Hancock

Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008) The premise (for a super-hero movie) is interesting, the stars are all competent, and in some cases exceptional (Charlize Theron puts in quite a surprising turn in her role), and the writing sometimes refreshing.  

What kills Hancock is the direction.  Berg's snatch-and-grab semi-documentary style worked gangbusters for Friday Night Lights, but for the super-heroics of Hancock, you just get the impression that they're trying to hide some flaw in the effects from you, especially in the inevitable fisticuffs that these things seem to depend on (although the cleverer ones find ways around it).

Will Smith plays John Hancock, who can bend steel in his bare hands, but would rather bend his elbow.  He's alcoholic, down and out and super-depressed. Most super-heroes are high and flying, but Hancock takes it the wrong way, so rather than looking up in the sky for him, chances are the best place to find him is the gutter.  He has powers and abilities far beyond mortal men, but no idea who he is, how he got that way, and there's no messianic father-figure to tell him the back-story.  And yeah, he'll do all that super-heroic stuff, but he's too stoned out of his mind to do anything carefully—he's like a bull in a china shop, and every time he does some good, he does a lot more harm in property damage.

After saving the life of marketing maven Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), Hancock is taken under wing, sobered up, read the "with great power comes great responsibility speech," and given a better public image (rather than a secret identity), a leather "sooper-suit," and is supervised in his derring-do so that he first does no harm.

Hancock isn't very good, but it has an interesting take on things "Superman-ish," and when you see Man of Steel, the latest "official" Superman movie, you'll see some of the ideas brought back to the source—the colliding bodies, the city-wide collateral damage, and the hard edge of sci-fi aspect to things that most super-hero movies tend to miss for the musculature and myth-making.  Also, the script has a literal vulnerability for the super-dude that's far more ingenious than sticks and kryptonite-stones.  You wanna reduce Superman's effectiveness?  Attack him through his loved ones.  Hancock takes that one step further by making his loved ones his true weakness, making him vulnerable, and shortening his life, taking the "apart-ness" of the super-hero, bringing it from the sub-text to the foreground, and lending the whole thing a nice melancholy touch that's missing from the genre as a whole.  It also brings Will Smith nicely down to earth, as well.

Thor: the Dark World (and the Comic-Book Movie Matrix)

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

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

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

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

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

It also compares to TLOTR by sharing the propensity for using the first six minutes or so of the film to shoe-horn as much detailed exposition intoned with doomed gravitas as can be wedged in before the title card.  "Long before the birth of Light," Anthony Hopkins' Odin informs us, "there was darkness. From the darkness, came the dark elves."  That's quite a jump, but then, we have to find out about the Aether (everything in the Marvel Universe seems to be a common term spelled wrong), the Kursed on Svartalfheim, and the 5,000 year configuration of the nine Realms, at which point evil with a capital "E" can take out all nine of them with having to make it a bank-shot.  Malekith (because everybody needs to have a name that sounds like a lisp) and who is played by an unrecognizable Christopher Eccleston* is the leader of the Dark Elves and wants the Aether all for himself, so that he can destroy the nine Realms because...well, I don't know why, it seems like a really dumb thing to do, akin to crapping where you eat.

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

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

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

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

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

Thor: the Dark World is a Rental. 

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

The comics Malekith

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11) Any easter-eggs for the true fans?

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

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

Man of Steel

Zod It
or
The Never-Ending Battle (No, Really.  The Never-Ending Battle)

Marvel Comics' film division has so saturated the movie market that its Direct Competition, DC Comics looks like a 98-pound weakling by comparison.  Oh, they did well with Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" Batman series (very well), but the Warners film version of Green Lantern was a little dim.  So, if they put out any more product, they'd better do it right, or be seen as also-ran's.  And the one they HAVE to nail is the DC super-star and cornerstone, Superman. The Last Son of Krypton debuted in comics in 1938, has been on-screen since the Fleischer cartoon days of 1942, a radio series since 1940, on television since 1952, and the big screen since 1980 (ushering the current glut of superhero movies).  Superman has had several iterations since, especially on television, starting with George Reeves, then "Lois and Clark," then "Smallville."  Much tribute has been paid the last few years to the movie version starring Chris Reeve—he even appeared on "Smallville" a few times before his death—and Bryan Singer's attempted re-boot, Superman Returns, was a slavish recreation with better technology, that, in retrospect, was so slavish, it was a little creepy.

The rumor is Warner Brothers HAD to make a Superman movie or pay out a healthy sum to the family of Jerry Siegel, the characters' co-creator, and coincidentally, David Goyer gave Christopher Nolan a great idea for how to handle Superman while they were making The Dark Knight Rises.  Nolan wants to direct other things besides super-heroes, so he brought in Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) to do the film, and in some ways its a good choice.  Snyder knows how to bring comic books to the big screen, transposing the static images to a hyper-dramatic movement, even if he sometimes misses the point of what those stories are saying. The trick was making a GOOD Superman movie—even the Reeve ones corroded after a few years—out of an essentially "old-fashioned" character that challenges for worthy opponents.  What can you do with Superman that hasn't already been done?  How do you present it-him?  Is he Moses or Hercules?  Christ or Pro-Wrestler?  There have been lots of interpretations over the last 75 years, and Nolan-Goyer-Snyder have snatched quite a few of them to their purposes.

Lets talk about what's good about Man of Steel: they're no slavish interpretations: on Krypton, there are no gleaming towers, head-bands, or crystal palaces, but instead an interesting steel-chrome re-imagining, with no plastic in sight (even their view-screens are pointilated metal images), with no clean architectural lines but re-engineered as if by Frank Geary.  Superman's suit is more rococo than Ringling Brothers.  Casting is uniformly excellent: yes, Laurence Fishburne makes a great Perry White; Amy Adams a spunky, no-nonsense (for once) Lois Lane; and Henry Cavill is empathetic as the many identities of alien Kal-El, preternaturally handsome, almost beautiful, and alarmingly ripped, he never winks, acts cute, and plays it straight and unironically, with maybe a little too much furrow in his brow.  Russell Crowe's Jor-El is a bit more of an action-figure this time, which seems unnecessary, and Ayelet Zurer has much more to do as Lara than just cry and fret.  Kal-el's Earth foster parents, the Kents, are marvelous, both Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, but especially Costner, whose Jonathan Kent is a moral force to be reckoned with, fully aware that his son is not only a special-needs child, but a sociological game-changer, the answer to "we're not alone in the Universe" and all the potential for panic and fear that his very existence might produce. Costner's been waiting in the wings doing good, unsentimental character work in smaller movies, shucking his ego, for many years for the opportunity to do something this good and remind people that, yeah, he's a good, clever, disciplined actor capable of great things.

The other thing that gave me great hope for Man of Steel was its re-interpretation of the whole "growing up super" problem.  Kal-El/Clark Kent grows up with a gradually increasing set of powers—in class one day, he freaks out because he can see the skeletons of all his classmates, a cacophony of sounds from miles around threaten to split his skull, he runs to isolate himself in (as tradition) a broom-closet, and when teacher threatens to open the door, he zaps it with heat-vision.  He can't tell people what's going on—Dad's orders—but he has to learn to deal with being different, and suppress it, even to the disservice of others.  It's the "gift or curse" dlllemma, which has been touched on before in the mythos, but never to this extent.  And the other nifty thing is that more than any other "Super"-movie, this one is more science-fiction oriented, it's an alien invasion movie that "Superman" just happens to star in, and be the chief target for.  And there is a concerted effort to make this "THE moment" when Clark becomes Superman.  Here, Kent's been going from one job to another for years, hiding from society, and when super-opportunity rears its ugly head, he moves on, lest he be found out (it's also the impetus to introduce Lois Lane, who happens to stumble on this "mysterious stranger" and, reporter that she is, tracks him down).  But, that "alien threat" text is a great way to keep Superman under wraps,* dealing with the anonymity, and bringing Lane into it.  There's great potential there, as the one person who exposes to the people of Earth that there are "aliens among us," is the picture's chief villain, Krypton's General Zod.

One of the best things about Man of Steel is its cast, including Kevin Costner as Superman's Earth Dad.

And this is where the movie gets into trouble.  Not that Zod isn't a great character.  Genetically-engineered—the Kryptonian way—to be a soldier, he stages a coup in the last days of Krypton in a misguided attempt to keep Krypton "pure."  He finds the naturally-birthed Kal-El repellent, Jor-el a traitor, and is single-mindedly determined to return Krypton to its proper way.  And as spewed by Michael Shannon (who's terrific here, but then he's always terrific), he is a seriously deranged megalomaniac. And although his plans are simple, his means of doing it are so complex,** they tend to bog the movie down, leading to the worst problem with the film—it's ultimately dull and tedious.

We all remember Superman II—with Terence Stamp as General Zod—and the extended fight between Christopher Reeves' Superman and the three Kryptonian criminals which, while good for its time, seemed to be merely a bunch of fighting Cirque De Soleil wire-work.  This time, it's the way it's imagined in the comics, super-fast, punching, punching, punching, the combatants sending each other crashing through buildings and skidding across  pavement to screw themselves up and go at each other again...over and over and over again.  Comics-geeks (including me) have always wanted to see this, it's a dream come true, but like Hitchcock's retort to why his characters never go to the police ("because it's bo-oring" and then proved it in Psycho), it's too much of the same thing, no matter how much collateral damage is being inflicted, it becomes as dull as a "Transformers" movie. One shouldn't be looking "up in the sky" by rolling their eyes. Someone once expressed a dissatisfaction with "super-hero" movies because Hollywood has turned them from adventure stories to war stories, and the ante is being upped to the point of unsustainability and sameness. It's the familiar, in recent story-challenged movies, city-calving carnage, but just in different costumes, and if film-makers are going to keep trying to tap this dry well, they need to come up with unique stories besides battles royale, ones suited to the particular characters (and not particularly the villains').

And that's where Man of Steel ultimately fails—the screenwriters let the character down.  What sets Superman apart is he IS so pure, his intentions are the best, he's "the big blue boy scout," with a moral compass that's been set on both Krypton and Earth, the best of both worlds.  Here Superman makes choices for his adopted home-world that should scare the bejesus out of its citizens, and they're made about twenty minutes of destruction (and how many unseen lives) too late. Forget the considerable property damage sustained—whole city blocks are turned to scrap, buildings collapse, with I'm sure lots of people crushed in the rubble—his ultimate action and the timing of it, is just not what The Man of Tomorrow represents in any of its incarnations. The filmmakers negate what makes the character of Superman so special in that one act, making the character just another guy with too much power in a suit, and not a very good guy at that.*** 

Lots of good things here, but lots of bad things as well, and I argued back and forth with myself over what to rate this, but just because of the tedium factor I chose what I chose, so one could fast-forward—like a speeding bullet—through the never-ending battles.

Man of Steel is a Rental.

Direct dialogue grab from Grant Morrison's (and Frank Quitely's) "All-Star Superman"

* The TV-series "Smallville" did a similar thing, hiding "Supes'" as "The Blur," but Clark Kent stayed illogically stationary as a target.

** In fact, it's the same story-line of the recent story-arc "H'el on Earth" that spanned through the comics last year.

*** It's not like the filmmakers don't know it, they're preaching it throughout the entire movie.  In fact, at one point, Kal-el surrenders to the military as part of Zod's ultimatum to Earth.  He sits in an interview room, placidly, in hand-cuffs, the allowance of which is brought up by reporter Lane.  His explanation and one of the best lines in the movie:  "Well, it wouldn't be much of a surrender if I didn't..."

The Amazing Spider-man

Spider-man v. 2.0
or
"With Great Power Comes Sequels, Re-Boots, Etc....(A Spider-man's Work is Never Done)"

It may be a web-strand too soon to be doing a re-boot of the "Spider-man" franchise, but The Amazing Spider-man does do one thing that justifies its existence—it's better than the Tobey McGuire/Sam Raimi first film in the original trilogy, and right off the ledge manages to have the fun, energy, pop-soapishness, and inventiveness of the second film in that series, the one with Dr. Octopus.  We have to go through the origin story again (but that's okay, we seem to have to with every "Superman" film, and evidently will with the next one).

The story is basically the same—Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a smart high school geek with a photog hobby, and his first encounter with an industrial science lab manages to put the bite on him, arachnidally-speaking, then strange things start happening as he does whatever a spider can, conflicts, conflicts, conflicts (of the physical and angst variety), "with great power comes great responsibility," yadda yadda yadda.  But there's a lot of "Spidey"-history to draw on, and the writers (James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent—who added a lot to Spiderman 2—and Steve Kloves—who mentored Harry Potter) have tinkered and brought a lot of missing pieces to the table.  This time the love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, who appears to be the oldest person in school, but that may be part of the appeal of the character, certainly to Parker), daughter of an NYPD captain (Denis Leary, who plays it straight, tough, and with impeccable comic timing), and bowing to the fanboyish, his web-powers are not so organic—he's got the little web-shooters now, although interestingly, he doesn't develop the web-goo.  Oscorp is still around, although we never see its CEO (or do we?), so's the Daily Bugle—but Parker doesn't have a job there yet, so there's no J. Jonah Jameson (how could replace or improve on J.K. Simmons' interpretation?).  The villain is another industrial bio-scientist, Curt Connors (played as if was Peter O'Toole by Rhys Ifans and he's terrific), who—not giving anything away here—eventually turns into the Lizard.

What's different is motivation and sub-text.  Echoing the Potter series, attention and emphasis is paid to what happened to Peter's parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) that put him in the care of Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field, both extraordinarily good) and indications are that is the story which will run throughout this movie-arc (as well, I suspect, as the consequences of keeping secrets (as I said, there's a lot of history to drawn on). 

What's also different and good is how everybody's perfected the formula, including director Marc Webb (who made the, to me, extraordinarily fine (500) Days of Summer): Garfield's Parker is more in line with the comic character, mood-swinging as well as web-slinging, and his Parker is awkward, stammering, frequently inarticulate and perceived outwardly as something of a jerk, a simp, or worthless* (hey, wow, they got the character of a misunderstood teenager down), and the fights, which in the past have been rushed and often unfollowable, now flow and, frequently—thanks to CGI—in one continuous shot that swoops, loops and parallels Spider-man's flight patterns.  The pace is still there, but thanks to stunt arranger and second-unit director Vic Armstrong (a few of the Bonds and Indiana Jones), it's not all a blur.  Also, under Raimi, some of these fights were brutal and sadistic, and, don't get me wrong, these are no less savage, and take more of a toll on the participants.**  But the desperation is there, and the "wrong-ness" of the abuse of power, which kept my moral compass (or is it "Spidey"-sense?) from peaking out in the red zone.  

So, yes, it's the same story, but more sure-footed (by having its hero less so), and also intriguing for what it might hold in the future.  The first trilogy seemed to be a little wobbly as it went along, searching for story.  This one already feels like it knows where its going, and will find the best and most opportune path to get there.***

The Amazing Spider-man is a Full-Price Ticket.  (I saw it in IMAX 3-D, but it's not really necessary).

* And—a nice touch—he's thin and ungainly, not buffed-out, like the typical "strong-man" super-hero, which is the way he was when Steve Ditko first drew him.  Nice.

** This does bring up something that will be difficult to sustain: Parker is frequently shown battered, bruised, and slashed from these fights, which makes his encounters post-fight with Aunt May a little illogical.  And at some point, when will she clamp down on him, or child-protective services step in? 

*** A couple more things: there's no interpretation of the "Spider-man" theme from the 60's cartoon ("Hey there, there goes the Spider-man!") but James Horner's score is his most inventive in a long time—if a little needlessly bombastic in rare instances; there is a "coda" of sorts, but early in the credits (so you won't be missing anything if you don't stay for the full credit roll); and the Stan Lee cameo actually made me smile and feel affectionate towards the man.  Now, that's amazing.

Green Lantern

"In Dullest Day, the Weakest Light..."
or
"Oa, the Humanity!"

When the silver-age of comics began in the late 1950's, the '40's age of super-heroes were being replaced with westerns, horror and science-fiction tales.  So, those earlier mystery-men were re-incarnated with sciency origins that no longer depended on mystic powers and a sense of right-and-wrong.  Befitting the times, the original Green Lantern was a railroad engineer, who happened upon a mystic rune that gave him extraordinary powers.  The modern GL was a test-pilot, bequeathed a magic ring by a dying alien who'd crash-landed his spacecraft while on patrol.  As the story progressed, the pilot Hal Jordan, found he had been made a part of an intergalactic police corps (based in no small part on E.E. Smith's "Lensmen" series and its "Galactic Patrol") led by a clutch of identical blue-skinned big-headed "Guardians of the Universe," who supervised the Corps on a planet in the middle of the Universe, Oa, where was built the Corps central battery from where all green power originated.  There are a lot of Green Lanterns, patrolling every corner of the Galaxy.  And they had two weaknesses: you had to recharge the ring or it would run out of juice after 24 hours, and it didn't work on anything yellow.

That's a lot of back-story.  Probably too much for one movie, and it pushes the credibility envelope that science-fiction movies can push before leaving general audiences in an anti-matter cloud of skepticism, if not downright derision.*  And the movie version of Green Lantern, written by a bullpen of the comics' writers crams enough emerald exposition to make any viewer green around the gills.  I know there are a lot of fan-boys out there who will probably cry crocodile tears if their favorite Lantern isn't in the movie (where's Ch'p?  And G'nort?), but it's only a two hour flick—you can't put the whole Universe (and Mogo) in it, though this one tries (Me, I just wanted to see that staple of Hal Jordan tricks—he can create anything he wants, and the thing he uses the most is a boxing-glove—I was not disappointed).

It took the rest of the movie to do that.  TMI is the least of this movie's problems.  As much as it pains me to say it, Green Lantern just isn't very good.  Casting is fine: Ryan Reynolds makes a great Hal Jordan, Blake Lively is merely okay as over-dependent on-again/off-again g-f Carol Ferris, and Peter Sarsgaard has a fun time screwing around with arch-villain Hector Hammond, affecting a John Malkovich whine before he turns into an über-brained cross between Joseph Merrick and Truman Capote.  Mark Strong does nice work as the devilish looking "bad" Lantern Sinestro.  And with that, it's a kick to see some of these characters brought to life.

But...it needs a bit of a power battery charge.  The pace is a little sluggish**—with all the global and galactic goings-on, there's a little too much Carol Ferris interaction for the movie's own good—she's not as integral as, say, Lois Lane is to Superman, and she never really came into her own as a character until she became a super-hero, too (don't ask), and it's not as if Blake Lively was demanding that she had more to do.  Fact is, the scenes between Reynolds and Lively are the worst of the picture, as they're stuck with Screenwriter 101 dialog*** and little chemistry between them to make it in any way interesting.****  The tone is just a little too proud of itself—the Corps is taken VERY seriously, even though that's the part that should have been the most fun, and although Hal Jordan has the most wise-cracks with his "fish-out-of-water" learning curve, this is the latter-day mythos Jordan, suffering from "The Marvel Curse" of being angst-ridden over some lack in his life, in this case "absent-father" syndrome.

And The Guardians are even worse useless ideologues than they are in the comics, their pretentious dithering and superiority making their scenes sound like they were transcripts from the U.N.

But, there's something else about The Guardians that solved the riddle of what bothered me about the movie from the start.  It's one of the darkest movies I've ever seen, as if it was a 100 watt movie projected with a 20 watt bulb (I saw it flat, so I can't imagine what the 3-D version, which is always less bright, must be like).  There is just no "brightest day" in Green Lantern. It's when The Guardians show up on their too-high-seats (that should give you a clue about them) and you can barely make them out—they look plasticine and animatronic, less life-like than the Lincoln at Disneyland.  But that's not the worst of it, the sight of the entire Corps must surely be impressive, but you get the sense that the crowd scenes are merely composed of randomly moving blobs, and the design of the main bad-thing, Parallax—a Guardian possessed of the essence of fear—looks like a particularly gnarly piece of Brillo-pad that's been set on fire, with a blocky Mt. Rushmore face in the middle of it.  It all points to one thing—the FX shots are substandard enough that the film-makers—partcularly director Martin Campbell, who directed (and invigorated) the two best Bond movies of the past 20 years had so little confidence in so many of these shots that the entire film has been desaturated to keep the bad shots from standing out from the good.  It's not all bad.  The FX-wizards did impressive work with the GL costumes (completely CGI) and the couple of Lanterns that we see well—Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) and D.I. Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan)—some of the flying works, but the landings are a little rocky.  But the ring-constructs are kinda dull (that's the scripters' fault)...lasso's and jets and guns and...Hot-Wheels tracks???  If we're doing product placement how about beating people over the head with a bottle of Coke (label out)?  "The only limits are what you can imagine."  Earth is in trouble.  But the retailers should do fine.

But, I think the worst thing about Green Lantern is that nothing resonates, nothing inspires, nothing evokes a sense of wonder or service.  Nothing even made me crack a smile—except that the green energy coming from the most powerful accessory in the world is apparently painful (as well it should be).  As a fan of the comics who wanted it to be good, watching the movie was painful for me.

Now, if you would, please repeat after me Yojimbo's empowering adaptation of the Green Lantern oath:


"In dullest day, the weakest light,
the SFX might look all right.
To cure the need to see the sight
of comic-flicks...
Green Lantern might."

Because it's just a Cable-Watcher.

"Green Lantern ponders the Universal Question: "why is there so much yellow paint in the world?"

* The secret is to couch your sci-fi in legend or familiar genres—so Star Wars gets a pass because it borrows liberally from westerns, samurai movies and old sci-fi, but A.I. Artificial Intelligence featuring robot-mother-love, melted ice-caps and "the mechas will inherit the Earth" provokes superior chortling.
** But then, so's Hal.  A couple of times during battle scenes I was thinking, "This guy can jet across the Galaxy.  Shouldn't he be showing up now, before anybody gets killed?"

*** "Nice." "Impressive, isn't it?"  "I was talking about your dress."  Really?  Is that a line they use at Comic-con's?

**** The only interesting aspect to her is that she sees GL is Jordan almost immediately: "I've seen you naked, you think I wouldn't recognize you by hiding your cheek-bones?"  Good point.  Although he DOES lower his voice as is par for the course in superhero movies. 

X-Men: First Class

"The X Factor"
or
"Don't 'X,' Don't Tell"

Movies from Marvel Studios seem to be running the pattern of "Star Trek" movies (at least in my eyes), the "even"-numbered ones tend to be best, while the "odd"-numbered ones are a little clunky.* That's certainly the case with the "X-Men" franchise.  Bryan Singer's first film did a lot of heavy lifting adapting the comic to the screen, but there was a virulent strain of exposition, and some jostled positioning of the characters in what is essentially an action soap opera.  The best thing about it was its casting, but its big confrontation was poorly done.  X-II, also  directed by Singer, with all the introductions out of the way, concentrated on story and moved along smoothly with an emotional end-point that seemed to matter. Singer left to complicate the "Superman" movies, and left X-III in the hands of Brett Ratner, who produced a very expensive film that looked cheap, felt cheap and really screwed up the X-Men line-up.  Ratner was required to use an expensive cast which ate up a lot of the film's budget, and the results on-screen suffered, despite the audience familiarity of the stars.  There really didn't seem to be anywhere for another film to go, without some heavy gene-splicing of the cast.

So, here's the fourth "X-Men" Movie (we won't talk about X-Men Origins: Wolverine—we already have) X-Men: First Class, a sort of re-boot of the series, although keeping elements from the original films that everybody seems to like.  They could have easily made it an "X-Men Origins" film.  It starts where the first film began—at a concentration camp in Poland as Erik Lensherr (here Bill Milner, but he'll grow up to be Michael Fassbender**) watches helplessly (for the moment) as his parents are imprisoned in a concentration camp.***  The parallel story is of young Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher, then James McAvoy ) who finds a metamorph in his kitchen (Morgan Lily, but she'll be played as a young adult by the ubiquitous Jennifer Lawrence), whom, recognizing a fellow mutant-traveller, he takes in as a sister.  Their lives progress and Lensherr, who has developed powers over metal, hunts down the Nazis (particularly Kevin Bacon) who killed his parents and tortured him, while Xavier attends Oxford with his "sister" Raven, achieving top honors—and why wouldn't he, as he can read minds and project thoughts.

What is nice about X-Men: First Class is it takes real-world events of the time that Lee and Kirby were creating the series in the early 1960's—in this case, the nuclear gamesmanship of 1962 when the U.S. planted missiles in Turkey, which was then challenged by the Russians planting nukes in Cuba, thus lighting the match for the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of that year, which came within a sub-crew's breath of a nuclear X-change between the two very real "super-powers."  Singer is credited with the story, and however counter-intuitive it might have been to place it there (and it does create a couple of continuity errors), it "works" and works gang-busters.  With Singer's story and the direction of Matthew Vaughn (getting stronger and stronger with each movie), it feels more like a 60's groovy spy story than your standard super-hero fare, and for once—save for a poignant moment in X-II—the consequences of the plot really seem to matter. 

Those familiar with the "X-Men" comics will know of "The Hellfire Club"**** and it turns out that organization of nefariousness and debauchery fits in well with the swinging '60's.  Led by Sebastian Shaw (Bacon), with henchmen Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Riptide (Álex González) and Emma Frost (January Jones), they've pulled the mental strings of military puppets on both sides to set up the nuclear stand-off, and as Shaw absorbs energy, a nuclear holocaust wouldn't kill him, it would only make him stronger.  Banding together with the CIA, (uneasily, except for agent Moira McTaggert—Rose Byrne and another played by Oliver Platt), Xavier joins forces with Lensherr, in classic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" style, and begin recruiting other mutants to form a secret society of operatives hiding in the shadows to do undercover work against the Hellfire Club.  Pretty soon, things become dire enough that they must come out of the cold and overtly take a stand, certainly taking their place among "the best and the brightest."

It's your classic "oppressed minority" story (something Lee and Kirby knew all too well when they were doing the comics—both were Jews, which was common among the pioneers of the creators of the superhero comics genre), but during the 60's it was a civil rights metaphor that only became more overt as the years went on.  Singer pitched his initial The X-Men concept as a "meeting between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X," but it was more than that; Singer gave it a "hiding in plain sight" slant towards gay rights that involved not only opposition to the mutants but out-right hysteria (something the scenario buys into with the "recruitment" angle, long a charge of anti-gay paranoia). 

So, you have a superhero flick that acknowledges its comics roots by employing a style from the movies of its origin's time-frame, with a rather clear-eyed look at a real-life crisis (mutants weren't involved, although I've always had my suspicions about Robert McNamara), some nice performances, grand-standing direction, good action set-pieces, and a few nice surprises for fans of both the comics and the previous films.  X-Men: First Class manages to be more than the sum of its parts, certainly the best of the series and among the best of the genre, thanks to its scope and style and its own undefinable, uncanny "X"-factor.


X-Men: First Class is a nifty Matinee. "First Class," indeed.

The First "X-Men" comic (from 1963)

* Iron Man being an exception.
** Fassbender is terrific, playing contained rage and menace throughout, but when he lets go with the emotional histrionics, there is just enough control to it to make you worry what would happen if he "really" let go.

*** They even use Michael Kamen's music from the first film in the scene.

**** Although writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne site "A Touch of Brimstone"—a controversial episode of the British TV series "The Avengers" (and it's important to make that distinction with Marvel)—there's been a long history of actual Hellfire Clubs.