10 film trilogies with bad third chapters
Mar 22
Sometimes it’s because the studio makes so much money they can’t resist developing another sequel. Sometimes it’s because the franchise creators always planned a three-act story arc. Sometimes the studio funnels funds into the hands of franchise creators who don’t really know how to build on their first film. Whatever the case, 3 is the magic number in Hollywood: trilogies have grown in popularity since the overwhelming success of the original Star Wars saga, bolstered by the compelling continuity of the Lord Of The Rings model. But unfortunately these classic models have left us with some less-than-awesome knock-off products, where the third film in the series should be the best, but ends up being the worst.
Here’s a list of the ten worst offenders, the offers which you can and should refuse.
10 - The Matrix
The Matrix was a pretty cool movie. It blended dystopian cyber-punk with off-the-wall kung-fu nonsense, and struck a chord with many a cynical viewer waiting for the twenty-first century to begin. The Matrix was way over-the-top, but it was a relatively restrained production when compared with its sequels. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions were shot back-to-back and released a year apart to keep people’s memories fresh, or something. Reloaded was flawed but still had its moments; Revolutions was just terrible. Everything — everything — was CGI. Main characters died for no good reason. That stupid fight scene in the rain where only one Smith fights Neo went forever and never really felt real or emotional. The prolonged robot attack on the human stronghold Zion was similarly endless and weightless. The first case in this list of directors given free reign and then screwing up their own franchise.
9 – Alien/s
Okay, the Alien films are technically no longer a trilogy, but for a while there they were just 3, and Alien 3 was an extremely disappointing follow-up to Ridley Scott’s and James Cameron’s classics. Where the first movie was personal and had the element of surprise in its advantage, and the second one utilised similar tactics to rollercoasters in order to elicit squeals of excitement from the audience, the third movie tried to go back to the personal tone of the first film, and failed miserably. Without the claustrophobic atmosphere and grim photography of the first flick, Alien 3 was a strange and unwelcome entry to the saga. Killing all survivors from Aliens but Ripley was probably a mistake as well, as was setting the film on a penal colony, not to mention the squeamish introduction of religious symbolism into the series. Let’s hope Ridley Scott’s 3D Alien prequel (never thought I’d type that phrase) doesn’t suffer the same fate.
8 - Back To The Future
Another case of the back-to-back double-whammy production, Back To The Future: Part 3 is the weakest of the three by far. The first movie was tight and clever and fresh, the second movie managed to retread the first and still not become boring, but the third one struck out on a limb and became uncomfortably dull. Giving Doc a love interest and sidelining series hero Marty McFly didn’t help the series, and neither did setting it in an unconvincing Old West town. Sure, flashes of wit and character are still there, but it feels so different in tone from the earlier flicks that it comes across as something of a disappointment.
7 – Pirates Of The Caribbean
The Curse Of The Black Pearl was a revelation, a truly fun and unique take on the perennially-popular pirate tales of yore. It made a star of Keira Knightley and introduced Johnny Depp to a whole new generation of love-sick tweens, kickstarted a potentially great franchise, and managed to be consistently entertaining and original in its execution. Not so its sequels. Like The Matrix flicks, the second one was still pretty good, with a few good set-pieces and amazing visual effects tempered by an overlong script and some flat characters. But the third, At World’s End, really dropped the ball. New characters came flying out of the woodwork, the plot became overly confusing, Orlando Bloom had nothing to do, sex symbol Jack Sparrow found himself stuck in some hideously boring fantasy la-la land, and all the wit, bravura and action of the first two movies appeared to have drifted out to sea. Let’s hope On Stranger Tides brings the series back on track.
6 – Spider-Man
As I discussed in the full Spider-Man 3 review, Sam Raimi did a massive backflip between the flat-out classic of Spider-Man 2 and the ho-hum melodrama of Spider-Man 3. Like a few other flicks on this list, the third instalment introduced too many characters, went on for too long, and became too melodramatic for its own good. I mean, seriously, three villains? In a single film? The audience’s credulity can’t be stretched like spider’s silk, Raimi. The 3D Spider-Man reboot (ugh!) will never replace the classic first two films in our hearts, but maybe it can erase the memory of the third one, which can’t possibly be a bad thing.
5 – X-Men
Words can hardly describe the sheer disappointment inherent in X-Men: The Last Stand. Series founder Bryan Singer departed after the sublime second flick to pursue the equally disappointing Superman Returns, leaving the X-Men reigns in the one man fans feared the most: Brett Ratner. I’m sure Ratner’s a nice guy, and I mean him no ill will, but seriously, how do you ruin such a promising franchise in one fell swoop? So many random, unnecessary characters were introduced, you killed the captain of the Enterprise for no good reason, you included the pictured battle of powers, which looks suspiciously like something out of an episode of Dragonball Z, and you managed to do the impossible: you made Wolverine unlikeable. The poor folk who couldn’t wait for X-Men: Origins: Wolverine: The Prequel: The Movie Of The Comic were equally disappointed by the latter film’s failure to approach the quality of the first two X-films, and I think it’s safe to say, with a heavy heart, that the X-Men films’ streak of quality ended with X-2.
4 – Terminator
As discussed in my review, Terminator 3 exists in a curious state of having no purpose. Terminator itself didn’t need a sequel, but nobody complained when James Cameron’s seminal robo-action thriller Terminator 2 inevitably did roll aorund. But then there’s T3, bereft of its iconic director, devoid of an interesting script or compelling performances — and even Arnie manages to fumble his classic character. Of course Terminator Salvation was even worse; at least T3 had that hilarious crane-smashes-through-everything-in-its-path chase scene, as well as Arnie’s entertaining performance. Maybe James Cameron will be so upset that he lost the Oscar he’ll be inspired to actually make good movies again, and return to the universe he helped create.
3 – Jurassic Park
Goodness gracious me, what a cinematic abomination Jurassic Park 3 was. From the classless inclusion of a numeral in the title to the appointment of Joe Johnston in the director’s chair to the vomit-inducing fight scene pictured above, nothing about this film rang true to its source material. Jurassic Park was a streamlined vision of Michael Crichton’s techno-thriller novel, and Spielberg managed at least to include some of the morality and science of the source material in his taut and frightening adaptation. The Lost World wasn’t exactly gold, but it was still fun, and it showcases one of Spielberg’s most nail-biting action scenes (I’m talking about the trailer-over-the-cliff bit, where you almost forget for a minute about the dinosaurs, only to be forcibly reminded in a terrifying way moments later).
Everything about JP3 was cheap and nasty. The script was full of holes an illiterate five-year-old could have spotted, the characters (and the actors chosen to play them) were extremely boring and out-of-place in the Jurassic universe, and the inclusion of the spinosaur as the new big bad villain caused a million eyes to roll around the world. Spinosaurus was a piscivore with weak jaws and an alarmingly slim build — everyone knows T-rex would’ve owned him any day of the week – sorry, geeked out there for a minute. Anyway, you can’t just throw away the franchise villain in favour of the strange-looking spinosaur. Bigger is not scarier. Also, raptors that can talk and have cute quills on their skulls? No wonder Spielberg barely showed up to set in his role as executive producer.
2 - Godfather
In its own strange way, the third installment to what are arguably the two greatest films ever made lived up to the overall theme of The Godfather Parts I & II: family. The Godfather Part III is the bastard son of the bunch. The ugly duckling. The useless degenerate nobody talks about and everybody wishes didn’t have the family name. Let’s face it, The Godfather should never have been a trilogy. Part II was such stellar work, still regarded today as one of the greatest sequels ever made. Both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II came out in the 1970s and collected prestigious Oscars (we’re talking Best Picture). Over a decade passed before Part III came to fruition and boy oh boy do we wish it never had.
The release caught us all off guard, too. Our defenses were down. Francis Ford Coppola was the man. Both Godfather films, Apocalypse Now. Even The Conversation has qualities people still discuss today. So the community was excited and highly anticipated what the man would do with a third installment of his mobster story. So much about The Godfather Part III is problematic it’s hard to sum it up in a few words. The acting is horrendously forced, the plot is untidy and the overall execution, from editing to blocking, is tired and sloppy. The Godfather Part III could’t hold up under the weight of the spectacular films that preceded it. It collapsed in spectacularly embarrassing fashion.
1 - Star Wars (original trilogy)
And here’s the worst offender, the head honcho of the Third Film Failure Club, The Return Of The Jedi. The first film of the saga was plagued with poor production values and a cast and crew who actively railed against the film’s production, but miraculously George Lucas persevered and delivered a stunning slab of imagination and escapism the likes of which the world hadn’t sampled since the classic Greek myths of yore. The Empire Strikes Back improved on Star Wars‘ formula by playing with the characters and universe in a compelling way. Empire is most people’s favourite Star Wars flick, and it wins this with its darker tone and more complex morality. The Return Of The Jedi seems like a reflexive push in a new, lame direction. For every shot of Leia in the slave bikini outfit, there was a shot like the one where the droids’ feet stick out of the desert sands like some horrible Looney Toons skit; the heavy and suitably dramatic final showdown between Luke, Vader and the Emperor — the culmination of six hours’ worth of drama — is emotionally engaging to this day, but it is undermined by the inclusion in the film of a certain species of sapient organism known as ewoks.
The ewoks are symbolic of Jedi’s problems in general: it appeared to be pandering to children. The relatively serious fantasy of the first two films is completely undermined by the inclusion of walking, talking teddy-bears, and the main featured planet of Jedi is too familiarly Earth-ish to be atmospheric like Tatooine, Hoth and Bespin (of the first two films). Plus Luke is no longer recognisable — his trials with Yoda appear to have turned him from a whiney but honest youth into a crushingly dull and characterless adult. This is no single person’s fault. Lucas stepped back after the debacle of shooting the first film, and let the reigns fall into the hands of other (superior) directors for the two sequels. Empire benefited from this separation, but Jedi suffered. Then again it could’ve been Lucas’ vision from the start to end his fantasy epic end on the planet of the teddy-bears, in which case everyone should have predicted earlier just how much the prequel trilogy would suck.
There you have it, our list of good-turned-bad trilogies is complete. Do you agree with these choices? Are there other trilogies you’d include in your own lists? Do you hate ewoks as much as me?
State of the art: 3D and the “AVATAR effect”
Feb 07
The disappointing but inevitable box office success of James Cameron’s lacklustre return to fantasy filmmaking has, for better or worse, solidified 3D movies as financially viable in the minds of those cold, distant studio execs whose only apparent concern is the bottom line. After the unprecedented success of Avatar in standard 3D as well as Imax 3D venues, many studios appear to be jumping on the 3D bandwagon. Clash Of The Titans is reportedly undergoing a last-minute 3D transfer; pressure from Sony to shoot Spider-Man 4 in 3D apparently contributed to Sam Raimi’s eventual departure from the project; Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Parts 1 and 2 are supposedly going ahead in 3D; Michael Bay is attempting to resist Paramount’s demands to shoot Transformers 3 in 3D; mediocre horror films continue to be shot in the format (Piranha 3D); and of course the glut of 3D animated films continues unabated (Toy Story 3, Shrek 4, How To Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, Puss In Boots, Kung-Fu Panda 2, oh god it just goes on).
But as if that wasn’t enough, Slash report that Sony has announced plans to re-release old movies in 3D on blu-ray. This plan is so strange, so incredibly dull and calculated, that it couldn’t possibly have been fabricated by the trades. Sony apparently has its sights set specifically on the likes of Ghostbusters, Men In Black, Spider-Man, and Gladiator, as well as more recent flicks such as District 9, 2012 and Zombieland. Don’t forget, Sony doesn’t just make movies, they make … well, just about anything electronics / entertainment related. As such they are planning to push 3D kicking and screaming into your living room: at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Sony unveiled a series of 3D-capable tellies, as well as announcing that Sony’s PlayStation 3 can be updated via a forthcoming patch to play 3D-encoded blu-rays. Super.
In fact, 3D was the main star of CES 2010, with all the major TV companies (LG, Samsung, etc.) showing off their own lines of 3D TVs, as well as talking about future 3D-playback-enabled blu-ray players. All of this development was planned years in advance of Avatar’s success, but the show’s timing was suspiciously fortuitous– 3D was on everyone’s minds after Avatar, and I’m quite sure a great many people were interested in taking that immersive 3D experience back home with them, so showing the consumers exactly how to do this could not have come at a better time.
Six months ago if you’d asked me about 3D I would have sounded cautiously optimistic. I would have been anticipating Avatar‘s release, waiting to see whether or not it would disprove the traditional public understanding that 3D is just a flash-in-the-pan gimmick, but I would have sounded much more interested in 3D in a different arena: gaming. The vast majority of games these days are rendered in 3D, and the technology to render the action from two slightly different viewpoints, thereby tricking the brain into seeing depth, was already ready for public consumption six months ago. The trick was to find a 3D-capable monitor — up until this year’s CES, there were only two (precisely two) LCD monitors capable of outputting 3D. You see, to avoid shuddering during motion, the monitor would have to refresh 120 times a second (60 for each eye), and there were only a couple of monitor models in the world that could do it, and they were expensive. Plus you would have to invest in your very own pair of polarised glasses.
The glasses designed for home use by graphics company nVidia are a bit different from the ones you were given at the cinema. For one thing they’re sturdier, and for another a bit more stylish. The most important thing is that they communicate via infra-red beams with a receiver plugged directly into your PC, so the glasses can time the flickering in each eye to coincide with the 120hz flickering of the image on the screen, alternating 60 times per second between each eye, resulting in — you guessed it — 3D. Six months ago I was very excited at this new, intriguing technology, until every Tom, Dick and Harry jumped on the 3D bandwagon and started flooding the burgeoning market with dross. It used to be novel and exclusive, but now everybody in the TV business is jostling the market with their new toys, to the point of saturation. But I digress. How will this affect you, the curious blu-ray buyer?
Well, that 60-inch 200hz LED TV that you bought for ten thousand dollars six months ago isn’t good enough for 3D. Sorry. Up until now, LCD and LED TVs boasting smooth motion at 200hz have just been interpolating 50hZ footage into 200hz. I don’t really know what “interpolating” means in terms of programs and processes, but it sounds a lot like “bullshit” to me. So the new 3D-enabled TVs unveiled at CES are actually capable of displaying 120hz, really, this time, for real, meaning that, yes, we can go out and buy a 3D blu-ray and put it in and enjoy the immersion. Ah, but wait, the blu-ray player! That’s right, current blu-ray players are incapable of outputting a 120hz dual image! Drat!
After forking out a not inconsiderable amount for a brand spanking new LED/LCD 120hz telly, you will then be forced to do one of several things, depending on what (if any) blu-ray player you currently own. If you own a PS3, you will have to download the firmware update that enables 3D codecs — which hasn’t been released yet … If you don’t own a PS3, you’d better hope you own a duck’s nuts Sony blu-ray player hooked up to the internet, or another, lesser brand of blu-ray player with internet connectivity and solid support systems so you can download a firmware update that way (again, these firmware updates still don’t exist as far as the consumer is concerned). If you have a garden variety blu-ray player with no data transfer or internet connection, you’re up the creek.
Another thing you’ll have to look into is the glasses. I imagine home theatre glasses will work a lot more like the cinema ones than the 3D gaming ones — they’ll be generic polarised lenses that don’t require any of that infra-red nonsense to separate the fields. Where do you get the glasses? How many do you get? How much do they cost? Can four people sit in one room with four pairs of glasses and all watch a 3D movie together? Wouldn’t that look freakin’ weird? Will Sony glasses work with LG blu-ray players? The mind boggles with questions.
I expect that by this paragraph you will be totally and utterly turned off by the very concept of bringing home the 3D experience. The amount of money required to upgrade your existing home theatre system is, as I mentioned before, hefty enough to dissuade the majority of punters from investing in the tech. The blu-ray format is already unpopular, expensive and misunderstood enough as it is; how is adding to the complexity and price of the format going to convince consumers to invest in a technology they have so far avoided like the plague? Blu-ray is like the new, rich kid that nobody wants to play with. Why, as his parent, would you send him to school on a segway with a new pair of shoes and a lunchbox full of caviar? There is no way this kid is going to get through the day without getting bullied and / or ignored.
Releasing every single blockbuster movie over the next few years in 3D is all well and good, but remember that the home theatre market is just as massive as the box office, and it’s often where ignored or forgotten films find their niche. If your movie is only designed to be viewed in 3D, what does that say about it as a film? It was a cash-grab, a 3D clone of Avatar, and by the time it hits DVD shelves everyone will have forgotten it was in 3D and will suddenly realise the movie is actually very mediocre. The fact that major electornics companies are putting their considerable weight behind this iteration of the 3D fad means that it won’t die quite as easily as the last few; and it might be that in 10, 20, or 50 years 3D entertainment will penetrate the market to the extent that 3D in your home is not prohibitively expensive. But until then, until the time comes that watching Letterman late at night on the couch in 3D is the norm, every movie released in cinemas in 3D is just a gimmick.
SPIDER-MAN 4 scrapped in favour of franchise reboot
Jan 12
Hollywood is officially broken. After a recent flurry of casting rumours (Anne Hathaway, John Malkovich as new villains), delays, script problems and fan plot speculation regarding the planned fourth, fifth and sixth Spidey flicks, Sam Raimi has finally had enough of Sony’s shit, and has officially left the building, taking with him Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, the heart and soul of the films, and any sense of dignity the series might once have had. I was doing my daily news rounds, saw a little piece on Malkovich publicly confirming his involvement in Spidey 4, and then BAM — a headline about Spider-Man 4 being unceremoniously let go.
Deadline brings us the bad news.
You’ve got to wonder what Sony was thinking. Until The Dark Knight came out, Spider-Man 3 was the highest-grossing superhero film of all time, despite its mixed reception. If I was Sony, I’d let Raimi loose on the fourth film, maybe with the mandate to pare down the number of villains introduced. I’d try to keep intact and nurture the creative team behind the first three films. I’d plan on turning a dime by putting the same names on the poster as I did the last three times. I wouldn’t reboot the freaking series.
I don’t want a reboot at all. I don’t want to have to go through Peter Parker’s formative high school character-building sequence again just to get to the web-slinging, heart-breaking action. I don’t want to have to put up with someone who isn’t Tobey Maguire filling the shoes, I’d feel guilty and awkward. I’ve grown attached to Maguire as dorky Peter, and anyone else in the role would just feel like a whole different character. And who would they get to direct? Brett Ratner? God save us all.
Anyway this reboot is due in northern hemisphere summer 2012, by which time we’ll have had Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America, Nick Fury, Thor, The Fantastic Four (another, more reasonable reboot), X-Men: First Class, as well as The Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, and god knows how many more Marvel / DC superhero flicks. The world’s gonna burnt be out on over-the-top action and ordinary people fighting extraordinary fights. You’d think around this time we’d be hankering for a revival of the feeling that for many people started the superhero movie craze: the perfect time for a good old-fashioned Spidey sequel.
Sure I’m taking this a lot more sensitively because I literally just watched all three Raimi-helmed Spider-Man flicks, but I don’t think I’m being too unreasonable here. It’s like Bryan Singer leaving the X-Men movies — oh wait, he did that. Okay, it’s like Peter Jackson not directing The Hobbit — oh wait … It’s like James Cameron not finishing off the Terminator movies — damn it! It’s like Steven Spielberg walking away from Jurassic Park — argh!
Okay, okay, I should have seen this coming. But seriously, sometimes Hollywood is a stupid, stupid place.
The 7 best comic book movies
Jan 11
The Joker turns 70 this year. The clown prince premiered in the northern hemisphere spring of 1940 in Batman’s first standalone series. Batman himself, as well as Superman and some other, lesser-known characters, are a few years older even than Mr J. Back then it was all about domino masks, tights, capes, and good-old-fashioned crime-fighting, with a dash of Freudian introspection on the side. With the exception of Superman, ostensibly the first super-powered comic book hero, straight detective stories were favoured for a good many years till the likes of Marvel popularised super-powers in the fifties and sixties and the genre exploded. Comic books were respectable back then. Hypermasculine men fought each other while hyperfeminine women floated around in the background; morals were unquestioned; the pulpy, predictable serials were tasteful and plain, unadorned with such concerns as sexuality, racism or moral ambiguity. Crime was duly punished, and justice was pursued in a cheap, disposable monthly medium affordable to the average middle-class American kid.
In the 80s comics underwent something of a rennaissance. Batman was rebooted in a grittier, morally challenging storyline, the X-Men got serious with Wolverine’s brutal training in Tokyo finally explored, and out of a hole in the sky fell the Watchmen series, one of very few successful stand-alone comic books. Since that sudden reversal of content comic books have floundered in an endless torrent of glossy, cookie-cutter superhero stories. The art styles have gotten more sleek and gratuitous in their anatomic inaccuracies, but the actual content, as far as this detached, casual observer can tell, hasn’t developed into anything really worth taking notice of.
The 90s saw a brief rush of comic book movies — The Mask, Spawn, Men In Black — that were okay, performing so-so at the box office, but it wasn’t until Bryan Singer’s X-Men that the world finally got a superhero flick that did justice to its (overrated) source material. It was fun, subversive, mature and posed a few interesting sci-fi questions, while telling a remarkably personal tale with emotion and flourish. After the critical and commercial success of this pioneering film the floodgates were opened and in the past decade we’ve seen just about every single major character in the Marvel stable trotted out for a cinematic outing or two, and DC haven’t slacked off in their contribution either. But the vast majority of these films have been mindless dross homogenised by the Hollywood machine — witness The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, The Spirit, etc., for evidence of this.
There have, however, been many shining lights in the dark. Here are the seven best comic book movies as judged by yours truly.
7 - V For Vendetta (2005)
Socio-political commentary has a propensity to become dangerously dull. How do you make it interesting, you ask? Add masked vigilantism, a fascist regime, some huge explosions, and Tchaikovsky to it. A dark, apparently faithful adaptation of the “graphic novel” (isn’t it cute when they try to sound mature?) of the same name, the V film is dark, violent, and socially relevant. The themes of freedom, justice and masked vigilantism are classic comic book fare, but here it’s all wrapped up in a smart, mature tale that’s pretty fun to watch.
6 – Road To Perdition (2002)
Bet you didn’t know this was originally a comic book. Actually I bet you didn’t even see this movie, hardly anyone did. But it’s got Tom Hanks in it, and a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, not to mention Paul Newman, some delicious cinematography, and some cool shootouts. The story is a tad melodramatic and simplistic, but the scrambled morality of gangster lifestyles is explored in a more compelling manner here than in any Scorcese flick to date. Sam Mendes, of American Beauty, directs.
5 – Iron Man (2008)
Funnyman Jon Favreau miraculously wound up at the helm of this (by ’08) routine superhero origin flick, the first act in an inevitable franchise. Thankfully Favreau kept the film sharp with the casting of Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role as Iron Man / Tony Stark, whose moral compass isn’t as concrete as Spidey’s or the Bat’s, and in the film’s fresh, brisk pace and tone. Anyone who claims not to have had fun watching Iron Man is lying.
4 – X-Men 2 (2003)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard scoots around in a mind-controlled wheelchair, staring people down and unleashing his merry band of mutants on the world, trying to make it a better place, while Gandalf the Grey floats around in a metal bucket for a helmet trying to stop Picard for no other reason than “the Nazis killed my parents, therefore everyone deserves to die.” Okay, okay, there’s more to this sequel to the film that started the heroic avalanche in 2000 — some breathtaking action set-pieces, some palpable drama between the main characters, a very cool sci-fi aesthetic, and the kind of professional filmmaking usually reserved for “serious” movies. X2 perfectly rides the line between mindless entertainment and intellectual stimulation, with great performances all round. Shame about X-Men 3 and X-men: Origins: Wolverine: The Prequel: The Beginning.
3 – The Dark Knight (2008)
Oh Christopher Nolan, you simultaneously delight and disappoint me. The Dark Knight is a big, loud, dark, complex film on every level. Christian Bale’s Batman, introduced in the middling Batman Begins, faces his first true test as a superhero in the form of Heath Ledger’s ultra-villain the Joker. The Joker’s wicked anarchic sense of humour is simultaneously amusing and terrifying, and Ledger’s performance of the character is the stuff of cinema legend. He inhabits the role, a role invested with such realism and integrity as to be utterly repulsive but ultimately fascinating and compelling at the same time. Bats is forced to question his own morality and identity in the face of the Joker’s cruel and unusual pranks and set-ups, meanwhile contending with a psychotically deranged Harvey Dent / Two-Face incited to violence by the Clown Prince himself. Batman’s dark, ugly world is a thematically beautiful and intellectually interesting place: every villain in Gotham City has a fascinating aspect to their psyche, and Batman invariably winds up being the most boring character in anything he’s in. The reason I don’t love Nolan’s second bat-flick is because it’s so cool, so loud, so flashy, so dark and awesome and gritty that there’s very little actual character to latch onto when all is said and done. The emotion is there, it’s just buried miles deep beneath layers and layers of crowd-pleasing aesthetic stylings.
2 – Watchmen (2009)
Having just criticised The Dark Knight for being shallow, I feel a pang of guilt including Watchmen in a higher position on this list. It is literally a shot-for-shot, visual-effects-driven recreation of the original comic book, but beneath the arguably flimsy veneer is the single most coherent, challenging and daring narratives in the history of comics. Some masked vigilante kills some other masked guy, and there’s a scientist who was de-atomised and is now a blue god, and there’s some Rorschach-wearing clown going around being unpredictably awesome for some reason — the plot merely serves as a prism through which comic books can be deconstructed and scrutinised and then spat back out as a damning observation of the world circa 1985, and as such, it is amazingly fun to watch. I identified most with John Osterman (Billy Crudup) as he undertook the journey to coming to terms with his superpowers: Dr Manhattan, as he is known, is an immediately more realistic depiction of a superhero than was ever depicted before Watchmen hit the shelves — he’s over the whole infinite power thing, he’s over seeing through time, and he’s bored of life as we know it. I guess that’s the kind of thing ultimate power brings you — boredom. So why do we all spend our lives scurrying to secure a slice of the power pie? Imagine thoughts like this, suggested constantly and in every scene of this visually entertaining flick, and you have some sense of the extent to which I was engaged and challenged.
1 – Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Ah, the amazing Spider-Man. The original Spidey flick was one of the earlier superhero flicks, and one of the better ones. Director Sam Raimi infused the story with enough classic character archetypes, modern references, universal coherence and pure, undiluted emotion for the film to be a promising start to the franchise. But it was nothing compared to the first and as yet only good sequel, in which the characters set up in the first film are dutifully knocked down in one of the most brutal, uncompromising but ultimately optimistic middle acts in the history of cinema. I enjoy every single scene of this movie, and it’s one of those few movies I could watch a dozen times and not become utterly sick of.
So there you have it, Froley’s favourite 7 comic book movies!
Honourable mention should go to 1978′s Superman for setting the bar for superhero dramas in their current form; Zack Snyder’s 300 proved that sometimes even slavish adaptation of the oft-maligned source material can prove to be entertaining; and David Cronenberg’s A History Of Violence barely even resembles a comic book movie at all, what with the lack of capes and superpowers and whatnot, and is all the better for the absence of such silly things.
What are some of your favourite comic book movies of all time? Do you think Hollywood has gone a little costume-crazy since X-Men was released, ten years ago? Do you think the style of storytelling and characterisation inherent in comic books is leaking into non-comic book movies? I want to know what you think, dammit!
SPIDER-MAN 3 review: oh how the mighty have fallen
Jan 11
I was actually looking forward to finishing off the Spidey trilogy, especially coming off the back of the first sequel. I had fond memories of this third instalment, but watching the film again, I have no idea why. Maybe it stands on its own quite well — that is, if you don’t watch it within 48 hours of the other two — but after the awesome Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3 feels detached, unfamiliar, and wrong on several levels.
So after enduring difficult trials in the middle Spidey flick, Peter Parker now leads something of a charmed life. He’s got the girl, the city loves him, he’s getting steady work and good grades. But from the very beginning Spider-Man 3 feels completely different from the first two movies. The tone and pace have changed, as well as the narrative focus. There is way too much going on in this movie for it all to hit the right mark. But where exactly did Sam Raimi and the screenwriters go wrong?
Well, for a start, they make Peter Parker annoying. He’s always put his foot in the majority of social situations, but here he acts aggressively and pig-headedly, not like the level-headed, polite character of the original film, and manages to screw things up for himself with girlfriend MJ. For her part, Mary-Jane also becomes annoying, in a jealous-of-my-boyfriend’s-superpowers kind of way. This seems especially weird after the cathartic conclusion of Spidey 2, in which MJ proclaims her love for Peter in a powerful, honest way. Funny how people backflip whenever dramatic tension requires them to do so, huh? And then there’s Harry, who at the end of the last film had discovered Spider-Man’s true identity, and looked set to follow through on his promise to kill the Spider, even it meant killing his best friend as well. This awesome potential for drama is unceremoniously swept under the rug in an oddly unoriginal fight scene early in Spider-Man 3 — Harry attacks Peter and winds up getting beaten, and wakes up in hospital with convenient short-term memory loss. This is a pretty criminal use of plot device, especially at this point in the overall three-film narrative. At about this point, with all three major leads disappointing in a serious way, I began to greatly anticipate the introduction of a good villain to shake up Peter’s world.
So after briefly setting up Harry as supervillain New Goblin and then trashing his memory in some horribly amateur plot device, we get another supervillain in the form of Flint Marko’s Sandman (played by Thomas Haden Church). The Sandman is actually a rather pathetic character, and while Raimi aims to make him sympathetic like he did with the villains of the first two films, here he fails because Marko is actually a base criminal. Sure, he’s stealing money to help his sick daughter recover — but he’s still stealing money (of course if America had a health care system that wasn’t borderline criminal, none of this would be a problem). So anyway Marko is transformed into the Sandman, and this time around, with suspension of disbelief already straining, the superpower comes off as contrived and silly. So he’s made of sand? How does he colour the sand so he can walk around looking like a normal human? How do you kill someone who can rebuild himself out of extremely common materials? And how the hell does he maintain consciousness even as the inanimate grains of sand composing his body dissipate and waft through the breeze?
While Marko’s busy whining about not being a “bad guy,” meanwhile beating the crap out of anyone who tries to stop him incessantly stealing things, we get another pseudo-villain in the form of some weird sticky black gunk from outer space. Yes, that’s right, the outer space, the one that has never bothered anyone up until this point. Anyway this black goo latches onto Peter and amplifies his aggression, turning him into even more of a douche than he already was. There was potential in this idea. Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus only did the evil things they did because an exterior influence penetrated their psyche and warped their good intentions into evil deeds — the potential is here for the same thing to happen to Peter as Spidey, perhaps turning him into a true menace to New York, who can only be stopped by, oh, I don’t know, the New Goblin. That way Harry can actually be a good guy for once instead of being relentlessly cruel and cold, and Spidey can get a taste of his own medicine. I-rony!
But then Peter manages to rip the black stuff off his body and throw it onto some guy called Eddie Brock, played with amazing incompetence by Topher Grace. Brock serves as a parallel to Peter Parker — he’s also a budding photographer trying to impress his dream girl. But Brock crosses some lines the morally-strict Peter wouldn’t dare to, and then when he becomes infected with the alien venom, he gives himself over totally to evil, so I guess that means it’s okay to beat the stuffing out of the poor guy. So how does this black stuff work? Where does it come from? On its home planet it must have some corporeal co-inhabitants it can be symbiote buddies with, right? How does it have a mind of its own when it doesn’t appear to have a brain? How did it survive the journey here? How does it chemically amplify an emotion? How did a simple lab test with a microscope confirm any of this? A brief overview of some of these rules would be nice. Instead the black goo just becomes distracting and annoying. If an audience doesn’t understand something, it will groan every time it appears in a scene. Why are you breaking all these rules, Sam Raimi?
There’s a few romantic subplots involving Peter’s pseudo-infidelity with cutie Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), Harry’s advances on a confused and strangely vindictive MJ, and MJ’s forced betrayal of Peter’s love, devised with malicious glee (which comes off as completely unconvincing) by Harry once he gets his memory back. None of these distractions ring true, and what’s worse, Peter doesn’t even take his chance to hook up with Elizabeth Banks’ Betty Brant. Shame on you. These dalliances divert attention from the real point of the movie, which is … er …
So here’s what the movie should have been about. The only villain should have been the New Goblin, forget the Sandman and that Venom nonsense — those characters are not in the least compelling, nor even that visually exciting, and they contribute nothing to the story. Explore the lengths to which Harry will go to avenge his father’s death — will he go for Aunt May first, and then MJ, to try and get to Peter, just like his dear old pa? How much of himself or the city of New York will Harry sacrifice in his misguided quest for revenge? Then flip the coin and ask, once again, and with bigger stakes, how much Peter is willing to sacrifice in order to stop crime dead in its tracks — will he kill his best friend for the sake of justice and peace? Do that same MJ-or-the-little-children dilemma scene from the first one, but this time put MJ on the other side of the island, forcing Peter to choose one. Or unmask Peter once and for all, reveal him to the city and the world at large. Do something to challenge Peter Parker at the most fundamental level. Then, Peter can rise to the challenge, and when he doubts himself, Aunt May and MJ will be there for him, and he will tragically go out and kick the Goblin’s ass.
Or, if you’re really dead-set keen on introducing Venom, only put it on Peter. Like I suggested above, turn him into the villain of the picture, alienating his friends and family, and then have New Goblin ironically come to save the day when Black Spidey goes around trashing the city. Harry is the new hero, and Spidey is the new villain, completely lost and disconnected from his roots. Then they can both realise what they’ve done and work together to undo the damage Spidey’s been doing this whole time. Harry can forgive Peter for failing to jump in front of the runaway hoverboard that killed his father, and Peter can forgive himself for doing all these stupid things to everyone in the first place. This way only one of the characters is radically changed, instead of every single one of them. Plus you get a focused, driven conflict between the three best friends. It’s personal, it’s different, and it’s emotionally engaging. Introducing so many new characters after already radically altering your existing protagonist(s) is a bad move, especially if the new characters are going to be as dull and pointless as the Sandman, Venom, and Gwen Stacy.
There is still a good movie buried in here somewhere. The montage of Peter exploring his new black-suit hyper-sexuality is extremely amusing, if a little long. JK Simmons again nails his hilarious role, and is given a little more to do this time, as is Elizabeth Banks as secretary Betty. The finale has a few dollops of vague emotion, a mere echo of the sheer catharsis of the first two films, but still more powerful than what you’d find in most movies. The Goblin-forced break-up scene is also pretty devastating thanks to the performances and timing, and it feels like the Peter Parker of the first two films makes an appearance for this brief but welcome scene. Plus the overall product is so polished it’s hard to hate it.
But the failures threaten to overwhelm the feature. Too many villains, none with enough motivation or sympathy; too many entirely unnecessary subplots and minor characters; too much of a departure from the first films; the running time is too long; the visual effects are way overused this time (black characters flying against black backgrounds? At night?! Arghh, my eyes!); the action scenes seem like unnecessary retreads of the first two films’; but most of all the film lacks the emotional narrative core of the first two. The hero isn’t supposed to completely change after the second act, he’s supposed to find himself, that’s the point of all those brutal challenges. He’s supposed to come to terms with himself, and then go out and fight the real problem, which in this case should have been the actions he took in the first act — killing Norm Osborn and setting his best friend against himself.
While the third Spidey feature doesn’t measure up favourably against the first two, it’s not actively bad as popcorn entertainment. It’s light, fresh, okay to look at, and moves fast enough not to be dull or sleep-inducing. So I can’t give it anything but a thoroughly average score.
That wraps up my Spider-Man weekend. I was both pleasantly surprised and dismally disappointed at the experience, but it was totally worth it. Here’s hoping Raimi and co. can pull out all the stops for Spider-Man 4 (due 2011), and return to more of a Spider-Man 2 vibe.
Spider-Man 3 score
51/100
OPINIONS COUNT