Seth MacFarlane Makes Better Trek With The Orville Season 1 Than The Current Custodians Of That Franchise!

The Good: Good dialogue, Engaging plots, Decent characters and character development, Genuinely funny, Special effects
The Bad: Short season, Some moments of predictability/less-developed characters
The Basics: The Orville Season 1 is a love letter to what Star Trek used to be with fresh, realistic dialogue and characters, making it a must-watch show!


Seth MacFarlane is, no doubt, tired of hearing comparisons between his show, The Orville, and Star Trek. And yet, it is hard not to make those comparisons given that the writing for The Orville - at least on the plot and theme fronts - is such a clear homage to Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In some of its most clever moments, The Orville even makes allusions to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager; yes, all of the Star Trek franchise from when the franchise was growing, at its peak, and maintained a pretty consistent level of quality. Anyone who has listened to a commentary track or interview featuring Seth MacFarlane or have watched the episodes he wrote and developed of his other shows knows that Seth MacFarlane is a big fan of the Star Trek franchise. And while The Orville is not part of the Star Trek franchise, it has more of the thematic heart and soul of Star Trek than the hideous current Star Trek television series, Star Trek: Discovery.

But, to dispense with the comparative aspects, The Orville Season 1 is a twelve episode season of science fiction comedy that follows the adventures of the starship Orville, 400 years in the future. The adventures are, largely, recognizable to fans of the Star Trek franchise. There is an "everybody falls in love" style episode, an "alien culture with one key difference makes for an allegory to a contemporary social problem" style episode, aliens capture important crewmembers for a zoo or experimentation and the season finale is deft weaving together of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Meridian" (reviewed here!) and the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Blink Of An Eye" (reviewed here!). The Orville even cleverly rewrites and reworks the classic Star Trek episode "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" (reviewed here!). The plots of The Orville are not likely to surprise fans of the Star Trek franchise.

But those fans are likely to be entertained and excited by the twelve episodes of the first season of The Orville.

The Orville is a science fiction comedy and what sets it apart from the more straightlaced science fiction works like (most of) the Star Trek franchise is the dialogue and the characters. The characters in The Orville talk like real people, they interact like real people, they encounter their fantastic circumstances and alien influences like human beings, not over-the-top archetypes. The characters interact with a surprising sense of realism; the series opens with the would-be Captain being cheated on and he does not simply forgive his ex-wife, the helmsman and navigator joke with one another and develop a friendship but Lt. Malloy is a bad influence on Lt. LaMarr, and the ship's doctor is hit on relentlessly by a gelatinous being who she is not interested in. The alien characters, like Alara, have realistic conflicts - her boyfriend is intimidated by her physical strength, so she finds herself constantly loveless. The most prominent alien couple, Bortus and his partner Klyden, are strained when they have a child . . . and the robot character, Isaac, acts as a mirror that allows human nature to be explicitly explored.

Set hundreds of years in the future, when humans are the dominant population of the interstellar Union, Ed Mercer returns home to find his wife in bed with a blue-skinned alien. Pissed off, Mercer leaves Kelly and loathes her for her behavior. But, when the Orville is commissioned and prepared to leave spacedock, Kelly calls in a favor from Admiral Halsey, arranging for Mercer to get command of the new ship. Kelly is assigned as First Officer of the Orville, much to Mercer's disgust. But, Mercer assembles his command staff and the ship heads out into the galaxy.

On the outer reaches of explored space, the Orville comes under attack by the Krill, a vicious alien race that thrives on warfare. The ship encounters a massive colony ship where the people are ignorant of the fact that they are aboard a spaceship and they are oppressed by a fanatical religious order. One of the command crew gets trapped in a series of nightmares and the all-male race that is represented on the Orville by Bortus and Klyden experiences a schism when the pair has a daughter. Kelly accidentally influences a less-evolved alien race and Mercer and Malloy have to go undercover on a Krill ship to prevent a major attack on the Union.

The Orville features characters who joke with one another, react in unprofessional ways - they get freaked out by horrible or dangerous things when they encounter them - and have realistic, often carnal, needs. The characters make mistakes, try to live up to higher ideals and do not always succeed and they hold grudges. As a result, The Orville Season 1 is remarkably accessible and entertaining. The characters are relatable and in most of the episodes, they are funny. The show is dominated by the hate-love relationship between Ed Mercer and Kelly Grayson, but most of the characters are surprisingly well-developed over the course of the first season.

In the first season of The Orville, the primary characters are:

Captain Ed Mercer - Promoted to Captain of the Orville, he is bitter about having to take Grayson on as his First Officer. He is good-natured and friendly and curious about the cultures of the different alien races of his crew and the planets the Orville visits. He is friends with Malloy and slowly comes to rely upon Grayson for her perspective. He is good at improvising when he has to and does his best to oversee the crew of the Orville, even though he does not know all their names,

Commander Kelly Grayson - Mercer's ex-wife, she had an affair with Darulio and is shocked when he turns up as an expert needed for one of the Orville's missions. She is patient with Mercer while he works through his feelings over her betrayal. She befriends Alara and quickly recognizes the potential in LaMarr and advocates on his behalf,

Dr. Claire Finn - A single mother of two boys, she sees to the wellbeing of the crew of the Orville. She is hit on by Yaphit - a gelatinous assistant chief engineer who is very smarmy - and is excellent at her job,

Lt. Commander Bortus - One of two Moclans (an all-male race) aboard the Orville, he is married to Klyden and he acts as the ship's Second Officer. He and Klyden are shocked when they have a girl, which forces them to return to Moclan to determine what to do about their gendered child. He is unfamiliar with human customs and is awkward in many of their social situations. He and Klyden become somewhat estranged after their daughter is born,

Lt. Alara Kitan - The security chief of the Orville, she is a young woman with super-strength because of her planet's higher-gravity. Mercer quickly comes to rely upon her for her strength when the ship encounters closed doors and violent aliens. When she freezes up during an emergency in Engineering, she becomes determined to excise herself of fear,

Lt. Gordon Malloy - A slacker helmsman, he loves practical jokes and is one of the few members of the Orville crew that Mercer knows coming in. He is sarcastic and pranks Isaac until the robot's turnabout turns out to be horrible for him. He is a bad influence on LaMarr, but he is so good at what he does that Mercer taps him to help infiltrate a Krill warship,

Lt. John LaMarr - The ship's navigator, he tries to fly under the radar by not living up to his potential. He is part of a mission where he humps a statue and becomes a criminal on a planet where criminals are judged by social media. He is put in the running for Chief Engineer when Newton decides to move on,

and Isaac - The ship's science officer and a robot, he is unfamiliar with many human mannerisms and asks the bridge crew about them. With a power supply that is designed to last for millions of years, he is chosen for a mission on a planet where time moves at a very different rate than in our universe. He tries his hand at pranks with Malloy and mutilates the other bridge officer!

The Orville might be derivative of Star Trek for its plots and sense of cultural advancement, but it has a strong, unique look and feel to it. The Orville is well-lit, the crew moves at a relaxed pace, the faster-than-light engine conceit is a fun light-up effect on the aft bows of the ship; the universe in which The Orville is set looks advanced and comfortable, while still populating that setting with relatable characters.

Seth MacFarlane wrote most of the episodes in the first season of The Orville and he stars as Captain Ed Mercer. MacFarlane and Adrienne Palicki have great on-screen chemistry to play the bickering couple, while maintaining a sense that the characters might well have had good years together prior to their split. Peter Macon and Halston Sage play the alien characters with a delightful, off-put quality that makes them feel like they are not quite used to working with the humans their characters are surrounded by. Penny Johnson Jerald leaps into the role of Chief Medical Officer with all the jargon her Star Trek Deep Space Nine character was never saddled with quite ably.

Ultimately, The Orville Season 1 is an entertaining, thematically-smart science fiction romp that manages to consistently find the right balance between humor and moralizing, realistic dialogue and science fiction action sequences, making for one of the 2017 television season's most delightful surprises!

For other works from the 2017 - 2018 television season, please check out my reviews of:
The Punisher - Season 1
"A Life Earned" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Inhumans - Season 1
Stranger Things - Season 2
Rick And Morty - Season 3
"Beebo The God Of War" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"Don't Run" - The Flash
"Reign" - Supergirl
"Crisis On Earth-X, Part 2" - Arrow
"Into The Forest I Go" - Star Trek: Discovery
Twin Peaks - Season 3 ("The Return")
Game Of Thrones - Season 7
The Defenders - Season 1
Friends From College - Season 1

7/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Slow Burn Of Atomic Blonde

The Good: Good acting, Good direction, Engaging plot, Good reversal
The Bad: Thinly-defined characters, Predictable plot progression/fight sequences
The Basics: Atomic Blonde might have burned itself up on the hype, leading to an under-performing opening weekend, but objectively viewed, it is an impressive film worth attention!


The prevailing wisdom in the world is that, given a choice between the two, a book is always better than the movie upon which it is based. There are exceptions to that rule, but often when they come up, the topic is hotly debated in fandom. A few months ago, I was drawn into watching the red band trailer for the film Atomic Blonde and the trailer was so compelling and intriguing that I hunted down the graphic novel upon which the film was based. The book, The Coldest City (reviewed here!), was insular, featured terrible artwork, and vastly prioritized the realism of its setting over the development of the characters involved. In fact, if anything, reading The Coldest City made me less excited about seeing Atomic Blonde.

Despite that, I eagerly attended an opening day showing of Atomic Blonde and the fact that it took me almost a full day to write my review speaks to the fact that the film has a density to it and requires some unpacking to truly appreciate it. In fact, Atomic Blonde is far better than its source material and it is a rare example of how those who are too tied to the original work upon which a film is based are likely to experience an initial disappointment with the movie.

Writer Kurt Johnstad adapted Atomic Blonde from The Coldest City and he found the absolute right balance of fidelity to the original work and fleshing the material out. The Coldest City is a short book - a fast read packed more with jargon than substance and development. Johnstad fleshes the bones of the book into a more-realized film by giving its protagonist, Lorraine Broughton, a genuine romantic relationship (Atomic Blonde is already being accused to having a gratuitous lesbian relationship, but the truth is Lorraine's relationship with Delphine allows Broughton to be humanized, fleshed out beyond her job and, frankly, is hardly as erotic as one might guess for having Charlize Theron naked) and fleshing out the film's primary antagonist with a truly brutal example of KGB tactics. Even better, Johnstad eliminates one of the fundamental problems with The Coldest City by referencing Satchel - the Soviet double-agent - immediately in the film (in the book, the first reference to Satchel comes perilously late in the narrative, creating an artificial and disturbingly forced reversal at the climax of the graphic novel).

The thing is, Johnstad's script is good, but it hinges upon the film's end because of the way director David Leitch directs the movie. Throughout Atomic Blonde, Johnstad gives obvious hints to how the book ended and it's tough to call it a "spoiler" as the book has been out for over five years. Leitch, however, insinuates the reversal at the end of the book through the alcohol in the film and as the film goes on, it is hard not to believe that the spies are not picking up on the Obvious Clue being left as to Satchel's identity. The reason that it took me so long to write my review of Atomic Blonde was that I spent much of the viewing annoyed at Leitch for directing the clue to Satchel's identity so obviously.

David Leitch, however, earns a lot of credit for his direction of Atomic Blonde; had I had faith that he was not simply telegraphing the end of the film, I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more. And there is a lot to enjoy in Atomic Blonde, but the film is a slow burn, the opposite of Wonder Woman (check out why I assert that film gets worse the more one deconstructs it here!) - Atomic Blonde gets better the more one considers it.

Set in November of 1989, Lorraine Broughton is called into MI-6 Headquarters for debriefing. There, she is interrogated by Eric Gray, while the C.I.A. observer Emmett Kurzfeld looks on and Broughton's boss, C, observes through a double-sided mirror and records the session. Ten days prior, Broughton was tasked with going to Berlin to recover the corpse of James Gasciogne, an MI-6 agent who was killed by a Soviet spy. Broughton is tasked with both recovering the corpse, under the alias of a lawyer working for the dead man's estate, and recovering a list that Gasciogne appeared to have died for; a list of every spy working in Berlin.

After arriving in Berlin and discovering her identity has already been compromised when the Soviets attempt to kill her, Broughton meets with the surviving MI-6 station officer in Berlin, David Percival. Percival is believed to have "gone native" and operates a black market in Berlin intended to destabilize East Berlin by exciting the youth culture there. It does not take long after Broughton arrives for the list to resurface, but the mission is complicated by Spyglass, an operative who has memorized the list and needs to be extracted from East Berlin, Soviet operatives attacking and a French spy who develops a quick, passionate, relationship with Broughton.

Atomic Blonde is a well-directed film and one of the aspects I particularly enjoyed about the movie was that it was violent without being overly gory. There are numerous occasions when two characters are in a life and death combat situation and Leitch puts one character's back to the camera and allows the brutality or kill shot to be obscured. The film is populated by fast punches, surprisingly limited blood splatter and when characters are, for example, shot in the head, it often happens at a distance that is anything but intimate, making the violence and the fighting much more entertaining than unsettling.

Music plays a big part of creating the atmosphere of 1989 Berlin (on both sides of the Wall). The soundtrack for Atomic Blonde is an impressive blend of period-specific songs and remixes/foreign language versions of the songs. Similarly, the costumes are impressive.

Far more than being a style film, Atomic Blonde does a good job of making Lorraine Broughton interesting to watch. Broughton is characterized as a tough, all-business spy, but she is humanized by her relationship with Delphine, the French spy. Broughton lets down her guard with Delphine and the relationship she develops with Delphine allows Broughton to see the potential life she could have outside spycraft. And Atomic Blonde might be impressively erotic (I suppose it is to some people), were Broughton not already pretty bruised by their first encounter.

Charlize Theron is entirely convincing as Lorraine Broughton. Theron sells her character's aliases and her efficient, professional, coldness - she is a viable spy. In fact, the moment Theron gets the viewer to fully invest in her character's abilities and competence is when Broughton sarcastically observes, "I can read a fucking map." In a world that predates smartphones and instant connectivity, Theron realistically portrays a human asset. Sofia Boutella is fine as Delphine Lasalle, but she plays Lasalle like a reluctant spy; a woman who wishes far more she took one of her other job options. Regardless, there is no hint of her character from Star Trek Beyond (reviewed here!) in her performance in Atomic Blonde.

James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, James Faulkner, and Rolland Moller all give good supporting performances (though I spent much of Atomic Blonde thinking of Moller, "Sean Harris really has some range in this!") in Atomic Blonde. McAvoy is well-cast as the emotionally-confused Percival.

Ultimately, Atomic Blonde is an entertaining spy thriller that does a decent job of fleshing out a bare-bones idea in compelling ways, even though it still is somewhat plot-heavy and more concerned with action-adventure entertainment than making its protagonist truly well-rounded and compelling.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Baby Driver
Transformers: The Last Knight
Rough Night
Wonder Woman

6.5/10

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

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Dregs Of The Future Travel Down The Road To Bore Viewers!

The Good: Wonderful direction, Good acting
The Bad: Pacing, Lack of plot developments, Unlikable characters
The Basics: The Road is a good idea with a troublingly drawn-out execution that is unfortunately disappointing.


A few years ago, before my move to Michigan, I had a good friend who was a local librarian. He was one of the early supporters of my writing career and he even helped to fund one of my early script projects, which was pretty huge for me. While we only managed to go out to the movies once, for Inkheart (reviewed here!), but we talked quite a bit about films and television shows. Near the end of his life, he was on a post-apocalyptic movie phase and when he recommended Doomsday (reviewed here!) to me, there was an additional sense of disappointment for me because I had gone into it with such high expectations given that my friend had recommended it to me. The last film I recall him raving about was The Road, so when it, too, disappointed me, I once again felt let down.

The Road is a dark film set after an unnamed apocalyptic event. Focused intimately on a father and a son, the movie is well-directed and well-acted, but is boring as all hell. The Viggo Mortensen vehicle is based upon a novel by Cormac McCarthy and it is worth noting up front that I have never read the book. This is a pure review of the film and I have to hope that some of my friend’s love of the film was because of his affinity for the book.

Out in a wilderness where all of the vegetation and animal life has died, a man and his son are making a treacherous journey south. Following the last direction given to him by his wife, the man has struggled to protect his son as they head toward the coast. The threat of starvation is as real as the menace of cannibals, which is made explicit when the pair encounters a band of thugs. When one of the thugs starts looking at his son like a food source, the man shoots him, which forces the boy to question whether or not they actually are the “good guys.”

Further down the road, the pair discovers a house with a secret room, locked from the outside. Investigating, they discover the basement is filled with people who are being kept by the home’s owners as a food source. As they near starving to death, the pair finds a bomb shelter stocked with food. But when they hear what the man believes is a bandit one night, they leave the shelter. Continuing toward the coast, the two find themselves beset by thieves, archers, and are forced to choose between survival and protecting their humanity.

The Road spends a huge amount of time establishing mood and setting, as opposed to developing a story or even creating a compelling character journey. To that end, director John Hillcoat does an exceptional job of exploring the setting. The colors are muted, gray and brown, save in the flashbacks which are bright and golden. The food the men find is also presented in vivid colors, but the rest of the film is dirty, torn, and barren for its people, clothes, and landscaping. The Road has a realistic presentation of a decimated world that is populated by people who have reverted to the worst aspects of human nature.

Unpleasant to watch, The Road lacks the character, depth of relationships or even the plot developments of other wasteland stories, like The Walking Dead. Instead, The Road has two thin people encountering weak, frightened, equally skinny people who react with hostility and fear to the protagonists. The man is scared of everyone and everything and the constant reminder that he carries a gun so either he or the boy can off themselves quickly becomes tired.

The performances in The Road are good, even when the characters are somewhat bland. Viggo Mortensen is unsettling in the role of the man, though he plays the part with an uprightness in the flashbacks that makes it seem like he was a good man. He and Charlize Theron, who appears only in the flashback scenes, actually have very little in the way of on-screen chemistry. Their relationship raises two mysteries for the viewer: how did the man and the woman stay alive for years after the birth of the boy in the same place and how did they stay together when the world ended?

In a similar fashion, actor Kodi Smit-McPhee is so convincing as the whiny boy that it makes the viewer wonder “How did this kid get such a thin skin when he was born into the horrible world or death and cannibalism?” Smit-McPhee and Mortensen play off one another in a convincing-enough fashion to make the viewer believe that they would cling to one another with what passes for hope in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Smit-McPhee actually comes into his own opposite Guy Pearce at the climax of The Road. The child holds his own opposite an almost unrecognizable Pearce with an intensity that is surprisingly adult.

Sadly, it is not enough to save The Road. The Road is boring when it is not being intense, gory, or utterly disturbing. What The Road is not is entertaining. Instead, the film provides a cognizant argument for killing oneself at the outset of the apocalypse. After all, who would want to live in a world like the one shown in The Road?!

For other works with Charlize Theron, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Prometheus
Snow White And The Huntsman
Young Adult
Hancock
Arrested Development - Season Three
Aeon Flux
15 Minutes
Reindeer Games

3.5/10

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

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Lucking Into Masterpiece, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus Details How Prometheus Was Developed!

| | | The Good: Amazing detailing, Very thorough
The Bad: Some of the camerawork, A few notable missed opportunities
The Basics: An intense documentary for fans of Prometheus, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is more than just a bonus feature!


Love it or hate it, Prometheus was a mammoth cinematic undertaking and it is a pretty ballsy idea. At its heart, Prometheus is essentially a two hour film to explain a model/set piece seen for under three minutes in Alien. To capture the incredible process of creating Prometheus, director and documentarian Charles de Lauzirika created the documentary The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus. Personally, I was pissed that the only way I could get all of the bonus features for Prometheus was with the four-disc version of the film. I do not yet have a 3-D Blu-Ray or 3-D television, so having to shell out five dollars extra for a disc that I could not even play, irked the crap out of me. That was until I watched The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus.

The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is the cornerstone of the exclusive disc available only in the four-disc version of Prometheus (reviewed here!). The documentary, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is a three hour, forty-one minute presentation that explores every aspect of the creation of the film Prometheus. Having excitedly watched the documentary twice now, all I can really say is: 1. Wow! John Spaihts got screwed, and 2. Wow! How could such an incredible film come out of such a haphazard creative process?!

To be fair to director Charles de Lauzirika, it is tough to create an enduring and interesting documentary on a film. Far too often, any form of documentary on the creation of a film is a ten to twenty minute featurette designed to help sell the DVDs to fans who crave exclusive content. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus takes some cues from the successful documentary Lost In La Mancha (reviewed here!), which documented the collapse of a Terry Gilliam film. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus successfully explores the genesis of Prometheus from the earliest concept aspects through the promotional material.

While pitching to executives at Fox, writer John Spaihts was asked about revisiting the Alien Universe and began generating ideas for director Ridley Scott, who was interested in returning to science fiction and that particular universe. Very shortly thereafter, Spaihts, Scott, and a visualization team began creating the film that would evolve into Prometheus. With production ramping up, the studio got nervous about using Spaihts’s work alone and Damon Lindelof was brought in to rewrite the script, working closely with Ridley Scott.

With the production design visualized for the entities, vehicles, ships, and equipment of the film, Prometheus was cast, the film was shot, and a massive, viral marketing campaign launched in order to make it one of the most anticipated films of 2012. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus explores every aspect of that.

The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is impressive in its level of detail. Elements like the process of designing the giant transport vehicle that came out of Prometheus create an unparalleled level of documenting for a modern film. Director Charles de Lauzirika managed to get some incredible footage of behind-the-scenes moments from the preproduction materials through the casting and alternate takes of scenes. The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus actually makes Prometheus seem like one of the great “happy accidents” of modern cinema. De Lauzirika captures amazing footage of writer John Spaihts and Ridley Scott who discuss the creation of Prometheus in a way that makes it clear that production was very much under way before anything remotely resembling a finished script was prepared! Prometheus, then, was far less about telling the story it ultimately came up with, than it was justifying an evolution of various alien creatures on screen!

With impressive candid footage of the incredible process Noomi Rapace went through to create Shaw and get the look and feel of the character right, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus has great footage of all of the cast members and it manages to be entertaining as well as incredibly informative.

What The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus lacks is probing questions and a real sense of curiosity from the filmmaker. This film is, unfortunately at times, a very pure documentary. Charles de Lauzirika does not ask (or use footage if he did ask) about what many of the participants actually think or feel about what they are going through. Spaihts, for example, talks about how he was not surprised to have the project taken out from under him, but he never says how he actually felt about it. He expresses no dissatisfaction with the fact that what he wrote was radically altered by Damon Lindeloff. Similarly, de Lauzirika never gets Ridley Scott to open up on his deeper motivations for taking on Prometheus. Long before the film had a spiritual component, Scott was creating it and his only real solid idea, as detailed by The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus, was that he wanted the H.R. Geiger-designed “space jockey” to be a suit for something that was human beneath.

What is missing from The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus are the probing moments or even using fully what de Lauzirika had access to. The best example of missed opportunities comes when de Lauzirika captures H.R. Geiger’s visit to the production offices, Ridley Scott speaks for Geiger. How de Lauzirika could not get Geiger to talk about his thoughts on what Scott was doing weakens that portion of the film.

Ultimately, though, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is far more than a DVD bonus feature. It manages to not repeat too much of what is already present in the DVD commentary tracks on Prometheus and the documentary has wonderful bonus features of its own. Loaded with “Enhancements,” The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus gives the viewer the option to see featurettes within the documentary that provide additional material – especially in the artwork department – that will keep Prometheus geeks entertained for hours and hours on end.

Informative and educational, The Furious Gods: Making Prometheus is enough to satisfy fans and convince Prometheus detractors that an exceptional amount of thought went into developing the film, regardless of the results!

For other Prometheus-related reviews, be sure to check out my takes on:
NECA’s Prometheus Engineer (Chair Suit) Action Figure
NECA’s Prometheus Engineer (Pressure Suit) Action Figure
The Alien Quadrillogy

6.5/10

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

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One Miserable Character Dominates A Thoroughly Miserable Movie: Young Adult

The Good: The acting
The Bad: Characters, Plot, Unimaginative direction, Writing
The Basics: After months of eagerly looking forward to watching Young Adult, I watch the film and discover . . . it’s an absolute lemon.


I can think of no film that I missed in theaters last year that I wanted to see more than Young Adult. Now that it is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, I managed to get my chance and the truth is, I am left absolutely baffled as to why I wanted to see the film. I cannot think of a movie that has let me down more lately than Young Adult and the feeling of “Why did I want to see this?” truly stems from the fact that there were no good lines in the movie. I do not write with hyperbole here; I cannot think of a single line from the movie that, if I saw it in a preview, I would have excitedly said, “I must see Young Adult!”

And it’s not that I don’t like depressing stories of human suffering - Everything Must Go (reviewed here!) was more enjoyable than Young Adult. I even like independent cinema, as my love of God Bless America (reviewed here!) illustrates. So, I’m left with the conclusion that writer Diablo Cody got lucky. Juno is great, but maybe she truly just had the one work in her; Cody might be as burned out at Mavis Gary and, if that is the case, it would be nice if she no longer troubled us with writing films that assemble intriguing and wonderful casts only to absolutely suck the enjoyment out of watching a movie for us.

Mavis Gary is a raging alcoholic whose young adult book series is getting one last volume before it is officially shelved. As Mavis tries to write the book, she becomes obsessed with how her ex-boyfriend in Minnesota has just had a child and she returns to her hometown to rekindle a relationship with him, despite him being married. Hanging out at a local bar, Mavis encounters Matt, who was crippled in high school by jocks who thought he was gay.

Even as Mavis pursues Buddy Slade, her high school boyfriend, she keeps finding herself running into Matt, who sees her for the wreck she is and calls her on it. As Mavis moves closer to acknowledging her faults, she finds herself obsessed with Buddy, using Matt and avoiding her parents.

Young Adult is one of those films where it is tough to muster up the enthusiasm to write about the experience, it was so disappointing. First and foremost – even above the writing lacking a pop or intrigue to make the film work on more than just a literal level - Young Adult suffers from the protagonist being utterly loathsome. Again, I am not certain at all what I saw that made me think I would like Young Adult because from her first frames on screen, Mavis Gary is not only mean, self-centered and vapid, but she is boring. Mavis has nothing particularly wrong with her life; she is a successful writer, seems to have all she wants or needs and yet, she’s a drunk who obsesses over the past in the most whiny, self-centered way.

Mavis Gary might be the best cinematic example of a person with a personality disorder (i.e. a person for whom everything revolves around them, with no regard at all for others, their thoughts or feelings) and if that is the case, it does not help her. It makes her no more interesting; instead, she is just an embodiment of a horrible personality. Unfortunately, Young Adult lacks a hook, anything at all to make the viewer empathize with Mavis or even want to keep watching her past the first five minutes.

The closest the film has to an intriguing character is Matt Freehauf. His story is pretty much a one-line joke – he was celebrated as a poster boy for hate-crime awareness until the moment it became clear that he was not gay and thus, the crime was just excessive bullying – but it is well-played by Patton Oswalt. Oswalt lends a quiet strength to the role and becomes a reasonable sage as Matt.

Unfortunately, Young Adult is so predictable that Matt and Mavis eventually do end up in bed together . . . with a remarkable lack of physical or psychological consequences. Perhaps that is what is so troubling about Young Adult; Mavis spends most of her interaction with Matt simply using him and Matt is stuck in the past. Matt is not stuck in the past the way Mavis claims – he has daily reminders of how horrible the past was to him through his scars and being forced to walk with a crutch - but rather in the way he lets Mavis treat him. Matt was a victim of bullying and Mavis, who clearly shows she does not actually care about him, bullies Matt into moving around, giving up his microbrew beer, and ultimately giving in to her in every way she asks.

Unlike a film like Requiem For A Dream, that captures the horrors of modern life with a stark, dank, depressing reality, Young Adult lacks any superlative quality. Requiem For A Dream may be dark and miserable, but it captured a reality with stunning realism as to make it even more troubling. Young Adult does not even do that. It is a predictably-structured melodrama that drags itself to an inevitable, miserable conclusion that leaves the viewer wishing they had back the time they invested in the movie. There is no artistry.

One of my new cinematic favorites, Patrick Wilson, gives an unfortunately dim performances as Slade. Charlize Theron dominates the film as Mavis and while this is not one of her better characters, it is a role that is unlike any of the others she has ever played. She gives a performance that makes her virtually the polar-opposite of the stiff-backed, professional Meredith Vickers in Prometheus. But I’d rather watch that film over and over again than even catch another clip of Theron slouching through the role of Mavis.

Now on DVD, I hated the primary material enough that I refused to watch any of the bonus features. Young Adult is a very easy movie to recommend an “avoid it!” rating.

For other works with Charlize Theron, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Prometheus
Snow White And The Huntsman
Hancock
Arrested Development - Season Three
Aeon Flux
15 Minutes
Reindeer Games

2/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Divorced From The Marketing, Prometheus Is Still More Than “Alien: The Next Generation!”

The Good: Interesting characters, Engaging philosophical elements, Great effects, Decent pacing, Good initial story, Good acting.
The Bad: Plot develops into something far too familiar (derivative).
The Basics: With Prometheus, a science vessel inadvertently awakens a powerful, potentially malevolent force that might redefine humanity’s understanding of itself!


Entering 2012, there was no film I was more excited about than The Dark Knight Rises (reviewed here!). From pretty much the moment Anne Hathaway was cast as Selina Kyle, I was psyched. But on New Year’s Day, I visited the IMDB and saw the movie poster for Prometheus posted there. And I began to look into what the film was about. And suddenly, there was a new movie I was anticipating. With the earliest press about Prometheus debating whether or not the movie, which Ridley Scott had announced as the story of the “space jockey” from Alien, would actually be a prequel to Alien, I was hooked on every scrap of information that was released about Prometheus.

So, I began to consider what a prequel would actually mean. If the film was actually going to be about the giant alien seen in the crashed derelict spacecraft in Alien, it would – I reasoned – have to be set quite some time ago. After all, the “space jockey” was a fossil. So, it seemed logical that any real prequel to Alien that focused on the space jockey would have to be about how that crescent-shaped ship crashed on the planet with the methane crystals in the atmosphere. To satisfy fans – and I am a fan of the Alien Quadrilogy (reviewed here!) – it would have to establish the space jockey setting the twelve-second repeating beacon that the Nostromo was sent to investigate and answer how the space jockey became infected with the alien that burst out of its chest, leaving the fossilized remains.

By those criteria, Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien. Set in the same universe as Alien, Prometheus is an entirely tangential story that populates the Alien universe more than it has been (in Aliens, one of the Marines refers to Ripley’s seeing an alien in such a derisive tone that makes it sound like humans have not had much experience with extraterrestrials, despite other Marines referring to sex with the, presumably, androgynous Arcturians). A science fiction-horror film that tries to be smart and cerebral, Prometheus develops into a fight for survival on a distant world that is likely to please the fans of the Alien franchise.

Except for those looking for something truly new.

The only real, lasting, disappointment from Prometheus is that the build-up implied that the film would be something truly new and different. For all of the incredible aspects of Prometheus, the plot structure too-closely mirrors other installments in the Alien franchise, so that the film that originally seemed audacious enough to truly do its own thing, eventually becomes a whittling down process that seems more like it is trying to squeeze back into the mold, as opposed to truly break it.

That said, Prometheus is incredible and must be seen on the big screen (biggest possible!) in order to truly appreciate the depth, scope and grandeur of all its aspects, even its scariest ones.

Following the discovery on Earth of potential extraterrestrial influence with disparate ancient civilizations, the Weyland Corporation sends an expedition to a remote sector of space in the hopes of discovering who those aliens were and how they influenced humanity. The android, David, awakens the crew of the science ship Prometheus, who include scientists, the ship’s captain and a representative from the Weyland Corporation, Meredith Vickers. Landing on a moon around a gas giant, the Prometheus crew finds an alien structure and inside they discover alien bodies. They also find storage containers. With a sandstorm coming that will cut off the team from the landed ship, the chief scientists – Shaw and Holloway – and David return to the Prometheus.

Aboard the Prometheus, the scientists study an alien head they recovered, while David opens one of the alien containers and infects Holloway with material from it. With the storm passed, another team returns to the temple to find those left behind dead. David accesses another level of the temple, which is actually an alien space ship. While Holloway’s health worsens, David learns that the aliens had, in fact, been to Earth and they may still have plans for it. Desperate to stop the spread of the parasites that are growing within Holloway and Shaw, as well as prevent the ancient aliens from returning to Earth to wipe out humanity, Vickers, Captain Janeck, David, and Shaw work against the alien entities and the sinister Weyland Corporation.

Prometheus is notable in that it does what both great science fiction and great films do; it successfully tries to explore something greater than itself. In many ways, Prometheus is an incredibly well-detailed extension of the old adage that one should not look into the face of their own gods. Elizabeth Shaw is, from a young age, motivated by a strong desire to learn and seek her creator. While she is a scientist, she adopts the idea that humanity was seeded on Earth and the artwork from ancient cultures implies to her that the engineers of humanity’s development returned or lived among ancient humans. Hers is a quest to, essentially, seek out her god.

In many ways, that is the quest of David, as well. Programmed by the Weyland Corporation, David has a full understanding that his programming is limited to a human mindset. David wants to experience something more and his place in Prometheus solidifies the metaphor of the dangers of seeking god, especially when one has something they want of it. Both Shaw and David yearn for discovery (though David has been programmed alternative directives) and Prometheus starts as their search.

But the theme of exploring humanity’s origins and trying to understand who we are and why we exist comes to a pretty abrupt end once Holloway is infected. Instead of simply following that course and trying to provide the audience with answers which were bound to disappoint theists everywhere, Prometheus takes a right turn into horror. The cerebral aspects of Prometheus are not completely negated or done away with – there is an entire conspiracy plotline that becomes far more active in the film’s latter half that is smartly presented – but once Holloway and Shaw become human incubators, Prometheus makes the transition from mildly scary science fiction to an action adventure film that is more in line with the standard horror film than Star Trek or Star Wars.

Prometheus manages to present engaging characters – which might be why it is so disturbing that the film turns into the bloodbath it does. While there are a few members of the Prometheus crew who never leap into being more than background characters, the main crew is remarkably well-defined. Even Vickers, who initially is cast as a cold, efficient, Company-oriented woman who might seem to have no real personality to her outside a sense of ruthless efficiency, is given a compelling reason for all of her actions in the film’s latter half. The relationship between Shaw and Holloway (who is an atheist) works well as an “opposites attract” type relationship while they share a common interest in the archaeological evidence they collated prior to the flight and a sense of adventure that makes their journey together seem plausible.

But, like Alien, Prometheus takes a step back from its characters to become a film that is a series of confrontations and desperate escapes. This, of course, leaves the viewer feeling somewhat jerked around as the characters one gets invested in in Prometheus do not have great chances of survival and the body count in the film is predictably high.

What sets Prometheus apart from other science fiction horrors, in addition to the philosophy and stronger sense of characters at the film’s outset, is the caliber of acting. Prometheus might seem to be playing with a stacked deck with Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, and Michael Fassbender (with brief initial roles from Patrick Wilson and Guy Pearce as well), but the performers truly do give something new of themselves, each and every one. In Prometheus, Elba has a more casual and accessible role as Janeck than in any other role I have yet seen him. He is professional, but approachable and Elba plays Janeck as a guy who cares, which offsets Theron’s Vickers very nicely, as they share many scenes together.

As for Charlize Theron, Prometheus gives her a nice chance to play villainous with more purpose than she was able to illustrate in Snow White And The Huntsman (reviewed here!). Theron plays steely well and she makes Meredith Vickers often feel less human than Michael Fassbender’s David, but she makes the role work. As Vickers is given more backstory, Theron infuses more emotion to her, without ever making the character go through any form of ridiculous transition. Theron establishes Vickers with a strong sense of personality and she never slips from that.

As the resident android, David, in Prometheus, Michael Fassbender obviously has a significant acting challenge. Fassbender continues to impress with his range as David. In Prometheus, he manages to play a character that is clearly not human, while making him seem more than just a guy with somewhat stiff mannerisms. For lack of a better analogy, Fassbender does not make David into a character like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Data, as an android searching for what it means to be human. Instead, Fassbender manages to simply embody an android by acting soulless. His performance is without spark or zest and that wonderfully frees him to make David seem like an android, without making him unsympathetic. Fassbender dominates his scenes and he still has the ability to evoke complex emotions with simply a look.

The obvious protagonist in Prometheus is Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace. Prometheus is actually the first film I have seen Rapace in and it was enough to make me willing to look her up in other works. She plays Shaw’s idealism exceptionally well – with literal wide-eyed excitement and she is credible in the film’s later sequences which require her to seem both tormented and as something of an action heroine.

The effects in Prometheus are absolutely amazing, making it a visual wonder that ought to be viewed on the biggest possible screen. Having now seen it again, this time in IMAX 3-D, I have to say that is THE way to see Prometheus! Ridley Scott uses the whole canvass for the IMAX presentation and even on that, there are several moments, like when the Prometheus is entering orbit and the atmosphere, that the ship is tiny, even in IMAX. It will be virtually impossible to see on DVD!

The 3-D effects for the IMAX presentation are simply stunning. Because the film was filmed in 3-D, the effects are like watching a box filled with characters and settings, as opposed to post-produced 3-D, which basically looks like two levels. Prometheus is rich in depth, even in the smaller moments, in 3-D IMAX.

As well, the audio presentation is exceptional. Events like the silt pounding the ship and crew make one's chair vibrate from the intensity and the climax of the film is so much richer with the IMAX soundsystem. I was also much more aware of the soundtrack the second time through and the haunting theme to Prometheus lends the film a wonderful sense of adventure and, later, horror.

But Prometheus is not flawless; it’s own familiarity robs it of that. But for fans of the Alien franchise who have been looking for something exciting that is new but on the familiar canvass, after so many false starts and disappointing sequels, Prometheus feels like coming home.

For other works with Micheal Fassbender, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Haywire
X-Men: First Class
Jonah Hex
300

9.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all of the films I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Everything Fans Were Hoping For, Snow White And The Huntsman Is A Surreal Fantasy Adventure!

The Good: Decent effects, Generally good acting
The Bad: Predictable plot, Light on character motivations, Editing
The Basics: Visually impressive, Snow White And The Huntsman gives Kristen Stewart a bona fide action role that beefs up her acting chops!


Right now, I feel bad for Kristen Stewart. Yes, as unlikely as it might seem, I feel bad for Kristen Stewart. Stewart, who skyrocketed to fame as the protagonist in Twilight and its sequels (reviewed here!), is facing the end of her first major franchise with the impending release of Breaking Dawn, Part 2. So, Stewart is doing what a savvy actress her age ought to be doing, which is to find the next big thing for herself. Snow White And The Huntsman was never going to be a franchise for Kristen Stewart, but it was a particularly shrewd way for the young actress to try to retain her Twilight audience. But, from the promos for Snow White And The Huntsman, one might think that Kristen Stewart’s role in the movie was incidental (the latest t.v. spots and trailers do not include any of her lines). Given how much Snow White And The Huntsman Stewart dominates, it’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for her the way she is not being highlighted in the ramp up to the film’s release.

Snow White And The Huntsman is enough to make cinephiles forget all about Mirror Mirror (reviewed here!) earlier this year. Bearing a far closer resemblance to Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland (reviewed here!) – without the Burton quirky sense of humor - Snow White And The Huntsman is a directoral triumph for Rupert Sanders. Snow White And The Huntsman might simply be the retelling and reworking of the classic fairy tale story, but Sanders and writers John Lee Hancock, Evan Daugherty, and Hossein Amini manage to make it feel surprisingly fresh without feeling cheap. Instead, Snow White And The Huntsman delivers a classic hero (or heroine) story with a sensibility likely to please anyone who loves fantasy films.

Ravenna is the evil Queen who dispatches the King as part of her quest to gain supreme power over the kingdom and over her own immortality. Insecure in her power, she uses dark magic to retain her youthful appearance by eliminating every beautiful young woman in the realm who could threaten her. But, she learns that Snow White is destined to overthrow her and has the power within her to usurp her position on the throne and break the magic that keeps her young. Unwilling to risk that, Ravenna’s creepy brother William captures the girl and prepares her for execution. Snow White escapes to the enchanted forest where she lays low.

And so, Ravenna employs the Huntsman to find and kill Snow White. It does not take long for the Huntsman to track Snow White down in the Dark Forest. Realizing the Queen has betrayed him, the Huntsman switches sides and leads Snow White to safety. With the help of Snow White’s dwarven companions, the Huntsman befriends and trains Snow White. Fighting for the soul of the kingdom, Snow White and her companions overcome magical beings and human adversaries to confront the Queen and retake the kingdom.

Snow White And The Huntsman is a big, special effects-driven film that manages to tell an intriguing story in a mature way. Unlike many other incarnations of the Snow White story, Snow White And The Huntsman is dark. Ravenna is appropriately tyrannical (if a little monolithic) and the story takes a decidedly action-adventure turn to make Snow White a compelling female protagonist. For all the complaints about both fairy tales and the Twilight Saga’s interpretation of female protagonists, in Snow White And The Huntsman Snow White is an empowered, powerful warrior. Snow White And The Huntsman is the story of Snow White becoming that woman. Sure, she could use the help of several men to get in the door, but when it comes down to it, she is the one who must stand against the evil queen.

And more than the special effects – which are magnificent and frequently trippy – it is the acting that sells the viewer on Snow White And The Huntsman. While the characters of Raveena and the Huntsman are pretty monolithic, Snow White And The Huntsman’s director, Rupert Sanders, utilizes his cast very well. Chris Hemsworth manages to play the Huntsman as a strong individual without simply retreading his interpretation of Thor. In fact, one of the few likable character aspects of Hemsworth’s Huntsman in Snow White And The Huntsman is that the character is cautious and smart. Moreover, Sanders does not capitalize on Hemworth’s looks. In Snow White And The Huntsman, Chris Hemsworth is sweaty and dirty and he looks like a guy who is used to being out in the woods. And Hemsworth pulls it off (even if he doesn’t keep to one distinct accent for his lines).

Charlize Theron, who is looking to have a pretty awesome two weeks whatwith Snow White And The Huntsman and Prometheus (reviewed here!)making their debuts back to back, does what she can with the somewhat monolithic character of Raveena. Like many fairy tales, Snow White And The Huntsman does not provide the viewer with a truly satisfying reason as to why the antagonist wants absolute power. Her insecurity is fairly well-documented, but Raveena’s passion to stay alive and beautiful is not terribly compelling. Theron does what she can with the role, though more often than not, she makes Raveena an icy despot, as opposed to a character with more depth or apparent cunning.

It truly is Kristen Stewart who steals the show from Snow White And The Huntsman. Despite the big special effects in the film, it is Stewart who manages to deliver a performance that proves her actually worthy of the role. Absent is the stumbling uncertainty of Bella Swan (though there are moments when Stewart has to play Snow White as confused or hurt). When Snow White is trained to be a leader, Stewart takes the role and works it. The idea of Kristen Stewart with authority or gravitas in a role will never be put in doubt again once audiences take in Snow White And The Huntsman! Stewart is able to level a steely glare that works and there is something about the way she sets her jaw that defines determination exceptionally well.

Unfortunately, upon the second viewing, one of the aspects of Snow White And The Huntsman that failed to wow me was the editing. The film possesses far too many rough cuts between scenes, which unfortunately undermines some of the wonderful special effects. The result is a series of abrupt transitions that pulls the viewer out of the film.

Ultimately, Snow White And The Huntsman is an engaging action adventure movie and it satisfies the adult/twentysomething desire to re-experience fairy tales in a more adult context. Not for young children, Snow White And The Huntsman is a visual treat that is a surprisingly direct, uncomplicated story that capitalizes well on the current fascination in pop culture with fairy tales.

For other films with Chris Hemsworth, please check out my reviews of:
The Avengers
The Cabin In The Woods
Thor
Star Trek

7/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the films I have reviewed!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Minutes Tick Away With Intensity In 15 Minutes!

The Good: Acting, Pacing
The Bad: Characters are written as "types," Promotes interethnic prejudice, Cheap romantic subplot
The Basics: In a movie that attempts to reveal the relationship between the media and violent crime, all that is shown are weak characters and police incompetence.


It takes a daring film to hire a well known actor and put their character in mortal jeopardy in a way that the viewer actually believes that they may not survive the film. For example, if one cast Pierce Brosnan as an action hero, the viewers will always doubt the character's jeopardy because the prevailing wisdom is "Why would you shell out the big bucks for the actor only to kill off his character?" 15 Minutes counts on the shock value of such things as that prejudice when it cast Robert De Niro and put his character in the hands of a psychopath.

Aging New York Detective Eddie Flemming is working the streets of New York City with his badge, gun and no small amount of celebrity. His affiliation with the camera crews of Robert Hawkins' gritty news-entertainment show brings him as much grief as it does help. While investigating an arson murder, Flemming finds himself in the company of Jordy Warsaw, a fire marshal who is more than a little green. As the two begin to work together hunting down an Eastern European psychopath and his friend who is documenting the killing spree on his stolen home video camera, they learn from one another until Flemming finds himself in the hands of the enemy and Warsaw must work alone to straighten all of the problems out and bring the criminals to justice.

While 15 Minutes appears on the surface to be a scathing indictment of the relationship between the media and violence, the actual thesis is more truly that the police are utterly incompetent and without the media, no problem would truly be solved. Hawkins quasi-news show is fighting for ratings under the credo "if it bleeds, it leads." As a result, Hawkins often badgers Flemming into taking down criminals that Eddie is apathetic toward. Flemming makes arrests that Hawkins works hard to get on tape, making Eddie a target for the criminals Emil and Oleg. In the bloodbath that ensues, wherein Hawkins' television show buys the most terrible footage of murders possible, it is easy to blame the media for the problems depicted in the movie.

However, the underlying principle of 15 Minutes is that the media acts as an important watchdog for police action. How? Hawkins and his television show motivate all of the important decisions regarding the criminal activity; anything that the media deems unimportant is ignored by law enforcement. One of the first scenes of the movie, for example, has Emil and Oleg lying to an apathetic customs agent (also part of law enforcement). The agent is portrayed as slow-witted and uncaring and as a result, the obviously nervous Emil and clearly distracted Oleg are let into the country. Following that, Oleg makes a obvious, broad-daylight theft of the video camera that chronicles Emil's decent into psychopathic behavior and we never once see the police bothering to try to solve that crime. In short, none of the crimes in the movie that occur without the media's attention have any interest to law enforcement and therefor go uninvestigated. As further proof of this bold interpretation of the movie, it is only when the media pays special attention to Emil and Oleg that all efforts are made to bring them to justice.

The problem with how they are finally apprehended and the whole situation between law enforcement, criminals and the media is worked out is that all of the characters here are "types." Eddie is your archetype of a New York City police detective who has become somewhat detached and unemotional, battered into a sense of stable ambivalence from all of his work on the streets. John Herzfeld, the writer of this film, attempts to humanize this character in a lame series of scenes where he attempts to propose to the reporter, Nicolette. Moreover, Jordy is ambitious, clever, inexperienced and emotional, everything one expects out of a Hollywood action hero who is just starting out. It is inconceivable that a fire marshal would do nearly as much as Jordy does in this movie on the law enforcement side. It is simply not what arson investigators do.

The most troubling character aspect is the use of Emil and Oleg as villains. I can live with foreigners as villains, however 15 Minutes goes out of its way to vilify people from other countries by using a hyperbole of accents, lowbrow mentality and obvious attempts to manipulate what is written as a "good, wholesome America." 15 Minutes is one of those media causes of ethnic intolerance. Why? Because the question one has to ask is "Why did the villains need to be foreigners?" Certainly not to get the message across that the media breeds violence in its society. Indeed, far more compelling to that thesis would have been a young character growing up in the U.S. and seeing all of the media violence evolving into someone who killed for sport or fun or because they were desensitized to it. Instead, Herzfeld - who also directed this - uses foreigners from Eastern Europe and he evokes every possible ethnic stereotype possible. In the process, Herzfeld removes the emphasis from the media as villain and the criminal as villain to the foreigner as villain and that does nothing to help this film.

Even the caliber and quality of actors and acting in 15 Minutes cannot save this movie. While Avery Brooks and Kelsey Grammar give admirable supporting performances, they are always relegated to the background when Robert De Niro's Eddie and Edward Burns' Jordy are on screen. Burns especially comes across as an actor of medium caliber trying too hard to fit into an ensemble far beyond his ability. He is often clumsy with his body language and seems uncertain with his deliveries. Outside Burns, the acting is phenomenal, especially Karel Roden, who plays Emil.

In the end, 15 Minutes goads the viewer with questions of moral ambiguity and teases the watcher with scenes that put Jordy on the edge of becoming violent. It culminates in an incident where the viewer is supposed to feel cathartic relief and cheer for Jordy, but the whole episode comes across as formulaic and scripted and provides no real catharsis. Instead, when Jordy does such things as punch Robert Hawkins while the police and Nicolette watch, it is hard not to see him as a jerk instead and complain that the movie was Hollywood obvious.

The acting and sense of real tension aside, the movie is violent and disappointing in many ways, most notably the way it overtly dismisses ethnic diversity and becomes thematically overbearing. What starts as a movie that seeks to challenge and educate the viewer descends into the most predictable Hollywood bloodbath without any real sense of enlightenment or thematic unity.

For other works with James Handy, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The West Wing - Season 3
Unbreakable
The West Wing - Season 1
Jumanji
The Verdict

5.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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More Comprehensive Than The Cartoon, Aeon Flux Goes Live Action!

The Good: Decent acting, Interesting enough story
The Bad: A number of cheated effects, Fairly bland characters, Neat and tidy ending
The Basics: In a dystopian future, freedom fighter Aeon Flux is given the assignment of a lifetime; kill the tyrant who has enslaved the humans. Instead, she learns the truth in Aeon Flux.


I was never a fan of the Aeon Flux animated series on MTV, not from lack of trying. It was a series of short works that created a futuristic world where the hero, Aeon Flux ran around blowing things up, getting it on with her enemies and managing to get killed every episode. It was a nonlinear series, thus she was killed repeatedly over the course of the series. It just never managed to appeal to me enough to get into it. The animated series just felt so . . . undeveloped, juvenile. I could see the appeal to the usual crowd of youth who watch MTV, though; it was fast, filled with action and the lead was a hot chick. It certainly fit the demographic of the teens who the show was targeting.

In the live action Aeon Flux, the viewer is treated to a reasonable amount of backstory. It is early 2400s and all that remains on Earth is a single city, humanity having been wiped out by a plague in the early 2000s. The leader of the world, Chairman Trevor Goodchild, has created a tyranny that is lush and beautiful but offers no real freedom. Above the garden paradise that is Bregna (the city) is a floating zeppelin called the Relical that is supposed to remind the people of the past and the horrors humanity has survived.

There are rebels in Bregna, known as the Monicans. They are essentially terrorists (or insurgents or freedom fighters, perspective dependent, of course) who run around blowing things up. The best of them is Aeon Flux and she is charged with disrupting Bregna's advanced surveillance technology. While Aeon works to free humanity from the Goodchild Regime, Trevor's brother Oren makes a power play and soon Aeon is charged with killing Trevor and in the process she learns the truth.

I have to admit, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Aeon Flux. I'm sure there are die-hard fans of the animated series who find this incarnation to be bland and against the canon of the Fluxverse. It's probably why I enjoyed it as much as I did. In order to sustain a ninety minute feature Aeon Flux resorts to a surprisingly rational story. In short, it explains the world it is set in, the characters explore that world and live within its rules and there is a fairly neat and tidy beginning, middle and end to the movie that was lacking in the animated series. In short, I did not spend the entire duration of the movie wondering constantly what was going on.

Those who know me might be tempted to believe that at this point, I am likely to complain that it explained itself too much, but I won't go quite that far. Aeon Flux has a decent balance between establishing the world it seeks to portray and exploring its secrets once there.

Equally surprising to how developed the plot of the movie is is the fact that for a big-budget (or moderately budgeted) science fiction special effects movie, so many of the special effects are cheated. There are a number of times that Aeon is firing her gun and the barrel of the gun is out of the shot, preventing us from seeing the spray of bullets. So, in one particularly adventurous scene, Flux is on the run firing her weapon and all we see are the effects of the shots, in this case huge chunks of a stone building coming down underneath the feet of her enemies.

And it's not just gunfire. One of the other Monicans, Sithandra, has had her feet replaced with hands (because, why not, right?) and so she is running around barehanded throughout the movie. At one point, she is tumbling through the air and the director must not have wanted to swap out the actress's feet because the shot is cheated so that Sithandra's lower hands are never in the shot as she falls. It's such an obvious and cheap shot that it's almost laughable.

And, it seems, no one has yet perfected a bluescreen shot of someone hanging from something flying. I've yet to see a movie where a person hanging from a helicopter looks real when looking down as they soar over the ground. Maybe it's a perspective matter that no one has yet figured out.

Anyway, the special effects that the movie deigns to do are decent. The rest are cheated out.

Aeon Flux is an interesting enough character for the first time. In the movie, she is motivated by the death of her sister. Trevor's regime had her killed, likely because of Aeon's status as a member of the rebelling Monicans. Aeon's guilt and desire for revenge motivate her and that is a compelling enough motivation for us to believe her as the story begins. As the secrets of Bregna reveal themselves to Aeon, her character does a decent job of growing from the new information she receives.

And Trevor Goodchild is, quite simply, more complex than the average supposed villain in science fiction. Trevor is a world leader played like a world leader. He is a man with responsibilities and things he does to keep Bregna running. When Aeon makes her assassination attempt on him, he is practicing a speech! That kind of detail makes him ring as fairly realistic and at worst interesting.

The people who surround Trevor and Aeon are all "types," though. Outside Aeon, the Monicans are pretty thoughtless terrorists. Their motivations aren't explored, so they end up as caricatures of freedom fighters. They are gun-toting rebels out to shoot and kill without a clear reason as to why. Trevor's fellow politicians, similarly, are just stereotypes of what we expect of politicians. Oren is the ambitious brother, the others on the council are supportive of whoever is strong and none of them seem to have what it takes to be worth watching.

Oren is played by the generically good-looking Jonny Lee Miller and his performance is fairly dry. He lacks the charm of any politician who is attempting conspiratorial politics. It is refreshing, however, to see Pete Postlethwaite in the movie as the Keeper. Postlethwaite is perfectly cast as the subtle elder who guards the Relical. Similarly, in a movie where the heroine is running around in costumes designed to flaunt her figure, one of the most beautiful individuals presented is Frances McDormand as the Handler. Neither McDormand nor Postlethwaite are given large enough roles to say their talents are well-used, but it's refreshing to see them nonetheless and they do make the most of the scenes they are in.

The one who failed to grab me was Marton Csokas as Trevor Goodchild. When I first heard there was a live action Aeon Flux being made, I had just seen 28 Days Later (reviewed here!) and I could think of no one better for the role than Christopher Eccleston. Csokas does not have the look of Trevor but more than that, he doesn't seem to have the bland, casual brutality to him that made Trevor Goodchild in the animated version. I'm all for getting away from the animated Aeon Flux, but in this case, Trevor Goodchild is never menacing. In short, he's never a villain and I attribute that in large part to the acting of Marton Csokas.

The one bound to make or break the movie is actress Charlize Theron, as she takes on the title role of Aeon Flux. In short, she does what is demanded of the role. She runs, she jumps, she speaks the lines Flux has and she does it all well. Actually, Theron was surprisingly well cast and she certainly brings something more than just her body to the role. She makes us believe that a cold-hearted assassin could be rational and stay her hand for the truth in a way Jennifer Gardner failed to in Elektra (reviewed here!).

Aeon Flux is not great filmmaking; some of the fights drag on too long and outside Aeon, the characters don't pop with enough motivation to make us invested in the world they have created. But it's solidly entertaining and it's worth the watch when one wants something fun.

For other movies with dystopian futures, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Brazil
Priest
The Alien Quadrilogy

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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