I finished reading The Name of the Rose a few weeks ago and decided I absolutely had to watch the 1986 film adaptation, mostly because it starred Sean Connery and Christian Slater as detective monks, and who wouldn’t want to watch that?

I’ll admit, I was kind of hoping it would be gloriously cheesy. Instead, it was just sort of . . . okay.

SUMMARY:

William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and novice monk Adso (Christian Slater) travel to an isolated abbey for a debate on the poverty of Christ. Unfortunately, someone — or something — is killing off monks left and right.

NOTES:

1. First, it should be said that the hair displayed in this movie is some of the worst hair I’ve ever seen. And while that’s probably to be expected in a film about monks in the Middle Ages, there is simply never an excuse for this:

Come on, man. Pull yourself together. Even Jesus owned a comb, right? (I mean, probably. Unless the Franciscans were right, of course.)

2. So here’s the thing: there’s no way I’m looking at this movie anywhere near objectively. I’m judging it as an adaptation, not as its own creative work. Which I’m cool with because judging it as an adaptation . . . kind of why I wanted to see it in the first place. But let’s just be clear on what kind of review you’re reading here because I’ll probably be comparing it to the book a lot.

Now, this novel — it’s not an easy thing to adapt. There is a veritable shitload of religious history stuffed inside this book, like, chapters and chapters and chapters of it. There’s no way it would ever have all fit inside a two hour movie. (Or a two hour and ten minute movie, as the case may be.) In fact, slimming some of that shit down is a bit of a relief, and I like religious history. I minored in Philosophy & Religion, for god’s sake, and I still was happy to see we spent a little less time discussing the differences between the Dolcinites and the Minorites. I was especially pleased to see a NINE PAGE SERMON on the coming apocalypse shortened into a sixty second monologue. That was helpful for my sanity.

But I do feel like we lost a few important things along the way. Like this thing about the poverty of Christ is a Big Deal, and sure, many of the visiting Franciscan monks look appropriately flustered about it, but I don’t feel like the movie ever manages to convey why it’s such a Big Deal. I wanted to really understand the consequences of what might happen if the talks fell through, and I didn’t get that at all from the film.

And what’s weird about this story, too, is that the book was written in the 1980′s, takes place in the 1300′s, and still feels weirdly relevant today. At least that’s the impression I had from reading it — I kept thinking about some of the things Pope Francis has said about capitalism and financial inequality, as well as some of the very angry responses he’s received from conservative politicians and commentators. (Good Christ, I just linked to a Rush Limbaugh rant. Well, read at your own risk.) I don’t feel like I’m usually one to seek more Inspirational Messages from my movies — certainly not from my murder mysteries — but I can’t help but feel like there are some missed opportunities here. I think this could be a smarter movie than it really is.

3. But enough about that, at least for now. Let’s talk about how YOUNG Christian Slater looks in this movie.

Tell me that’s not, like, the best picture ever.

Christian Slater is all of fifteen in The Name of the Rose, and — well — he’s not very good. But considering he’s not even legal at this point, I won’t be too hard on him. I mean, just look at him. I just to pat him on his adorable baby head.

Mostly, Adso spends this movie looking around, blinking innocently at things, and asking William stupid questions for the audience’s sake. He gives more of an accent attempt than I was expecting, although that’s not really saying much. (Especially considering it’s not the right accent. I’m pretty sure he’s Austrian in the book.)

4. On the other hand, I like Sean Connery well enough in this.

He’s not who I’d cast in a remake — even if he was still acting after the fiasco that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – but I enjoyed some of his line deliveries, and he’s clearly one of the best actors in the entire cast. (The only other person I really liked was F. Murray Abraham and, occasionally, Ron Perlman — who I liked in some moments and didn’t in others. It was weird.) Watching Connery nerd out in the library was pretty great. Buddy, I’m with you. Books are awesome.

5. But as to the rest of the casting . . . well . . .

IMDb trivia tells us that Jean-Jacques Annaud specifically cast some of the ugliest men he could find as the various monks, and on one hand, it’s nice to see that not everybody in this monastery looks like Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum. (Well. I guess it’s nice. Although I probably wouldn’t have objected too hard at the idea of seeing Sexy Monks, cause hey. I’m shallow like that. Also, Sexy Monks is my new imaginary band name.) But honestly, it’s occasionally a good thing when Hollywood remembers that not everybody in the world looks like they were carved out of cream cheese . . .

. . . except it seems pretty clear to me that Annaud cast these actors solely to make the monks and the abbey itself seem creepier and more foreboding, which is kind of shitty. I can’t help but think about fairy tales, how beauty is almost always a virtue of the good, whereas ugly girls have to just deal with the fact that they’re destined to be wicked. It’s kind of a sucky lesson to learn, really. Why should the inside reflect the outside? So, you’ve got a really big forehead and fucked up teeth — what exactly about that screams villainy, again?

I’d be totally down with casting for realism, but I just don’t think that’s what this is.

6. Not to mention, I actually wish Annaud had gone for realism. Cause it’s not just the monks who look scary — everything is shot to look all sinister and gothic and ugly, and I feel like the movie would be more interesting if all the suspects and victims actually seemed like people, not shadowy caricatures.

Also, mud — while fun to play in — is kind of boring to look at, after a while.

7. There is also a girl . . .

. . . but we’ll have to wait to talk about her. For now, I’ll just say that her role is actually expanded from the novel, which is both a good thing and a bad thing for this story. Mostly bad, though.

Actually, let’s just get to spoilers, shall we? And a reminder: these spoilers will be for both book and movie. If you’re only familiar with one and don’t want to know too much about the other, please go no further.

SPOILERS

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The mystery begins before William and Adso even arrive at the abbey. Adelmo, a young, attractive monk, appears to have died from somehow falling out of a locked window. In the book, the Abbot asks William to look into the matter, as he’s eager to have the whole thing squared away before everyone can arrive to start talking about whether Christ believed in owning shit or not. In the movie, however, William figures out something awful has happened, supposedly because he’s clever, but really because the Abbot is a shifty, shifty weirdo.

(Although he’s no worse than Berengar, I suppose — but we’ll get to Berengar shortly.)

Now, everyone at the abbey thinks that some kind of evil spirit, if not the Devil himself, must have killed Adelmo, but William figures out the truth very quickly: Adelmo killed himself by jumping out of a different, unlocked window, and his body simply rolled down the hill. The case isn’t quite solved, though, because another monk — Venantius — is killed the next night, and he certainly didn’t commit suicide, as his body is found upside down in a very large jar of pig’s blood.

I’ll admit, I was really looking forward to seeing this scene after reading it in the book.

The monks are uber freaked out about this, as you might expect, although they are awfully histrionic about it. I mean, they start wailing and shrieking about the End Times a lot faster than seems appropriate to me. Monks! Calm yourselves, men!

No one is wailing or shrieking harder than Ubertino, though. Ubertino is  hiding out at the abbey — he has some fairly unorthodox beliefs — and he is yet another weirdo monk in a long series of monk weirdos.

In the novel, Ubertino is clearly obsessed with — and tormented by — the thought of women. He has such charming things to say about them, really. In the movie, though, while Ubertino does briefly talking about women (“beautiful are the breasts that protrude just a little,” like, WOW, guy), he mostly seems to be perving on young Adso. He doesn’t really serve a ton of purpose in the story except to loudly proclaim that the deaths are a clear sign the Apocalypse is nigh, and that there will be five more murders in accordance with the prophecy.

William, of course, thinks this is all a bunch of superstitious nonsense, and it is, but it doesn’t look like that when Berengar is found quite dead the next day in the bath. (Point of interest: Berengar has a black mark on his tongue and on his index finger, just like Venantius did. This will obviously be important later.)

But I’ve skipped ahead. The night before Venantius’s body is found, William and Adso sneak into the Aedificium to look at what the dead translator was working on. They find a book — which will henceforth be known as the Very Important Book — but Berengar manages to steal it (and William’s newfangled glasses) from under their noses. (The whole thing about the glasses is a much bigger deal in the novel, but it’s one of the few changes from text to screen that doesn’t bother me at all.) William and Adso split up to give chase, which we’ll get back to in a minute. (Boy, will we.)

First, though, let me talk a little about Berengar.

We later find out that — prior to their respective demises — Adelmo and Berengar had sex. We’re told that Berengar, as assistant librarian, had access to the Very Important Book, and wouldn’t let Adelmo look at it unless he agreed to sleep with him. (I was less clear on this while reading — I kind of assumed that Berengar and Adelmo’s relationship was a little more two-way than that, despite the fact that Adelmo obviously hated himself for it — but perhaps I just misread something.)

Now, I find it a little uncomfortable that Berengar is a gay monk who pretty much extorts sexual favors from a straight monk, leading him to the path of SIN . . . because, you know, that’s totally what those gay men do, turn perfectly good, straight men into evil homosexuals. Then again, there’s no reason a gay character should always have to be the heroine’s fashion-forward bestie, right? Gay people can be terrible, just like straight people can. I don’t think I have a fundamental problem with a gay character who extorts sexual favors.

I do have a fundamental problem if that same character is portrayed as an even shifter, shifty weirdo than the Abbot, though.

Cause, you know. We really need to get across that Berengar is gay, and what better way to show that than to make the guy a bald, pasty creeper with long nails and a high-pitched shriek, especially when mice come anywhere near him?

*Sigh*

Moving on. While chasing after Berengar, Adso find himself a poor, comely peasant girl hiding in the kitchen. The girl doesn’t have a name — or dialogue — but she does have a nice body that she’s more than happy to share with Adso.

Adso — who was raised in a monastery and has probably never been within five feet of a woman — doesn’t take a whole lot of persuading. (Unfortunately. Their sex scene seemed long and awkward to me, not least because the actress was 22 at the time of filming, while Slater was all of 15. I was very relieved to get back to the monk murdering, thank you very much.)

Now, you might be wondering why a poor, young peasant girl is hiding in the kitchen of a monastery. Well, it turns out that Remigio, one of the monks, snuck her inside. He gets to have sex, and she gets to have food, see? Seriously, everyone at this abbey is so damn charming. (Although I’m assuming she did change her mind about the sex, otherwise, I’m not sure why she’s hiding at all.)

I should throw out there: even in the book, I thought this scene was kind of ridiculous. Actually, it might be even more ridiculous in the book — the movie at least makes a teeny, tiny attempt to harbor some kind of chemistry between the two actors. See, early in the film, Adso sees the Girl outside the abbey, and they share a Look. In the novel, however, Adso sees the Girl for the first time when he stumbles upon her in the kitchen, and she’s basically like, ‘Gosh, you’re good looking. Let me introduce you to my vagina.’ Cause yes. I can totally see how women who are about to sell their bodies for food so that their little brothers can have something to eat are absolutely in the mood to fuck any passing pretty boy for free.

Wait . . . getting laid is this easy? Or are women just uncontrollably aroused by my monk bangs?

In the novel, Adso keeps thinking about the girl and the sex and the sin and the sex — nothing that’s particularly surprising. Unfortunately, the movie takes it a step further by having him instantly fall in love with her, despite the fact they haven’t said a single word to one other, or hell, even seen each other in halfway decent lighting. Of course, maybe Adso isn’t really in love with her — maybe he just thinks he’s in love with her because he’s lusting after her body and all – but nope, he has a discussion with William that clarifies this is the Real Deal, y’all. No matter how ludicrous that is.

And unfortunately for Adso, William, the Girl, and basically everyone ever, Bernardo Gui of the Inquisition shows up shortly thereafter.

We find out that William also used to be a part of the Inquisition, which I guess is supposed to be a Big Reveal, although I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not particularly surprising, I don’t think, even if you haven’t read the book — where we learn about William’s former career in, like, the first fifty pages. Of course, the movie does make some changes here — in the book, Gui and William just don’t particularly like each other, whereas in the film, William once stood up for a supposed heretic, and Gui tortured him until he recanted. I don’t mind the change to his backstory — it’s appropriately dramatic, and Connery has a nice moment, talking about how he got to live while the other man was sentenced to burn — but there are one or two moments where it all seems a little much to me. (We’ll get to that in a minute.)

So, Salvatore is caught practicing witchcraft, and unfortunately, the Girl is with him at the time. Adso wants to save her, but William says she is already “burnt flesh”. Meanwhile, the debate is going pretty poorly for the Franciscans, not that we spend more than three minutes on it. More importantly, our friendly herbalist monk Severinus of the especially frightening hair finds the Very Important Book and tells William about it. William can’t leave the conference right away, but advises Severinus to go inside and lock his door until he can come. Severinus does this, but alas! He does not check his surroundings before he locks up, so Malachia, the librarian, has the opportunity to kill him and steal the book.

(Point of interest: Malachia’s name in the book is Malachi. I have absolutely no idea why they changed it.)

Malachia urges Remigio to run because the Inquisition will surely burn him along with Salvatore and the Girl. (Remigio doesn’t just like the ladies, see. He and Salvatore also used to belong to a very violent heretical group, the Dolcinites.) Of course, Remigio gets caught trying to escape, and Gui blames all the murders on him. Remigio clearly didn’t kill the others, but he basically goes nuts under the threat of torture and confesses to everything anyway.

Gui forces William to be a judge on Remigio’s trial — to which I seriously rolled my eyes — and William argues that Remigio didn’t do it. Gui says William is clearly a heretic himself, and I think plans to arrest him — but doesn’t, at least not immediately? Maybe he really wanted to hear blind Jorge’s sermon about the apocalypse first, I don’t know. Anyway, Malachia suddenly collapses at said sermon, dies, and in the uproar, William and Adso take off, heading for the library.

Oh, I haven’t really talked about the library yet. Hm. Well, the library is a Big Deal — or ought to be, anyway. See, it’s forbidden for anyone but the librarian or the assistant librarian to enter — because books are dangerous, you know, at least the wrong kinds of books with the wrong kinds of knowledge. So, Adso and William have to sneak in and find their way through the labyrinthian setup.

Jorge has beat them there, though, and we move into the Big Reveal. The VIB is actually a missing work by Aristotle, a book about comedy. Jorge is not a big fan of comedy. To him, laughter is a dangerous thing because, oh, laughter defeats fear, and the fear of God is important to the order of the universe, and might not men start laughing at God if they laugh at everything else, etc., etc. This argument works a little better in the novel, partially because there’s more time for the discussion, but also because you can hear it. In the movie, Jorge is running around the labyrinth as he rants at William, and everything he says echoes weirdly, so it’s hard to make out exactly what he’s shrieking about.

It turns out that Jorge has spread some deadly poison on the pages of the book, sticking them all together. Venantius, Berengar, and Malachia all died because they each licked their index finger while reading, in order to turn the pages easier. (And that shows you for licking the pages, nasty boys. That’s just gross.) Jorge tries to trick William into doing the same, but William is too clever a detective monk for that, so Jorge’s Plan B is to destroy the book by eating the poisoned pages and setting it on fire for good measure. Of course, the library also goes up in flames.

Meanwhile, Gui is busy roasting people outside the library.

Salvatore and Remigio both die, while the Girl is saved at the last minute because of course she is. Adso — who has escaped the library under William’s orders — chases after Gui, yelling some nonsense about how this is all his fault, and far be it from me to defend an evil bastard from the Inquisition, but that’s just patently untrue. Gui didn’t set the library on fire, poison the book, or kill the monks. (Okay. He killed a couple of the monks.)

Gui escapes in his carriage, but not for long. The peasants, presumably upset about the Girl nearly being barbecued, have decided to revolt, and they launch Gui’s wagon off a godamn cliff. This is just silly. For one thing, the peasants have shown absolutely zero sign of stirring towards revolution before now. For another thing, Gui (like Ubertino) is a real historical person, and totally didn’t die from getting his ass tossed off a cliff.

William escapes the fire with an armful of charred books. He and Adso leave the abbey, but not before a run-in with our favorite mute peasant Girl. Adso has a choice whether he should continue going with William or leave everything he’s ever known behind for a girl he’s never spoken to and thankfully chooses the former. Old Adso Narrator says that he never regretted the choice because William taught him much, but now that he’s all old and dying, the one face he sees most clearly is the Girl’s, and he doesn’t even know her name. And that’s how we end it.

Now.

There are some big differences in this ending. For one, Gui doesn’t bite it in the book. For another, the girl totally does. Well, not on screen. Gui and his people leave with the supposed heretics and witches in tow. They’re absolutely going to be burned, just not right there at the abbey.

Also, it’s not just the library that burns down in the novel — the whole abbey does in a huge, three day fire. Monks that you never meet in the movie are horribly killed. And William doesn’t escape that library with jack shit in his arms, and he totally dies of the plague some years after the story.

The movie actually has a pretty decent Kill Count, but it pales a bit compared to the book:

Movie Kill Count:

Adelmo
Venantius
Berengar
Severinus
Malachia
Salvatore
Remigio
Jorge
Gui
Most of the books
Old Adso (okay, he’s basically about to die)

The Book Kill Count, on the other hand:

Adelmo
Venantius
Berengar
Severinus
Malachi
Jorge
Abbot
ALL of the books
Benno (not in film – died in library fire)
Alinardo (not in film – trampled during fire)
Salvatore (off screen – but totally going to happen)
Remigio (off screen – but totally going to happen)
Girl (off screen – but totally going to happen)
Ubertino (off screen – murdered a few years later)
William (off screen — plague a few years later)
Old Adso (okay, he’s basically about to die)

Cause yeah. This book is not an upper. The loss of the library — which is supposed to be one of the most magnificent libraries in the entire world — is just devastating. Aristotle’s book on comedy is destroyed right along with the rest of the books. Most of the monks are killed off. William doesn’t really save anyone, and Jorge basically wins. I’m saying, I’m not entirely averse to creating a slightly more hopeful ending for the movie.

But I’m not exactly sure how to do it because this movie’s ending — while not ridiculously upbeat — still rings false to me somehow. Perhaps because the movie seems more concerned with the fate of the girl than the library, and ultimately I think it should be the other way around. Like, to me, this is very much a story about knowledge versus faith, and whether these two things are intrinsically opposing forces, or whether they can coexist in harmony with one another. William, I imagine, would argue that scholastic learning has been his path to self-enlightenment, that his fervor for knowledge has led him closer to God. Many of the other monks clearly feel the same, or do in the novel, anyway, where their inability to enter the library freely is a considerably bigger deal. (Not to mention feeds into their desperation to look at the forbidden VIB.)

But Jorge — and Ubertino as well — both argue that knowledge is dangerous, that too many ideas, or exposure to the wrong kinds of ideas, impede the path to God. It’s this fundamental belief that causes the deaths of all these monks. The battle should be for the library, and the fall of it should be devastating.

Instead, the library burns, and it’s just . . . it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. I mean, William’s upset about it, sure. But he grabs at least a few books, so it’s basically okay. It feels just like when our heroes lose the Book of Amun-Ra at the end of The Mummy, or the Holy Grail at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We knew they couldn’t keep it, right? It’s basically expected at this point. Anyway, the girl is Saved, and isn’t that really all that matters?

I’m not trying to say that a woman’s life isn’t important – I mean, I certainly hope people would choose to rescue me over a shitload of old books — but our Girl just isn’t that significant to this story. Taking her out of the picture changes almost nothing in the long run of things. After all, Salvatore is really the one doing witchcraft, which could certainly have been done without her. Adso’s emotional turmoil would certainly be altered, sure, but nothing in the actual plot would change. Taking out the library, on the other hand, changes almost everything about the story. There are no murdered monks without the forbidden library. 

And maybe if the Girl was very important, you know, thematically — but she just isn’t, not really. The movie tries — the writers basically tell you that the titular ‘rose’ is a reference to the Girl, and they want you to feel all invested at the end when Adso has his whole moment of choice deal . . . except it totally doesn’t work cause, like I said before, these two do not know each other AT ALL. For this moment to play, we really need them to have an actual relationship, or at least buy into some kind of special connection between the two. And I didn’t buy into that, not even a little.

You know what could have helped with that? Hm, here’s an idea:

Dialogue.

CONCLUSIONS:

Meh. It’s not terrible, and there are moments I enjoy, but I can’t help but feel like this movie failed to translate some of the more powerful ideas from the book. (Amusingly, I think the film’s deficiencies may have actually forced me to appreciate the book more.)

Although. I could be interested in a remake.

MVP:

Sean Connery

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORAL:

Our love is God. Let’s go get a slushie.

Women don’t really want intelligent conversation, basic introductions, or even food to feed their families. If your face is pretty enough, they will totally have sex with you on a kitchen floor for funsies.

Oh, and monks are probably not to be trusted. I mean, honestly. Just look at their hair.

So, I didn’t see Ender’s Game in theater. But my friend Robyn did, and she’s here to tell you all about it while I kick back and drink a mimosa or something. -C.S.

Ender’s Game is my favorite book. I first read it in 1991, and I’ve re-read it about once a year ever since. So, I was extremely ambivalent about seeing the movie. On the one hand, Ender’s Game! On the other, HOLLYWOOD + Ender’s Game. But, since they did such a good job with my other childhood favorite, Lord of the Rings, I let a friend convince me to go.

Sigh. I should have listened to my gut.

I didn’t hate it. Okay, actually, I did kind of hate it. BUT I could tell that the writers tried very hard, so E for effort people. But while they managed to cram most of the plot of the book into the movie, they ended up completely missing the point of the story.

Disclaimers:

• It was unavoidable that this review be almost as much of a book review as it is a movie review, because I couldn’t help but compare the two constantly. If you haven’t seen the movie, it is nearly identical to the book, spoiler-wise. If you haven’t read the book, definitely stop reading this and go check it out!
• Also, I am not here to debate Orson Scott Card’s political opinions and whether/how they should impact our judging of Ender’s Game. While considering an author’s cultural background and situation can definitely inform our understanding of their works, I am going to take the less contentious route of critiquing the movie and book entirely separate from that.

Summary: Many years ago, Earth was attacked by a bug-like alien race. The humans barely won back then, and they aren’t going to wait around to be attacked again. They’ve assembled a fleet to try to wipe out their enemies before they can come back, but they need a bunch of brilliant children to lead it, and a particularly brilliant child to be the fleet’s general: Ender Wiggin.

SPOILERS

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Notes:

1. There are so many awkward voiceovers by Ender in this movie. Look, voiceovers are tricky in the best of cases (e.g. Anthony Hopkins has an unbelievably captivating voice, and yet Odin still sounds silly at the beginning of The Dark World), and Ender has to do 4-5 of them, all of which are full of clunky exposition that could have been cut or shuffled off elsewhere. That’s just not fair to the actor.

The name of the aliens is changed in the movie to be the “Formics”… apparently the director was so worried that posh British folk would be upset over the word Bugger that they changed the name. First off, seriously? I mean, Joss Whedon got away with mewling quim, and you’re worried about Bugger? This level of squeamishness is an ominous sign 45 seconds into a movie adaptation of a book with far more offensive material than somewhat mundane British slang.

Second, if you’re going to change the name, at least make it something that doesn’t sound like a countertop material.

2. In a very Game of Thrones move, the movie makes Ender and all the other kids about 5-10 years older than they are in the book. Ok, I get it. It’s hard to find a 6-year-old who can convincingly pull off tactical genius, lead mock battles and beat the crap out of other kids. Plus throughout the book, Ender is supposed to age from 6-11, and no amount of makeup is going to make that a trivial onscreen transition.

I would have been on board with 10 year old Ender, but Asa Butterfield was 15 when they filmed, and is easily as tall as the other children who are supposed to be able to beat him up. Plus, one of the main points of Ender’s game is that these children are being put into adult situations way beyond their maturity level, because even though their reasoning capabilities are far beyond average, they’re still children. Their innocence is the entire reason the military wants them as commanders, and the reason they keep lying to Ender about the things he is doing—if he knew, he wouldn’t be willing to keep playing the game.

3. On a related note, the movie rational for having kids commanding humanity’s fleet of REAL warships is—wait for it–that they’re better at video and board games and have faster reflexes.

Wait. What?

To be fair, they later add on that kids “integrate information” more easily, but still, that’s a stunning grasp of the skills you need to be military leaders, Gavin Hood. It’s a mystery that the DOD doesn’t have you on call.

4. One of the other main themes of the book is the tension between a person’s autonomy and their responsibilities to humanity. The adults take a very ‘ends justify the means’ approach to military training, and blatantly admit to each other that they are destroying Ender’s happiness (and the other children, to a lesser extent) in order to make him into the tool that humanity needs to win the war. Ender himself is aware that the adults are lying to him and using him, but he keeps going along with the game because he keeps being reminded of why it’s so important. In fact, he himself starts to treat his subordinates (Bean) the same way the adults are treating him—keeping the cycle going.

It’s this tension that makes Ender’s discovery of the Bugger queen at the very end of the book so heartbreaking. Ender realizes that he didn’t have to kill the Buggers because they weren’t really the enemy, so the game/war he’s sacrificed so much for was actually meaningless.

I’ll come back to what the movie does with this theme in the synopsis. I give them props for trying, but it ends up being very tell, not show, and a lot more preachy and judgmental than it needed to be.

5. They almost completely cut Peter and Valentine from the movie. For all the things they cut that I think were a tragedy, this is not one of them. I love the story of the siblings, and the ways that they use their power and intelligence differently, but you can show Ender’s personality and mental breakdown without them if you have to. And given that the movie was 2 hours long already, something had to go.

BUT, if you aren’t going to have Peter the jackal be the most formative person in Ender’s life, why have him at all? The movie has a couple of lines establishing that he is a douche to Ender, tells us that he was too violent for Battle School (in a voiceover, of course), and then has one throw-away line from Ender about how he feels “the Peter in me” when he fights. Later on, both Peter and Valentine show up in Ender’s ‘Mind Game’ and freak him out, but because we don’t know them very well, it doesn’t make much sense. The amount of attention isn’t nearly enough to set up Ender’s hatred of violence and himself as he becomes more violent, and it certainly isn’t enough to set up Peter’s (kind of) redemption later on, which is meant to be a proxy to Ender’s hope for redemption.

So, it’s pointless, and it eats up movie space: either have Peter in the movie, or don’t.

I’m harping on this issue because it’s the main problem I have with this movie: they blindly stick to the plot without thinking about what purpose each element was meant to serve, so when they cut things or adapt them to the screen, it doesn’t seem to be done thoughtfully.

Casting:

Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield)

Hi, I make this face for most of the movie.

I enjoyed Asa Butterfield in Hugo, but he was either not ready for the role of Ender, or the writing/direction gave him nothing to work with. Given the other complaints I have, I suspect the latter.

Even though the other characters keep saying how special and smart Ender is (the movie is about as subtle with that point as a giant hammer), it is difficult to feel sympathy for him as a person, and it’s not clear why anyone would trust him with a fleet, let alone thrust it at him. He alternates between seeming like a dick to seeming weak, sad, and whiny.

A bit of the problem is Ender’s age, as mentioned above. In the book, he is far younger than all the other children, which really highlights just how smart he is. You lose that when Ender is the same age. More importantly though, Ender is supposed to be a talented leader on top of his genius, because of his ability to deeply understand other people and how they think (like Valentine) and his need to win (like Peter)—this is why he is able to beat the Buggers, and also why he comes to hate himself deeply for beating people, in real life and in the games. At the same time, Ender is supposed to be extremely in control, and stoic. His subordinates have very little idea that he’s emotionally falling apart.

Having any character be that complicated is a tall order, and I grant that it is easier in the book, where you know everything Ender is thinking. But this weak/strong dichotomy is possible with the right acting and direction—just see Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) in Catching Fire, or Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in Thor. And it’s completely missing with Ender.

You know, in my imaginary re-casting of Ender’s Game, I think that Kodi Smith-McPhee could have been a good Ender, at the same age he was when he did Let Me In. He does a lot with very limited facial expressions.

Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford)

Only you can prevent Bugger Formic invasion!

I expected to find Harrison Ford a bit jarring as Graff, but I was actually pleased. He’s not Sandra Bullock in Gravity quality, but he’s also not Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin (I’d say I’m sorry if you liked that movie, but I’m not. Seriously, that movie was horrible. What’s wrong with you?).

Anyway, Graff actually managed to capture world-weary military commander who understands that sometimes surviving means doing pretty despicable things. He successfully walks the fine line of sympathetic (at least relatable) antagonist. Sure, he manipulates and lies to children for a living, but he is completely convinced that the fate of the entire human race is at stake, so…there is that as well.

Major Anderson (Viola Davis)

I was so pleasantly surprised to see them cast Anderson as a black woman, because while Anderson in the books was male, there is no reason the character needs to be. Then, it became clear that she had also been changed from the second in command at the Battle School into, essentially, a child psychologist. Oh. Nice surprise, meet cliché gender roles.

In Anderson’s capacity as psychologist, she has a few good lines about the damage that they are doing to Ender which are supposed to paint Graff as an uncaring bastard, but they came off unconvincing, because very little that is done to Ender in the movie actually seems that bad on the adults’ part, other than the neglect that lead to the fight with Bonzo. He has friends, a pseudo-UST-girlfriend, and wins a lot. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for emotional breakdown, it sounds like milk and cookies + nap time = dreams about puppy dogs.

So essentially, Anderson exists to make you hate Graff and sympathize with Ender, but since one isn’t particularly inclined to sympathize with Ender, she just comes across as heavy handed, telling the audience that Graff is a bad guy although his actions do not conclusively show that. UGH! What is so frustrating about this is that Anderson and Graff’s philosophical dialogues at the beginning of almost every chapter are one of the best things about the book. They could literally have lifted that dialogue word-for-word into the movie (and they do, in one or two cases) and it would have been great exposition and character development. Why change it?

Anderson is definitely not the most problematic female character though. That honor goes to:

Petra Arkanian (Hailee Steinfeld)

I feel things deeply, cause of my lady parts.

There aren’t a lot of women at Battle School. OS Card explains this with some mumbo jumbo about evolution working against us, and that’s a pretty dumb reason, but at least the one female Battle School character he does give us is Petra, and she’s an unequivocal bad ass: a crazy marksman, one of the best tacticians at Battle School, and she teaches Ender basic Battle Room maneuvers and how to aim when Bonzo decides to be a dick and refuses to let him practice, by teaching him how to shoot as well as the basics of the Battle Room. So, bad ass. You know what she’s not? The Token Female Character.

And Hailee Steinfeld…is. She is definitely a victim of poor directing, because none of her acting in the movie is bad, per se. It’s just…Hollywood, did we have to make every female character with lines the dumping ground for emotional moments? Petra essentially takes on the combined roles of Alai (closest friend), Dink, (teacher, dispenser of philosophy), Valentine (emotional connection) AND Bean (mentee, confidant), which only partially overlap with the roles she actually played in the book (teacher, friend, superior officer, competitor). Petra has enough to do without having her constantly laugh and/or make sad faces with Ender. It gets to the point where some of the scenes bordered on UST, and if they had actually crossed the line of making her a love interest, I would have bitterly wept right there in the theatre.

Bonzo Madrid (Moises Arias)

Every time Bonzo was on screen, my brain started singing ‘Short People’. I am going to hell.

Setting aside his physicality for one moment, Ender’s douche bag of a commander is one of my favorite characters in this movie. He is not a fantastic leader and is extremely threatened by Ender’s intelligence, both of which are very clear.

Unfortunately, what is entirely lost is what a physical threat Bonzo is to Ender. For 5 straight chapters of a 15 Chapter book, Bonzo is a constant reminder to Ender that no matter how much he can beat his enemies by using his brain, he is still a little boy who can be hurt very badly, very easily. This threat, and the subsequent tension that comes with it, is undermined when Bonzo is close to a foot shorter than Ender is, and ends up looking more like a disgruntled banker than a menacing Spanish rage-machine.

Detailed plot summary:

Awkward voiceover #1 tells us that humanity was almost wiped out until a genius named Mazer Rackham gave his life to save us. Now that he’s dead, we need to train a bunch of kids to lead our fleet so that we can go take the enemy out before they come back.

Ender (Asa Butterfield), apparently the gamer of all gamers, beats an older kid who handles the loss with all the grace of a WOW raid leader during a wipe. On the heels of this victory, Ender is called in to get his monitor removed, and we get our first glimpse of Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davis). They discuss whether or not Ender is truly ready for Battle School, and we get our first famous book quote:  “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you, he’s the one.” Cool, although from what the audience has seen of the monitor, it’s less of seeing through Ender’s eyes and more of watching him through close-circuit TV Hunger-Games style.

Now that Ender is “out of the program” the boys from earlier come to beat him up, but he beats the crap out of one of them so they leave him alone. He goes home, and his older brother Peter is angry—not on Ender’s behalf, but at Ender, because he lasted longer in the program than Peter did. Basically, Peter’s a jealous dick. And Valentine’s a…loving sister. That’s about all the character development we get for these two for the rest of the movie. Oh and we learn that Ender is a “third,” but not what that means or why it is important, so good luck figuring it out if you didn’t read the book.

Graff comes by, and surprise! Ender didn’t wash out, they just wanted to see how good he was at beating up other kids before they offered him a place. Actually, given the amount that I am ripping this movie apart, I should say that it got this scene really right. The exchange between Ender and Graff about whether Ender wants to go to Battle School shows that Ender has no gut desire for violence, and is going only out of a sense of duty.

Ender gets on a space shuttle to the Battle School, and we meet Alai and Bean, who are going to become Ender’s Background Bros a bit later in the movie, but for now, don’t have a great first impression of him because Graff announces to everyone that Ender is so far above them that they would basically be Formic-meat without him. This is the point where in the book, another boy starts hitting Ender on the head and Ender breaks the boy’s arm on accident, completely alienating him from the rest of his launch group. By cutting this scene, I think the movie missed a big opportunity to show Ender’s unwitting (yet brutal) violence and his horror at that part of himself (they could have instead cut awkward voiceover #3 where Ender says that learning to fight makes him feel “like Peter”).

It turns out that the alienation was 100% deliberate on Graff’s part, because complete isolation is part of his plan to shape Ender into The Best Military Commander Ever. He tells Anderson (and us) that Ender “must never believe that anyone will ever help him,” so that he will always rely only on himself.

At the bunk, Sergeant Dap, the new cadets’ supervisor, performs the traditional military-scream-fest about maggots or gelding or something, and Graff tells them that nobody in the room is their friend, but is a competitor for valuable promotions. I know it’s a long walk from the shuttle, but did Graff forget his speech from 5 minutes ago about Ender being so far above the competition that they shouldn’t bother?

Classes and training start, and we see the same footage of the Formic invasion that we saw at the beginning (suggestion: save 3 minutes and cut that first voiceover about the war, and let the audience stay in suspense about why we’re putting such young kids in the military until now). The Battle Room is gorgeous—not what imagined when I read the book, but I wasn’t disappointed at all. In figuring out how to use their guns, Bean and Ender manage to mend some fences, and then in class, a guy named Bernard is a complete douche to Alai, and Ender defends him with a very clever prank. This cements their friendship, which we know because the other boys move over to eat with him in the lunchroom, leaving Bernard the bully alone.

Ender writes a voiceover email to Valentine saying how hard Battle School is and asking why she doesn’t write back. He then challenges Graff and Dap about whether their emails are being filtered. This new scene takes up 5 min and accomplishes nothing as far as I can tell. Ender has already made friends, so we don’t need his plucky insubordination for that, and the news that Graff has been filtering emails would be WAY more powerful later in the movie when he takes Ender to see Valentine. Plus, the foreshadowing of Dap telling Ender he will never salute him and then later on saluting him is…cliché, at best.

Ender is promoted to Salamander army, and his new commander Bonzo is pissed at being saddled with such a noob. He orders Ender not to get in his way, and when Petra helps him practice, tells him that’s not allowed. Except Ender knows his rights regarding free time, and in a great exchange, metaphorically punches Bonzo in the family jewels until he lets Ender do what he wants.

One of the games Ender plays on his tablet is called the “Mind Game,” and in it, he interacts with a fantasy world as a variety of creatures. We get to see a bit into the Peter side of Ender’s mind, here, because he solves a supposedly unsolvable puzzle by taking his mouse and burrowing it into a giant’s eye, thereby killing it. That’s dark. After that, his avatar turns into a boy, and he finds Valentine and Peter, the latter of whom tells him he’s finally a killer. Neither of his siblings should be in the simulation though, and a very upset Graff tells Anderson to change the program. Anderson replies that she can’t, and that perhaps Ender is feeling pressure, and then we have the best quote in the movie! Graff says, “Of course he’s feeling pressure, Anderson! This is a boot camp, for kids who are going to have to face a real enemy!”

Ender gets his own army, called Dragon Army, and I think at this point the writers were hungry for lunch and decided to start using the Cliff’s Notes version of the book, because this is basically what happens: Ender’s army is a bunch of “misfits” including Bean Alai and Bernard because hey remember him that makes sense but Ender says I’m going to need your suggestions too because I can’t make all the decisions around here and therefore they start to do really well in the battles so yay and now Dap finally salutes him so touching double yay until Graff for some reason decides to put two armies against them including Bonzo’s except Graff ALSO apparently thinks that’s not fair to do even though he just did it so he has Petra and Dink join Ender for the fight because wtf why not and then there’s no way they can win so Ender “cheats” the system by sending one person through the door to win the game which he is apparently the only one clever enough to think of despite Dap telling everyone that way back in minute 25 of the movie and you caught all of that right?

This face. Seriously, this face.

Here are the totally trivial and not-at-all important things that are supposed to be happening in this part of the story, which constitutes almost 1/3 of the book:

• Ender’s army is actually made up of misfits, and does not include any friends, because remember, Graff wants Ender isolated. Oh yeah, that theme.
• Ender tells his army that Bean is the best solider among them to isolate him, and realizes he has turned into Graff.
• We see Ender lead, and how he is revolutionizing the way Battles are played.
• Graff has Anderson rig the battle schedule to push Ender’s army beyond what any other army has ever been asked (or able) to do. The stress of this starts to truly wear Ender down, because he recognizes that he can never afford to lose, even in a game.
• There is an active plot to kill Ender led by Bonzo, and although the adults know, they don’t do anything about it, because Ender has to understand that he will never get any help from anyone. Oh yeah, that theme too.

Ok, so instead, angry Bonzo attacks Ender in the showers and Ender accidentally kills him gives him a serious head injury. I would have stood behind this change, even though I think it weakens the horror and self-hatred Ender feels, except then Anderson shows up and apologizes to Ender for the adults not stopping this. What happened to doing whatever it takes to make Ender a self-sufficient leader who will not rely on anyone to save him, no matter how young he is?

Ender decides that he won’t be their monster anymore, which is pretty bad news for Graff because the fleet is close to arriving and he needs a commander ASAP. So, he asks Valentine to manipulate Ender into going on, which she begrudgingly does. This scene is well done, and if it weren’t for the context of the rest of the movie, would have been quite powerful.

Ender and Graff head off to Command School, where he learns that he will be playing a new training game on a simulator, with a team (Alai, Bean, Petra, Dink, and Bernard). As the best shooter, Petra is in charge of their main weapon, called Dr. Device, which breaks molecules apart at an atomic level to create an expanding field of destruction, as long as the enemy is grouped close enough.

Ender also has a new teacher, who is…duh duh duh…not dead Mazer Rackham! Turns out he got on a spaceship and flew close to the speed of light so that he would only experience a few years while Earth experienced 50, so then he could train the next commander. The scenes between Ender and Mazer are the best in the movie, and there should have been more of them. Once again, the movie completely shuffles away the pressure that Mazer is putting on Ender, which in the book, destroys his mental health further to the point where he passes out during a simulation. What the kids are doing just doesn’t seem that hard.

On their final exam day, the enemy absolutely overwhelms them, and for the first time, they are fighting around a planet. Like his last fight in Battle School, Ender decides to “cheat” – he’s going to use Dr. Device against the planet. Losing almost every ship in the process, he gets Petra’s ship close enough to the planet to fire, leading to the utter destruction of every ship in the area.

Of course, you all know the twist: these were never simulations, and Ender has been fighting the real war this entire time. He has just unknowingly committed xenocide. And this is the real reason the adults (Mazer in particular) couldn’t be the leader, because although he was empathetic enough to understand the enemy, once he understood them he could never in good conscience kill them all.

This is an absolutely horrifying moment, and Asa Butterfield handles it so well. It would have been even more personally horrifying, though, if we had gotten to see Ender struggle and suffer more throughout the movie, so that it’s not just horrifying on a general “xenocide seems a bit morally dubious” sort of way, but also in a “I gave up everything for this betrayal?” way, too.

Ender rushes to his room and collapses, and in a dream, realizes that the surface of the planet he is currently on has a structure exactly like the scene with Valentine from his Mind Game, because the Formic Queen has been sending him dreams all along (#HeartKnowledge!) He wakes up and rushes to it. Inside is a Queen (just wondering–how has she been chilling on this planet all this time without anyone noticing?). She doesn’t talk to Ender, unlike in the book, but he realizes that she is dying and wants him to take the fertilized cocoon of a Bugger Queen with him until he can find a planet safe for the Buggers to return and live in harmony with humanity.

Conclusions

Too much time spent worrying about the minutiae; too little time spent thinking about what they wanted the actual themes of the movie to be. I still believe an amazing adaptation could be made of Ender’s Game, but this movie just didn’t get there.

Grade: C- (only due to grade inflation, because it is, admittedly, better than 47 Ronin).

Mewling Quim Award: Co-producer Orson Scott Card. Why did you do this to your incredible book?

Happy Valentine’s Day, people. Please put your candy and/or sweetheart aside and come along with me on our continued snarky journey through bad horror movies. Today we’ll be concluding Bloody Hearts with our review of Would You Rather.

It is an uncomfortable movie with a surprising amount of actual potential. Unfortunately, the finished product is just not very good.

SUMMARY:

Iris (Brittany Snow) desperately needs money to pay for her little brother’s cancer treatment, so she accepts a sketchy proposition from a creepy gazillionaire (Jeffrey Combs) and ends up playing a sadistic version of Would You Rather with seven other equally desperate contestants.

NOTES:

1. We live in the age of Google. Say about that what you will, but it means that when some rich weirdo at the doctor’s office who discards his chewed nutshells on the seat next to him like a sick fuck offers you a chance to play some kind of vaguely described game at his residence for a chance to win millions . . . you can go home and look that asshole up.

I’m not saying Iris should expect a night of horrifying torture, nor am I saying there will necessarily be evidence of Combs’s intentions online — though there is apparently enough for at least one conspiracy theorist to be involved — but it bothers me we never see Iris make even the most rudimentary attempt at research on this guy’s foundation. I know the doctor backed up Jeffrey Combs’s legitimacy and all, but I have to say, as a woman? I would not be particularly inclined to go to a stranger’s estate at night by myself when I had absolutely no details on what kind of “game” I would be playing to save my brother’s life. I certainly wouldn’t want a driver to pick me up and leave me stranded at their place with no vehicle of my own. (I mean, assuming I could drive, which I can’t. But I still would have wanted someone I actually knew to give me a ride, or at the very least, I would have told SOMEBODY where I was going. Come on, Iris. I know you’re desperate, but these are very basic safety precautions I’m talking about.)

2. Ultimately — and unfortunately — I think Would You Rather fails as a scary movie. But whether you see any potential in it or not probably depends upon your tolerance for the torture porn sub-genre.

The greater majority of people I talk to dislike torture porn as a matter of principle. (Or they don’t know what I’m talking about, in which case, I rapidly change subjects.) I certainly wouldn’t describe it as my favorite flavor of horror, but I do like movies that fall under the category — assuming anyone can agree on what constitutes ‘torture porn’ these days, which I’m pretty sure no one can. If we’re going by this list, though, there are a handful of films that I like: Hostel, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Saw, and The Hills Have Eyes (the 2006 remake).

It was really only a matter of time before someone turned ‘Would You Rather’ into a horror movie, and considering the nature of the game, it’s not at all surprising the film falls under the TP category. But I think this movie makes the mistake of very repetitive violence – the game here is structured into a series of rounds, and the first and second rounds basically consist of everyone having to make the same exact ‘get hurt this way or hurt someone that way’ choice. While occasionally interesting, this is a mostly limiting setup that fails on a couple of levels. Individuals challenges actually create better opportunities for character development, not to mention allow for more creative violence. And let’s be honest here — if you’re watching a horror movie based on ‘Would You Rather,’ you probably want some creative violence.

But I also think that the film might have benefitted from some choices that didn’t directly lead to physical violence. For instance, some of the psychological, pre-game stuff — offering a recovering alcoholic 50,000 dollars to drink scotch, for instance — is actually fairly sinister stuff. It might not sound like it, but the moment really plays well in the movie. I only wish there had been more moments like it leading up to all the Big Violent Death Stuff. It would make the characters more interesting and give the film a better shape.

3. What could also help give the film a better shape: writing out the utterly pointless characters.

This isn’t a particularly long film, but we really shouldn’t be wasting any time on people who don’t advance the plot in any meaningful way. These guys? Nada. Zippo. I’ll provide more details in the Spoiler Section, but neither of them change anything about the final outcome and are entirely irrelevant to the game itself.

4. Cutting these worthless characters is especially important when you have eight contestants and, save Iris, only bother to hint at maybe one or two other backstories. Most of the players are only deemed worthy of one-to-two word descriptions: goth girl, old lady, etc. We never get any indication on who these people really are or, more importantly, why they need this money so bad.

5. But I’ve been pretty negative so far. I should talk about what actually works: the acting. Well, okay. Some of the acting. I’ll get to the problems in a minute, but first let me focus on your two contenders for MVP: Jeffrey Combs and Enver Gjokaj.

Jeffrey Combs is kind of delightful in his typical oddball way. (Actually, this is almost tame as far as his eccentric characters go. If you want true Combs craziness, you should go watch The Frighteners.) His line deliveries are darkly funny and overall pretty fantastic. He kind of makes the movie, since he provides the only source of humor that, frankly, this film sorely needs.

On the other hand, Enver Gjokaj makes what should be an incredibly boring character actually somewhat likable, not to mention acts the holy hell out of this one scene. I can’t tell you what the scene is just yet, but man, it’s like . . . Jesus. Almost everyone else in the cast is clearly in it for the rent money, and Enver’s like, “Oh, HELL no. I am an ACTOR, and we’re doing this scene RIGHT.”

6. Of course, for every amazing performance, we have an equal and opposite performance . . . or something like that. That’s some kind of science law, right?

June Squibb is nominated for an Academy Award this year, and I’m sure she’s a fantastic actress who does great work in Nebraska, but her line deliveries HERE make no godamned sense to me. It’s like her character doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea what’s going on, and I know she’s old, but I’m pretty sure she isn’t supposed to have dementia.

Sasha Grey, on the other hand, appears to be mostly known for porn, if her IMDb credits are any indication. I won’t say she’s the worst actress I’ve ever seen on screen, but that’s a pretty long way from saying that she’s good. Of course, her character is entirely mishandled from the get-go — because of course it’s the goth who is the vicious sadist with no feelings – but if played by an actress who could, well, act, Goth Girl Amy could actually be kind of awesome. You know, in an evil, badass, Mitsuko from Battle Royale kind of way.

That’s about all I can tell you without getting into Spoilers, so let’s just go ahead and do that now, shall we?

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

We begin by spending a little time with Iris and her brother, Raleigh.

You’ll notice the knit cap Raleigh is wearing, which is the movie silently telling us that the kid has cancer — and that the actor didn’t want to shave his head or fuck around with a bald cap for his six minutes of screen time. (Much less wax his eyebrows or pluck out his eyelashes. Yeesh. That sounds like the beginning of a decent Would You Rather question right there: would you rather pluck out all your eyelashes, or ______ ?)

Iris came back from college to take care of Raleigh, although she can’t land a job and is drowning in debt. She goes to visit Dr. Barden (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) about payment options, and he introduces her to nut-eating, uber-rich weirdo Shepard Lambrick — of course his name is Shepard — who tells her (almost nothing) about the game, and that she needs to RSVP by 8:00pm tonight if she wants to participate.

Iris, to her credit, doesn’t immediately say yes. But I still find it ridiculous she wouldn’t tell anyone where she’s going. She lies to her brother that she’s going out with friends, presumably so he won’t get his hopes up or something. We will later find out that this is a deadly mistake. (Warning: I will be bitching about this A LOT towards the end of the review.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Barden — otherwise known as the most worthless character in the entire movie — has reservations about Iris becoming part of the game. Because she’s, you know. Young and blonde and pretty. My God, she’s just too innocent to die! See, Dr. Barden has a guilty conscience because he survived the game himself however many years ago, and he knows what she’s getting into. To that end, he decides to sneak into the estate that night and rescue her. The amount of time we spent intercutting the real action with Dr. Barden creeping around the house like a loser is ridiculous, and I remember thinking, I’m going to be super pissed off if this guy doesn’t manage to do anything at all to advance the plot. Guess how well his sneaking around turns out?

But that’s skipping ahead. First, we meet all of our contestants.

Lucas (Enver Gjokaj) and Cal (Eddie Steeples) take the time to helpfully tell the audience Iris all about the other players. (Why she’s curious about the other people and not what the rules of the game are, I don’t know. Her seeming total lack of concern for what this game might entail continues to drive me batshit.) The one-to-two sentence descriptions we get of each character is about the extent of what we learn about them for the entire movie. So we’ve got:

Old Lady in a Wheelchair
Slightly Obnoxious Gambler
Recovering Alcoholic Conspiracy Theorist
Evil Goth Girl
Young Veteran with PTSD
Nice Guy Who is Doomed to Die Because He’s Black
Nice Guy Who is Almost-But-Not-Quite a Love Interest
Nice Girl

Iris is, of course, the nice girl, and if you were wondering — Brittany Snow is okay. She’s not particularly exciting in this role, but she certainly isn’t terrible either. I seem to remember her being pretty bad in the remake of Prom Night, but maybe I’m just unfairly blaming the entire movie on her. That was, after all, an excruciatingly dull film.

So, the contestants all have dinner together with Evil Shepard Lambrick. Joining them for dinner is the movie’s other most unnecessary character, Julian. Julian is Shepard’s psychotic son who did something completely unacceptable — and almost certainly rapey — during last year’s game and has to be repeatedly reminded that there are rules and a code of conduct and all that. Julian sullenly promises to be good. I see that turning out almost as well as the doctor’s attempt to save Nice Girl Iris.

During dinner, Nice Girl Iris mentions she’s a vegetarian — because of course she is — and Shepard immediately senses an opportunity. He offers to pay ten thousand dollars for Iris to eat her steak. Eventually, she does it.

I will not throw up, I will not throw up, I will not throw up . . .

It’s hard to blame her when the money is actually on hand, staring her in the face. And it’s a surprisingly uncomfortable scene, although nothing compared to what immediately follows: Recovering Alcoholic Conspiracy Theorist (John Heard) says that he can’t drink because, really, he’s kind of a moron — were you not watching what just happened, Mr. McAllister — and Shepard presses, offering ten thousand dollars for a single glass of wine or fifty thousand for this, like, a JUG of Scotch. RACT ends up drinking the Scotch and is, of course, a slumped mess by the next scene, although frankly, I’m slightly surprised he isn’t dead.

None of this sounds so horrible when I type it, but there really is a very palpable unease to this whole scene — I’m actually glad I didn’t end up watching Would You Rather with my friends because it’s just not really a movie meant for group mockery. Some of the elements are done pretty well, actually, and while I wouldn’t say I had fun watching the movie, exactly, this part of the film did evoke a certain kind of psychological horror that’s fairly effective.

But then we move into the Real Game. And while it’s still troubling stuff, it’s just . . . it just gets awfully repetitive. I would say there’s a lot of screen time here that’s rife with missed opportunities. But never mind that for now: let’s talk about the first round, which consists primarily of an electroshock to the head. Everyone has to choose whether they want to shock themselves or the player to their right.

Noteworthy things that happen in this round:

1. Nice Guy Who is Doomed to Die Because He’s Black is first up and chooses to shock himself rather than Goth Girl Amy. It’s mostly notable because — unlike the others — he doesn’t have any idea what the voltage on this thing is and can’t know if it’s going to kill him or not. Brave, dude. Very brave.

2. Goth Girl Amy, on the other hand, shocks Old Lady in a Wheelchair before Shepard can even finish his sentence, showing that she doesn’t just shop at Hot Topic — she’s evil. I get why movies like this always need to have that one asshole who immediately starts playing dirty, but it does help if that character has some kind of personality or charisma or changed facial expression or anything. Also, it’d still be cool if dark eye makeup didn’t immediately translate to Daughter of Satan.

3. Recovering Alcoholic Conspiracy Theorist drunkenly tries to muscle his way out of the house and is shot for his trouble.

Bye, John Heard! You know, he dies in a fair amount of the things I see him pop up in. Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York being obvious exceptions.

4. Nice Guy Lucas (Enver Gjokaj) is the only contestant to get shocked twice . . . because he can’t shock the pretty blonde girl, of course. Lucas is really only tolerable because Enver Gjokaj is playing him. It’s very hard to play the inspirational Boy Scout. In related news, why the hell doesn’t Youtube have more clips of Victor in Dollhouse? This is criminal. I need my Victor fix now, and you’re failing me, Internet. (Ooh, never mind. Netflix has the whole series on Instant. Crap. I may have to sift through this now.)

In the interim between Round One and Round Two, Young Veteran with PTSD manages to piss off Julian the Psycho, which is unfortunate, because everyone’s next choice is to decide between whipping the vet or stabbing the person to their left in the thigh. This culminates in two more deaths: Old Lady and Young Vet. The gambler chooses to stab the Old Lady, trying to spare the kid who clearly can’t take any more, but does about the worst job you can think of and manages to kill her. I mean, I know not everyone knows how to avoid the femoral artery — I certainly wouldn’t — but I feel like if I had to guess, I wouldn’t stab directly into the upper middle of her thigh.

And then the Young Vet dies anyway when Previously Nice Guy Who is Doomed to Die Because He’s Black is abruptly swayed by Goth Girl Amy’s kill-or-be-killed philosophy and whips the ex-soldier. Actually, Young Vet doesn’t die immediately, but it’s clear that he’s going to and can no longer continue in any case, so he’s carried out of the room.

I suppose Previously Nice Guy isn’t doomed to die solely because he’s black. He basically has to die now, so we can have a kind of redemptive, ‘I did a bad thing, so I must die’ death. (Actually, Dr. Barden fits that description too.) Also, anyone who’s ever seen a movie before knows that our final two going into the last round are going to end up being Nice Girl Iris and Nice Guy Lucas, no matter how improbable that is. But up until this moment, Previously Nice Guy has been just as much of a stand up dude as Nice Guy Lucas, and yet there’s never been any doubt on which one is Iris’s almost-but-not-quite-love-interest is. I’m honestly not sure if that has to do with skin color or not.

So, the group — sans Goth Girl Amy — all try to escape. Previously Nice Guy is shot and killed, while Nice Girl Iris almost makes it out of the house. Unfortunately, Julian the Pyscho finds her and tries to rape her.

Dr. Barden, who has finally infiltrated the house, helps stops Julian and is immediately shot for his trouble by Bevans the Badass Butler. (I forgot to mention it before, but I do kind of enjoy Bevans.) And it’s just . . . why the hell did we waste all this time watching Dr. Barden sneak around if he’s just going to get insta-killed? It’d be one thing if he really kept Julian from raping Iris, but she’s actually managed to stab the little shit herself by the time Doc shows up, not to mention Bevans appears on scene not a minute later and would also have prevented Julian from attacking her again, should he have regained the upper hand. So . . . yeah. Barden really does nothing of any importance after the first five minutes of this movie and, arguably, not even then.

For that matter, do we really need an attempted rape scene anyway? I suppose it’s good that aristocratic people who think nothing of murdering or torturing poor people find rape just too . . . uncouth . . . to bear, but after this scene, Julian disappears to pout (and bleed) in his bedroom, and I just don’t think we needed to waste any time on him or Dr. Bardem.

We get to the (somewhat) gory stuff in Round Three. (Most of the explicit gore is implied in this movie, which I highly suspect has more to do with budget than taste.) Everyone gets an envelope with ‘challenges’ ranging from Totally Sucky to Totally Gonna Kill You Dead. The contestants have a choice to make — be held face down in a barrel of water for two minutes or open the envelope and hope for the best. If I had been stupid enough to attend this party, this is almost certainly the round I would die in, as I’m both a) asthmatic, and b) panicky underwater. Since the barrel would basically be an automatic death sentence anyway, I would have to choose the envelope, as most of the contestants do.

Gambler dies when he has to light a firecracker in his hand, and by firecracker, I mean a quarter stick of dynamite.

It blows his whole hand right off, and the shock and blood loss kill him shortly after that. Nice Girl Iris chooses the barrel of water and manages to hold her breath for the allotted two minutes. (If she hadn’t chosen the barrel, all of her teeth would have been forcibly removed.)

Goth Girl Amy opens her envelope because we find out she has a thing about drowning, considering her husband drowned their little girl once upon a time. It’s really the only backstory other than Iris’s we get, and while I don’t mind sympathetic villains by any means, last minute bids for sympathy that come out of nowhere right before a character bites it are always kind of a bullshit move. To make it meaner, Amy’s card just forces her to the barrel of water anyway, only she has to stay under for an additional two minutes. Not surprisingly, Goth Girl Amy quickly drowns.

Nice Guy Lucas also opens his envelope. He has to slit his own eye open with a razor blade.

This, by the way, is the scene where Enver Gjokaj brings the ACTING. I mean, he really goes for it — begging, bursting into tears, screaming obscenities, all of it. It’s pretty impressive. I never did finish watching Dollhouse when it was on air– it’s embarrassing, actually, how close I was to finishing it — but despite my problems with that show, I absolutely adored Gjokaj, and I remain surprised that his career hasn’t taken off more because he’s both attractive and awfully good at his job.

Of course, that leaves our Nice Girl and our Nice Guy as the last two left standing for the final round. Jeffrey Combs is all but smirking his lips off when he tells them that the person who goes first in the last round has a distinct advantage over the other player, so he flips a coin. The toss goes to Nice Girl Iris. She has the choice to walk out the door with Nice Guy Lucas but no money, or she can kill Lucas and win ALL the money.

Nice Guy Lucas immediately laughs, telling her that they’ve won, but quickly grows sober as he correctly reads the expression on her face. He tells Iris that they share something in common — he knows about her younger brother, see — and he’s still in the middle of explaining all about his sisters when Previously Nice Girl Iris promptly shoots and kills him.

This is actually pretty awesome because it’s really changing up the tropes. In a typical horror movie, Nice Girl Iris wouldn’t be able to do it, or she’d fake doing it and the two Nice Attractive People would somehow kill their captors and escape. Or maybe Nice Guy Lucas would kill himself, just so that she and her brother could be happy and alive together. But this . . .  this is a far more interesting resolution. It is easily the most exciting thing about this movie, and I was all ready to bump up my grade a bit for this uneven little horror movie . . .

. . . until Iris gets home and discovers her brother has killed himself because he wants her to have a better life or some shit.

Hey, my bad. Looks like Bro might have been wearing a bald cap for thirty seconds, after all.

I cannot properly express to you my level of disgust with this ending.

One of the more interesting — and sometimes troubling — aspects about the horror genre is how it deals with morality. In fact, it might come up more in horror than it does in any other genre. The part that I actually like is the part that deals with what real people would do in terrifying situations — do you save yourself, do you go back for others, do you lose your humanity in the face of widespread inhumanity, etc. There isn’t a right or wrong way to respond in these situations for me — I like character development and consequences, so I really enjoy seeing the myriad of ways people can turn out given the various situations they’re put in.

The part that can be more problematic, however, is the ‘punishing’ aspect of horror, the part that deals with the victims who ‘deserve’ to be killed. And honestly, some of it doesn’t bother me. The typical misogynistic jock guy in a stupid teen horror film that gets axed? I actively tend to look forward to that, and the gorier his demise, the better. And anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I like vengeance stories. I mean, I really like them — or at least I’m attracted to them, if not always pleased with how they turn out.

It seems to me that there’s always a lot of talk about what our attraction to horror means, if you can only like certain aspects of horror and if liking violence for violence’s sake is wrong. Sometimes, I feel like I’m supposed to be apologetic for enjoying movies that don’t hold back on their shlocky, cartoonish gore or for watching films that positively revel in their artistic depictions of death and terror. The thing is . . . I’m not. Apologetic, that is. I fully get that it’s not everyone’s thing, but I don’t believe that my interest in these kinds of movies makes me any less of a well-adjusted person than the average rom-com moviegoer. (All bets are off if I’m wearing black lipstick, though. Sadist Carlie is out for blood on those days.)

So, I’m okay with some of the punish-y stuff. (We’ll have to save killing off sexually active women for another rant, sadly.) However, I don’t like my horror to read like a morality play, and that’s exactly how this ending comes across to me. Having our virtuous survivor girl kill the nice, honorable guy so that she can save her brother is interesting. Immediately punishing her, on the other hand, by killing off said brother in some bullshit horror version of “The Gift of the Maji” is cheap and annoying and ruins everything that was awesome about Iris killing Lucas in the first place.

Because I really can’t stress that enough — that moment was AWESOME. It’s a surprising move in a film like this, yet never comes off as inconsistent with Iris’s character and situation. I have sympathy for her, even though I think what she did was wrong. It is the kind of character ambiguity you rarely get to see in final girls. But to kill off the brother just so Iris can learn her lesson and figure out that she murdered someone for nothing . . . that’s just deeply, DEEPLY frustrating.

Horror can be about morality, but for Christ’s sake, if I wanted a sermon, I’d go to church. And really, I liked “The Gift of the Maji” when I read it in high school, too, but I think it might only work the first time you come across it.

CONCLUSIONS:

Decent setup and some surprisingly good moments — but unnecessary repetition, useless characters, and that fucking ending bring it down hard.

MVP:

Enver Gjokaj. It was a hard call, and Jeffrey Combs gets a very close second place — but I think Gjokaj ultimately has the more challenging role.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C-

MORAL:

Learn to Google before you accept strange invitations to strange places from strange men, offering strange yet wonderful things you should damn well know is too good to be true.

Obsessively watching Teen Wolf and Sheriff Johnny Cage reminded me of something last week: I have never actually written a review for Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, yes. But Mortal Kombat itself? Nope.

This is one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies ever. Keep that in mind while I occasionally and lovingly rip it to shreds.

DISCLAIMER:

SPOILERS abound, people. Just in case you’re actually worried about that.

SUMMARY:

It’s up to a handful of human fighters — but especially Liu Kang (Robin Shou) — to save the realm of Earth by winning a tournament called Mortal Kombat.

NOTES:

1. When I was a kid, all I really wanted were my best friend’s toys — which, come to think of it, is probably what most kids want. Specifically, I wanted a trampoline, one of those bouncy ball things that you sit on, and a Sega Genesis. And I especially wanted that Sega so I could play hours and hours of Mortal Kombat.

I don’t plan to spend much time talking about the differences between the games and the movie — because plot? Who cares about plot? But I feel like I should mention that there is a distinct discrepancy between the level of violence between this movie and the game. Actually, to my great surprise, the movie is PG-13, which kind of makes me laugh because there’s very little about it that does not seem perfectly suited to a ten year old. (And yes, that’s about how old I was when I saw it for the first time.) The games — which I probably started playing around the age of eight — were considerably gorier, even if their graphics are now hideously and laughably outdated. Nobody gets sliced in half with a hat or has their spine ripped out in Mortal Kombat the movie. Unfortunately.

I actually don’t mind that the violence in the film gets severely toned down — I certainly don’t need any scenes where VOMIT comes into play, thanks, Noob Saibot — but it wouldn’t hurt for our fighters to occasionally sport a bruise. Johnny Cage gets the shit kicked out of him by Scorpion in the film, and there is nary a cut or a black eye in sight, which is just silly, really — although hardly the silliest thing about this movie.

2. What is the silliest thing? That’s hard to say. It could be Shang Tsung’s ever-changing hair styles. Seriously, it just ups and shapeshifts mid-scene.

Cause really. The only thing funnier than Shang-Tsung’s little man-bob is Liu Kang’s Fluffy Angst Mane — or Fluffy Mane of Failed Meditation. I can’t decide which name I like better.

You know, my hair just doesn’t get quite that kind of volume. I’m a tiny bit jealous.

3. Oh, okay. Let’s talk about the actual movie. Specifically, let’s talk characters. Here is our Chosen One again:

Liu Kang was trained his whole life to enter the Mortal Kombat tournament, but he had an identity crisis or something and went off to America where everyone watches television and eats junk food and knows that the world can’t be saved by people kicking inter-dimensional ass. So his brother, Chan, tries to step up to the role of Hero and is promptly murdered by Shang Tsung for it. Liu Kang, in his Green Lit Room of Angst, finds out about this in the very worst way possible.

Uh, folks? This is not the nicest way to let a person know their sibling has died. This is kind of like breaking up with someone by text message, only, you know, a thousand times worse.

Anyway, Liu Kang travels back to compete in the tournament so that he can avenge his brother’s death. At this point, even if you know nothing about the video games, it’s pretty clear that Liu Kang is going to be the one to defeat Shang Tsung and save the world. Which is fine, I guess, but when Rayden’s talking to Liu, Sonya, and Johnny Cage, and he’s all like, “One of you three will decide the fate of this tournament,” it’s kind of well, Jesus, I wonder which one it’s going to be, Rayden.

4. For the most part, Liu Kang is kind of boring. His best moments by far are any time he’s making fun of Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby).

I kind of love Johnny Cage, but he is sort of a tool. (Although less in this movie than in other iterations of Mortal Kombat, which is probably why he gets killed off a lot.) After all, he’s not the guy trying to take down his brother’s killer, or even his partner’s killer — he just wants proof to say that he does his own godamned stunts, really. Regardless, I generally enjoy Linden Ashby in this — he’s got some funny lines and amusing reactions, even if those reactions are not nearly as dialed up as they ought to be. (More on that in a bit.)

The real reason to love Johnny, though, is his fight with Goro, which is about as underhanded and unheroic as possible.

To defeat this dude, Johnny waits until Goro is distracted before doing his patented ‘I Can Do the Splits and Then Punch You in the Balls’ move — which, to be fair, is pretty impressive — and then totally runs away. He gets to a location he can actually use to his advantage and then basically kicks the bad guy off a cliff (into the Clouds of Insanity). It’s kind of awesome.

It is also the only actual Flawless Victory in this movie. Screw you, Liu Kang: you are wrong.

5. Unfortunately, Johnny also has a love interest in Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras).

Sonya Blade is a super cop who’s participating in the tournament so that she can kill Kano and avenge her partner’s murder. Johnny spends most of the movie hitting on her, and she spends most of the movie being disgusted with him, until they’re suddenly at some scenic spot sharing a Moment in The Worst Scene of All Time.

Actual lines from this scene:

Johnny: “Because I can’t let what happened to Art happen to you. Not to you.”
Sonya: “Oh, don’t you dare do this to protect me, Johnny Cage!”

It’s so much worse than it sounds. It is so bad. It is soul crushing. The lines are terrible, the delivery is terrible . . . it’s all basically terrible. Really, the only way to get through it is to act the scene out as you watch it on the couch with your very best ugly cry face. Not unlike how I watch Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, or how Sandra Bullock watches old beauty pageants in Miss Congeniality.

6. The frustrating thing about Sonya is that she’s treated very much as the Girl in a boy movie. What this means:

A. In group battles, Sonya fights one bad guy while Johnny and Liu fight three to four each.

B. A punch to Sonya’s face will hurt her exponentially more than it will hurt any of the other boy fighters.

C. She will scream. Repeatedly, and even occasionally in slow motion.

D. Both Shang-Tsung and Rayden will get up close and personal and whisper in her ear like creepy pervs, despite the fact that Rayden is a good guy who should probably not being doing that.

E. She’s kidnapped like a damsel in distress (despite the fact that she’s totally a super cop) and forced into this short dress because, you know. GIRL.

Now the thing about this particular bit: it’s kind of an homage to the game, where Sonya is tied up in one of the backgrounds. (Although no one has creepily changed her into some ugly mini dress or pulled out a crimper. Seriously, did Shang Tsung actually do Sonya’s hair before chaining her up? There’s a hair salon AU fanfiction somewhere in this movie; I just know it. Maybe a crossover with Blow Dry. Anyone else ever see that movie?)

And I’d totally be okay with the homage if there weren’t about eighty other examples in this movie about how Sonya is the weakest of the fighters and almost always needs to be saved by the boys. And before we get into the inevitable ‘women aren’t as strong as men argument’ — can we be clear about something? This movie is based on a game where women and men fighting one another as equals. That’s all there is to it. I really don’t want to hear complaints about realism when we have characters who can freeze people or do gravity defying bicycle kicks. Besides, action heroes — whether they’re male or female — are so very rarely realistic in any sense of the word, and yet it often seems like the only time we really complain about this is when the person kicking all kinds of ass is a woman. It get old to listen to.

7. Sonya is not, actually, the only girl in Mortal Kombat. There is also Kitana.

Unfortunately, Kitana (Talisa Soto) has zero personality and almost no character arc of any kind. She’s basically just around to deliver exposition and be Liu Kang’s love interest. She doesn’t even get to kiss anyone until they explode to death! It is hugely disappointing.

8. Luckily, Lord Rayden (Christopher Lambert) is around to make everything better.

Rayden is at his best when he’s making fun of his champions. All gods should be snarky — it makes them more interesting. Possibly my favorite part in this entire movie is when he tells our heroes, “The fate of billions will depend upon you,” then openly laughs at them. And then he’s all like, “Sorry.” It is kind of awesome.

9. Also making everything better? Shang-Tsung.

Shang Tsung (Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa) is, admittedly, a total creeper, but he’s also kind of hilarious. It’s not just his hair, either — he’s got this perfect sneer down, like, pat. Hiroyuki-Tagawa is super campy here, and I enjoy the hell out of him.

Here’s what we don’t get about Shang-Tsung, though: why, exactly, is he the one recruiting our heroes for this competition? Like, he basically has to trick everyone on board, but . . . shouldn’t that really be Rayden’s job? What happens if Shang-Tsung doesn’t get our heroes to compete? Does Earth forfeit — because, I think, Shang-Tsung would rather enjoy that. Or does Earth somehow automatically win? Because that seems pretty dumb. And if Shang-Tsung has to trick our heroes into the competition, shouldn’t Rayden have to somehow recruit our villains? I feel like that should be a balance thing.

Also — does Shang Tsung kill Chan in order to get Liu Kang to compete? Because Chan is clearly the weaker fighter, so that seems like a less than winning strategy, really. Or did Chan somehow challenge Shang Tsung before the tournament. Cause . . . that just seems like it should be against the rules. I mean, it was against the rules when Scorpion and Sub-Zero threatened our heroes, right? (Leading to one of my very favorite lines, mostly because of the way it’s hissed: “Your sideshow freaks attacked my fighters.”) Is there a double-standard against evil?

And even if it isn’t against the rules for Chan to challenge Shang Tsung . . . it seems like a dumb play. Why would you even do that? I’m so confused.

10. It should be said – Mortal Kombat totally has the best workout music. Come on. Who listens to this and doesn’t immediately want to start sparring? Crazy people, that’s who. A favorite diversion of mine: copying one of the Cast Your Might poses and then spontaneously attacking my sister.

To probably no one’s surprise at all, I usually go with Shang Tsung’s ‘mighty fist of evil’ pose.

11. In our remake — because of course Mekaela and I immediately started talking about how we’d do a remake — Shang Tsung would do a lot more shapeshifting. Because, seriously, shapeshifting is fun, and it’s a great way to introduce more cameos from the games. (Especially now that there are so many more characters.)

Another way to introduce good cameos? How about Shang Tsung’s 10,000 soul slaves?

Kitana solemnly intones that Liu Kang has to fight the souls of thousands of dead warriors . . . but what she really means is that he has to fight about ten guys who attack him one by one. It is hilariously lame. C’mon, Paul W.S. Anderson. Pull your shit together — this is totally Crazy 88 action time. This could have been so awesome.

12. Of course, the whole final battle is kind of bullshit, but let’s come back to that in a little bit. Actually, let’s briefly go over everyone’s very first battles in the movie.

Liu Kang gets to fight this human dude that I totally remember from WMAC Masters, and whose braids just seem like they’re getting in the way. Sonya Blade fights her nemesis, Kano, whose neck she breaks like a twig — and hilariously, it’s totally NOT self-defense, and there’s never any discussion on whether he’s worth it or the usual stuff you get when a hero flat-out murders somebody.

Johnny Cage, meanwhile, has to fight a dude with a secret skull face, fire breath, and a bite-y thing that comes out of his hand for his first fight. Oh, and he gets sucked into Pirate Hell.

It seems a little unfair. Also, I have honestly no idea how Johnny Cage gets out of Pirate Hell once he miraculously defeats Scorpion. I do kind of love the silly nod to the Friendship, though, even if it doesn’t make any logical sense.

13. While I’m thinking of Johnny, though — and really, of everyone in this tournament — let’s talk about having proper reactions to the absolutely horrifying shit that is happening around you. For instance, when you see some dude completely freeze some other dude, and the frozen dude flies threw the air and smashes into a bazillion pieces? This shouldn’t be your reaction:

Johnny Cage: “Little tournament, he said. Good for the career, he said. Yeah, right.”

I mean, it’s a funny line. I actually like how it’s delivered, but good Christ. A dude was just FROZEN AND DECAPITATED. The only proper reaction to something like that is screaming, thank you.

14. Also, in a remake, maybe Art shouldn’t be an original character? I mean, Art’s okay, and I’m sure they cast him because the actor is actually a martial arts expert in real life, which I suppose is cool for martial arts nerds. But his character is also so clearly and absolutely expendable that when he dies — I mean, I always do feel a little sorry for Art, but it’d be a lot more impressive if they killed an actual character from the games, or at the very least someone our heroes had a real relationship with — that way, when Johnny goes into vengeance mode or Sonya busts out her slow-motion horror movie scream, you know, it might seem real.

(My only problem is figuring out who to bring in and kill off. I would’t mind Jax actually being in the tournament, but I don’t really want him to die. Hm. Kung Lao, maybe? Johnny Cage seems like the obvious choice, but I like Johnny Cage, dammit.)

15. But let’s get back to that bullshit and hilarious final battle.

It starts off pretty good. We go up the awesomely bad CGI tower — mid 90′s CGI is the BEST — and Shang Tsung challenges Johnny Cage to fight. But Liu Kang’s all like, “No! You will fight me!” And Johnny Cage could be like, “Hey, dude, did you see how easily I took down Goro? I can totally take this guy,” but instead he’s like, “Nah, I’ll let you handle this one.” Not unlike how he stands around off screen and does absolutely nothing as Liu Kang fights Reptile for like seven minutes. (I like to think that Johnny Cage was just standing outside, whistling aimlessly to himself, while thinking, You know, I threw a four-armed monstrosity over a cliff earlier this afternoon. I think I’m good for the day.)

Anyway, Shang Tsung and Liu Kang square off in this kind of awesome fight scene that might have been my favorite in the movie if it was longer than forty-five seconds. When Liu Kang makes Shang Tsung bleed his own blood, Shang Tsung summons his ten useless warriors. This is the first of Liu’s three tests: Face Your Enemy, which he easily defeats.

Face Yourself is even worse. It lasts fourteen seconds — oh, I totally counted — and mostly consists of Liu Kang running up to meet Shang Tsung on the second story.

And then we get Face Your Worst Fear, which is apparently Liu facing the ghost of his brother, Chan.

I’m not saying that it wouldn’t hurt to see somebody use my dead sibling’s face to try and taunt me into killing myself, but I am saying that sort of thing is a tiny bit more effective when you don’t actually watch the shapeshifter turn into the dead brother with your own eyes. Oh, I know. Shang Tsung had his back turned. Please. Liu Kang clearly saw the guy transform, so when Shang Tsung/Chan says, “Rayden sent me to help you,” everybody watching should be like, WHAT? Are you kidding me right now? Who would even buy that? Shang Tsung, you’re an asshole. And when Liu Kang has to tell himself, “You’re not really Chan,” I’m like, gee, Liu, what was your first clue?

Then Shang Tsung/Chan is like, “Now I’m here to help you brother.” And immediately we’re given a shot of spikes coming out of the ground on the level below them — which is basically the the best juxtaposition shot I’ve ever seen. It’s like when that one terrorist in Die Hard’s all, “I promise I won’t hurt you,” as he loads a clip into his gun. Makes me laugh every time I watch it.

But Liu Kang says — with the appropriate amount of conviction — that he is not responsible for Chan’s death, that it’s totally Shang Tsung’s fault. So Shang Tsung stops his silly attempt to deceive him, changes back, and just starts kicking the crap out of Liu Kang. But THEN he makes the mistake of taunting Liu for being the Chosen One. Liu knows he IS the Chosen One, though, which he repeats with even more conviction, and this allows him to grab Shang Tsung’s arm all mightily, which is apparently all it takes for Shang Tsung’s soul slaves to start rebelling against him and fly away? I don’t even know.

Shang Tsung refuses to surrender and — after screaming that the souls are his FOREVER like a very spoiled child who refuses to share his toys — runs at Liu Kang in the stupidest manner possible, like I’m not sure what he thought he might accomplish by charging a dude with his arms spread wide at the sides, but whatevs. Liu Kang kicks the crap out of him and finally knocks him over the ledge with a fireball, where Shang Tsung lands on a spike and dies. And Liu Kang has the nerve to call this a flawless victory because he’s also an asshole. I mean, seriously, Liu Kang. Fatality would have been fine, but flawless victory? In the words of Lord Rayden: “I don’t think so.”

Then it’s all happy times back on Earth . . . until the Emperor, who is clearly a cheating cheater who cheats, shows up anyway, kind of negating the whole point of the movie. But our heroes get into fighter pose and prepare us for a sequel, or try.

Cause, really. Nothing could properly prepare us for the sadness that is Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

QUOTES:

Johnny Cage: “We got a guy with things coming out of his hands; we got another guy who freezes stuff, and then there’s a man who, as far as I can tell, appears to be made out of pure electricity. I mean, how did he disappear like that? What is going on here? Who is this guy?”
Sonya Blade: “Let’s just think this through. There is a rational explanation for this.”
Liu Kang: “He’s Rayden. God of Lightning and Protector of the Realm of Earth.”
Johnny Cage: “Oh, great. There’s your rational explanation.”

Sonya Blade: “Where the hell are we?”
Johnny Cage: “Do I look like your travel agent?”

Johnny Cage: “You know, you’ve got to admire her. When she puts her mind to something . . .”
Liu Kang: “It’s not her mind you’re admiring.”
Johnny Cage: “. . . it’s true.”

Johnny Cage: “This is not good. But I’m fine. I can handle this.”

Lord Rayden: “What have you done?”
Johnny Cage: “I made a choice. This is our tournament, remember? Mortal Kombat. We fight it.”

Sonya: “My friends will come for me.”
Shang Tsung: “Hoping against hope? Such an endearing human trait, I’m touched. Really.”

Johnny: “Sonya, you go ahead. Find out what that was. Liu and I will wait right here.”

Liu Kang: “Wait. What about me?”
Rayden: “Oh, you.”

Johnny: “Ha, ha ha ha, no more steps.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Silliness. But super nostalgic silliness.

MVP:

Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORAL:

The best way to a flawless victory? A big old punch to the balls.

Guardians of the Galaxy came out last Friday. Obviously, that was too long to wait, so I saw it at 7:00 on Thursday instead.

I had a few problems with the movie, mostly minor, but overall I had a pretty great time watching this.

SUMMARY:

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a scavenger and thief, must team up with a bunch of other misfits, assassins, and talking raccoons in order to stop Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) from killing a whole bunch of people with one of those nifty Infinity stones that are always popping up in Marvel movies.

NOTES:

1. Let’s begin with one of the movie’s strengths: the comedy. This movie is funny as hell. The script is great, a perfect blend of offbeat, snarky, goofball humor. There was one joke I kind of couldn’t believe got past the censors. (So to speak.) You just don’t see a lot of jizz jokes in PG-13 action films. Then again, you don’t see a lot of PG-13 actions films featuring gun-wielding raccoons, so. Anything’s possible, I guess.

Every review I’ve read or discussion I’ve seen has tried to come up with what other science-fiction movie Guardians of the Galaxy is analogous to. Like, people compare it to Star Wars, which I can kind of see — if you just sort of take out the Jedis and focus on scrappy Han and Chewbacca saving the universe. (For my money, Rocket and Groot are basically the new Han and Chewy, and I adore them.) Of course, GotG is a little weirder than Star Wars, which is one of the reasons it’s also getting compared to Farscape. (That, and the whole show is about a group of escaped prisoners who reluctantly have to band together to save the universe and, in the process, eventually become a family. I will go into my whole Gamora/Aeryn Sun analysis a little later.)

I don’t know if there’s one show or movie that GotG is exactly like. It’s ultimately pretty light fair, optimistic and brightly colored, but it’s also snarky and a bit demented and has a few surprisingly decent emotional moments. (Although there is one that doesn’t quite work for me, which I’ll get to in just a minute.) Tonally, Guardians feels like something new, something fresh, and that’s always exciting to see.

2. Interestingly, though, one of my minor problems with the movie happened right out of the gate. (If you’re worried about being spoiled for the first five minutes of prologue setup, just skip this whole note.)

We begin our tale with Young Peter Quill and his mother, who is dying of cancer. I was initially surprised we were going with the Finding Nemo approach of beginning our generally upbeat movie with tragic human death, but not particularly put off by it . . . except that Meredith Quill immediately threw me out of the story. She did this in two ways:

A. Her Southern accent? Yeah. This is what happens when an English actor does a Southern accent. And I’m not even good at judging Southern accents because I’m Californian, and I can’t distinguish even a little between the, like, 47 variants of Southern. Still. This is wrong.

B. More importantly (to me, anyway), her cancer makeup seemed awful. Now, I haven’t heard anyone else mention this, so maybe I was just having a weird brain thing that day and her makeup was fine, but . . . I didn’t buy that she was sick, like, not for a second. Her pallor seemed really artificial. She kind of looked like she was wearing a bald cap. And this isn’t something I was expecting to be critical of, either; I have never before, so far as I can remember, watched a movie and been like, You don’t look like you’re really dying. I know; I see dying people all the time, and you are FAKING IT, buddy. But I had a hard time concentrating on the emotion of the scene when I was so hyper aware that she was acting.

3. Which led to another weird nitpick that no one else had, probably because it’s a little silly — I wasn’t crazy about the look of the background aliens.

I mean, I liked that they were colorful — lots of pinks and blues and greens — and I generally liked the look of the main characters well enough. Nebula, for instance, looks interesting. Her skin has texture. She has body parts that she can disconnect. It’s not like someone just slathered her in blue paint and said, “Let’s go.” You know, thought went into her design.

But with a lot of the extras, that’s kind of how I felt: just paint them in primary colors and maybe alter an eyebrow ridge or something. Which is what I expect from low budget SF television shows, but dude, this is MARVEL. Money? Not really an issue these days. Of course, I don’t think this would have even occurred to me if I hadn’t already been hung up on the mom’s makeup, but I just felt like . . . we’ve got this whole galaxy here, right, and all kinds of different aliens running around, and you know the story is going to be bizarre and hilarious because James Gunn is the one directing it, and I just . . . kind of wish more of the aliens’ makeup reflected that morbid kookiness that I’ve come to expect from him.

4. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is all around excellent.

I’ve had “Cherry Bomb” stuck in my head all week and, in fact, am listening to it right now. (And by listening to it, I might mean enthusiastically lip-synching to it, as I am wont to do.)

5. Let’s discuss our main characters, shall we?

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt)

Chris Pratt is perfect here. He owns the screen from the first second you see him, dancing through the opening credits, using alien lizards as impromptu microphones. (This is definitely going on my Favorite Opening Credits of All Time List.) As I still haven’t gotten around to watching Parks & Rec yet, I’m mostly familiar with Pratt from Everwood – which, yeah, this is different. I’m definitely interested in seeing more of his stuff.

My favorite thing about reading all the various interviews with Pratt is that he keeps getting all the questions that actresses usually get. I have yet to see an interview for GotG that doesn’t ask about his diet and workout routine to lose weight. He and Scarlett Johansson should really compare notes.

Gamora (Zoe Saldana)

I want to say I love Gamora as much as I love Peter Quill, but . . . that would be a lie.

Gamora’s okay. I think the reason I like her at all has everything to do with Zoe Saldana, whose performance I invariably enjoy in everything. She has a few really great and surprisingly comedic moments in this movie. She also has pretty decent chemistry with Chris Pratt. But as a character, I find Gamora a little lackluster. Backstory wise, she’s basically Princess Kitana, which is fine, but she also reminds me of a not particularly well-developed version of Aeryn Sun, a badass whose been involved in some ugly shit and ultimately becomes a hero, making amends on her journey to self-actualization. (Actually, that’s basically Xena too.)

As an arc, there’s nothing wrong with that . . . my problem has more to do with depth of character. Cause Claudia Black and Lucy Lawless both had multiple seasons to develop that journey, to move past simply being a collection of Badass Chick tropes. Zoe Saldana, on the other hand, not so much, and Gamora — you know, she’s the only female on the misfit crew, and of course she’s the one who feels compassion, who wants to help people, and Peter Quill wants to protect her pretty much from the moment he sees her, and it’s all just . . . she definitely feels more like a collection of tropes than an actual character to me.

Again, if we had more time with her, I might feel differently, but the time we spend with Gamora is mostly time we spend with Gamora & Peter, and so the focus is on UST instead of awesome female character development.

And I like the UST because these two actors really do have good chemistry, but I kind of feel like I’d like Gamora better if she wasn’t anyone’s love interest. Because at the end of the day, even though she has a few good moments, and even though I love Zoe Saldana, Gamora feels more like the Hero’s Love Interest than an actual member of the team to me.

At least she doesn’t constantly need to be rescued, though. I do appreciate that.

Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper)

I definitely had my concerns about Rocket before seeing this movie because, as a general rule, I’m not a huge fan of talking animal stories. There are exceptions to that, of course,  but there aren’t many. And a talking raccoon on the other side of the universe who likes to blow shit up . . . well, I wasn’t entirely convinced.

But I loved Rocket in this movie. Bradley Cooper did a great job, I thought — he didn’t even really sound like Cooper to me. Rocket is hilarious and, at a couple of points, surprisingly moving. Like, I did not go into this movie expecting to feel particularly sorry for a space raccoon, and yet? There I was, going awww like a fucking sap.

Come on, Carlie. Get your shit together.

Groot (Vin Diesel)

I really like Groot. I don’t know if I have a lot of deep analysis on why Groot worked for me. He just did. What I’d like to say about Groot has to go in the Spoiler Section, so for now I’ll just say that he and Rocket have a pretty awesome chance of getting Best Dynamic Duo in my eventual 2014 movie superlatives.

Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista)

I like Drax well enough, although I think Bautista sells the comedy better than he sells the raw emotion. Like, Drax has the past that’s often reserved for male protagonists (murdered wife and child), but I don’t know if I ever really feel the anger and grief from him. It’s not horrible. I didn’t laugh at his pain or anything; I’m just saying, I’m more moved by the talking raccoon. On the other hand, Drax is actually pretty funny, and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting him to be. So that was cool.

6. Unfortunately, Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) is yet another example of a boring Marvel villain.

He’s not terrible or anything, and I think Lee Pace probably does all he can with the role, but . . . Ronan’s another dude who wants to destroy everything and kill everyone because he’s EVIL. He has almost zero personality . . . which is, admittedly, more personality than Malekith had in Thor: The Dark World, but still. I want MORE from Marvel now. I want them to show me one villain, other than Loki, who I’d give above a B grade to. Because only a few have managed B grades from me; everyone else, B- or under. Mekaela and I’ve been working on a Marvel Movie Villain ranking list, and folks, it’s not good. (I’d post this list, but I’m still trying to decide if I should split it into two — Big Bads and Everyone Else — or keep all the villains together. Also, I feel like I should rewatch a few of the movies I haven’t seen in a while for a fair assessment, which is unfortunate, because I don’t particularly want to rewatch The Incredible Hulk again, among others.)

7. Finally, I definitely like Nebula a lot more than Ronan, but I’ll admit, she doesn’t have a lot to do in this movie.

Considering I also like Karen Gillan quite a bit, there’s probably some bias there. (Although it’s not like I don’t like Lee Pace. Pushing Daisies, anyone?) Mostly, I just wish I had a friend who happened to be a professional makeup artist because I would sit in a makeup chair in a long time if it meant I could do a convincing Nebula cosplay.

Man, that would be fun.

SPOILERS

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SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Here’s an interesting thing: our hero has both mommy and daddy issues. Usually, it tends to be one or the other, mostly the latter for heroes and the former for villains, but Peter has a dead mom who he still misses and an absentee alien father whose identity we never learn. He never seems to be too angsty about the whole dad thing during Guardians (because that’s for the sequel), but I like the revelation that Star Lord was something his mom used to call him. Also, that the present he finally opens at the end of the film ends up being a second mix tape. Yup, I totally called that. (Shhh. I don’t care if it was obvious. I called it because I’m a GENIUS.)

Anyway, Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his crew of scavenger cannibal types are the ones who initially abducted Peter from Earth, apparently on a mission to deliver him to his father, which they never actually do.

Honestly, I was really wondering if Yondu was Peter’s dad for a while there — because that would have been kind of hilarious, especially with Yondu calling Peter son and describing himself as an angel. (I’m pretty sure the mom deliriously calls the father an angel or having the face of an angel or something like that.) Oh, also, Yondu wouldn’t let his men eat Peter, which is absolutely the strongest sign of paternal love that I can think of. (I also really like the scene where Peter’s like, “Stop holding that over my head! That doesn’t make you a good guy, NOT eating a child.” Or whatever he actually says — I was going to put this in my Quotes section, but I can’t seem to find it online, and I don’t remember the exact dialogue anymore, dammit.)

Still, it’s probably for the best that someone other than Yondu is Peter’s father. Here’s to hoping it’s not secretly Thanos. (Otherwise, dude’s gonna have some SERIOUS daddy issues after all.)

Okay, so what else do I need to talk about? I was originally thinking about recapping the whole movie, but this review has already taken me a lot longer than I originally intended — damn you, paying job, for getting in the way of my blogging — so maybe I’ll just make a few more random notes before wrapping up:

1. What the hell is Glenn Close doing in this movie?

She’s not bad in it or anything, just . . . she has nothing to do. Her character could have been played by anybody. This woman’s been nominated for six Oscars — I do not understand what she’s doing here unless she really likes Marvel action movies or she has grandchildren who really like Marvel action movies. Even then, you’d think she could hold out for a slightly better part. Unless she’s more important in the sequel or something, but . . . yeah. I’m at a loss here.

2. I still am not a huge fan of Ronan, but I was really happy when he abruptly broke The Other’s neck. I assumed The Other was going to play a much bigger role in the next phase of Marvel movies, and I wasn’t really excited about it, considering that he looked and sounded a lot like an Emperor Palpatine rip-off. When he died, I burst into laughter. Best thing Ronan did that whole movie.

3. Oh, okay. I guess his face was pretty hilarious at the end when Peter Quill distracted him with a dance-off. That whole bit was kind of awesome. There should totally be more dance-offs in superhero movies.

I still want more exciting villains, though. Come on, Ultron. It’s all on you, buddy.

4. At one point, Rocket gets drunk.

Maybe we shouldn’t be giving alcohol to this guy.

Yup. The talking space raccoon gets drunk, so you’re thinking hilarity and hijinks, right? Well, you’re wrong. This is one of those totally sneaky emotional moments where Rocket, all angry and hurt, starts talking about being an experiment and everyone treating him like vermin, and I started feeling bad for him. I have Feels for the TALKING SPACE RACCOON. What the hell is my life right now?

5. I also was all sad when Groot supposedly died, like, way more sad than I would have expected to be about a walking tree. Maybe the film would have been slightly better if he’d actually stayed dead instead of being reborn as Mini Groot — you know, like, actual consequences and everything — but I’m actually totally okay with him coming back. Cause I like Groot. He has this one moment where he’s kicking the shit out of these bad guys, and I’m thinking, Look, this is funny, sure, but I KNOW you’re trying to one-up the Hulk smashing the shit out of Loki right now, and sorry, buddy, but that’s just not going to happen. And then Groot turns around with the biggest, most innocent grin on his face, and I’m like . . . okay, that was pretty good.

Plus, if Groot stayed dead, we wouldn’t get Covertly Dancing Tiny Groot, which is clearly something we all needed in our lives. Basically, everyone I’ve ever met who’s seen this film has decided that they need a Dancing Tiny Groot Plant in their homes, and I am totally on board with that. ThinkGeek, get on this.

6. I’m also glad that Nebula lived, partly because I felt a little sorry for her — I generally feel sorry for the less-loved children in stories — but mostly because I’m hoping she has a bigger role for the sequel. Also, the fact that she outlives Ronan (by totally abandoning him, which, right on, Nebula) makes her a Super Second Banana. Excellent.

7. Finally, about the Post Credits stuff:

A. I loved this: “No raccoons or tree creatures were harmed during the making of this film.” This is excellent.

B. I am significantly less enthused about any chance of a Howard the Duck movie. Holy shit. I mean, I totally laughed, but wow. There was a guy in the theater who was like, “Oh, HELL no,” and I was kind of like, “I’m right there with you, buddy.”

I was won over by the talking raccoon, but guys, I think Howard the Duck is pushing it a little too far, sorry.

QUOTES:

Gamora: “I will not succumb to your pelvic sorcery!”

Gamora: “You don’t get to ask questions after the nonsense you pulled on Knowhere.”
Drax: “I just saved Quill!”
Peter: “We’ve already established that you destroying the ship I’m on is not saving me.”
Drax: “When did we establish that?”
Peter: “Like three seconds ago!”

(Peter has — in a nice nod to The Avengers — twelve percent of a plan to basically save the universe)
Rocket: “Twelve percent?”
(Rocket bursts into laughter)
Peter: “That’s a fake laugh.”
Rocket: “It’s real.”
Peter: “Totally fake.”
Rocket: “That is the most real, authentic, hysterical laugh of my entire life because that is not a plan!”
Gamora: “It’s barely even a concept.”
Peter: “You’re taking their side?”
Groot: “I am Groot.”
Rocket: “So what, it’s better than eleven percent? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

Rhomann Dey: “He’s been traveling recently as Rocket’s personal houseplant slash muscle.”

Rocket: “Metaphors go over his head.”
Drax: “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”

Gamora: “I’m a warrior and an assassin. I do not dance.”
Peter: “Really? Well, on my planet, there’s a legend about people like you. It’s called . . . Footloose. And in it, a great hero . . . named Kevin Bacon . . . teaches an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that dancing, well. It’s the greatest thing there is.”
Gamora: “Who put the sticks up their butts?”
Peter: “What? No, that’s just a — “
Gamora: “That is cruel.”
Peter: ” — a phrase.”

Rocket: “Why would you want to save the galaxy?”
Peter: “Because I’m one of the idiots who lives there!”

Gamora: “We’re just like Kevin Bacon!”

Rocket: “That’s for if you wanna blow up moons.”
Gamora: “No one’s blowing up moons.”
Rocket: “You just wanna suck the joy out of everything.”

Drax (to Groot): “Where did you learn how to do that?”
Peter: “I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘I am Groot’.”

Gamora: “Your ship is filthy.”
Peter: “Filthy? She has no idea. If we had a black light, it would look like a Jackson Pollock painting.”

Korath: “Star Lord!”
Peter: “Finally.”

Groot: “We are Groot.”

CONCLUSIONS:

I completely dig the offbeat, mischievous sort of misfit humor, and I’m absolutely excited to see more GotG sequels. This movie made a lot of seemingly unworkable things work, and that is no small accomplishment. But I’m definitely hoping for Gamora and Nebula to have better material to work with next time around, Gamora especially, and I’d really like to see a more interesting villain, especially in a weird little universe like this one where a quirky villain could really shine.

MVP:

Bradley Cooper

TENTATIVE GRADE:

A-

MORAL:

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Or, to put it another way, averting genocide is slightly more important than a big score.

I never had much interest in watching Cloud Atlas. I didn’t read the book, and while the trailer looked somewhat intriguing, everything I heard about the story itself kind of made the movie sound like a convoluted nightmare. And if it had been a convoluted nightmare starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tatiana Maslany, I’m sure I wouldn’t have hesitated, but Tom Hanks and Halle Berry aren’t particularly big draws for me, and what little interest I did have quickly dwindled after the film left theaters.

But recently my sister struggled through Cloud Atlas (the book) and wanted to watch the movie to compare. And I had just finished struggling through Rebecca (the book) and wanted to watch that movie to compare.

A compromise was arranged and a review was born. (A review for Rebecca may come next week.)

SUMMARY:

Christ. Um. Six individual stories that take place over the course of several centuries reveal how the choices we make in our time affect those in the future, and how all human stories, no matter when or where they take place, are concerned with the same basic values — love and liberty. Or something like that?

NOTES:

1. First, I feel like it should be said that this is a wildly ambitious project. I don’t feel like, for me, it was an entirely successful one (or even a mostly successful one), although there are aspects to the film that I enjoyed or, at the very least, could appreciate. Even without reading the book myself, I can’t imagine the work that went into translating this kind of multi-generational/multi-ethnic/multi-everything story into the big screen. So, that’s worth noting.

2. It’s also worth noting, though, that this movie (at 172 minutes) is entirely too long for me. At one point, Mekaela paused Cloud Atlas for a stretch/food/bathroom break, and I realized we still had 80 minutes to go instead of the 30 or 40 that I had initially assumed. I quickly became very depressed.

It doesn’t help that I find the 2012 story featuring Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) almost entirely worthless.

What little I liked about this segment can’t be discussed without Spoilers, so I’ll briefly sum up what I didn’t like: tonally, it feels completely inconsistent with the rest of the film. Where the other sections of the movie are dramatic and impassioned and suspenseful (or, at least, they attempt to be), this story mostly feels cartoonish. Which I suppose is intentional — Timothy Cavendish is clearly meant to be the comic relief — but the comedy itself feels forced and, really, just not all that funny. As a whole, I found the 2012 plot both implausible and boring. I didn’t care if Cavendish made it out of the entirely unlikely scenario he found himself in, and I couldn’t stand how they wrapped his whole segment up.

While liberty is, rather literally, an integral part of this story, the element of love is . . . well. Somewhat less significant. And by somewhat less significant, I mean to say that Cavendish’s love interest is shoehorned into the story with the kind of thought and subtlety you expect from product placement . . . and not just any product placement. Product placement in Wayne’s World.

3. Actually, for a movie that seems particularly concerned with Love, capital L, I didn’t find this to be a particularly romantic film. The only love story that truly works for me is the 1936 one about the bisexual composer and the sweet boyfriend he left behind.

All the others fail on some level or another. Some aren’t terrible — the 2144 New Seoul romance is adequate, I suppose, if not particularly inspired — but others (like the last-minute romance on the Big Isle) just does nothing for me at all. I know I like to pretend I have a cold, dead heart, but I can be moved by a decent love story, if you bother to take the time to actually write decent love stories, which, no. These just aren’t.

4. While I didn’t read the novel myself, I did pick up a little bit about it, mostly from whenever my sister would start muttering under her breath, “Well, that’s not what happened, but okay.” I do think Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings made a smart call by changing up the narrative structure — telling this story chronologically might have played in the novel, but I think it would’ve been a big mistake for the film adaptation. I’m also glad that the New Seoul storyline turned out differently, as I’m pretty sure I would’ve had a complete temper tantrum if they’d gone with the original ending.

5. However, I do feel that having the core cast play multiple characters from various ethnicities and genders was ultimately a really bad idea.

The best thing I can say about this is that someone from every ethnicity plays someone from every other ethnicity, and both women and men play each other. So, it’s somewhat inclusive, at least, and not the usual blackface or yellowface bullshit that’s sadly typical of Hollywood . . . although I think it’s also fair to point out that the main cast is still vastly white. Of the thirteen main actors listed here, eight are Caucasian, three are black, and only two are Asian (one Korean, one Chinese).

Also, that’s actually not true, what I just said about every ethnicity playing every other ethnicity — because I forgot about the total lack of Latino actors. Luisa Rey’s ethnicity is not actually brought up in the film, but her name is a Spanish one — which, admittedly, isn’t proof positive that her character is supposed to be of Hispanic descent, but it’s certainly not a terrible indication, either. Also, Doona Bae has a small but somewhat significant role as a Mexican woman in the same storyline . . . and yet no one in the main cast is Latina? Really, guys?

Ultimately, I don’t find the racebending — if that’s even the appropriate term, in this scenario — quite as offensive as many others do, although I can easily see why they would. But even if we could all agree that it’s in good taste (which, ha), I still take issue with how it’s presented here because unfortunately — and apologies to the late Roger Ebert, who I vehemently disagree with on this particular point — the makeup fails spectacularly on multiple occasions. Sometimes, it’s not so bad, and then sometimes — oh my God, it’s BAD.

Hugo Weaving (pictured above) probably gets the worst of it. None of the white actors are particularly (or at all) convincing as Korean characters, and yet Weaving’s makeup looks so much more horrifically offensive. I was also mildly appalled by his Caucasian woman. The fact that Weaving so spectacularly fails to look like anything but a man in weird nurse drag almost feels like a play for laughs, like ha ha, men who dress up as or identify as women are so funny! (I don’t actually think that’s intentional, considering one of the directors of this movie is a transgendered woman — although I would point out that she didn’t direct this particular segment. It’s possible that the awkwardness here is simply a side effect of the general comedic tone of the 2012 story, but regardless of intention, I was still kind of bothered by it.)

And while it took me a minute or two to actually recognize Hugh Grant in Old Man Makeup, I still knew it was some young guy in Old Man Makeup, and I mean, from the very second I saw him. It was incredibly obvious. At worst, the makeup is offensive. At best, it is HUGELY distracting throughout the film, consistently taking me out of the story . . . and for what? I can’t really discuss this much more here, but I’ll just say for now that the whole racebending aspect to the film felt very gimmicky to me, and I’m not at all convinced that it was necessary.

6. I wish the far-future story had a little bit more world-building involved. Or maybe I just wish that because I had such a hard time actually understanding any of the exposition.

In the far future, Tom Hanks and Halle Berry speak a kind of pidgin English, and as someone who’s vaguely interested in linguistics and cultural anthropology, I find that interesting. As an audience member who’s already likely half-deafened herself by listening to too-loud music on her headphones, though, I kept begging them to slow down so I could catch the fucking words they were saying. Ultimately, I got enough of the gist to understand the basic story, and for some reason, I found Halle Berry a little easier to follow than Tom Hanks, but good God, I was struggling for every word.

7. Finally, before I talk about them specifically, I just figured I’d mention my favorite segments of the movie were probably the 1936 story, the 1973 story, and the 2144 story. As I said earlier, the romance worked best for me in the 1936 story (which is actually funny, and I’ll tell you why in just a few moments), while the 1973 and 2144 stories were anchored by strong and interesting female characters.

Well, okay. Somni-451 (Doona Bae) does get rescued a lot in her section, but I still found her interesting for some reason. And while I’ve never been Halle Berry’s biggest fan, I very much enjoyed her as Luisa Rey. I totally could’ve watched her in that role for the whole movie.

Sadly, Cloud Atlas is a wee bit larger than that. Much to my sorrow.

SPOILERS

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SPOILERS

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I’m wondering if it might be easier to approach this movie story by story. I absolutely refuse to discuss everything that happens in every segment, but if I tackle them individually first, it might make it easier to analyze the film as a whole. We’ll try it out — and if it doesn’t work, you probably won’t know, because I’ll just have deleted this whole section. Also, if my reviews ever sound like they’re talking to themselves, well, most of the time, they are.

So. 1849:

I actually have very little to say about this one. White lawyer is saved by his new black friend from an evil white doctor and, in the process, learns that slavery is bad. That’s kind of the whole story. The only thing I wanted to bring up is to compare the love story here with the love story from 1936. Both are epistolary romances — our lawyer is writing in his journal as he travels home to his wife, while the composer is writing letters to his boyfriend, Sixsmith — but the wife is not even a little important here. I actually entirely forgot about her until we see Lawyer Adam rushing into her arms, like, it’s some big, dramatic, ‘you’ve-been-waiting-for-this-the-whole-movie’ moment and I’m like, Oh, right. So, she exists.

You could argue, I suppose, that the love story here isn’t about Adam and his wife, that it’s more of a fraternal love story between Adam and his new friend, Autua — which I would totally be into, since I feel like there isn’t enough emphasis on non-romantic love in Hollywood. But that’s absolutely not the impression I get from Cloud Atlas, where the focus is ALWAYS on romantic love. This is especially unfortunate, as the shitty romances will continue to be a problem for me throughout the film.

1936:

Here’s the funny thing about this relationship: you almost never see Frobisher and Sixsmith together in the entire movie, and yet you’re rooting for them to make it, even though Frobisher is, in my opinion, kind of a conceited pain in the ass. I still like him, which I mostly attribute to Ben Whishaw’s charm, but he is the kind of Artiste that would drive me entirely nuts if I actually had to spend any quality time with him.

This is why I think their romance works, when almost all of the others fail:

A. Sixsmith is the only character, I believe, who appears in two different stories. He will also pop up in the 1973 story as Old Sixsmith, and that continuity of character, I think, makes me more invested in him. (Sadly. Things basically suck forever for Sixsmith.)

B. Unlike Lawyer Adam’s wife (who does not have her own journal to write in), we actually see Sixsmith’s (admittedly silent) reactions to the letters, as well as his slightly bizarre but kind of delightful dream where the two are silently and gleefully breaking fine china all over the place.

I have daydreams like that. Who wants to break crockery with me?

C. We begin Frobisher’s story near the very end, as he’s writing a last letter to Sixsmith and putting a gun in his mouth. You spend the whole movie waiting to see if Sixsmith is going to get there in time, hoping that he will while knowing almost certainly that he won’t — there is, after all, no Old Frobisher in 1973 — and that tension makes the audience more invested in their romance.

Sixsmith is about two minutes too late, and James D’Arcy’s performance here is very moving. I really feel bad for this guy. I also feel kind of annoyed that the only love story to end tragically is the gay romance. (Well, I suppose that’s debatable. But the so-called love story of 1973 is ridiculous, so I wouldn’t even count it, and I don’t actually consider the 2144 story all that tragic. But I’ll get to that.)

A few last notes:

A. Halle Berry’s character is entirely dropped from the storyline and doesn’t really seem necessary in the first place. Except, I suppose, to keep everything in balance and make sure that a black actress plays a white role. Still, I wish her character had, you know, some actual significance.

B. Considering that the whole movie is named after it, I kind of expected the Cloud Atlas Sextet to be more, I don’t know, amazing. I’m not saying it’s bad. I just didn’t love it.

C. I wish Frobisher’s reasons for committing suicide were a little more clear. From what I understand, he did it in the novel because he’d created his biggest masterpiece and there was really no point in living afterwards, or some such nonsense. (I’m telling you, I’m not that kind of artiste. I have such little patience for this kind of bullshit.) In the movie, though, it’s kind of like he just does it because it’s scripted. I mean, either way, Frobisher is sort of an asshole, but still. The whole ‘I’ll never do anything better’ reason annoys me on a personal level, but totally seems in character — but, guys, you still have to address it in the movie, or offer up some kind of alternative explanation.

1973:

This is the investigative thriller story, and it’s pretty fun for the most part. Halle Berry is really enjoyable as Luisa — she’s sort of spunky but comes off as a real person, and I entirely buy all of her reactions. Three things to mention:

A. Assassin Hugo Weaving kills Old Sixsmith by shooting him through the mouth, presumably because Assassin Hugo Weaving is a fan of deeply mean parallels. Have I mentioned how sorry I am for Sixsmith? Seriously, his whole life is terrible.

B. I am not impressed by Keith David’s plan to kill Assassin Hugo Weaving. Like, at all.

C. Tom Hanks plays a bit part in this story as this scientist dude who instantly falls in love with Luisa.

I mean, they talk for approximately three minutes, and that’s it. (He is then promptly killed for helping her out, but never mind that now.) I . . . really don’t know what to do with this. If you’re just looking at these two characters in this one story alone, their instant love is absurd. I mean, it’s really dumb. Admittedly, I’ve never been a big fan of love at first sight stories, but even those stories generally give the actors something to work with. Here, nothing. Zippo, zero, nada.

If the idea is that these two souls keep falling in love with one another, you’d think they’d come together in every story. But they don’t — Halle Berry and Tom Hanks are not, so far as I understand, romantically linked in the 1849, 1936, 2012, or 2144 segments. Unless Halle Berry’s soul and Tom Hanks’s soul are not represented by Halle Berry and Tom Hanks in each life. That would certainly seem true in Halle Berry’s case — because she has a very distinct birthmark that’s not only very similar to Frobisher’s birthmark but also to a main character from each story. (And all of these characters are played by different actors, specifically Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, and Jim Sturgess.)

So say Lawyer Adam’s Soul was reborn into Frobisher and Frobisher’s soul was reborn into Luisa Rey. If this movie is about two souls who keep falling in love with one another, then that would mean Lawyer Adam’s Wife was reborn into Sixsmith who was then reborn into Scientist Dude Tom Hanks. But not only does that fail chronologically (Scientist Dude Tom Hanks is obviously born well before Sixsmith dies), it really makes no sense for only one of the souls in this Destined Couple to have a nifty, reoccurring birthmark. So either the birthmark does not mean that each person who has it possesses the same soul (in which case, what the BLOODY HELL does it mean) or Tom Hanks and Halle Berry aren’t always meant to love one another (in which case, why the FUCKING HELL does Tom Hanks feel this Destined Love Connection).

And — well, shit. I didn’t actually mean to go into all of this yet — I really just planned to point out that Scientist Dude’s love for Luisa feels like a ham-fisted attempt to tie each story together with love, thematically speaking — but since I’m already here: at this point, I don’t see a story reason to have the same actors play multiple roles per segment. If the birthmark is the only indicator of a repeating soul, then you certainly don’t need it — you either get one actor to play the same soul in every segment, or everybody in every segment is different. (You know, like how the world actually works. Reincarnation may or may not be real, but I suspect if you hunt through history, you’re not going to keep finding my face over and over again . . . although I’d be delighted if you can prove me wrong on that. Delighted, and mildly creeped out.)

Meanwhile, if Tom Hanks is always Tom Hanks . . . well, why? What does that do for the story? Because as an audience member, I can’t say that I’m seeing any meaningful connection between the various characters played by Tom Hanks, or any of the actors for that matter. Hugo Weaving is, not shockingly, always an antagonist, but Hanks (among others) plays both protagonists, antagonists, and just random extras. Either way, no one seems to learn anything from their past lives, either consciously or unconsciously. I can’t track a progressive forward movement where the soul appears to be evolving or devolving. And if there is no meaningful pattern . . . why even be discussing souls at all?

Because, really, I’m not convinced that the story even needs to have these reoccurring souls. There are connections (some admittedly more tenuous than others) between all six segments, where what people choose to do affects other people down the road, people in future times and future places, people they’ll never meet and maybe could hardly even imagine. Reincarnation isn’t necessary for these connections to be significant, for this story to have purpose. The mortal choices are the ones I find moving here. The immortality, the destined purpose, the fated love . . . all of that is where I feel like the story falls down hard.

And yet if there is no reincarnation — why dress up the same principle cast in this often offensive and highly distracting makeup, unless it’s a gimmick? Why not just have an epically large cast with actors playing characters who share their actual ethnicities and genders?

All right. Now that I’ve found myself in a 1,000 word intermission, let’s go back to the individual stories, shall we?

2012:

Well, I’ve already told you that I actively disliked The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, which just depresses the crap out of me because — look at that name! The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is an amazing title — I just adore the crap out of it — and yet. We get this. Sigh.

It’s possible that reading about Cavendish would’ve been more entertaining, but as is, I just found myself so bored every time we went back to this guy. His story starts strong — well, his story starts with Tom Hanks as a gangster, so believability is something of an issue. Still, Gangster Tom Hanks abruptly throws a critic over a balcony, and that definitely startled me into laughing really hard. That was awesome.

Unfortunately, that’s the last moment that works for me in this segment. I don’t particularly like Cavendish, certainly not enough to feel sorry for him, and I don’t really believe that his brother would let him rot in a nursing home for the rest of his life. I find Nurse Hugo Weaving to be deeply problematic. I’m not hugely entertained by the antics of the old people trying to escape, and I just feel that, in general, this sort of goofy comedy is tonally inconsistent with the rest of the film.

And for fuck’s sake, I can’t believe Jim Broadbent ends up with Susan Sarandon.

Before Cavendish accidentally checks himself into a nursing home, he briefly goes to spy on The One Who Got Away. This turns out to be the girlfriend he (many a year ago) lost his virginity to in the awkwardly comedic fashion that you would expect from this guy. And I guess Susan Sarandon has spent the last fifty years secretly pining for Jim Broadbent too, because after he escapes from the evil nursing home, they get together — and never mind the fact that he spends no time thinking about this woman during the film, other than the three seconds he stands outside her window like a fucking creeper. They are in LOVE, dammit. FATED SOULMATE LOVE.

It just bugs me. Susan Sarandon’s character — if you can call a smiling woman with no lines and seven seconds of screen time an actual character — is held out like a prize for all of Cavendish’s troubles, like oh, you escaped from the Fortress of Doom, now here’s your Rescued Princess! Cause sure, she’s had her whole life to live while you’ve been busy publishing books by non-intimidating gangsters, and sure, she seemed relatively happy in those three seconds you spent spying on her, but I’m sure she wasn’t really happy until you came waltzing back into her life with all your seedy connections, psychopathic relatives, and crippling money problems. I know that’s what I look for in a man.

Like I said, I don’t buy most of the luv connections in this movie, but this one was possibly the most ridiculously contrived.

2144:

This was probably my third favorite segment in the bunch, but if I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure why. There’s nothing hugely special about it — the two romantic leads had very little chemistry, and the future dystopia itself wasn’t anything hugely original. (In fact, it’s getting to the point where it’s not a future dystopia anymore without the disenfranchised discovering that they’re eating something particularly horrific — although I did think the soylent green reference in the 2012 story was clever.) And, of course, the Caucasian people playing the Korean people is basically the worst. I’ve mentioned Hugo Weaving already, but Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo is also . . . not good.

No. Not good at all.

I did enjoy Doona Bae as Somni-451, though, particularly in her interview with the Archivist. And maybe I just have a weakness for cool looking SF — because even though this story doesn’t really bring anything new to the dystopia table, I still found myself more intrigued by it than many of the others. In fact, the only thing I really did enjoy from the 2012 story (other than the abrupt death of the snotty critic) is how it influenced this one. Cavendish’s dumbass life story apparently became a very overwrought and silly looking film, only Somni-451 (who has never even seen a James Bond movie, much less a piece of cinematic genius like Casablanca or Some Like it Hot) looks at THIS movie like it’s true art. I do think it’s interesting, how future generations could potentially build whole ideals or belief systems on the misinterpretations of past laws, religious beliefs, art exhibits, etc, so I did find this connection interesting. It actually kind of reminded me of reading “Source Decay” by Charlie Jane Anders.

Arguably, Somni-451 and Hae-Joo’s romance is tragic, as, you know, they both die. But it doesn’t strike me as particularly tragic, partially because I don’t really care about these two as a couple (they’re pretty by-the-numbers, as The Hero and The Prophesied One go, almost like a gender-reversed Trinity and Neo) and partially because their story still seems like a victory, which, I don’t think you can really say that about Frobisher and Sixsmith. I am glad they changed this from the book, though, because apparently — book spoilers — the whole revolution deal is one big set-up/lie in the original novel, and seriously, people, I am so OVER that bullshit twist.

After the Fall:

Like I said before, I wish we got more world-building in this one — because being thrown into the deep end is kind of fun, but I was confused on how Somni-451’s story influenced the culture here. Like Tom Hanks’s people thought she was a goddess, or something? I really wanted to understand their religion a little better. I wouldn’t have minded knowing what was killing Halle Berry’s people, either, and I certainly wish I understood what the fuck was up with the satellite. I assume she was basically sending out an SOS to outer space, since they’re all on another planet at the end of the film? I’m not sure who she was asking for help, though. Aliens? Space colonists? The USS: Enterprise? Though, again, maybe these questions were answered in the film, and I just didn’t understand, as I didn’t catch half the dialogue.

At the end of the movie, we find out that Old Tom Hanks and Old Halle Berry end up together and have a big ass family, which I guess isn’t as bad as their inexplicable love connection in 1973, although I have to say, I didn’t see their relationship as being even a little romantic until, boom, they were suddenly together. Like, Old Tom Hanks is just all, ‘Yeah, we’ve been a happy couple for fifty or so years,’ and I’m all like, “Wait, WHAT?”

And . . . well, shit, I guess that’s about it. Finally.

CONCLUSIONS:

It’s not a terrible movie. It’s ambitious and interesting, and I like certain things about it. But when Variety describes it as an “intense three-hour mental workout rewarded with a big emotional payoff,” I’m like, nope. Because where this movie falls down for me — other than the well-meaning but ultimately awkward racial stuff — is that there is no big emotional payoff, at least, not one that I found. Almost all of the love stories feel contrived to me, and while yay!liberty is a solid theme, I don’t feel like Cloud Atlas is telling me anything I don’t already know. I’m not moved by this movie, and I have significant intellectual problems with it as well.

MVP:

I’m giving this one to Halle Berry, I think, but I liked James D’Arcy a good deal, too.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C+

MORAL:

Slavery bad, love pretty?

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. You get to dress up in fun costumes, have an excuse to eat junk food that you were going to eat anyway, and watch a bunch of scary movies. Also, it’s not a traditionally Family Gathering kind of holiday, so it comes with a lot less drama than, say, Thanskgiving or Christmas.

Also, in my house, Halloween is a time to savor truly terrible horror movies.

We will begin Splatterfest 2014 with our first film: Nine Dead.

SUMMARY:

Nine strangers are kidnapped and locked in a room together. Their abductor explains that he’ll kill one of them every ten minutes until they can figure out how they’re all connected and why they’re all here.

NOTES:

1. This is exactly the kind of mystery that I get all nerdy and excited about. A group of strangers having to figure out who they are or how they’re connected is just such a great setup for a story. The amount of potential is staggering. And yet, these mysteries are rarely — if ever — executed well, and not surprisingly, Nine Dead is no exception.

One of the biggest problems for me? Racist and homophobic stereotypes. I won’t go into details until the Spoiler Section, but wow. There are some serious problems here. I’m talking issues like whoa.

2. Another serious problem?

Melissa Joan Hart is hideously miscast as Kelley. Like, it’s bad. It’s also inevitable because Hartbreak Films, her own production company, is the one producing this shit. And, admittedly, a lot of the writing doesn’t do Hart any favors. Kelley was never going to be a great character, and no actress could have fully saved her. Regardless, she is deeply unconvincing in the role.

I also take considerable issue with some of her backstory . . . but we’ll have to discuss  that later, too.

3. Actually, due to the nature of this story, I’m not sure how much I can really say without Spoilers. I can tell you that while this film introduces a fair number of red herrings that lead absolutely nowhere, I’m surprisingly okay with it. After all, it’d be silly if each character immediately knew what they did to warrant abduction and potential execution. They have to talk it out, go through all the shit they’ve ever done, and some of them have done some naughty shit. It make sense that a few characters bring up Big Sins that end up having nothing to do with why they’re there.

4. I also like some of the reactions to the general insanity that’s going on around them.

Okay, some of them are just overacting. William Lee Scott is kind of hilarious, though not always (or even mostly) intentionally. But while few of the characters are particularly likable, most of them have at least a couple of funny moments or completely believable reactions that makes them, if not fully sympathetic, then at least watchable.

And then there’s Kelley.

5. Unfortunately, just too much goes wrong with this story. In fact, one mistake is made immediately: for some reason, we have to watch about half of the characters get abducted instead of just beginning in the Room of Doom. The abductions don’t take long, at least, but they’re pretty repetitive and don’t serve much purpose. Most of the information we can glean from these short scenes is later fed to us, anyway, so I don’t think there’s anything here that provides a crucial clue to solving the mystery.

Similarly, we keep cutting away from the Room of Doom to watch cars — quite possibly the same car — drive by the warehouse they’re stuck in, and I have no idea why. I assumed that this car had to be important by the end, but for the life of me, I don’t see how. And the ending, like the very last shot? It’s pretty terrible. I’ve disliked abrupt endings before, but the way this movie cuts out, it’s like someone completely forgot to put in the last scene, like the camera stopped recording and no one realized before they sent the movie off. It’s hideously bad.

If you’re not going to watch Nine Dead — and be honest, you’re totally not — feel free to continue onward.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

All right, let’s see if I can remember how all these people are connected.

Christian, a bartender, aspiring actor, and very first to die, gets a loan from mob moneylender, strip joint owner, and all-around-asshat Sully. Christian plans to use this money for some big drug deal thing. Alas, he is caught and goes to jail. When he gets out, he has no money to pay Sully back, and fearing for his life — or at the very least, his kneecaps — buys a gun from Leon and robs Mrs. Chan’s store. Fortunately for Christian and deeply unfortunately for Mrs. Chan, she mistakenly picks Wade Greeley out of the police lineup. ADA Kelley knows that Mrs. Chan isn’t a reliable witness, though, since she suffered a concussion and is, like, old and stuff. And Kelley desperately needs a win, or she’s on her way out, so she uses her unwitting, married boyfriend, Officer Jackson, to plant evidence. And even though Christian confesses his crime to Father Francis, the priest refuses to break his vows and tell the police what he knows. Thus, Wade Greeley goes to jail, where he is raped by child-molester/murderer Coogan. As if this wasn’t enough, Wade also contracts AIDS from Coogan. When he gets out of prison, Wade applies for an experimental AIDS treatment that’s his only chance of survival, but Eddie denies the claim based on his felony conviction. Thus the miserable existence of Wade Greeley comes to an end, and Wade’s father (John Terry) is seriously pissed.

Okay, now that you know all that . . . man. There are just so many things to discuss. Let’s begin with those stereotypes I mentioned before, and the deeply problematic characters that are Leon and Coogan.

Leon is the only black character in the cast, and of course, he’s this thug guy who runs guns and robs people, not to mention killed his own brother. (And dumped his corpse during a Cinco de Mayo festival because his brother never liked Mexicans. All sorts of fun racism in this movie. Another example: Leon is mocking Mrs. Chan by pulling at the corners of his eyes and making some vaguely Chinese-sounding babble. Mrs. Chan, in turn, lets out a spew of pissed off Chinese, which she chooses to punctuate with the one English word everyone in the room understands. Hint: it starts with ‘n.’) Admittedly, the majority of characters in this film are hardly paragons of decency and compassion, but not everyone is a total waste of a human being, and Leon’s casting wouldn’t have bothered me nearly so much if, say, Insurance Dude Eddie or Kindly Father Francis were also black.

Still, it’s Coogan that bothers me the most.

To remind you, Coogan is a man who both molests and murders children. (He is, apparently, not particular when it comes to girls or boys.) He isn’t the least bit ashamed of this. In fact, he seems rather satisfied with himself. Dare I say sassy. I take no issue with the fact that Coogan is a remorseless, murdering pedophile, or even that he’s occasionally funny. (Because, honestly, he is. I hate how the character’s portrayed, but the actor is clearly one of the stronger talents in the room.) I do, however, take issue with the fact that his every line delivery is just dripping with Saucy Gay Evil — to the point where he’s near-lisping some of his lines. Again, it’s particularly bad when there are, so far as I can tell, no other gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters in this film. Yes, folks, there is only one non-hetero character in Nine Dead, and he’s a pedophile rapist with AIDS.

For fuck’s sake.

On the upside, Mek and I took a few bets throughout the movie (like who was first to die, that sort of thing) and we both kept losing them. It’s impressive when a movie can surprise you, and this one did, a number of times, even. I think the only thing I twigged to super early was that Jackson was a cop, partially because when he’s abducted next to Daniel Baldwin, Baldwin pulls out a gun, and my immediate instinct was, Oh, cop. Even without that scene, though, it’s pretty obvious Jackson is LAPD, what with his repeated insistence that this isn’t some cop ploy to trick convicts into incriminating themselves, and the fact that ADA Kelley, who clearly knows who Jackson is, pointedly asks if he wants to reveal something else about himself. (I would also like to add that these people are morons. Yeah, guys. The cops kidnapped each of you with stun guns and set up this whole elaborate operation. I mean, come on, dudes. This is going a little beyond, “Your buddy’s in the next room, so you better talk fast if you wanna make a deal.”)

Also, Daniel Baldwin is, admittedly, the least well-known of the Baldwin brothers, but he’s still sort of name, particularly in a movie where the biggest stars are Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the second-to-least useful kid from the remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds, and Christian Shepherd from Lost. So, you’d expect him to appear for more than 35 seconds, right? Yes, well, you’d be wrong. I checked. I was sure Baldwin would come in at the end of the film, but apparently he was only cast to say a couple of lines and get tased. It is remarkably bizarre.

Other incorrect guesses:

In a twist, Mrs. Chan secretly speaks English all along!

Nope. Evil Christian Shepherd — as I will now be referring to him — actually gives her a note written in Chinese to explain why she’s here just before he kills her. As I’m pretty sure Google Translate would have failed him (like it fails us all), I can only assume that he had to actually ask somebody, “Hey, can you write this in Chinese for me: ‘You falsely identified my son as a criminal, and he went to prison, was raped, and died from AIDS because of it.’ Thanks a bunch!”)

The black guy would die first.

Nope. It’s Christian, er, Bartender Christian. (Evil Christian Shepherd says the death order is random, but later suggests that it isn’t. This becomes problematic later.) Regardless, Mek said that Sweater Vest Guy (Eddie) would die first, but while neither of us were right and thus have failed to become a dime richer, her guy didn’t die until the very end of the movie. So I clearly won this round.

Kelley had Jackson’s Affair Baby and didn’t tell him she had an abortion.

Not quite. Mek and I were both right about the baby, but Kelley actually kept the kid and just said it was someone else’s.

The priest isn’t a priest because when two different people can’t remember how a prayer goes, he can’t or fails to help them finish it.

Nope. The first time around, it’s Christian who can’t remember the prayer, and the priest is flustered because he thinks he recognizes Christian’s voice from confession. (Kid couldn’t remember the prayer then, either.) The second time, it’s Eddie, and it flusters the priest some more because it reminds him of Now Dead Christian, whose crime is certainly the reason that they’re there, only the priest can’t tell anyone that without breaking his vows.

Once we knew there was a Secret Confession — but before we linked it to the forgotten prayers — I figured it was Kelley telling Father Francis about the abortion, since Kelley seems the most ridiculously desperate to keep her secrets hidden. (Kelley has priority issues, although admittedly, Christian has more, as he laments that he’s going to miss his audition a few minutes before his demise.) She very obviously keeps trying to change the subject from ‘Talking About Our Deepest, Darkest Sins’ to ‘Let’s Kill That Motherfucker, Even Though We Have No Way Out of Here, and The One Guy Who Came Closest to Escaping is Now Dead.’)

I make mention of these failed guesses because there are actually some pretty clever misdirects and red herrings in this movie. The thing with the prayer, for instance, or bringing up Sully’s dead brother, or the fact that Jackson once helped beat and blind a kid because he was a rookie cop too scared to stand up to his superiors . . . these are all pretty effective in keeping the audience guessing. I’m not kidding when I say that there’s potential in this story.

Unfortunately, there are also some plot holes like you would not believe. Let’s go back to Evil Christian Shepherd, who we will now be referring to as Evil Omniscient Christian Shepherd.

The only way this plot makes any sense is if our killer is omniscient. Because, logically, there’s no way he can know how everyone is involved. Sure, he knows that Mrs. Chan identified the wrong man, even if was an honest mistake. He knows that it was Eddie’s signature on the letter that says, ‘Nope, no treatment for you.’ And his son could easily have told him who raped him in prison. Everyone else, though, is a bit sketchy.

I suppose it’s at least possible that Evil Omniscient Christian Sheperd could’ve guessed Kelley was framing his son, and that the cop she was having an affair with was helping her, intentionally or otherwise. But I fail to see how he figured out that Bartender Christian was the real thief in the first place, or that he got a loan from Sully, or bought a gun from Leon. (Especially Leon, since that purchase happened in the middle of the night with no apparent witnesses.) But it’s really Father Francis who seals the deal. Father Francis won’t even tell these fuckers what he knows to save his own life, or theirs. So, how in holy hell did EOCS know that Bartender Christian went to confession, OR what he confessed there?

Other problems arise, too, when EOCS tries to kill poor, sweater-vest wearing Eddie.

EOCS has the gun pointed at Sully, who’s taunting the shit out of him. (I actually sort of love that Sully never feels remorse for what he’s done, that he refuses to die angry or scared, and that he’s mostly just incredulous that he’s gonna die for loaning some asshole five grand instead of any the hugely terrible shit that he’s done.) Sully says, “C’mon, asshole, pull the trigger!”and EOCS is like, “Yeah, one prob. It’s Eddie’s turn to die next.” Understandably, Eddie is a lot less eager to accept death with open arms, but when EOCS fires his gun, Father Francis jumps in the way and dies instead. EOCS is about to kill Eddie anyway, but Jackson reminds him of his own rules: one person dies every ten minutes. So EOCS stomps away petulantly and waits for the clock to rundown.

Here are my problems:

A. If EOCS is now killing based on some order that only he understands, Eddie should be the next person to die after Father Francis. Instead, Mrs. Chan is killed. Why? Well, because we need to keep Eddie alive to learn what his role in the mystery is. Mrs. Chan, on the other hand, has already revealed all of her secrets, so she goes next instead. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough for me. I need an actual story reason Eddie doesn’t die next, even if it’s just seeing EOCS pulling names out of a hat before he enters the room every time.

B. More importantly — and I didn’t actually catch this until after the movie was over — EOCS has whispered (or delivered a note) to every character he kills right before he kills them. Watching how they react is part of the mystery. Bartender Christian’s last words are: “How could I have known that?” Whereas, Coogan’s last words were: “Yeah. That’s a good reason.” Once we know why they’re here, those reactions make more sense. However, EOCS doesn’t tell Eddie why he’s been condemned to die. Why? Well, because Eddie doesn’t die. If Eddie died, then he’d know and be able to share a huge part of the mystery with the others. Basically, the movie would end in the next two minutes. But again, I need an actual story reason EOCS doesn’t tell Eddie why he’s here, and there isn’t one.

The only way Father Francis’s sacrifice play works, I think, is this: someone need to piss EOCS off so much that he forgets his whole whisper ritual thing and just tries to shoot them, only the good Catholic priest gets in the way. In which case, the person shouldn’t be Eddie — who just can’t inspire that kind of rage — but Kelley. I’m not really crazy about the idea of a guy nobly sacrificing himself for the one white woman in the room, but story-wise, it makes much more sense. Kelly is the only other person close enough to Father Francis, and she’s also the one that pisses off EOCS the most.

Because let’s be clear about this: Kelley inspires so much rage for so many reasons.

A good part of it, as I said earlier, has to do with performance. I haven’t seen a less convincing assistant district attorney since Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, and I’ll be honest with you guys: in the battle for realism between Katie Holmes and Melissa Joan Hart, Katie Holmes wins hands-down. Kelley is also deeply unlikable because her first and foremost character trait is that she’s an uber bitch, presumably because she’s a strong-minded, career-first kind of woman, and that unfortunately tends to translate to One-Note Shrew in Hollywood. Of course, that makes no sense to me, because I feel like a character whose primary goal is to preserve her reputation would not be bitching about something every time she opens her mouth, but that’s basically what she does here. And since we don’t learn much about the only other woman in the movie — as she doesn’t speak English and none of the other abductees speak Chinese — well, ladies, Kelley is pretty much our only representation in this movie. Yay, girl power?

And I haven’t even gotten to the Last Minute Rape Subplot yet.

Yup. In the last ten to twelve minutes of the movie, Kelley abruptly decides to tell Eddie and Jackson — the only guys left — about how she was abducted off the street one day and raped in the back of a van, only she managed to get the upper hand and killed the shit out of that guy. Then she went back to work the next day like nothing happened. And maybe you’re wondering if this rape has something to do with Wade Greeley and why she’s here; well, it doesn’t, not at all. As far as I can tell, there are only three possible reasons for this monologue:

A: To garner some last-minute sympathy for Kelley, who survived such a horrific ordeal. (This is probably the least likely reason, considering what happens at the end, but I bring it up because I’ve seen too many TV shows and movies have an unsympathetic or generally disliked character raped in hopes that it will make people feel sorry for her and like her more. I cannot possibly express to you how much I hate this trope.)

B. So that Eddie could hear her story about rape, think to himself, ‘Hey, you know where rape happens a lot? Prison. And Wade Greeley ended up in prison — what if he got raped by one of the many people here who have been to jail, like Coogan. And what if Coogan was HIV+, since he’s the most likely to be, obviously, as a bisexual child predator and all, and shit, remember how I had to tell people once that they couldn’t have our nifty new AIDS medicine if they were convicted of a felony? Holy shit, I solved the puzzle.’

No, really, that’s pretty much how it goes. Two seconds after Kelley has told her story, Eddie makes the rape connection. It is the dumbest thing in all existence.

C. To show that Kelley is a fighter and will survive at all costs. We know this because Kelley wraps up her story by saying, “I will survive at all costs.” This is incredibly last-minute and wholly unnecessary foreshadow for what happens next: EOCS lets the three of them go as promised, but Kelley doesn’t want anyone to know what she’s done, so she kills everyone. (It’s EOCS, you see, that makes up the titular nine dead, not Kelley.) I really don’t believe you need to lay in the groundwork that Kelley has murder “in her” because honestly, don’t we all have murder in us? Are we trying to say that if Kelley hadn’t been raped, she wouldn’t have been able to kill these people, that the rape is the one and only thing that broke her humanity or something? Because that’s some bullshit. That’s another trope I’m not a particularly huge fan of.

But if you feel it’s absolutely essential to add in this whole backstory (and it’s not), then guys, you cannot just shove it in there ten minutes before the end of the movie. That’s ridiculous. If Kelley is going to tell this story at all, it needs to happen much, much earlier, maybe back when people are confessing if they killed anyone or not.

As a side note: I’m trying to decide who got screwed over the most. Jackson had absolutely no reason to suspect the evidence Kelley gave him, so he really didn’t do anything wrong here. Although he’s also the guy that helped blind a dude that one time. Mrs. Chan picking Wade out of the lineup certainly turned out bad for him, but she’s an old lady with a concussion, and there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest she did this maliciously. (Not to mention, it wouldn’t have been enough to convict Wade anyway without Kelley framing him.) And Eddie couldn’t have known that Wade was innocent of his felony conviction, and his company probably wouldn’t have care if they did. (Technically, the priest didn’t do anything wrong, either, but my sympathy for him depends on how much he knew and when he knew it. If he didn’t realize that someone else had been arrested, that’s one thing. If he did know and chose not to speak, I’d actually have a little less sympathy for him than, say, Sully, who’s a total scumbag and yet only related incidentally to the crime itself.)

I bring all this up because — before he dies — EOCS says something like, ‘If you people had only tried to help him,’ and ‘Any of you could’ve saved his life,’ and I think we’re all supposed to feel sorry for EOCS, like he’s not such a bad guy after all. (Especially now that Kelley’s in the picture). But I’m like, “Ehhhhh . . . I think we’re stretching this a bit. For one thing, I don’t actually think that’s true, that any of these people could have saved Wade’s life. For another, while I feel for this guy, let’s not kid ourselves here: this dude is a psychotic murderer. I have way more sympathy for Mrs. Chan than EOCS.”

Anyway, EOCS tells Kelley that it doesn’t matter if she kills him, that the police are already at the building and he’s been recording all of this. I assume this is true, although we never see the police look at any of these recordings. (Or, for that matter, find out if the police tracked the kidnapper down themselves, or if EOCS called them there.) Kelley decides to ignore this, kills everyone, and runs. Well, lightly jogs, anyway, the way you do when cops are chasing you.

This is how the movie ends: Kelley goes down one corridor and appears to be looking down another. The cops run by the same corridor, but nobody is there. And then the movie just cuts out. I think it’s supposed to imply that Kelley escapes the warehouse (because she’s a survivor, she’s gonna make it), but I can’t quite come up with the words to explain just how bad this last shot is. In fact, Mek and I rewound the movie to see if we blinked and missed something, or if something went wrong with the DVD, because it really feels like the last scene was accidentally chopped off and no one noticed. But there was nothing.

I know it’s a low-budget movie and all, but man. That may have been one of the worst film endings I’ve ever seen.

QUOTES:

Killer: “Don’t use your son as an excuse. It really pisses me off.”

Jackson: “You put me in a room with you and no windows and no doors, and you’re gonna wish that you were never born.”
Coogan: “Sweetie, we are in a room with no windows or doors, and the only thing you’re gonna do is try to survive, just like me.”

Sully: “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of me being all pissed off while I die. Of all the shit you could have killed me for. Five grand? Fuck you!”

Eddie: “My name is Eddie Vigoda.”
Sully: “Hi, Eddie!”
Eddie: “Maybe that helps somebody.”
Jackson: “No, Eddie. No. It doesn’t.”

Eddie: “You put yourself up on a pedestal, but you’re here just like the rest of us. So, why don’t you stop talking about why you shouldn’t be here and let’s figure out why you are.”

CONCLUSIONS:

So much wasted potential. Yet another Bottle Episode Mystery Movie I’d love to rewrite.

MVP:

Um. I’ll go with James C. Victor, I guess. (Eddie) But the actors who played Sully and, surprisingly, Coogan were also possibilities.

LVP:

Melissa Joan Hart, no question

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C

MORAL:

Don’t be a dirty rotten moneylender. Or sell illegal guns. Or rob people. Or rape people. Or frame people. Or sleep with people who might conceivably plant evidence. Or take your priestly vows seriously. Or do your job. Or try to identify a guy who stole all your money and gave you a concussion.

Basically, just stay home and watch television. Everyone’s better off that way.

Mekaela and I have designated this November as Mystery Month, for reasons that I’ve already forgotten. So it seems the right time to jump back into those noir films I’m continuously behind on.

I like parts of Kiss Me Deadly. But it’s definitely not one of my favorites.

SUMMARY:

“Bedroom dick” and all-around lousy human being Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picks up a hitchhiker. Shortly thereafter, she’s murdered and he’s nearly killed himself. Now he’s determined to look into the case, despite (or possibly because of) all the asshats who warn him not to.

NOTES:

1. Sometimes, I feel like the two words I type more than any other on this blog are “likable characters.” Obviously, not every movie needs to center around likable people, but the bonus to having them is that your audience is automatically invested in your story because they care about what happens to these people.

Kiss Me Deadly has virtually no likable characters.

We will begin with Mr. Hammer, our very masculinely named protagonist. Hammer isn’t a particularly nice guy, considering he’s far more concerned about the state of his car than the woman he almost hit in the middle of the road. (To be clear: it’s her fault for jumping out in front of him. Regardless, most people at least feign concern when they nearly run over someone.) Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this schmuck. He also says this to our distressed hitchhiker:

“What’s this all about? I’ll make a quick guess. You were out with some guy who thought ‘no’ was a three-letter word. I should have thrown you off that cliff back there. I might still do it.”

Charming. I’m aware that noir detectives are usually dicks (pun intended), and I’ve liked movies that have featured asshole protagonists before, but there’s a delicate sort of balance to it that I think Kiss Me Deadly falls on the wrong side of. The majority of positive reviews I’ve read for this movie have all praised Hammer for being the slimiest and dirtiest noir hero of them all, but creating a deeply unlikable protagonist doesn’t usually seem like a bold choice to me. It seems likes poor strategic planning.

2. And obviously it doesn’t help that everyone else is annoying too.

The women in this movie . . . yeah. They’re not good, and an unlikely number of them seem to find our charmless hero mysteriously irresistible, which meant I kept thinking, “HE GETS THE WOMEN,” to myself throughout the film. I’ll wait to address most of the female characters until the Spoiler Section, but I do want to spend a little time here on Velda (Maxine Cooper). Velda is Mike Hammer’s Girl Friday and Quasi Love Interest, and at times she actually seems somewhat competent. At other times, she’s completely infuriating.

Like, okay. There’s this one scene where Velda has done a bunch of research for her boss, and as he’s asking her questions about this and that, I’m thinking to myself, You know what? Velda is clearly the actual detective here. This is cool. I’m all for that.

But then she’ll rapidly change direction from being independent and awesome to being needy and weird. Like when she awkwardly transitions a dead woman’s last words into a bid for sex. Or how she tells Hammer that she likes it when he gets into trouble — since that means he’ll need her around — but then immediately becomes angry with him, since getting into trouble means he’s putting everyone’s lives in jeopardy, including (gasp) hers! I think I’m supposed to feel sorry for Velda here, but instead, I’m just stuck on . . . but . . . I don’t understand. These two thoughts don’t follow logically at all.

I really wish Hammer and Velda weren’t sleeping together, and not just because I’m currently working on a noir story featuring the platonic relationship between a detective and his awesome secretary, I swear. I think it would solve a lot of problems for me. Hammer and Velda would, at the very least, both be instantly more sympathetic, even as they do some less-than-nice stuff in order to pay the bills.

3. Also, their close-talking scene was just awkward and not cute or sexy at all. Juliet and Shawn do a much, much better job of this. (It kills me that the full clip isn’t here, though. Youtube! Why have you failed me yet again? Now I have to go watch the full scene on Netflix just because you left me hanging.)

4. The credits in this movie are kind of interesting. They go backwards, like so:

I’ll admit, I don’t have any particular deep thoughts about that. I just thought it was unique and thus worth bringing up.

5. But back to those wascally wabbits characters: I’m not convinced that a single person in this movie acts rationally. It’s not just Velda and Hammer, although it’s fair to say that Hammer regularly acts like a moron. (Why do you keep going back to your apartment when people are after you? WHY? Oh, they’ll never suspect me here because it’s far too obvious? Hammer, you’re an asshole.) It’s also the people who want to stop Hammer from pursuing this case. I can’t speak too much about that now, but I will say that at least some of them have decent reasons for not wanting Hammer involved, reasons beyond the fact that he’s a slimy moron asshat. (Which, obviously, should be reason enough.)

The problem is how these people try to dissuade Hammer from getting involved.

Shortly after surviving a car accident that nobody could’ve survived, Hammer is brought in for the most one-sided interrogation I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s asked disdainful questions about his seedy business practices, which are then answered by the other men in the room. This is really an expository scene to let the audience know that Hammer is a scum bucket — in case the “maybe you were raped, which is totally your own problem” line wasn’t enough to clue you in — but from the POV of the characters involved, it just doesn’t make much sense. When dealing with a disagreeable person that you want out of the way, it’s usually not the best idea to repeatedly mock or insult him. Because really, guys, what are you even picturing here? That he’s going to bury his head in the sand and feel ashamed about all the bad things he’s done? That he’s going to forget he and his precious car were ever shoved off a cliff, simply because you were mean to him? Please. Even if he wasn’t already interested in a score, Hammer is far more likely to stick with the case just to fuck with you. Hell, I probably would do that, and I’m not nearly as disagreeable as Mike Hammer.

It doesn’t help that certain information is withheld from Hammer, information that I’m relatively sure would’ve made a direct impact on Hammer getting involved in the first place. One particular snotty bastard — I can’t remember his name, so we’ll be calling him Cop McSneer — even says something like, “Would it made a difference if we had told you?” and Hammer, suitably chastised, does not answer. Meanwhile, I’m having an apoplectic fit on my couch, screaming, “OF COURSE IT WOULD MATTER!” while my sister laughs at me. (And, incidentally, agrees with me. These people are dumb.)

6. Admittedly, maybe I missed some stuff to explain all this. If so, I’m sure someone, likely using their most condescending language, won’t miss the opportunity to tell me. But despite opening with a bang, Kiss Me Deadly seemed pretty dull for well over half the film, and I had a lot of trouble focusing on the various names and faces of all the people involved. I really had to keep dragging my wandering attention back to the film, and I didn’t get fully invested until a surprising turn about 2/3 of the way into the story. That turn is really what makes this movie worth all the recognition, although I can’t say it makes me forgive the film’s various other shortcomings.

7. Finally, I found this ancient answering machine entirely too fascinating.

It’s huge. I kind of want one now, possibly because I’m a ridiculous person.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, our hitchhiker’s name is Christina.

This is Cloris Leachman in her very first role, and I’ll be honest: it’s not my favorite. But I don’t like anybody in this movie, so that’s no big surprise, really. I find Christina particularly annoying as she diagnoses Mike Hammer as being as one of those “self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing but his clothes, his car, himself,” not to mention the kind of guy who “never gives in a relationship.” She’s not wrong, but it’s not exposition I’m convinced we need, and if I were Hammer, I wouldn’t be real thrilled with some escaped mental patient hopping in my car and giving me an unflattering psychoanalysis within five minutes, either. (Although Hammer has already regretted not throwing Christina off a cliff, so it’s not like he has the moral high ground here.)

Of course, if I were Hammer, I would press for more details once I knew my passenger had escaped from a mental institution. Because Hammer kind of asks, but he doesn’t seem all that concerned or curious about it. I, on the other hand, would be curious about it. I would have questions. And depending on the answer to those questions, that’s when I would consider throwing her ass out of the car, not after speculating that she’d possibly been raped. I mean, Jesus.

Hammer plans to drop Christina off at the bus stop. Christina tells him, “If we don’t make it, remember me.” This is said with capital ‘S’ significance, so we know it’s a capital ‘C’ clue, as is Christina just happening to mention her namesake, the poet Christina Rossetti. We then spend the entire movie waiting for Hammer to finally consider looking through a book of Christina Rosetti poems. It turns out that the one he’s looking for is called “Remember Me,” which, in retrospect, is pretty obvious. But I was stuck on “Goblin Market,” mostly because it’s the only Christina Rossetti poem I’ve ever read. (And I only read it after a friend was horrified I’d never heard of it. I don’t recall having much opinion on the poem either way.)

I should mention that the whole ‘Poem as Clue’ thing ends up being kind of lame. This is the passage that Lily reads out loud:

“Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you’ll understand.
But if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once we had.”

First, it’s lame because Lily is cutting out lines. I don’t mind that she magically skips to the relevant stanza, but I’m decidedly not okay with her just cutting out two lines in the middle of her recitation. That’s dumb. I hate it when movies do that. Also, some of the words seem wrong (like using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘but’ instead of ‘for’), and I don’t think Christina is supposed to have edited them or anything. The clue is also lame because after Lily reads this passage out loud, Hammer somehow divines that Christina must have swallowed something significant. And bitch, please. You did not figure that out from this passage. I don’t believe you.

But that’s skipping ahead. Let’s go back to when Christina kicks it.

(The leg pun was unintentional. Hell with it. I’m keeping it now.)

My brain had a serious disconnect while I was watching this scene. The second I saw her legs, I assumed the bad guys hanged Christina, except then she started screaming. (And went on screaming long after her legs had gone still, like, whoops.) Now, obviously, they’ve probably just strung her up by her arms or something while they’re torturing her for information, but at first I was like Are they really trying to make me think that she’d be screaming while BEING HANGED? And then my brain caught up and I was like Ohhhh. Silly rabbit.

When Christina passes out, one of the bad guys says he can revive her, but Mr. Boss Bad Guy, otherwise known as Blue Suede Shoes, ex-nays that plan on the basis that it would be Resurrection and playing God, or something? I don’t know, that bit seemed weird. Anyway, Christina and Hammer are put back in Hammer’s car and driven off a cliff. But it’s okay because Hammer is totally fine.

I suppose he does at least end up in the hospital. Briefly, anyway, with nary a scratch anywhere on him. This is where we meet Velda, not to mention Cop McSneer. Unfortunately, this is also about the time I started checking out of the story, so I’m transitioning from a detailed synopsis to a more random notes approach for the rest of this review.

1. If you know there’s a bomb in your car, don’t get inside it.

No, buddy, it’s totally safe in this car. Would I lie to you?

At one point, bad guys put a bomb in Hammer’s car, which Hammer’s mechanic friend, Nick, nearly triggers when he begins to turn the key in the ignition. Hammer saves him, which is nice, and they extract the bomb and drive to Nick’s garage. Nick cheerfully holds the bomb in his lap the entire ride, which just drives me nuts, but nothing beats Hammer casually announcing that he only found the bomb the bad guys wanted him to find. Dude. DUDE. You do not get in a car when you know there’s another hidden bomb, especially if you’re not quite sure what will trigger it. In this case, it’s tied to the speedometer (Kiss Me Deadly is the predecessor to Speed!!!), but YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT WHEN YOU DROVE ACROSS TOWN, DID YOU, BUDDY?

You should be dead right now, Mr. Hammer. This is Darwin Award material. I am done with you.

(I almost forgot to say that when Nick extracts the first bomb, he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Hammer only says to take out whatever’s near the starter. Nick extracts what appears to be a bundle of dynamite and asks, “This is what you mean?” Yeah, Nick. I think that’s what he meant. I’m not sure if this moment was intentionally funny or not, but I did laugh pretty hard.)

2. Nick, unfortunately, isn’t as lucky as his friend. He survives the multiple car bombs, only to die the way that so many movie mechanics do — crushed under the car he’s working on. Mean, Blue Suede Shoes. Very mean. Although I feel it should be said that Nick is also a little obnoxious. I mostly felt sorry for Nick’s less obnoxious and less plot-relevant friend, who’s all broken up about it. Poor dude. Go be in a movie with nicer people.

3. This movie has a ton of classical music in it. I kept thinking it was some big clue. It wasn’t.

4. Christina’s supposed roommate, Lily, is super annoying.

I’m not sure what she’s going for, exactly — seductive with a heavy side of vulnerable and frightened, I guess? — but she mostly comes off as loopy and grating. Actually, Mek and I were initially convinced that Lily was an escaped mental patient herself, but in turns out, she’s actually a bad guy, which, honestly? Kind of a relief. I liked her much more when she was greedy and evil. Too bad I couldn’t stand her for every other scene.

5. Through obscure poetry references and deduction, Hammer discovers that Christina swallowed a safe deposit box key. He leaves Lily outside and alone in a top-down convertible in the middle of the day when people are (supposedly) trying to kill her so he can check it out. Because, really, he is such a moron. Which I know, I know. Many people say that’s the whole point, that Kiss Me Deadly is a scathing indictment of film noir — and maybe that’s my problem with it. I like genre deconstruction; hell, I love genre deconstruction, but I feel like it works best when you’re a fan of the genre itself, when you see all its potential and possibilities as well as its problematic flaws and missteps. I don’t want to watch a noir movie that hates noir, anymore than I want to see a western that hates westerns, or even a romantic comedy that hates romantic comedies. I want an intelligent discussion, maybe an angry one, but not one filled with contempt and scorn.

6. Mike Hammer uses the safe deposit box key and discovers . . . Marsellus Wallace’s soul!

Kidding. He discovers a nuclear weapon, but you can clearly see where Quentin Tarantino is lifting from with his briefcase in Pulp Fiction. The words “nuclear weapon” are never actually used, though, and we never really see what’s inside of the box, just that it glows ominously, giving the whole movie a sudden sci-fi bent, which is awesome. THIS is when I finally started giving a damn about the movie, when my kind of dull noir suddenly turned out to be apocalyptic SF noir. There really needs to be more apocalyptic SF noir.

7. Hammer doesn’t fully open the box, which ends up being a very good call. (We’ll find out how good a little later.) It does burn his wrist, though, which Cop McSneer later notices.

This is my Disappointed Face.

Hammer gives up the key to Cop McSneer after he figures out just what kind of shit he’s involved in. He says he didn’t know, to which Cop McSneer asks, “Do you think you’d have done any different if you had known?” And this is a problem for me because — like I said earlier — I feel pretty confident that Hammer would have done differently if he’d known. And I don’t like this guy, like, I’m not looking for excuses to defend him. Mike Hammer is a total assclown. There is no doubt about that. But the movie wants me to shake my finger at him here, and I’m like, “Uh, no. If they wanted him to back off because national security is at risk, all they really needed to do was show him pictures of people with radiation poisoning, and this guy? Would have backed off so hard his shoes would still be on fire.”

8. In the meantime, Velda’s been kidnapped. (Which Cop McSneer doesn’t give a damn about, because I guess her death will be just desserts for Hammer? Wow. Thanks, Cop McSneer. Let me just say how encouraged I feel, knowing that a woman’s life has been entirely reduced to how her death would make a man feel. I can only hope that your fellow detectives take protecting the public as seriously as you do.)

(Also, now that I’ve looked it up, I see that ‘just desserts’ should actually be spelled ‘just deserts,’ but I’m actively choosing not to spell it that way because it just seems wrong. #RebelliousSpellingBeeChampion #OkayFineIOnlyGotThirdPlace

Hammer tries to save Velda — which would have been a lot more interesting if they weren’t sleeping together, like he actually valued a woman without (gasp) having sex with her — and ends up getting abducted himself. (Actually, this part happens earlier, but whatever. Chronology, pah.) Mr. Blue Suede Shoes gives him sodium pentothal — truth serum, to anyone who’s ever seen a movie — which, in this particular version, will make him dream about his secrets and talk in his sleep. That’s sort of an interesting variation on how Movie Sodium Pentothal usually works, and makes me wonder if this is the first film to use it, and if not, what is.

It should also be said that everything Hammer says here is an incoherent mumble, so I’m not particularly convinced about the effectiveness of this plan. Especially since he awakens, kills people, and escapes.

9. Mr. Blue Suede Shoes gives Lily — or actually, Gabrielle — a long, villainous monologue about Pandora and various other mythologies where women are killed for the sin of being inquisitive. (Is there a myth where a man is killed for his curiosity? There must be, right? Please?) It’s all very tiresome, and thankfully Lily kills him, which is easily the best thing she does in the whole movie. She also shoots Hammer before opening The Box. Unlike Hammer, though, she opens it the whole way.

You can’t really make Lily out in this picture, but I bet you can guess where she is just the same.

I’ll give Kiss Me Deadly this much: Lily killing herself by essentially opening the Ark of the Covenant surprisingly doesn’t bother me here, unlike when they actually open the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I have never liked how that movie resolves, and I don’t care who knows it. So there.

10. The ending of this movie is interesting for a couple of reasons.

As far as I can tell, I saw the ending that original audiences saw, where Hammer and Velda make it out to the beach and stumble around in the waves as the house explodes. The ending itself is incredibly abrupt, but not in a way that seems incongruous with old movies. However, there was also an alternate ending that a huge number of people are more familiar with, one where we never see Hammer and Velda make it out. Instead, the film ends with a series of images that suggest the nuclear apocalypse has come.

I’d have to see both endings to decide which I preferred, but honestly, even the supposedly happy one didn’t actually strike me as all that upbeat. I think I was supposed to go, “Yay! They made it! Good guys win again!” But I didn’t, and not just because I don’t like anybody. I just figured, Yeah, okay, they made it out of the initial blast radius, but dude. There’s no WAY that they — or anyone else in the area, for that matter — aren’t going to suffer and eventually die from radiation fallout, right? Especially Hammer, who, besides still being shot, was already exposed to radiation when he partially opened the box and BURNED HIS FLESH. We’re totally looking at a nuclear disaster here, right? Right.

I feel like this movie ends in apocalypse, no matter where the film actually cuts out. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that.

CONCLUSION:

I really like the SF apocalyptic turn of this story, and even a couple of moments here and there. But it’s still not my favorite. Due to the deeply unlikable characters and a mystery that wasn’t particularly intriguing (until it suddenly was), I just couldn’t engage with the story.

MVP:

Er. I guess Ralph Meeker did what he was supposed to do, even if I didn’t like him. I certainly bought Hammer’s relish whenever he was punching someone. (Or slapping someone. Shit, I almost forgot — Mike Hammer’s signature move is to slap people silly. He did it to like twelve people in under ten minutes. I was cracking up.)

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B-

MORAL:

Don’t continue to open boxes if the contents start to glow. Shut the box and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Also, don’t be a dick. You might accidentally help kick off a nuclear apocalypse. At the very least, Wil Wheaton is going to be very disappointed in you.

So, I have this ongoing quest: I would like, just once, to go see a movie when my friends and I are the only people in the theater. I don’t know why this is my quest, considering there are approximately 78,000 other goals that are my worthy of my time and energy, and yet, here we are. Quests are rarely chosen, right? They are something that is given, something laid upon you. Quests are a thing of destiny.

I’ve come close to fulfilling my quest at least half a dozen times now, only to have some asshole wander in during the previews, unwittingly ruining everything I’ve longed to achieve. I don’t throw popcorn at this asshole, partially because I’m a mature young woman but mostly because I don’t eat popcorn.

I mention all of this because last week I finally went to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I. This movie came out roughly two months ago. You would think that the majority of people who wanted to see it would, in fact, have already seen it. This was clearly the cinema’s expectation as well, considering we were obviously sitting in their teeniest-tiniest theater available. And yet, as soon as we sat down in the empty room, about twenty-five more people walked in.

You know, I’m not my namesake. I’m not asking to slay dragons here. I’m not even asking to lead any rebellions.

On the upshot, I generally enjoyed Mockingjay, Part I.

DISCLAIMER:

You may see SPOILERS for the previous movies in this review. You will not, however, see spoilers for this movie until you reach the clearly marked Spoiler Section. You will not see spoilers for the book anywhere, primarily because I haven’t read it yet. If you comment, I would strongly prefer that you didn’t leave book spoilers yourself. If you must leave them, please mark them appropriately so that I might ignore them until next November.

SUMMARY:

Somewhat reluctantly, Katniss becomes the figurehead of the Rebellion, aka, THE MOCKINGJAY. Meanwhile Peeta — and others, but let’s be real here, it’s mostly Peeta — is held captive by President Snow. Also, everyone suffers from some hardcore PTSD.

NOTES:

1. Now, I said I enjoyed Mockingjay, Part I, and I meant it — I will own this movie when the series comes out in a box set, and I’m sure I will happily rewatch it — but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a few problems with this third installment. Actually, I had a fair number of problems. Let’s tackle one of the minor ones right away, shall we?

According to IMDb, the word “mockingjay” is used roughly twenty times, and people? I believe it. I would have believed thirty. Even a mere twenty, though, is just too damn much for one film. Cause I know it’s the title of your movie and all, but after the sixth time someone solemnly says, “She’s the Mockingjay,” I just really wanted to scream back, “I know! Really, I know. You don’t need to tell me anymore.”

2. The interesting thing about Mockingjay Part I is that it’s very much a movie about trying to press on and recover through intense emotional trauma, and in some ways, I think this film is wonderfully successful at it. I like the opening scene quite a bit. Jennifer Lawrence does an amazing job with the material that’s handed to her, like that even needs to be said at this point.

I also like that Katniss isn’t the only one struggling here. Everyone’s having difficulties, although one character in particular surprised me. I’ve read some reviews that have criticized the film’s slower pace, but to be honest, that didn’t bother me at all. In a way, it reminded me of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, which was criticized for similar reasons but is actually one of my favorite HP films in the whole series. I don’t mind that this movie is more of a character study than its predecessors.

3. That being said, I do think that Katniss has one too many breakdowns.

For the majority of the movie, I’m fully on board with Katniss’s trauma. I like that she’s scared. I like that she doesn’t want any of this, that she primarily agrees to be the rebellion’s shining star as a bargaining tool in order to get what she wants. I’m sincerely pleased that she has a terrible time coping with all that she’s been through. I will always, always be a fan of emotional consequences.

But at some point, crying in a bunker becomes repetitive, and her last meltdown in the film not only seemed like needless overkill, it just didn’t feel consistent with her arc over the course of the story. Jennifer Lawrence can work hysteria, but if you overuse that talent, it loses some of its potency. Like when Joan of Arcadia started having Amber Tamblyn cry every episode. She was really, really good at it, but after six episodes straight, you’re just like, Oh, look, Joan’s a weepy bucket again. Must be Tuesday.

4. A lot of my problems here are tied into what I think might be the film’s biggest downfall: unlike its predecessors, Mockingjay, Part I can’t quite keep the juvenile love triangle bullshit from minimizing the impact of what everyone’s been through.

So, this is Peeta. You all remember Peeta. I like Peeta. But as the film continues, Katniss’s obsession with saving Peeta starts to feel less like it’s about her guilt for being rescued while he was left behind and more about what secret luv feelings she might or might not have for him. I don’t mind that she has those feelings, and I do like when Finnick tells her that her love for Peeta is obvious, even if it’s not romantic in nature.

But Katniss is so single-minded throughout the film that it’s hard to imagine we’re supposed to interpret her feelings as anything but romantic. Which might still work for me if the film ever bothered to let Katniss talk about Peeta like he’s an actual person, like if she ever shared a moment they had or explained why she felt so responsible for him, if there was any nuance about her feelings towards him at all.

Instead, Katniss just screams, “Peeta! PEETA!” for half the movie, and while it’s not quite knocking “WAAAAAAALT!” off the podium, it does sometimes get frustrating, particularly near the end, during that last emotional breakdown. Up till then, I could deal with it because I, too, wanted Peeta to be rescued. Finally, though, I lost my patience, and all I really wanted to do was sit Katniss down and have a serious conversation about priorities. Of course, Katniss’s priorities have always been first and foremost to her loved ones, and that’s fine; I even like that about her. But at this point, I feel like she’s putting the Boy ahead of everyone else she cares about, and that really bugs me. Katniss is an awesome heroine. I don’t want her main focus to be about a Love Interest.

5. You may be thinking that everything I’ve complained about thus far has finally edged me towards Team Gale. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I tried to give Gale a second — nay, a third chance. I really did. And for a while, it seemed to be working. I still liked Peeta, of course, but Liam Hemsworth has a little more screentime in Mockingjay Part I, and I liked hearing about the things Gale went through when District 12 was bombed. After all, Katniss isn’t the only one who’s had a hard time recently. Gale has gone through some pretty horrific shit himself.

But then he went to Whiny Town, and I quickly lost all sympathy.

I think I’ll hold off on the details for now, but let me just say that this is another instance where the juvenile love triangle bullshit strikes pretty hard, and it’s unfortunate because I don’t think it needs to be this way. It’s really only a line, but that line basically turned me against Gale for the rest of the movie.

6. I know so far this review has been kind of negative, but I did have a good time watching Mockingjay, Part I. There are a number of individual moments (most of which I can’t talk about yet) that are pretty great. I also really loved all the war propaganda stuff. Propaganda is kind of treated like a dirty word. It’s very often associated with the enemy (or at least assholes), so it’s nice to see heroes you’re supposed to like using it as well.

Also, hilariously, Katniss is just as bad of an actress as you’d think she’d be. I may have watched most of these scenes giggling with my face hidden behind my hands.

7. A new sequel always means one thing: new characters.

Alma Coin

Julianne Moore is enjoyable enough as the President of District 13. Her best moments, I think, are whenever she’s squaring off with Philip Seymour Hoffman. (It was sad, when Hoffman popped up. I’d actually completely forgotten about his character until that moment. On the upside, I liked him quite a bit in this movie.) I especially liked the moment in Command where Coin’s basically like, “Yeah, PR guy, shut your trap. We got this.”

Cressida

Natalie Dormer doesn’t have so much to do here, but she always draws your attention whenever she’s on screen. Also, her hair is awesome, like possible Best Hair of the Year awesome. Often, documentarians in movies are just manipulative asshats, insensitive and shrill. But Cressida is a bit more interesting than that. Manipulative, sure. But smart, almost gentle, and never shrill.

Pollux

Elden Henson has even less to do in this movie than Dormer, particularly because his character can’t talk. But I have a fondness for the actor, and he’s got a very sweet smile. Is it terrible to assume he’s going to sacrifice himself at some point in the next film?

8. I mostly acquire new music through friends, through movies, and through the alternative radio station I listen to on my TV. I generally don’t listen to much else, which is why I hadn’t yet heard “The Hanging Tree,” despite the fact that it hit the Top 40.

I had also never heard any of the remixes. Man, this song kind of cracks me up. Like, this is kind of a Depressing Times ballad, right, and yet? Let’s make it a dubstep? Okay, then.

9. A lot of my biggest problems in this movie happen in the third act. In fact, that emotional breakdown I keep talking about is basically the beginning of a fifteen minute stretch of the film that I think is inarguably weak. The movie’s climactic action stuff fails for me in a big way; however, the ending itself is pretty solid. I’m pretty eager to see Part II and annoyed because I want to look at fanfiction and can’t for fear of spoiling myself.

Alas. This is what comes from choosing to watch the movies before reading the books.

Should you care to read further . . .

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Let’s rewind to the beginning of the movie.

We begin with Katniss freaking out in some dark corner and getting pulled back to her bed in the hospital at District 13. She’s not the only one having a rough go of it, either; Finnick pretty much looks like he’s losing his damn mind.

He smirks a lot less in this movie.

Finnick’s breakdown isn’t solely because of the Games themselves. President Snow’s goons have kidnapped his GF Annie and taken her to the Capitol with Peeta and Johanna. Throughout the film, we’ll hear a lot about Finnick missing Annie and Katniss missing Peeta. We will not, however, hear anyone talk about missing Johanna, presumably because she’s not dating anyone at the time of her abduction. This is crap. Johanna is the best. I missed you, Johanna.

I liked Finnick well enough in Catching Fire, but because I’m a terrible person, I found him about eighty times more interesting once I realized he was on the verge of a total breakdown. I didn’t expect it from him, for some reason — I guess I didn’t expect his character to get much deeper than Smirky Eye Candy With a Secret Heart of Gold — and I thoroughly enjoyed the surprise.

Unfortunately, we don’t actually spend all that much time with Finnick. You can kind of watch as he slowly pulls himself back together, the way Katniss is doing, but it mostly happens off screen. This is mildly unfortunate because I feel like the film misses a great opportunity to have more scenes between the two of them. Finnick and Katniss are two of the very few people who have survived the Games, and they’re also the only ones whose loved ones have been taken hostage by Snow. The movie gives you a few moments with them, but I really wish there were more. I also wonder if the bunker scene where Finnick comforts Katniss might have been stronger if it had been the other way around.

Meanwhile. President Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee want Katniss to become THE MOCKINGJAY — sorry, I can’t help myself — but she’s still pissed at them for leaving Peeta behind, so she’s like, “Fuck you, losers. I’m out of the hero biz.” A trip home changes her mind, though. (BTW, the destruction of District 12 is very nicely done.) She does come up with some new terms: the Rebellion is to rescue the hostages (but mostly Peeta) as soon as they humanly can, and the hostages (but seriously, PEETA) are to be pardoned for any crime they may have committed while being held against their will. Also, Prim gets to keep her cat.

Why the pardon? Well, Captive Peeta starts appearing in a series of interviews with Caesar Flickerman, calling for the rebels to lay down their arms and surrender. This turns everyone except Katniss against him. (Although I’m actually with Katniss on this one. Peeta begins looking worse and worse with each interview, so clearly something is being done to him.)

I actually really like the interviews, particularly the one where Peeta starts pleading with Katniss to stop being the rebellion’s puppet, to think and decide for herself. I wish I could remember the exact dialogue now, but I thought it was clever, how he could easily be talking to himself here. I was never fully sure how much control Peeta had over what he was saying, if he was knowingly calling for the ceasefire in order to protect Katniss, or if some conditioned part of his brain actually believed what he was saying. (We’ll be talking more about Peeta’s brainwashing later.) Either way, it worked pretty well for me. Poor kid’s got it kind of rough in this film.

And then there’s Gale.

So, Gale’s had it rough too. He managed to evacuate 900 people out of District 12 before it got bombed to hell, which sounds like a lot until you realize about 9,100 people didn’t make it out at all. So, definitely, Gale’s got scars. And I really like that he has something to angst about other than his love for Katniss . . . until, of course, it’s all about Katniss.

See, Gale’s upset, right? Well, Katniss kisses him. I don’t think anyone, including Katniss, was assuming that her magic lips would heal all of her friend’s wounds, but presumably she was trying to provide some level of comfort. Whether a kiss was the proper way to way to deliver that comfort is a question for another day. I, instead, will be focusing on Gale’s reaction. “You only notice me when I’m hurting,” he says before going off to sulk somewhere. And I guess I’m supposed to be like, “Ooh, burn,” or maybe, “Oh, that poor, unnoticed Gale. Why doesn’t that Katniss realize what a nice young man she has right beside her?”

Instead, my reaction was more like, “Wow, Gale, way to be a whiny douche.” Because to me, his woe comes off as very entitled, like, “I loved you first. I loved you best. Why do you keep focusing on that guy you went through all this harrowing shit with instead of loving ME?” Like he deserves to have her, at this point, and she’s not playing along.

Well, I find that infuriating. As much as I wish Katniss wasn’t so focused on Peeta during this movie, at least I can get where she’s coming from. But Gale . . . I mean, I’d be fine if he was saying, “Hey, I’ve been through some really terrible shit, too, and I need you to listen to me sometimes and be here for me like I am for you.” If she couldn’t recognize that he also needed a shoulder now and then, yeah, I’d totally get it. Friendship shouldn’t just be a one-way street. But really what I’m taking away from this scene is, “Yeah, sure, you’re trying to be supportive and loving and all, but if you’ve got the hots for another guy, then what the fuck is that even worth?”

Moving on. Peeta manages to warn the rebels that an attack is headed their way. Everyone survives, but when Katniss is supposed to do another propo film, she has a meltdown. Why? Because President Snow dropped a shitload of white flowers with his bombs, which makes Katniss suddenly realize that he’s going to kill Peeta.

Now, the shot of all those flowers? Pretty cool. And the white roses are actually pretty ominous. They’re a great callback to the previous film. Still, Katniss’s meltdown annoys me more and more each time I think about it, partially because Katniss has already had enough meltdowns at this point, partially because she and thousands of other people have just survived a terrifying bombing and she’s still only concerned about Peeta’s life, and partially because it comes off like this is the first time she’s ever realized that Peeta might actually die, which is just dumb. I really mean it when I say that I enjoy both Katniss’s PTSD stuff, but at this point in the film, I kind of need her to step up. Instead, she becomes a quivering mess, and it just doesn’t work for me.

So Katniss runs off, and Haymitch comforts her by saying that there’s a mission underway to rescue Peeta. Naturally, this snaps her back into action, which, ugh. As it turns out, the propo that Katniss was supposed to do is actually part of the diversion; it, like, scrambles the Capitol’s defense signals or something. I don’t know, technology. Anyway, since Katniss bowed out, Mostly-But-Not-Fully-Recovered Finnick takes over the job, and it’s . . . awkward.

The whole scene doesn’t work for me. I tend to blame it more on the script than the delivery, but it kind of depends on what the director’s intentions were here. The dialogue itself is just awful, rambling and strange, with little bearing on the action it’s being juxtaposed with. Which might have actually worked for me, if they played it like Finnick was having trouble coming up with things to say, since his whole role here is to just keep talking as long as possible. Hell, the boy’s obviously had some trouble coping this whole movie. Maybe he just isn’t ready for this. That would be fine.

But unfortunately, that’s not how the speech comes across at all. Sam Claflin’s delivery made me feel like the moment was supposed to be powerful, revelatory, a moment of strength for his character, but mostly Finnick just seemed to be trying to fit the word ‘poison’ into every sentence. It drove me nuts.

Also . . . is Finnick talking about being a prostitute here? Because as he rambled on, I suddenly caught a few words and was like, wait, WHAT? I found it extremely difficult to focus on what he was saying, though, because we had to listen while watching the Big Rescue Team flying into the Capitol. I understand the narrative reasoning for that, but ultimately it seems like a really poor decision. The action takes away from whatever important revelations Finnick might be making, while the speech doesn’t at all inform what you’re watching on the screen. It doesn’t give you any new sense of context or add another level of interpretation or provide dramatic irony or really do anything but get in the way.

It feels like a small thing to bitch about — considering the scene’s only, what, five minutes long? But you’re waiting the whole movie for these guys to rescue Peeta, and when they do, it’s just not very tense or creepy or anything. I definitely found the Big Rescue scene a serious letdown.

Then Katniss ends up talking to President Snow for Reasons.

Mostly, I found this whole bit kind of silly. Her reaction to possibly losing both Gale and Peeta is pretty powerful, though. (See, it’s okay if she has some emotional breakdowns. I just need to buy the instigating factor.) Still, I kind of wish Katniss had just been a part of the Big Rescue Team because I bet that would have brought the intensity up. Plus, you know. I’m all about the heroine rescuing the prince.

Fortunately, the team comes back alive, even Boggs (Mahershala Ali), the only person I was actually worried about. (I forgot to mention him before, but he’s another one of the new characters I enjoyed. Like Pollux, I worry that he could potentially sacrifice himself for a main character in the next film.) Of course, between Gale’s confused realization that the Capitol just let them escape and President Snow’s not even remotely subtle jibe about how the one you love will be the one to destroy you, MUAHAHAHAHA, you’d think that somebody would consider putting the rescued prisoners in restraints or at least under strict supervision until they could figure out what Snow’s game plan was. But, you know, logic.

Instead, Katniss goes to see Peeta, and Peeta very nearly strangles her to death.

First, it should be said that both Peeta and Johanna look like hell. I mean, they are skinny. Turns out, the weight loss is all CGI, which is kind of great in my opinion. (Actually, I can only confirm that for Hutcherson. I assume the same is true for Jena Malone, but she’s really a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo, so now I’m not sure.) I thought Peeta might have been slimmed down by CGI, but I wasn’t positive, and anyway, that’s a lot healthier than losing forty pounds for your job. (I feel it should be said: I’m not an actor and supremely unlikely to ever become one, but if I ever did end up in Tinseltown, I can say with a pretty high level of confidence that I wouldn’t go Method. I know it works for some people, but to me it sounds like a completely miserable way to create something. Also, I’m lazy.)

So, Skinny Damaged Peeta takes one look at Katniss and immediately tries to kill her. Would have done, too, but Boggs manages to take him down. (Poor Peeta. Finally gets to be a badass, except that he’s using his new fighting skills to try and kill his beloved.) We then learn that he’s been subjected to a bunch of fear-conditioning brainwashing shit that turned him into a weapon, and we end the film on the sight of him strapped to a table, trying to escape and, essentially, having totally fucking lost it.

It’s actually a pretty great way to end the movie, and I definitely want to see how and if he recovers from this in Mockingjay, Part II. Also, how the rebellion works out (I kind of assume it will succeed) and how many red shirts will fall before the end. I care less about who Katniss ends up with, although at this point I’d actually be pretty surprised if it was Gale. In fairness, the love triangle thus far has seemed vastly balanced against him, which kind of sucks. On the other hand, he still manages to come off as a whiny jerk, so. My sympathies are limited.

QUOTES:

Alma Coin: “Do you have any other conditions?”
Katniss: “. . . my sister gets to keep her cat.”

Finnick: “It takes ten times as long to pull yourself together than it does to fall apart.”

Beetee: “Uh, let’s not fire the red ones in here.”

Alma Coin: “And if you’re killed?”
Katniss: “Make sure you get it on camera.”

CONCLUSIONS:

I enjoyed watching the movie a lot more than this review would suggest. There are any number of strong moments here, scenes that I’ve really wanted to watch again. But — perhaps because it’s aiming for trickier subject matter — I feel like this one has bigger problems than its predecessors.

MVP:

Jennifer Lawrence. Still. Always.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, at least if the one is a boy you maybe want to kiss for realsies this time.

A few months ago, I went to San Francisco. I don’t make it out to SF all that much, primarily because I don’t have a car and it’s a long damn bus ride. But when I do go, I usually try to get in a trip to Rasputin’s because, man, I just love that place. On my last visit, I bought a movie for three dollars purely because I knew it’d be fun to review. That movie?

Oh, Identity. I’m not even quite sure where to begin with you.

DISCLAIMER:

Okay, I tried really hard to create a Spoiler Free section of this review, but that pretty much eliminated everything I wanted to talk about. So if you haven’t seen this movie, I’d advise against reading this, for SPOILERS will abound. Boy, will they.

SUMMARY:

Ten strangers find themselves trapped at a roadside motel in the middle of a terrible storm. None of them seem to be having a very good night . . . and that’s before they start getting killed off one by one.

NOTES:

1. Okay, I take it back. I know exactly where I want to begin:

As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d go away.

I actually first saw this movie in theater, and guys, let me tell you, it took some serious effort not to throw my Milk Duds at the screen straight away. The movie begins with Malcolm (Pruitt Taylor Vance) reciting the poem above, and while the recitation itself doesn’t bother me, I take issue with the fact that Malcolm claims he came up with it himself because, uh, no he didn’t. The poem is called “Antigonish” and was written by Hughes Mearns, like, a century ago. All Malcolm Rivers did was screw up the wording a little. Fuck you, Malcolm Rivers. You’re a godamned liar.

(There, Mekaela. I hope you’re happy. See, Mekaela’s favorite part of this movie is when I grind my teeth, trying not to rant about this for the umpteenth time. Specifically, her favorite part is when I fail.)

2. So, here’s the thing: I kind of like this movie. It’s not really all that good — one of the Big Twists is boring, while the other is just patently ridiculous — but I have fun watching it despite the fact that some parts of it (okay, most parts of it) are just so dumb. Of course, I’m a sucker for this type of story — it’s yet another mystery where strangers have to figure out how they’re all secretly connected before they can escape.

Let me go ahead and tell you how they’re all secretly connected:

This is the aforementioned Malcolm Rivers, notorious serial killer and poetry plagiarizer. Malcolm is sentenced to be executed the very next day, but a last minute hearing in the middle of the night changes all that. Dr. Alfred Molina wants to prove that his patient has dissociative identity disorder, otherwise known as multiple personality disorder, and that he shouldn’t be executed because only one of his personalities is responsible for all these terrible crimes. Also, his personalities are all fighting for their lives, so to speak, because Rivers is under some kind of experimental treatment where all his personalities are meeting one another, and by meeting, I mean being hunted by the One Killer Personality.

So, yes. These people?

They’re all Malcolm Rivers’s split personalities, and 9/10th of this movie takes place in his head.

There are so many things wrong with this.

The first and most obvious problem is that this is not how DID works. And admittedly, I’m not an expert — I took one Abnormal Psychology class like a decade ago. I will not be pretending I have firsthand knowledge of the subject, certainly not when the whole diagnosis seems to be controversial anyway. But from the mighty ten minutes of research I actually did — yeah, I’m pretty sure the creators of the film didn’t even do that much. This is not one of my bigger problems with the movie, honestly; while we need to have more movies depicting accurate representations of mental illness . . . I don’t know. I just can’t get worked up over it in this particular instance.

Still, this first Big Twist leads to a lot of internal logic flaws and inconsistencies. Like, there is very little discussion of how Dr. Alfred Molina’s bullshit experimental drug therapy actually works (like, come on, guys, give me a couple of lines of exposition at least), nor am I clear when Malcolm started taking the drug, as his multiple personalities start to meet one another well before Malcolm himself arrives at the hearing. (Especially the ones who are already married to each other, like how does that work exactly?) Malcolm also doesn’t seem to have his own personality (like, one named Malcolm Rivers), which seems . . . odd.

And what’s worse is this: for Malcolm to avoid lethal injection, his various Good Personalities must kill his Evil Serial Killer Personality. Usually, stories like this are trying to prove that the defendant or convicted can’t be held accountable for his actions based on the fact that he’s — technical term here — nuts; here, however, everyone seems to be on board with the idea that Malcolm is seriously mentally ill (or they quickly get on board, once they actually see him), but they’re still totes cool with executing him anyway. It’s only when the Evil Serial Killer Personality is eliminated (supposedly) that his execution is cancelled, and Malcolm’s allowed to live at a mental hospital where he clearly belongs.

My other problem with this whole Everyone Is A Split Personality thing? It’s kind of boring. Not because it’s been done to death, but because . . . well, who cares, right? I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but generally I find that stories which take place near-entirely in someone else’s head are not really my thing. It’s kind of like the whole unreliable narrators deal. I don’t hate them on principle, but 97% of the time I think they’re a cheat.

What actually could have been interesting is this: don’t make the multiple personalities a Big Twist. Reveal it from the beginning. Make Identity an actual story about identity — like what qualifies a person as a person? Is it personality? Memory? These characters possess those things, even if they’re imagined. Is it really ethical to pit these personalities against each other without their understanding? Don’t they want to live? Do they deserve to? And do we, as audience members, want to see the original personality restored, or are we just voting for our favorite personality to survive?

In this case, the only Big Twist would be the identity of the Evil Serial Killer. It could be pretty much anyone. Except, of course, who it turns out to be in Identity.

3. Let’s make a pact, you and I. Let’s agree right now that we will have no more Evil Kid Stories.

I actually don’t hate Creepy Kid stories. I get the appeal of the Creepy Kid, and there are plenty that I really like (Carol Anne from Poltergeist, the Red Queen from Resident Evil, Claudia from Interview with the Vampire, Cole in The Sixth Sense, etc.) but straight up Evil Kid is kind of dull and practically expected at this point anyway. It doesn’t make for a great twist, especially not when he’s so damn obvious about it. I mean, his name is Timmy, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t they just name him Look-How-Innocent-I-Am McGee, or something?

Timmy’s MO also makes his identity pretty clear to anyone who’s paying attention. He is, after all, the indirect cause of both his mother and stepfather getting run over by cars. Two different cars, even: he tricks his mother, Alice (Leila Kenzle), into stepping out into the middle of the road, where Ex-Cop and Worst-Limo-Driver-Ever Ed (John Cusack) immediately slams into her, and he tricks his stepfather, George (John C. McGinley), into pushing him out of the way before Larry (John Hawkes) can accidentally run over him with his truck. I’d like to point out that Evil Timmy is putting a lot of faith in George’s reflexes, not to mention appears to have supernatural knowledge that Ed won’t be looking at the road at this precise moment, despite the fact that it’s raining and looking at the road is a huge part of his entire fucking job.

George dies instantly, whereas Alice survives long enough for Evil Timmy to smother her with a pillow. And this is where Timmy’s true nature becomes hideously apparent, even though it’s about another thirty minutes before the movie actually reveals it. See, at this point in the movie, all the survivors are holed up in one hotel room with the hope that if they all stay in line of sight of each other until morning, no one else will die. The only person who isn’t in the same room is Alice; she’s in the adjoining room, trying not to die from her injuries. The only person allowed to leave the main room to go into the adjoining room is Timmy. When Alice ends up murdered (which we know because of the motel key countdown), you’d think it’d be pretty clear who killed her. Well, apparently, it’s not. Because everyone in this movie is an idiot.

4. This movie has a pretty huge cast. Let’s talk about them.

I enjoy John Cusack, but I’ve found that outside of a specific niche, I can’t always take him very seriously. Like Grosse Point Blank is one of my favorite movies ever and I think he’s terrific in it, but I don’t always buy him in roles like this, specifically any kind of law enforcement roles. (Although this is clearly six steps above playing Edgar Allan Poe. Man, was that a bad call.) Cusack isn’t terrible and I do enjoy a few of his reactions, like when he’s listening to Larry and clearly wondering, “How is this my life?” Still, I feel like this movie might be (minimally) improved if it was anchored by a stronger lead.

I haven’t seen much from Amanda Peet in a while, but she’s probably one of the stronger actors in this cast, despite a silly and unfortunate “What Are You Waiting For” moment. (Well, only partially unfortunate. I did, after all, enjoy the line about oranges.) Peet has decent reactions — I certainly buy her freak outs — and I generally like her character well enough. My only problem with Paris is how obvious it is that she’s going to be the Final Girl.

If you’ll pardon the digression — one of my problems with the movie (and so many other movies like it) is that there are ten players in this story, and we all know who’s going to make it out alive. There are really only a few ways it could play out:

A. Paris, Ed, and Timmy survive. (Assuming Timmy wasn’t evil.)
B. Paris and Timmy survive. (Assuming Timmy wasn’t evil.)
C. Paris survives alone. (Assuming Timmy IS evil.)
D. Paris survives alone . . . until she doesn’t. (Also assuming that Timmy is evil.)

And that’s about it. Admittedly, Paris isn’t your momma’s Final Girl because Paris is a hooker, but she still clearly is a Final Girl. (And anyway, she’s getting out of hooking now, which means she’s worthwhile by Movie Standards. If her goal was to continue being a prostitute, well, that would almost certainly be a different story.) Her survival was never really in question — the only concern was whether she’d die in One Last Big Twist or not. (Spoilers: she does.) The same cannot be said for, say, Ginny (Clea DuVall), Larry (John Hawkes), or any of the others who were clearly never going to make it. For once, it’d be nice to be surprised not just by the identity of a killer but by who survives the onslaught.

I think this is the first thing I ever saw John Hawkes in, and he’s kind of great. Not because his role is particularly well-developed or because he’s a hugely likable character (his funny moments are somewhat offset by his super hostile reaction to prostitutes), but because Hawkes is just that good. He has a ton of energy and brings such life to his character that I was actually rooting for him, despite the fact that’s he’s sort of a hateable dick. Definitely a scene stealer.

I can only assume that at the time of filming, John C. McGinley desperately wanted to play someone who was the opposite of his character on Scrubs. George certainly fits the bill: he’s an extremely timid guy who’s not particularly great in a crisis and spends a good chunk of the movie panicking or repeating step-by-step instructions to himself, whether those instructions are about what to do when you get a flat or what to do when a speeding car careens straight into your wife. Frankly, I’m a little surprised he’s not asthmatic to boot. I do actually kind of like George (I sort of adore the bewildered delivery of “What is going on here?”), but he doesn’t really have a whole lot to do before he gets killed himself.

Of course that’s still more than Leila Kenzle gets. Alice smiles at her kid, stupidly steps into a road, gets hit by a car, and spends most of her screen time unconscious until she’s rather abruptly dead.

Rebecca De Mornay isn’t in this movie for all that long — she’s the first to go, since Alice doesn’t technically die for another hour — but I like her here. De Mornay plays a stereotypical, self-obsessed actress who appears to be fading into obscurity, and I actually wished she lived a little longer. She’s a terrible person, no doubt, but she brings a bit of humor to the story, or does, until she gets her head chopped off by a seven year old.

Okay, there are too many people here and too much left to talk about. I’m just going to start doubling up. Ray Liotta seems like pretty solid casting to me because he mostly seems to play asshole cops and criminals anyway, and while we don’t trust Rhodes (certainly not after seeing the hidden blood on the back of his shirt), we might not make the immediately leap to escaped killer. Maybe he’s just a corrupt cop — not exactly out of Liotta’s wheelhouse. Anyway, I like the actor in this; he conveys frustration and incredulity quite nicely. His plan to keep everyone in the same room is very solid.

Jake Busey, meanwhile, is mostly there to be a creepy red herring, which he excels at because he’s Jake Busey. It’s not just because he looks a lot like his dad, either — I doubt I’ll ever see Busey in anything and not immediately think of  Johnny Bartlett.

Finally, William Lee Scott and Clea DuVall play young, annoying newlyweds, and it’s hard to decide which one is more infuriating. Scott’s character, Lou, is certainly a winner — past history of cheating, general lack of sensitivity, temper problems that suggest he has been or is likely to become abusive, etc. None of this is helped by Scott’s overacting, which is reminiscent of his performance in Nine Dead.

Ginny, meanwhile, appears to exist solely to make stupid decisions, like that time she argues that they need to leave the motel, despite the fact that there is absolutely nowhere to go. Or how she storms off to her own motel room to pack because she’ll definitely be safer by herself while there’s a serial killer on the loose.

Her terrible decisions are not limited to the current situation either; apparently, she lied about her pregnancy in order to get Lou to marry her. This horrible life choice was made after she heard that he cheated on her with some other girl and mostly proves that Ginny is no more skilled at the long game than she is at making short term plans for survival. Cause, Gin, you do realize that while Lou might marry you for the baby (and that’s a pretty big ‘might’ in today’s culture), he’s certainly not going to stop cheating on you just because you’re hitched. Still, I’m sure this is a decision you won’t regret for the rest of your life. (However short that may happen to be.)

5. Now that I think about it, though, Ginny isn’t just hanging around to make poor life choices. She’s also there to Feel Things. There always has to be a character with Heart Knowledge, and in Identity, that character is Ginny. Case in point: Ginny, apropos of absolutely nothing that’s going on, suddenly says, “Remember that movie where the ten strangers went to an island and they all died one by one, and then it turned out they weren’t strangers, that they all had a connection?”

Larry, currently tied up and suspected of multiple homicide, does remember that movie, so he helpfully adds, “They all messed with the same guy, and he was getting revenge.” Rhodes doesn’t want to hear anything Larry has to say, but Ginny insists, “I’m just saying maybe there’s some connection between all of us.”

There are a few problems here. First and obviously most important is that I think Ginny and Larry are mixing up movie trivia. Presumably, they’re referring to And Then There Were None, unless there’s some other movie where ten strangers go to an island and get killed off one by one. (And if there is, someone please tell me so I can go watch it immediately.) And admittedly, I haven’t seen the entire film, but unless the filmmakers changed a great deal more than I’d assumed, the ten strangers aren’t actually connected. The bad guy certainly isn’t out for revenge. Instead, he’s punishing them for their individual instances of getting away with murder. He’s like a vigilante, but more sadistic and with less colorful outfits.

The other problem, of course, is that there’s really no reason for the characters to suspect they’re all connected at this point, even though they are. The writers want to introduce that idea, but apparently they couldn’t think of any better way to do that than having Ginny break the silence by bringing up incorrect movie trivia. Fail, writers. This is a fail.

6. Ooh, and let’s not forget the time when Ginny randomly tries to blame everything that’s happening on the fact that the motel is supposedly built on an old Indian burial ground, which is such a bullshit red herring, I can’t even deal with it.

We also have the problem of the disappearing bodies.

See, Ginny and Timmy die (well, Ginny dies, anyway) when their car blows up. (Little Timmy has been very industrious about the murders so far, up to and including shoving a baseball bat down Jake Busey’s throat. I’m not even sure he’s tall enough to do that, so I’ll assume he found a chair or something to stand on.) But when the others look for survivors, there are no remains. In fact, suddenly all of the other dead bodies have disappeared too. This is a little something I like to call ‘bullshit.’

Of course, none of the bodies are strictly speaking real, so they can technically go poof whenever the hell they want, but I object to the inconsistency. When Rhodes later shoots Larry, his body doesn’t vanish, and the same is true when Rhodes and Ed shoot each other. There is no valid story reason why the bodies would magically disappear at this point in the story; the only actual reason they do so is to divert suspicion from the fact that the car does not, in fact, contain the ashy/melty pieces of Timmy’s body, because Timmy, of course, isn’t actually dead. That’s lazy damn writing, IMO.

7. And about Ed and Rhodes shooting each other —

— well, first let me back up a second. Okay, so in the past, Ed quit the force after a traumatic incident with a jumper left him struggling with depression and mysterious blackouts. He has one of those blackouts at the motel and ends up in Malcolm’s hearing, where he gets the unfortunate existential blow that he’s not a real person and this whole horror scenario he’s been living is actually just a diabolical scheme to root out a serial killer by handing him victims on a platter and saying, “Chow down, buddy.” Ed has about two minutes to freak out, digest, and ultimately make peace with that before he’s back at the motel.

Meanwhile, Paris has discovered that Rhodes is a fugitive and that he killed the cop he’s currently pretending to be. Rhodes kills Larry and nearly kills Paris too; luckily, she escapes, and Ed strolls in with one plan: kill the killer. Guy doesn’t even try to defend himself, either, presumably deciding that his existence doesn’t matter since he’s imaginary anyway. (I forgot to mention earlier that Ed owns a copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Writers, you’re a bunch of assholes.) Ed and Rhodes fatally shoot each other, Paris fucks off to grow oranges, and everything is hunky dory until it’s revealed that Evil Timmy never died in the first place.

But according to IMDb trivia, the filmmakers removed a crucial bit of sound from that shoot-out scene. Supposedly, as he’s dying, Rhodes whispers, “I didn’t do this,” and Ed responds, “I know.” I’ve since gone back and watched, and though it’s hard to tell with the lighting, it does look like that’s what they’re saying to each other. What’s particularly interesting about this is that, apparently, the dialogue was muted because the director thought it would ruin the twist that Evil Timmy was alive. (I still maintain that twist was ruined a good half hour earlier, but whatever.) Whereas I would assume they muted the sound on that scene because that dialogue makes no fucking sense. It’s one thing for Ed to stroll up and shoot Rhodes because killing him will save Paris and leave her alone and safe in Malcolm’s body, but if Ed knows that Rhodes isn’t the killer . . . well, The Killer, anyway . . . why the hell would he do it?

8. For a movie that I kinda like, I’m well aware that I haven’t said anything terribly positive in the past few thousand words. And honestly, I don’t have a lot of arguments in its favor, either, other than the fact that it has potential and I take a certain amount of so-bad-its-good satisfaction from its cheesiness. But there are some genuinely good scenes in this movie. I generally enjoy the pause-flashback structure (until they mostly abandon it), and the scene where we see that nearly everyone has some kind of secret is pretty well-done.

In particular, I think the twist about Rhodes is fairly well-handled. There’s support for it throughout the movie (like Rhodes about to touch evidence with his bare hands before Ed stops him), but I don’t think it’s immediately obvious from the outset. Or that Larry found the last motel owner dead and took over his business without telling anybody. I like that most of the players have secrets (although I kind of wish Paris’s money played into the mystery somehow).

9. I don’t think Malcolm deserved to be executed, but it is true that he has a lot of pretty shitty personalities. Little Timmy is The Killer, but Rhodes and Jake Busey (I’ve come too far to look up his character’s name now) are killers too, if not quite so enthusiastic and prolific about it. Ginny, Lou, and Washed Up Actress Caroline aren’t killers, but they’re unlikely to win any Awesome Human Being awards. And Larry totally kills George — sure, it was an accident that Timmy helped instigate, but Larry is still absolutely at fault for his shitty driving, just like Ed’s at fault for running down Alice. Timmy influencing her to step back into the road wouldn’t have meant shit if Ed was actually looking where he was going. I think we should all acknowledge that.

That leaves Alice, George, and Paris as Malcolm’s best personalities — and even Paris is a bit of a stretch, since I’m pretty sure she steals all the money from her john in the beginning. (The fact that he seemed obnoxious is probably not a morally sound enough reason to rob him, sadly.)

And if you’re wondering why Malcolm Rivers is so fucked up, well, it’s because of one reason: his mommy was a ho.

Honestly. One of these days, we’re going to have a story where Prostitute Mommy isn’t the root of all that’s evil. I feel like that you don’t get a lot of happy Prostitute Mommy stories. Some happy Stripper Mommy stories, maybe, but once you have a kid, you better not be screwing people for cash, or else you’re gonna be raising a serial killer. For that matter, Mek brought up another idea: why don’t we have more Prostitute Daddy stories? Let’s equal opportunity this shit.

10. Finally, I’m just lumping in some random notes together to keep this at even 10.

10A. While I’m on the subject of prostitutes, how exactly does Larry take one look at Paris and know she’s a hooker, anyway? I mean, it’s really one glance and it’s all over. Her clothes aren’t conservative, sure, but I don’t know if they’re that trashy, and even if they were, does Larry automatically assume that every girl in a short skirt charges people for sex? Cause if that’s the case, I assume Larry gets his nose broken a lot.

10B. Evil Timmy may be a creative killer, but Malcolm Rivers is apparently not a terribly imaginative man. All his personalities have the same birthday and geography-related names? Please. And don’t even get me started on Lou Isiana. That is the dumbest name in all of existence. Writers, I continue to be ashamed of you.

10C. Amusingly, IMDb trivia tells us that in the first script, the killer was originally an expat female teacher from Australia. This was changed because there was concern that a lady teacher serial killer would outrage parent groups — because I can really see how those same groups would be a-okay with a child serial killer instead.

10D. We all make certain decisions we’re not proud of in real life, the kind of thing we’d yell at people for doing in horror movies. Hell, I walk around by myself in a hospital basement in the middle of the night for my job; at some point, I need to face the fact that a masked serial killer is probably going to rise from the dead and murder me. Still, there are things that I’m pretty sure I’d never do and never would have done, even when I was a dumb teenager and prone to worse horror movie mistakes.

For instance: NEVER investigate laundry rooms in the middle of the night by yourself. This is asking for death. But even if I (stupidly) did do that, I honestly don’t think it would occur to me to open all the dryers, even if I thought something unusual — like, say, a human head — was rattling around in there. (Cusack’s lack of reaction here is just wrong. I don’t care if he used to be a cop. You find a decapitated head where you’re supposed to find socks, and the only possible proper response is to scream or, at the very least, yelp and back away.)

Also, if you’re going to open those dryers, you should at least restart the ones without human heads in them. Come on, man. That’s just common decency.

10E. Finally, you know what else I wouldn’t do? Play prison guard to a serial killer. Nope, not even if a cop or ex-cop asked me to. Not. Happening.

Ed’s response to Larry’s deeply legitimate concerns about such a task is this: “He’s unconscious, Larry. He’s tied to a post.” Presumably we’re supposed to think this is a valid argument, which, it’s totally not. If I was Larry, I’d be like, “Fuck you, buddy. You could have this guy blindfolded and hog-tied for all I care; I run a fucking one-star motel and will not be doing any guard duty on my own. Not to mention, the guy isn’t likely to be unconscious forever, and he got away the last time someone tied him to something, didn’t he? No, you go ahead and play police officer, buddy. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be drinking tequila and watching Wheel of Fortune, thanks.”

If only characters would speak sensibly. If only.

QUOTES:

Rhodes: “All right. You want a plan? Everybody want a plan? Here’s the plan, okay? No one’s gonna move. We’re gonna stay here, like this, in this room until dawn. No one leaves, no one moves. And if he tries anything, I’m gonna shoot him! And if there’s something out there and it comes in here, I’m gonna shoot it! And if anyone of us tries anything, I’m gonna shoot ‘em!”

Rhodes: “You got a name?
Paris: “Paris.”
Rhodes: “Paris, huh? Never been.”
Rhodes: “Well, you ain’t going tonight.”

Caroline: “Listen, I understand the bleeding person has a medical condition, okay? But so do I! My lung walls have . . . depleted cilia. If I stay here, I could asphyxiate!”

Larry: “I was scared — ”
Ed: “Why were you scared?”
Larry: “I thought you wouldn’t understand — ”
Ed: “No, no, no, I’m capable of understanding.”

Larry: “I’m not a murderer, godammit!”
Rhodes: “There’s a dead body in your freezer, Larry!”

CONCLUSIONS:

Yeah, this one has a lot of problems. I enjoy because I just do, but I couldn’t really in good conscience recommend it to anyone.

MVP:

John Hawkes

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C

MORAL:

Hm. You don’t have to be legally sane to be executed anymore? Or how about the one I’ve learned from virtually every time I’ve played Betrayal at House on the Hill: the killer is always, always the little kid.

The internet provides many things we once found elsewhere: rants, recipes, porn, personality quizzes. It’s the main place I look for movie news and trailers, so it’s pretty rare when I go to the theater and see a preview for something that’s not even on my radar. Such was the case many months ago when Mek and I went to see a movie (I’ve long since forgotten which one) and saw a trailer for Kingsman: The Secret Service. We turned to each other and were like, “What was that, and when do we get to watch it?”

Well, we watched it last week. And while I do have some problems with the movie, Kingsman is overall pretty damn fun.

SUMMARY:

Harry (Colin Firth) recruits Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a petty criminal and the son of a fallen colleague, for a shot at becoming a gentleman super spy. Meanwhile, Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) and his, er, particularly cutting associate Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) plot something appropriately fiendish. (If you’ve seen the movie, I’m sorry for the pun. No, that’s a lie, I’m not sorry at all.)

NOTES:

1. Lets begin with this movie’s strongest feature: the action.

MAN. The fight scenes in this movie are cartoonish, violent, fast-paced, and AWESOME. Like, intensely awesome. Just in case the capital letters aren’t indicative enough of how much I enjoyed this, let me be clear: one fight scene in this film has an extremely good chance of winning Best Fight Scene of 2015, and I say that knowing The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Terminator: Genisys are still to come. Some people deplore this level of gratuitous violence. I, on the other hand, welcome it with open arms.

2. There are, however, aspects of the film that I’m less enamored with. Namely, the female characters.

I know. I’m shocked too. Imagine my shocked face. Cause it’s shocked.

To be fair, Gazelle is okay. I mean, she’s more of a Badass Female Type, not an actual character, but she’s enjoyable enough to watch and she has a few funny exchanges with Valentine, so I’ll take her. But Roxy (Sophie Cookson) — a potential spy recruit pictured above — is so utterly bland that I yawned just looking at her. You know that one character who pops up in high school movies, who’s pretty and popular and so, so sweet and just happens to be dating King Douchebag? That’s basically Roxy; she’s just not dating King Douchebag. The majority of her role in this movie is to say things like, “Just leave him alone!” and “Don’t listen to him, Eggsy!” Because from almost the second we meet her, Roxy’s priorities seem to be less about becoming a Kingsman and more about making sure Eggsy’s precious feelings aren’t hurt. Vomit.

I can’t remember how many Kingsmen candidates go through the interview/training process, but I’m going to take a rough stab and say there are about ten. Ratio of male to female recruits? 8 to 2, and it’s no surprise when the female candidate who isn’t Roxy gets eliminated fast. (Sorry, I’m not even counting that shit as a spoiler because it’s ridiculously obvious who the final contenders for the position are.)

Other female characters include Eggsy’s stereotypical, victimized mother and the Princess. I have a lot to say about both, especially the Princess, but unfortunately that will have to wait until the Spoiler Section. For now, let me just say that neither exactly help a movie that’s already failing on the Worthwhile Female Characters scale.

3. And as much as I usually enjoy Samuel L. Jackson, I’m really not crazy about the lisp.

Now, I’ve seen that Valentine’s lisp was Jackson’s idea and I actually like the reasoning behind it, at least in theory. My problem is this: Jackson is not playing his typical Badass Motherfucker character. Valentine is a villain who causes great violence but can’t look upon it personally; he hates blood and is generally squeamish about getting his own hands dirty. And speech impediments are so often used in fiction to be synonymous with weakness, particularly when it comes to bad guys. Manly men and stone cold killers never have lisps; only sissy villains. You know, guys with mommy issues. If Jackson was playing Evil Nick Fury, I don’t think I’d mind it, but as is, I really wish he hadn’t used one.

4. Colin Firth is pretty great, though.

Millions of women swooned to Colin Firth when he manfully strode around the grounds in a wet shirt as the broody Mr. Darcy, but I came late to the Pride and Prejudice miniseries party and, frankly, enjoyed the Keira Knightley version more. (Yes, yes, I welcome your tomatoes and rage.) I did, of course, enjoy Colin Firth’s modern Mr. Darcy, particularly when he apologized for his rudeness and reindeer sweater, but it might have been his role in Love Actually that totally won me over on Firth’s charm. Still, the guy is an especially unlikely action movie star, so I was delighted to watch him in Kingsman, where he manages to retains all that posh charm from his previous films while just kicking the shit out of EVERYBODY. Fun performance and great casting here.

5. And our main star, Taron Egerton, is pretty solid too.

Eggsy is a funny and likable protagonist who made me laugh at several parts throughout the film. I’m completely unfamiliar with Egerton’s work apart from this, but I’d definitely be willing to watch him in more things.

6. This is, I believe, the fourth collaboration between Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, and considering their other films together were Stardust, Kick-Ass, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, I’m likely to follow any future movies they create with interest. I’m particularly curious about Jane Goldman because it’s pretty rare when you hear about a female writer in Hollywood, particularly one who’s working in action and comic movies. That kind of thing is exciting to see, although unfortunately doesn’t stop me from having problems with some of the female characters in their work.

In the larger discussion of filmography, though, Kingsman felt very reminiscent of Kick-Ass to me, particularly in terms of its action, choreography, tone, and music. The soundtrack was pretty awesome — they use some songs, like “Free Bird” or “Pomp and Circumstance” to hilarious effect. Funny story about the music, though: Kingsman begins with the song “Money For Nothing,” which immediately made me smile. Shit, I thought, I haven’t heard that song in ages. I should listen to it again when I get home. 

So later I’m at home, right, head-bobbing along to the song as I jot down some notes about the film, and either I’ve never heard the uncensored version before or this is just one of the many songs that I’ve never really noticed the lyrics to because suddenly I’m hearing “that little faggot with the earring and the makeup” and there’s like a cartoon SCREEEECH in my head, and I stop typing and am like, “Wait, WHAT?”

7. Finally, back to tone: like Kick-Ass, Kingsman has a lot of fun playing with tropes, only instead of superhero conventions, they’re playing with spy movie tropes. It’s actually a pretty enjoyable throwback to cheesy James Bond movies — one homage being the unfortunate exception — and while plagued with one or two plot conveniences, Kingsman is overall clever and funny and a pretty good time at the theater.

I just really wish I could change a few things about it.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

First things first: in one of the film’s earliest scenes, Lancelot (Jack Davenport) tries to rescue Professor Arnold (Mark Hamill). I’m mentioning this less because of the scene’s plot relevance and more because I didn’t know either of these actors would be in the movie and was quite happy to see both. In fact, I was all like, “Hi, Jack Davenport! I didn’t know you were going to be here!” And then roughly sixty seconds later, I was like, “Bye, Jack Davenport! It was nice seeing you before you got all bisected!”

Mark Hamill’s inclusion was particularly awesome for two reasons: one, cause it’s Mark Hamill, and two, Kingsman is apparently loosely based on a comic by Mark Millar, and in the comic Mark Hamill himself gets abducted. It’s a nice nod to the source material. Unfortunately for Professor Arnold, his fate isn’t much better than Lancelot’s: a chip implanted in his neck self-destructs, blowing up his head. I had no earthly idea at the time how much head-splodey carnage this scene was foreshadowing.

But backing up many, many years: Harry (or Galahad) feels guilt over the death of a new spy he recruited into the business, so he gives this medallion thing to a very young Eggsy and tells him he can use it anytime to call in a favor. Fast forward maybe fifteen years later, and Eggsy’s life isn’t going so hot, having dropped out of the marines and living at home with his mother, baby sister, and abusive stepfather.

The mom, in particularly bugs me, partially because her entire story is about waiting for a man (in this case, her son) to rescue her, and partially because she comes off as weirdly trashy, even though that’s not how she struck me at all when we first met her. I’m not saying your life can’t spiral downwards after you lose somebody, of course, but this . . . it kind of reads like her husband was the only thing saving her from being a useless sack of rags, and now that he’s dead, well, of COURSE she fell into a tragic situation like this. Single mothers making it work, ha. We all know that doesn’t happen.

I fully admit that I could be reading too much into this. But I find the mother’s complete lack of agency disturbing, particularly in a story about domestic abuse, and the transition from Grieving-But-Seemingly-Good-Parent to Ignoring-My-Baby’s-Tears-Because-Christ-I-Need-A-Cigarette-Parent seemed really jarring to me.

Anyway, Eggsy uses his favor to get out of jail after the most superbly unrealistic joyriding scene ever and gets recruited to compete for Lancelot’s now-open spot in the Kingsmen/Knights of the Round Table. (And I know this isn’t important, but I’ve gotta say that if you’re gonna base your entire secret spy agency on Arthurian mythology, don’t you think you’d spring a few extra bucks for an actual round table? I’m disappointed in you, gentlemen.)

Merlin (Mark Strong), using an odd Scottish accent that didn’t sound particularly consistent to my admittedly untrained American ears, warns the recruits that this will be the most dangerous job interview any of them have ever encountered. He hammers this in by having all of them write their names and next-of-kin addresses on body bags.

Still want to join?

Eggsy has one of my favorite reaction shots in the whole movie when he looks at everyone else, all like, “Uh, guys? Is everyone else seriously okay with this?” Nice Girl Roxy assures him that it’s just a scare tactic, but she seems to be wrong when the only other girl candidate is killed in their first test.

I say seemingly because of course Other Girl doesn’t really die, something I suspected early on but figured out for sure when they let King Douchebag live. (I refuse to look up his actual name. He doesn’t have enough character to merit a real name.) See, the competition has whittled down to three candidates, and they’re exactly the three you expect: Eggsy, Nice Girl Roxy, and King Douchebag. K.D objects to Eggsy because of his lower class status. (There’s a whole classism theme to this movie. It’s about as subtle as a bag of bricks to the head, but really, I didn’t mind it.) In the loyalty test, the candidates are knocked out, tied to train tracks (with a train hurtling towards them, naturally), and asked to give up their employers.

King Douchebag, of course, immediately sells out the Kingsmen, but not only do they let him live, they send him on his merry way with his memory fully intact, despite the fact that these guys totally have Amnesia Darts.

This told me two things:

1. The supposedly dead girl wasn’t dead after all because you don’t kill some recruits and not others, especially if the ones you let live are the ones who showed willingness to betray you.
2. The Kingsmen are idiots.

Honestly. If you’re not even going to use your Amnesia Darts on a spiteful kid who fails the LOYALTY TEST, how do you expect to keep your super spy agency a secret anyway? I simply don’t believe it. King Douchebag later shows up at an inopportune time to screw Eggsy over, but IMO, the real reason he doesn’t get his mind wiped after failing is because they’d have to do the same thing to Eggsy, as he also flunks out, and that would create serious plot problems with the movie. I know it sounds like a minor thing to complain about, but it’s actually a semi-serious plot convenience problem for me.

Meanwhile, Eggsy passes the loyalty test. Unfortunately, he still loses the Lancelot position because he refuses to shoot his dog.

See, the recruits all get a puppy at the beginning of their training, presumably to teach them responsibility or something? Shit, I can’t remember what BS reason they give for it. The point is, Mek and I are looking at each other, going, “Oh yeah, the recruits are totally gonna be forced to kill their dogs.” (Interestingly, this is also the Final Test that Cooper fails in Dog Soldiers, although — minor spoilers — since Liam Cunningham and his merry band of soldiers are actually first grade assholes and not gentlemanly at all, they kill their dogs for real, not just shoot them with blanks. Eggsy doesn’t find out about the blanks until later, of course.)

Meanwhile, it’s not all training and possible dog murder. Valentine and Gazelle are busy kidnapping celebrities, political figures, and a variety of other prominent rich people. Some of them return after agreeing to Valentine’s nefarious schemes, each with a chip implanted in their necks (like the ill-fated Professor). Others, like the Princess, are locked away where they can’t tell anyone about said nefarious schemes. It turns out that Valentine wants to save the planet by drastically reducing the population, which he plans to achieve via all those chips which, when activated, emit a Homicidal Motherfucker Impulse to try and kill the hell out of everyone around you.

They test this on a small church/hate group in America that’s basically the Westboro Baptist Church. Harry knows something is supposed to happen and goes to investigate. Before he can escape, though — and his little speech to the uber religious woman next to him is a thing of beauty — Valentine activates the chips.

And then Harry kills EVERYBODY.

You guys, this scene. This SCENE. This is one of the best fight scenes I have ever had to privilege to watch. Nothing could have prepared me for this glorious, wanton violence — and the thing was, I thought I was prepared for all the glorious, wanton violence. I knew going in that there was at least one scene where normal people were going to attack the hell out of each other (I figured it out from a review unrelated to the film), but holy SHIT, you guys. This scene alone makes this movie worth watching.

As I’m watching this thing of beauty, a distant part of my brain — whatever lobe is directly responsible for writing emotional H/C fanfic – starts thinking, Man, if Harry makes it out of this movie alive, he’s going to have some serious angst. Cause sure these particular churchgoers are all terrible people with terrible opinions, but they’re also all innocent people, and our mentor hero just killed the shit out of them.

Well, he doesn’t. Make it out alive, that is. Harry exits the church to come face to face with Valentine and instead of McDonalds, Harry gets a bullet to the head. I figured early on that there was a decent chance our dapper spy wasn’t surviving the movie, but the moment is still startlingly abrupt and I definitely had one of my “Jimmy, noooooo!” moments because Colin Firth is just seriously the best in this.

Arthur (Michael Caine) turns out to be evil, surprising no one, so it’s up to Eggsy, Nice Girl Roxy, and Not-So-Scottish Merlin to save the day. And I should say here that I do like the fact that Nice Girl Roxy becomes Lancelot — I just wish she got more to do. See, the plan is that Eggsy and Merlin will sneak into Valentine’s little paradise for all the celebrities who joined in on the Die, Poor People, Die plan. Meanwhile, Nice Girl Roxy has to conquer her fear of heights by going up into space and taking down the satellite that Valentine needs to activate the chips worldwide.

Really? Must I?

Which sounds important but it’s really not and mostly just serves to sideline her from all the real action. Better luck next time, Lancelot.

Then Eggsy gets to dress up super suave because to sneak in, he has to pretend to be Arthur. (Thankfully, Valentine doesn’t personally greet all his arriving guests, otherwise their plan would be totally fucked from the start.) He doesn’t look half-bad actually, even with his giant gentleman glasses.

Unfortunately, he’s discovered almost immediately because King Douchebag is naturally there. (Seriously, people. AMNESIA DARTS.)

In what’s probably the second best scene in the movie, Merlin manages to hack into all those chips and activate the self-destruct button. “Pomp and Circumstance” plays as hundreds of heads explode into colorful confetti — it is the funniest damn thing. I can’t even tell you.

But even with all the collaborators dead, the world is still at risk. Nice Girl Roxy took down her satellite (and pretended to have trouble as she fell back to Earth, as if anyone seriously believed she was in any real danger), but Valentine quickly borrows another satellite. Just like that, all the innocent people on Earth start killing each other again, so Eggsy goes to kill Gazelle and Valentine. Merlin seems free to go help Eggsy with that but instead opts to chill on the plane because of . . . Reasons?

One of the good-turned-suddenly-homicidal people is, of course, Eggsy’s mom. I assumed that she would at least get to attack her abusive husband during this worldwide brawl, but for some reason he’s entirely absent, and we just see her try to kill her baby daughter instead. The women roles in this movie are so disappointing.

Eggsy manages to kill both Gazelle and Valentine. Valentine isn’t hard, as he’s looking away from the violence and doesn’t see that he’s in danger. (He looks away when he shoots Harry in the head too, and despite my sorrow for Colin Firth, I was amused when Gazelle was all like, “Isn’t killing great?” and Valentine was all, “Christ no, this is horrible,” and Gazelle is like, “Wait, what?”)

Then Eggsy goes back to the Princess.

Le sigh.

So, yeah. Eggsy discovered the Princess — she’s an actual Swedish princess, BTW, in case that wasn’t clear — a little earlier, but was too busy saving the world to let her out right then. The Princess — who has seemed like a perfectly normal person thus far — suddenly says, “If you save the world, we can do it in the asshole.”

And . . . look, it’s a funny line? I mean, I did laugh. Eggsy’s very blank-faced, “I will be right back,” was a good reaction too, but I was really hoping the Princess was just lying to give him extra motivation to get her the hell out of there or something because the whole princess in the castle thing is not a trope we really need to keep going. But of course she does have sex with him, and not only that, but we’re treated to a ridiculously gratuitous shot of the Princess’s ass. And hey, I’m actually not the feminist usually arguing against gratuitous nudity (I just want more equal opportunity eye candy, that’s all) but this was just ridiculous. In a film already chockfull of subpar female characters, the Princess is just the worst. Her whole character basically boils down to being a Sex Trophy.

And guys, I do get it, that it’s a James Bond homage and all, but I don’t care. Just because it’s an homage doesn’t mean I have an obligation to like it.

And — well, that’s basically it. Eggsy, now not just a man but a Kingsman, gets to save his mom and beat up his stepdad, which is a nice callback to an earlier scene with Harry, although it still keeps the mom from having even the slightest shred of agency in this film. Presumably, Eggsy, Nice Girl Roxy, and Merlin all continue saving the world, and now that Arthur’s seat is open, maybe we can continue our charge towards modernity by adding another woman to the round table, or a guy who isn’t actually white, or hey, what about a woman who isn’t actually white?

Come on, potential sequel. If you ever get made, I will expect some diversity from you.

QUOTES:

Harry: “I’m a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. Hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon, madam.”

Harry: “Boys, I’ve had a rather emotional day, so whatever your beef with Eggsy is — and I’m sure it’s well-founded — I’d appreciate it if you could just leave us in peace until I’ve finished this lovely pint of Guinness.”

Harry: “Did you see the film Trading Places?”
Eggsy: “No.”
Harry: “How about Nikita? . . . Pretty Woman? . . . all right, my point is that the lack of a silver spoon has set you on a certain path you needn’t stay on. If you’re prepared to adapt and learn, you can transform.”
Eggsy: “Oh yeah, like in My Fair Lady.”
Harry: “Well, you’re full of surprises. Yes, like My Fair Lady.”

Eggsy: “What does this do? Electrocute you?”
Harry: “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a hand grenade.”
Eggsy: “Shut up.”

Lancelot: “I suppose asking for a cup of sugar would be going too far.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Totally enjoyable film. Amazing action sequences. I’ll probably own it on DVD for the church scene alone. But I’m still knocking it down a letter grade, mostly because of the bullshit female characters. Sorry, guys, but you had plenty of opportunities, and it’s 2015. I expect better.

MVP:

Colin Firth

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

Being a hero isn’t about what class you’re born into. Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter: if you fight to save the world, you apparently deserve a piece of ass at the end.

Netflix’s Daredevil comes out tomorrow and nerds ’round the world are pretty jazzed about it — all except me, it seems. Don’t get me wrong: I do plan to watch the series. I even figure I’ll probably like it, assuming all the buzz it’s been generating for the past few weeks is worth a damn. But I’m just not as excited as I’d like to be, partially because I was underwhelmed by the first trailer, and partially because I’m — perhaps unfairly — annoyed by EW’s recent review, where they refer to it as a superhero show “specifically for grown-ups,” unlike all those other “juvenile” superhero TV shows that I’m passionate about. It’s interesting when a review makes you feel like a scolded child for enjoying something.

Anyway. New Daredevil got Mekaela and I talking about old Daredevil, naturally. People are eager to talk shit about that movie, and it’s not like I loved it, either, but I found myself wondering — was it really as bad as everyone said? People can be prone to over exaggeration, after all, and Ben Affleck’s been a pretty easy target for the last fifteen years or so. Then again, that’s basically what I thought about Fantastic Four, too (sans Affleck, obviously), until I rewatched it last year and discovered, No, it really IS a pretty crappy movie. I felt like I needed to give Daredevil the same chance.

My verdict?

Well, let me put it this way: Daredevil the TV show? It can’t possibly be any worse.

DISCLAIMERS:

This is a terrible movie that came out the year I graduated high school. As such, there will be SPOILERS throughout this review, and I’m not in the least bit sorry about it.

SUMMARY:

Matt Murdoch (Ben Affleck) is a stupidly chivalrous lawyer by day and a merciless vigilante by night. He’s also blind, but the accident that caused his blindness helpfully enhanced his remaining senses, giving him a kind of sonar vision. Anyway, his life isn’t going all that great until he meets the beautiful Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner). It’s all love in the time of superheroes until Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan) hires an assassin, Bullseye (Colin Farrell), to start killing people.

NOTES:

1. Seriously, guys. This is SO MUCH WORSE than I remember it being.

A lot of it’s Affleck. I won’t lie about that. It’s certainly not ALL Affleck — Daredevil, like Batman & Robin, has very little actually working in its favor, and hanging the entire flop on the leading man’s head seems unfair in the extreme. The script is just atrocious and gives Affleck almost nothing to work with. It’s important to acknowledge that.

It’s also fair to acknowledge that this movie may showcase the worst acting of Ben Affleck’s career, and guys, I’ve seen Phantoms, so you know this shit is bad. Affleck basically has one expression the entire movie, and it’s miserable. I mean, Matt Murdoch is supposed to be unhappy, sure, but this doesn’t work. I assume Affleck is shooting for broody and conflicted; instead, he mostly just ends up at mopey. (It’s also very hard to shake the idea that Affleck isn’t really acting here, which makes me a little sad. You want to imagine acting as a generally joyful experience, don’t you?)

But yes. It’s a pretty poor performance. Nearly every line delivery is flat. The voiceover especially — my God. If I ever make a Top 10 Worst Movie Voiceovers list, this one is definitely going on it. And while I am most certainly not an expert on blindness . . . I watch Affleck in this movie and I just don’t buy it at all.

Ben Affleck’s best moments in this movie are probably whenever he’s flirting with Jennifer Garner. And let me be clear — these are not good scenes, which I’ll discuss further in the following notes. But the actors, perhaps unsurprisingly, have decent chemistry with one another, and Affleck seems the most at ease in her presence. If they had actually been provided decent material, perhaps their relationship might have been romantic instead of, you know, creepy and ridiculous.

2. Let’s discuss Matt Murdoch and Elektra Natchios’s meet-cute, or as I prefer to think of it, That Time Where Daredevil is a Total Creeper.

Okay, so Elektra and her Stupidly Fake Green Eyes walk into this restaurant when Matt and his lawyer buddy, Foggy (Jon Favreau), are hanging out. (Foggy gives Matt a bottle of mustard and pretends its honey, which proves less that he’s terrible and more that he’s incredibly stupid. Seriously, the mustard bottle is shaped like, well, a mustard bottle, and the honey bottle is shaped like a bear. You don’t need super senses to see past that trick, genius.) Matt immediately smells Elektra’s beauty because we all know that beautiful people smell like rose petals and joy, while ugly people smell like sweaty jockstraps smeared with tuna. Matt gets up to hit on her, his primary flirtation technique apparently Passive Aggressive Shaming. Elektra doesn’t give her name before quickly leaving, and that really should be all that happens.

Instead, Matt also leaves the restaurant and follows her like a creepy stalker. When Elektra catches him, Matt just says, in a charming and reasonable tone, that he only wants her name. You know. Like he’s entitled to it. Like that’s absolutely an acceptable reason to follow a woman out of a restaurant and start trailing her around the city. Unfortunately, neither Elektra nor anyone else in this movie calls Matt out on his totally disturbing behavior, but to prove that she’s a Tough Girl, the two spar like total weirdos in the middle of some playground.

It’s not the saddest fight scene I’ve ever seen, but . . . it’s pretty sad.

I’m aware that fight scenes have probably come a long way in the last twelve years, but this is kind of ridiculous. It is so SLOW. Fight scenes this slow don’t belong in movies that were filmed after 1990. The Matrix came out four years prior to Daredevil; this movie has absolutely no excuse. It’s like Matt and Elektra are fighting in slow motion. Point of interest, this is also how they’ll have sex later in the film.

3. The best thing I can say about Matt and Elektra’s relationship is that no one says the ‘L’ word. Which THANK GOD because they’ve known each other for like five seconds, and there’s only so much I can take. Still, even without saying it, these two act like they’ve been in love for years, which is completely and utterly ridiculous.

A Timeline of Matt and Elektra’s Super Love

Matt stalks Elektra in order to win her name. Elektra gives him said name because all she’s ever really wanted was a worthy opponent who she could still best in combat.

Elektra sends an invite to this near total stranger for her father’s fancy dinner party, which he doesn’t plan to attend because she’s too good for him and he’s so tragic and blah blah blah.

Elektra somehow finds Matt walking on a random street. He immediately takes her up to his special rooftop spot so he can see her beautiful face in the rain.

He almost leaves to fulfill his Vigilante Duty, but she persuades him to have slow-motion sex with her instead.

Matt does go to the party, and they flirt a little before being rudely interrupted by Elektra’s family drama, which is another way of saying that Elektra’s father is murdered, and she mistakenly believes Daredevil committed the crime.

Elektra stabs Daredevil but instantly realizes her mistake when she finds out that he’s Matt Murdoch after all, presumably because she knows him so well after their one-and-a-half date. It never even occurs to her that Matt could’ve killed her father, which I find hilarious. Anyway, she goes after Bullseye and is quickly killed, so Murdoch can be all, “Nooooo! I didn’t think my life could possibly get any worse, and then my soulmate was shoved in a refrigerator! Curse you, Bullseye! CURSE YOU!”

4. It sucks, too, that Elektra gets her ass so thoroughly handed to her. It’d be one thing if Elektra and Bullseye had this awesome fight and she ultimately lost. I’d get that. But Bullseye kicks the shit out of her, like, it is zero contest, which is genuinely disappointing. Not to mention bizarre — how is it that Elektra defeats Daredevil twice but can barely put  up a hint of resistance to Bullseye, while Daredevil handily takes out both Bullseye and Kingpin? That is some wonky shit. (I suppose, to be fair, a sniper does give a timely assist with Bullseye.)

5. But I have to admit something now, no matter how much geek cred I instantly lose: I find Colin Farrell as Bullseye kind of delightful.

To say that he’s good would be a lie, of course. Farrell’s performance is insanely over-the-top; he does the vast majority of his acting by bugging out his eyes. And if Daredevil was an intentionally campy movie, I don’t think this would necessarily be an issue. The problem here is that Daredevil clearly wants to be dark and tragic and can’t even remotely stick the landing. The story is ridiculous, the villains are silly as hell, and the writing is so, SO TERRIBLE. None of it’s particularly good on its own, and thrown together, it’s a hot mess of ludicrous proportions.

Still. That scene where Bullseye looks totally panicked on the plane, like his brain might explode if that harmless old lady keeps yakking at him? Man, that shit still makes me giggle. Like you’ve never fantasized about killing an annoying passenger on a plane with a peanut before. Don’t front.

6. Overall, the plot is pretty weak, particularly in how it feels like the story doesn’t really start until Matt meets Elektra, which is about 33 minutes into the movie. Seriously, coming up with the earlier plot summary was actually kind of hard — the movie spends a lot of time setting up the story and introducing all the various superhero tropes, but the actual plot itself? Thin. Infuriatingly thin, like when you find a super cute shirt at the store, only the shirt turns out to be an extra small instead of the large you were promised by the lying liar of a clothes hanger, and of course it’s the only one left, and you’re like, “Holy Jesus, maybe this would have fit me in the second grade, you know, before I started developing breasts.” It’s just like that, and I totally wasn’t venting about every shopping trip I’ve ever taken ever ever ever.

Daredevil also fails when it comes to the common superhero dilemma: To Kill or Not to Kill.

So, Matt Murdoch begins firmly on the side of killing people, as evidenced when he throws some skeezy rapist (Paul Ben-Victor) in front of a fucking train. Hilariously, no one seems very bothered by this; like, I get the cops don’t want to acknowledge he exists and all, but they’re ignoring some crazy huge evidence to do so, like not only does Daredevil leave a calling card, but it is literally on fire.

And the only person who does believe in Daredevil is an investigative journalist namde Ben Urich (Joe Pantoliano), who apparently is also Daredevil’s No. 1 fan, since upon uncovering Matt’s secret identity, fails to turn him in or even bring up basic concerns, like, “Have you ever thought about not murdering people?” I’m not wildly sympathetic to rapists myself, but there is almost zero discussion about how the hero of our movie occasionally, violently kills people. The only person who argues against it is a priest, and come on; he’s a priest, and he’s only got maybe two minutes of screen time, anyway.

What makes all this even funnier is how, at the end of the movie, Daredevil learns the Will to NOT Kill. Like I said earlier, this is not a particularly original arc — hell, it’s Oliver Queen’s ongoing dilemma on Arrow — but what’s fascinating here is that Matt Murdoch mostly just skips having an arc at all and comes to the morally correct conclusion without bothering to actually go through the lesson. Seriously, a priest says he can’t condone murder, and one time Daredevil accidentally scares a little boy and tries to reassure him that he’s not the bad guy. That’s it. That’s all. The amount of screen time devoted to Matt figuring out that Killing is Wrong is under a minute. (Also, at the end, Daredevil says that with Elektra’s help, he didn’t just save the city; he saved himself. And — what? HOW?)

And the best part — I’m talking the cherry on the homicide hot fudge sundae best part — is this: Daredevil takes the Better Path and chooses not to kill Kingpin, the man who murdered his father, approximately five minutes after he throws Bullseye through a fucking church window to his doom. And you can’t argue this is self-defense or anything; Bullseye is on his hands and knees, literally begging for mercy, when Daredevil picks him up and tosses his ass out. It’s, what? A four story drop? At least? Bullseye’s body smashes into Joe Pantoliano’s car, thankfully not killing Joe Pantoliano. Meanwhile, Daredevil leaps from rooftop to rooftop, presumably thinking, You know, Father Everett was right. Maybe murder IS wrong. (Hysterically, Father Everett — who has just watched Matt kill someone in the House of God — is suddenly like, “You go, dude! Annihilate that fucker!”)

(Although apparently — as I just found out by glancing at Wikipedia — Bullseye is supposedly still alive? I guess someone cut a later scene with Bullseye in the hospital, recovering from his injuries with his magic aim still intact. And this is where I declare, “Bullshit, sir.” One, it is incredibly unlikely Bullseye would live through that. Two, there’s no legitimate reason that Daredevil would suspect Bullseye could live through that, meaning Daredevil still tried to murder that asshole. And in my mind, did. There will be no convincing me otherwise; that dude be dead.)

7. Finally, let me just go over my list of random, miscellaneous shit that needs to be discussed:

7A. Seriously, that voiceover. There’s very little to like about this movie, but the dreadful narration may actually be the absolute worse thing. The script is horrific. It is chock full of shitty cliches and wastes a lot of time telling you things that you can already see. Adult Matt tells us (in a voice utterly devoid of inflection) that he trained to be a Man without Fear as we watch Little Matt training. Adult Matt tells us that he gained a kind of sonic sight as we see a pretty clear representation of Little Matt seeing the world with his ears. Eventually, it’s like, “Dude! Stop giving me exposition for things that I am currently watching!”

I figured that the awful narration would finally go away after the first twenty minutes of prologue. I was wrong. I was so horribly wrong.

7B. Oh, about the whole Man Without Fear thing? Seriously, writers. Shut the hell up. Yes, I’m aware that it’s the superhero’s nickname from the comics, but the way you use it here? Bullshit. The father and son training to be fearless was pretty hokey from the get-go, but then suddenly everyone’s calling Daredevil “The Man Without Fear” any real explanation? Please. Work harder.

7C. Here’s a question — mostly because I don’t feel like looking it up right now: did Daredevil really sleep in a sensory deprivation tank in the comics?

I mean, I get the idea — I guess — but this seems like a really good way to accidentally drown in your sleep. Who finally killed Daredevil? Bullseye? Kingpin? Nope, it was his water-filled sleeping casket. Whoops.

7D. Another question — does the movie ever give a reason that Joe Pantoliano wanted to talk to Matt Murdoch anyway? I mean, this is well before the dude finds out about the cane — is it just because Murdoch was involved in scummy rapist’s court case? Maybe I missed some dialogue because I was too busy groaning at the shitty narration or something, but I was never clear about this — and it is kind of important because if Pantoliano never tries to talk to Murdoch, he never puts it together that Murdoch is Daredevil and thus never warns Daredevil that Elektra is in danger. (Admittedly, Elektra ends up dead either way until the sequel, which if memory serves is actually even more appalling than this movie.)

7E. Speaking of that court case — why in the hell is the court room green?

Seriously, this is the kind of colored filter that’s usually reserved for morgues or alien bunkers. What in God’s name is it doing in this scene?

7F. I do get why people are worried about Ben Affleck as Batman, considering his Daredevil does kind of come off as a pretty piss poor imitation of the Dark Knight. I would definitely prefer it if Bruce Wayne could have more than one facial expression during the whole movie. That being said, I stand by my original claim: Daredevil was made over ten years ago, Affleck has grown as an actor, and superhero movies have seriously grown as a genre. I still have some reservations, but I’m willing to give the guy a chance.

7G. I do hate Daredevil’s costume, though. There’s something about the red here that doesn’t quite work for me, although I can’t quite place what it is. I also despise those horns. And I wonder if the costume was particularly hard to walk in because Ben Affleck moves kind of funny in this movie.

7H. There is something about the soundtrack that is super intrusive. I don’t object to the music itself — hell, I like some of the songs — but they pop up at weird times, like “and song . . . HERE!” It’s kind of hard to describe, but it keeps taking me out of the film. (Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.)

7H. Oh shit, I forgot about the CGI! (Seriously, I wouldn’t have made Note 7 this many parts if I’d realized how much shit I still had to talk about.) Cause, guys. GUYS. The special effects are BULLSHIT. The CGI in this movie is primarily limited to city landscapes and buildings, but it is hilariously bad. I would have thought mid-late 90’s for sure, not early 2000’s.

7I. Finally — and I don’t know why — but the scene where Matt Murdoch’s super bitchy ex-girlfriend breaks up with him over the answering machine? Mek and I cracked UP at that. “Are you there? Of course you’re not there. You’re never there. At least, not for me.”

It’s okay, Ex-Girlfriend. I’m sure you’ll find a man who returns your phone calls, sleeps in a normal bed, and doesn’t determine beauty purely by scent.

QUOTES:

Matt: “Stop hitting me.”

Matt: “I’d rather just end it before it starts.”
Foggy: “That’s gotta be some kind of record, Matt. You just completely bypassed the whole relationship phase and went right into the breakup.”

Elektra: “Good answer.”
Matt: “I thought that might be the right answer.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Bad. Just bad all around.

MVP:

Hate me all you want, but I’m giving it to Colin Farrell. Though I do like Michael Clarke Duncan too. He’s also campy, but in a less bulging eye way. His reaction to Daredevil’s secret identity is kind of the best. Oh, hell, just give it to both of them.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C-

MORAL:

Killing is WRONG when it comes to avenging your father. But it’s not so bad if you’re avenging this lady you slept with that one time.

So. I am way, way behind on my 2015 Best Picture Winner Challenge. Thus far, I’ve only watched one film and I didn’t care for it at all. I thought maybe I’d reward myself with a movie that — hopefully — would be more my speed, but I took too long in doing so, and before I knew it, spring had come. Which meant only one thing: I had to watch Gone With the Wind.

See, knowing that Gone with the Wind is a four-hour American epic, Mek and I decided to make an Event out of it: an indoor Easter picnic. We spread a blanket out over the carpet and ate classy finger foods like lunch meats and cheese slices and Bagel Bites. (Briefly, we considered classing it up for real, but I don’t much like cucumber sandwiches, and Mekaela chose Martinelli’s in wine glasses over actual wine, so that was basically that.) I put on my petticoat and we both wore our fancy hats and it was, all in all, a pretty good time.

But maybe we should have gotten real booze because oh my God this MOVIE.

DISCLAIMER:

To my mother: Mama, if you read this, I’m sorry. I know how much you love this movie, and I will say some nice things about it. Just possibly not very many.

To everyone else: this movie came out in 1939. SPOILERS abound.

SUMMARY:

The melodramatic life and times of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), a spoiled Southern belle who finds her courage, greed, and — I guess — love in and after the Civil War. Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) also shows up periodically to flirt like a scoundrel or act like an ass.

NOTES:

1. Before I get into the movie itself, I feel like I should more properly set the stage.

I had a great deal of fun flitting around in that petticoat. Mekaela, meanwhile, chose to color-coordinate her fancy hat with her purple pajamas. Clearly, between the two of us, we are the future of fashion.

Alas, the cats would not wear any matching fancy hats of their own — such infrequently cooperative creatures, cats — but they did have a great deal of fun with our picnic basket.

A week later, and we still haven’t had the heart to put up that basket. Bane and Nygma keep climbing in there for naps. It’s adorable.

2. Now that I’m through with the blatant kitty cuteness, though, let’s move on to the actual film. I think I would like to begin my cinematic blasphemy with this question: holy fuck, what is wrong with everyone? Gone with the Wind is many things, but it is NOT a romantic film.

We’ll go into more detail about each of these points later, but if it’s been a while since you’ve seen this classic romance, let me just remind you of some of the things that take place besides all the flirting:

Marital Rape
Dead Children
Spite Marriages
Stealing Your Sister’s Fiancee
Domestic Disputes That Lead to Miscarriages
Everyone Treating Their Partners Like Shit

If I’m supposed to find any of this passionate and stirring . . . well, I guess that explains why I’m still happily single.

3. But maybe I should back up. I’m discovering that Gone With the Wind is sort of an unwieldy film to tackle — there is, after all, a great deal of material to go over.

As I’ve already complained groaned wept said, Gone with the Wind is roughly four hours long, and though Scarlett sometimes makes me wanna hit my head against wall, I didn’t have any real big problems with the first two hours. (Well. Other than the horrific racist stereotypes, but we’ll get to those shortly.) I felt like the story was building to something. I was interested to see how our silly, spoiled protagonist would grow — and she did grow, at least for a short time. The first fifteen minutes or so in Hour 3 where Scarlett kills the Union soldier who comes into her house, and she and Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) have to get rid of the body?

Man, I adored that scene. Not only did it quickly fulfill Scarlett’s promise to “lie, cheat, steal, or kill,” (which, upon hearing, I was immediately like, “Okay, all that shit better come true”), but it was awesome to see another turn in the relationship of these two women who were once sorta-enemies (even if Melanie never actually realized it). I really wanted these two to be genuine friends after this. In fact, I was shipping the two of them pretty hard. (I support a surprising amount of ships in this story.)

And I’ll be honest — a big chunk of my problem with Gone With the Wind is that I kind of want it to become Fried Green Tomatoes. You know, with more petticoats. And that’s not entirely fair because clearly no one ever intended for this story to turn out as Fried Green Tomatoes — but I’m just desperately unhappy with what it actually became.

Hour 3 is okay — Scarlett does some deeply awful things, sure, but they’re done in the service of saving Tara and never going hungry again, so they work for me because they’re consistent with her character arc. But I think the pacing seriously starts to suffer when Scarlett marries Rhett Butler, and sweet Jesus, Hour 4 is such insane melodrama — and not the fun Melrose Place kind of melodrama, but awful, awful shit. Hour 4 is what breaks Gone with the Wind for me.

4. But let’s go back to Hour 1. This is how we begin Gone with the Wind.

Yeah, this is a problem for me. Of course, this movie was made in 1939. Romanticizing the antebellum South probably wasn’t particularly controversial back then. Hell, I’m not sure it’s all that controversial now — I sometimes get a little tired of Hollywood’s love affair with the Confederacy, particularly when you hear news stories about the various states who want to ban AP US History courses because they want to pretend that America wasn’t partially built on blood. But holy shit, people. Look at that language. This is the age of gallantry, of knights and their ladies fair? We’re going to address slavery in a tone of wistful nostalgia? I mean, Jesus. That’s some scary shit right there.

5. The stereotypical black characters are also, well. Upsetting. I know there’s a lot of mixed feelings on Mammy and Hattie McDaniel’s career in general, but I also think she put a lot of force and character into that performance, and the fact that she actually won Best Supporting Actress for it — I mean, there aren’t words for how huge that is. I can’t see a lot of shame in that role.

Prissy, on the other hand.

Let me clear: I don’t believe that shame belongs to Butterfly McQueen at all; the shame in its entirety should lie with the writers and directors of Gone with the Wind. But holy God, is watching Prissy painful. She is a cringing, lying, idiotic mess of a character, and a horrifying reflection of how white people saw (and, in too many cases, see) black people, as not only inferior but . . . but subhuman.

6. But let’s move on to something a little more lighthearted than problematic messaging and institutionalized racism. This era did have one thing going for it, and that one thing is fashion.

Man, you guys. The costumes in this movie are amazing. Scarlett’s wardrobe alone, I mean, damn. I’d wear that dress above in a heartbeat — it might’ve been my favorite in the whole movie, even more than her spectacular green curtain dress. (Between this and The Sound of Music, I guess the lesson here is that I really need to learn how to sew. My creation, unfortunately, would probably turn out more like this.) Admittedly, I don’t know what I’d wear the dress to, exactly, but still. We can’t all be practical in our desires, can we? And I must confess, I’m mildly delighted by the idea of grocery shopping in a dress that could fill the entire width of an aisle. “Where am I going in this fine outfit? Oh, just to Lucky’s. I need to pick up some canned chili for dinner. Also, Pop Tarts. Can’t miss out on the essentials.”

7. Also, for whatever problems I have with Gone with the Wind, acting isn’t really one of them. In fact, I’m still having trouble deciding who I want to give MVP too.

Vivien Leigh gets a lot of the acclaim and, in my opinion, rightly so — Scarlett is not a deeply likable character, and yet — up until Hour 4, anyway — I find her an engaging lead. Flawed, certainly. I absolutely want to pelt her with terrible Easter candy, like Peeps, which are obviously the Devil’s food. But that I am invested in her character at all, that I find any sympathy for her spoiled, silly ass, well, I would put that down to Leigh’s strong performance. And — not for nothing — I didn’t catch her British accent once.

And of course Clark Gable himself is charming as hell.

In a way, I suppose it’s no real surprise that Scarlett and Rhett’s relationship is considered one of the great romances in cinematic history. They do have remarkable chemistry with one another, after all, and I really did get a kick out of watching their antagonistic flirting. Let’s be real here: Rhett Butler is basically Han Solo in the Civil War, and who doesn’t love that? (Up until that dread fourth hour, anyway, when Rhett’s shitty behavior is too awful for even Gable’s near endless charm to overcome.) Plus, Gable has chemistry with everyone — I really loved Rhett’s relationship with both Mammy and Melanie. In fact, there were a number of scenes in this movie where I kind of hoped Rhett and Melanie would get together at the end. In case you needed more cinematic blasphemy.

(Also, this: I went to Archive of Our Own in search of either Melanie/Rhett or Melanie/Scarlett fanfiction and found absolutely bupkis. Everyone’s OTP is, for once, both a het romance and the traditional pairing. Fanfiction writers, I’m a little disappointed in you.)

Actually, it’s Olivia de Havilland herself that I feel gets overlooked.

If Leigh has the challenge of making a terrible person sympathetic, then de Havilland has the challenge of making the Nice Girl not syrupy and boring. And there’s no doubt about the fact that Melanie is the Nice Girl. She never turns on Scarlett, ever; it’s like she’s simply incapable of thinking the worst in people, which is not actually a character trait that I particularly admire in real or fictional people. I should at the very least find her a little pathetic — but I actively like Melanie. Maybe it’s that one scene with Scarlett and the Union soldier that does it, the one where she comes down the stairs, sickly and frightened but also with a sword in her hand. She may not make me laugh the way Rhett does, but she still might be my favorite character in the whole movie. Melanie’s only Fourth Hour problem is that she dies. I guess you can’t really blame her for that one.

8. And then there’s Ashley (Leslie Howard).

Honestly, I think most of my problems with this movie have to do with this guy.

See, in the beginning, Scarlett is infatuated with Ashley and is certain that he loves her as well, despite the fact he’s getting engaged to Melanie. Scarlett pretty much throws herself at him, a proposal he politely rejects. And seriously — take a shot, people. Scarlett throws herself at Ashley, what? Three more times in this movie? It’s insane. At the beginning, Scarlett is young and immature and makes intensely stupid decisions, like responding to this rejection by spitefully deciding to marry Ashley’s cousin. (Lucky for her, Charles dies in the war.) But she’s sixteen and I suppose I can forgive her for it, even if I feel like I personally had better common sense at sixteen. But Scarlett stays in love with Ashley for a VERY long period of time — twelve years, I believe? That’s what Google is telling me anyway; I’ll admit to initially thinking it was fifteen or twenty years.

And the thing is, I have absolutely no idea why Scarlett fell in love with Ashley in the first place, much less why she stayed in love with him for over a decade. Ashley has next to no personality, no apparent sense of humor, no real defining character traits. He is the blandest of bland love interests. Also? He’s not particularly attractive. I mean, the guy’s not ugly, and obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, but I don’t think anyone would argue that this dude is so Joseph Morgan or Jensen Ackles levels of hot that it somehow makes up for his total lack of personality. Hell, even if Ashley had been played by someone unfairly gorgeous like Tom Hardy or Idris Elba, I mean, come on. Ashley has still said NO for 12 YEARS. Rejection sucks for everyone and I appreciate that Scarlett isn’t a quitter, but by the end of the movie, this is just equal parts ridiculous and pathetic.

Mind you, Scarlett is supposed to think that Ashley loves her too, that it’s only his marital duty to Melanie (and not actual feeling) that has kept him away. She only discovers at the very end of the film that Ashley actually loved Melanie all along, which apparently causes her to realize that she really loves Rhett after all, or something like that. Which, what total shit. Seriously, you shouldn’t realize you love someone only when another dude’s like, “Actually, I never wanted to marry you in the first place.” I feel pretty bad for Rhett here, and I don’t even like Rhett at this point in the movie.

Also, who CARES if Ashley loved Melanie or not? Regardless of his motivations, he was still pretty clear about the whole ‘I’m Not Going to Leave Her’ plan. I get that the heart wants what it wants and that intentions matter, but for Christ’s sake, people. Actions matter too.

9. And the thing is — I’m okay with the fact that attaining Ashley is Scarlett’s driving motivation for the first two hours. Sure, it’s maddening — Girl Pines After Guy is not really my favorite type of story — but it works. She’s immature and frivolous and she imagines that this one entirely boring guy is the most important thing in her life. Fine.

But once she’s been through the horrors of war, once she’s delivered Melanie’s baby on her own (Prissy hardly counts) and makes it through a dangerous and devastated countryside back to her own home? Ashley should no longer be her driving motivation. Too much has happened. She’s grown up. Scarlett’s driving motivation for the rest of the movie should be to keeping her promise to God that she’ll never go hungry again.

I’m not saying she can’t have feelings for Ashley. She can. You can’t turn off your heart, I get that. I could even have dealt with one last seduction attempt (even though I heartily rolled my eyes when she did so — and that wasn’t even the last attempt). But after that, that’s it. It’s time to move on, not just because I want her to but because I think the story needs her to. I mean, clearly I’ve been outvoted by time, God, and everyone, but still. Gone With the Wind doesn’t have to be Fried Green Tomatoes, but it’s hard to hold onto any respect or even much interest in a character whose primary goal in life has been the exact same since she was sixteen and an idiot.

10. And it’s especially hard when this tale of unrequited love spirals into pure ugly melodrama.

So, here’s a rundown of what happens: Scarlett is attacked while traveling alone, and her second husband, Frank, is killed when he and some other men go to get justice and avenge her honor or something. Extremely shortly thereafter, Rhett proposes to her and it’s kind of romantic, I guess — as much as a proposal can be when the guy mocks the hell out of the woman he’s proposing to, and the woman admits that she’s in love with another man and that she mostly says yes because of the money. I do feel a little bad for Rhett because he obviously does love Scarlett and she repeatedly treats him like shit, but seriously, she straight up tells him that she’ll never love him, and he thinks, what? He can just kiss that away? Rhett, you’re an asshole. You absolutely knew what you were walking into, buddy — marrying someone with the belief that you can change them over time is just stupid. My sympathies are limited.

Anyway, they do seem happy for a short while, but then Scarlett remembers that she loves Ashley and it all quickly goes to hell. She has a kid, Bonnie Blue, who Rhett adores but Scarlett doesn’t seem to want. (I suppose that’s up to interpretation. She has, like, one scene with the kid.) She refuses to have any more children or sleep with Rhett. Then she ends up kissing Ashley, which everyone finds out about. Melanie, bless her soul, never believes it, but Rhett sure does — he forces her to go to Melanie’s party in this red gown, having her basically dress the part of a whore.

The whole thing is squicky and terrible, and it’s not going to get any better.

Rhett gets drunk that night, and the two argue again. This time Rhett threatens to get Ashley out of Scarlett’s mind by smashing her skull in. He doesn’t do that, which is good, I guess. Unfortunately, what he does instead is tell her that they’re having sex, and when she says no and fights back, he physically restrains her and carries her upstairs. So yeah, Rhett totally rapes Scarlett. But it’s clearly meant to be okay because the next morning she’s all smiling and content because all she really needed was a good fucking? Jesus Christ, this is so many levels of gross.

Rhett feels bad about his behavior — as well he fucking should — and offers Scarlett a divorce. She doesn’t want one, but he leaves for London anyway, taking Bonnie Blue with him. Bonnie misses her mom, though, so eventually he comes back to drop her off — because sure, Scarlett seems like she’ll make a great single parent — and the two get into another argument, this one conveniently at the top of a staircase. (Lot of staircases, in this movie.) Scarlett tells Rhett that she’s pregnant and that she doesn’t want the baby. Rhett tells her, “Cheer up. Maybe you’ll have an accident.” Scarlett wildly tries to strike him and when Rhett dodges, Scarlett immediately has that accident, falling down the stairs and losing the baby.

(I suppose I should point out that this scene is rife with moments where you can see that the two actually do care about one another. Scarlett is clearly ecstatic when Rhett comes home but immediately falls back to lying at Rhett’s cold greeting. Rhett is delighted to hear about the baby, but draws back when Scarlett jerks at his touch. I know I’m supposed to watch them and think, You guys are so perfect for each other, if you could only get your shit together, and in a way, I DO think that. But once again, my problem is that it’s not only intention — action matters. Sure, I shipped the hell out of them early on — but that was well before the rape scene, you know? At some point, love isn’t all you need.)

Because the staircase miscarriage isn’t tragic enough, little Bonnie Blue dies about five minutes later. And not only does she die — she dies the exact same way Scarlett’s father did.

Moral: horses get you dead.

I’ll say this: the whole thing about dead Bonnie being scared of the dark? That was actually genuinely sad. And I really liked that Melanie came to talk to Rhett, even though we disappointingly don’t get to see the actual scene itself. I really do think their relationship is interesting. I basically want to ship everyone with Melanie.

Unfortunately, Melanie dies too because of course she does. She collapses immediately after leaving Rhett — tragedies are one after another in this movie, paced like explosions in a Michael Bay film — because she also has a miscarriage and dies from complications, I guess. (Actually, that’s debatable. Wikipedia says miscarriage, but some people say that she did deliver the baby. I don’t remember seeing one, and she didn’t look particularly far along to me — but then I can’t remember if they bothered giving her a pillow to stuff under her dress the first time around, either. Look, Melanie died for Plot Reasons, okay?)

Before she kicks the bucket, Melanie tells Scarlett to look after Ashley. And once realizing that Ashley never loved her, Scarlett runs after Rhett to tell him she’s loved him all along. Rhett’s not having any of it and takes off, but supposedly the movie ends on an up note with Scarlett realizing that she’s always gained her strength from Tara and that she’ll go home and find a way to get her man back again.

“After all, tomorrow is another day.”

And I get the idea, I do, but honestly, Scarlett’s speech here just reads to me as vaguely delusional at this point, that she’ll never get Rhett just like she never got Ashley, and at the end of the day, it will all end in tears.

11. Finally, I’m left with a small handful of random notes that I haven’t managed to address yet.

11A. The cinematography in this movie is pretty lovely. This famous shot, for instance, with 800 extras and 800 dummies?

It’s a great shot. And the rest of the movie, too, just looks beautiful — I’m such a sucker for Technicolor. Maybe we see that majestic vista one too many times, but hell. It is pretty.

11B. Scarlett is constantly hating people forever, especially in the first half of the movie, and that gets a little tiresome. Still, I’d be pretty pissed at Rhett, too, if he left me alone on the road with a very sick woman, a woman who’s clearly not all there, and a newborn baby, all so he could go ease his conscience by signing up for a losing war. Screw you, Rhett Butler.

11C. Finally, I couldn’t stop playing the Celebrity Game while watching this movie. Actors kept reminding me of other actors, so I kept remaking the movie in my head. For instance, Frank would be played by Mark Ruffalo.

Ashley would be played by Tom Hiddleston.

Melanie would be played by Amy Acker.

And Joan Cusack would play Belle.

Of course, my remake of Gone with the Wind would turn out a lot differently.

QUOTES:

Rhett: “You should be kissed often and by someone who knows how.”

Rhett: “You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.”

Rhett: “This is an honorable proposal of marriage made at what I consider a most opportune moment. I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.”

Melanie: “Scarlett, you killed him. I’m glad you killed him.”

Scarlett: “Well, I’ve guess I’ve done murder. I won’t think about that now. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Scarlett: “Go on! I want you to go! I hope a cannonball lands slap on you! I hope you’re blown into a million pieces! I — ”
Rhett: “Never mind the rest. I follow your general idea.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Jesus, I don’t even know. There are a lot of strong elements here. It’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. But I hate where Scarlett’s arc goes. I’m appalled by her and Rhett’s romance, at least post-marriage, and that last hour of that movie is just ridiculous tragedy after ridiculous tragedy. I was probably never going to LOVE Gone With the Wind, but after that fourth hour, I can’t even really like it.

MVP:

Clark Gable, I think. It’s his performance that really makes Rhett Butler so iconic, and while his love story with Scarlett ultimately doesn’t work for me (like at all), there’s no denying that it did for countless others. And if I didn’t like Rhett as much as I do (for 3/4 of the movie, anyway), I think the whole thing would have been torturous to watch.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C+

MORALS:

Horses lead to death.

Pregnancies rarely work out well.

Marital rape isn’t such a bad thing.

Four separate rejections is not enough to stop a woman’s passion. All she really needs is to hear these words: “He’s just not that into you.”

Land is the only thing worth fighting for.

THE CONFEDERACY WAS GLORIOUS.

It’s 10:00 p.m. Thursday night. I’m sitting in an aisle seat at the Roxy Theater and the Marvel credits have just started to play. My little hands are clasped loosely together. I can actually feel the childish hope written all over my face.

Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron is fast-paced, funny, and pretty enjoyable, especially for a movie that’s 2 1/2 hours long. Despite that, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed with the finished product.

SUMMARY:

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) makes what is, in hindsight, a fantastically bad call when he attempts to create an AI named Ultron (James Spader) to protect humanity. When Ultron decides the best way to protect humanity is to kill the hell out of it, the Avengers try to take him down. Team infighting and big action sequences ensue.

NOTES:

1. Let’s start with what works surprisingly well: Ultron.

Those of you who read this blog with any regularity already know how I feel about Marvel villains: by and large, they suck. They are boring as shit. Loki, I love. Loki is amazing. Beyond that, though, there are only a few semi-decent villains out there. The vast majority of Marvel bad guys have next-to-no personality and all seem to desire the same dull things. You know that old adage about a movie only being as good as its villain? Marvel alone has proven that to be false.

Ultron, though, is pretty awesome. Not because he wants anything so spectacularly original — the destruction of the human race is about as by-the-numbers as you get — but because he has a ton of personality, specifically, Tony Stark’s personality. I’ll save my lengthier analysis of this until the Spoiler Section, but as Ultron is Tony Stark’s creation, there are definite similarities between the two characters, similarities that I think are kind of fascinating. And James Spader is just delightful in the role. His voice work is energetic, creepy, and hilarious. He couldn’t possibly have been better cast.

2. So, here’s the thing: I like a ton of stuff about Age of Ultron. It’s not a bad movie by any means, and I had a great time watching it in theater. I will certainly buy it as soon as it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray, and it made me crack up repeatedly, which is great. Unlike the rest of the internet, I’m not, like, ideologically against the concept of grimdark superhero movies, but I also love to laugh, and Age of Ultron definitely made me laugh.

But . . . it’s got some definite problems, and the main one is what I think we were all afraid of: there’s just too much going on.

There’s so much going on in Age of Ultron that I almost feel like I should delay this review until I watch the movie a second time. But since I doubt that a second trip to the theater will happen anytime this week . . . well, here we are.

This sequel is responsible for giving significant screen time to each of our six heroes, which includes building a brand new romance between two of them and giving another one a far more fleshed out and somewhat unexpected backstory. It has to add and establish four new main characters, not to mention bring in several side characters and about eighteen cameos. (Okay, it’s probably more like . . . five? Nine? Whatever, there are a lot of them.) Time has to be spent foreshadowing future Marvel movies, including Thor: Ragnarok, The Avengers: Infinity War, and — to an extent — Captain America: Civil War. Then, you know, there’s the whole plot. And somewhere in the third act, the movie just begins to buckle under its own weight.

I want to be fair here, since the majority of my review is feeling more critical than complimentary: considering just how much is going on, Joss Whedon actually does a pretty amazing job juggling everything above. What I’m describing could easily have been a train wreck, and Age of Ultron isn’t one. I really do like this movie. But it also isn’t even close to competing with The Avengers for top spot, and it’s sure not going to knock Winter Soldier down to the third place, either. At best, it’s got a chance at bronze . . . but it’s hard to say on one viewing. My instincts tell me Iron Man is going to stay on the podium, though, and Age of Ultron will have to settle for a Participant certificate.

3. About those new characters — well, unfortunately, I’ve already talked about the only one I really liked. As far as everyone else goes?

Elizabeth Olsen is an indie darling, but I think this might be the first thing I’ve actually seen her in, and she’s . . . fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with her performance — she seems to do all she can with it — but I just don’t find Scarlet Witch to be a particularly compelling character. Her powers are awesome, definitely, but she doesn’t have much in the way of actual personality and I’m kind of iffy on her and Quicksilver’s backstory. (I’ll come back to that later.) At the end of the day, I just don’t care much about her.

Still, ultimately, I like Scarlet Witch a lot more than I like Quicksilver. And again, Aaron Taylor-Johnson doesn’t really do anything wrong. Quicksilver’s just boring. He has one or two small moments I like, but mostly, that’s because of the other characters in the scene. I don’t want to compare him to Evan Peters’s Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past — because, really, his interpretation of the character is so dissimilar it’s just not really a worthwhile comparison — but I needed something out of this kid, and I just didn’t get it.

Listen, I adore Paul Bettany. I have been in love with Paul Bettany since I first watched A Knight’s Tale, like, fourteen years ago. And Jarvis (or JARVIS, whichever you prefer) is just the best, one of my favorite AI’s ever. But Vision . . .

. . . God, I find Vision dull.

I am well aware that I’m in the minority on this. I’ve read very few Marvel comics (at least, thus far), so I primarily know Vision from Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, where he wasn’t one of my favorites. He sure isn’t my favorite here. Bettany’s performance is quite solid, and he does have some nice moments — I am willing to concede that I could become more invested in his character in later films because there is potential there — but in Age of Ultron, he’s just, like, that semi-benevolent god robot? He feels very archetypal to me. Maybe I’d find him less so if this movie had more time to spend on him, but as is, he kind of reads like a less interesting version of the Machine on Person of Interest to me. (Meanwhile, Ultron has to be snarkier version of Samaritan.) In Person of Interest, the conflict between the two is fascinating. Here, not so much.

4. We also need to address the rather sudden romance of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).

So, I seen a lot of people who hate this ship, but actually, I’m not one of them. Maybe they aren’t my OTP yet — I don’t think I actually have an OTP in Avengers — but there is definitely something about these two characters together that I find really interesting. And I think Ruffalo and Johansson have pretty decent chemistry with one another, so I want to like them.

Unfortunately, the romance just goes far too fast for me.

Part of the problem, of course, is that most of their Becoming Attracted to One Another stuff happens offscreen in between The Avengers and Age of Ultron. I think that can work (she says, desperately — I may or may not have a similar setup in some stories to come out later this year), but it’s pretty hard, and a LOT more time needs to be given to Bruce and Natasha in this movie to make the audience believe it. Otherwise, it feels too constructed, too artificial — we don’t buy that these two have spent all this time growing closer between films.

Natasha and Bruce do have scenes in Age of Ultron, but they’re pretty limited and before you know it, we’re moving on to Next Level Stuff. And that, that just doesn’t work for me. I was all for them being cute with their Casablanca flirting — seriously, I was ALL FOR IT — but then the relationship suddenly skipped  into, like, let’s have a Future together! And I just couldn’t buy the pacing.

5. Maybe it comes down to this — I’ve read a few interviews now where Joss Whedon calls Age of Ultron a smaller, more personal movie, and in some places — especially in the first half — I agree with that, and enjoy it too. There are a lot of great character moments in this film which I really, really like, scenes where we get a closer look at what each of our heroes fear, scenes where the Avengers keep not quite honestly communicating with one another, keep holding back. I mean, I could watch Steve Rogers and Tony Stark all damn day. (And boy, am I interested in Civil War — but more on that in a bit.)

The problem, I think, is that the third act of Age of Ultron doesn’t seem to belong to that same smaller film, and a lot of the more personal, character-driven stuff just kind of goes by the wayside. Now, obviously, I both wanted and expected some Big Action Stuff at the end of the movie. I like Big Action Stuff. The Battle of New York, for instance, was fantastic. And there are moments here, in this big battle, that I really enjoy (“Oh for God’s sake!” stands out in particular), but overall, I feel less invested in everything that was going on. The stakes almost feel, I don’t know, rote? And we spend so much time on Saving the World! that I feel like some of the other earlier character stuff doesn’t get the chance to fully resolve. I know you bring out the Avengers for the Big Kids Work, but I can’t help but feel like maybe if the stakes were lowered somehow, the movie might feel a little less discordant, less like Joss Whedon was trying to make two movies and put them in one? I’m not 100% on any of that, though. I’m still trying to work it out.

When I saw The Avengers in 2012, I could not WAIT to see the next film. I was completely obsessed with it. It dominated my nerdy little brain for months. When Age of Ultron ended . . . I talked pros and cons with my sister for half an hour, thinking about how I was going to shape this review, and then I went to read Daredevil fanfiction.

You try not to have unrealistic expectations going in — but, well. Sometimes you just have them. That’s how it goes. I liked Age of Ultron, but I feel like if it had remained a smaller movie centered around the team itself, if it wasn’t stretched in so many directions and it wasn’t so interested in setting up Phase III — I think I might have liked it more. I think I could’ve loved it with all my big nerd heart.

Think I’ve been going on too long about a superhero movie? Ha. I have SO much more to say. (Probably too much. Er, sorry.)

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

First, can I just say I waited for, like, YEARS to see how Age of Ultron was going to deal with the end of Iron Man 3, only for them to pretty much entirely ignore it? Assholes. If one of your big claims to fame is your Giant Shared Continuity, you so shouldn’t be able to do that. I’m shaking my finger at you, Joss Whedon. (Shhh. He totally cares.)

Okay, moving on. Our story begins with the Avengers on a mission to retrieve Loki’s scepter. The team seems to be working relatively well together, despite Steve chiding Tony about using coarse language and Hawkeye getting himself seriously injured. (Because of course it’s Hawkeye. That poor bastard. Also, the cursing bit was great — I was waiting the whole movie for Steve to swear at the end, but I didn’t initially expect it to be a running gag. Totally loved it.)

We’re introduced to Baron von Strucker briefly, but don’t worry about him because he has about four lines before he’s unceremoniously killed off in between scenes. More importantly, we’re introduced to the twins: Quicksilver will begin his quest to annoy Hawkeye (setting up the reversal for when he sacrifices himself for our beloved archer) and Scarlet Witch fucks with Tony Stark’s head, making him hallucinate all his fellow Avengers dead.

Awww. Tony’s all damaged. Although I freely admit to giggling a bit when Fake Captain America’s like, “This is all your fault!” or whatever it was he actually said. It’s a bit over the top. (Still. You know Whedon secretly ships Steve/Tony. You just know it.)

This particular bit of mindfuckery is what sets Tony on the path to create Ultron, which actually, I really enjoyed. When I first heard that Whedon was knocking Hank Pym out of Ultron’s origin story, I was a little disappointed — not just because I like Hank Pym (or did, before all that split personality bullshit happened) — but because I kind of felt we’d already covered Tony’s “I Used to Do Bad Bad Things” story to death, and I wasn’t really interested in him being responsible for Everything Going Wrong again. The mental manipulation made this work much better for me.

(I will say, though, that I’m less crazy about Tony’s weapons being responsible for orphaning Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. I get why it happens this way — it gives them motivation for their Evil Deeds, plus gains our sympathy as audience members, at least supposedly — but the whole thing feels a bit artificially constructed for me, perhaps because Quicksilver divulges their whole traumatic backstory in One Big Exposition Monologue that I just never quite connected with. I also have to agree with Mekaela that there probably should have been at least one scene between Tony and Scarlet Witch near the end of the film. The fact that these two never have any real confrontation doesn’t quite work for me, not with this setup.)

Anyway, Tony enlists Bruce’s secret help to create Ultron, giving all of us Science Bros fans a nice fist bump. And seriously, Ultron is such a delight because he’s very much the twisted subconscious of Tony Stark. I remember a lot of reviews complaining that Iron Man was the villain of his own movie in Iron Man 2 (which I completely disagreed with), but here, Ultron basically is a villainous Tony Stark, and it’s great, particularly because Ultron despises Tony and simply cannot acknowledge how much of him is his creator. They even use some of the same phrases, which doesn’t go unnoticed by other characters in the film. Pretty much everything Ultron says could be taken right out of Tony Stark’s mouth, which I adore. It really makes me want to see some fan film (that will absolutely never happen, of course) where James Spader plays Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. voices Ultron. I really cannot praise James Spader enough in this — I enjoyed the holy hell out of him.

But moving on: the Avengers celebrate their successful mission with a giant party, mostly so we can establish a few things:

A. Natasha and Bruce like-like each other, and Steve Rogers ships them like whoa.

B. Falcon is still helping Steve track down Bucky. (I guess Captain America: Civil War is still going to be about the Inhumans, but I was really surprised that they didn’t talk about them at all in this movie. Not, like, they had time or anything. Still, I feel like Whedon and Marvel weirdly prioritized Ragnarok over Civil War, and I would’ve expected them to at least mention who the Inhumans are and that they exist, since Marvel clearly isn’t counting on movie goers to be watching Agents of SHIELD. It kind of makes me wonder if the whole divide between Tony and Steve is ultimately going to be less ideological and more like, ‘Fuck you, Cap, your BFF killed my parents.’ It’s going to be interesting, one way or the other. I’m excited about it, but I also really need them to not make Tony into a total unsympathetic dickbag. This greatly concerns me . . . but, yes, we’ve gotten off topic. Again.)

C. War Machine is still around, in case anyone cares.

D. Nobody can lift Thor’s hammer (yet), but Thor is NOT PLEASED when Captain America succeeds in moving it just a little.

I know this was leaked early, but it’s still a great scene, even if I absolutely could not watch Bruce trying to lift the hammer. I hid my face behind my hands and everything. Sympathetic Embarrassment Syndrome is a real thing, people. Or should be, anyway.

Ultron breaks up the afterparty, though, by killing Jarvis (well, sort of) and trying to kill the Avengers. Then he escapes and enlists the aid of the Maximoff Twins. Meanwhile, no one’s very happy with Tony and Bruce right now, but especially Tony, either because Bruce is instantly apologetic for what he’s done or because it was obviously Tony’s bad idea in the first place and everyone knows Banner’s a big pushover until he really isn’t.

Stuff happens. I can’t remember all the specifics now, but at some point Scarlet Witch does her mind mojo on everyone but (thankfully) Hawkeye.

Because I’m a Bruce fangirl, I was a little disappointed we couldn’t see him hallucinating his Holy Shit Traumatic Past before going all Grrr Hulk Grrr, but I suppose we didn’t really need that. (Dammit.)

What we get instead:

A. Some time with Natasha in the Red Room. Every bit of it is awesome. Can we PLEASE have a Black Widow movie already?

B. Idris Elba pops up to blame Thor for everything going to hell. I am always happy to see Idris Elba, but it’s Thor’s stuff here (and especially later, when he takes off for his whole Lake Vision Quest deal) that I really felt could’ve been done better. I know we have to deal with the Infinity Stones and Vision and whatever, but this shit felt pretty muddled to me.

C. Captain America dreams he’s back having his dance with Peggy. (Because you never miss out on an opportunity to include Hayley Atwell, not if you’re sane.) There’s a really nice thread here about Cap still feeling like a man out of time, about not having a home anymore, although I do feel like it gets resolved a bit too fast at the end.

Hawkeye’s stuck with the Brainwashed Kids, so that leaves Tony on his own to deal with an out-of-control Hulk.

This is all pretty awesome. Well, for the audience, anyway — it’s a a great action sequence. It’s decidedly less awesome for the team, who are all pretty shaken after their experiences and not exactly in good graces with the rest of the world after the Hulk’s devastation. They all need a place to lay low for a while, so Hawkeye brings them to his Secret Domestic Bliss.

(If you recently heard the sound of a million voices crying out in terror and being suddenly silenced, well. You probably mistook terror for agony, because that was the sound of a billion hearts breaking, specifically, the hearts of Clint/Coulson shippers around the world. Long live the ship, you guys.)

So, yes. This whole time, Clint has been secretly married with two kids running around and a third on the way. I’m . . . of two minds on this. On the upside, it’s kinda cool that one of the Avengers actually has a semi-functional normal life outside all this saving-the-world nonsense. You rarely get to see superheroes with wives and kids (at least, living ones), so that’s kind of neat. And it gives Clint more depth, which is great, because Hawkeye definitely gets the short end of the stick in the first movie and his family succeeds in helping to flesh out his character. Also, everyone’s reaction to his Secret Family works pretty well.

On the other hand . . . one of the few Marvel comics I do read is Hawkeye, and I’ll admit, I was kind of unrealistically hoping there would eventually be a merge with the Hawkeye we’ve seen so far and Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye, who I just adore. This pretty much kills any and all chance of that, which kind of bums me out. And let me be clear here: this is one of those disappointments that I don’t consider an actual flaw with the movie. Like, it’s a personal aw, man moment, not like a Okay, that doesn’t work. That’s an important distinction to make.

(Also, can I just say that Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is the main reason I kind of regret Marvel’s Great Overarching Continuity? Because I would KILL for a Hawkeye series on Netflix that could cross over with Daredevil — but it will never happen because Daredevil exists in the same world as Avengers, and this happily married, pretty grounded Hawkeye is already a part of that team, so the Hawkeye I want will never meet Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdoch. It makes me sad. At least I have fanfiction, I guess. I have seen at least eight different fanfictions with this pair-up alone.)

Good and/or Significant Moments at Clint’s Secret Farm House:

A. Natasha, the only Avenger who knows about Clint’s secret life, calls the unborn baby a trait for turning out to be a boy. Heh.

B. Bruce decides that he’ll have to run away, now that everyone has seen what the Hulk is truly capable of, and Natasha wants to go with him.

If you’re interested, this is when I start having real problems with their relationship. I like that these two are damaged “monstrous” characters, but these guys haven’t even kissed yet, and they’re just going to go run away together? No. It’s romantic but no. I just don’t buy it, not out of two people with massive trust issues, certainly not out of a woman who’s most infamous line last movie was, “Love is for children.”

If this movie had been about setting them up as a couple and next movie had been about them going away together, sure. I could have dealt with that. But that running off is even a possibility here, uh-uh. They just don’t have enough screentime to support it — in one scene, they’re flirting and navigating the possibility of maybe dating; in the next, Natasha’s proposing leaving her whole life behind for this guy, and Bruce is like, “Don’t you understand we won’t be able to have babies?” Like, WHAT?

C. While manfully chopping wood (not a euphemism), Tony and Steve argue about secrets, Ultron, and the end goal of the Avengers. It’s a pretty great scene and not just because Steve gets angry and splits a hunk of wood with his bare hands. (Though I’m sure many, many people appreciated that.) These two actors have great antagonistic buddy chemistry, and it makes me excited for Civil War . . . but, again, nervous because it really only works if you can see where both sides are coming from. I think you can in this movie, but if Tony turns on mutants the Inhumans just for existing . . . I don’t know. Even with his slight turn here, I feel like being totally prejudiced against Inhumans is OOC for him.

Still. I have no real problems with this scene, other than when Tony says he doesn’t trust Steve for not having a dark side and Steve’s all, you haven’t seen it yet . . . I kind of wanted to, you know, see it. Which of course could be foreshadow for Civil War, but from everything I understand, Steve is firmly on the Side of Good, whereas Tony is firmly on the Side of Evil. I’m really hoping it’s more interesting than that.

Ugh. Back to this movie, AGAIN. (Is this my longest review ever? It’s feeling like it right now.) Okay, so, eventually the Avengers recover this android body that Ultron was creating, although Ultron manages to abduct Natasha in the process. Tony once again cons Bruce into secretly helping him, this time by putting Jarvis into the android body, which Steve, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver (now all on the team) try to stop. And then Thor comes back from his boring vision quest to bring, heh, Vision to life.

A. When Bruce threatens to kill Scarlet Witch? Holy JESUS. Mark Ruffalo can command a shit ton of intensity when he wants to, and . . . look, I’m just saying I could stand to watch a lot more of that Banner. I mean, I like dorky Banner too — I like basically all versions of Banner, presuming he’s not being so embarrassing that I’m literally hiding behind my hands — but even without the Hulk involved, Bruce B. isn’t, like, the most well-balanced guy in the world. He should be dangerous, and I desperately want to see more of this.

B. Part of my dislike for Vision — or at least apathy towards him — may stem from my resentment that he comes from the destruction of Jarvis. He’s part Jarvis, sure, but he’s also a whole new character and — dammit, I loved Jarvis. Vision is not an adequate replacement for me.

This is like substituting Ezri for Jadzia Dax all over again.

C. The other problem I have with Vision is that, in Ultron’s hands, it seems like he’s going to be this Unstoppable Weapon, the Surefire Destruction of the Whole World. But once he’s on the Avengers’ team, he just sort of seems like a regular super powered dude, like, for an android with an Infinity Stone glued on his forehead, he doesn’t really feel like he brings that much to the table.

That being said, when he effortlessly picks up Thor’s hammer? Perfection.

Finally, we get to the Big Battle and Denouement. And yes, I’m going to ABC this shit, too. (Look, a lot happens in this movie, all right? It’s hard to organize my thoughts in any other semi-coherent way.)

A. Hawkeye talks with Scarlet Witch, who’s pretty busy freaking out because she helped cause all this destruction. I like this scene because Hawkeye’s pretty awesome in it, but . . . I can’t help but notice that, once again, the only superhero who freezes in the middle of the fight is the woman. Like, I can buy the reaction, but I still find it a bit frustrating. Couldn’t Quicksilver have been the one to panic instead?

B. One of my favorite parts of the whole movie, though, is when Hawkeye not-too-seriously contemplates murdering Quicksilver. This. This was just the BEST.

C. Of course, Quicksilver ends up dying to save Hawkeye, who’s about to sacrifice himself to save a little boy. It’s kind of a sad moment, I guess, but . . . not that sad? Like, I genuinely cried for Coulson in The Avengers, but here I was almost kind of relieved. Cause I didn’t care very much about this dude, and you knew somebody is going to go — and if it’s not Quicksilver, then it’s probably going to be the guy with his wife and two kids and one baby on the way.

D. Bruce rescues Natasha and tells her that they have to run away together now, that she’s done enough for the cause and her part in the fighting is over. And . . . seriously, when did Bruce Banner become a dude from the 50’s? First with assuming Natasha even wants babies and then trying to bench her from all the save-the-world action? What IS this?

Thankfully, Natasha isn’t having any of that bullshit because seriously, Banner, do you not know your quasi-girlfriend AT ALL? She kisses him and pushes him over this edge, forcing the Hulk to come out and play. This doesn’t turn out super well for Natasha, though, because after the big fight, the Hulk takes off in an invisible jet to hide from everyone, including her.

E. Vision kills the last Ultron bot.

But . . . there aren’t any strings on me! I’m supposed to be free and WIN!

It’s a decent scene between the two of them, primarily because the actors are so good. Still . . . I don’t know. I feel like something’s missing.

F. In the denouement, Steve and Natasha are all that’s left of the original Avengers. Tony’s tapping out, but I’m not actually sure if it’s because of what happened with Ultron or because he’s still got PTSD from the first Avengers movie or because he’s apparently wanted to quit this whole time. (Tony’s arc seems to fizzle at the end of the movie. It starts strong, but about 2/3 of the way through it just . . . kind of goes away.) Meanwhile, Clint’s also out . . . I think? He could just be on paternity leave, but that last scene felt weirdly final, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because when did Clint say he wanted to quit? Hulk’s AWOL and Thor . . . you know, I don’t even remember where Thor went. To investigate Ragnarok, maybe? (I told you I should have rewatched this movie.)

Steve, meanwhile, has apparently found his home. I’m very glad he and Tony have a moment at the end of the movie — because they absolutely needed it, and I was fully prepared to have a snit fit if they didn’t have one — but I never fully bought Steve accepting all this as Home because it felt a little sudden to me, like it should come after an emotional turning point in the film that he never actually has. I am not-so-secretly hoping Steve has more man-out-of-time angst in Civil War because I’m a terrible person.

G. Finally, Natasha and Steve are the ones training a new lineup of Avengers: Falcon, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, and Vision. Which . . . well. I know that the original actors aren’t going to stay with Marvel for the rest of their careers, and I much prefer the idea of switching out characters to flat-out replacing heroes with new actors. So, that’s cool.

Unfortunately, I’m so bummed by the idea of this lineup that I think I actually lost a tiny bit of interest in the upcoming Avengers movies. I love the hell out of Falcon, but other than that . . . I’ve always been pretty meh on War Machine, despite liking Don Cheadle, and I found Scarlet Witch and Vision both kind of dull in this movie, so. I don’t know. Marvel’s been on such a hot streak, but for the first time in a long time, I found myself wondering if I was going to care much about where they were going past Phase 3. It was a depressing realization.

QUOTES:

Thor: “Is that the best you can do?”
Ultron: “This is the best I can do! This is what I’ve been waiting for! All of you against all of me!”
Steve: “You had to ask.”

Steve: “Nick Fury, you sonofabitch.”
Nick Fury: “Whoa ho ho! You kiss your mother with that mouth!”

Ultron: “I’m glad you asked that because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan.”

Natasha: “I adore you . . . but I need the Other Guy.”

Tony: “Really? That’s it? You just roll over and show your belly every time somebody snarls?”
Bruce: “Only when I’ve created a murder-bot.”

Tony: “How do we cope with something like that?”
Steve: “Together.”
Tony: “We’ll lose.”
Steve: “We’ll do that together, too.”

Steve: “Look, as the world’s expert on waiting too long, don’t.”

Tony: “Good talk.”
Henchman in Background: “No, it wasn’t!”

Strucker: “Can we hold them?”
Henchman: “They’re the Avengers.”

Ultron: “They put the building in the middle of the city, so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that, the symmetry, the geometry of belief.”

Tony: “Thor didn’t say where he was going for answers?”
Steve: “Sometimes, my teammates don’t tell me things.”

Ultron: “Oh, for God’s sake!”

Tony: “Actually, he’s the boss. I just pay for everything and design everything, make everyone look cooler.”

Natasha: “Thor, report on the Hulk.”
Thor: “The gates of Hell are filled with the screams of his victims.”

Steve: “Right, what kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on him to protect their country?”

Steve: “Ultron killed Strucker.”
Tony: “And he did a Bansky at the crime scene.”

Tony: “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door . . . yay!”

Bruce: “I could choke you and not change a shade.”

Clint: “I’ve done the whole mind control thing. Not a fan.”

Steve: “Sorry for barging in.”
Tony: “Yeah, we would’ve called ahead, but we were busy having no idea you existed.”

Nick Fury: “That guy’s multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit.”

Hawkeye: “The city is flying. We’re fighting an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow.”

Hawkeye: “No one would know, no one would know. Last I saw, Ultron was sitting on him. The bastard will be dearly missed. I miss him already.”

Natasha: “Traitor.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Clearly, I’ve got some mixed feelings. Age of Ultron is a very entertaining movie and goes very fast, considering how long it is. I liked a lot of the smaller character moments, and it made me laugh multiple times. Dialogue, obviously, was awesome. Still, I can’t get past the fact that way too much was happening, and the third act started to collapse because of it. Also, the more I think about Natasha and Bruce’s romance, the more it feels mishandled. Which bums me out because I think I could ship them, if they’d been given a better start. (Actually, I know I could ship them. If it’s one thing I’ve learned from reading Avengers fanfiction is that I can ship Bruce with every other Avenger except Thor. Never could get into Bruce/Thor.)

MVP:

James Spader

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B+

MORAL:

“Every time someone tries to stop a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time.”

So, math. It’s not my favorite thing in the world. I appreciate its significance. I enjoy a certain kind of logic puzzle. I even tried reading a book about calculus this year because it promised solutions to varied problems like weight loss and the zombie apocalypse. (I can’t pretend I understood even half of it, but it was entertaining enough, I’ll give it that.) But as a rule, I am generally on the side of Math is Evil, and a movie about four mathematicians doing anything doesn’t sound like something I’d be into.

Unless those four mathematicians are also strangers who are locked together in a room, of course, hastily solving math puzzles and trying to figure out how they’re secretly connected before they all die horrible, horrible deaths.

I’d hoped to say that Fermat’s Room would be the Bottle Episode Mystery Movie to finally get an A grade from me. Sadly — while a mild improvement over Unknown and a vast improvement over Nine Dead — I think this one’s got some significant problems too.

SUMMARY:

Four mathematicians are invited to a Super Secret Math Party by the mysterious Fermat. Unfortunately, our heroes are soon trapped in a room that starts shrinking every time they fail to solve a mathematical puzzle in the allotted time.

NOTES:

1. One of my biggest problems in this movie? LACK OF PRIORITIES.

No, dude, you just go ahead and keep drinking. I’m sure this will all resolve itself.

If you’re stuck in what’s essentially the better furnished and better smelling Garbage Compactor Room from Star Wars, then your only priorities are simple: stop the walls from moving and figure out an escape route before you’re crunched and horribly squished to death. I mean, does that even need to be said? I feel like that shouldn’t need to be said.

Well, apparently it does need to be said because these four routinely do not act as though their very lives depend on actually solving these puzzles in time, or at least, they don’t act this way consistently. At one point, The One Girl (Elena Ballesteros) — whose actual pseudonym in this film is Oliva, a pseudonym I will not be using — is the only person in the room who’s trying to figure out the Super Important Puzzle and saying things like, “Let’s figure out why we were all targeted in between puzzles, okay?” This shows good common sense on her part, common sense she will absolutely NOT show later on when she slowly, and with plenty of dramatic pauses, reveals her relevant backstory as critical seconds are counting down. (I guess at least someone is working on the puzzle in the meantime. I do understand why you wouldn’t necessarily want four mathematicians all talking over each other to try and solve the same problem simultaneously — but there are ways to work around that problem that are probably better than one person delivering Story Time to two captivated audience members while one dude tries to keep them all from being crunched to death.)

To be clear, this isn’t just on The One Girl. Pretty much everyone in the room shows a stunning lack of priorities at one point or another. Terrible Bangs, AKA Bangs, AKA Galois (Alejo Sauras), is particularly awful in this regard. But he’s sort of a useless asshole in general.

2. In fact, we should be clear on this: no one in this room deserves to live.

I really enjoy live action Escape the Room games, so I totally understand the thrill of doing something that you know would totally get you killed off in a B-horror movie. I get it, but guys, this movie was made in 2007. Any letter that basically says, “Come to my secret locale but don’t talk to anyone about it and don’t bring your cell phone?” Bull. SHIT. You don’t just say, “Well, that sounds legit,” and trot off to your squishy demise. Do some basic internet research and make sure the whole thing’s above board. And yes, that means more than a five second glance at Google. That Escape the Room game I went to? Yeah, I absolutely chose the one that had actual Yelp reviews, not the one nobody seemed to know anything about located in a part of the city I wasn’t familiar with.

And for fuck’s sake, I don’t care what that invite says: you bring your cell phone. You can turn off your cell phone, sure, but any anonymous person asking you not to bring it at all? That person probably wants to either eat your flesh or turn your skin into doll parts. Don’t become dinner or doll parts, people. #TheMoreYouKnow

3. I should probably briefly introduce our four main players before we continue.

So, this is Bangs. We meet him four months prior to the main story, where he is on the verge of proving some Big Deal Impossible Math Theorem, and it seems immediately clear to me that he is something of a young hotshot/condescending slime bucket. Case in point: he’s flirting with two swooning coeds by simultaneously bragging about his accomplishments while completely insulting their intelligence. I assume these girls are supposed to be math students admiring a genius in their midst, not just a couple of random hot ladies fanning themselves over Bangs’s mathematical prowess and terrible hair — but then, if they are math students, why aren’t they slapping the hell out of Bangs for asking them if they know what prime numbers are? I mean, that’s some sexist bullshit going on right there. I know what prime numbers are, and I didn’t even get past Algebra II in high school.

(It should be said that I assume that this whole exchange was directed more at the audience than these unnecessary extras. But honestly, no one in the audience needs to know what prime numbers are to understand this movie. You might have a little more fun with the puzzles if you actually have a shot of solving them in time, but nothing in this plot is too complicated for the rest of us. And if you want to try and solve the puzzles with more than the allotted time, you can always use the pause button. It might break the dramatic tension, sure, but the characters are clearly more than happy to do that for you as well.)

This is Old Guy, AKA Hilbert (Lluís Homar). Originally, my nickname for Old Guy was Depression because in his introduction we learn that he’s been isolating himself for some time now and has even considered suicide. However, his invitation to our Super Secret Math Party appears to have levied his spirits somewhat, so I quickly switched over to Old Guy since he’s at least 10-30 years older than everyone else in the room and has sort of a grandfatherly vibe to him.

This is Library, AKA Pascal (Santi Millán), so named because we meet him in a library. Yes, my creativity knows no bounds. We don’t know too much about Library right away, other than he’s struggling with the problem (the one on the invite — you have to solve it to go to the SSMP) and only manages to answer it because a helpful librarian unintentionally gives him a Lightbulb Moment. Also, he makes duck-shaped popcorn poppers, cause that’s not weird or anything.

Finally, this is The One Girl. Unfortunately, The One Girl is apparently judged unworthy of an introduction because she never really gets one. All I can really tell you about her at this point is that she does not appear to be overly impressed with the duck-shaped popcorn poppers.

4. One of my favorite things about Fermat’s Room, actually, is the puzzles themselves. I really do like certain types of logic puzzles. I’m not great at them, but I enjoy them and there are even a few I’ve managed to figure out on my own — not under a minute, mind you, but still. A lot of the puzzles in this movie were actually familiar to me because they were all variants of ones I’d seen featured on io9’s old Sunday Puzzle column. Unfortunately, that didn’t really help me answer any of them in time. Still, I thought it was neat.

I did wonder, though, if the puzzles would actually be a little too well-known for these mathematicians. I’m not sure about this. I don’t actually know any mathematicians to ask. I will say, though, that I enjoyed how some of our Math Heroes were better at certain kinds of puzzles than others. That rang pretty true to me. After all, not all knowledge is universal. If you put me and my writer buddy Bryan in a room together and made us play Literature Trivia or we DIE . . . well, let’s just say that Bryan would mop up in the Jorge Luis Borges category, whereas your snarky reviewer would absolutely be chopped up for those squishy doll parts. On the other hand, I suspect (though cannot confirm) that I might be able to best him in Urban Fantasy, or at least the Laurell K. Hamilton category. You feel free to make whatever judgy judgments of that as you will.

5. Still, I continue to be frustrated by the non-logical approach our Math Heroes use to solve their logic problems. It’s not just their whole “One Person Works, Three People Chat” strategy, although that definitely irks to the point of madness — cause yeah, if I get the Jorge Luis Borges category, then sure, there’s really no point in my even bothering to play, and I’ll go work on the “Fruitlessly Trying to Stop The Walls With This Clearly Ineffectual Piano” plan or maybe trying to figure out the “Why We Were All Specifically Targeted” riddle. But if Bryan and I have to solve something we both know a little about — say, Shakespearean anagrams — then we could both potentially bring something to table and work separately to increase our chances of success. Certain people have strengths and weaknesses, sure, but I refuse to believe that every problem these people are given can only be solved by one person.

But all right, put that on hold for a minute — because here’s something else: the problems have to be solved in under a minute, right, or else the walls start to push inwards and keep pushing inwards until the correct answer is given. There’s not really any punishment for giving the wrong answer; the walls just keep moving, that’s all. So when you come across problems that are multiple choice (as some of them are), why waste so much time trying to solve it? Wouldn’t it actually be faster to just input the first option, see if the walls start to move, and then respond accordingly?

Sometimes, guessing is actually the right way to go.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

(Disclaimer: I’m totally going to spoil something for Clue in here as well. That movie came out thirty years ago, so I don’t feel all that bad about it — but just so you know. All kinds of spoilers abound and seriously, go watch Clue.)

So, let’s just get this out of the way: Old Guy is the Bad Guy.

There’s not enough frame in the world for to capture my Face of Sinister Evil.

I kind of figured from the get-go that one of our Math Heroes was secretly a villain. I never really picked a suspect — actually, the movie revealed it a little before I was expecting them too — but there are things that work for me about the Old Guy being evil. One, of course, is his attitude adjustment: of course he’s not depressed anymore! He gets to kill people!

But the fact that he’s older than everyone else and has supposedly been to one of these Super Secret Math Parties before actually lends an interesting amount of credence to the setup. In the beginning, OG’s constantly telling the others what to expect from such a shindig, and the fact that he’s sometimes right (for instance, with how the Room of Doom will look) makes this whole weird thing seem a little more legitimate for them. But the fact that he’s sometimes wrong (like when a car doesn’t pick them up and they have to use a freaking rowboat to get to their final destination) makes him seem more credible to us. If Old Guy was trying to say, “Oh yeah, rowing is totes normal?” We’d peg him as evil immediately.

All four mathematicians were supposedly invited by Fermat (Federico Luppi), but it’s not particularly hard to figure out that Fermat is actually a victim himself, partially because he doesn’t act anything like how a host would act, but also because I’ve seen Clue about 18,000 times by now and it seemed pretty obvious to me that he was this movie’s less slimy Mr. Boddy. (Er, Lee Ving’s Mr. Boddy, that is. There are a couple of Mr. Boddys in that movie.) In fact, I think that’s what I’m going to call him from now on — because I don’t use anyone else’s pseudonym in this review, and Fermat should be no exception.

So, here’s how it all goes down: The One Girl, Old Guy, Library, and Bangs all make it to the Room of Doom. Mr. Boddy shows up and acts a little awkwardly for a few minutes before quickly having to leave. He gets a phone call, see, from what he thinks is the hospital, saying something he can’t quite make out about his daughter. Of course, it’s not the hospital at all but Old Guy, who has just snuck out of the room to tamper with Mr. Boddy’s seatbelt. Other people just screw with the break lines or the power steering when they want to sabotage a car, but Old Guy, he’s a creative thinker. He makes it so the seat belt will release some poisonous gas when Mr. Boddy clicks it on. Unfortunately for him (and for us), Mr. Boddy is stupidly suspicious of seat belts, so he drives without one for most of the film.

So, here’s my thing: I don’t actually mind how obvious Mr. Boddy’s innocence is. I do mind how much time is wasted watching him drive around when none of those scenes contribute anything to the main story.

The action is in the Room of Doom. That’s where the real tension is. (Or is supposed to be, anyway.) Watching Mr. Boddy at the gas station isn’t suspenseful because I don’t believe he’s evil. (Nor do I care that deeply about the gas station attendant.) Watching him at the hospital only tells me information that I already know. And watching him drive back to the Room of Doom really isn’t tense because I don’t for one second think this dude’s going to be our Math Heroes’ salvation. It’s a puzzle movie, guys. If anyone’s going to survive it, they’re going to survive by figuring out how to escape, not because some jerk just opened the door for them. That’s a cheat. No one wants that.

So yeah. Nothing Mr. Boddy does changes anything for our Math Heroes — although I suppose the Math Heroes do, indirectly, get Mr. Boddy killed. See, the whole reason Mr. Boddy finally puts on his seatbelt is that he gets pulled over for erratic driving — and he’s driving erratically because he’s stupidly reaching for his ringing phone. (The caller? Library, trying to warn MB that he’s in danger.) Mr. Boddy, who accidentally left his ID behind in the Room of Doom, invites the cop along to verify his story. The cop does this and quickly notices that Mr. Boddy isn’t wearing his seatbelt. Mr. Boddy makes a crack about how people are more likely to die in them, but then relents and puts on the seatbelt, just so they can both pass out and drive off a cliff together.

Some thoughts:

A. Dying from irony is the very worst way to die. Seriously, I kind of hate it, particularly when it reinforces people’s fears about things that are meant to keep them safe. Yes, I’m lame, I’m aware; deal with it. I take seat belts fairly seriously, and I’d imagine so do a lot of other people who’ve been in head-on car collisions before. There but for the grace of God, and all that. Or really, there but for the grace of manmade safety devices that are far more likely to save you than get you killed. All right, fine, PSA over.

B. Whether you’re a big fan of seat belts or not, when a cop gets in your car — dude, you automatically put it on. I mean, right? The cop’s remarkably chill about the whole thing, too. I mean, he chides Mr. Boddy, sure, leading to their demise, but he’s so relaxed about the issue that I was like, “Wait, are seat belts more like a guideline than an actual rule in Spain?” My brief Google research, however, tells me this is not the case.

C. No matters what I said before, you really can’t blame the Math Heroes for this one because while Mr. Boddy is sort of a tragic figure, he’s also an idiot who can’t drive — and considering his daughter is in a coma because she was hit by a car, you’d think he might be a touch more cognizant of safe driving habits. You know what’s not a safe driving habit? Repeatedly taking your eyes off the road to grope ineffectually for your cell phone whilst in the middle of driving down dark and twisty streets in the middle of the night at full speed ahead. Mr. Boddy could park his car sideways in the middle of the road, and he’d probably be less likely to get hurt. Seriously, everyone in this movie deserves to DIE, and die badly.

Okay. Let me go back to the main story, which — I can’t stress enough — has so little to do with Mr. Boddy. He’s important for setup, yes, but after those first few minutes in the Room of Doom, we really don’t need to see him again.

You know how I said Mr. Boddy accidentally left his wallet behind? Well, once the Room of Doom starts doing its thing, Library sees the wallet and realizes that he accidentally ran down Mr. Boddy’s daughter. He surmises, incorrectly, that this whole thing is an elaborate revenge plot against him, and the other mathematicians are just collateral damage.

The truth, though, is that the Old Guy is seriously pissed at Bangs.

He IS pretty annoying.

Remember that Big Deal Impossible Math Proof that Bangs solved at the beginning of the movie? Apparently, OG had been trying to solve that his whole life, and he was This Close when Bangs, the young hotshot/condescending slime bucket, managed to do it first. This is what caused the Old Guy’s suicidal ideation — oh wait, I left a part out before. Right, okay, so Bangs wasn’t just on the verge of solving his BDIMP; he had solved it, but before he could defend it — or whatever the proper terminology would be — a Mysterious Someone trashed all his stuff, meaning he couldn’t prove what he’d done and would have to complete his work all over again.

So, when the Old Guy hears about this — and we’ll discuss how that happens in a minute — he rededicates himself to solving the BDIMP and actually manages to do it. But that’s not enough for him; he wants to be the first person to solve it, so he constructs this entire thing as a way of killing off Bangs before he can publish his proof. The whole drama with Library and Mr. Boddy is just a convenient cover. Old Guy plans to have the police come to the exact same conclusion that Library did, that he was the real target of this nightmare and Mr. Boddy the culprit behind it all.

I actually kind of enjoy all this, even if it’s such a ridiculously overelaborate plan and possibly unnecessary to boot. I mean, if Old Guy publishes his proof before Bangs can finish his work, I don’t think it’s going to matter if Bangs whines about it or not — he has no real evidence to back up his claim that he solved it first. And if reading The Calculus Diaries has taught me anything, it’s that mathematicians who published their work when they completed it (instead of dawdling around for no apparent reason, as some did) are the dudes who got credited with Solving Stuff, whether they really solved it first or not.

Here’s the thing, though: Bangs? He never actually solved anything at all. He just bragged about it (mostly to impress Old Guy — oh, how irony strikes again) and then, when it came time to face the music, was forced to trash his own stuff, just so he could have that much-needed extension. Basically, this whole thing has been for nothing. I’m totally okay with that.

I’m far less okay with The One Girl’s Big Secret.

Each character has a big secret, see. That’s generally how these kinds of stories work. Library nearly killed someone, Old Guy is trying to kill someone, and Bangs is a wanker who didn’t actually solve shit. The One Girl’s Big Secret, though, entirely revolves around her vagina and which men in the room have previously inserted their manhood into it.

The answer to that: Bangs and Old Guy. (Library is the only actual stranger in the group.)

It turns out that Bangs and the One Girl used to date. They broke up, though, because he thought she was seeing someone else. Which she was: she ended up playing Steamy Chess with Old Guy online and eventually met him on a boat to do Super Kinky Depraved Things. We never learn exactly what super kinky depraved things they did, but I’m pretty sure she said they were illegal, so maybe farm animals were involved? Whatever, it’s dumb. The whole point of this bullshit backstory is that The One Girl confirms what Old Guy has read but can’t quite believe: that Bangs’s Big Setback really happened. That’s it. That’s her whole purpose in this story. The One Girl is just an additional source on somebody else’s supposed tragedy. The One Girl could be replaced by a fucking newsletter.

Let’s see, what else . . . well, our Three Math Heroes escape after Bangs knocks Old Guy unconscious and Library realizes that there must be a secret way out because OG didn’t plan on dying with them. (The clue to this is in the pseudonyms. Old Guy assigned everyone the names of famous mathematicians who died at the exact same age the Math Heroes are, but Hilbert — OG’s own pseudonym — was several years older than OG when he died.) They barely escape, leaving our Big Bad to get crunched in his own death trap, and row on back to safety.

The movie ends like so: Bangs has grabbed Old Guy’s Big Deal Impossible Math Proof and now faces this ethical dilemma: should he publish it under the Old Guy’s name, letting the bad guy win, or publish it under his own name, which would help him out while being morally wrong. Library solves this dilemma when he does exactly what I said to do and tosses the proof into the lake. Bangs protests that the world needs this math, and Library’s like, “Dude, look around. The world’s still here.” Which I quite like, really.

Then Library and The One Girl make eyes at each other, which I just assume means they’ll hook up because that’s apparently what The One Girl is here for, and the movie ends.

Finally, some last random notes:

A. I assume the librarian who gives Library the clue he needs is actually working with Old Guy all along?

I assumed that from the beginning, actually, and thankfully it’s implied pretty early on — but oddly, it’s never explicitly shown, like I have no idea what Old Guy said to the librarian to get her to go along with this weirdness. (“I just need you to awkwardly work the word “alphabetize” into your conversation, okay? You — what do you like? Starbucks? Snapple? I will find every last hidden bottle of Snapple on the planet if you just help me out here.”)

If it is supposed to be a coincidence, though . . . man. It is terrible. To solve the puzzle, Library needs to organize his numbers by alphabetizing them. His Lightbulb Moment is only achieved when the librarian tells him, “One thing – put back any books you use in alphabetical order.” Like how the hell ELSE would you organize books in the library? So dumb.

B. I can’t decide how I feel about Mr. Boddy accidentally leaving his wallet behind. It’s the only reason Library knows how they’re related, which admittedly doesn’t bother me as much as it initially did, when I thought Old Guy wanted them to discover the wallet and I was like, “Wait, how did he possibly orchestrate that without Mr. Boddy being in on the game?” Ultimately, I doubt OG cares whether our Math Heroes know about Library’s connection to Mr. Boddy or not; that’s all for us, the viewers.

Still, something about the coincidence of this is nagging at me, too. Of course, OG likes coincidences. As he tells the audience Bangs at the beginning of the movie, “The more you study logic, the more you value coincidence.”

Oh, be quiet, writers.

C. I’m not convinced that Old Guy is a terribly great planner. Like, there have to be easier ways to kill Bangs than this. Think about all the steps OG had to go through here:

Step One: Seduce Enemy’s GF with Masterful Chess Proficiency and Kinky Boat Antics.
Step Two: Make a Detailed Model of the Room of Doom.
Step Three: Properly Furnish the Room of Doom, Complete With Secret Escape.
Step Four: Buy Four Big Presses That Will Slowly Crunch the Room of Doom.
Step Five: Come Up With a Series of Puzzles That Your Victims Will Not Be Able to Solve in the Time Allotted.
Step Six: Find Mathematicians Who Conveniently Died At The Same Age As All Of Your Victims.
Step Seven: Send Invitations to Enemy, Enemy’s Ex-GF, and A Dude Who Has Serious Cause to Hate Fourth Invitee, Other Dude.
Step Eight: Hire Helper to Assist Other Dude With Solving the Puzzle, Since He Clearly Can’t Be Trusted To Do It Himself.
Step Nine: Set Up Your Own Innocence By Talking About Your Weekend Plans With Concerned Friend.
Step Ten: Lead Your Victims to the Room of Doom Without Them Realizing It.
Step Eleven: Leave the Room of Doom Without Anyone Noticing to Sabotage Your Patsy’s Car With Poisonous Gas While Chatting With Him On the Phone.
Step Twelve: Seal Yourself Inside the Room of Doom With the Rest of Your Victims and Enjoy the Bloody Vengeance. BLOODY VENGEANCE!!!!

D. Finally, in case it isn’t clear enough, Bangs is SUCH an asshole. He actually throws down and breaks the PDA that they’re using to submit their answers. Their only chance of stopping the walls from closing in, and he breaks it in a giant temper tantrum.

Bangs, in the whole shepherd, sheep, wolf, cabbage scenario? You are definitely the cabbage. The asshole cabbage.

QUOTES:

Oliva: “I won’t fit!”
Pascal: “If your head fits, your body fits.”
Oliva: “Try putting your ass in a  helmet!”

Pascal: “The world is as it was.”

Doctor Friend: “You can’t go on like this. You have to get out. I’m speaking as a doctor, not as a friend.”
Hilbert: “You tell me three times a day. Three! I’m speaking as a mathematician, not as a friend.”

Galois: “You think it’ll resist?”
Pascal: “Pressure is unpredictable. It can turn coal into dust or a diamond.”
Hilbert: “Was that Archimedes?”
Pascal: “MacGyver.”

Hilbert: “I return tapes without rewinding them. I lie in electoral surveys. I take communion without fasting. I pick fruit without wearing plastic gloves. Could anyone hate me for things like that?”

CONCLUSIONS:

It’s definitely not the worst Bottle Episode Mystery Movie I’ve ever seen (or Quasi Bottle Episode, anyway), and there are some cool moments in it. But The One Girl’s stupid backstory was pretty annoying, and everyone inability to prioritize really took any and all tension out of the movie for me — which, considering I’m somewhat claustrophobic, really shouldn’t have been possible.

MVP:

Santi Millán, maybe? It’s a toss up between him and Llúis Homar.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

B

MORAL:

Professional jealousy happens to the best of us, but maybe take a few calming breaths before creating an extremely elaborate death trap for your annoying rival? At the very least, don’t hang out inside the death trap. Library figures out that the Big Bad has to be among them because a dude bent on revenge would want to see what’s happening, but you know, you could probably have just installed a camera in the middle of the ceiling that would have given you your voyeuristic jollies while making sure you were never crunched to death by your own sadistic cleverness.

Also don’t wear a seat belt, apparently. Assholes.

So, I’m a quitter. If I decide I don’t want to do something anymore, or it just isn’t worth my time, I’m done. I’m not terribly ashamed of this almost-certain character flaw, but it does sometimes come with devastating consequences, like when I decide to give up on my Best Picture Challenge and have to watch and review a terrible movie of your choosing as a result of my failure. And God help me, I finally watched it.

Let’s celebrate the Eve of All Hallow’s Eve by talking about Randy Meeks’s favorite scary movie, Showgirls.

DISCLAIMER:

There will be SPOILERS everywhere because seriously. And while there aren’t any NSFW pictures in this review, considering the film in question, it might not be a bad idea to skip this post if you are a) a small, impressionable child, b) working at a place where your boss likes to read over your shoulder, or c) related to the author of said review and don’t necessarily want to see her talk in detail about creepy lap dances or naked aquatic seizure sex.

The choice is yours, my friends. Choose but choose wisely.

SUMMARY:

Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) goes to Vegas to become a dancer. Things go badly almost immediately, but she eventually gets a job as a showgirl, partially because she makes friends with Molly (Gina Ravera), a character who is utterly too good for everyone in this movie, and partially because head showgirl Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon) has a kinda-creepy fixation on Nomi. From there: betrayal, seduction, sabotage, lap dances, melodrama, and a mind-boggling amount of tits.

NOTES:

1. Showgirls isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I probably wouldn’t even put it in the Top 10 (Bottom 10?), and overall found it easier to watch than my last Punishment Movie, Battlefield Earth. Of course, I had more vodka this time around.

Also included in the drink: midori, pineapple juice, peach schnapps, Sprite, triple sec, and, of course, the actual title of the movie, weirdly reflected from the television screen.

Still, it’s pretty awful, especially if you, like me, generally prefer stories that center around semi-decent people instead of gross, whiny, sexist, entitled assclowns. The characters in this movie? Yeah, they almost all fall into the latter group. Intentionally, I should add, but still. There is one decent character in this entire movie, and she’s violently beaten and raped by her very favorite musician and his two hulking bodyguards.

2. But that’s for later. Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we, with our hitchhiking protagonist, Nomi.

She’s awful from the very start.

So, Nomi catches a ride to Vegas with Super Skeezy Driver. SSD establishes his creep factor right away by suggesting that she sit a little closer to him. Nomi immediately responds by pulling her Foreshadow Switchblade and saying, “Chill, okay?” It’s a laughably atrocious line delivery — literally, I burst out laughing — and while I feel bad that Showgirls effectively killed Elizabeth Berkley’s career, I also can’t help but feel that she earned the hell out of her Razzie in this movie.

Nomi then changes the radio station with her knife — because it’s badass? — and sasses that she doesn’t like Garth Brooks, which is all well and good; I’m no huge fan of Garth Brooks, either, but who does that when your hitchhiking in someone else’s car? Turning down gross come-ons, absolutely, but rudely changing the music like this is your truck? Oh, and then refusing to give your name, even a fake name, in favor of staying silent and staring imperiously out the windshield? This is a prime example of Bitchy, Not Badass.

Of course, then Super Skeezy Driver proves that he’s also a dangerous psychopath when, offended by Nomi’s behavior, he’s like, “I’ll just pull over then” and nearly kills them both (not to mention everyone else on the road) by veering wildly and abruptly cutting off the semi behind them. Somehow, this convinces Nomi to finally put away her switchblade and give her name instead of doing what any sane person would do and jump the fuck out of the car.

I hate them both. I want them to die.

Sadly, no one dies in this movie. I was pretty disappointed.

3. Nomi and Super Skeezy Driver make it to Vegas. Soon after, SSD takes off with Nomi’s suitcase, leaving her with nothing but that handy Foreshadow Switchblade. Understandably, Nomi reacts badly to this. Which is to say, she leans into the nearest car and starts attacking it as she freaks out.

This is when Molly, owner of said car, comes by and — also understandably — is not pleased. She pulls Nomi away from the car and gets elbowed in the stomach for it. She then pulls Nomi away again and nearly gets puked on. (Which seemed kind of random? Is Nomi supposed to be drunk? Did she get an elbow in the stomach too?) And when Nomi accidentally staggers into traffic, it’s Molly (unfortunately) who saves her ass from getting run over. This immediately leads to a weirdly abrupt moment of burgeoning lesbian intimacy, where the two soulfully gaze into each others eyes — which, hey, I’d be all about the ship except a) Jesus Christ, Nomi just vomited, and b) a random, crazy woman attacking your car and then you and then nearly getting herself killed in the middle of the Strip doesn’t exactly strike me as a terribly romantic moment.

But what do I know? Clearly I’ve proven, time and again on this blog, that I’m a terrible romantic.

Molly follows up all the life-saving and almost-kissing by treating Nomi to dinner. Then she invites Nomi to crash at her place because Nomi has nowhere else to go, and because Molly is a godamned saint who is too good for this world.

4. Weirdly, though, Molly and Nomi are actually kind of a cute couple for exactly one scene.

Okay, that’s not true. They’re also pretty cute shopping together. But watching this scene in particular, I couldn’t help but feel like if this movie had been an actual love story between these two instead of an erotic thriller/lazy treatise on ambition and exploitation/shameless tit show/rape-and-revenge flick, I could have liked it. Obviously, that’s not what this movie ever wanted to be, I know. But even though I hated Nomi right from the start, I watched this scene and thought, “Aw, they’re kind of adorable together. I could totally watch the costume designer and the stripper be all cute and take on Vegas.”

5. Instead, we ignore Molly for awhile to focus on Nomi’s icky not-really-romance with James (Glenn Plummer).

This is James, although I prefer to think of him as Dipshit, or That One Guy on the Freeway From Speed.

They are the opposite of a power couple. Is there a term for that? They are both awful, awful people and their relationship makes no sense.

Sigh. We might as well go through it, step by step.

The Meet/Cute

Nomi and Molly go to a club. Bouncer James sees Nomi and decides to dance with her, even though he’s not supposed to, being on the job and all. No one cares about that sort of thing in this movie, though, so they go ahead and dance, or really, flail like spastic chickens.  (I mean, I’m not a great judge of this sort of thing. I’m a terrible dancer. I’m aware of this. But I’m pretty sure they’re both supposed to be good here, and uh, I outright giggled watching them.)

Bouncer James tells Nomi that she’s not so much dancing as teasing his dick (his words), but that he can teach her because he sees potential — which sounds exactly like the kind of insult/compliment a lot of asshats use to try and pick up women. Kneeing him in the balls, though, does seem like a bit of an overreaction, especially because by doing so, Nomi ends up inadvertently starting a bar fight. Not that Nomi feels bad about this by any means; on the contrary, she walks away with a giant smirk on her face, supremely impressed with herself for being a huge asshole. Luckily, some random dude notices that she started the fight, and she’s thrown in jail.

The Bail Out

What, you don’t normally bail out your prospective girlfriends the morning after they try to crush your testicles? Well, that’s what Ex-Bouncer James does for no apparent reason. (Yeah, he lost that job, to no one’s great surprise.) And not that paying her way out of jail entitles him to a date in any way, but there’s also zero reason to act like such a huge jerk to him, either. Still, this is Nomi, so yeah, she’s pretty much awful. For some reason, though, they both act like this is adorable.

The Stalking

Ex-Bouncer James ups his Creep Factor by the power of 80 MILLION when he a) spies on Nomi giving Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) a lap dance, and b) tracks Nomi down somehow and shows up at her door, like, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you, dude?

Seriously, for being a creepy stalker, this guy throws a ridiculous amount of weird judgment at her, always with the promise that he can teach her to stop dancing like a hooker. (This is a repeated thing with Nomi, how she’s always thrusting everywhere, how she’s less dancing than air-fucking — but I’ve gotta be honest, when she’s dancing on stage and not just, say, flat-out grinding against someone’s dick? I never really saw any difference between her and any of the other burlesque dancers. But, admittedly, this is far, far from my area of expertise.)

Anyway, Creepy Stalker James accuses Nomi of metaphorically fucking both Zack and his girlfriend, Cristal Connors. To which Nomi asks, outraged, “Are you following me around?” like that wasn’t patently obvious from him showing up at her trailer.

He then lectures some more: “You fuck ’em without fucking them, that’s what you do! Well, it ain’t right! You’ve got too much talent for it to be right!” Man. That’s pretty much exactly what my disappointed guidance counselor said to me! (I kid. The only thing I remember my guidance counselor ever saying to me is asking if people routinely underestimated my intelligence because of my hair, which is apparently what I get for actually attempting to participate in Spirit Week for once on Crazy Hair Day.)

The Extremely Brief Dance Lesson

Not surprisingly, the stalking scene above doesn’t exactly end with a big romantic kiss. But they both seem to be over that by the next time they run into each other, after Nomi walks out of a horrifying audition. (One of the main problems with Nomi is that her default reaction is to throw something in someone’s face and storm out, no matter what the issue is. Storming out after this audition? Absolutely understandable. It’s so deeply gross. But Nomi must exit in the exact same melodramatic fashion, what? Six times in this movie? I’m honestly not sure. You lose count after a while, but I am sure I’m using it as a drinking game rule if I ever watch Showgirls again.)

Anyway, Pro Stalker and Guidance Counselor-In-Training James is, not surprisingly, still disappointed in Nomi’s life choices, since being a burlesque dancer is just a fancy stripper and, after all, what about the number he wrote for her? (This has literally come up once.) He then tells off his boss for insisting that he work instead of chatting up random women, and his unprofessionalism apparently excites Nomi, so they drive off together to his place, where they have a dance scene that starts out sorta cute before quickly going to the naughty place.

PS/GC-I-T James figures he’s getting some, but Nomi tells him that they can’t have sex because she’s on her period. He doesn’t believe her. She says, “Check,” and I cringe because fingering someone to check for menstrual blood is just . . . ack, like, weird on so many levels . . . although, I do kind of love his reaction: “It’s all right. I’ve got towels.”

Nomi responds, “You can fuck me when you love me,” and saunters out. Honestly, at this point, I don’t even know what to do with that.

The Break-Up

Even though they’re not actually dating.

So, Nomi gets the showgirl job after all and goes running to tell Dipshit James. (It’s shorter. I caved.) Only Dipshit James is already hooking up with Penny, a new stripper at Nomi’s old job. It also turns out that Dipshit James gave Penny the same bullshit ‘I can teach you’ speech he gave to Nomi, which totally makes him a creep (not like we needed more evidence of this.) I can see why Nomi wouldn’t want shit to do with him anymore . . . but the way the scene actually goes down, Nomi acts like they were really dating, like there’s anything in all that bullshit I just summarized that might eventually spell L-U-V for these sweet kids.

Nomi storms off. Naturally. And that’s mostly the last we see of James. Once, he tries and fails to win her back with some flowers. And then, sometime later, we find out that James’s dance/choreographer career is a bust and that he’s getting married to Penny because she’s pregnant. I think maybe I’m supposed to care that his dream has died and he’s going to go work in his mom’s grocery store so his baby can have diapers? Yeah, I don’t care. He’s an assclown. Everyone’s an assclown in Vegas. There’s your godamn moral.

6. Case in point:

Here is Zack, our supremo slimy assclown with terrible hair, like, what is this, a pre-emo bang? (I know, I know, it’s the mid-90’s Joey Tribianni, but Kyle MacLachlan really doesn’t rock it.) Nomi trusts Zack because he’s pretty much the only one in the business (other than Molly) who’s even remotely kind to her, but it’s fairly obvious from the start that he’s as awful as everyone else, although he only shows his true, sinister dickbag colors to Nomi at the end of the film.

I don’t actually have so much to say about Dickbag Zack — he’s not really as big of a player in this as I assumed, like, he and Dipshit James probably have roughly equal screen time — but we should probably talk a little about the scene I’m sure you’ve all been waiting to hear about it.

Prior to watching Showgirls, I was warned of the “dolphin sex scene” by two or three different people. (And by warned, I mean that those people, once considered friends, maliciously laughed at my misfortune and impending retinal scarring.) Because of this, I became mildly apprehensive that this sex scene might, in fact, have actual fucking dolphins somewhere in there, bringing Showgirls to a whole other level of uncomfortable weird.

Thankfully, it turned out that Nomi just suffered a grand mal seizure while riding Zack’s dick in the pool. Which, admittedly, is also weird — sex has never before so closely resembled enthusiastic epilepsy — but at least we didn’t bring actual dolphins into it.

Also, tangentially related: at one point, Nomi sexily tells Zack, “I liked it when you came. I liked your eyes.” Lines like this will almost always inevitably confuse me because I burst out laughing when she said it — but that’s pretty much par for the course for me when it comes to dirty talk: I think pretty much all of it is impossible to take seriously. So for all I know, that particular line was actually super hot instead of hysterical.

It does seem a bit unlikely, though, when taking the rest of the film into consideration.

7. It occurs me that I haven’t really talked about Cristal Connors yet.

I know Gina Gershon mostly from one of my favorite episodes of Psych, “American Duos,” where she plays Emilina Saffron, the Paula Abdul parody character. It’s kind of fun to see her here. Actually, other than her Texan accent which I never bought for a moment, I don’t think, acting-wise, she’s as bad as some of her fellow cast. Then again, 98% of her job in this movie is just to leer at Nomi.

I’m honestly not even sure what to say about Cristal. She’s the star dancer, the Queen B, and she and Nomi spend most of the movie locked in one long power struggle, occasionally punctuated by manipulative lunch dates, creepy lap dances, and other Wicked Lesbian Action. Well, Wicked Bisexual Action, really, but I definitely kept thinking of this scene while watching Showgirls. (The bisexuality in Showgirls is . . . interesting. On one hand, there’s really no homophobia anywhere in this movie, which is kind of cool, actually. On the other hand, it all feels so artificial — like, let’s cash in on our two female leads macking on each other cause it’s so hot! — that I have a hard time feeling all, “Woo hoo, representation!”)

Nomi and Cristal are painted as hero and villain, sort of, but of course they’re actually one in the same, two sides of the same coin, all that jazz. Which Nomi directly proves when she shoves Cristal down a staircase and takes her spot as the Queen B.

I missed the foreshadow line earlier setting this up (presumably, I was too busy making myself another drink or snickering at something to hear it), so I was just thinking to myself, “You know, it’s surprising that none of these girls ever fall down that death trap of a staircase” when BOOM, Cristal goes down.

Not that she dies. She’s just out of the show and not all that unhappy about it, since she’s going to get a ton of money and, as she reveals to Nomi, did the same thing years ago to the last Queen B.

8. Molly, however, isn’t quite as forgiving as Cristal.

Molly is pretty angry about what Nomi’s done, especially after Nomi lies about it. (In a surprisingly solid bit of structure, one of the other dancers, Julie, backs up Nomi’s claim that Cristal “fell” after Nomi kept quiet about Julie’s own sabotage attack earlier in the film. Unfortunately for Nomi, Molly was looking at Julie when Cristal fell and knows that she couldn’t have seen shit.) For once, someone walks out on Nomi instead of the other way around, and it’s a refreshing change of pace.

9. Disappointingly, it only lasts for about a minute before Molly forgives Nomi and goes to a big party with her. This, of course, is when we arrive at The Scene.

Seriously. Fuck this scene.

For starters, it’s kind of weirdly abrupt. On one hand, the movie has at least bothered to mention Andrew a couple of times prior to his arrival (you’ll notice he’s in the poster behind Molly two pictures above) and Showgirls quickly tells us he’s an asshole when he talks to Nomi. And yet the actual scene itself feels sudden and heavily manufactured, which makes the brutal rape of the only likable character in this whole movie feel even cheaper, which shouldn’t even be possible. The entire thing is only done for Nomi’s . . . are we calling this character growth? Whatever, Molly’s rape is all about Nomi. The whole thing is just gross.

10. This is when Zack reveals both a) his true slimy colors, and b) Nomi’s holy shit, soap opera tragic backstory. We find out, among other things, that Nomi has worked as a prostitute to survive, which probably shouldn’t be too surprising, considering her constant refrain in this movie is that she isn’t a whore. And considering that she was clearly traumatized by the experience, I’m trying to find more sympathy for her, but she’s just . . . so . . . AWFUL. Every time she righteously denies she’s not a whore, I’m like, “Fine, okay, I believe you. But honey, there are so many worse things than being a whore, and sweetheart, you are all of them.”

11. Anyway, Zack gets all creepy and throat-grabby and threatening. Nomi, however, decides that getting revenge on Andrew is more important than her career as a showgirl, which, admittedly, is nice to see, although I’m still totally grossed out that Molly had to get raped for it to happen.

Regardless. Queen B Nomi transforms into Topless Vigilante Nomi.

To my surprise, there is actually some setup for Showgirls to make the sudden switch from high melodrama into a rape-and-revenge flick, particularly the Foreshadow Switchblade. But I’m pretty disappointed that they didn’t fully embrace the sub-genre and just kill the hell out of this guy. I guess it’s cool and all that Nomi beats him up (toplessly, of course, because I’m frankly surprised people don’t just walk down the Strip topless in this movie), but come on, you guys. If I have to deal with the rape, I sure as hell deserve a fully committed and bloody revenge. Nomi could have stabbed Andrew in both eyes with those perfectly manicured nails. She could have cut up or cut off all sorts of things with that switchblade.

Instead, Nomi beats him up, threatens him, and takes off for LA with the same loser from the beginning of the movie who stole her suitcase, setting up for a sequel that, obviously, didn’t happen . . . except how it sort of did, but without Elizabeth Berkley. The sequel is actually some direct-to-video thing about Penny, the stripper that absolutely nobody cared about.

I’ve considered it, and I’ve decided that I can live the rest of my life without witnessing the wonder that is Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven for myself.

12. I forgot to mention before that, according to IMDb trivia, Charlize Theron auditioned for the role of Nomi Malone and Angelina Jolie auditioned for the role of Cristal Connors. Think about that for a minute. Seriously, just imagine it.

13. Finally, hands down the weirdest moment for me in this movie is when Al Torres (Robert Davi) briefly comes back into the story like he’s some sort of  benevolent mentor figure instead of Nomi’s old boss that coerced blow jobs from his employees.

His actual line here?

“Saw the show. You were good,  real good. You take care, kid . . . it must be weird, not having anybody cum on you.”

I laughed so hard. Holy GOD. What the shit is this?

CONCLUSIONS:

Christ, I don’t know. There are moments in this movie where I feel like there’s a halfway decent story somewhere in there, obviously smothered by about 85,000 A and B-cup tits. And I surprisingly wasn’t bored, which isn’t nothing, but the characters are all awful, the dialogue is atrocious, the rape is gross, the acting is terrible, the sex scenes are unintentionally hilarious, and I’m not sure if you can claim your movie is all about exposing industry exploitation if your movie is going to be this blatantly exploitive itself.

Also, not for nothing — everyone loves to complain that studio interference ruins a movie, and sometimes people are absolutely right, but in this particular instance, maybe some studio interference would have been a good call? Because director Paul Verhoeven had complete creative freedom on this one, which means epileptic dolphin sex? Entirely on that guy.

MVP:

Gina Ravera

LVP:

Elizabeth Berkley. I know I’m hurting you, Saved by the Bell fans, but she’s just bad.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

D

MORAL:

Don’t go to Vegas. Everyone’s an assclown there, apparently, and on the off chance that they’re not, well, they’ll probably get violently punished for it.

All right, people. After several days of frantically dodging spoilers on social media, I FINALLY saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The more I think about it, the more I find small flaws and nitpicks, but overall I had a great time watching this.

SUMMARY:

Hm, shall we err on the side of vagueness today? How about this: thirty-ish years after the events of The Return of the Jedi, the galaxy is still being threatened by the remnants of the Empire, now known as the First Order. Luckily, there is still the Rebel Alliance Resistance fighting them off. Also, we’re introduced to a scrappy young band of new heroes, namely a scavenger, a fighter pilot, and a Stormtrooper who deserts his post.

NOTES:

1. Here’s the thing: I was excited to see this movie, but unlike the rest of the internet, I did not get particularly misty-eyed when I watched Han tell Chewie, “We’re home,” in that one teaser trailer. I felt vaguely bad about this, but eventually made peace with the fact that I had no heart and moved on about my day.

Watching it in theater was different. And I don’t know if it’s just because the tiny pieces of my geek soul finally caught up to me, or I was just having an emotional day (later on, I also broke down during the season finale of Adam Ruins Everything, although in my defense, that shit was totally depressing), but when STAR WARS appeared on the big screen, followed by the opening scroll, I was mildly horrified to realize I was actually tearing up. I was also excited, though, so excited I almost forgot I had to actually read the opening scroll this time.

Cause the thing is, this felt different to me. I grew up with the original trilogy, but I’m too young to have seen any of them in theater. I did see The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones in theater, but . . . yeah. I didn’t despise The Phantom Menace when I watched it, but it didn’t feel special to me, either; it didn’t feel like a return, you know? And the dialogue in Attack of the Clones was so bad it turned me off the new trilogy entirely, so that, to this day, I still haven’t seen Revenge of the Sith. (I really meant to watch all of them this year and give everything a second chance, but never quite got around to it. Maybe in 2016?)

This, though. I sat in theater and finally had my “Chewie, we’re home” moment, and that was pretty cool.

(Especially since someone brought their four-year-old along to periodically kick the back of my seat throughout the film, and that sense of wonder helped me grit my teeth and remember that I actually like children, usually, when I’m not stuck in a theater or on an airplane with them.)

2. The Force Awakens is basically A New Hope for a brand new generation. That is simultaneously the best and worst thing about it.

On one hand (the positive, happy hand–keep your lewd jokes to yourself, people), The Force Awakens feels like the old Star Wars movies and is chockfull of great homages to the past films while updating the story with some much needed diversity. A female hero! A black hero! A Latino hero! Also, the humor is really excellent in this film, like the comedy totally outshines anything in the past. In the middle of watching, I distinctly remember thinking, This might actually be my favorite Star Wars movie.

On the other, more negative hand, the basic plot of The Force Awakens is so derivative of A New Hope as to be a little lazy, and it’s not like A New Hope had a particularly exciting plot structure itself, since it’s basically a step-by-step model of the hero’s journey, but with lightsabers and neat, cinnamon bun hair. I won’t detail all the similarities between the two films until the Spoiler Section, but there’s definitely a way to invoke the feel of something without directly copying it, and I think The Force Awakens falls down a little in that regard.

3. But back to the happy. Let’s talk about our new heroes.

Rey

Daisy Ridley

Rey’s pretty great. She’s funny, smart, badass, interesting. She needs very little rescue from her male co-leads, and has a mysterious past that I’m looking forward to exploring in the future films. I buy her character and Ridley’s performance entirely.

Of course, Max Landis and others have called Rey a Mary Sue because, I guess, she has all the qualities that make an action hero great and just happens to be a woman? I mean, there’s an argument to be had about a hero being so awesome that the story fails to have tension or stakes; the problem is that a) The Force Awakens HAS tension and stakes, and b) people are far, far less likely to call out that particular story flaw, so long as that awesome hero is a man. (I’m bummed here, by the way, about Max Landis. I really like Chronicle, which he wrote, not to mention The Death and Return of Superman. I still like those things, but it’s nonetheless disappointing when you find out that someone whose work you’ve admired or enjoyed has opinions you seriously disagree with.)

I won’t talk too much more about the Mary Sue thing, partially because a lot of other writers are already handling the topic, and partially because I was already planning to write this thing next month about the whole concept of Mary Sues, but just for the record: Rey is totally awesome, and if you find her that unbelievable . . . well, fine, you don’t have to like her. But try thinking of it this way: maybe she isn’t for you. Maybe, just for once, you’re not the target audience. Feel free to repeat this to yourself if you’re also struggling with the shocking idea of black people in the Star Wars universe.

Finn

John Boyega

I pretty much adored Finn. John Boyega brings the humor in a big way, but I also buy his more serious moments too, which is great. I really hope we get more on his backstory; I feel like there’s a lot that can and oughta be fleshed out, and I’ll probably be a little annoyed if it never is.

Also, not for nothing: Boyega’s American accent is spot-on. I actually forgot he was English for a good solid ten minutes before remembering that, Nope, this is the kid from Attack the Block. The American is a lie.

Poe Dameron 

Oscar Isaac

Because of the way the story plays out, Poe doesn’t have as much to do as Rey or Finn, but I liked him pretty much immediately. He kind of feels like a throwback to an old school space swashbuckler, like he’s the cocky, quippy, fighter pilot dude who’s not really scared of much and can fly pretty much anything. I’ll talk more about him in the Spoiler Section (well, all of them, really), but for now I’ll just say that I found Poe rather charming.

4. We also have the return of some of our old heroes.

It was mostly good to see them all again, but for the most part, I’m going to table this discussion until I can continue with spoilers. For now what I’ll say is that it was a little strange listening to Leia since Carrie Fisher’s voice has changed with age. Mind you, that’s not a knock or anything. People, like, age. It’s just that Han basically still just sounds like Han, and Leia sounds almost like a whole different person. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it because I’ve seen Carrie Fisher in plenty of things since Star Wars, and her voice has never seemed off to me until I watched her as Leia again, and that dumb part of my brain was like, “But . . . wait?”

5. And to talk a little bit about our bad guys:

Kylo Ren

Adam Driver

For the most part, Kylo works for me pretty well. I wouldn’t call him a hugely intimidating villain, but he has just enough character to be interesting. Although I read one review that called him “sympathetic and menacing,” and I’m like, “Menacing, maybe, but uh, sympathetic? Yeah, meet me at camera three, guys.” Kylo primarily works for me because I don’t find him particularly sympathetic; if I was supposed to . . . well, we might have problems in future films. Much more on that in a while.

General Hux

Domhnall Gleeson

Gleeson does everything he’s supposed to do in this movie, and I don’t dislike him, exactly, but . . . unless there’s a plot twist where it’s revealed that he’s secretly a younger clone of Grand Moff Tarkin, I’m not really sure  what to do with him. I meant what I said before, about liking a lot of the specific homages to the original trilogy, but after a while, the movie starts staggering under the weight of just how many homages there are. Gleeson feels so much like Tarkin that it’s nearly impossible to judge him as his own character.

Captain Phasma

Gwendoline Christie

My brain keeps trying to insist her name is Captain Plasma. Go home, brain, you’re drunk.

Captain Phasma is kind of cool, although Christie is almost as criminally underused here as she was in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II, so hopefully she gets a lot more to do in future movies. Then again, maybe we should all just try to start a cult love of Phasma, anyway. After all, it worked with Boba Fett, and really, what did he do except die extremely ingloriously?

Finally, we also have our new Emperor dude, Supreme Leader Snoke, and . . . guys, I snickered every single time we went back to this loser. He appears to be some kind of fifty foot tall abomination that’s like a weird mix of Gollum and the aliens from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (Holy shit, he was actually played by Andy Serkis? Hand to God, I didn’t actually know that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make me like Snoke any better.) I just couldn’t take him even remotely seriously. I understand why we couldn’t have Ian McDiarmid back, but maybe we could have done, like, anything else with this guy’s design. Like, we could have modeled him after the Gatekeeper in Atmosfear. (Skip about 18 minutes, if you click on that link, unless you really want to know the rules for a V/H/S board game that you almost certainly don’t have because it’s just about 2016, come tomorrow.) Sure, the Gatekeeper was basically the Emperor already, but come on, I think we all know The Force Awakens wasn’t too worried about being original.

6. Other than Snoke, I thought the film looked pretty great. I’m afraid I don’t have any particularly deep analysis on that: it just looked and felt like old school Star Wars to me. (Nobody has any crazy Amidala-esque hairstyles, unfortunately, but I won’t hold that against the film.)

7. Finally, the script generally works for me–I’m pretty sure I preferred the dialogue here to the old movies, actually, although my opinion on that might change after a second viewing–but holy shit, there are a couple of moments where the lack of subtlety just killed me dead. Like, come on, guys. If you’re going to be that obvious about your symbolism, you might as well just show the scene with captions that read: “Get it? GET IT?”

Everything else I want to say includes spoilers, but you’ve probably already seen The Force Awakens, right? Like, it’s been out for weeks. If you haven’t seen it, what have you been doing with your life?

Assuming you have your priorities in place, you may continue onward.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

So, I was pretty bummed when I first heard that the new Star Wars trilogy was going to include the old Star Wars characters, and The Force Awakens proves that my fears were founded: Han Solo bites it.

Of course, it’s not that surprising that Han Solo bites it. For one, it’s that whole ‘the old gives way to the new’ thing that generally happens as franchises age. Our once-young heroes are now old enough to be the mentors, and mentors die: that’s just a fact. For another thing, Harrison Ford is a grumpy old bastard who’s wanted Han Solo to die for years. Going into this movie, I had a pretty good idea that he was going to go, and if it wasn’t him, it’d be Luke or Chewie. (I was never particularly worried about Leia, for some reason; I would have put money down that she’d survive, and hey, she did.)

So, sure, it wasn’t a shock. And the death doesn’t feel entirely cheap, either, even if it was obvious that Han was a goner from the very moment he stepped out onto that bridge. (Although, for me, it felt a little bit too reminiscent of Obi-Wan dying in A New Hope, particularly with Finn and Rey watching on, and for fuck’s sake: Kylo kills Han the second the sunlight is obscured!? Jesus. Yes, J.J. Abrams, I understood Poe’s hideously clunky line, “As long as there’s light, we’ve got a chance!” YOU ARE KILLING ME, MAN. I mean, I like your work more than a lot of my friends do, and I don’t give a shit if you want a lens flare every 25 seconds or not, but the foreshadow in your movies hurts me. Do we need to talk about the dead tribble again?)

Okay. My point, before I got off track, was this: eventually, you hit a mark where your heroes have survived so long that, if they were killed off, all you’d feel is bummed out and annoyed. My favorite example of this is NCIS–uh, SPOILERS here, although seriously, that show’s been on for like twelve years or something, so, like, deal with it. At the end of the second season, Kate, one of the main characters, is killed, and it’s kind of awesome. Not because I hated Kate or anything; she was generally fine, but it was a really well-handled, surprising moment, particularly for a procedural where killing off characters is a little trickier. (NCIS ain’t exactly The Walking Dead. You’re supposed to win in procedurals; that’s kind of the whole point.)

So, yeah, Kate’s death was a totally good, daring moment of the show. But nobody would have wanted to see her die in Season Ten, just for a Shocking Moment. That’s bullshit. Ziva was Kate’s replacement, and admittedly, I’ve always liked Ziva better than Kate. But if Ziva had died after eleven seasons when Cote de Pablo wanted to leave? Nope. Nobody wants that. At a certain point, you’ve been watching people long enough that you feel that they (and frankly, you) deserve to have a happy ending.

The Return of the Jedi came out in 1983. We’ve all known that Han, Leia, and Luke have been living their Happy Ever After for over 30 years . . . until now. Now, Han’s been murdered by his own evil son, impaled on a lightsaber and tossed to his doom. Call me silly, but that bums me the hell out. I feel like I’m going to go back and watch the original trilogy now, and every time Han makes it out of some scrape, I’m going to be like, “Yeah, you’re alive for now.” And of course it’s true that everyone dies, but I’ve got to tell you, I don’t really come to Star Wars looking for nihilism. I want cool lightsaber battles, not an existential crisis.

So, yeah. All of this is to say that while Han Solo dying isn’t ultimately a problem I have with the film, it does, for me, definitely detract from my enjoyment of the story. Maybe this will happen less and less with repeat viewings, but for now I’m just like, You bastards, you’re ruining my childhood! What’s next? John McClane? Maverick? INIGO MONTOYA?

Okay, let’s see. Well, perhaps we should talk some more about the similarities between A New Hope and The Force Awakens.

So, even during the movie’s opening scroll, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit letdown that in thirty years essentially nothing had changed in the political landscape of the Star Wars universe. Of course it would be silly and unrealistic to assume the entire Empire was destroyed simply because the Emperor was dead, but some movement here would not have been a terrible idea.

Instead, it’s almost as if the events of The Return of Jedi had zero effect at all because, apparently, all that’s really happened is that the major factions have changed names. Everything else is the same: the Resistance is still the underdog, the First Order still favors totalitarianism, despite not seeming to have any real clear platforms or goals about what they plan to do with the whole universe anyway. (One just assumes they’re big 1984 fans, you know, “the object of power is power” and so forth.) Even their methodology hasn’t changed: the First Order just keeps building bigger and bigger Death Stars (that are totally different this time because they can take out multiple planets at once!) and the Resistance keeps destroying them with their little dinky ass planes because their whole “The Little Guy Always Wins” philosophy is reflected even in their starship design.

I’m saying, none of it’s terrible, but The Force Awakens would be a lot neater if it felt like the original trilogy had any sort of consequence on the universe, particular because the plot feels so recycled. After all, the movie begins with one of our heroes sticking a vital message into a droid and releasing it on a desert planet to keep it out of the hands of the bad guys. Of course, this time our hero is Poe instead of Leia, the droid is BB-8 instead of R2-D2, and the message is about Luke’s whereabouts instead of blueprints for the Death Star, but yeah, it’s the same godamn plot. And sure, that’s obviously intentional and might even have been something I would’ve enjoyed conceptually, but since the plot continuously echoes the original and never really veers anywhere new, I find myself, on reflection, more and more disappointed by the film’s lack of originality.

But let’s get back to the story, shall we?

Okay, so our dashing pilot hero, Poe, is captured by Kylo Ren (and not Rylo Ken, which I keep trying to write), who turns out to be Han and Leia’s evil child. A bunch of people seem to think Rey is also their child, but while I wouldn’t mind the nod to the tie-in novels, I hope that isn’t the case, mostly because the writers would have to work awful hard to make me believe that Han and Leia happened to have another kid who nobody decided to mention during this movie. I mean, that just seems like shoddy writing. Personally, I’m in favor of the fan theory that Rey is one of the kids who was training to be a Jedi before that little asshole Kylo decided to kill all of them.

Because oh yeah, this guy?

SUCH an asshole.

When we meet Kylo Ren, he’s busy killing a harmless old man and also burning down an entire village, so, you know, sympathy is already a little hard to come by. Like, you can’t just say, “Whoops, my bad, I probably shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t my fault! The Dark Side made me!” Mass murder isn’t like shoplifting a pack of gum; the excuse of peer pressure really isn’t going to cut it.

Now, we do know that Kylo feels some inner turmoil about all this, but not because he acts particularly conflicted throughout the film. No, we mostly know about his inner pain because he confesses being drawn to the Light while talking to the twisted shell of a helmet that his dead grandfather used to wear, like, oh okay, that’s normal. But seriously, inner turmoil only counts for so much. After killing Max von Sydow and dozens of helpless extras, Kylo Ren also tortures Poe, tries to torture Rey (while doing that creepy too-close talking thing that male characters are always doing to women, like, I bet you guys everything that Kylo wasn’t all up slithering on Poe Dameron’s cheek) and then, if that wasn’t enough, blowing up entire planets of innocent people. And that’s all before he murders his father/beloved fan favorite of the franchise.

Star Wars has always been desperately weird when it comes to family. For one thing, so much seems to rely on genetic predisposition, like Luke isn’t a farmer because his dad wasn’t a farmer, despite the fact that he never met the man, and Kylo Ren is swayed to the Dark Side because he has too much of his grandfather in him, despite the fact that Darth Vader was dead long before this kid was even born and his parents are pretty godamn awesome. Does this mean a certain aptitude for the Force is a dominant genetic trait? After all, even Leia has Force intuition, although it doesn’t appear she ever learned to levitate shit. And perhaps the inescapable pull to the Dark Side is recessive, since it seemed to skip Leia and Luke (please, he was tempted for, like, a second) but hit Kylo (or Ben) pretty hardcore. What I’m saying here is that Darth Vader’s spunk apparently had some serious godamn staying power, and I think more essays about Star Wars should talk about that.

For another thing, though, being related to one of the story’s heroes probably shouldn’t garner the audience’s automatic sympathy for any one character, like, this is Darth Vader going to Glowy Blue Jedi Heaven all over again, despite all the terrible things he’s done, including Little Kid Slaughter. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he is standing a foot away from the man he fucking murdered. But we’re supposed to forgive him because he had one measly moment of, Huh, maybe I SHOULDN’T let this guy kill my son in front of me? What kind of bullshit is that?  The last thing you do, whether it’s good or bad, shouldn’t be the only thing you do that matters.

If I’m honestly supposed to sympathize with Kylo (up till the point where he kills Han, anyway, because I’m pretty sure that’s the No Going Back moment–as if murdering all his fellow Jedi classmates prior to the movie was just an example of the foibles of youth), well, the movie completely failed to make that happen, kind of like how nobody actually feels sorry for Anakin Skywalker even though you’re supposed to, because Anakin’s a whiny piece of shit. There are obviously plenty of parallels between young Anakin Skywalker and Kylo Ren, but what I enjoyed about Kylo was that I felt like the movie was inviting me not to give a shit, not that he’s a parody of Anakin, exactly, but that he’s never meant to be the tragic figure Anakin’s supposed to be. (It’s probably worth mentioning that, thus far, none of the Star Wars movies have sold me on the oh-so-tempting power of the Dark Side. Like, when it comes to makeup, I totally get it. Dark Side’s makeup obviously kick’s Light Side’s ass. But the movies themselves have always had a very tell, don’t show storytelling approach to this that’s never really won me over.)

While watching the film, I felt like Kylo was intentionally built up as a villain who you love to hate, an angsty, almost adolescent type guy who needlessly murders people and constantly throws temper tantrums when things don’t go his way. That interpretation works for me, so we’ll see how his character develops over the course of the trilogy, because if I’m supposed to feel sorry for him (or worse, if they actually do try to redeem him later on), well, we’re going to have problems.

(By the way, Kylo’s big temper tantrum–I think after Rey escapes?–was one of the funniest moments in the whole movie. Two Stormtroopers come up as he’s in the midst of his giant hissy fit, and just as Mek and I are silently gesturing, Run, Stormtroopers, run, the Stormtroopers slowly back away and leave. I laughed so hard I clapped.)

Okay. Back to the beginning, again. Evil Sulkmonster Kylo Ren captures Poe and successfully tortures information out of him with the Force.

Meanwhile, Finn (or FN-2187), is a Stormtrooper who’s horrified when he’s asked to help slaughter that entire village, so he breaks Poe out of his cell and they escape together.

Two things about this:

A. Like all Stormtroopers, apparently, Finn was abducted (either at birth or a very young age), conscripted into duty, and brainwashed. Somehow, Finn easily shakes off that conditioning, and I’d be pretty disappointed if the sequels don’t follow up on that. I don’t necessarily need to know where Finn comes from or who his parents were or anything (unless that’s significant to how he broke through the brainwashing, which, given the weird genetic predispositions of Star Wars, it probably is), but I would definitely like to know more about his upbringing and exactly how and when Finn grew a moral conscience, if it never properly worked on him, if it’s not working on other Stormtroopers as well, etc. Also, who was Finn’s dead friend from the beginning? I mean, sure, they probably just added him so that Finn could get blood on his helmet and be distinguishable from all the other dudes in white armor, but Stormtrooper Friendship is fascinating and I’d love more expansion on that.

B. Finn and Poe are my new OTP.

Apparently, our ship is called Stormpilot.

Here’s the thing: The Force Awakens was out for almost a week before I had the opportunity to see it. During that time, I tried desperately to avoid reading spoilers online and was, for the most part, successful, but my eyes scanned over something on Twitter that made it sound like a Finn/Poe romance was canon. I turned away very fast and was about 98% sure I’d misread it–mostly because if the two had kissed, I was pretty sure no amount of caution could have stopped me from seeing Gay Star Wars! all over the internet–but I kept it in mind, and when I watched the two characters in the movie . . . I was like, Hell YES, I want that.

There’s just . . . I don’t know, some kind of chemistry there. I honestly don’t expect the relationship to bloom into a romance (partially because I think they’ll go Finn/Rey, particularly with that line about boyfriends, and partially because I just don’t think anyone in Hollywood is bold enough to have the main heroes of their giant mainstream blockbuster franchise be gay, unfortunately) but I’d be ecstatic to be wrong about that. Because I was into it, and because it’d be a big deal to have action heroes who weren’t straight. Not a tragic gay romance or a family dramady with a gay brother or something, but badass gay fighter pilots and rogues. Like, let’s make that whole ‘this generation’s Star Wars’ really mean something, you know?

So, okay, Finn and Poe crash-land on Jakku, and Poe appears to be dead. Poe is totally not dead, which you know because you don’t see his body. What’s funny about this is that I was actually really worried about Poe, right up until the moment you’re supposed to think he’s a goner, because there was something about that opening scene that made me think, Oh shit, he’s going to be a fake out hero. He’s going to be one of those guys that’s heavily promoted as a big star, but he’s really just the dude who sets up the plot and gets killed in the first act, paving way for our REAL heroes to take the stage. I was pretty much convinced when Poe explains to Finn why BB-8’s important and what he looks like, and kind of bummed about it because there’s just something about the guy that’s immediately charming. But when there was no body left behind, just a fabulous jacket, I was like, Oh, okay, I’m pretty sure he’s coming back. Cool beans.

Two things, quickly, before we move on:

A. About that jacket . . . wasn’t Poe wearing it when he escaped? I’ve only seen this movie once, so maybe he took it off when he got into the TIE fighter for some reason, and I just forgot? Because I initially assumed that Poe wasn’t thrown from the crash like Finn was; I figured he’d woken up, found Finn was gone, and went to go looking for him. And I was like, That’s weird he left he jacket behind, like, it’s almost a stupidly convenient passing of the hero mantle. But I could have sworn he was wearing it when they crashed, right?

B. Apparently, JJ Abrams’s initial plan was to kill off Poe, so ha! Instincts! Also, this is just like Lost all over again, although, hopefully, Poe will remain considerably more lovable than Jack ever was.

So, Poe goes missing for most of the movie, and the story shifts focus to Finn and Rey. Rey, of course, has come across BB-8 and saved him from people who would salvage him for parts. There’s no way I’m actually going to recap everything that happens during this movie, not with a review thats already’s probably upwards of 5,000 words, so this seems as a good of a time as any to stop and talk in more detail about how awesome Rey is.

Cause, yeah, Rey is awesome. She’s funny and super competent and, while she doesn’t know how to do everything right away, has the typical action hero learning curve where she figures it out pretty fast. She rescues herself. She has a mysterious past and a child’s hope that whoever abandoned her will someday come back.

And, oh yeah, she also has THE FORCE.

I’d make a lousy Jedi. The Jedi philosophy doesn’t do much for me and never has, but nonetheless, I (and many girl nerds, I imagine) have always been disappointed that there were no girl Jedi characters, that all the telekinetic action and big glow stick fencing battles were reserved for those with penises. So it’s a big deal to me, to finally have a girl pick up a lightsaber or read someone’s thoughts or command weak-willed Stormtroopers to do what she wants, particularly when I believe there are only, what, four women with speaking roles in the entire original trilogy? And only two of of those characters are actually named in the films. (No, Mon Mothma doesn’t count. They don’t say her name in the movie.) If you go here, you can see every line spoken by a woman who isn’t Princess Leia in the entire original trilogy. The whole video, including credits, is less than two minutes long.

I think this is why I wasn’t really upset when JJ Abrams said that Star Wars would no longer be a boy’s thing. I think a lot of female fans felt like Abrams was effectively trying to erase them with that statement, like oh thanks, Great Male Savior, but I’ve liked Star Wars pretty much my whole life without your help, and I think I’ll just go ahead and keep on doing that, okay? I totally get that reaction because it can be incredibly frustrating to be treated like you’re some rare mythical creature, like, a girl willingly entering a comic book store on her own with the intent of purchasing comics for herself? WHAT SORCERY IS THIS?

Still, that’s not really how I took Abrams’s comments when I read them myself. I, personally, assumed that he’d made an effort to actively be more inclusive, that he wanted The Force Awakens to have more interesting and active female roles that little girls could get excited about. Because while there are plenty of girls who’ve been fans of the Star Wars universe for years, I’m sure there are plenty of other girls who looked at the original trilogy and said, “Fuck this shit. I’m going to go watch a movie where the male to female ratio of the entire universe isn’t 99 billion to 1.” Which is a fair reaction. (Especially for non-Caucasian girls, who get absolutely zero representation in the first trilogy. Things unfortunately aren’t much improved in The Force Awakens on that front, at least from what I remember . . . obviously, Lupita N’yongo is in it, playing some kind of Barkeep Yoda character, but since she also looks like this, you know, it’s not quite the same sort of presence that John Boyega has. It’s possible that I’m forgetting more minor characters, though. Like I said, I’ve only seen this once.)

Anyway, overall, The Force Awakens gets a yay, feminism! vote for me. It’s not just Rey, although obviously seeing a super competent girl-Jedi is a huge plus. It’s also that you see a few more women in the background, too, like they actually exist in this universe now. I was unreasonably happy about the female fighter pilot. She didn’t even do that much, and I was so excited to see her.

(Now if we could only get the toys to catch up. If you’re reading this more because you like me than because you know or care anything about Star Wars toy merchandising, look at these links to get an idea of just how hard it is to find Rey action figures, despite the fact that she’s the main character. This is what you get when you search “Poe Toy Star Wars Force Awakens.” This is what you get when you search “Finn Toy Star Wars Force Awakens.” And this is what you get when you search “Rey Toy Star Wars Force Awakens.” Notice the difference? Girls play with action figures too, people. Cardboard cutouts, costumes, and travel mugs rarely made my Christmas list as a kid.)

Hm, what else do we have to talk about? You know what, I’m just going to give up and do alphabetized notes for the rest of this review because, damn it, I would very much like to get this done before I go to sleep. So.

A. I really hope Leia gets more to do in the next movie.

I’m okay with her not having much to do here because Han kind of takes center stage when it comes to original characters, but now Han is super dead, so. I know it won’t happen, but I really wish Leia would kick her evil son’s sulky emo ass. (You know, without a big “you can be good again speech” because seriously. See the above rant.) Mostly, though, I just want Leia to get in on the action. Changing her title to ‘General’ doesn’t do much for me if you don’t actually have her really doing anything, like, I don’t find Princess a derogatory term if she literally is a Princess.

B. Personally, I’m hoping that Supreme Leader Snoke is, much like the Fear Demon in BTVS’s “Fear, Itself,” only about six inches tall in real life. Seriously, there’s somebody out there besides my sister who thought this dude was ridiculous, right? I can’t find anyone talking about this, and I don’t know if that’s because nobody else noticed, or if people are so jazzed about the movie that they don’t want to admit that the Chief Villain looks dumb as hell.

C. At the end of the movie, Dumb Looking Snoke says that Kylo Ren has to complete his evil training. I’m . . . curious as to what this entails. He can already read thoughts, levitate shit, and freeze people in place. He’s also already committed both patricide and genocide. For his Dark Side Graduation Ceremony, does he get to eat babies or something? Will this allow him to, like, somehow generate fireballs? Shapeshift? Ooh, will he FLY?

D. Here’s a thing: you never really feel the mass slaughter when the bad guys are just blowing up planets wily-nily in Star Wars. Like, this is an improvement on A New Hope because we actually get to (very briefly) see some of these people before they die, but there’s, like, zero gut punch to it. Can you even imagine how many people died in The Force Awakens? More people died in The Force Awakens than in every single movie you watched this year COMBINED. You think it’s all popcorn and lightsabers, but there is some seriously bleak shit in this movie that nobody wants you to notice. (Related: it would be pretty awesome if they introduced a character in the next film who was from one of those now annihilated planets and was utterly devastated. It has always bothered me how little Leia was allowed to react to the destruction of Alderaan in the original trilogy. Oh, the fanfiction that needs to be written.)

E. Finn lies to Rey for quite some time, pretending to be a part of the Resistance instead of an ex-Stormtrooper, and I’ve got to tell you: I was ecstatic when there was never a huge “I’m so betrayed!” blowup, like, I was so sure we were gearing towards that part in a romantic comedy where the girl realizes that the boy was paid to ask her out, and then the guy has to show how he’s really, truly fallen in love with her, and I was like, “Ugh, no; please no manufactured drama bullshit!” And then they pretty neatly sidestepped the issue. I was deeply relieved.

F. There are a good number of cameos in this movie, some that I missed (like Simon Pegg, for instance, or Daniel Craig) and some that surprised and delighted me. I should have known Greg Grunberg was going to show up, considering who was directing the movie, and I was especially happy to see Ken Leung, whose presence will always make me happy. Is it too much to hope that he comes back for the sequels and actually has stuff to do?

G. I think The Force Awakens does have the occasional pacing problem. Sometimes, it feels a little unnecessarily stuffed with action pieces, like, the scene with the monster dudes that Han’s smuggling felt fairly silly to me. (I mean, I enjoyed Rey saving Finn from them and all. But . . . did this scene actually accomplish, like, anything? It felt pretty squeezed in.)

I was also a little disappointed by the big attack on the Super Death Star. It’s not a huge flaw, but it does feel a little uneven because while all the stuff with Rey and Finn is exciting, Poe and his fellow Resistance fighters feel almost stranded, like, there is zero tension in any of their scenes. I don’t think I even noticed the moment when they destroyed the big weapon; it was just like, “Oh, hey, did they succeed? I guess they succeeded. Uh, yay?” I wish the movie could have found a way to make that part of the battle more exciting, partially because I like Poe, and partially because it suffered pretty deeply from comparison to the original. Like Luke turning off his computer and using the Force to destroy the first Death Star is kind of iconic. This stuff, not so much.

H. Finally, finally, I really like the last shot of this movie, with Rey desperately holding out the lightsaber to Luke, while Luke makes a face that’s like, “Jesus, no, I have to go back? NOOOOOOO!” I’m super excited to see where the next one goes, especially because Rian Johnson’s the one directing it this time, and I suspect he’s going to take the franchise to whole other, weirder and wilder places.

QUOTES:

Rey: “This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs!”
Han: “TWELVE!”
(mumbling to himself, irritated)
Han: “Fourteen.”

Rey: “Stop grabbing my hand!”

Poe: “Why are you helping me?”
Finn: “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Poe: “. . .you need a pilot.”
Finn: “I need a pilot.”

Finn: “We’ll figure it out. We’ll use the Force!”
Han: “That’s not how the Force works!”

Rey: “You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”
Stormtrooper: “What did you say?”
Rey: “You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”
Stormtrooper: “I will tighten these restraints, scavenger scum!”
Rey: “You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”
Stormtrooper: “I will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open.”
Rey: “And you will drop your weapon!”
Stormtrooper: “And I’ll drop my weapon.”

Han: “Escape now. Hug later.”

Finn: “Okay, stay calm, stay calm.”
Poe: “I am calm.”
Finn: “I was talking to myself.”

Finn: “He almost killed me six times!”
(Chewbacca grabs him by the throat.)
Finn: “Which is okay.”

Han: “Is there a garbage chute? A trash compactor?”
Finn: “Yeah, there is.”

Finn: “I need help with this big hairy thing!”

Finn: “What about that ship?”
Rey: “That ship’s garbage.”
(The ship they were running toward is blown up.)
Rey: “The garbage will do.”

Han: “You sure you’re up for this?”
Finn: “Hell no.”

Poe: “. . . do I talk first or do you talk first? I talk first?”

SUMMARY:

I know I picked at it a lot (I can’t help it; it’s my way!) but I really had a great time watching this in theater. I wish it could have been a little more imaginative at points, and I’m still making my peace with Han’s death, but credit where credit’s due: JJ Abrams gave me the kind of return to the series that The Phantom Menace never did.

MVP:

. . . you know, I think I’m going to give this one to John Boyega. It’s super close, and I think Daisy Ridley did an awesome job, but there was something about the humor that John Boyega brought to this film and franchise that really resonated with me. (Also, I’ve just got a thing for henchmen who are like, “Hmm. New life plan, maybe?)

TENTATIVE GRADE:

A-

MORAL:

As long as there’s light, you’ve got a chance. Once the sun is gone, though, RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Especially you, mentors. Get living while the living is good because, eventually, your father figure days are coming to an abrupt and depressing end.

Also, girls can do anything boys can do better.

Also, POE AND FINN 4EVER.

A side effect of falling hard for any particular fandom means that you will spend far too much of your time investigating any and all avenues of it. I fall in and out of love with fandoms the way most people fall in and out of love with, well, other people, and right now I am head over heels for anything to do with The Force Awakens. I even read a Star Wars novel, and I haven’t done that in probably 20 years.

Thus along with the Disney Princess Movie Challenge of 2016, I have also begun the great Star Wars Rewatch (that, presumably, everyone else did last year BEFORE The Force Awakens came out). That means I had to square my shoulders, face my fears, and watch a film I had not seen in a long time: Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace.

. . . yeah, it’s not great. There are definitely things I’m going to make fun of. Like, a lot of things. So many things. That being said, I’m not entirely convinced The Phantom Menace is quite the “involuntary twitching, brains leaking from ears, weeping blood, oh God, the horror, THE HORROR” experience people say it is, either.

DISCLAIMER:

We’re marking this one as a blasphemy, kids, since I didn’t despise The Phantom Menace with every fiber of my being like I’m obviously supposed to. (I won’t pretend I’m particularly kind to it, because I’m not. But I do actually try to be fair, especially since there are aspects of the film that I do enjoy.) Also, there are SPOILERS for all of the Star Wars movies except The Force Awakens.

SUMMARY:

Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his padawan, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are tasked to help negotiate a peace between the greedy Trade Federation and the Naboo. When that pretty much immediately fails, the two Jedi Knights must protect Naboo’s Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), but of course complications immediately arise, like broken hyperdrives, manipulative senators, and the first appearance of Baby Darth Vader (Jake Lloyd).

NOTES:

1. First things first: let’s talk about me.

I grew up on the original Star Wars trilogy as a kid, mostly when it used to play over and over on USA. I doubt I watched the movies in order. Probably in pieces, which is how I watched the majority of five seasons of BTVS, too, before we FINALLY got the channel that aired the actual show. There’s a more than decent chance that I couldn’t have differentiated one movie plot from the next for a long time and just considered it all one long film (much the way I still think of The Belgariad by David Eddings as being one massive book instead of five normal sized ones). And if I had to try and pick one that I liked the best, well, I’m not sure if it would even have been one of the original trilogy. I may very well have picked the TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor instead, which I know is almost certainly an appalling thing to say, but I liked the Ewoks as a kid and it had a little girl as the main character, so, yeah. If I got to choose what we rented, we rented that.

Look, I’m not proud of myself, okay? I’m just trying to be honest here.

My point is this: I always liked Star Wars, but I didn’t love it, not as a kid, anyway. I didn’t run around the house pretending to be a Jedi. I didn’t constantly dress up as Princess Leia. (I think I might have once because I vaguely remember trying to figure out how to do Cinnamon Bun Hair? But I wouldn’t have called her my hero or anything.) And we didn’t have any Star Wars toys at all. I did read a couple of Star Wars novels and enjoyed them, but that’s almost certainly because my sister read them and I basically just read whatever she did for years. Not to mention, I didn’t fully embrace my inner geek until after high school, and while I always loved watching movies, I didn’t get super passionately analytical and fannish about them until roughly college, which is also about the time I really started figuring out what I liked and didn’t like in stories.

So, The Phantom Menace? I saw it well before I became a diehard nerd: I was thirteen at the time, and the lady I semi-regularly babysat for took Mekaela and me out to see it. (I really don’t remember why. But it was nice of her.) I watched the movie and I thought it was, you know, okay.

This is the first time I’ve watched The Phantom Menace all the way through since 1999, and while I’m going to take way more words to say it, my basic impressions have not entirely changed.

2. I keep changing my mind about how I want to approach this review. Maybe the easiest way to do it would be semi-chronologically?

Wait, we’re talking about trades routes and taxation? This is already putting me to sleep.

One of my biggest problems with this movie is pacing. The Phantom Menace is two hours and sixteen minutes long, but it actually feels considerably longer, alternating between spending too long in certain places and not nearly long enough in others. (Tatooine, for instance. For the love of Christ, save us from Tatooine.) And while it starts with an action sequence . . . I’m not particularly into it at all, and I’m not quite sure why. Is it because the Federation dudes are kind of annoying? Is it because the droids don’t ever feel even a little bit intimidating? Is it because the stakes just never feel terribly high, even though they should? Or is it just because I can’t concentrate on the story when I so desperately want to leap into the screen and cut off Ewan McGregor’s terrible little ponytail that doesn’t suit him at all? (Seriously, I could deal with the braid, but the braid and the tiny ponytail? No.) The mystery may never be solved.

3. Also, here’s something I think we should all acknowledge before we go any further: Qui-Gon Jinn is kind of a dick.

He’s a little condescending to Padmé while they’re on Tatooine, but his assholery really shines when it comes to Jar Jar. And I know, I know: we all hate Jar Jar. I’m not going to argue with you on that; in fact, we’ll get to the many problems with Jar Jar and the Gungans in the very next note. But Qui-Gon is a dick to this guy without much cause, like, pretty much immediately. Consider this:

Here you are, just chilling on your home planet, maybe picking some flowers or doing something else relatively innocuous, when all of a sudden an army of droids, a gigantic ship, falling trees, a bunch of huge, terrified wildlife, and a dude in a robe come running directly at you. The best thing to do, obviously, is turn tail and run yourself, but be honest: have you really never frozen in a situation where freezing was the worst thing to do? If you haven’t, be quiet; no one likes you and your perfect stress responses, anyway.

Anyway, so you freeze up, freaking out for fairly legitimate reasons, and the dude in the robe runs straight into you. You basically cling to him, terrified, because there’s not much other option at this point, and you both fall down, barely surviving being killed by the ship that passes just overhead. Obviously, you could have handled this better, and some irritation on the dude’s part isn’t entirely unreasonable, so when you express your gratitude and he responds with, “You almost got us killed,” okay, fine, that’s fair. “Are you brainless?” does seem like a harsh follow-up, though.

You are not brainless, so you remind him that you speak (in case he didn’t catch that before). And he says, “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent,” and okay, that’s it, that’s fucked up. Like, who says that to someone thirty seconds after you meet them? Especially if the person you’re talking to actually does have significantly lower intelligence, as Jar Jar pretty clearly does in this movie. Isn’t that kind of like going up to someone with a cognitive disability and saying, “Wow, so you’re retarded.” It’s pretty awful. At best, Qui-Gon is an elitist and an occasionally insensitive shit. At worst, he’s just a big bully.

It should also be said that Obi-Wan, too, is pretty much a dick. Hard to know if he was always this way or just learned under Qui-Gon’s terrible tutelage, but yeah. His first reaction upon seeing Jar Jar: “What’s this?” Not “Who is this?” or “What’s going on?” but “What’s this?” Mind you, Jar Jar is standing right there, but Obi-Wan ignores him entirely to ask Qui-Gon, and QG, in a dry, long-suffering tone, responds, “A local.” (Qui-Gon’s suffering, mind you, has been going on for roughly 25 seconds.)

And later on Tatooine, when Qui-Gon says he’s going back for unfinished business (picking up Anakin, although I’m completely unclear as to why Anakin didn’t just come along in the first place), Obi-Wan says, “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic life form?”

You know, I’ve got this manager at work, Tom, who likes to make passionate arguments in the Empire’s defense, and while I really hate to credit Tom with anything because some of his movie opinions are just terrible (hi Tom!!!), I’m starting to slightly see his point of view here because, based on this movie, the Jedi Knights are basically snobby aristocratic bastards with glowing phallus-shaped weapons to fully symbolize their dickery.

4. And then there’s Jar Jar. Oh Jar Jar.

I’m not really going to get into whether I think Jar Jar (Ahmed Best) is a racist stereotype or not. I feel like there are other people who are far more qualified to talk about that, and have. (Including Best himself.) I do, however, find him incredibly cartoonish and annoying, not quite to the point of madness, exactly, but my fingers may or may not have been curling inwards like talons.

I get that he’s supposed to be comic relief. I get it, but I hate it, like I generally hate all bumbling characters whose lack of intelligence and usefulness are, for some reason, supposed to be funny. Jar Jar feels very forced to me, like George Lucas really wanted to create a character who everyone would find Lovable and Endearing, presumably because people love nothing more than a hysterically inept sidekick? Obviously, Lucas rather wildly missed the mark here. In some ways, Jar Jar kind of reminds me of Neelix from Star: Trek Voyager. (Although, IMO, Jar Jar is much, much worse.) Both often feel more like mascots than actual characters, and the thing is, no one actually likes mascots. The best part of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is when Ace beats up the giant bird man.

5. It doesn’t help that we only really meet one other Gungan in this whole movie: Boss Nass. And despite the fact that he is voiced by the superb Brian Blessed . . . yeah, Boss Nass is pretty annoying, too.

Yes, yes, technically we see tons of Gungans, and there is one other Gungan guy with lines towards the end, not that I remember much about him. But for meaningful characters, it’s pretty much Jar Jar and Boss Nass, and Jar Jar is, at best, an overgrown child; Boss Nass, meanwhile, is proud and weak-minded and more full of bluster than anything else. It’s disappointing primarily because I want to be interested in the cultural rift between the Gungans and the Naboo; these are wildly different, segregated societies that obviously share a bitter history: the Gungans seem convinced that the Naboo look down on them, and the Naboo . . . I don’t know, maybe do look down on them? Their shared history is so poorly developed that it’s honestly hard to be sure.

Two disparate sides that have to come together to defeat a common enemy is classic storytelling and can be very engaging, but it works best when you understand where both sides are coming from, when you focus on how their history informs their complicated dynamic. Time should be spent developing both of these cultures so that, when they finally do agree to come together, it’s a Big Deal. Instead, The Phantom Menace decides to spend this time on podracing and introducing deeply uncomfortable UST between Baby Darth Vader and the Space Angel who’s twice his age. (Okay, not really, but we’ll come back to Anakin and Amidala’s peculiar relationship later.) As such, the whole conflict and resolution between the Naboo and the Gungans basically breaks down like this:

The Gungans: “The Naboo need help, and we’re not helping them because they’re snobby and mean to us sometimes, maybe.”

The Naboo: “The Gungans are obviously super annoying and useless (as evidenced by Jar Jar Binks and Boss Nass, the only representatives of their people) but we really need their help, so let’s just appeal to their vanity and pride. That way, we don’t all die.”

The Gungans: “Wow, you’re bowing to us now? Ha ha, now we’re talking!”

I said one of my biggest problems with The Phantom Menace was pacing; another one is seriously wasted potential. The Star Wars films have always been, essentially, action/adventure movies in space, but that doesn’t mean you can’t allot some time to flesh out relevant backstory and important character moments. (We’ll be coming back to this when I eventually get around to reviewing A New Hope, where a certain princess watches her entire planet blow up and doesn’t get even a second of screentime to process or grieve.) And almost everything I like or could potentially like about this story is either underdeveloped or weighed down by some pretty weak writing. Which is unfortunate because the plot of the story itself isn’t actually that bad.

6. The one thing I do love about the Gungans, though, is how awesome their hidden city is.

Isn’t that gorgeous? Seriously, I adore this design. I have many, many problems with this movie, but I generally enjoy the look of it. (Except the CGI, but I’m magnanimously trying not to hold that against a movie that came out in 1999.) Especially when it comes to costuming and makeup, which are of course superb.

7. We must now stop everything to talk about the many amazing looks of Queen Amidala.

Oh my God, I just want to be her. (Well, you know. Without the bullshit romance and tragic ending.)

I can’t help but feel like the fashion in SF movies lately has been a little lacking. Or maybe not that it’s lacking, exactly, just that it’s shifted in style: gritty apocalypses and dystopian futures are really in right now, so I feel like a lot of the costumes I’ve seen have been, you know, torn, dirty clothes and leather jackets and such. (And if they’re particularly fashionable apocalypses, maybe a mohawk.) The Hunger Games movies did have some spectacularly ridiculous costumes (mostly worn by Effie), but the majority of them were so lurid as to be a bit absurd. Which was fine, I mean, they were intentionally silly and I enjoyed them (especially the butterfly dress, ZOMG), but I’d really love to see more space operas with wildly elaborate fashion like this, fashion that’s meant to be taken a little more seriously. (Did Jupiter Ascending have fantastic costumes? I haven’t seen it yet, and admittedly, I suspect if you’re taking that movie seriously, you’re doing it wrong. But it does seem like the kind of story that demands elaborate costuming.)

I’m actually planning to cosplay somebody else from The Phantom Menace at Dragon Con, but if I had to pick one Amidala outfit . . . man, I don’t even know. I think it’s between Amidala’s black dress of fashionable mourning and the dress she wears to the Senate. Either way, I’d look great. And either way, my head would probably weigh a hundred pounds, but hell, it’d be worth it.

8. It also needs to be said: Queen Amidala and her handmaidens are so much more badass than I remember them being.

(Note: I’m mostly going to refer to Natalie Portman’s character as Amidala in this review, except for when she’s on Tatooine. Then I’ll call her Padmé. And maybe occasionally Padmé Amidala. Just to be confusing.)

I really love Natalie Portman’s performance as Amidala. I like how severe she is, how capable and commanding. She isn’t flawless, of course–she gets manipulated by the Emperor Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who I prefer to think of as Senator Smirk–but I really buy that moment when she’s at the Senate and is like, “Uh, no, I’m not just going to wait for you guys to dawdle while my people are being slaughtered. Kick this guy out!” (Although, does it seem ridiculously easy to anyone else, deposing the High Chancellor? One new queen is like, “This dude’s weak!” and everyone else is instantly onboard? I can’t help but feel like the Senate must constantly be changing leaders, if this is how they run things.)

Also, I love, love, love that Amidala is the one who’s responsible for coming up with the battle strategy on Naboo. And that the two asshole Jedi, so in tune with the ways and secrets of the universe, never catch onto her deception, not until she chooses to come forward. And then she and her handmaidens all take up arms when invading the palace. It’s pretty awesome.

I do wish that Sabé (the perfectly cast Keira Knightley, above left) had a little more to do as her own character, if only because there’s such interesting potential in her relationship with Amidala. Sabé is both decoy and bodyguard, and she has to be able to communicate subtly and effectively enough with Amidala that she can issue her Queen’s commands without ever giving up the truth about their identities. There’s just so much material to work with there; it drives me a little crazy that Star Wars–a universe in which men seem to make up primarily 99.7% of the population–finally had a set-up where two female characters could have had their own relationship/dynamic/subplot, only to not do shit with it, in this or any other movie. (Sabé disappears from the story after this film, presumably because in the sequel, Amidala leaves office/abdicates and becomes Padmé forever. I find it wholly disappointing. I never thought in a million years I’d be tempted to write The Phantom Menace fanfiction, but yeah. I kind of want the Spectacularly Fashionable and Dangerous Adventures of Amidala and Sabé, like, right now.)

As far as Padmé goes in this movie . . . you know, she’s okay, but she doesn’t have that much to really do. Amidala has this presence, you know, and she’s doing important things and has a vital role in moving the story along. By contrast, Padmé on Tatooine is just kind of along for the ride. She isn’t particularly annoying (yet–I know the worst is coming in Attack of the Clones), but there’s nothing very exciting about her, either; she doesn’t add much to that part of the story and really is only around so she can meet her future husband, Anakin. Which is awkward because he’s a child and Padmé kind of comes off like his glorified babysitter.

9. Shall we now talk about Baby Darth Vader?

So, Jake Lloyd himself is . . . okay. I mean, the kid’s, what, eight or nine years old? I try not to be too mean to child actors because, you know, most of us don’t spring from the womb as genius prodigies, and the amount of hate this kid must have felt from the world before he even hit double digits is insane. I feel bad for Ahmed Best, too, (sure, I can’t stand Jar Jar, but I wouldn’t want anyone but the current presidential candidates from the Republican party to suffer the level of vitriol Jar Jar gets) but at the very least, he was an adult. Most of us have to hit puberty before we deal with the kind of shit Jake Lloyd did.

Still, Anakin himself has serious problems.

It seems like Lloyd is playing him more or less the way he’s been directed to, but Anakin comes across as very, very young. Like he’s supposed to be nine, but I would have guessed six or seven, and a young six or seven at that, like, this is a spectacularly innocent little boy. For Christ’s sake, his first line is to ask a pretty girl if she’s an angel. Ugh. The running around yelling, “Yipeeeeee!” also kills me dead, not in the good way.

And unfortunately, Anakin just gets worse and worse for me as the story goes on, like initially I rolled my eyes a little, sure, but by the time we got to Baby Darth Vader accidentally launching into space and taking down the Big Evil Ship, I was like, “Okay, no. Just no.”

Cause sure. This seems credible.

Look, the Star Wars movies have always been relatively family friendly (or as family friendly as stories can be when whole planets get destroyed and evil fathers torture their daughters and amputate their sons), but having this child whoopsie-daisy his way into saving the day is just dumb. It doesn’t feel particularly Star Wars at all, actually; it feels like something you’d see in a movie meant for little kids and only little kids, the kind parents sit through and think, “Jesus, 99% of the time procreating was totally worth it, but this is the other 1%, and my brain is BLEEDING FROM DUMB.” And the adult fighter pilots are especially unconvincing as they’re forced to cheer in unison with Anakin’s delighted whooping. “Golly gee willikers,” they might as well say. “Where did that amazing hero pilot come from? Boy I’m glad he’s around to save our skins and render us fully grown and trained fighter pilots useless and obsolete!”

In a movie plagued with considerable flaws, Baby Darth Vader blowing up the droid control ship might actually have been my least favorite scene.

10. But I got a little off track here. Let’s go back to Tatooine and discuss how maybe making Darth Vader a precocious second-grader was, all in all, not the best idea.

Darth Vader pretty regularly makes Best Villain lists, and we all know why: because James Earl Jones is a god, an evil and wonderful god. And bad guy origin stories can be very powerful, depending on their execution; at their best, they are tragic and relatable and make you think how we’re all one wrong choice away from being what we despise. But at the same time, it’s helpful to find a thread of what we loved about the villain in their younger selves, some hint of who or what they could become. Maybe if Anakin was more like, I don’t know, a charming street kid who was basically on the side of good but had a hint of darkness to him, some sense of danger, an anger that went beyond a childish pout when he didn’t get what he wanted. Maybe if he actually seemed anything like a real child with kindness and meanness and mischief, instead of that super innocent wonder child that you really only find in Hollywood. Anakin turning out to be Darth Vader . . . it’s a little like finding out that Wesley Crusher from TNG turned out to be, I don’t know, Khan Noonien Singh or something. I mean, who would even buy it?

Be honest. “I’m with Starfleet. We don’t lie!” is about on par with “Are you an angel?” and “Now, this is podracing!” isn’t it?

11. And holy shit, how, HOW did I forget that Baby Darth Vader is actually Evil Jesus?

“I can’t explain what happened.” Neither can we, Shmi. Neither can we.

As explained in the Spoiler Section of my Force Awakens review, family and genetics in the Star Wars universe have always been desperately weird. So I wasn’t surprised when Qui-Gon Jinn, Rebel Jedi and Elitist Dick Machine, asked Shmi, “Who was his father?” Because of course the most special thing about Anakin had to come from his totally absent father. But that all takes on a whole other level of holy shit WTF when you find out that Anakin didn’t HAVE a father. Yes. The Force is Anakin’s father. The Force went ahead and impregnated Shmi without her knowledge or consent.

You know, there might be a decent essay in how the real villain of the Star Wars universe is the Force itself.

The best thing I can say about this whole what-the-fuckery is that virgin conception generally doesn’t lead to villains, like here you are expecting Jesus and instead you got the Antichrist. (Even if he is, unfortunately, redeemed six movies down the road.) In a way, it’s kind of hilarious. You’ve got to like a story where the prophecy about the Chosen One bringing balance to the Force only brings balance in the most homicidal fashion possible. (Unless you believe that Luke, instead, was the Chosen One. I’ve seen both interpretations.) Then again, a story about a misleading prophecy would work a lot better if we didn’t already know the end of the tale, right? I mean, I know dramatic irony’s a thing and all, but still. It seems ill-conceived because seriously. Virgin baby? Come on. That’s so intensely corny and unnecessary.

And here I had thought that the lasting power of Darth Vader’s spunk couldn’t get any funnier. Boy, was I wrong. I didn’t actually realize that Anakin was only half-human in the first place. (And by the time he dies, even less so. Anakin is maybe 1/4 human, 1/4 robot, and 1/2 God. Does that make Luke and Leia Skywalker 1/4 God? Ooh, neat.)

12. So. The less said about the midi-chlorians, the better, right?

Probably. But that’s not really how I do things on this blog, so: there are ways to mix science and spiritualism that are really very interesting. That’s not what The Phantom Menace accomplishes here. More than anything, it feels like an incredibly random, dumb, and unnecessary retcon, like weren’t we all okay when The Force was just an independent living energy between the spaces of things, not something you could connect to through a bunch of microscopic creatures who hang out inside of you, occasionally whispering the secrets of the universe or impregnating you without asking your opinion on the matter?

Even 13-year-old and considerably less critical Carlie thought that the midi-chlorians were bullshit. (It probably doesn’t help that anytime I think of microscopic creatures chilling inside somebody, I think of A Wind in the Door, which automatically makes me picture midi-chlorians as dragon-cherubim things. Actually, that probably makes the midi-chlorians far cooler than they have any right to be.)

13. It occurs to me that I still haven’t really talked about our future young lovers, Padmé and Anakin, yet.

In the interest of being fair:

A. According to this awesomely helpful chart, Padmé is only five years older than Anakin. She’s 14, whereas he is nine.

B. There is a huge bullshit double standard to take into account here. It’s generally considered normal for men to be ten, twenty, or sometimes even thirty years older than their female love interests, but when women are older than men, it’s suddenly considered creepy and weird.

C. In no time during this movie does Padmé actually look at Anakin like, “You know, that kid could be fuckable when he grows up.” Because that would be horrifying on levels unknown even to this movie.

On the other hand:

Natalie Portman was 18 when this movie came out and, unfortunately, looks 18. Of course, this isn’t uncommon in Hollywood, and in fact you see far bigger gaps between actors’ ages and their characters’ ages all the time. But not only does Padmé not look like a child, she doesn’t act anything like a child, either. She is a queen trying to save her people from annihilation. There are no scenes when she’s wishing she could be free to do what she wants despite her family’s wishes, for example, or thinking about boys, or playing with other children. Padmé Amidala is an adult character played by an adult actress, and there is a squick factor there when you know the story is going to eventually skew romantic.

I’ve already said how much I love that Padmé Amidala is a badass. I don’t have any particular need to see her secretly desire childish things, and if she were to suddenly start playing with Anakin (like, they played tag or got into a food fight or something), I wouldn’t buy it for a second because her people are supposed to be in this huge peril and she would seem like a pretty awful queen. But it would help me see the basis for a love story because, right now, I don’t feel like Padmé treats Anakin like a friend or equal. She looks at him like a child, almost like a charge, and there’s just something creepy about the idea of a babysitter hooking up with one of the kids she used to watch ten years down the road.

I’m not saying it’s an impossible love story, but I am saying it’s a difficult one and, from what I remember, Attack of the Clones falls down so hard executing it that it might very well be one of the most unconvincing romances of all time.

14. I forgot to mention this before when I brought up Shmi Skywalker, but can we all agree that Qui-Gon Jinn should have just brought her along when they left Tatooine? I mean, come on. I’m sure the Jedi are all Lawful Good and everything–which is probably why they’re almost entirely wiped out later, the losers–but who the hell is going to argue that rescuing a slave along with freeing her son was the morally wrong thing to do? And are we really concerned that Watto would somehow have been able to stop Qui-Gon, a powerful Jedi, from taking her? For that matter, this story would have moved along a lot faster if Qui-Gon and co. had just stolen the parts they needed early on. Again, I’m sure thievery would make them the bad guys and whatever, but it’s worth pointing out that Qui-Gon clearly has no problem trying to brainwash people into doing whatever he wants, which is a super creepy Jedi ability when you think about it. If Qui-Gon was willing to force Watto to accept useless Republic credits, is that really any better than just sneaking in and stealing what he needs in the middle of the night?

But seriously, it drives me nuts that they leave Shmi behind, and it drives me even more nuts that no one goes back for her. I mean, Anakin can’t yet, sure. He’s a baby. What the hell could he do? And Qui-Gon’s dead, which, as far as excuses go, is a pretty good one. But if Anakin couldn’t convince Obi-Wan to help out (which, unfortunately, is likely), then why the hell doesn’t Padmé do something about it?

Meanwhile, Baby Darth Vader asks Shmi, “Will I ever see you again?” Shmi asks back, “What does your heart tell you?”

“Nothing good, lady. Nothing good.”

15. I forgot to check exactly how many minutes we spend on Tatooine, but it feels like far, far too long, especially considering how little actually happens there. You can basically describe Tatooine in a single sentence: the good guys can’t afford the parts they need to repair their ship until they meet young Anakin, a slave incredibly strong in the Force, who wins them a bunch of money during a dangerous pod race.

The amount of time we spend here must be at least thirty minutes longer than the amount of time we spend at Coruscant, which is weird because getting Amidala to the Senate has been our heroes’ primary objective since almost the beginning, and they spend, what, ten minutes there? Damn it, I wish I had remembered to check. There’s a serious possibility that we spent more time watching the pod race (roughly twelve minutes) than we did at the Senate.

Like I said before, the pacing of this movie seems seriously off to me. We bring in a bunch of ridiculous and unnecessary stuff (like the prophecy, the godawful midi-chlorians), introduce too many callbacks (like, R2-D2 is fine but C-3PO feels like a huge stretch), spend a ton of time on comic relief shit that doesn’t even work (especially in the Big Battle, like, this is not the time to have Jar Jar comically failing at war the way he fails at everything in life), and we neither focus on any of the stuff that I would personally find interesting (culture clashes between the Naboo and the Gungans, the Republic’s apparent total disinterest in the awful things that happen outside of it), nor bother to ever elevate the stakes, like, everyone says that the people of Naboo are in mortal peril, but I’ve got to tell you: I never actually feel it.

I do enjoy how The Phantom Menace sets up Senator Palpatine, but for the most part there doesn’t feel like there’s much drive to this story, and that’s a problem in any movie but especially an action/adventure that’s longer than two hours.

16. Speaking of things that are said but not shown: I really wish that whenever Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan talk about feeling a disturbance in the Force or the like, you actually got to see them experiencing those feelings. I mean, I don’t want to see the Force or anything (I can only imagine the CGI horror), but, like, it’s just dialogue. My sister and I were talking, and she brought up a good point about how when Luke’s speaking to Leia telepathically in The Empire Strikes Back, we get a reaction shot where you can see that she’s hearing/feeling his distress call. It’s not even that big of a moment, but we’ve both always liked it, and I feel like The Phantom Menace needs something like that occasionally, some kind of camera movement or facial expression or anything besides just words. As it is, it kind of feels like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan sense things not because of the Force but because it’s in the script. (On the upside, these are excellent moments to take a shot if you’re playing The Phantom Menace drinking game, as I obviously need to do someday.)

17. Just because I haven’t mentioned it yet: I don’t particularly like Obi-Wan as a character in this movie, but I think Ewan McGregor himself is pretty great.

I have always loved how much you can hear Alec Guinness’s particular speech patterns in McGregor’s voice. And he’s believably emotional towards the end when Qui-Gon Jinn bites the big one.

18. Which brings us to maybe the very best thing about this movie: Darth Maul and the “Duel of the Fates.”

First, Darth Maul (Ray Park, with Peter Serafinowicz dubbing his dialogue) is such a superb, iconic villain. (Although, to be honest, I kind of forgot he had lines at all. I just thought he was the silent badass type.) His makeup is great. His acrobatic fighting style is awesome. He has the best lightsaber in the Star Wars universe, and he only blinks once, when he’s cut in half. Darth Maul is a vivid and fun character in what is, mostly, a fairly lackluster story, and I’m happy to discover that I don’t enjoy him any less now than I did 17 years ago. (Ugh, I feel so old. Turning 30, man. It’s all downhill from here.)

It’s also worth pointing out that the end battle between Darth Maul, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon is easily one of my favorite fight scenes of all time. I love the choreography. I love the forcefields. I love that Obi-Wan keeps up the glorious tradition of characters in Star Wars nearly falling to their doom. (Twice, even.) And holy Christ, do I love the music. I fully plan to buy this song as a reward for finishing this ridiculously long review. And then, when I’m at work, I’ll put my earbuds in and walk the long, empty corridors of the hospital with my arms outstretched at my sides, striding towards fate and ready to kick its ass.

19. I find it interesting that Qui-Gon actually leaves behind a dead body. He doesn’t disappear the way Yoda and Obi-Wan do. He doesn’t fall into the darkness the way bisected Darth Maul or The Emperor does. He just gets stabbed, and his body is burned. For that matter, I don’t think his ghost ever pops up the way Jedi ghosts like to do. (I’m not sure about that, as it’s been forever since I’ve seen Attack of the Clones, and I haven’t actually watched Revenge of the Sith. But I get the feeling he doesn’t return.) It’s just interesting.

20. Finally, FINALLY, I will leave you with a small collection of even more random notes:

A. According to Wookipedia, Darth Maul somehow survived being cut in half, and I’m here to tell you: I reject this bullshit. I love this dude. He is supremely awesome. But he got cut in half and he is forever dead. Sorry, guys.

B. Yoda looks . . . really weird in this. He hasn’t gone full CGI yet, so presumably they changed to a considerably inferior puppet? Or the old puppet, like, eroded with time or something? I don’t really know what’s up with that, but I don’t like it.

C. Hey, it’s Mace Windu!

I don’t have so much to say about Mace. I just like Samuel L. Jackson, and it’s cool to see a black Jedi. Actually, to The Phantom Menace’s credit, I think this movie improves on the prior films’ roles for PoC and women. There are two black characters who have names and lines and everything. We’ve also got more than one woman with actual dialogue. We even have a woman fighter pilot who I forgot about, although since she’s outgunned and outflown by an eight-year-old child, I’m not sure how competent she really is.

It’s not, like, amazing, and certainly women of color don’t get much, unfortunately, but it’s still progress. (Or was back in 1999.)

D. More and more I’m convinced that the Jedi were kind of incompetent assholes. They think Anakin might be dangerous so they choose not to teach him, presumably believing that it would be safer if the kid with the ridiculous amount of power at his fingertips doesn’t get trained to safely use it? Yeah, that makes sense. Like, I know things turn out pretty poorly, but I don’t think that’s because Anakin is taught the ways of the Jedi. I think it’s because nobody saved his fucking mother.

I feel like I should say, in case Tom is actually reading this, I’m still not swung to the Dark Side of the Force. Blowing up whole planets is kind of a turn-off. But wherever the Morally Gray Side of the Force is, that’s where I wanna go. (Personally, I think that’s totally where Leia belongs. And Leia, clearly, is the best.)

E. Quick question: is there a deleted scene on Tatooine to explain why Qui-Gon and Anakin are suddenly running across the desert? Like, Darth Maul’s appearance comes off as super abrupt to everyone else, right?

F. Finally, it’s deeply important to mention that Baby Darth Vader pulls off the stupid padawan haircut much better than Obi-Wan ever did.

Oh, kid. You are blandly and cheesily written, but I suspect I will miss you by the time I get through the next movie. I am not looking forward to watching Attack of the Clones at all.

QUOTES:

Jar Jar: “Gungans no liken outsiders, so don’t expect a warm welcome.”
Obi-Wan: “Oh, don’t worry. This hasn’t been our day for warm welcomes.”

Ki-Adi-Mundi: “Your thoughts dwell on your mother.”
Anakin: “I miss her.”
Yoda: “Afraid to lose her I think, hmmm?”
Anakin: “What has that got to do with anything?”

Qui-Gon Jinn: “There’s always a bigger fish.”

Qui-Gon Jinn: “We’re Ambassadors for the Supreme Chancellor.”
Sio Bibble: “Your negotiations seem to have failed, Ambassador.”

Queen Amidala: “I will not defer. I’ve come before you to resolve this attack on our sovereignty now. I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee.”

Palpatine: “And you, young Skywalker, we shall watch your career with great interest.”

Obi-Wan: “You were right about one thing, master. The negotiations were short.”

SUMMARY:

I think the most frustrating thing about the story is all the unrealized potential. It’s not a deeply compelling movie, but it’s relatively watchable. It could just be so, SO much better than it is. Taking out the virgin birth, the midi-chlorians, Anakin’s fighter pilot sequence, and Jar Jar would be a big step in the right direction.

MVP:

Natalie Portman. But Ray Park is a close second place.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C

MORAL:

Er. We should do all we can to free slaves. You know. So long as they’re useful to us, anyway.

Also, the Jedi are dicks.

When Jurassic World came out last year, I was not particularly interested. I really like Jurassic Park, despite the fact that it totally scared me when I was a kid, as I had not quite yet become the bloodthirsty woman you see before you today–and because, embarrassingly enough, I felt bad for the blood-sucking lawyer. I know. Really, I know, but I’ve held a long-standing belief that nobody, not even greedy, cowardly bastards, should be killed in the bathroom. That’s a safe space, goddamn it.

Regardless. I had a fairly meh reaction to The Lost World and found little to enjoy in Jurassic Park III. (And can I just say, this franchise needs some serious work when it comes to titling? Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, and Jurassic World? How does that make sense? Who is responsible for this?) So, I couldn’t seem to work up much interest in a franchise that hasn’t been much good since 1993, even if Star-Lord and Ivy Walker were in it.

But finally, finally I got around to watching the movie after all, partially because Mekaela wanted to see it, and partially because I really wanted to know where I fell on the High Heels Controversy of 2015.

I’ll discuss the high heels further below, but as far as the movie itself goes . . . yeah, ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t waste the money to watch this one in theater.

SUMMARY:

Twenty-something years after the events of Jurassic Park, a new dino theme park has been built on its predecessor’s corpse, proving that humanity never learns anything ever, ever, ever. But it’s all going swimmingly until their newest planned attraction, the Indominus rex, breaks free and starts killing everything in sight. Now it’s up to Velociraptor Trainer and Manly Man Owen (Chris Pratt) to help Workaholic Park Director Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) save her nephews and stop the Indominus rex once and for all!

NOTES:

1. I have a number of problems with this movie, but I want to be clear: the high heels really aren’t one of them.

I, personally, do not do well in high heels. I have zero sense of balance. Possibly less than zero. If top tier yoga masters are the pinnacle of the balance scale at 100%, let’s say I’m somewhere roughly around -7. I walked straight into a chair last week and left a considerable bruise that wraps around my thigh and still hurts five days later, and that was wearing flats with no obstacles of any kind in my way. If I had to run from dinosaurs through a forest in high heels, I would promptly break my ankle and die. Taking off the heels would be a matter of necessity for me.

However, let’s not pretend that I would be a whole lot better off in bare feet. It’s not like Claire is running across a field of soft grass and daisies here. The ground is hard and full of terrors sharp rocks, thorns, poisonous plants, dinosaur poop, broken branches, and bugs; for all I know, those bugs are actually vicious dinosaur-insects who can sting and poison you to death in a matter of seconds. (Hush, you: dinosaur-insects is a perfectly legitimate science term!) And since Claire is clearly used to her high heels and obviously has far better balance than I ever would, staying in them while running for her life might actually be a better option.

I can understand why the high heels might throw some audience members out of a story–although I’d be remiss if I did not point out that this is hardly a new problem, like, I’m not entirely sure why Jurassic World got so singled out for something that comes up time and again with women in action movies–but I don’t know that I thought they were so utterly ridiculous, myself, and I do feel like there were a lot of other, far more problematic aspects to both Claire’s character and the film in general that were buried under this controversy.

2. Because here’s the thing: this movie has kind of a screwy plot, incredibly stupid antagonists, a fairly slow start and, really, all sorts of things wrong with it, but I could have forgiven a lot of them because, you know, DINOSAURS. Despite not having the best track record with the franchise, I really did hope to enjoy this movie for some silly fun times.

But I just cannot forgive Jurassic World for how godamn judgy it is.

I have to deal with so much shit in this movie.

So, this is Claire. She is an intelligent, professional, well-dressed executive with an impressive job and bazillion things to oversee. She has allowed her duties to keep her from spending much time with her nephews. She has also clearly chosen her career over starting a family of her own, assuming she ever wanted children to begin with.

And for two hours and four minutes, Claire is judged for these choices by virtually every character in the film. Seriously, she gets called on her numbers first, feelings later approach by her sister, her nephews, Owen, and even the company’s CEO, Masrani (Irrfan Khan), who you’d think would care about the numbers at least a little, but apparently doesn’t, at least not when he’s in scenes with Claire and needs to reinforce the message that PEOPLE MATTER TOO.

And it’s not like I’m a particularly anti-people myself, but all the moralizing gets relentless. It doesn’t help that I fully believe that Claire would have been treated differently if she was a male character, say, Clark. Clark could have really gone one of two ways. It’s true that he could’ve been a thin, villainous character, in which case he absolutely would’ve been eaten by the Indominus rex (who will, henceforth, be known as Super Dinosaur). But the movie wouldn’t have spent two hours lecturing at him, either, and likely his inability to deal with children would have been played off as funny rather than as a serious character flaw–much like Sam Neil in the first Jurassic Park–because men aren’t actually expected to like or want kids.

Clark could also have remained a redemptive character who would’ve gone through an emotional, dinosaur-fueled journey to realize that he wasn’t paying enough attention to his family. But I just don’t believe that he would have been as repeatedly condemned as Claire is throughout the film. Think of all those many, many Deadbeat Daddy Redemption stories that Hollywood loves to produce. The Deadbeat Daddy is always the hero of the piece, and while someone probably criticizes him in the beginning of the film (the petulant adolescent child, for instance, or a shrill ex-wife), we’re still encouraged to sympathize with the dad, to understand that he’s just trying his best and probably had very hard circumstances to deal. I suspect Clark, despite being a Deadbeat Uncle, would have been more of the same: his teenage nephew would have given him the stink eye and his sister would have yelled at him for not picking up her kids, but that probably would have been the end of it. There wouldn’t have been jabs about his priorities every other minute, not to mention his heroics in the film would completely negate his absence in the past, which should also happen with Claire, but . . . doesn’t quite seem to.

3. It doesn’t help that Owen and Claire’s UST relationship never moves past tired tropes (Manly Man and the Ice Queen), and that Owen comes off as more than a little condescending towards his love interest.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Chris Pratt’s acting, but his character itself is so boring. He’s such a quintessential American hero that I’m a little surprised he’s not wearing a T-shirt that has a flag, some apple pie, a bottle of beer, and the words “I Love Jesus” on the back. He’s a casual guy’s guy, likes board shorts and drinking tequila. He was in the Navy because of course he was. He has a Southern accent because of course he does. (He also appears to be some kind of velociraptor expert, but I assume he didn’t have any fancy schooling for that. He’s not a nerd, after all! He probably just had dogs as a kid, or something, and learned how to extrapolate.) And there’s nothing in the script that suggests he has any kind of flaw; his failed date with Claire is laid pretty much entirely at her feet, with all the usual implications that he’s just being a dude and she needs to be less frigid and soften up like a woman should.

And again, the insult-flirting banter between the two of them might seem more sexy and less annoying if this film didn’t seem hellbent on showing how wrong Claire’s been all the time. But there is no equality here: Owen is obviously supposed to be Awesome, while Claire just needs to Learn Something. What’s particularly interesting about this is that Owen is simply not nearly as Awesome as the script desperately wants him to be: one moment, in particular, has the nephews geeking out over how badass he is, despite the fact that Claire, moments previously, did something far more badass. I’ll discuss it further in the Spoiler Section, but it’s kind of ridiculous.

4. My other issue with Jurassic World when it comes to being preachy is how it deals with scientific progress.

Of course, the whole franchise is built on the idea that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, science needs to be responsible, etc. etc. And I don’t disagree with those ideas, necessarily, but It’s Not Evil, It’s Science! is a very tired trope, and I’m not wild about cheap, lazy lines like, “Maybe progress should lose for once.”

Part of the problem too, I think, is that I never fully buy InGen’s need to build this Super Dinosaur in the first place. The movie argues that the idea of creating dinosaurs was new twenty years ago, but now it’s old and people lose interest quickly. Specifically, comparisons to NASA are brought up, and how the generic public lost interest in going to the moon. On the surface, I see how all this could be true, but looking at it closer, I’m not entirely convinced.

The NASA thing, for instance. You know what the huge difference between Jurassic World and the moon missions are? The general public doesn’t get to walk on the moon. Trust me, if there was an amusement park on the moon that normal people could purchase tickets to like they were going to Disneyland? Yeah, interest would ratchet right back up. (I mean, I wouldn’t go. But less claustrophobic people who wouldn’t panic in a space suit? Yeah, they’d be there with bells on.) In Jurassic World, though, kids actually get to ride on dinosaurs. Must more be said? Moon missions and Dino Land so aren’t equivalent things. Hell, people still go to Sea World, and whales are old as shit. (Admittedly, Sea World’s attendance has plummeted in the past few years, but that seems to be primarily because of that documentary that exposed the whales’ shitty living conditions, not because kids have gotten tired of giant sea creatures or sitting in splash zones.) And unless I missed a line of exposition somewhere, there are no other competing dinosaur theme parks with actual live dinosaurs anywhere else, right? This is literally the only place you can go in the entire world if you want to see a dinosaur up close and personal.

That people are dumb and greedy and make stupid decisions, sure, obviously, that’s true. It’s not like I can’t imagine people being idiotic enough to make Super Dinosaurs. But Jurassic World, in its great, preachy fever, works so hard to tie in its CAPITALISTIC GREED IS BAD message that I can’t help poking at the flaws in its argument.

5. On the upside, the park itself is honestly kind of awesome.

I remember watching the trailer for Jurassic World and thinking, “Holy shit, don’t you people learn anything?” After the events of the first, second, and third film, I wasn’t sure why anyone sane would ever willingly go near this place, much less pay money for it. However, when I actually watched the film itself–and especially when I saw the dinosaur petting zoo, for some reason–I will admit to feeling this sense of wonder that I don’t think the franchise has really had since the first movie. And despite knowing all the terrible things that have happened in the previous movies (and were shortly about to come in this one), I really wanted to go to this park. I wanted to pet the baby dinos. I wanted to be there.

6. I was also happy with some of the smaller roles. BD Wong coming back as Dr. Wu, for instance–I was excited about this, maybe especially because Gotham just came back, and while my interest in that crazypants show has dipped yet again, BD Wong as Hugo Strange entirely delights me. I’m also always excited to see Judy Greer, who is criminally underused but manages to give a fairly flat and almost entirely worthless role some much-needed depth. (Also, I loved seeing Judy Greer and Bryce Dallas Howard as sisters again. I really need to watch a film with them that’s actually worthy of their talent.)

7. And then there’s Vincent D’Onofrio.

Performance-wise, D’Onofrio is fine. I mean, he’s working that smirk like’s trying to outdo Wentworth Miller on either Legends of Tomorrow OR Resident Evil: Afterlife, but he’s perfectly fine in the role of Super Smarmy Antagonist. But his whole plan is just so immensely dumb that it’s like I can’t even with this. And, honestly, everything about what his character brings to the story feels like an unnecessary plot complication. I’m just not convinced he’s necessary at all, and I think this film would have been stronger if it had been rewritten without him.

If you want more details on that or anything else, follow below.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

First an additional disclaimer: I can’t seem to stop comparing this movie to Deep Blue Sea, so considered yourself warned for SPOILERS on that score, too.

Now. It appears Hoskins (D’Onofrio) has been secretly working with Dr. Wu to turn the dinosaurs into weapons for the military. It’s a little disappointing that Dr. Wu is a bad guy, but not entirely surprising; he is, after all, wearing a black turtleneck.

I’m either evil, or I’m secretly Batman. You decide.

Still, I was kind of bummed, mostly because I liked that moment when Dr. Wu calmly tells Masrani that you can’t ask people to create monsters and then get pissed off when their creations act monstrous. I didn’t actually think there needed to be a Bigger Secret Conspiracy at play; if you already have corporate greed as the instigator of this disaster, you don’t also need a shadowy military plot. Especially if it’s going to be this dumb.

Look, I’m not gonna lie: a dinosaur army sounds kind of awesome. Especially if it was, like, a dinosaur-rider army, like each soldier has one particular dinosaur that she bonds with. (I’m basically thinking the Temeraire series, only in present day and substituting dinosaurs for dragons.) But Hoskins’s plan here is monumentally stupid. He goes from seeing Owen do a few small raptor tricks to assuming that they can be easily trained and controlled for battle by anyone, and not just someday but now. He is absurdly confident than they can use the raptors to defeat the Super Dinosaur, and I just have zero idea why.

Even more bizarrely, it kind of works? Like, sure, at first it totally fails because it turns out that the Super Dinosaur also has raptor in its DNA cocktail and quickly becomes head of the raptor pack. But later Owen manages to sway a few of his raptors back to the Light Side (including Blue, clearly the only one who matters) and they (along with a T-Rex, and a big assist by the mosasaurus) eventually help defeat the Super Dinosaur. So. Maybe Hoskins’s plan to weaponize raptors isn’t so crazy after all, except it totally is? I don’t know, the whole thing is just dumb.

What’s really important: Judy Greer and BD Wong live!

I mean, Greer doesn’t step foot on the island, so her living wasn’t really in question, but I like the actress, so I’m still happy about it. BD Wong’s survival is far more surprising, but presumably he lives so that he can come back for some more mad science shenanigans in the inevitable sequel. (Also, Blue makes it too, because the T-Rex he allied with ultimately decides not to attack him once the Super Dinosaur is dead, which I think we all know is bullshit. Honor among dinosaurs? Yeah, I’m not buying it, guys.)

Claire, Owen, and the kids survive, too, which isn’t surprising, although I suppose they could have killed off Claire if they decided that two hours of crapping on her wasn’t enough punishment and felt that she needed to die as well. That pretty obviously wasn’t going to happen; the only reason it even occurred to me is because of that time that Deep Blue Sea surprisingly killed off Saffron Burrows, even though she’s the scrappy hero’s primary love interest. In that case, Saffron Burrows bites it because the “This Is All My Fault, Thus I Must Die” trope wins out over the more standard scenario where the hero and his love interest always make it. But as much as Claire is judged for her type A-personality, neglecting her family, and fully failing to see the dinosaurs as sentient, feeling creatures, she’s never really blamed for the deaths at Jurassic World. Maybe that’s why Hoskins exists, after all, to make sure that all this terror can be blamed on one person?

Hm, by discussing the ending, I’ve actually skipped past several things I had planned to talk about. Let’s just wrap the rest of this review with a bunch of more random notes.

8. Masrani is sort of an odd character.

As I said, he’s the CEO of Jurassic World (although while watching, I misheard and initially thought he was just a big financial investor) and in certain scenes–his helicopter ride with Claire, for instance–he has an odd, hippie, not-terribly-CEO vibe to him, presumably because that scene really only serves two purposes: a) foreshadowing his not-quite piloting skills and explosive demise, and b) making sure we all really, really understand that Claire is out of touch with her humanity. In other scenes, like when he’s in the control room and refusing to kill the Super Dinosaur, he seems more like the profits-first CEO guy we all expect him to be. And his death is a little disappointing because it feels like a gigantic throwaway; it mostly just happens so that Vincent D’Onofrio can take charge. Irrfan Khan’s acting is totally fine, but I’m a bit dissatisfied with the role itself.

9. Masrani’s death serves one other purpose: it releases the pterodactyls on the general public. The pterodactyls appear to kill far, far more of the tourists than the Super Dinosaur ever does; regardless, no one seems particularly concerned that these guys–who, you know, are not limited to this island because, like, WINGS AND STUFF–are on the loose. They basically just kill a bunch of people and take off, and we never really mention them again. It seems like a problem.

10. We also need to discuss Claire’s assistant, Zara.

I’m bringing Zara up for two reasons: A) she’s played by Merlin’s Katie McGrath, and B) she has the most ridiculously cartoonish death since Stellan Skarsgard in Deep Blue Sea, who lost his arm to a shark bite, fell hundreds of feet from a helicopter into the ocean (whilst strapped to a stretcher), and was finally thrown into a giant pane of glass by a mega-shark.

By comparison, Zara dies when she is grabbed by one pterodactyl, flown up hundreds of feet into the air, dropped, picked up by another pterodactyl before she can hit the ground, dropped into the ocean, caught by another pterodactyl who dives into the water to capture her with its mouth, and then finally is eaten when the mosasaurus comes up to chomp down both her and the pterodactyl who’s still trying to bite her in half.

It’s such insane overkill that it’s obviously meant to be funny, but giving Zara what appears to be a comedic karmic death feels kind of weird and more than a little sexist to me, considering that her worst crime is losing the kids at the park because they decide to ditch her while she’s too busy working on her cell phone to notice. Of course, she’s the grown up here, so she is the one responsible for the kids . . . but a) one of the kids is maybe 16 or 17, so let’s not pretend she left two infants in a bathtub next to a powered up blow dryer or something, and b) she probably didn’t apply to this job to play babysitter, you know? Not to mention, Zara does search for the kids and is doing her best to get them to safety when she suffers her needlessly horrific death.

Look, I’m sure someone’s going to say I’m overthinking this and maybe I am, but . . . it really feels like director Colin Trevorrow felt Zara deserved a karmic death simply because she’s a young woman who’s on her cell phone a lot, and honestly, that kind of grosses me out. It reminds me too strongly of how people lose their godamn minds when women take selfies because oh my God, vanity, SIN OF SINS. If Zara had just been killed like any other person in this movie, I wouldn’t have cared; I mean, it’s not like I ever expected her to live. Mek and I had her marked for death pretty much the instant we saw her. But to give this young woman–who is no way responsible for the total shitshow that goes down–a worse death than Hoskins and Masrani combined? Yeah, I’m not crazy about that.

11. The kids themselves are okay, I guess.

The little one, Gray, is played by Ty Simpkins, who I primarily know from Iron Man 3. He’s a nerd who’s super excited by dinosaurs, and I generally enjoy his enthusiasm. Though the editing doesn’t exactly do him any favors: for instance, we get a scene with him bouncing up and down, all happy, and then the next scene he’s suddenly depressed because his parents are getting divorced, and then the next scene after that he’s happy again, like the previous scene never happened. Obviously, moods can swing up and down in a day, or even in an hour, but the lack of transition between these scenes leaves Gray feeling a little unbalanced.

Zach (Nick Robinson), meanwhile, is a moody teenager with not much to flesh him out as a character. He is sullen and girl-obsessed, and that seems to be about the extent of him. Zach does have one or two semi-nice moments with his little brother, but mostly he’s pretty flat, and there is a totally weird moment in the beginning of the movie where he’s super not into his girlfriend, who meanwhile is very into him for no real reason I can tell. I was sure that this was going to come back into the story later, like, say Zach reveals that he’s distancing himself because they’re going to different colleges next year or something, but nope, it’s just there because teenage boys being assholes to their girlfriends is funny, I guess?

Also, their parents are getting divorced, which I guess is important because it gives them a reason to be on the island without their mom or dad?

I’m only in this movie for three minutes, but damn it, I’m an actress and I will make this crap WORK.

But there’s so little to it, and I can definitely think of other ways to get the kids on the island without their parents, so the whole divorce storyline feels a little like unnecessary drama to me. Judy Greer manages to make it work, particularly in that scene pictured above, but there’s something about the whole subplot that, while not terrible or anything, just feels a little silly and underwritten.

12. Here’s where I really take issue with the kids, or more seriously, the script: Claire decides that, damn the danger, she’s going out to search for her nephews herself and enlists Owen’s help. They go looking, but the kids manage to make their way back to the other tourists on their own. Danger is not quite averted yet, though, because that’s when those pesky pterodactyls strike. One pterodactyl is trying to chomp Owen’s face off; the only reason it doesn’t is because Claire cold cocks it with a gun before shooting it. It’s a nice moment. Her nephews see her do this, and seem somewhat impressed for five seconds . . . until approximately the next scene, when they all jump in a Jeep to get away from a pterodactyl, and Gray’s like, “Can we stay with you?” and Claire’s like, “I’m never leaving you again,” and both boys are like, “No, no, him.” Him, of course, being Owen.

And I’m like . . . but . . . you just saw your aunt take down a dinosaur. I know it’s not the Super Dinosaur or anything, but pterodactyls are still totally killing people. Owen’s ass would be dead right now if it wasn’t for Claire. Faces are kind of important. It’s a problem when something eats yours, especially while you’re still wearing it. Meanwhile, the only thing these kids have seen Owen do is put a car in reverse, but they’re already discounting Claire as the kickass hero? Come on, movie. I know you want me to think Owen is the Most Badass Badass of All Badasses Who Ever Lived, but this is just getting ridiculous.

13. A couple of more Claire moments:

GOOD: When Owen criticizes Claire’s attire, Claire gets into Action Mode by rolling up her sleeves, unbuttoning her shirt, tying it into a little knot, and putting her hands on her hips, which just totally and legitimately confuses Owen. It’s the rare bit of comedy here that actually works for me because it’s one of the only times that the movie pokes fun at Claire without being an entirely condescending ass about it. Altering her business casual attire into a vaguely outdoorsy look is both such an earnest and clueless response that I find it entirely endearing, and it doesn’t feel out of character at all. Would there were a few more moments like this, and less moments where people tell Claire that of course she’ll have kids someday. Ugh.

BAD: While searching for the kids, Owen and Claire comes across a dying . . . brachiosaurus? No, it’s an apatosaurus, right? Well, whatever: Owen and Claire comes across grown-up Little Foot and take the time to sit with the poor creature while it dies. It’d be a nice moment except for two things: a) the kids are still missing at this point (in fact, they’re currently being menaced by the Super Dinosaur) and finding them feels like it should probably take priority here, and b) this is yet another teaching moment for Claire, who finally understands that the dinosaurs feel things too. I swear, I feel like I’d get subtler sermons at church than in this movie.

14. Oh, I totally forgot to mention Barry (Omar Sy), Owen’s raptor-training partner. I’m not surprised I forgot about him, considering how irrelevant he really is to the story, but I am relieved that he didn’t die, so there’s that.

15. Finally, a few things to bring up about Lowery (Jake Johnson), the nerdy comic relief who works in the Control Room.

A. His dinosaur toys gave me Firefly flashbacks. Sadly, there’s no “this land” homage.

B. He decides to stay behind and help when the other employees evacuate, which is a brave decision that I never, ever would have made. He also tries to do the whole sweeping heroic kiss thing with his co-worker, Vivian (Lauren Lapkus), who immediately backs up and is like, “Oh, no, I have a boyfriend.” It’s kind of hilarious and also a little bit surprising, given this script, so I was not surprised to discover that it was an ad-lib by the actress. (Also, I would have paid good money to see Claire have this reaction when Owen kissed her earlier in the film. That would have cracked me up so hard.)

C. I can’t remember exactly what it is that Lowery doesn’t want to do–open the T-Rex door, maybe–but Claire responds, “Damn it, Lowery, be a man and do something for once in your life!” Lowery’s wounded, “Why’d you have to make it personal?” totally made me laugh, but I feel obligated to point out that he totally already did do something by staying in the Control Room instead of getting the hell off the island like everyone else. Like I said, I know this movie wants me to believe that Owen is the finest specimen of manly manhood to ever walk this earth, but there is more than one way to be a man and more than one way to be a hero.

QUOTES:

Masrani: “Who authorized you to do this?”
Dr. Wu: “You did. Bigger. Scarier? Um, cooler, I believe is the word you used in your memo. You cannot have an animal with exaggerated predator features without the corresponding behavioral traits.”

Masrani: “You created a monster!”
Dr. Wu: “Monster is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We’re just used to being the cat.”

Masrani: “It’s killed people, Henry.”
Dr. Wu: “That’s unfortunate.”

Karen: “Well, a promise tomorrow is worth a lot less than trying today.”
Claire: “Ugh, you’re using Mom’s lines now?”
Karen: “God, I am using Mom’s lines.”

Hoskins: “Millions of years of evolution, what we did learn? Nature is the gift that–oh SHIT!”

(Lowery, totally misreading the situation, sweeps in for the kiss.)
Vivian: “Oh, no, I have a boyfriend.”

Owen: “What kind of diet doesn’t allow tequila?”
Claire: “All of them, actually.”

Owen: “What is that supposed to mean?”
Claire: “. . . it means I’m ready to go.”

CONCLUSIONS:

I mean, it’s watchable. I know I just spent 5,000 words complaining about Jurassic World, but it’s not, like, the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The action is pretty enjoyable, once it really gets started. The acting is decent, and the dinosaurs look cool. But the preachy and often dumb script coupled with the cliched character dynamics really prevented me from enjoying this even as a silly action movie.

MVP:

Bryce Dallas Howard. It’s not her fault the script undermines her performance at every turn.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C. Which maybe I’ll change with time (I was, after all, initially hovering between a C+ and a B-), but I’m not sure I can grade a film higher than a C when 4700 words of a 5000-word review turn out to be overwhelmingly negative.

MORAL:

Women, get off your phones, stop worrying about your jobs, and focus on the one thing that really matters: having babies.

I still haven’t quite gotten around to seeing the not-exactly-critically-beloved Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. (I’m not particularly jazzed about going, either, but I do want to check it out for myself. I like making up my own mind about shit, particularly if Batman’s going to be involved.) However, I knew I wanted to watch Man of Steel before I made my trip to the theater, so a few weeks ago I finally sat down and put it on.

Man. That long, dreary ass film did not help motivate my interest in Batman v Superman AT ALL.

DISCLAIMER:

I feel like all my reviews lately have been chockfull of spoilers, and I feel kind of bad about that . . . but yeah, this one’s going to have SPOILERS too. Sorry,  fellow folks who are also behind on their DC superhero film viewing.

SUMMARY:

Kal-El/Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) grows up rather miserably on Earth after his birth planet, Krypton, is destroyed, eradicating almost his entire species. And despite Pa Kent’s best efforts, Clark becomes a hero when General Zod (Michael Shannon) and the Rest of The Last Kryptonians arrive on Earth, threatening to destroy the entire human race.

NOTES:

1. Before we started the movie, I had this lovely dream that I could write a quick little review that would only take an hour or two, tops, as if I’d ever written anything brief in my entire life. Needless to say, that dream was dashed within the first twenty minutes of the movie because boy, do I have problems with this prologue. And admittedly, some of those problems are possibly inherent to the source material, not just this particular film adaptation . . . but some of it’s definitely the film adaptation.

In fact, I have so many issues that I might as well just summarize everything that happens in the first twenty minutes so I can better discuss why I think it’s crap:

We begin our tale with Jor-El (Russell Crowe) telling the Kryptonian High Council (or whoever) that the whole planet has only a couple of weeks left to live.

“Dudes, it’s sort of a problem.”

The Council is basically like, “Do you expect us to evacuate the beach during tourist season?” and Jor-El’s like, “Why bother? We’re all doomed anyway.” Presumably he’s about to pitch his totally weird ‘Baby Soul Survivor Plan,’ but that’s when General Zod pops in, and he is not happy. Zod’s like, “Fuck you, Council, we’re taking over your shit,” and proceeds with all the usual rebellion/treason/murder stuff. His plan, I guess, is to escape (somehow) and use the Kryptonians genetic codex to preserve only the pureblood lines.

Unfortunately for him, though, Jor-El is emphatically not an alien Death Eater, and he’s like, “All people deserve to live, but especially my newborn son because he was born naturally THROUGH A VAGINA.” He then proceeds to do a bunch of silly action stunts so that he can steal the codex and fuse it to Kal-El’s cells, or something. I guess his plan is to boot Kal-El to a new, populated planet so that he can bow-chicka-wow-wow his people–or at least their DNA–back into existence? Which, I’ve got to say, would have probably made a much more exciting movie. Oh my God, is there a porn like this? Superman knocking on various doors wearing his cape and nothing else, and saying, “Excuse me, but I need to bang you in order save my people from extinction?” If there isn’t, SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE IT. (And then, for the love of God, don’t send it to me. My eyes don’t actually want to see that.)

Anyway, Jor-El and Lara successfully see Kal-El off the planet before Zod murders Jor-El. The Kryptonians manage to crush Zod’s rebellion and send him and his cronies into this blackhole prison deal. And then two weeks later, Krypton blows the hell up, taking everyone on the planet with it.

So.

A. Let’s begin with the fact that this is a twenty-minute prologue to a story that basically everyone already knows, even non-geeks. I’m aware that this version includes certain individualistic elements (that I generally didn’t care for) but even taking that into consideration, twenty minutes? If you’re going to do that, you need to make sure those twenty minutes are both necessary and really, really interesting, neither of which was the case for me here.

B. Also (and this is, admittedly, my least significant problem), the whole prologue had a weird, almost vaguely Shakespearian feel to it that I just didn’t buy. I struggled taking it seriously, which is not the reaction you generally hope for when it comes to tragic origin stories.

C. Far more importantly, I just can’t seem to buy the total annihilation of the Kryptonian people. Cause, like, the Kryptonians seem to have a pretty advanced society. They’re capable of propagating their entire species through artificial means. They have devices which can terraform whole planets. They have prisons inside black holes. But for some reason, Jor-El is entirely convinced that they’re all doomed, that two weeks isn’t enough for anyone other than one entirely helpless newborn baby to escape? There’s only the one infant-sized escape pod on the whole planet? Even if Jor-El actually was advocating for evacuation (which, again, he totally wasn’t) and the Council was like, “Nope, no one gets to leave the planet because we’re all going to be totes fine!” I just don’t believe for a second that word wouldn’t get out, that people wouldn’t try to escape. I know you have to look past some stuff when it comes to Superman source material (glasses make you a whole new man, and all that), but I just can’t buy this.

For God’s sake, Krypton. The Enterprise managed to save thousands of Vulcans in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek, and they only had minutes. Get your shit together.

D. The whole mudblood/pureblood thing feels super random, probably because no one really ever bothers to bring it up again. It’s so inconsequential to the story that I wonder if it only exists at all to make sure we understand that Zod is the bad guy.

By this point, we’ve mostly figured it out.

Cause, at first, this guy is kind of sympathetic, isn’t he? Yes, yes, killing off Council members is bad, but it is the Council’s fault that billions and billions of people are going to die in the first place, right, and while Zod’s military coup seems hilarious mistimed, I do get the general idea: he punishes and overthrows the bad rulers so that he can save as many of his people as he can. That doesn’t really sound so bad until you realize that he only wants to save, like, the noble lineage or whatever and fuck the rest.

Still, prejudiced and awful as it is . . . it does seem that Zod’s plan saves more people than Jor-El’s. Seriously, Jor-El’s plan is just awful, right?

E. Lara’s only real contribution to this story is pushing the button that sends Baby Kal-El into space. She doesn’t even get to be a Helpful Exposition Hologram. This is what I call the Martha Wayne treatment: the father is the inspiration and/or source of angst, and the mother wears pearls. (In the dozens of movies and animated movies and TV episodes and comics I’ve read, I have seen one Batman story do something interesting with Martha Wayne. One. If you’ve seen more, I’d love to hear about it!)

F. Finally–and this is just one of those IMO, pet peeve things–I feel like one of the laziest ways to describe an evil and/or dystopian future society is to have everyone be born artificially. It’s so boring and cliche. I’d love to see someone use this trope in a positive light. (Again, if you know of one, please let me know! I love recommendations, provided they aren’t given to me in as condescending of a manner as possible.)

2. So, yeah. All of that? Just the first 1/7 of the movie.

On the plus side, I really don’t have a problem with any of the acting. (Well. Okay, I did have a pretty hard time taking Michael Shannon seriously, which sucks because I know he’s supposed to be a great actor, but . . . yeah, Zod didn’t quite do it for me.) There are a lot of good-to-great actors in this cast, and it’s the material, not their performances, that really make the movie fall down hard.

Henry Cavill, for instance:

Acting-wise, he’s totally fine. I actually really enjoyed that one scene where he’s in an interrogation room, speaking evenly to the frightened and intimidated human generals. He felt a little like the Superman I’m familiar with. (Which, to be clear, is primarily the one from Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. I am not comparing this film to the Christopher Reeve movies, as I was probably about four the last time I watched them.)

It’s just that, story-wise, I’m totally bored by everything about Superman. Clark Kent is one broody motherfucker in Man of Steel, which I guess isn’t so surprising because he’s had an entirely miserable life, at least in this particular version. Admittedly, Mopey Superman is pretty weird because it’s kind of like giving us a movie about an optimistic and happy-go-lucky Bruce Wayne or, IDK, a movie where Thor’s really depressed about having to hit things with his hammer. But I’m sure there’s a way to give us a darker Superman story, one that focuses on his literal alienation from everyone around him, that is still compelling and nuanced. This is just . . . flat and dull.

It reminds me a little of the whole grimdark debate, which is unfortunate because I basically hate that debate as, inevitably, people on both sides of it get on my nerves. Really dark stories are not inherently any better or worse than really upbeat stories; it’s just a matter of how you tell them. DC’s whole film brand is Dark and Gritty, particularly in comparison to Marvel, and despite what a lot of Marvel fans will say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when you mistake dark and gritty for joyless and one-note. Dark can still be funny. Dark should still be entertaining. Dark ought to have the highs, so you can better feel the falls. It’s earned consequences and depth of emotion that make dark stories great, characters doing immoral or questionably immoral things for understandable and believable reasons. When it’s just asshats acting like asshats and some angsty dude trudging around the earth for two hours, when it’s grim for grim’s sake in lieu of actually making sense . . . that’s not deep or complex or noteworthy. That’s just poor storytelling.

3. I generally enjoy Amy Adams as Lois Lane, though.

Lois and Clark’s romance doesn’t do much for me, admittedly. Their kiss at the end feels a little forced, like, I would have totally bought a ‘Holy shit, we survived!’ kiss, but I think this was supposed to be much more romantic than that. Still, Amy Adams is a great actress who I rarely get to watch, as she generally picks Oscar-bait shit that I have little interest in seeing, and I think she provides Lois a good deal of fire and zeal that I enjoyed. Some of my favorite scenes with her, actually, are on the Kryptonian spaceship with Hologram Jor-El. I was happy to see her have actual stuff to do. Also, I got a weird kick out of watching Russell Crowe doing his best Scarecrow while giving her directions. I can’t even give you a reason why I enjoyed that so much; I just did.

4. Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are perfectly fine as Superman’s parents, at least, acting wise. I haven’t seen Diane Lane in a while, and I enjoyed her performance. She didn’t really have so much to do, but she still had presence, purely by being awesome. (I continue to love this tweet about gender/age inequality in Hollywood roles. I would totally watch Diane Lane play a superhero.)

Meanwhile, I don’t know that I’d say Kevin Costner’s performance was terribly compelling, but it also wasn’t bad. Everything wrong with Pa Kent–and oh ho, are there things wrong with Pa Kent–comes straight from the script.

I knew going in that a lot of Superman fans weren’t happy with Jonathan Kent’s characterization. (And yes, that’s the last time you get his actual name. Chief Asshats like Pa Kent don’t deserve a real first name.) I knew there were some questionable ethics (or lack thereof) in play, but I imagined something a little less clear cut, like . . . well, honestly, I don’t know what I imagined, but I’ll tell you what I sure as hell wasn’t picturing: Pa Kent telling Lil’ Clark that when his school bus crashed into a lake, he maybe should’ve let roughly thirty kids drown, rather than potentially expose his big secret. Pa Kent pretty much just advocated child murder, and not just one annoying kid but the mass murder of children. Holy shit.

See, it’s little things like this that make it very hard for me to feel sorry for Pa Kent when he gets eaten by a tornado. There’s also the not insignificant fact that his death is entirely his own fault. Check this out: Angry Teen Clark and Pa Kent the Terrible are fighting in the car when a tornado comes along because, you know, Kansas. Appropriately, they run away, but unfortunately a dog needs rescue. Obviously, Clark is the proper person to retrieve sad dog, but Pa Kent goes instead, and you know what? I probably could have been okay with that, if it was played like Pa Kent instinctually thought “storming death cloud” and “my kid” and went NO, even though he knows that his kid basically can’t die. I will take a certain amount of protective parental instinct in the face of clear logic. (I’m considerably less excited about “get your mom to the overpass,” though, like Martha Kent doesn’t actually come with her own set of legs.)

But Pa Kent isn’t so much worried about the tornado hurting his boy as he is about protecting Clark’s damn secret, so much so that he needlessly sacrifices his own life to keep Clark from revealing his powers. Yeah. There he is, about to get blown into the next state, and he actually holds out his hand, all Stop in The Name of Love, to silently tell Clark that he’d rather die than potentially expose his son’s true origin. Which might have been moving in some other world where all aliens are immediately executed or sent to concentration camps or something, but that’s totally not this world. Pa Kent lets himself die because of the possibility that his son can’t convince humanity that he’s a good guy.

Jesus H. Christ. Never mind how little regard Pa Kent clearly has for his own life . . . can you even imagine what something like that would do to the kid?

I’m not okay.

Seriously. I’d rather spend the rest of my life on the run from every government on the planet than live with the fact that I could have saved my dad’s life but didn’t because he wanted to become an asshole martyr instead. Clark has to carry that guilt now until he dies. If this movie had ended with Clark eating a kryptonite bullet, Ghost Pa Kent would only have had himself to blame.

And what’s even more infuriating about all of this isn’t just that Zack Synder and David S. Goyer turned Pa Kent into a completely terrible human being, but–somehow–they still want him to be an Inspirational Mentor Figure, the reason Clark becomes a hero. Like, WHAT? People. People. You can’t have a dude kill himself to keep anyone from knowing about his son’s superhuman powers and then later have that dude’s wife say, “He always believed you were meant for greater things, and that when the day came, your shoulders would be able to bear the weight.” NOPE. Not happening. Pa Kent did not want his son to do great things. This fucker pretty much died to make sure that day would never come, and the only reason it actually did is because, you know, it’s kind of hard to make a Superman movie where no one ever becomes Superman.

Pa Kent is the worst, everybody. Think how much better off Clark Kent would’ve been if Martha Kent had raised him on her own. (Maybe in this universe, that’s just how it happened.)

5. The supporting cast in this movie is kind of ridiculous. It felt like I recognized someone roughly every there minutes: Toby from The West Wing, Morpheus from The Matrix, Roman from True Blood, Boyd from Dollhouse, Gaeta from Battlestar Galactica, Helo from Battlestar Galactica, Snow from Person of Interest, Liam from Teen Wolf, Vanessa from Daredevil, and Death from Supernatural. (If you don’t almost exclusively watch SF/F TV shows and movies, that’s Richard Schiff, Laurence Fishburne, Christopher Meloni, Harry Lennix, Alessandro Juliani, Tahmoh Penikett, Michael Kelly, Dylan Sprayberry, Ayelet Zurer, and Julian Richlings.)

There is some insanely good talent in that list. Can you imagine what this movie could have been like if the actors were given material actually worthy of their talent?

6. One of the only actors I wasn’t familiar with was Antje Traue, who played Faora-Ul.

Faora-Ul is General Zod’s right hand, and I bring her up because she’s kind of a badass. In fact, she is about 80 times more intimidating than General Zod, who–for being Krypton’s Chief Military Dude–does not strike me as a particularly great strategist. I mean, come on: Kal-El knows almost nothing about his home planet, right? Sure, he did get some very brief exposition from Hologram Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude, but it wasn’t very in depth: all he knows about Zod, for instance, is that he led a military coup against the leaders who doomed billions of people to death. Instead of Zod coming down, all, “I’m going to destroy the only planet you’ve ever known, Clark, and kill everyone here!” why doesn’t he just try to, you know, trick him? Considering how literally alienated Clark has been this whole time, I really don’t think it would be that hard to do. He’s clearly desperate for anyone the least bit like him–if Zod had pretended to be a friend for five seconds, his evil plan might have worked.

Then again, perhaps not because I just can’t take Zod seriously. Perhaps it’s the hair. It’s too bad Faora-Ul didn’t outlive him because she has all the markings of a good Super Second Banana.

7. I feel like I should cover the events of the film chronologically with the same amount of time and care (and rage) I spent on the first twenty minutes, but I don’t really want to. For a 2 1/2 hour film, there doesn’t seem to be all that much plot involved. Clark Kent broods a lot. Lois Lane investigates. Zod threatens people. The government is suspicious of Clark but eventually works with him to take down the aliens, and Clark becomes a journalist for a major newspaper because, according to TV and movies, basically anyone who wants to become a reporter can without the slightest hint of training, education, or prior work experience.

So, I think I’ll just wrap-up this up in typical me fashion with a few random sub-notes:

7A. I will admit this: Zod’s death, which infuriated plenty of other people in the nerd fanbase, actually didn’t bother me all that much.

Well before I saw this movie, I found out that Superman killed Zod, and I wasn’t crazy about it, which may surprise the few of you who are aware of both a) my bloodlust, and b) my belief that sometimes killing the bad guy actually is the morally correct thing to do. (Clearly, I will never become a superhero, no matter what radioactive creature bites me.) Superman is a weird pick for that sort of thing, though, and people made it sound like he straight up murdered the guy in cold blood . . . which is totally cool if you’re making an Injustice: Gods Among Us movie, but–sadly–nobody is. (I desperately need to get back to the comic because it is intensely awesome.) And while I may be interested in stories where superheroes cross lines, Superman is definitely the wrong choice for straight-up murder.

That all being said, the way it was shot? It didn’t strike me as super immoral. It wasn’t like Superman killed someone who had surrendered or was otherwise defenseless. I believed that the family was in imminent danger, and that Superman felt he had no other choice in order to save them. (Actually, I believe that those people would have been dead well before Superman could have helped, since if Zod wasn’t such a loser, it might occur to him to just glance right instead of insisting on turning his head. But that’s neither here nor there.) Pivotally, I believed Superman’s anguish when he made the choice to kill. If he had been happy about it or if he’d tossed out some kind of glib one-liner, or even if he just hadn’t seemed to be particularly broken up about killing someone, I would have been angry. But I bought Cavill’s grief in the moment, so ultimately, it worked for me.

7B. So, Clark Kent finds the Fortress of Solitude through . . . heart knowledge? Seriously, I’m not sure. There must have been an actual explanation for this, but apparently I missed it somewhere between Clark broodily staring at the sea and Clark broodily staring at the sky. I’m not watching it again to figure it out.

7C. A helicopter crashes in this movie and does NOT explode. For 30 years now, movies have taught me that this is a physical impossibility, so needless to say I was quite stunned when it happened.

7D. Things go badly for a lot of people in this movie, but I might feel the worst for Richard Schiff’s character. And yeah, some of that is surely because I will always love Toby Ziegler, but there’s also the fact that this dude totally helps save the day but dies anyway when Meloni heroically sacrifices himself . . . which, as a consequence, sort of less-heroically sacrifices Schiff too, who more than likely didn’t even realize he was about to die, since he was on a different part of the plane when Meloni crashed it.

Meanwhile, Lois Lane only survives because she falls out of the plane. How often can you even say that?

7D. Finally, I kind of like the switch-up at the end where Lois already knows Clark’s secret identity when he begins work at the Daily Planet. Of course, it’s still ridiculous that no one else can figure out that he and Superman are the same person given the events of this film, but like I said, there are some things you have to take with a grain of salt when it comes to Superman stories, and that’s one I can, personally, accept.

But for a movie that’s clearly not afraid to significantly change up Superman’s origin story . . . I wish it did something much more interesting with it.

QUOTES:

Superman: “You might want to step back a bit. Maybe a little bit more.”

Jor-El: “You’re talking about genocide.”
Zod: “Yes! And I’m arguing its merits with a ghost.”

Lois: “What’s the ‘S’ stand for?”
Superman: “It’s not an S. On my world, it means hope.”
Lois: “Well, here, it’s an ‘S’.”

Dr. Emil Hamilton: “The ship appears to have inserted itself into a lunar synchronous orbit, though I have no idea why.”
General Swanwick: “Have you tried communicating with it?”
Dr. Emil Hamilton: “Well, they haven’t responded, as of yet.”
General Swanwick: “I’m just speculating, but I think whoever is at the helm of that thing is looking to make a dramatic entrance.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Meh. The action scenes and cinematography are all good. I have no beef with the technical filmmaking, and little with the acting, either. But the tone is dreary, the script sloppy, and the overall story is kind of screwed as a result.

MVP:

Amy Adams. I’m pretty sure it’s entirely her performance, and not the script itself, that makes Lois Lane even a little bit interesting.

TENTATIVE GRADE:

C+

MORALS:

Letting a bunch of kids drown when you could save them without ever being in the slightest bit of danger is definitely a tough philosophical dilemma, right up there with the Trolley Problem or the Overcrowded Lifeboat.

Letting your kid watch you die when he could have saved you equals A+ parenting. That definitely won’t fuck him up at all.

In the event that your apartment building is very, very slowly burning down, do not take the time to try and escape yourself, or warn others that they should try to escape, or take down the evil landlord who doesn’t want anyone to escape because that would mean he was responsible for the fire in the first place. Instead, take that time to make a very special baby carriage, strap your newborn child inside it, and toss it from your window into another window of a different building across the street. Surely your newborn will make it because you programmed that carriage to take special care of its passenger, and–just like HAL 9000 taught us–absolutely nothing could go wrong with that. And while you and everyone else you know in the apartment building will die, you and your partner can comfort yourselves with the knowledge that at least one person survived and will grow up to procreate with people from other apartments, meaning that a piece of you and your people will always live on. Though I suspect the person from 2B will not see it the same way.