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Showing posts with label Marvel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
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If you crave the sight of superheroes bashing apart robots then Avengers: Age of Ultron will not disappoint. Within these glossy 141 minutes an armada of CG robots are beheaded, exploded, sliced apart, crushed, electrified, melted and disarticulated. Buildings are reduced to rubble, cars are tossed about, extras run every which way screaming and gigantic floating ships buzz around in the sky. Everything is happening at once! But also, puzzlingly, nothing is happening.
The film continues right where Avengers Assemble left off with our heroes mopping up the dangling plotlines of that film. After that in the mood for celebration; but these spirits are dampened when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) accidentally creates Ultron (James Spader) an evil robot that wants to wipe out humanity. The rest of the film involves the familiar faces of Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Lia, Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) tracking down Ultron and foiling his nefarious scheme.
Along the way they pick up a couple of new recruits, the Maximoff twins Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and zen robot Superman-a-like The Vision (Paul Bettany). Rounding out the cast are a smattering of supporting characters from the Marvel franchise and a couple of character actors who look happy to collect a paycheque.
What's most vexing about Age of Ultron is that there's nothing thunderingly wrong with it. The action is competently shot, the script gets to the point with a minimum of fuss and there's a big action scene about every half an hour. Joss Whedon has delivered a summer superhero blockbuster that ticks every box required of it. I've always approached criticism on the maxim that I'd much rather watch an interesting failure than successful mediocrity, but the latter describes Age of Ultron to a tee.
Part of the problem is that, very quickly, the film defines itself as an interstitial chapter leading up to the future Thanos/Infinity Gauntlet films. Entire scenes are devoted to setting up this future threat, leaving us in no doubt that the 'real' peril is still to come. The consequence of this is that the narrative we're actually watching feels increasingly sidelined. This also means the tug towards the status quo is irresistible to the point where, as the credits roll, we are almost in precisely the same place as we began.
This applies to the increasingly repetitive character arcs as well; so the Hulk learns to control his rage a bit more, Black Widow comes to terms with her history a bit more, Captain America gets over the past a bit more and Thor worries about Asgard a bit more. Theis repetition is especially egregious in Tony Stark, who by my count for the fifth time in a row learns an important lesson about hubris. Maybe this time it'll stick, but given his vaunted presence in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War I'm guessing probably not.
That lack of forward momentum even extends to developments within the movie. The crowning moment of the trailers for this film is the promise of an upgraded 'heavy' Iron Man duking it out with the Hulk. This fight plays out exactly as loudly as you'd expect, the destruction broadly quoting the climactic scenes of Man of Steel. Problem is, the fight is of so little consequence to the plot that it could be cut from the film with little to no impact to the narrative. It's an action sequence for the sake of an action sequence in a film that exists because an Avengers movie was scheduled for 2015.
Even a contractual obligation with hooks for future instalments dug into it like ticks could say something with it's narrative. Age of Ultron doesn't. In fact it almost aggressively resists being about anything. The closest we get is a repeated motif where the characters idly ponder whether they're monsters or not, complete with a couple of basic visual references from Frankenstein. Symbolically it's about as deep as a puddle, believe me I tried to find something to grip onto here - but that's the best I could manage.
Pressed for something to recommend, I enjoyed James Spader's villainous turn as Ultron, who reminded me of a somewhat toned down version of Bender from Futurama. Rarely have I seen such a moustache-twirlingly evil robot on screen. Sure his motivations and intentions are kinda confusing, but he's never less than amusing to watch, dancing around the frowning superheroes like an refugee Disney villain.
That's about all there is to say about this. There's a crushing inevitability to Age of Ultron. It will make a ridiculous amount of money. It will be hoovered up by mewling nerds who're happy with watching things happen. It will successfully spawn sequels ad nauseum. Honestly, it's a dull and pointless experience and you shouldn't bother with it.
But come on, let's not kid ourselves. You'll go anyway.
★★
Avengers: Age of Ultron is released 24th April.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
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In James Gunn's excellent Guardians of the Galaxy the human race gets to be the coolest kid in the playground. Set in a universe populated by the moronic, the pompous and the self important (all with surreal haircuts) we come out looking like intergalactic Fonzies. Even better, is that our most effective weapons aren't guns and bombs, they're Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and David motherfucking Bowie.
This is an old school space opera that's much more a 21st century evolution of Flash Gordon than any po-faced hard science fictioning, the kind of setting where a few blobs of latex and a bit of facepaint on an extra and they're a whole new species. This blob of weirdness set within the same filmic universe as Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, but this is a clean slate in every sense of the word. Gone is the desaturated dullness of The Winter Soldier and the atrocious flattened cinematography of The Avengers. In its place is a riot of colour and imagination, shot with an eye for the epic and a desire to embrace comicbook ridiculousness.
That Marvel are willing to release a tentpole summer blockbuster starring a talking raccoon, a tree man that only says three words and an obscure-to-everyone-but-ultra-geeks supporting cast of comic book space dudes says an awful lot about their current level of confidence. I consider myself relatively up on comics - I know my Stilt Man from my Hypno-Hustler - but even I drew a blank on what the hell the Guardians of the Galaxy's deal was.
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| Drink in that lovely colour. Mmmm. |
The centre of the story is Peter Quill aka Starlord (Chris Pratt). Abducted by aliens as a young child he's grown up to become space Indiana Jones. His life consists to be zooming around the universe in a cool spaceship, stealing alien archaeological relics and living the Kirkian dream of banging multicoloured spacebabes. After tracking down one particularly important item he becomes involved in an intergalactic war, one side wreathed in darkness and flying around in a sinister ship that looks like a floating Castle Dracula and the other a miniskirted, greenery covered utopia run by a magnificently coiffed Glenn Close (you decide who the baddies are).
Space MacGuffin in tow, Quill is suddenly the focus of a lot of attention. Courtsey of some impressively organic screenwriting he's soon the leader of a fractious group of losers bound together by either psychoses or greed. They are; green skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), gun-wielding smartass raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper), the childlike tree man Groot (Vin Diesel) and hulking moron Drax (Dave Bautista).
They've got to band together to keep the space whatsit from falling into the hands of the evil Kree Empire led by the sinister Ronan, his cybernetic half-sister Nebula and their muscle Korath who all serve the Darkseid ripoff Thanos who wants nothing more than to master the Infinity Gems and blah blah blah.... you know what? None of that rubbish matters in the slightest.
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| Here's 'yer baddie. He's a bit pantomime. |
Refreshingly the entire intergalactic conflict takes a backseat to well constructed set pieces, cracklingly good dialogue and excellent music. This whole science fiction universe is one ginormous straight man to our everyman hero as he bounces from one ridiculous situation to another with only his sense of comic timing saving him from disaster. By the end you've realised the less seriously Quill treats the plot the more success he has.
Highlights are passing off the Kevin Bacon classic Footloose as one of Earth's epic tales, an inpromptu dance-off in the face of certain death, a perfectly timed jizz-joke, Drax's inability to comprehend metaphor, a Simpsonsesque foreground vs background gag involving Groot and the confident, logical assertion that no person can truly be "a 100% dick". Gunn essentially treats the Marvel space comics like his personal playground, fitting in more idiosyncrasies and bizarre elements than anyone could ever have expected Marvel would allow.
Underscoring all that is a firm vision of epic adventure. Cinematographer Ben Davis frames his glittering space vistas with a care and attention to detail that'd make Jack Kirby blush. Everything is vibrant and alive, frames are packed with miniature details that bring the world to life and crucial imagery is composed with an artist's eye for drawing the eye through a frame. Great blooms of colour fill the screen during the action sequences, purples, red and yellow flames blossoming around the characters to stunning effect. For the first time in a Marvel film even the 3D is worthwhile, the fruit of Gunn taking an active interest in the post-conversion process.
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| ^ this is good shit ^ |
On top of all that is the genius idea to soundtrack the film with hits from the 70s. The conceit is that when Quill was abducted in 1988 one of his few possessions was a cassette Walkman loaded with a mix of his mother's favourite tunes. The music makes the film accessible, the familiarity of the songs giving audiences a foothold in an this alien universe. Not to mention that the careful chosen songs all kick ass - as characters plan out their next move to the snarling howls of Joan Jett it's difficult not to get keyed up.
Guardians of the Galaxy ends up feeling like a sharply delivered riposte to critics (and I include myself in this) who've written off Marvel Studios movies as unimaginatively formulaic and stylistically bland. This is light years beyond garbage like Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers; if Marvel really are trying to figure out a formula to stick to they could do a hell of a lot worse than making their subsequent films more like this. This is brimming over with things I enjoy - imagination, good nature and the most ridiculous hairdos this side of The Fifth Element.
★★★★
Guardians of the Galaxy is released on the 31st of July.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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When Iron Man was released in 2008 it was a shot across the bows of the superhero genre. A combination of great dialogue, brilliant casting and slick pop-inflected direction added up to a film that, while easily recognisable as a Hollywood blockbuster, possessed something new and unique. But six years on, with nine Marvel films and a TV show under their belt, what was once shiny and new is now slightly and predictable. Audiences know the score with Marvel movies so they have to mix things up - be it through the buddy cop comedy caper of Iron Man III or the upcoming bonkers-looking space opera Guardians of the Galaxy. So what's new for Captain America and his buddies in SHIELD? Well Marvel has decided to get political, and boy is it a mess.
The Winter Soldier revolves around a simple question; what if the goodies were (wait for it) secretly baddies? SHIELD, who have always been depicted as US Homeland Security on steroids were treading pretty questionable moral ground in The Avengers and as The Winter Soldier opens we find them wading through even murkier waters. They're building a fleet of enormous flying gunships capable, as a proud Nick Fury explains, of eliminating threats before they even have a chance to harm anyone. This doesn't sit right with the upstanding Captain America, who blithely notes: "This isn't freedom. This is fear."
This all sets the stage for a twisty-turny tale of double-crosses and betrayals interspersed with car chases, huge explosions and burly guys punching each other to no obvious effect. It's pretty clear what the Russo brothers are going for: All the President's Men with superheroes. They've even cast Robert Redford, who obligingly leans against windows overlooking Washington and hammily pronounces guff like "In order to build a better world, sometimes you need to tear the old one down." (During this scene a huge, blinking neon arrow is pointing at Redford reading "He's the baddie!".)
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| I suspect that knowing that Captain America is a pretty boring superhero, they put in this guy, an even MORE boring superhero, to make Cap seem more interesting in comparison. |
There's a whole bunch wrong here but it all boils down to simple cowardice. The film is obviously the product of a post Wikileaks/Snowden world, drawing none-too-subtle parallels between the mass surveillance of SHIELD and the evil shit the NSA has been up to. The problem is that though the film sternly wags its finger at this sort of thing via the totemic 'golden generation' figure of Captain America, it just doesn't have the guts to be outright condemnatory. The end product is a castrated film, one that wears the trappings of a political thriller but without the politics - rendering it impossibly slight at best and dangerously simplistic at worst.
The biggest flaw is that with agencies like the NSA and GCHQ et al being genuinely supervillainous in real life there's very little room for exaggeration. So the film becomes an infantile exploration of what might happen in a mass-surveillance society if there were a few superheroes about, which feels vaguely masturbatory. But hey, a bit of wish fulfilment isn't such a bad thing right? At the very least it should be cathartic watching a muscular man in a brightly coloured costume decking the person who ordered all this surveillance.
It's not - primarily because the crux of the film is two quasi-fascist organisations squaring off against each other. The anti-democratic Fury-knows-best tight uniforms and black ops wetwork world of SHIELD versus HYDRA, literal Nazis. It's Nazis versus Nazis folks, and the film expects you to root for the 'good' Nazis. If this weren't merely an episode in an ongoing multi-billion dollar franchise it could have shaken things up, but it's almost obliged to return to the status quo by the time the credits roll. Nothing can change too much in Marvel's world, so in place of actual politics the film settles for criticising the mass surveillance of citizens by painting it as an attack on the incredibly nebulous concept of 'freedom'.
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| Easy on the eyeliner there son. |
We're in George W Bush country here folks, the extent of Captain America's political nous expressed as "The price of freedom is high... and it's a price I'm willing to pay!". Listening to doggerel like this you want to slap the film around the head - it's rubbish like this that created the very situation you're criticising! The conclusion it arrives at is that mass state surveillance is an alien intrusion into the fine process of US militarism and that once you've gotten rid of that problem everything will be just hunky-dory and we can go back to the 'regular' military state. So The Winter Soldier ultimately finds itself in the perverse position of arguing that we merely need the 'right' kind of fascism.
Frankly it's a bit of a mess elsewhere too. Chris Evans does the best he can, but it's difficult to get away from the fact that Captain America is a pretty dull superhero. Things aren't helped by giving him a partner who can fly (which is ready salted crisps as far as superpowers go) and one that can shoot people. The titular Winter Soldier is a non-character, having maybe 4 or 5 lines in the entire film, spending most of his screentime glaring petulantly like a teenage goth forced to go on holiday to Disneyworld.
It's all a bit of a shame. If this film had a bit more bravery and brains it could have been a great piece of subversive agitprop with a huge potential audience. As it is it's just a dumb blockbuster with pretensions of relevance working studiously through the established Marvel movie formula. A formula that's looking increasingly creaky as the countless sequels tick by.
★
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is on general release.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
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The third in the series is usually where superhero films come a cropper. After getting the origin story out of the way in the first film, and kicking up the action a notch in the second, the third always seems to go a bit awry. There's logical reasons for this happening: they range from the director of the first two departing, main character development running out of steam, using up all the good villains or even simply becoming a touch over-confident and throwing too much at the screen, knowing that it's your last shot with the property. So, this film has a lot of expectations to shift; even great film series tend to lose their lustre by this point. With this in mind it's important to note Iron Man 3 wears its 'threequel' status proudly - after all, when was the last time a summer blockbuster came out with an unadorned '3' attached to it?
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