily applied to later permutations of the franchise.

At the best of my current ability to analyse the topic, the main character roles that allow the plot of a Star Wars trilogy to hold itself together boil down to seven specific archetypes, loosely defined as follows:

the Selfless Hero – Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Hero is the main active force of good in the story, propelling the plot forwards through a series of choices primarily motivated by altruism. They’re less prone to take part in comedy scenes, and when they do it’s mostly through quipping rather than practical gags.

the Rogue – Coming from a dangerous background, their motives are often dubious. Unruly and undisciplined, they initially align with the “good guys” out of self-interest, and tend to be motivated (even in their positive choices) by personal feelings and attachments rather than by interest in a greater cause of universal good. Among the three protagonists they’re the most likely to take part in physical comedy.

the Warrior Princess – Strong and independent (often to the point of overconfidence) they nonetheless tend to require a lot of rescuing. As noble as the Hero but less misguided in their choices, they serve as the story’s moral anchor. They’re the least likely member of the protagonist trio to get involved in comedy relief.

the Mentor – The Hero’s first teacher and tutor. Killed by the Dark Knight by the end of the first chapter, to form a grudge between the protagonist and main antagonist and to act as an inspirational moral compass.

the Sage – A secondary instructor to the Hero, acting as a connecting figure to past lore greater than the story’s present concerns.

the Dark Knight – The story’s active antagonist, pursuing the protagonists and representing a physical menace. Caught in the middle of a personal character arc that puts them on an eventual course of collision with the Dark Lord.

the Dark Lord – The story’s passive antagonist, acting as a behind-the-scenes mastermind. Less physically involved in battle, they represent an almost incorporeal, abstract concept of evil to be defeated at all costs, portrayed with fewer human qualities than the Dark Knight, if any at all. Much like the Sage, their character is already formed and undergoes no meaningful variation throughout the trilogy.

As far as the monomyth is concerned, the Original Trilogy is by far the most classical of the Star Wars iterations. Its themes and aesthetic – as alluded to in my choice of terminology – lean heavily into archetypal sword-and-sorcery elements: a farm boy with a greater destiny is led by a wizard to the rescue of a captive princess, held prisoner by an evil wizard-king and his right-hand black knight.

As such, it’s also easiest to make the OT’s cast of characters fall neatly into our grid. Here’s how (right-click and “show picture” or “open in new tab” to expand):

3. The Prequel Trilogy: recurring motifs and variation

Things get more interesting as we “backtrack forward”, as it were, to find ourselves in Prequel Trilogy waters. The prequels are a fairly different affair from Episodes IV through VI, but while the substance and setting of their narrative arc play to a different tune from what made the original Star Wars films what they were, the character types inhabiting that narrative are very, very familiar.

The formula we defined when looking at the Original Trilogy can be seen at play here with several overlapping points and a few key variations, first and foremost in the fact that this time around the Selfless Hero isn’t the main protagonist: the prequels’ focus, in accordance with their darker story arc, instead falls on the Rogue, personified by the younger Anakin.

Plot-wise – and also character-wise; more on this in Part 2 of this post chain – the Rogue is defined by change. They start in one position and often end at the opposite end of the spectrum. Han enters the Original Trilogy as a scoundrel and a street rat, and exits it as a decorated hero on track to marry into royalty. Anakin’s arc leads him from slavery – a position of absolute lack of power – to the heights of Force-infused might, from good to evil, and from hope to despair.

All that lays the groundwork for his transition into the Original Trilogy’s main antagonist, creating a precedent for the Hero and the Rogue falling on opposing sides of the good/bad moral axis as they trade their spot in one trilogy’s trio of protagonists for one of the four other positions in the character ladder. This will be a very important point as our analysis moves into predictive territory.

The other roles are filled in with ease... save for one: the Dark Knight category is, admittedly, a bit of a contended spot. In my mind, the Knight is the “villain with an arc”: their motivations – and even their ultimate alignment – change throughout the trilogy they inhabit, whereas the Dark Lord looms as an immutable agent of evil whose personal goals and inclinations are pretty much set in stone.

It could be argued that Palpatine ends up filling the role, as his arc as a villain is at least as well-explored as Vader’s was in the Original Trilogy films; still, as compelling as his final transition from Sheev Palpatine to a full-fledged Darth Sidious is, he only half-fits the bill. More importantly, his role in the prequels’ overarching plotline is clearly more suitably tailored on the “mastermind in the shadows” archetype, a dead ringer for the Dark Lord label.

So the Dark Knight spot is possibly meant to be left vacant, at least if we only take the films as our frame of reference. Instead, things get a lot clearer if we turn our attention towards the additional material provided by the – entirely canonical, unlike the rest of the now-scrapped Expanded Universe – Clone Wars and Rebels animated shows, where Darth Maul is not only revealed to have survived the end of The Phantom Menace, but also goes on to have a complex and extensive character arc.

I don’t agree with the entirety of Belated Media’s What if the Star Wars Prequels Were Good? YouTube series, but I absolutely concur that treating Maul, Dooku and Grievous as interchangeable pawns in Palpatine’s scheme was a major mistake that would’ve been sorted out by simply giving Maul a more developed story arc beyond Episode I. The Clone Wars and Rebels do exactly that and, wouldn’t you know it, his journey begins by killing the Mentor (Qui-Gon Jinn) and ends with him turning against his former master, the exact same arc followed by Vader in the Original Trilogy.

Now that’s what I call a Dark Knight. Our character role chart, thus informed, shapes up as follows:

At this point I’ve hopefully managed to provide you with a solid enough grasp of the system’s general bases. We’re going to need that as we head forward into a second tier of analysis: how plot mechanics interact with character dynamics.

[ NEXT – Thematic classes and the Sequel Trilogy ]

[robedisimo]

Thor: Ragnarok [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

In May 2018, a little over six months from now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will celebrate its ten-year anniversary with the release of Avengers: Infinity War, what will by then be its nineteenth instalment. That number is made even more baffling by the fact that the franchise will get there – if trailers for the February-bound Black Panther are any indications – with not a single unquestionably bad movie to its name, an accomplishment of truly astounding proportions when it comes to sequels.

Still, if you went and asked, you’d find very few people with actual doubts regarding one specific fact: in Marvel’s chain of cinematic successes, the Thor franchise was the weakest link pretty much from day one. While never exceedingly terrible, its films’ narrative shortcomings and tonal inconsistencies – and lack of a coherent voice, due to their bouncing from one director to another – always betrayed the fact that it was the property Marvel had the least clear idea what to do with.

That’s almost certainly why it was the last of the original “Phase One” franchises to get a third chapter... and, as it turns out, that’s exactly what the film series needed. Much like the Wolverine film franchise, whose scattered release schedule resulted in each chapter reflecting very different sensibilities within the ever-evolving superhero genre, the Thor films have gone through different phases, showcasing different approaches to the source material. Still, it was pretty clear that both Kenneth Branagh’s and Alan Taylor’s attempts at capitalising on the property’s more Shakespearean and Tolkien-like aspects didn’t completely click.

That’s perhaps because despite the character’s stories being known for their epic scale – in the most literal sense of the term – their ultimate underlying quality is actually sheer outlandishness: much like DC’s Superman, Thor isn’t defined by the villains he fights as much as by what he can do, which is to say pretty much anything. His immortal and virtually invulnerable nature mean his adventures can take place in the Middle Ages or the far-flung future; he can get punched through a sun, or hammer moons to dust; he can travel to the land of the dead on the back of a flying goat and be back for dinner with Captain America.

And sure, the MCU still has a long way to go before it can truly catch up to the comics; but there’s no denying that since those first shaky steps – in which Norse gods had to be explain away as aliens with “magic-like science” – Marvel has grown way more confident in embracing the more insane aspects of what has made these stories so popular for over half a century. Which is why it’s important that Thor: Ragnarok comes to us after Guardians of the Galaxy clearly showed how ready audiences are to cheer for talking raccoons and walking trees, and after Doctor Strange took a decisive step forward into the realm of sorcery. Free from the burder of having to shoulder the mystical side of the MCU, and with zany, indie-film comedy the new hot thing on the table, the god of thunder can finally do what he does best: have a lot of grand, absurd fun.

That’s maybe too long an introduction before finally getting to the film I’m actually reviewing, but really: I don’t have that much to say about it aside from “see for yourself”. Ragnarok is a relentlessly entertaining space romp that’s filled to the brim with love for the more visually iconic – Jack Kirby reigns supreme in this threequel – and narratively far-fetched facets of Marvel comics, resulting in two-hours-plus of fun, funny adventure blending larger-than-life epic with what’s easily the most laughter-filled script in the Marvel universe to date.

The plot is pretty straightforward, which likely accounts for why the original cut of the movie ran to a bare 90 minutes; the extra 40 added through reshoots mostly consist of jokes a character development – both often blended together to hilarious effect – and it’s frankly impressive how well these two apparently separate parts of the film gel together. Still, don’t be fooled: while character-driven fun is absolutely the script’s main focus, Ragnarok does have its fair share of story – and action, showcasing some of the best super-powered brawling in the genre’s history – and surprisingly doesn’t shy away from taking real, tangible chances with the characters and setting, to mostly satisfying ends and to (hopefully) concrete, lasting effect on the franchise’s shared universe.

The counterpoint to that is that the narration’s brisk pace often results in rushed story beats. There’s not a single wasted second in the whole movie, which is a spectacular achievement by itself, but on the other hand that also means the script never stops to catch its breath, occasionally leading to excessive levity: at least a couple moments throughout the film, while clearly meant as momentous, earth-shaking developments, aren’t afforded enough time to really sink in with either the audience or the characters. Ultimately, however, that doesn’t take much away from the entertainment value of a movie that’s entirely built on the strength of its director and cast.

The cast itself has never looked more comfortably at home than it does here, and that goes especially for those actors now inhabiting their roles for several years: this brash, jokey Thor definitely suits Hemsworth way better than the stoic portrayal of the title character in comics ever did, and Hiddleston’s Loki – while certainly at the waning end of his MCU relevance – is as charmingly shifty as ever. Meanwhile, Ruffalo’s Hulk enjoys some long-deserved character development, something that will be very interesting to keep up with in the upcoming Avengers movies.

The film also benefits from franchise mainstays getting support by a really solid influx of talented newcomers. Cate Blanchett bends – but doesn’t manage to break – the Marvel villain formula as the stunningly page-accurate Hela, while Tessa Thompson steals every scene she’s in as a rendition of Valkyrie that, while sitting on the opposite end of the specturm when it comes to adherence to the source material, comes across as consistently entertaining. Even out-of-the-blue addition to the series Skurge, arguably one of the hardest sells Marvel’s had in years in terms of character design, fares well thanks to Karl Urban’s self-effacing performance.

Throw into the mix the goldblumiest Goldblum that ever goldblumed – not to mention director Taika Waititi doubling as the motion-captured Korg – and the final recipe is definitely a tasty one. All that, it must be said, comes at the expense of previous central characters in the series, most notably the entire Earth-bound human cast; but then Ragnarok definitely seems bent on doing just what its title suggests: tear down the old and usher in the new, rewriting the rules and drastically altering the franchise’s narrative. And for that, sacrifices had to be made.

In that respect, Thor: Ragnarok is a possible peek into the future of the MCU, and certainly the most outright postmodern of the Marvel movies so far. Its acceptance of the genre’s quirks is so earnest that it feels more like excited, benign self-parody than the cringing embarrassment at the geekiness of it all that was so pervasive in early-2000s “dark & gritty” superhero fare. More than anything, it shows that Marvel can learn from criticism, embracing the parts of its formula that work – lighthearted humour above all – and adjusting those that don’t. One example? After years of mostly-bland soundtracks, Ragnarok takes a cue from James Gunn’s spacefaring franchise in making use of licensed music... and the results are pretty darn enjoyable.

Indeed, this third Thor rumbles into theatres a more accomplished follow-up to the first Guardians of the Galaxy than this year’s Vol. 2 could ever hope to be. If you’re in search of a good time at the movies, look no further than here: turns out it doesn’t take a hammer for a sequel to finally be worthy.

[Verdict: POSITIVE] 

[robedisimo]

It: Chapter One [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

As a consumer (and lover) of fiction, my relationship with Stephen King’s body of work has always been conflicted. While undeniably one of the most prolific and influential writers in the teen-aimed horror genre, King always struck me as the direct antithesis or today’s “young adult novel” authors, whose works often build upon a commercially inviting premise on the meagre strength of amateur-level prose: King is a competent and often evocative wordsmith, but his craft all too frequently works in the service of exceedingly banal storytelling concepts.

That sadly goes double for the past forty years of film adaptations based on his works. Occasional classics such as Misery and The Shining – still my second least favourite Kubrick movie – aside, King-derived cinema and television have often been an exercise in disappointment. Nowhere is that represented more exemplarily than in the 1990 televised mini-series It, a product held by some as the pinnacle of terror while the rest of us were left wondering how the Tim Curry-led hamfest could be seen as anything but self-parody.

So when a remake of that (reportedly) generation-defining clunker came out to critical acclaim, I naturally felt the need to see for myself whether all the positive buzz was truly deserved... and in order to do so, I had to brave the most terrifying thing out there: a horror movie audience. What I got for sitting in a theatre amidst a crowd of gasping, gossiping, giggling teenagers was, to be frank, a pretty mixed experience.

To put it bluntly, It wasn’t scary then and it most definitely isn’t now. What it is is an often good-looking, narratively competent film that – it must be said – does a commendable job approaching the frankly ludicrous premise of a rampaging demon clown with a straight face rather than self-effacing mockery. On the subject of whether that works for or against it, well... your mileage may vary, as adherence to the source material results in a fairly toothless piece of horror film-making. While I imagine that it could be somewhat refreshing for horror aficionados to see a contemporary film make use of such classic, archetypal genre tropes – the creature under the stairs, the gushing blood fountains, the crooked haunted house – I can’t help the feeling that in 2017 these things are just too rote and abused to frighten anyone who’s neither a child nor a complete newcomer to spooky films as a whole.

Not that the movie can really be faulted for its dated nature: as a new adaptation of the source material – rather than a remake of the 1990 mini-series – it just wouldn’t have been appropriate for 2017′s It to try and update the original’s scares for a modern audience. And that, I think, is where director Andy Muschietti’s efforts ultimately fall apart: his film, just like its predecessor, just isn’t a frightening one, no matter how many gratuitous jump-out moments it throws at its audience. In order to be effective, modern horror needs either Babadook’s primal assault on the senses or Get Out’s self-aware genre deconstruction, and It: Chapter One lacks both. Luckily, that’s not all it’s got going for it.

Indeed, the new It is at its best when it’s not trying to do anything scary at all, instead taking the time to just be a grounded coming-of-age story. The script’s strengths shine through in the updated ‘80s setting – which for its part does showcase the sort of cheeky genre awareness so sorely lacking from the horror portions of the movie, in a scene that pays humourous homage to the tradition of musical montages – vibrantly recreated in similar fashion to the successful experiment in the same direction in last year’s Stranger Things.

Bumping the period setting down the line – from the novel’s 1950s and the TV mini-series’s 1960s – obviously serves as a pretext for Chapter Two’s inevitably contemporary 2010s setting, but at its core the story isn’t really affected by the change: It still manages to capture the universal, timeless qualities of the whole experience of puberty, even as it sets aside the source material’s more controversially prurient content. Instead, the script favours the use of sexual themes as an ever-present thematic undercurrent to what is essentially a horror-tinted allegory for predatory sexual assault on children – the villain of the story is, after all, a walking, talking Jungian archetype – with a classic “the real monster is people” message lying at the heart of it.

In that, It: Chapter One is a good – if clichéd – adventure film with a nostalgic edge, rudely interrupted at regular intervals by a mediocre horror flick. If what you’re interested in is, essentially, an especially messed-up version of The Goonies then you may have a lot of fun with it, as the simple truth about this movie is that despite its insistent claim to scariness when it’s so drastically not part of the horror genre, what you’re left with is a perfectly adequate and entertaining product rife with good performances, fun – and occasionally poignant – character writing, and a couple memorable visuals supported by a competent use of special effects.

So as I’m left with the task of assigning a score of sorts to this film, I’m frankly torn between what you’re seeing there at the bottom and a decidedly more mixed verdict. The deciding factor, in the end, must be your own: if you’re going for a teen adventure flick with a memorable villain design and a few fun jump-scares, then this new It does nothing wrong; but if you’re hoping for a chilling scarefest, then this is most definitely an abject failure on almost all counts. Still  – despite this first chapter thankfully working as a self-contained film with a definite ending – this is just half the story. Perhaps the other one will bring with it the kick the material so sorely deserves.

When all’s said and done, It: Chapter One definitely ranks as one of the better King adaptations to the silver screen, although that may not be setting the bar all that high. Unless you’re a Stephen King purist or a compulsive slasher flick junkie, this probably doesn’t warrant watching in theatres; I know Chapter Two will likely be a straight-to-DVD affair as far as I’m concerned. Still, as far as remakes that get the damn job done – that is to say, re-adapt the source material to better results than the original film – are concerned, this is definitely a step up from the overly corny 1990 version. Depending on your inclination, that just might be enough.

[Verdict: MOSTLY POSITIVE]

[robedisimo]

Blade Runner 2049 [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

I’ve seen things – not many, but a few – you people wouldn’t believe. One of them is an empty theatre at the premiere of a Blade Runner sequel. All things considered, it’s not hard to understand why audiences, all hope beaten out of them by fifteen years of prequels, sequels, remakes and reboots, would initially shy away from this obvious candidate for disaster.

Yet we few, we happy few, who dared to sit down in a darkened theatre hall with low expectations and a hole in our wallets came out three hours later with the most unexpected of feelings: that of just having seen one of the best films in 2017, and possibly in quite a longer while than that. Thirty-five years in the making and likely one of the most warily anticipated films in our collective lifespans, Blade Runner 2049 is a small modern miracle. The ways it could’ve gone wrong were almost innumerable – two of them, Harrison Ford and Jared Leto, are right there on the poster – but, somehow, it managed to push through it all.

There’s very little I can say about this film without spoiling its plot, so let me get a few technical evaluations out of the way before getting to the true meat of the matter. Blade Runner 2049 is, first and foremost, a gorgeous piece of cinema. Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) once again proves to be one of the most prominent rising stars in contemporary filmmaking, elevating this sequel – and the blockbuster genre as a whole – to pure cinematic art. It doesn’t hurt that Villeneuve is probably more in touch with the description of “arthouse director” than Ridley Scott was at the beginning of his career, either; still, the bulk of the praise must go to director of cinematography Roger Deakins, whose now-inevitable fourteenth Academy Award nomination could result in civil war if this film doesn’t get finally get him a damn Oscar.

There’s little point in my describing the film’s visual feel: you have to see it for yourself. I’ll just say that the use of light in its scenes is some of the most arrestingly beautiful I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in a movie, and that the number of shots worthy of being framed and put on exhibit far exceeds my ability to recall at the moment. This is a supremely good-looking film, expanding and building upon the original’s seminal aesthetic in ways that update the franchise for a 2010s audience while staying true to the first film’s retro, neo-noir vibe.

The world 2049 creates is a deeply immersive one, believable and tactile in its concreteness. Everything that made Blade Runner’s cyberpunk design memorable is remarkably echoed and scaled up, resulting in often monumental sets of majestic dystopian grace. A great deal of credit for that also goes to Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score, booming and rumbling with ominous tones and never quite content to simply recycle Vangelis’s iconic original soundtrack. Add a few legimately good ideas about the (near and far) future of consumer technology, and this Blade Runner sequel comes out an extremely poignant example of sci-fi entertainment packaged within a rounded, cohesive audio-visual experience. If you were worried the earlier release date of Ghost in the Shell – itself a Blade Runner-inspired franchise – would end up stealing 2049′s stylistic thunder, you can rest easy: this is a whole other level of spectacle.

Narrative-wise, the film moves assuredly on the strength of a solid plot and compelling characters, supported by generally valid performances. Villeneuve and screenwriter Hampton Fancher allow the film a relaxed, contemplative pace – not dissimilarly from its predecessor – but, thanks to a suitably expanded runtime, can devote time enough both to the setting and its atmosphere and to character development. Ryan Gosling’s protagonist – an alternately steely and emotional character reminiscent of his visceral role in 2011′s Drive, aided by a fantastically compelling turn by co-star Ana de Amas – is one we get to know deeply and personally, unlike the original film’s Deckard. Ironically, it’s in 2049 itself that we finally start knowing Harrison Ford’s enigmatic eponymous character as a man, outside of his professional detective persona.

For his part, Ford does his job to satisfying results, topping both his return in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (by roughly a cinematic light year) and his more recent revival in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There’s something about the fact that these legacy sequels seem to get proportionally better the less screentime Ford gets in them, but I get the feeling that’s something best left unsaid. Meanwhile, Jared Leto and Syliva Hoeks work okay as the film’s eerie antagonists, but their characters’ motivations are, in fairness, the least explored, leading to their coming off as slightly more cartoony and melodramatic than the rest of the cast.

As to complaints, my only gripe would be that 2049 feels a bit like one film and a half, and not just because of its runtime. Clocking in at over 160 minutes, there’s a feeling at some points in its third and final act that the Blade Runner sequel we sat down to watch ended at the two-hour mark, and that the film’s climax is in fact a heavily condensed version of what could’ve just as easily been a third chapter in the franchise. Still, the movie ramps up to a tense and – ultimately – meaningful finale, and most remarkably one that manages to tie into the original’s while resisting the temptation to ape its ever-quotable monologue.

All that should do it for a critique of the film’s substance, but it’s its role in modern cinema that still deserves a fair deal of discussion. To begin with, Blade Runner 2049 is already being talked about as one of the best sequels ever produced, although we probably shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking Hollywood will now know how to get sequels right: 2049 is less a messiah ushering in a new era and more a happy exception to a well-established rule. On the contrary: its mind-bending importance isn’t aimed forwards – despite the fact that everyone attempting a sci-fi thriller from now on will have to hold it as an inescapable measuring stick – but rather backwards, rippling all the way back to the original.

When I first became interested in cinema, Blade Runner was already a piece of film history. After all, Ridley Scott definitely had a sizeable role in shaping the concept of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking between the inception of this very franchise and his debut with Alien a few years prior. 2049 can’t touch that status, no matter how hard it tries; instead, it subtly works to change what its forefather was about, and how the two instalments relate to each other. Amazingly, brazenly bold in their narrative scope, 2049′s plot developments are of such pivotal magnitude in its world’s history that the original Blade Runner’s story becomes positioned as set-up to what we didn’t know was coming.

In more than a way, 2049 eschews the performance anxiety so common among sequels by completely refusing to act as a narrative appendix to its predecessor, instead actively working to turn the first film into a prologue to this new chapter’s much bigger, much more momentous events. Even more than that, it could be argued that 2049 consumes its final act of defiance by treating Blade Runner as somewhat unnecessary viewing, though that’s entirely unintentional. Make no mistakes, this sequel treats its predecessor with nothing but the utmost reverence; it just happens to be assembled so competently that all you need to know about the first film’s role in the latter’s plot is conveyed, with grace and effectiveness, within the sequel itself, with very little need for the viewer to have actually seen the original.

Thus 2049 finds itself in an extremely eccentric position: that of being one of those few fabled sequels that manage to vastly improve upon the original – The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being the most readily available examples – but, unlike most direct follow-ups, being so remote from the first film in terms of chronological separation that its status as the superior product can’t be acknowledged without an impressive measure of awkwardness. Blade Runner is simply too iconic to be knocked off its pedestal, and yet 2049 is, plainly speaking, the better product... even if a lot of what’s so great about it owes a vast creative debt to the original’s groundbreaking nature. Like a snake eating its own tail, it’s very likely we’ll never hear the end of this debate in the coming decades of academic film critique.

In conclusion, Blade Runner 2049 is the closest thing to a masterpiece I’ve witnessed in quite a while. As science fiction, as a sequel, and as a film unto itself, it’s a prime example of something done very, very right. Could the minds behind it choose to tempt fate once more and dare to go for a threequel? Who can tell. As I type this, 2049 is headed for what could very well be a way more contained opening-weekend box office than projected, poetically joining its iconic parent film in the ranks of critically-acclaimed commercial failures. Perhaps, in modern Hollywood’s sea of cinematic replicants, the only thing viewers can no longer stomach is a film with a soul.

[Verdict: VERY POSITIVE]

[robedisimo]

Home-video review: Death Note (2017) [MODERATE SPOILERS]

Perhaps the most notorious catchphrase spawned by Death Note’s iconic – if a tad overrated – source material can be translated as follows: “all according to plan”. I can’t think of a less appropriate phrase to pair with the film I’m about to discuss. A prime example of the kind of adaptation that should never, ever be greenlit, this Netflix-produced disaster somehow managed to get everything wrong, which I suppose is a pretty impressive bizarro-world achievement in its own right.

First, a disclaimer. I won’t cover the race-swapping controversy surrounding this project, for a very simple reason: if you want an accurately-cast adaptation, the good news is there already is one, of middling quality though it may be – more than one, actually, as the franchise has expanded to four films and a miniseries since 2006. I’m much more interested in analysing it as a film, an adaptation, and an act of storytelling, three areas in which 2017′s Death Note offers varying degrees of spectacular failure.

Starting with the cast, yes, but for reasons entirely divorced from their ethnicity. It’s not a major issue to make hilariously-named main character Light caucasian, but it’s definitely one to turn him from honour student with a holier-than-thou attitude, coming from a wealthy, respectable family and for all intents and purposes above suspicion, into the embodiment of a TVtropes page on Hollywood’s trademarked “troubled youth” stereotypes. All clichés are there: smart kid, bully issues, dead mother, hair-trigger temper, lots of teen angst, problems with authority, right down to the painful inclusion, at minute one of this film, of a wistfully-gazed-at love interest in the shape of a store-brand Bella Swan.

If you’re feeling dizzy with dèjà vu it’s because you’ve seen what I just described in a million other high-school dramas, but that’s not the worst of it. Our protagonist here is, at his core, a regurgitated mockery of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, albeit with even greater power and none of the responsibility. In essence, much like the recent Ghost in the Shell adaptation, this is yet another Japanese property forcibly twisted by a Western studio into a conventional “superhero origin story” formula. For a film with a body count in the dozens, its first victim is originality.

What we’re left with is a character who fits the stereotypical “school shooter” mould to a frankly unnecessary degree, a fumbling anti-hero driven by irrational instinct rather than by cold rationality gone wrong, which was arguably the source material’s entire point. The original Death Note revolved entirely against the cerebral game of chess between Light and his arch-nemesis “L”, a clash of wits with life-and-death stakes in which each contender had to constantly strive to stay one step ahead of the other.

Here, due to the random pacing resulting from collapsing an episodic narrative into a 90-minute movie, events that were pivotal in the original series flash by at lightning speed. You’re never impressed with anything these two adversaries do because you’re not allowed the time to appreciate their strategy... and because ultimately the main character doesn’t even appear to have one. The only clear glimpse at the meticulous mastermind seen in the comic comes to us at the literal last minute, and by then it doesn’t really work as a plot twist as much as a narrative inconsistency with the reckless, oblivious kid we’ve spent the entirety of the film with.

What’s worse, for most of its runtime the script merely relies on telling you how smart the characters supposedly are, without showing it. Believe it or not, that’s actually the better option, as its occasional attempts to show it yield dismal results. As is often the case when a writer of average intelligence has to write a character of exceptional intelligence, the readiest solution turns out to simply write all other characters surrounding them as resounding morons. L neglects to follow Light’s girlfriend’s movements, despite her being the most obvious accomplice to his crimes; neither does he bother to resort to simple GPS phone tracking when his own right-hand man goes off the grid under Light’s mind-controlling influence, despite Light being dim-witted enough to conduct the whole affair on an open line.

All in all, this is a monumentally stupid movie. Its two (meagre) saving graces come in the shape of Adam Wingard’s direction – unexceptional but consistently competent throughout, especially considering that this is essentially a made-for-television product – and the visual effects work on Ryuk, the franchise’s main supernatural character. Willem Dafoe, poor soul, tries his best with what little he’s given, and pretty much only succeeds in fuelling my fustration at his ongoing failure to be cast as the ultimate live-action Joker.

Still, even here something feels inherently wrong: the character is depicted as more outright malicious than in the source material, and meaninglessly treated as if he were the story’s villain when most of the film’s runtime features him as a mostly passive, barely-felt presence whose entire role begins and ends with justifying the movie’s title. And that, I feel, is Death Note’s ultimate failure: it’s a false adaptation.

This film isn’t interested in actually recreating the source material it purports to adapt. Somewhere in Hollywood, someone simply wanted to make a movie with similar elements to an already-released property but telling a different, way more generic story. Earlier this year, run-of-the-mill sci-fi feature Life – as so many others before it – did the same by recycling the basic structure of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Death Note goes one step beyond: rather than facing accusations of plagiarism, it acquired the rights to the franchise it wished to ape and now parades around in its hollowed-out skin, a misshapen bug in an Edgar suit.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the simple fact that, in order for its plot to work, the film makes up its own rules for the eponymous killer journal, completely discarding canon lore from the source material. If it weren’t blasphemous to assume this sort of foul play in the movie industry, one would be tempted to say that this film was put together by someone who never actually read the comic and had it instead summarily described to them, perhaps by the same guy in charge of canon-friendliness on 2015′s Fantfourstic.

In conclusion, Death Note is a stunning step backwards when it comes to Western adaptations of popular Japanese fiction, and cause for renewed alarm concerning the often-threatened Hollywood renditions of such classics as Akira or Battle Angel Alita. Give it a go if you’re a fan of deathly bland cinema, or if you’ve been looking for an unexpected spin-off of the Final Destination franchise. Everyone else can probably make better plans.

[Verdict: NEGATIVE]

[robedisimo]

Five Things I Hate About Pacific Rim

It has happened to all of us: sometimes you dislike a movie everyone else seems to like. Other times – a rarer occasion in my case, but it does happen –you actually like something everyone else seems to think was the worst thing since the invention of dubstep.

Then there are those times when you like a film all right, but not as much as you wish you did. You went in with high expectations, you want to like what you’re seeing, but so much of what you’re being shown just doesn’t click. So much... but not enough to tip the balance either way. You exit the theatre with an exactly equal set of good and bad impressions, and you’re stuck with forever neither liking nor disliking that movie. Critical limbo.

Pacific Rim is one of those films for me. It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s spectacular, it’s got kick-ass theme music, and it tries to actually put together an original franchise – derivative though it may be – rather than adapt a pre-existing property. But for all the good in it, it’s got some pretty serious flaws which I’ve never managed to get over.

Here are my top five complaints.

1. It skips the best part of the story

Pacific Rim’s premise is an oldie but goodie. As giant alien monsters invade Earth, humanity’s last stand comes in the shape of colossas anthropomorphic machines, piloted by mankind’s strongest and bravest. A purposeful homage to two staples of Japanese pop fiction – the “mecha” and kaijū genres – the film meshes together various tropes found mainly in animated TV series, to largely decent results.

However, the plot’s appeal relies heavily on the elements of worldbuilding shown throughout the film’s runtime: references to the invasion’s beginning, to the history of human resistence, to past attacks, monsters and robot models, alongside brief flashes of museums, labs and black markets in a world that has changed and adapted to the strange creatures visiting it.

Leaving all that as vague backstory isn’t a bad idea per se: rather than start the story in a mundane, familiar place for the viewer – like the 2014 Godzilla reboot, in which the state of the world in-story starts from real-life status quo – it hits the ground running, with a good deal of plot development already established.

That would all be fine and dandy if said development weren’t massively more interesting than the film’s actual plot. The brief glimpses we get with regards to “the story so far”, with mankind’s desperate push back from the brink of extinction and pilots facing monsters while being slowly poisoned by their machines’ radioactive core, are great. What will happen after humanity finds out about the real alien threat behind the monster invasion – fingers crossed for Pacific Rim: Uprising – is equally promising, provided it doesn’t get as stupid as Independence Day did.

Pacific Rim is simply sandwiched between two way more interesting chapters of the story it’s telling. It’s a second act, neither as informative as a prologue nor as exciting as a climax. It’s Reloaded without The Matrix.

2. It fails to represent the “mecha anime” genre

This one isn’t really a matter of the film’s execution as much as a conceptual issue. As stated before, Pacific Rim wants to pay homage to a very specific – and very popular in the West – niche of Japanese fiction, that of “mecha” anime shows. It does so by employing a number of common tropes from the genre, including the binary pilot system and the existence of a higher alien mind behind the waves of giant monsters; and by inserting an actual Japanese character into the narrative, an obvious nod to the East-West “handshake” the film wants to establish.

Where the homage falls apart is in the fact that this is a movie, not a TV series. It may seem a pointless distinction, especially when it comes to feature films having budgets more in line with the genre’s visual demands. Yet, in my opinion it’s the episodic format itself that makes most of the experience Pacific Rim seeks to recreate. Episode after episode, shows such as Mazinger Z, UFO Robot Grendizer or Daitarn 3 – or more grounded “real robot” series such as Macross, Patlabor and Nadesico, if you can’t bring yourself to liken Pacific Rim to the “super robot” genre proper – follow the same patterns: a monster appears, the mech is dispatched, and the fight is eventually won by using the robot’s ultimate move, an outlandish and visually extravagant trump card designed to make kids yell the attack’s name alongside the show’s protagonist.

Del Toro’s movie doesn’t really conform to that formula: all fights are designed to feel like bar brawls, with a lot of (admittedly cool) punching but very little in the way of big, showy laser-beam stuff. The closest the film gets to an actual anime finisher is Gypsy Danger’s surprise sword, inexplicably forgotten until halfway through the movie’s runtime.

Ironically – or frustratingly, depending on your point of view – Pacific Rim takes clear steps towards a more varied approach with the introduction of robots Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon, this one even sporting a catchy “special move” name with its “Thundercloud Formation” attack. Having different robots with different shapes and specialised fighting styles is a clear nod to standard anime formula; too bad the two machines are just trashed within ten minutes of screentime.

The rest of the film is only too happy to keep relying on simple, uninteresting human-shaped robot designs and plain old fisticuffs... which honestly defeats the very notion of building giant robots in the first place, I think. My point being: if all you’re going to do is punch the monsters, why not attach huge metal fists to a bunch of regular missiles and call it a day?

3. All fights are the same

So it’s fair to say that where the film does feature a good dose of repetition is, frustratingly, in the wrong department. That doesn’t just relate to the fights’ content, but also to their setting: most of Pacific Rim’s battles take place at sea – it’s in the title; the movie quite literally painted itself into a corner with that premise – by night, and in the rain. All highly scenic conditions, but again very low on the variety scale.

Water (and underwater) fights also create an additional problem, by rendering the scale of the fighting itself mostly irrelevant. The size of the monsters and of the robots fighting them only matters when framed by familiar points of reference such as architecture, natural elements such as trees and mountains – as in Kong: Skull Island’s case – or nearby humans. Showing giant robots and monsters surrounded by nothing but water does nothing to establish size, which often leads to scenes looking more like a normal-sized Iron Man battling a bear. Which sounds awesome, but is another film entirely. There’s a reason why the city-set fight scene involving buildings, ships and freight containers was the most included in trailers.

The only two examples of broad-dailight battles are the aforementioned Sidney fight, which is only shown in a very brief news footage segment, and the flashback fight set in Japan, which happens entirely off-screen. The latter is also the only fight in the movie to take place against a monster with a design other than the homogenously reptilian look shared by all other creatures in the movies, so that’s another point of contention. If you’re gonna put a giant crab in there, I expect to see me some damn giant crab punching.

4. Rushed character arcs

Another issue produced by the film’s short runtime when compared to a full anime season is the middling execution of character development. Most main characters in the movie go through personal growth, which is commendable, but where the growth in side characters – Newt, for example – mostly works due to their personality having a “base” starting point without much need for exposition at the beginning of the script, main cast members are instead saddled by too much backstory for their eventual catharsis to be rewarding for the audience.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Mako’s character, whose entire past storyline is not only introduced relatively late in the film considering her co-protagonist status, but also confined to that whole phantom first chapter in the Pacific Rim franchise to which I alluded earlier. I know that comics and novelisations covering events prior to the film exist, but I’ve always been of the opinion that a franchise should keep all of its main cards on one table, rather than force its audience to chase down a variety of clues disseminated through different media.

Mako’s personal arc is incapacitated further by its collision with Raleigh’s, who as the male protagonist hijacks most of the film’s focus. Their motivations and character journeys are supposed to mesh but they actually end up clashing more often than not, in part due to the fact that the two actors share the same on-screen chemistry you’d obtain by filming me and a plate of broccoli.

Which is where an episodic structure would’ve come in handy. Anime shows – or any sort of televised serial, for that matter – function on an incremental mini-arc pattern: each episode tells its own small story with a beginning, development and end, and the accumulation of those chapters in the characters’ lives is what propels the overarching plot arcs forward.

Even more important, however, is the time between episodes. The sequence of separate incidents detailed in an adventure series is interspersed with off-screen periods of time which imply passage of time and, with it, the building of shared experiences between cast members. Pacific Rim is a two-hour-and-change movie which can only tell one story, with one story arc. The time we see our main characters spend together on-screen is pretty much all the time they actually spend together, getting to know each other, in-story. And it’s not nearly enough.

5. Dumbest line in (pre)history

So here’s where I need to take a deep breath. As I said at the beginning of this post, I harbour no hard feelings towards Pacific Rim. It’s one of those movies I’ll happily watch if there’s a TV rerun on even though I don’t especially love them, like Ghostbusters II. Still, for the fifteen seconds it takes for this specific moment to come and go, I hate this movie.

With a burning passion.

The following exchange happens right after Newt, one of the film’s two resident  kaijū experts, links his own mind with a brain extracted from one of the alien beasties, gaining insight into their motives and modus operandi:

They overtake worlds. They just consume them... and then they move on to the next. And they've been here before in sort of a trial run. It was the dinosaurs. But the atmosphere wasn't conducive, right? So they waited it out. And they waited it out. And now with ozone depletion, and carbon monoxide, polluted waters... well, we've practically terraformed it for them.

Yes, you read that right. Dinosaurs were not original products of earthly evolution, but rather alien invaders. Which is, of course, supported by fossil evidence showing that dinosaurs had glowing acid for blood. Not to mention, by the fact that modern-day descendants of those prehistoric animals, such as all birds, are well known for their ability to produce electro-magnetic pulses.

It was, however, a brief invasion, as that first, failed trial run ended as the aliens realised the Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t right for them yet. Which explains why dinosaurs only stuck around for about 175 million years.

An enlightened fella in a YouTube comment section once tried to vehemently explain to me that the true meaning of that line was that “it was the [event that caused the extinction of] dinosaurs”, true to the widespread grammatical convention of omitting key passages in dialogue sentences. Needless to say, I think that explanation is “pretty [much an ultimately futile attempt to avoid admitting that a film you like may actually be really] stupid”.

For those few seconds, Pacific Rim shows a side of itself that I was honestly shocked to see in a film by Guillermo Del Toro: a complete, wild disregard for even the most basic notions of credibility and logic, and a stunning willingness to treat its audience like idiots. Even in the theatre it knocked me off from story immersion in a major way, and I never fully recovered for the rest of the runtime.

And that’s why that is the dumbest single line in a monster movie this side of Sharknado. Let’s hope the next one features less talking and more crab punching.

[robedisimo]

Home-video review: Ghostbusters (2016) [MINOR SPOILERS]

If you were to compile a list of the most debated films of the past decade, there’s little doubt that last year’s Ghostbusters reboot would float to the top. An object of contention from its very inception, the movie’s a textbook definition of controversial: dragged right from the start through a carousel of Internet stupidity due to the choice of an all-female cast, the production chose to answer not with quality marketing – the first trailers were appalling to say the least – but by doubling down on the gender angle, preemptively calling misogyny on anyone who’d dare criticise the film once it came to theatres.

The end result was just as confounding as you’d expect. The movie came out to fairly positive reviews from an uncharacteristically generous critical community, perhaps all too eager to see a progressively-cast project succeed; it was, however, not as much of a hit with audiences, ending up as a franchise-halting failure at the box office. Controversies aside, though, the final question remains: was it any good? To paraphrase a classic Simpsons quote: short answer, "no" with a "but"; long answer, "kinda" with an "if".

The main problem with this new Ghostbusters is that it’s not a well-structured film. Hints of an overarching plot are seen early on in the script and then ditched, with most of the first act being spent meandering aimlessly from one comedy scene to the next. The film’s actual villain shows up way too late in the game, and is such a throwaway character that you end up asking yourself why they went with such a bland threat to begin with.

The answer, one feels, is that they didn’t want anyone to steal the spotlight from the film’s four heroines, which creates a massive issue with the script’s content. Driven by a well-meaning wish to showcase the cast’s comedic talents, the plot just takes a backseat to jokes, more jokes, nothing but jokes... and not particularly great ones, either. It takes about ten minutes for the movie to get to its first fart joke, and the smell lingers all the way to the end credits. At least when it comes to the sort of comedy involved, disliking this film has about as much to do with misogyny as trashing Adam Sandler movies has to do with antisemitism.

(I’m not drawing that comparison just for the sake of being mean. Had it been produced fifteen years ago – just look back at 2001′s Evolution, which, wouldn’t you know it, was produced by the same Ivan Reitman who directed the two original Ghostbusters and again produced this reboot – this is exactly the sort of script that could’ve resulted in a horribly misguided modern-day update of the franchise starring Sandler alongside the likes of Jack Black and Eddie Murphy... except that is rather mean. This reboot’s four protagonists at least show some talent; Sandler never had one funny bone in his body, and Murphy at some point misplaced all of his in a tragic full-body skeleton transplant.)

Indeed, given its leads’ career thus far, it’s no big surprise that 2016′s Ghostbusters feels more like a semi-improvised Saturday Night Live skit than an actual film, which ends up being a double-edged sword to say the least. Some of the improvised character interaction is undeniably enjoyable – Kate McKinnon’s great comedic timing often steals the scene – but the lack of accurately-crafted lines leaves the script tragically devoid of quotable moments, something which made the original all the more memorable. It’s a bit disheartening that the most easily remembered line from the reboot is a not-so-funny rehash of a famous quote from a different movie, i.e. William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

What’s doubly odd is that the reboot sometimes comes off as actively disrespectful towards the 1984 original, ultimately turning into more a scathing parody of the source material than a loving homage. In some ways I was reminded of Michel Gondry’s strange Green Hornet (2011), more lighthearted mockery than actual adaptation. Here the surviving members of the original cast appear in cameos ranging from the amusing to the outright distasteful, and the film’s climax ramps up towards the franchise’s iconic logo getting proton-blasted in the crotch region. Yeah, I know. To each their own.

So where’s the (sporadic) good I promised? Well, first of all, the cast is pretty capable, which makes the whole thing particularly disappointing when you consider what the film could’ve been had it been graced by any semblance of an actual script. That, and the action is occasionally rather fun, with a colourful third act that will undoubtedly please children and easily-impressed adults. Even this aspect of the reboot isn’t without its problems, though: browsing other reviews you’ll find frequent references to the Scooby-Doo movies and Disney’s Eddie Murphy-led The Haunted Mansion, two franchises with which Ghostbusters shares its generic neon-green ghostly graphics. The iconic, recognisable visual identity of the original’s artisanal effects is all but gone.

And therein lies the film’s biggest and foremost issue: if you’re rebooting – not just remaking – such a beloved property, you have to do it not just with a degree of respect, but with something good and interesting to bring to the table. If you really want to resurrect the franchise then shake up the formula, change the rules, do something unexpected. Go big, or go home. The new Ghostbusters is merely content to rely on its gender-swapped cast for novelty value, and that’s simply not enough to shake off the impression of a knock-off rather than a genuine successor.

It’s a real shame that this couldn’t be something different. Sony should’ve just marketed this all-female supernatural adventure as an original property, maybe even embracing the inevitable comparisons to the original Ghostbusters which would’ve certainly followed. Perhaps they just didn’t think such a project could fly without a well-known logo slapped on top of it, which honestly sounds about as confident in the appeal of women comedians as the YouTube commenters blindly backlashing at casting news. I don’t know.

What I know is that this film will hold a place in the childhood of a generation with no better critical taste than mine had when we were toddlers. To them, this reboot is probably more than good enough, and I suppose that has to count for something. All I can say is that it’s not good enough for me.

[Verdict: MIXED TO NEGATIVE]

[robedisimo]

Home-video review: Terminator Genisys [MINOR SPOILERS]

For a franchise with such a negative outlook on technological advancement, the Terminator film series sure seems all too eager to be kept alive by artificial means. Much like the Alien saga – until earlier this year, anyway – its run pretty much lost momentum after an acclaimed second instalment and has been struggling to find a second wind ever since; if Terminator Genisys is any indication, however, it may just be time to pull the plug for good.

Coming in the wake of 2009’s Terminator Salvation – a spectacularly boring film whose only dubious claim to exceptionality rests on being the second James Cameron-related release in a single year to mistake Sam Worthington for a charismatic lead – Genisys is largely based on the same sort of attempt at having its cake and eating it too. As Salvation took advantage of the franchise’s time-travel shenanigans to simultaneously work as a prequel and a sequel, so Genisys presents itself as a not-so-soft reboot of the property while at the same time continuing to stand upon its previously-accumulated mythology, essentially positioning itself as a sequel despite the fact that it effectively restarts the plot from scratch.

The operation, needless to say, is half-successful at best. Rebooting an established continuity via time travel was a neat – if not uncontentious – trick when J.J. Abrams pulled it in 2009′s Star Trek, but it’s a double-edged blade to say the least. Genisys – which, given the time scales, could’ve very well gotten its idea from the Trek reboot, after Salvation failed to reinvigorate the franchise in the same year – takes the same road but to shakier results, including the choice of recasting all established characters but with the inclusion of an aged member of the original cast to “validate” the whole affair and grant it his blessing moving forward.

Seeing Schwarzenegger return to one of his most iconic roles is definitely a treat, and overall I must admit it feels less tired than his turn in T3 did. Like most aspects of the film, however, he doesn’t quite manage to recapture his classic edge. Genisys clearly wishes to take advantage of its franchise-recursive narrative to revisit some of the most iconic moments in all the previous movies, and Arnie’s awkwardly paternal streak in T2 is heavily referenced throughout the film, to mixed results: he gets the few genuine laughs to be found in the script, but the sense of unstoppable threat that was always integral to the character, whether on the good or the bad guys’ side, is mostly gone.

The plot itself doesn’t offer anything particularly interesting either, despite one theoretically compelling twist that was tragically spoiled by one of the most incomprehensible marketing campaign in cinema history. Genisys puts some interesting ideas on the table, but it seems content to just throw them out there and follow the unfolding of a plot that’s by design half-retread of things we already saw in previous instalments. The old evil A.I. scenario is once again afoot, this time updated with some remarkably vague – and fairly unneeded – commentary on our current climate of connectivity and overreliance on technology.

The story blasts open some very viable avenues for meaningful emotional drama, but it doesn’t really seem interested in exploring them. Instead, director Alan Taylor – beefing up his track record of mediocre film projects, after the aggressively so-so Thor: The Dark World – serves up a number of chase scenes, explosions and robotic fistfights with very little passion behind them, aside from a couple inventive visuals more likely to have originated from the effects department than from direction or writing. It all looks okay – minus one shockingly awful helicopter chase near the climax – but it’s not enough to make this film the event it wanted to be.

When all is said and done, the huge problem with this sort of reboot of beloved effects-based franchises – I’m looking with utter contempt at you, Jurassic World – is that they just can’t be expected to recapture the same “wow” factor upon which they stormed out of the gate all those years ago. The Terminator series was once a pioneering corner of the effects industry, but now it’s just mundane CGI soup. The Alien franchise can still (barely) survive because space horror is a relatively small genre and most examples of it still try to copy Scott’s seminal work in the first place; on the contrary, action sci-fi is now such a hypersaturated milieu that this latest Arnie romp simply vanishes like a drop in the ocean.

Casting frankly didn’t help, in this case. Recasting Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor – taking over from Linda Hamilton in the first two films, and GoT colleague Lena Headey in the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series – is about as convincing as swapping Dwayne Johnson for Shia LaBeouf; while indisputably a decent actress, and a suitably audience-drawing name right now, she does nothing to reinject the franchise with the energy it so desperately needs, and neither can Jai Courtney, Jason Clarke or J.K. Simmons, half-slumming in a role the necessity of which to the plot isn’t quite clear. It all rests on Schwarzy’s broad but increasingly-elderly gubernatorial shoulders, and he’s no longer enough to carry a movie all on his own.

It’s not my custom to go into single, specific scenes in my review, but there’s one moment in Genisys which truly incapsulates all you need to know about this movie’s mindset. As our new, travel-sized Sarah Connor is faced with two identical versions of the pathologically bland male protagonist – one of which is a shapeshifting T-1000 impostor – she decides to resolve the matter by randomly shooting one of the two in the foot, by sheer luck resulting in a liquid metal spill. It’s really too bad our smart, resourceful heroine – or indeed the screenwriters pulling her strings – doesn’t possess the basic smarts or resourcefulness to order both lunks to take off a shoe and shoot those instead, as the fake’s clothes are mere extensions of its shape-changing body. Genisys isn’t exactly prone to subtlety.

In conclusion: Terminator Genisys isn’t a movie so bad as to be worth getting mad at, but it certainly isn’t that good either. It feels aimed at the sort of younger audience who’ll be content with big explosions, trite action stuff and a few cheap laughs, but at the same time its plot is almost indiscernible for anyone not familiar with the franchise, i.e. an older fanbase which, I expect, has an exactly 50/50 chance of outright hating it or mildly appreciating the chance to reconnect with beloved characters and creature designs. All in all, I think Genisys mostly succeeds at doing what it set out to do; it just so happens that what it set out to do was pretty damn stupid to begin with.

[Verdict: MIXED TO NEGATIVE]

[robedisimo]

Home-video review: The Killing Joke [MODERATE SPOILERS]

It’s no secret that Northampton-based graphic novel guru Alan Moore isn’t fond of cinematic adaptations of his works, and it isn’t hard to see why: over the years, attempts at translating his – often groundbreaking – comic book series into film have ranged from the astoundingly awful (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) to the bafflingly unfaithful (From Hell). Even the arguably more successful efforts in the field, while at least managing to be well-enough-received as films in their own right, came out either twisted into a mainstream mentality (V for Vendetta) or, while visually interesting and almost pathologically faithful to the source material – except where it really mattered, arguably – ultimately inconsequential (Watchmen).

Sadly, The Killing Joke doesn’t break that mould. What it does manage to break in the process, however, is our collective heart. Originally released in 1988, the graphic novel was one of three pivotal comic stories published roughly at the same time that permanently changed the face of the Batman mythos, the other two being Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989). Like its “siblings”, Moore’s story drove Batman back to the mature, dark corner of comic literature; but unlike them, it took place in the character’s actual published continuity rather than in an alternate “what if” scenario.

Its contribution to the ongoing, established Batman canon hinged on two central elements: one, it proposed a hypothetical origin for the Joker – presented through such an unreliable narrator as to keep its officiality ambiguous – and two, it consigned then-Batgirl Barbara Gordon to a wheelchair, kickstarting her transition into the cyberspace-based hacking heroine known as Oracle. The latter development stuck around for over two decades until it was ultimately reversed by the “New 52″ reboot of DC’s comic continuity in 2011, which reverted Barbara to her caped, teenaged self.

It was a bleak, violent, bloody story, and people loved it. But back then, such darkness of content made the story a commercial conundrum: its popularity, owing in equal measure to Moore’s quality writing and Bryan Bolland’s exceptional artwork, begged an adaptation, but its harsh themes were too much for the American animated industry of the early '90s, no matter how popular the coeval Batman: The Animated Series was proving to be among adult audiences as well as children. The project was then put on the back burner, waiting for the times to catch up and the possibility of R-rated animated films becoming available.

Now, almost thirty years of hope and hype later, fans of the book and show alike got their wish at last... too late. The once-proud Warner Bros. animation department has been treading somewhat middling ground for a while, releasing often-decent products but to very little fanfare, in part also due to their abandoning the widely-recognised Bruce Timm art style – the recent Justice League: Gods and Monsters and the upcoming Batman and Harley being a happy exception, hopefully signalling a change of attitude. The Killing Joke was likely meant as a return to widespread relevance and acclaim, riding on the anticipated comeback of beloved voice actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill to their iconic roles in Batman: The Animated Series. Alas, things went very wrong.

The most glaring culprit, I’m sad to report, is the handling of the source material. Writer Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets) once again proves that he’s out of his element scripting Batman stories, misusing key beats from the book and tacking a Batgirl-focussed prologue and epilogue onto the original progression of events. This particular choice likely stems from the controversy sparked a couple years ago year by a variant cover to issue 41 of the rebooted Batgirl comic series, referencing the Killing Joke events – which, in the new continuity, never actually took place –: the illustration depicted Barbara as helpless and terrified, something many concerned readers – and random onlookers – saw as invalidating the character’s agency and usual combative attitude.

Cue the outrage, and the monstrously misguided choice to seize this animated film as a prime opportunity to “make things right”: to save Barbara from her marginal role as just a plot device, a victim for the male heroes to avenge, and give her a more prominent, less passive role in the narrative. That basic outlook isn’t one to condemn, of course. It’s absolutely true that the part she played in the book was that of nothing more than a tragically innocent casualty: the Joker cripples her to get to her father, commissioner Gordon, as he’s unaware of her secret identity and, therefore, of the fact that he’s ironically actually striking at Batman on a very personal level as well. It’s a shockingly brutal fate to inflict upon a major franchise character, which can be lauded for boldness but certainly also complained about with some good reason. Alan Moore himself later reconsidered this decision, and so one can see – if not condone – why the people behind this movie adaptation chose to go for the revisionist approach. Sadly, the end result is jarring to say the least.

Right off the bat, the film’s prologue introduces a romantic involvement subplot between Batgirl and Batman – not quite as baffling as it could’ve been, since the same plot point was previously hinted at in the Batman Beyond TV series over fifteen years earlier – in an effort to portray Barbara as a more proactive, more “knows what she wants” character. This approach fails in at least three different ways: it ends up framing her as an aggressive, headstrong, illogical character, which is pretty much the opposite of her classic characterisation; it draws the focus away from the Batman/Joker dynamic, by trying to expand her role in ways that distracts from the central story’s themes; and at the heart of it, it just disrespects the source material by stapling pieces of an entirely different film onto the fabric of the original plot.

On top of that, the adaptation of the book’s actual content leaves a lot to be desired. The animation is choppy, the art style flat, the transitions between flashbacks and present-day narration – one of the most daringly cinematic elements in the novel, as a result of the wonderful chemistry between Moore’s meticulous scripting and Brian Bolland’s masterful illustrations – are often mishandled. The text itself is approach in the wrong way, as well: key lines of dialogue are cut, stitched and altered, and so the film can’t even really work as a faithful audiobook version of the original, in part also because of the acting. Mark Hamill is the definitive Joker voice, and his rendition of the character’s monologues are worth a watch despite the botched animation, but Kevin Conroy is at his most wooden despite the material’s emotional requirements.

All in all, a rather disappointing outcome for such a long wait and a production effort of such deep-seated potential. Will we ever get an unabashedly good adaptation of an Alan Moore property? Upcoming TV shows based (again) on Watchmen and the League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen already have me reaching for medication, but I guess miracles can happen. For the time being, if it’s an R-rated animated film you want, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker remains the place to look after seventeen years and counting.

[Verdict: NEGATIVE]