How To Make A Dragon Boring: Pete's Dragon

The Good: Decent effects, Acting is all right
The Bad: Pacing, Overbearing soundtrack, Thematically heavyhanded.
The Basics: The new rendition of Pete's Dragon is boring until it reaches a disappointing, obvious, ending.


When it comes to family films, I knew nothing about Pete's Dragon until I sat down to watch the new incarnation. As I understand it, the original version was a kitschy blend of live-action and animated elements. Disney has remade Pete's Dragon as live action film with a new CGI dragon, which made me (as someone with no affinity or reference to the original) wonder "have people been clamoring for a new, refined version of the classic kid's film?"

Having now watched Pete's Dragon, I'm not sure what the push was for the movie. This version of Pete's Dragon seems like a boring blend of Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest (reviewed here!) and Where The Wild Things Are (reviewed here!), both of which are superior films. At the moment the car crash occurred, my wife - who had seen the original film - warned me that Pete's Dragon had the potential to be very dark. The new incarnation of Pete's Dragon is not overly dark on the thematic front, though it is fairly dull and thematically heavyhanded. I'll take boring over child abuse in my entertainment any day, though.

Pete is reading Eliot Gets Lost in the back seat of his parent's car when a deer runs out in front of the car and in the resulting accident, his parents are killed. Pete crawls out of the wreckage and is menaced by a wolf . . . until a dragon appears out of nowhere to save him. Six years later, Pete is living in the wilderness near a logging site with his dragon companion. They seem to have gotten along quite well and while there are local legends about the dragon, no one (save Meacham and Pete) appear to have seen it. One day, while the forest ranger Grace is out patrolling, she comes close to Pete and Elliot, prompting the dragon to turn invisible. Grace leaves, but not until Pete has the chance to steal her pocketwatch, and Elliot returns.

As loggers encroach upon the forest where Pete and Elliot live, Grace, her fiance Jack, and Jack's daughter Natalie, discover Pete living in the woods. Taking Pete to the local hospital separates him from Elliot and all he knows. While Pete tries to escape Grace and the town, Gavin (Jack's lumberjack brother) goes hunting for the dragon. As Grace tries to take care of Pete, Gavin discovers that Elliot is real, but is discounted by his brother.

Pete's Dragon is obvious family fare and it is more boring and predictible than it is bad. As one might expect from a Disney film, Pete's Dragon promotes the archetype of a heteronormal family and takes that which is other and puts it into that vision of family. As a result, Pete - who is happy and surprisingly well-adjusted for a wilderness child - is dragged from all he knows, loves, and wants to be with and placed in a family with a father, mother, and sister and the audience is supposed to find it satisfying. Given how drawn out the beginning is, the time with Pete and Grace's family feels more forced than emotionally satisfying.

There is a real disconnect of reason in Pete's Dragon. How did Pete progress his language skills beyond that of his five year-old self when he only had one book to read? Why would Grace take a social services type stance in regard to Pete when all she truly seems to want to do is hang out in the woods and protect the trees? Why is Gavin's first instinct to hunt the dragon when the only logical explanation for Pete's survival in the woods was the aid of a benevolent creature, like Elliot? Pete's Dragon lacks any subtlety or sophistication, which makes it disappointing. Sure, it has a nice pro-environment message that is lacking in the public dialogue these days, but it is drowned out frequently by an intrusive soundtrack and long stretches where virtually nothing happens and people try to deny that the dragon actually exists.

The performances in Pete's Dragon are fine. Oakes Fegley is fine as Pete and his greatest acting moments come in his ability to flawlessly work with unreal objects - the CG dragon. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Grace, who is presented as the archetype of a caring woman, in a role that is forced and flat. Elliot, the computer-generated dragon, has more emotional range and expression to him than most of the adult performers emote in the film.

Ultimately, Pete's Dragon feels like a drawn-out, cinematic version of "Puff The Magic Dragon" but at least the song ends after five minutes. Pete's Dragon is longer and feels quite a bit longer than that.

For other movies currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
ZoomSpaceman
The Whole Truth
Suicide Squad
Nerve
Star Trek Beyond

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Child-free Jurassic World Might Not Have Sucked.

The Good: Moments of effect, Some of the performances
The Bad: Unlikable characters, Ridiculous and predictable plot, Thematically heavyhanded
The Basics: Jurassic World is another cheap re-do of Jurassic Park: this time with undertones of sexism and an overt "family values" message likely to disgust viewers more than the killer dinosaurs will!


Jurassic World is, as I write this, the third top-grossing film of all time and already has a sequel in development. I waited weeks to watch Jurassic World because I have not, traditionally, been a fan of the Jurassic Park film franchise. In fact, I only recently realized that I have only seen and reviewed the first Jurassic Park (reviewed here!) before taking in Jurassic World. While I was not super-impressed by Jurassic Park, I was actively bored and repulsed while watching Jurassic World.

Before watching Jurassic World, I had some inklings that it might not become my favorite film of all time. My wife asked me if I grade on a curve for "b" movies and I told her "no" - I review and rate Casablanca with the same criteria as Step-Brothers and Just Friends - and we had heard some rumblings that it had some distinctly anti-child-free elements to the film. What surprised me most about Jurassic World was how dramatically sexist the film was. And yes, for those who are deliberately child-free, there is something distinctly offensive about the death of Zara in the film (this is not a significant spoiler at all). Zara is the personal assistant to Claire, who is saddled with childcare duties that are nowhere near in her job description and as "punishment" for her failure to look out for the child protagonists of Jurassic World, she endures the longest on-screen human death sequence of any of the human characters (only one of the dinosaur characters is brutalized longer on-screen than Zara is!). For those of us who are deliberately child-free, the message from screenwriters Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Colin Trevorrow (who also directed the film!) and Derek Connolly is pretty clear: everyone should want to have children in their life or die horribly for not protecting kids!

More than Twenty years after the planned Jurassic Park was scrapped, Isla Nublar is up and running as a successful theme park known as Jurassic World. Despite having more than twenty thousand visitors to Jurassic World a day, the park's director, Claire, is anxious about the bottomline and has had her team of scientists developing new human-engineered dinosaurs. Claire is meeting with the corporate director, Masrani, and sponsors who are funding the research for developing the new dinosaurs, when her sister sends her nephews - Gray and Zach - to the park. Unprepared for their visit, Claire fobs the kids off on her assistant, Zara, and tries to keep the park up and running.

But the new genetically-engineered dinosaur, Indominus Rex, decides now is the time to fake out its overseers and it pretends to escape its enclosure, which sets up for her actual escape. Claire is forced to rely upon the velociraptor trainer, Owen, to find her nephews who are lost in the park when Indominous Rex breaks out and the rides get shut down. While Owen and Claire are out trying to save the children, the military contractor Hoskins siezes the opportunity to fill the power vacuum by bringing the velociraptors into the field against the Indominus Rex. While trying to get the human visitors to safety, the dinosaurs are set against each other.

Every now and then, there is a movie that has a conflict that has such a stupidly complex story when the simple solution is the most sensible and Jurassic World is exactly that kind of movie. Jurassic World is populated by characters who learned absolutely nothing from Jurassic Park and live in a world where our technological achievements did not occur. In Jurassic Park, DNA from other animals was spliced with the dinosaur DNA to fill in, essentially, the introns, because computers of the day did not have the processing speed to analyze full DNA strands in a timely manner. That is not the case now. Computer speeds have become so very much faster that it would no longer take decades or even years to render a single dinosaur's DNA strand. In other words, all of the evolutionary benefits the Indominus Rex gets from its spliced DNA are entirely unnecessary.

But beyond that, Jurassic World suffers from being a victim to simple numbers. The Indominus Rex has $26,000,000 worth of research and development poured into it, which is why Claire is anxious to not kill it right away. But the potential lawsuits from deaths of visitors to Jurassic World with the utterly foreseeable event of a giant genetically-engineered dinosaur escaping and killing or maiming anyone is entirely forseeable to exceed $26,000,000. So, simple business insurance would have Jurassic World preparing for foreseeable disasters with a killswitch (i.e. it is more cost-effective to insure the research and development on a new dinosaur than it is to insure against the deaths of up to 20,000 visitors to Jurassic World). Jurassic World makes a piss-poor run-around the concept with "shock collars" and "trackers." The moment the threat of Indominus Rex was revealed in the film, I sat up and asked "Why didn't they install an explosive in the dinosaur so if it left the enclosure or they couldn't find it, they could just blow its head off?" The writers of Jurassic World are not so smart. They thought "we'll give it a tracker." But even there, why wouldn't they put a small load of Cesium in the tracker? Cesium explodes in oxygen and if the dinosaur was smart enough to remove the tracker, the process of removing it would kill the dinosaur. How is it that pretty much anyone watching Jurassic World will be smarter than the people who are supposed to exist in the world where engineering dinosaurs for fun and profit is real?!

So, back to the actual film Jurassic World. It's a lot of running around. It's a lot of computer-generated dinosaurs running around and attacking people. There are a lot of guns that shoot dinosaurs and don't seem to cut them down nearly as fast as one might expect. And there are a lot of surprisingly weak women. I love Judy Greer. Greer plays Karen in Jurassic World, the mother of Gray and Zach. In her professional workplace setting, Karen begins crying while on the phone with Claire for no particular reason other than the fact that Claire is not actually spending time with her children (nothing bad has yet happened to them to their knowledge). Zara is a nonentity who is not so vital that she cannot be fobbed off on babysitting duty (and fails horribly at that because she can't stay off her smartphone). Claire constantly defers to men in the film; she is the director of Jurassic World, though she gets a verbal spanking from Masrani for not understanding the philosophy behind the park (though this is not a new job for her!) and turns to Owen for in-field help at the first sign of trouble. The most competent female character in Jurassic World is Vivian, a control-room operator who is horrified when things go wrong at the park, but stands her ground against inappropriate inter-office contact when it comes time for her to evacuate.

The acting in Jurassic World is fine, save the preponderance of shots where child actors fail to get eyelines or emotional reactions right while working with virtual characters.

The dinosaurs are big, but hardly special in Jurassic World and there my analysis ends: Jurassic World is a long, painful, dull before is rushes into a derivative chase movie that viewers have already seen.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Dragon Blade
Fantastic 4
Jenny's Wedding
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Ant-Man
Lila & Eve
Minions
No Way Jose
Terminator Genisys
Inside Out

2.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts, The Twilight Saga Holds Together Poorly.

| | | The Good: Moments of concept, Portrayal of young love, Cinematography
The Bad: Underdeveloped characters, Melodrama, Stiff acting, Belabored plot
The Basics: The Twilight Saga starts as a charming tale of love between a mortal and an undead individual and drags out a dismal series of conflicts for multiple movies.


There are few movie series’ that have been produced in recent memory that have both such loyal fans and such rabid detractors as The Twilight Saga. Based upon a tremendously popular book series that pretty much defined the contemporary teen paranormal romance genre, the cinematic Twilight Saga was one of the smartest bets by the studios in recent memory. It came with a build-in audience, had a sufficient franchise to draw out and had the potential for mass appeal. And it worked: the success of the first two films made household names of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, as well as launched the career of a number of the secondary performers in the films, and inspired the studio to split the final film into two to milk the fan base for additional money and keep the “phenomenon” alive.

But the same things that made the series seem initially strong also gave so much for the detractors to rant about: the films, which feature vampire and werewolf characters, were remarkably bloodless and for a great romance epic, the main couple was shockingly sexless. The acting was mixed and the fact that the film could not keep a consistent director to maintain a singular vision for the films may have worked against it (especially on the press circuit). For my part, I look at what is directly in front of me. Having sat down and rewatched the entire cinematic rendition of The Twilight Saga, there are several things that stand out to me now, looking at the work as a whole. As it will inevitably be viewed as a solid Saga (shocking that when Breaking Dawn, Part 2 was announced for DVD and Blu-Ray, no collector’s series set was announced simultaneously!), it behooves one to consider the entire work.

The Twilight Saga is a rare example where the parts, when put together, make something significantly less than the films on their own. Allow me to explain.

First, The Twilight Saga consists of the films:
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn, Part I
Breaking Dawn, Part 2

For those unfamiliar with The Twilight Saga, the five films follow the exploits of Bella Swan, innocent, pale klutzy high school student who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington when her mother wants to travel more with her new boyfriend. Forks, a mist-covered rural community, is where Bella’s father lives and works as a sheriff. There, Bella meets the mysterious Edward Cullen. Edward, she quickly learns, is a vampire, but a friendly one. Bella and Edward begin a romance, which puts them in danger when a roving trio of vampires comes through and starts killing humans and attacks Bella.

On Bella’s eighteenth birthday, there is an incident and Edward abandons her, ostensibly for her own safety. At that point, Bella rekindles her friendship with Jacob Black, a local who she slowly learns is a werewolf. Jacob’s protective instinct kicks in and while Bella prevents Edward from killing himself so he is no longer tormented by his love for Bella, the attempt draws the attention of the powerful Italian vampires, the Volturi. The Volturi come to Forks shortly thereafter when the villainous Victoria raises an army of vampires to destroy the Cullens and the werewolves and vampires work together to protect Bella and put down the threat of the rogue vampire clan.

After Bella graduates high school, she and Edward get married and during their honeymoon, the unthinkable happens: Bella gets pregnant from Edward and the spawn is something no one quite understands.

What struck me most about rewatching The Twilight Saga all together was what a weak link New Moon (which I rather enjoyed when it originally was released) was and just what a forced sense of conflict the Saga possesses. The initial villains are dispatched fairly quickly and make way for a far less sensible group of villains. The Volturi are visually menacing and creepy beyond belief, but they are basically superpower vampires who claim to be working to preserve the vampires and keep them off the humans’ radar while being the most obtrusive group of vampires: while the Cullens and the other vampires seen in the Saga generally blend in, the Volturi look like out-of-date elves who kill humans with startling regularity.

The love triangle (a term I loathe because it seldom is actually true – and is not in The Twilight Saga, as there is no emotional connection between Edward and Jacob) between Bella and Edward and Bella and Jacob seems increasingly forced as the film series goes on. In fact, outside of most of New Moon, it is painfully clear to everyone save Jacob that Bella has chosen Edward as her love interest. Even more than any problems with Kristen Stewart’s (who plays Bella) acting, Bella becomes a problematic character for the way she makes her choice, yet keeps stringing Jacob along.

Ironically, Eclipse, which might be the least-respected of the films, is a stronger link in the storytelling. With a compelling villain, a cool effect (the battles in this film are bigger and actually have significance) and a real test for the Edward/Bella relationship where Edward’s solution is not simply to run away, Eclipse actually stands up as a solid and engaging film. It is, when viewed as a whole Saga, also the high water mark of the films.

The final two films seem like much more of a coda comparatively. They seem like a necessary evil to the story, as opposed to a vital chapter, a simple fleshing out of the promise at the climax of Eclipse as opposed to an engaging end to the story. Here is why: the wedding is an inevitable, obvious plot point that was pretty much foreseeable the moment Edward returned to Bella in New Moon. The incident with the Volturi is a forced plot point – in a perfect world with the seemingly endless financial resources of the Cullens and the fact that the Volturi are in Italy, Bella and Edward could have easily avoided them for all eternity – and the conception of Renesmee seems an artful dodge for an audience obviously not prepared for an actual adult relationship. In other words, the first year of most real marriages is, frankly, hell (after the Honeymoon period wears off). It takes a real love and patience to survive the first year of a marriage as two people give up doing everything their own way and figure out how to do things “the Us way.” That, however, is not what the audience who wants to gush over an immortal love between a hundred plus year-old man and an eighteen year-old woman wants to watch. So, the writers and directors provide a much more literal hell (and a less-than-subtle admonishment about the dangers of sexuality!) when Bella’s first lovemaking produces a monstrous pregnancy that (among other things) shatters Bella’s spine and leaves her with becoming a vampire as her only viable chance of survival. Instead of taking the fantasy of immortal love and making it seem more real, The Twilight Saga makes love seem more preposterous and uncomfortable and dangerous.

The Twilight Saga has somewhat inconsistent direction but, oddly enough, a consistent sense of spectacle and quality of cinematography that makes the movies eminently watchable. The pacing for the Saga is off and the acting is inconsistent. However, while Kristen Stewart gets the awkward nature of Bella Swan right in Twilight, it is not until the Breaking Dawn movies that she is given more room to express range, so she goes through most of the Saga stiff and portraying boredom over passion. In rewatching the Saga, it is actually Robert Pattinson who stands out for the poor acting. Whereas Taylor Lautner portrays Jacob Black as an invested, interesting, and passionate guy, Pattinson’s role seems to be simply to show up. Edward Cullen is cold, passionless, and frightfully dull and Pattinson does not make the role any warmer. Instead, he is stiff, gives Stewart almost nothing to play off of and yet, when he smiles, that is supposed to substitute for actual personality.

It, alas, does not.

Ultimately, any one of the Twilight films is fine, but when viewed together as the complete Twilight Saga, it becomes tiresome and more of a mess than it ought to. Fans and moviegoers deserve quite a bit more.

For other film sagas, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Trilogy
The Harry Potter Saga
The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy

5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Oscar Pandering Season Comes Early With The Help, The First Serious Contender Of 2011!

The Good: Social message, The acting, Character development
The Bad: Slight pacing issues
The Basics: Emma Stone rocks out her final movie of the season, The Help, which tells the important story of exposing segregation in Mississippi.


Oscar Pandering Season is usually in December; it's the push when all the major studios and all the art studios release their contemplative pictures before the holidays and, coincidentally (?, no, it's by design!) the Oscar nominations process begins. They have, for the past several years, bet that the members of the Academy are too dim to recall any movies that came out a month before to nominate. Last year, with the Best Picture nominees being bumped up to ten, films like Inception (reviewed here!) had a chance at the big prize, though the first serious contender (for everyone but me, who was hoping Inception could pull it off) came out in October when The Social Network (reviewed here!) was released. This year, Oscar Pandering Season comes even earlier with it being hard to acknowledge that The Help has a serious chance at the Best Picture nomination and win.

What I found so interesting before going into see The Help tonight was the advertising. Unlike most movie previews of late, The Help did not try to cash in on the celebrity behind any of its stars. Instead, because it was based upon a wildly popular book (in the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the book, so this is a very pure review of the film), the advertising thrust for the movie was simply showing off who embodies which of the characters. Unfortunately, the advertising left me, a complete newbie to the phenomenon that is The Help with the idea that the film is populated by four character/archetypes: Skeeter the woman coming of age in the South who begins to challenge the mores and norms, Aibileen the long-suffering maid who is quiet and powerful, Minny the sassy black housekeeper and Hilly the stereotype of the Southern woman who embodies most of the problems with segregation.

Having now seen The Help it is easy to say that there is a serious contender for three of the big Oscars as well as a tough to whittle down Best Supporting Actress category (from just this one movie!). And the movie is near-perfect. My wife thought it was perfect, I think there were a few minor pacing issues that robbed it in the intangibles from reaching perfection (and, honestly, the more I think about Skeeter, the less I think there is actual character development going on there). I will say that I cannot recall the last time I watched a movie and found myself tearing up as much as tonight.

In the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, Skeeter is stepping out into the workforce. She has landed a job at the newspaper writing the household column, but she is noticing that the status quo is upsetting her more and more. So, she pitches a New York publisher an idea; to write a book about the black maids in Jackson and get the inside story on how their lives are lived. Her first subject is Aibileen Clark, a maid she has known for years and now works for Jolene, one of Skeeter's bridge club friends.

Just as Aibileen is reticent to risk her job by telling Skeeter what she truly wants to know, Minny is uneasy about her employer, Hilly's, push to get separate bathrooms for the help so whites and blacks will not share toilets. When a rain storm makes it difficult for Minny to get to the bathroom Hilly has provided, she attempts to use one of the indoor bathrooms and Hilly fires her. As Aibileen warms up to Skeeter's project, Minny takes work at the only house in town where Hilly has not badmouthed her; the estate of Celia Foote, a social outcast who is trying to get pregnant. As the Civil Rights Movement takes violent turns with the deaths of Medgar Evers and JFK, Aibileen and Minny get up the courage to help Skeeter write her book and encourage others to stand up, too.

Thrown in there is a very brief subplot in which Skeeter has a go with one of Hilly's friends and it is very much a subplot. It works for the social message of the film, but not so much for Skeeter's character. She seems smart enough from the beginning to not truly need a man in her life and the point of the boyfriend seems mostly to nail home the sense of conflict going on after The Help is published. Moreover, Skeeter is comparatively liberal from the outset, so she doesn't so much develop as she simply learns new information.

That said, The Help is a powerful character study for Aibileen and Minny. Aibileen's arc takes her on a journey of self-discovery whereby she gets the courage to stand up and tell the truth about some of the horrors of the segregated lifestyle. Unfortunately, the climax for the character is ruined in the previews, but the film is so engaging that I enjoyed the build-up to her confrontation with Hilly. Minny's character arc is one whereby her fronts are pulled away until she develops actual self-worth through her chaotic employment situations. Sure, she is the sassy black archetype that the previews made her seem, but she works because the movie has so much more of her in terms of developing her character after the fall from Hilly's graces.

But the real story for The Help is going to be the amazing acting. Allison Janey gives a wonderful supporting performance that proves what Mr. Sunshine's viewers quickly learned; Janey has a remarkable knack for performing crazy. As Skeeter's mother Charlotte, Janey bears the secret to one of the film's recurring mysteries - what happened to Constantine, the maid who raised Skeeter? Janey plays the role as crazy enough to steal the attention in her scenes but not so overbearing as to distract from the main narrative flow. And she does it opposite her once-recurring-star from The West Wing Brian Kerwin!

Anna Camp, Jessica Chastain and Emma Stone all give wonderful supporting performances. And I lump Stone in on the supporting end because Skeeter is the facilitator, not so much the focus of the narrative. Besides, I'm pretty sick of writing how amazingly talented Stone is. She's wicked talented and while Janey slips out of her accent for a single line, Stone never does, giving a performance that continues her memorable ascent.

Bryce Dallas Howard is cold and vicious as Hilly. Hilly is the uber-bitch and Howard lands the role so effectively that there is truly nothing more that can be said. Her body language is wound so tight that it is amazing to think that she has ever played anyone more loose.

Octavia Spencer is more than just decent as Minny. Spencer is a tough one to write about; Minny is a pretty stereotypically sassy black woman and Spencer seems to dive right into that role. But when Minny has her epiphanies and is accepted by Celia's family in a loving way, Spencer lands the moment just right. She softens her eyes and there is a tenderness that she portrays that runs deep. She makes more out of the moment where her character does not speak than most of the moments when she is delivering the film's funniest lines.

But most of the film rests on the shoulders of Viola Davis. Davis is a master of the craft and at only 46, she has the task of convincing viewers she is quite a bit older. Her physical presence is impressive; she shakes slightly, she waddles a little bit, but mostly, she starts the film with a tired look in her eyes that embodies years of oppression. But when she interacts with her ward, she lights up and Aibileen comes alive as a truly viable and complicated character. And her journey works and captivates the audience for the full two hour seventeen minute runtime of the film.

The Help is emotionally complicated and it does not shy away from confronting the big horrors of segregation. It does, however, couch it to retain its loyal middle-aged female fanbase. So, for example, when a maid is arrested and becomes the subject of police brutality, we see the nightstick raised, but we are left to our imagination how terribly it falls. And complicated films tend to do well when the Oscars are considered. For a change, I feel like pushing for the obvious choice. So far, The Help is the best movie of 2011 and it deserves to be viewed, contemplated, and probably watched again.

For other works featuring Octavia Spencer, please check out my reviews of:
Peep World
The Soloist
Spider-Man

9.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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With Spider-man 3, Sam Raimi Gets Strike 3 - He's Out!

The Good: Thomas Hayden Church/Flint Marko, James Franco/Harry Osborn
The Bad: The Sandman, Most of the other characters, acting and plot, Special effects
The Basics: Outside a few moments where James Franco and Thomas Hayden Church are given the screen and enough script to work with, Spider-Man 3 is a dud.


Before I give my bottomline on Spider-man 3, let me tell you how much I was looking forward to it. I didn't get into the whole cinematic Spider-man phenomenon the last few years as the film franchise began. I relented the last day Spider-man (reviewed here!) was at my local theater, just to see what all the fuss was about. Then, nothing. When buzz about Spider-Man 3 began, I saw an image of Thomas Hayden Church and I said to myself, "he looks just like the Sandman!" See, the weird thing is, I don't remember ever seeing an episode of anything with Sandman in it, but I saw the striped shirt and I knew who he was supposed to me. Time passed. It leaked that Venom was going to be in the film, my interest was piqued. Topher Grace was announced as Eddie Brock, Jr. (who transforms into Venom) and my thought was "That's brilliant casting!" Brock has to have the same gravitas as Peter Parker, they are foil characters and Topher Grace struck me as an ideal foil to the bland, wholesome Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. So, I began to get excited. I saw the first trailer and I was excited up until the moment I saw the first images of the Sandman and my heart fell. Nevertheless, I knew I was going to be one of the geeks out for the midnight showing, so I decided to let my love of actor Alfred Molina take over and I recently watched Spider-man 2 (reviewed here!). Having just now returned from the midnight showing of Spider-man 3, I'm prepared to render my bottomline verdict right here at the top: if you haven't purchased your tickets yet, don't bother.

This is, at best, matinee material. Had I known it would be as bad as it was, I would have waited until it came to my local library on DVD and watched it for free. Seriously. And I was generally looking forward to this installment! Come with me, I'll show you where it all goes wrong.

Following quite immediately on the heels of its predecessor, Peter Parker is very much in love with Mary Jane Watson and after a visit with her to her Broadway opening and a night in the park, Peter tracks some alien goo home. Because it's good, sedate goo, it waits for Peter to be attacked by Harry Osborn, who knows he is Spider-man. Incapacitating his former best friend, Peter wounds Harry and Osborn loses his memory. While Harry recovers, Peter neglects Mary Jane Watson some and finds himself in a competition at his job with a new photographer named Eddie Brock. When Spider-man is attacked while getting the key to the city - for saving the police commissioner's daughter from a random crane - by a sentient pile of sand, Peter becomes lost to his inner demons.

Returning home, Peter falls victim to a very real demon, the patient black goo, which causes him to become more aggressive by picking a fight with the Sandman, who he has learned is Flint Marko, the thief who killed his uncle. Defeating the Sandman with a train and water, the transformed Spider-man/Peter Parker begins to become more aggressive, picking fights with Eddie Brock, pushing away Mary Jane, strutting pointlessly around New York City, and ultimately engaging in a big dance number with Gwen Stacy (I wish I were joking, people). Following this incident, which culminates in even more violence, Parker rejects the black goo, Brock gets slimed by it and everything comes together in a big, ridiculous hostage situation/battle that is as silly and frenetic as it is predictable.

Let's start with what is done well, because there is so little here. First, Thomas Hayden Church does well as Flint Marko. I'm making a point to delineate here. Flint Marko, sympathetic cat burglar who is after a whole lot of cash for his ailing daughter is lightyears ahead of most villains in this type of movie. Marko has a purpose and he generally goes after that purpose. Thomas Hayden Church is remarkably well cast and he has good gravitas in the role. Indeed, when he delivers his classic line "I'm not a bad man, I've just had bad luck," it could have come out sounding canned, dull and cliche, but he sells it. While Church is Marko, the character works. That means in the beginning and the end. When Church is playing the Sandman . . . we'll get to that in a moment.

The other bright spot is James Franco as Harry Osborn. Franco is an acting heavy and here he comes into his own like I've known he eventually would. Franco held the screen with Robert De Niro in City By The Sea and here he shows the same level of acting ability in playing the tortured and tormenting Osborn. When he's angry, we believe him, when he's calculating, we buy it. When he's hurt, he makes us feel like he is diminished. He is the one to watch this film.

I wish I could say the same for Topher Grace. Grace was well cast to be a foil to Tobey Maguire. The problem is Eddie Brock is so poorly written that Grace has virtually nothing to work with. Brock is an accessory to the Parker storyline and he is added in at such judicious intervals that the viewer sits and wonders why they bothered. If they were going to plague us with a Spider-man 4, he ought to have been saved for that. As it is, Brock appears in only one scene without Parker and Venom comes into the film so ridiculously late as to belay sensibility.

The other draw is Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy. I don't begrudge her from taking airtime from Kirsten Dunst, but the part is a pretty weak one. Despite the fact that Gwen Stacy has one of the few genuine moments of character in the entire movie - when she realizes that the possessed Peter Parker is using her in the big dance number solely to hurt Mary Jane, Stacy apologizes to her - most of the time Howard's role is to play Gwen Stacy as a damsel in distress and a toy to be tossed between Brock and Parker and then away.

To finish off the subject of the acting, both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst continue to underwhelm as Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Maguire is bland and dull and when he is supposedly having his character conflicts, he plays Parker as bland, with a strut. There's no energy, there's no aggression, there's no hurt or determination. He's just dull. Similarly, Dunst failed to impress me in a single scene she was in. As Mary Jane Watson, she does not appear stung when hit, seduced when kissing, even angry when spited. Worst of all when Watson, damsel in distress that she is, is literally hanging for her life, Dunst does not play her with any realistic amount of fear.

But, of course, what does it matter? She's a woman after all. Women in Spider-Man 3 are either helpless damsels in distress (Watson and Stacy), objects to be leered at (the many women of Parker's strutting sequence) or crones who pop up with wisdom after everything has already been made clear (Aunt May). And the less said about the women in the background of crowd scenes the better. When Spider-man is announced as he comes to get the key to the city, some of the supernumeraries in the background are hamming it up something fierce with their "I see the Rapture" performances.

The only thing worse than the bulk of the acting and the utter lack of genuine character (outside Flint Marko and Harry Osborn) are the special effects. Special effects ought to be . . . wait for it . . . special. They can enhance great acting, they can make the impossible real and they can create realities that simply would be otherwise difficult or expensive to make. But most of all, the key to visual effects is something simple:

You have to be able to see it.

Any truly great special effect stands up because it can be seen. The best effects integrate with reality and meld with actual live human footage seamlessly. The result is the creation of a new reality on screen that makes the impossible real and the best effects make that clear. In The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Gollum becomes believable because he is lit perfectly, he moves like a human and because the audience can see him and evaluate him as a part of the reality on the screen.

The first battle of the movie, wherein Harry Osborn as a New Goblin gets into a big, aerial fight with Peter Parker, the special effects are anything but special. Everything happens with such dizzying speed that nothing is comprehensible. Nothing in the scene is real because it happens on a giant screen at a speed that is so fast that nothing sinks in. To wit, Harry whips out something green and starts beating Peter with it. Is it a lightsaber? Is it a baton? It is a letter opener? It is an inanimate carbon rod? Who knows? It's not shown clearly until far, far later in the movie. In order for special effects to work, they have to be real and the speed here cheats reality in such a way that the scene becomes a big, blurry mess.

Moreover, the use of CG characters for Peter/Spider-man, Harry/Goblin and later Venom and the Sandman are almost all universally sloppy. They look animated most of the time and it's unfortunate because robbing the scenes of their reality pulls the viewer out of the experience in a very horrible way.

Which brings me to the Sandman. The Sandman is presented essentially two different ways. At times, he is in the very human form of Flint Marko. Those scenes are great because it's mostly Thomas Hayden Church in a striped shirt. Sometimes, the Sandman is just a big hunk of . . . you guessed it, sand. The formation of the Sandman wherein the sand first tries desperately to coalesce into the man works well, especially considering much of it is done without the ability to emote through the eyes. That works.

What did not work was virtually every other scene where the Sandman appeared as sand. Leaping out of a full truck of sand, appearing as an apparent mountain of sand and even the final disappearance of the Sandman featuring a wind that only blows sand (not anyone nearby's hair . . .). The whole Sandman portion of the film suffers from the "Hellboy Villain Problem." In the cinematic version of Hellboy the movie suffers because the villain simply continues to get bigger and bigger (physically). Flint Marko works, initial Sandman works, Big Fist Sandman is an embarrassment and by the time we get to Skyscraper-sized Sandman (seen in many of the trailers!), the effect is so far out of reality that the movie is long dead. The effects buried it.

Of course, the poor effects might have been the final nail in the coffin of a movie that lopped off a leg with a lack of character, took the other leg off with bland acting, and tied both hands behind the back of the film with a crummy script. Spider-Man 3 was bound and gagged by extended self-referential bits. I like the Marvel movie's "Where's Stan Lee?" bits. They can make even the worst Marvel outings have two seconds of pleasure. In Spider-man 3, that moment is longer. So, too, is the "cameo" by Bruce Campbell. Don't get me wrong; I like Bruce Campbell, but his extended appearance in this movie as the maitre d' is just an homage to Campbell and it pulls the viewer out of the narrative. I will not even write about the supposed comic relief involving J. Jonah Jameson. This sort of self-congratulatory, acknowledging the film series as a film series just stuffs a big, sweaty sock in the mouth of our already wounded movie.

But what shot this poor, dumb movie in the skull between the eyes? The big dance number. You've no idea how much I wish I were making up the idea that after strutting around a la Saturday Night Fever, Peter Parker shames Mary Jane Watson by dancing manically. And as I watched this scene, I became more and more sick to my stomach. I realized why with surprising speed; the scene was familiar to me. I had seen this type of ridiculous, exaggerated dancing before. Where? The Mask. You know, the Jim Carrey movie? Peter Parker with black goo becomes Jim Carrey in a zoot suit.

The film does not come back from that. It doesn't matter how arguably cool looking Venom is when he finally emerges. It doesn't matter how debilitatingly predictable the movie becomes in relation to Peter Parker and Harry Osborn, the movie is dead the moment Tobey Maguire is seen at the piano. It's dead. Period.

My final post mortum is this: the writers of this movie insulted me time and time again and one of the most blatant insults was the idea that no one working on this film seems to know what short term memory is. When Peter and Harry engage in their time-lapse opening battle, Harry - the viewer is told - loses his short term memory. This includes him not knowing Peter Parker is Spider-man and how his father died, an event that occurred two years prior. Two years ago puts the damage in long term memory. Short term memory is like a flash drive, maybe fifteen minutes worth of information before it is archived into long term memory. Damage to short term memory is debilitating for forming new memories, as portrayed in the fabulous film Memento. My point here is that this is information that is widely known, a mistake like this up front is just insulting. It was bad enough my senses were assaulted, I didn't need my intelligence insulted as well.

If you feel like you must see Spider-man 3, heed my advice (well, my strongest recommendation would be "don't, until you can do it for free!") and wait for a matinee or for it to come to the dollar theater on its way out of town. Between trying to cram too much in, underdeveloping what is there, suffering through performances by the same bland actors and special effects that are more cartoon-like than reality, Spider-Man 3 is a bust.

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
Captain America: The First Avenger
X-Men: First Class
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil


3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Terminator Without Arnold Is Remarkably Average Action-Adventure: Terminator Salvation.

The Good: Decent acting, Moments of plot
The Bad: Predictable plot, General lack of character development/originality
The Basics: In a VERY weak "recommend," the stiflingly average Terminator Salvation makes for passable entertainment, but nothing to spend much time at all thinking about.


A few years back while on the road for a Star Trek convention, a fan asked Robert Picardo - who played the Emergency Medical Hologram on Star Trek: Voyager - about the candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Picardo wisely said that his hope for the potential governor would be that (if elected) Schwarzenegger would help restore Hollywood to a moviemaking capital of the world. Picardo's logic was pretty sound; Hollywood built Schwarzenegger as an actor, but in the years since his rise as an actor, taxes and codes had made the studio town the bane of many a production company's existence. Los Angeles was no longer THE place to shoot a movie or television series and instead, places like Vancouver became popular filming locations in the 1990s. One wonders how Picardo would feel about Terminator Salvation being filmed mostly (according to the closing credits) in Albuquerque. Considering that this episode in the Terminator film franchise utilizes the current governor of California minimally, one supposes Schwarzenegger has little to worry about in this regard.

That said, director McG and writers John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris have very little to be excited about with Terminator Salvation either. Having caught a screening of the film, the overwhelming feeling at the end of the film was that it was a startlingly average film. My wife, who had never seen a Terminator film before was unimpressed by this installment and her comment at the end was "I'm glad we didn't pay to see that" and "I'm not going to look up the other three movies now." For its part, Terminator Salvation opens well enough, but quickly devolves into a remarkably average action-adventure film where the most enjoyable moments almost all come as a result of callbacks to past films in the franchise (though none were as extreme as my hoped-for cameo with all of the past actors playing John Connor appearing, say, in a bar . . .). I had prepared for the film by reading the prequel graphic novel Sand In The Gears (reviewed here!) and was a bit disappointed by how little bearing that had on the movie.

In 2018, the bombs have gone off, humanity has been virtually decimated by the SkyNet machines and the few pockets of remaining humans have organized into the Resistance, led by John Connor. The thing is, back in 2003, a killer named Marcus Wright was put to death by lethal injection, after signing his body over to a doctor working for SkyNet. Shortly after an attack on a SkyNet facility - where John Connor is the lone Resistance survivor - Marcus Wright turns up naked on the battlefield, disoriented and wanders to Los Angeles. As John Connor and his Resistance cell organize for a final assault on SkyNet as the result of a shutoff signal that might well stop every single SkyNet machine, Marcus begins a journey of his own.

Wright's journey puts him in the company of Kyle Reese, a man who is supposed to be sent back in time to become John Connor's father. Reese and his ward, Star, find themselves captured by machines shortly after Wright turns up and Marcus's search for answers take him in the direction of SkyNet. On that search, he encounters John Connor and both Connor and Wright learn a terrible secret about the herding of humans by the SkyNet machines . . .

. . . only, it's not much of a secret because all of the final trailers for the film ruin Wright's secret. Seriously, any potential for greatness that Terminator Salvation ever had was completely crushed by the fact that Wright's secret is revealed in the previews. In a movie where the Terminators are exactly where one expects them to be based on framing (i.e. even my wife who had never seen one of these films knew the active Terminator was right behind the one on the assembly line) the subtlety of moments is ruined when the viewer has mere seconds between the intelligent revelation and the explicit reveal. And that the explicit reveal made it into the preview trailers is reprehensible on the part of the advertisers. They gut the emotion of the moment and of the film.

That said, the plot has virtually all of the expected "Terminator" moments. There are fights, car chases, a few catchphrases that pop up. The only innovative cameo is the use of the song "You Could Be Mine" within the film. Outside that, the cameos are surprisingly bland and generally obvious. Strangely, I was the only one in the theater to react to the first mention of Kyle Reese, whose name is first dropped when John Connor is put at the #2 position on SkyNet's most wanted list. Kyle Reese's story is told in The Terminator.

Only, it is also told in this film. Terminator Salvation is essentially the story of three men, past, present and future: Marcus Wright, John Connor, and Kyle Reese. Marcus Wright had his day and is living his second chance, John Connor is living his prophesied potential and Kyle Reese is just coming into his own. Wright's story is interesting, but he was cast far too close to the look of the new John Connor, Christian Bale. Those looking for any deepening of the storyline between John and Kate Connor will have to wait; Kate shows up pregnant, but does almost nothing for the course of the almost two hours.

Worse yet is that Marcus Wright is hardly interesting. He takes the role - in terms of screentime and character arc - that is traditionally held by the adversary (Terminator) and his relationship with Blair is hardly engaging. Instead, they seem to be the most active male and female on the screen, so the camera stays on them. Unfortunately, here is where the film becomes absolutely dumb. Wright enters the Connor Resistance Cell, pretty much begging those there to let him go so he can go to San Francisco to find someone at SkyNet. Neither Connor nor his people bother to ask him who he is searching for or why. At least none of the humans look surprised when Blair breaks Wright out. Connor is at least that smart, fortunately.

The real winner of the film, though, is actor Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. Yelchin is having a pretty exceptional month as an actor, whatwith charming audiences as the child prodigy Pavel Chekov in the film Star Trek (reviewed here!) and now picking up the mantle of Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation. Yelchin earns his chops by perfectly picking up some of the mannerisms and vocal characteristics of Michael Biehn, who originated the role in The Terminator. Yelchin steals the screen often enough from both Bale and Sam Worthington, who plays Wright.

Worthington is a decent-enough heavy, but he only shines when he is on screen opposite Moon Bloodgood (Blair) or on his own. Put beside Yelchin or Bale and he seems far less impressive. In fact, he only has one truly great bit of emoting in the film and to discuss it is to ruin the surprise for the few who have not yet seen the trailers. As for Christian Bale, he does a good job as John Connor. Personally, I enjoyed the prior take on Connor as an unlikely man living in disbelief of his destiny trying to scrape together a life off the grid. Nick Stahl made for a convincing antihero and an unlikely leader of the resistance. Bale is much more obvious, overt and military in his bearing and as a result, he sells the new John Connor just fine.

The problem, as it often is in these type movies, is that Terminator Salvation plays fast and loose with the continuity and the character of John Connor is an awkward constant/inconsistency. But as far as the film on its own merits goes . . . this moves away from being smart or complex science fiction into pretty mindless action-adventure pretty quickly. And for that, it is adequate. But with so many smarter options on the big screen right now, it is hard to get excited about this one. See it free, if possible.

For the other "Terminator" films, please check out my reviews of:
The Terminator
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Another Nail In The Coffin Of My Dislike For Jim Carrey: How The Grinch Stole Christmas

The Good: Sigh, I suppose the Dr. Seuss lines thrown in, that's a stretch. Christine Baranski.
The Bad: Visually cluttered, Unsure of audience, Utterly unfunny, Make-up isn't terribly good.
The Basics: An atrocious reworking of a holiday classic attempts to make more out of the story than there is and fails. Completely. I wouldn't torture my worst enemy with this!


When I first encountered the new medium, DVD, I applauded the merits of the DVD and how I could watch deleted scenes and lament that they were not in the film. I watched the deleted scenes on the DVD of Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas and I was not impressed; they deserved to be deleted. Of course, my one complaint about the deleted scenes were there weren't nearly enough. Given the quality of this film, it should have mostly been presented as deleted clips. The film was quite bad.

Allow me to begin with the single redeeming factor of the film: Christine Baranski is in it. Yup, her presence alone is like a game card that prevents a film from being an utter, complete waste of time. Do you ever shiver when you see talent wasted? I do. In fact, I'm likely to cry when I see someone of incredible talent wasting it. In this case, Baranski is never given the limelight long enough to shine, which she could have done.

It's not Baranski's fault she doesn't get the opportunity, it's the script's. And herein lies the fundamental problem with this film; the script. When one attempts to take a poem that takes five minutes to read and stretch it into a film that must be at least ninety minutes long, one is flirting with disaster. In this case, the effort fails. And it falls hard. This is a spine-breakingly agonizing film to watch.

The script isn't there. That means the story isn't there. The story is the title. This is how the grinch stole Christmas. It's a story that doesn't take long to tell. So, what this film attempts to do is expand that. It builds more of a backstory to the Grinch and has the full day before Christmas for the Whoville celebration and Cindy Lou Who's full quest to understand the Grinch. There are enough inane sub plots, like the Mayor and Martha May Whovier's stories and minor adventures, thrown in to kill time.

Not a single character is interesting. The Grinch isn't interesting and a huge fault of that is in Jim Carrey. Okay, that's not entirely fair. Ron Howard directed this claptrap, so I'll blame him; Jim Carrey is simply himself. He has potential to be funny. On In Living Color, he was funny. Since then, he's been Jim Carrey. Most roles he's hired for he's not being hired for his acting, he's hired for himself. That is, when you hire Jim Carrey, you're not hiring Jim Carrey to play the Grinch, you're hiring Jim Carrey to be Jim Carrey as the Grinch. This involves a lot of flailing and trademark facial expressions, ticks and whatnot that are his standards.

The problem is Ron Howard supports Carrey here and the camera style is nauseating. I mean there are incomprehensible images of things moving quickly that dominate much of the film and a ton of the wipes from one scene to another. It makes the film confused.

And it's a confused enough film. The film doesn't know what audience it wants. There are a lot of jokes that will go completely over the head of children and even those aren't terribly funny to adults. It's not a funny film at all. I didn't laugh a single time. And this troubled me, because I sat down desperate to believe no Christmas film could be as bad as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Well, Chevy Chase, if you're reading this, congrats! It's now a tie for last place.

So the acting stinks, there's no character development, the plot is stretched so far it's like an overextended piece of Swiss cheese, it fails to make a statement of any sort to people of any age (other than "please laugh because flatulence is funny!" Which is such an old thing that, well, unless you're 12 - in which case half the jokes in the film shall go over your head -, you'll not find it funny.), it has horrible visual effects in simple aspects of directing and it's utterly unfunny. Well, the only component I don't believe I have covered is the design.

Tim Burton is a master. He does big extraordinarily. He does weird expertly. Put Tim Burton and Danny Elfman in a room and have them build a weird, creepy, nightmare and they'll do it. Have them create something of pure wonder and they'll come through. The problem is, Tim Burton didn't create Whoville and Danny Elfman had nothing to do with this project. Nothing works visually. The mountain the Grinch lives in doesn't have character. It looks like someone said, "this is what it looked like in the storybook, make a three dimensional version of it." That doesn't work! It doesn't work to reconceive something and then keep the classic aspects of another. To that end, the interior of the Grinch's lair is simply cluttered. A master at visual effects will make everything have a purpose, Ron Howard's vision was "make everything look like something that can be looked at." It feels like we're looking at a movie set.

I'll close my panning this simply awful film by saying this; critics of this film have been attacked for not having Christmas spirit or such. It's ironic that I argue this position, but I think most of the people panning this film have a lot of Christmas spirit. It's sad when something you want to enhance your holiday detracts so much from it by the lack of quality within it. This film is exactly like that. I watched it with someone who watched the original cartoon when it aired the first time and who would consider that one of the best films of all time (sadly enough, from my perspective) and she loves the book and that original. She was so psyched to see this. She was so vastly disappointed that today when I got DVDs out of the library, she said simply, "I can't believe I sat through that entire film yesterday; it was so horrible." There was a tear in her eye. So, before accusing me of having a heart two sizes too small, let me suggest that the best gift to give a critic is a taste that is equally discriminating all year round. One who has that cannot possibly recommend a film based on easy dazzling effect. And the truth is, seeing this film objectively, they couldn't even possibly be dazzled.

For other Christmas movies, please check out my reviews of:
The Muppet Christmas Carol
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Batman Returns

1.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Doing More Than Just Encouraging Fans, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Delivers!

The Good: Decent acting, character development, special effects, Sense that story is going somewhere, DVD/Blu-Ray bonus features
The Bad: A lot feels very familiar.
The Basics: The next installment in The Twilight Saga, Eclipse progresses the stories and relationships from the earlier films and is entertaining for viewers from teenagers up.


Series’ become tougher and tougher for non-fans the longer the series persists. Those who are not embedded in a phenomenon tend to be looking for something that builds on the prior installments while still giving viewers something that feels new, if not entirely familiar. So, for example, with Twilight (click here for review!) the pressure on filmmakers was to please fans and get an audience who had not read any of the books intrigued in the story and characters. With New Moon (click here for review!) the pressure was to retain the audience and not simply repeat the teen melodrama aspects and allow the audience to feel like the story was actually going somewhere. They largely succeeded. With Eclipse, the third installment in the Twilight Saga, the stakes are raised, especially for those who are not already glued to the series.

For that audience, the fear has to be that Eclipse will simply be a repetition of the two prior installments and will be more teen melodrama than anything else. After all, in The Twilight Saga, there is a romance to vampires and werewolves and much of Kristen Stewart’s acting involves alternately looking moon-eyed and falling down. With Eclipse, the formula is broken and the film fearlessly illustrates what it only implied in New Moon, that most vampires are actually angry and quite evil. While New Moon had the carnage off-screen, Eclipse illustrates it and the conflict becomes more than just a teenage “I love him,” “no, I love the other guy,” “no, I love the first guy more” story. And it is bound to be well-received by the fans. It was well-received by this non-fan.

Bella Swan and Edward Cullen have made it through their Senior year of high school and as their relationship is deepening, Bella is applying to colleges. They realize they have slightly different views on both marriage and Bella being turned into a vampire, their own conflicts are enhanced by Charlie wanting Bella to spend more time with Jacob than with Edward. But in nearby Seattle, Washington, there have been killings which Jacob knows are the work of vampires. Bella, despite Edward’s dislike of Jacob, continues to visit Jacob and Jacob’s werewolf clan moves to deal with the vampires, while Jacob becomes more protective of his best friend. When Edward and the Cullens are given proof that the problems in Seattle are the works of vampires, Alice sees the menace coming to Forks and the Cullens are forced to flee.

With an army of vampires descending upon Forks, Bella, Edward and Jacob flee in order to protect Bella as she appears to be the target of the rage of the vampires. With the newborn attack imminent, the Cullen family joins forces with the werewolves in order to prevent the slaughter of humans and the exposure of both supernatural communities.

The nicest thing about Eclipse is that while the characters seem largely the same in the film, the plot has an almost constant sense of movement and the film feels like it is going somewhere. And where it goes is worth the wait. The key to who is behind the army of vampires and why makes perfect sense and the emotional resonance carries back to the final scene of Twilight, which works for those who have seen the prior installments. For those who have not seen Twilight, the motivations for Victoria are repeated enough so that she seems like a reasonable villain. Newbie viewers are more likely to be lost by the appearance of Jane and the Volturi than Victoria and her arc.

On the subject of Victoria, Bryce Dallas Howard steps into the role beautifully and while fans might miss Rachel Lefevre, Howard does a good job of playing Victoria as both harsh and wounded. In fact, I didn’t even notice the recasting until the credits, that is how flawlessly Howard assumes the looks and mannerisms of Victoria as characterized by Lefevre.

On the character front, Eclipse does a decent job of progressing Bella, Edward and Jacob, though it narrowly misses recreating the sense of watching the same ridiculous love triangle in the prior film. The movie works in this regard because it leaves the characters with a much more firm sense of who each of the principles are and what direction they are headed in. Bella manages to swoon more for Edward and the resulting decisions she makes feel much more organic than simply having to choose between the two lead hunks. The result is that Eclipse replays better than New Moon for those who are not looking at the series for the teenage romance aspect.

As far as performances go, Ashley Greene continues to steal her scenes as Alice Cullen, the vampire who is able to see the future (except when it is most useful). Fortunately, her vision is explained and explored more in this movie, as is Jasper’s twitchiness. Jackson Rathbone has played Jasper as twitchy and dark and in Eclipse he is given the chance to steal a scene or two for more than just chill factor. He portrays Jasper in a more adult fashion and when Jasper begins to take a leadership role in the planning of the combat, it is Rathbone’s performance which sells it.

The leading men do what they have done before, so there are no surprises from Robert Pattinson (Edward), Taylor Lautner (Jacob), Billy Burke (Charlie, Bella’s father) or Peter Facinelli (Carlisle Cullen). Facinelli deserves a special note in that his role as the Cullen patriarch is given more importance in Eclipse and Facinelli makes good use of the screentime. His trick is to both provide a level of consistency and to make quiet scenes where Carlisle provides deeply human wisdom seem inhuman and Facinelli nails it.

Kristen Stewart continues to do a decent job of balancing Bella’s role as damsel in distress and normal teenage girl. In Eclipse, the role is a bit more physical for her and she seems up to the task. Waifish girls everywhere have a new role model in Stewart’s Swan and she plays off Pattinson well, so at the very least the film portrays a very real sense of sexual chemistry.

Finally, while New Moon had some morph effects which were not ideal (notably with werewolf transformations), Eclipse has the kinks worked out. The special effects are amazing – especially the new effect that gets around blood and gore related to werewolves slaughtering vampires! - and adult audiences are likely only to be disappointed in that they do not go far enough. The climactic battle has startlingly little blood for a conflict of its magnitude and those looking at this for an adult sense of realism are likely to be a little let down. The lack of blood is actually well portrayed and the fracturing of limbs is pretty awesome!

But those looking for something new to swoon about in Forks, Washington, where vampires and werewolves are real and they are all interested in teenagers, Eclipse is something to rave about.

And there is more to rave about with the two-disc DVD and Blu-Ray presentation of the film. There, Eclipse is loaded with two commentary tracks as well as a small number of deleted scenes which flesh out key moments of the movie. There is also another six-part featurette on the making of Eclipse, which fits with prior Twilight Saga DVD releases. As well, there are music videos for songs featured in the movie and on the Eclipse soundtrack. In other words, there is plenty to enjoy!

For other Twilight Saga merchandise or works, please check out my reviews of:
Twilight trading cards
The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner (novella) By Stephanie Meyer
“Edward And Bella” Hallmark Ornament

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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