A Meaningless Title

So, the alternating pattern continues, as the abysmal “Into Darkness” is followed up by... hell, probably the best Trek film since Undiscovered Country? The reboot finally steps out of the shadow of the original series, and is all the better for it, finally feeling fresh and exciting. Hell, that's practically one of the movie's themes, letting go of the past, and I can only hope that carries through from now on.


Spoilers and specific comments below:
( Read more... )

The title is still terrible and means nothing, though.

So, general thoughts? I'm not exactly disapointed, but I can't help but be reminded of the quote about someone's work being both good and original, but the parts that are good are not original and the original parts are not good...

Alright, maybe that's a bit unfair, but the movie really struggles when it's not following A New Hope beat for beat.

( The Good, the Not-So-Good, and the Baffling (Contains Spoilers) )

Was thinking about Star Trek 5 – because somebody has to, right? And it occurred to me – why is it a terrible Star Trek movie? Because it’s actually a Star Wars movie!

Think about it. Who’s the villain? Well, he’s a renegade from the group of powerful psychics who repress their emotions and avoid strong attachments. He’s been cast out because he delved into ancient forbidden philosophies, and decided to follow a different path, one all about gaining strength through embracing pain and revelling in emotions. Using this power, he gains power over the minds of the weak-willed and forms an army to carry out his monomaniacal obsession.

The plot draws everyone inexorably to the desert planet with the city full of scum and villainy that is somehow both a total backwater and also the most important location in the galaxy. Everything’s sort of worn out looking and broken down – even the good guy’s ship is a malfunctioning, unreliable hunk of junk.

There’s a lot of weird mystical babble going on as our heroes fly across the galaxy. The villain tries to tempt the good guy psychic into joining him, but fails, even after a contrived family relationship is revealed. Eventually, however, the villain sees the light and sacrifices himself to save the heroes from the real evil, who at the time was busy shooting lightning at everyone.

The movie ends with our heroes celebrating as night falls over a Californian national park, and a childish song wraps up the adventure!

It's long overdue, but it's good to finally have a decent sequel to The Matrix.

A quick comment on getting back from Into Darkness: Can someone please, PLEASE, turn off the recording of Wrath of Khan that seems to have been stuck on loop at the Paramount writer's studio for the last decade or so? Why not rehash Undiscovered Country or the Voyage Home for once? Or try doing the Motion Picture or Final Frontier properly?

You're never going to top the original Wrath of Khan, please stop trying...

An odd thought: I was still in my mid-teens when I saw Fellowship. I’ll be thirty when the last Hobbit film comes out…

Anyway, I liked the film. Compared to Lord of the Rings, it seemed a little more… light-hearted isn’t exactly the right word, but certainly a fair bit less serious or weighty – which fits the difference between the books. I thought the film handled the difference in tone quite nicely by framing it as Bilbo’s account of his adventure, and much of the early scenes is word-for-word from the book. I do hope the rest of the trilogy keeps up that mood, and the attempt to expand the story into a trilogy doesn’t result in attempts to make it too serious or ‘epic’. I liked the cameos from Galadriel and Saruman, but I wouldn’t want the movers and shakers of Middle-Earth to overshadow Thorin and company…

Regarding Thorin and the dwarves – I found it interesting that the film seemed to take Tolkien’s comment that his dwarves are vaguely analogous to Jews and ran with it – some of Thorin’s company seemed to have a very eastern/central European look to them, there were a lot of references to Dwarves as a people in exile, victims of an involuntary diaspora, outsiders wherever they go. Of course, there’s problematic attitudes in associating dwarves with Jews – but, on the other hand, it’s pretty much impossible to adapt Tolkien’s works without carrying over some problematic content, and a fantasy film with Eastern-European Jewish analogues as the heroes makes for a nice change from the usual Anglo/Nordic cultures. And the Hobbit ends with everyone consumed with greed for Smaug’s hoard, not just the Dwarves…

There’s also a nice sense that Thorin’s band are fairly ordinary people – not as unaccustomed to adventure as Bilbo, of course, but hardly on the level of Aragorn or Legolas. A few orcs on wargs is treated as a serious threat, and they avoid combat whenever possible. I liked that – Smaug should be an utterly terrifying threat once we get to see him in full, a year or two down the line.

Things I disliked – Radagast was a bit too goofy for my tastes, and seemed rather supurflous. Everything he said was repeated by Gandalf a few scenes later anyway, his appearance seemed more to make up for him being cut from Fellowship, less a useful addition in its own right. The escape from the stone giants dragged a little too – then again, they’re slightly out of place even in the novel, never being so much as referenced again anywhere else…

An odd realisation – outside of the brief glimpse of Dale-town at the beginning, I don’t think there was a single human onscreen in the entire film. Certainly none with lines…

Anyway, bring on the Desolation of Smaug! Next year in Erebor!

Anyone remember “Tom and Jerry: The Movie”? The misbegotten film where Tom and Jerry are friends and have to help an orphan girl escape her evil aunt? And they talk and sing all the time? Well, you’re in luck, because you can buy the DVD from the Warner Brothers website! And they describe it as thus:

The Cold War? Of course! Tom and Jerry wasn’t just slapstick, their battles represented the constant struggle for control between the two superpowers! The seemingly bizarre decision to have them as friends in the movie represents the zeitgeist of the 1990s, the sense of optimism and hope that so many felt following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union!

Perhaps we can see the film’s new villains, the greedy relatives and dogcatchers, are representative of the growing rise of corporations and financial institutions at the expense of the traditional nation-states represented by Tom and Jerry?

And, of course, there is the film’s coda, where Tom and Jerry revert to their antagonistic ways. A criticism of Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’? An implied return to cold war rivalries, that would prove prophetic of the more hawkish foreign policies of George Bush and Vladimir Putin? Or perhaps an allegory for the Yugoslav wars, and the way they returned the spectre of war to a Europe that had thought such things long buried?

Truly, Tom and Jerry: the Movie has far more political depth than I had given it credit for! Thank you, anonymous Warner Brothers blurb writer, for opening my eyes!

Pros: Hilarious, fantastic movie. If you don't enjoy it, you have no soul.

Cons:It's been more than a week, and I still have the Mahna Mahna song stuck in my head...

Disappointment of the day: Finding out that the Immortals film I saw a poster for the other day isn't a remake of 300 from the Persian point of view...

Incidently, while checking on Wikipedia, I found the Byzantine Empire at one point fielded units known as 'Immortals' in reference to the Persian soldiers - because, apparently, being a Roman Empire based in Greece defended by an elite force of Viking mercinaries wasn't enough of an anachronism stew for the Byzantine emperors.

Staring at a poster at the bus stop today, I finally realised the new Transformers film isn't called "Dark Side of the Moon", it's just "Dark of the Moon".

I realise one shouldn't expect quality from a Michael Bay film, but is it too much to ask for at least a title that makes sense?