Marvel Universe Consequences Compound In: Spider-Man: Homecoming

The Good: Sense of realism surrounding the protagonist, Sense of consequence for prior films
The Bad: Unremarkable protagonist, Light on great or even interesting performance moments, Familiar character arc
The Basics: A painfully mediocre Marvel Cinematic Universe work, Spider-Man: Homecoming smartly explores the enduring consequences of the Chituari invasion by blandly blending that with the story of a teenager figuring out a super-suit he was given.


As a genre fan and a reviewer, Marvel films are pretty much a staple. So, it is a testament to how little enthusiasm I had going into Spider-Man: Homecoming that it took me until today (almost a week after its initial release) to actually make time to watch the movie. I have never really been a fan of the character and source material for Spider-Man, though I did like Andrew Garfield and thought he did fine in The Amazing Spider-Man (reviewed here!). Despite not feeling compelled to rush right out and see Spider-Man: Homecoming, when I sat down to the film today, I did so with an open mind and a general excitement to take the movie in.

Spider-Man: Homecoming slowly became a difficult film to review because it actually did much of what it set out to do well, but I quickly discovered how little interest I had in that story. Spider-Man: Homecoming is very much the story of what would happen if a teenage boy suddenly got into the super hero business and had to figure out his own way through developing his abilities using unfamiliar technology and no training. And Spider-Man: Homecoming did that well, but with so many other works - The Flash Season 1 (reviewed here!) and Daredevil Season 1 (reviewed here!) - where long arcs have been done showing protagonists slowly developing their skills, Spider-Man: Homecoming feels very much like it is coming late to the party.

That said, from almost the first frames of the film, Spider-Man: Homecoming is obsessed with fleshing out the consequences of prior Marvel Cinematic Universe works. In the process, Spider-Man: Homecoming further undermines Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and retcons S.H.I.E.L.D. to have been even more incompetant than it was overwhelmed. Like almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe work that followed it, Spider-Man: Homecoming explores the devastating consequences of the Battle Of New York from the climax of The Avengers (reviewed here!). When Peter Parker and Spider-Man were introduced in Captain America: Civil War (reviewed here!), there was a distracting quality to the boy's introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it set Spider-Man: Homecoming to leap over the traditional super-hero origin story. Unfortunately, while bypassing the origin, Spider-Man: Homecoming gets mired in the training phase of the super hero arc and mixes that with a banal teen drama story.

Following the Battle Of New York, Adrian Toomes and his business are poised to grow from salvaging Chitauri technology when the salvage operations are taken over by a Stark subsidiary. Facing ruin, Toomes steals an artifact and - with his employees - quietly refuses to turn over technology they already recovered. Eight years later, Toomes and his crew have developed weapons based upon Chitauri technology and have begun to dominate the black market in New York selling their hybridized weaponry to criminals. Around that time, Peter Parker meets Tony Stark and is recruited for the Berlin mission. Following that, Parker is put under the guidance and observation of Happy Hogan and generally abandoned by Stark.

Peter starts cutting out his activities so he can be ready for Tony Stark's call, but it never comes. Parker takes up the mantle of Spider-Man to help people and fight street-level crime. When he encounters criminals robbing an ATM using Toomes's technology, Spider-Man inadvertently creates collateral damage in the form of a bodega Parker loves getting destroyed. Parker begins to track Toomes's crew, but quickly discovers that Tony Stark has put safeguards and tracking devices into his suit. With the help of his friend Ned, Parker deactivates the suit's safeguards and tracks Toomes's supplies to Washington, D.C. There, he is put in a position where his classmates are in danger and he has to save them.

Facing a loss of his supplies and his business, Toomes sets out to eliminate Spider-Man by finishing the development of his advanced flight suit. Toomes and his newly-promoted associate are about to be taken down by the FBI when Toomes reveals his flight suit and manages to elude Spider-Man's capture. But while Spider-Man is able to save the nearly-destroyed Staten Island Ferry that the Vulture sliced in half to escape, that draws the attention and active involvement of Tony Stark in his attempt to stop the criminal enterprise.

Spider-Man: Homecoming gets some things very right, primarily not relying excessively on special effects to make the movie work. Instead of being a fairly gross explosion of CG-effects, Spider-Man: Homecoming manages to be comparatively grounded, focusing more on the characters and the plot than big special effects sequences. And Toomes is a villain who manages to stay just on the right side of being over-the-top when he finally suits up to become Vulture.

The thing is, the pacing and tone of Spider-Man: Homecoming, having Peter Parker fumble through his early training while desperately waiting for Tony Stark's call and getting fobbed off on Happy Hogan makes the first hour and twenty minutes of the film feel like a particularly lame Iron Man spin-off. But right around the point where I was bored enough to not care, Spider-Man: Homecoming actually presents an effective reversal in the plot. When Peter Parker picks up his date for the school dance, he gets a decent surprise and Spider-Man: Homecoming finally presents a villain who is not outwitted by a fifteen year-old boy.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man: Homecoming rapidly develops a decent climax - which essentially puts Spider-Man and Vulture in a fight for a plane full of Stark Technologies crates that Happy was moving from Stark Tower to the Avengers facility in upstate New York - and then attempts a second "surprise" reversal that falls flat and feels desperate (much in the way putting "Robin" into The Dark Knight Rises felt forced).

Spider-Man: Homecoming is dominated on the acting front by Michael Keaton. Keaton plays Toomes and right off the bat, Toomes fits into the very pragmatic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The grounding aspect of the MCU has been that characters are often limited by real-world aspects - Tony Stark making a clunky prototype suit with discarded missile pieces in a cave, the weak Steve Rogers not having any chance to join the traditional military, Scott Lang getting fired from Baskin-Robbins when they learn he is an ex-con, etc. - and Toomes starts right there. Toomes is looking to provide for his family and is willing to do anything he has to to take care of their needs. Toomes makes sense and his leap from trying to play by the rules to black market arms merchant needs no drawn-out transition. Toomes is a pragmatist whose sense of identity is maintained throughout Spider-Man: Homecoming and Michael Keaton does a good job at playing the villain, especially in a key moment when the character's sense of understanding is played entirely through Keaton's facial expressions.

For as good as Keaton is and as sensible as Toomes is as an adversary, he is not enough to save Spider-Man: Homecoming. Tom Holland plays Peter Parker as bland and Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Zendaya and Tony Revolori all outshine Holland in the school scenes they share.

The biggest issues with Spider-Man: Homecoming come from its continuity in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. How did Toomes and his crew avoid falling victim to the microbes that were on Chitauri technology in the Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "FZZT" (reviewed here!)? While the "Department Of Damage Control" seems like a pretty thin veil for S.H.I.E.L.D. teams recovering Chitauri technology in New York City, how is it that S.H.I.E.L.D. - before and after its fall from grace - never detected Toomes and his crew using Chitauri technology. While it is reasonable that a city as large as New York City would have multiple groups - Hammer Technologies, Toomes's salvage business, the New York Fire Department, and at least one privateer - that might end up with Chitauri technology, the more that new groups are retconned into having that technology, the more incompetant S.H.I.E.L.D. is made. In past Marvel Cinematic Universe works, S.H.I.E.L.D. had shit locked down - it took one man, Coulson, to investigate Thor's hammer falling to Earth and getting that (and Thor!) completely contained. Obviously, New York City is much larger and the Chituari invasion was much more massive, but the dependence within the Marvel Cinematic Universe of that invasion turning so many new-to-the-narrative characters bad reduces the effectiveness of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the magnitude of other attacks, like the Dark Elf attack on London.

Ultimately, Spider-Man: Homecoming is more forgettable than it is bad. Spider-Man: Homecoming does a decent job of exploring how big events in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have had consequences that resonate for years, but the teenager stumbling through using technology he was handed progresses with minimal flare and a comparatively low "wow" factor, making for a less-impressive cinematic outing.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Transformers: The Last Knight
Rough Night
The Mummy
Wonder Woman
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

4/10

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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A Worthwhile Technique Is Introduced With Sliding Doors, An Otherwise Average Film!

The Good: Well-paced, Good concept that is executed well, The two lead actors.
The Bad: Mood, John Lynch's attempt at romantic chemistry, One character is used entirely for plot exposition.
The Basics: Sliding Doors is a moody, surprisingly charmless drama that explores the effect of a single moment on a woman's life and the ripple effect it has in her personal and professional lives.


Every now and then, there is a premise that becomes so well-known and referenced that the general population gets the idea whether or not they have seen the source material for that premise. I have found myself referencing Sliding Doors - the Frasier episode "Sliding Frasiers" was based upon the same device, as was (essentially) the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" (reviewed here!) - that it almost escaped my notice that I had never before seen the film Sliding Doors!

Sliding Doors utilizes a fairly simple plot device to explore the idea that a single moment can change the direction of one's life. Writer and director Peter Howitt makes the moment a very literal one; catching a train in London. From the point at which the protagonist of Sliding Doors gets through the sliding doors of a subway - or not - her story, day, and life take very divergent directions.

Helen is rushing on her way to work Monday morning, where she is fired for taking vodka from work the prior Friday. Leaving the advertising agency at which she works, she goes to the subway, rushing to catch the next one. In one reality, she has to avoid a little girl, which causes het to be stuck outside the train; in another, the girl's mother pulls her close and Helen is able to continue her mad dash to the subway and she makes it into the car. The abandoned Helen learns from the public address system that there has been an accident and there will be no more subways coming. So, Helen goes up to the surface where she is mugged trying to get a taxi. On the subway, Helen sits and ignores the man sitting next to her, James, who is trying to talk her up. That Helen is charmed by James and arrives back in the flat she shares with Gerry to catch him having an affair with Lydia.

The other Helen tries calling Gerry from the hospital, but when he does not answer, she takes a cab home. The difference in time is long enough for Gerry to be done sleeping with Lydia for her to be gone and Gerry to be in the shower when Helen arrives home. Gerry sloppily tries to clean up from his affair and fakes caring for Helen, while in the alternate reality, Helen is despondent. Helen goes out and gets drunk while Gerry tries to track her down, with James arriving at the bar she is at and she tells him just how rotten her day became after they parted ways. In the other reality, Gerry and Helen go to the same bar and get shitfaced drunk, ignoring James and his friend Clive. The next morning, both Helens wake up and are nursed through their hangovers by Gerry and (in the reality where she made the train) her best friend Anna. Anna takes Helen in and gives her a makeover and she mopes for nine days in her friend's care. In the other reality, Helen rushes out and gets part time work to take care of Gerry while he does not write the novel he claims to be working on. One date night, Helen calls Gerry on the presence of two brandy glasses in the bedroom the day she got mugged. As Gerry's relationships with Helen and Lydia fall apart in one reality, Helen gets a new lease on life in the other through her friendship with James and her new determination to start her own business.

Sliding Doors has an impressive cast led by Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Helen. Paltrow manages to play the role of Helen credibly in both realities by making Helen not overly happy in either reality. Paltrow is able to play giddy drunk for moments, but the bulk of her performance is serious and sad. Paltrow helps to create a mood that is largely consistent throughout the narrative and it helps illustrate that even though a minor incident may change one's life, a single incident does not change one's entire personality.

Paltrow plays off John Hannah as James and John Lynch as Gerry. Hannah is very intelligent and able to make James articulate and plausibly charming. He and Paltrow play off one another very well as a result of excellent on-screen chemistry. Lynch and Paltrow have so little chemistry that the relationship between Helen and Gerry never seems plausible. Lynch and Jeanne Tripplehorn have so little on-screen chemistry that they, too, seem entirely implausible as a viable romantic couple. Tripplehorn makes good use of her minimal time on screen to steal her scenes. Tripplehorn takes a comparatively minor supporting role and makes Lydia seem deeper than just a mistress.

Sliding Doors is well-directed by writer Peter Howlitt and it is hard to say that the film is predictable because I've seen so very many works that are derivative of it. What is poorly presented is the character of Russell, who is Gerry's friend. Actually, what Russell is is a tool for exposition that moves portions of Gerry's story along without having to show it. His character might be a necessary evil in order to give some depth to Gerry outside his relationship, but functionally Russell is a tool.

Ultimately, Sliding Doors does what it sets out to do by illustrating the effects of a single moment on a life and it does it well-enough to be entertaining and worth adapting the technique for other works, even if it is not truly exceptional in its own right.

For other works featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, please visit my reviews of:
Iron Man 3
The Avengers
Contagion
Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie
Glee - Season Two, Volume 1
Iron Man 2
Iron Man
Running With Scissors
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
Shallow Hal
The Royal Tenenbaums
Bounce
Shakespeare In Love
Hard Eight
Malice
Hook

6/10

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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Aging No Better Than Its Initial Release, Hook Is Bloated And Boring!

The Good: Decent character arc for the protagonist
The Bad: Mediocre performances all around, Varying quality of special effects, Plot progression in the midsection is dull
The Basics: A family adventure that provides a live-action Peter Pan story, Hook is an unfortunately dull take that has the lawyer Peter Banning put on a quest to save his children by reverting to his prior persona of Peter Pan.


Last month, with the untimely death of Robin Williams, my wife and I felt an instant desire to rewatch works by Robin Williams that we had not seen in quite some time. For me, that took the form of wanting to watch The Fisher King (reviewed here!), for her she had a powerful desire to rewatch Hook. Hook was one of those films that I had managed to avoid in my young adulthood – when it was released, I was past the age where I had any interest in kid’s movies and I was still too young for the adult themes in Hook to resonate – but, as it turns out, it was one of the formative films for my wife. I recall the movie being on in the staff lounge when I worked at a summer camp (I avoided it by going off on my own to read, as I frequently did), but until my wife sat us down to watch it, I had never actually seen Hook. In watching Hook, I realized that I never paid tribute to the passing of Bob Hoskins, who also died this year (I’ll rectify that later this week!). Unfortunately for the legacies of Robin Williams, Bob Hoskins and the rest of the cast who will one day leave this work behind as part of their legacy, Hook is not an exceptional film in any way.

Steven Spielberg, who directed Hook, is famously quoted as saying “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning” and he certainly is right about that. Most movies do not develop or only do so in truly predictable, banal ways. Unfortunately, with Hook, Spielberg (who was not involved with writing the film) illustrates well that even with a solid sense of development, it is possible to make a pretty terrible movie. Hook is not the worst movie ever, but it is a film crippled by mediocrity, hampered by predictability and is so concerned with telling a specific story of one character’s arc that is completely neglects a sensible development for several of the other characters (most notably the titled villain).

While finding an audience should not be a huge problem, rewatching Hook is a great example of how a movie without a clear focus of to whom the story is being told can be troubling. The film is painfully boring for children for almost the first third, too goofy for adults in the second and third parts to pay off for adults and ultimately acts as an overlong The Little Rascals sketch with an obscenely long build-up.

Peter Banning is an American lawyer who hates flying on planes, is tremendously focused on his work, and neglects his two children most of the time. After missing his son, Jack’s, baseball game, Peter, his wife, and children head to London where Peter’s “great grandmother” Wendy is being honored for her lifetime of charity work for orphans. While Peter, Wendy and Moira are out at the dinner, Jack and Maggie are kidnapped from their beds by the malicious Captain Hook. Peter is miffed, though Wendy tries to get him to believe that he has to go to find the children. Peter is visited by Tinkerbell, who takes him to Neverland.

There, Peter awakens in the pirate’s village where he finds his children and Captain Hook. Hook slowly comes to accept that Banning is Peter Pan (even though Banning does not), but finds the straight-laced lawyer an unworthy opponent for his wrath. To save Peter’s life and the life of his children, Tinkerbell tells Hook that she can get Peter to remember who he is within three days and they can have the battle Hook wants. So, while Hook tries to convert Jack to his cause, Peter is taken to the Lost Boys where Rufio and his child gang retrain him to use his imagination and recall that he is Peter Pan.

The thing about Hook is that Hook is so dramatically underdeveloped in contrast to Peter that he comes across as a monolithic villain. He has had decades to get over the fact that Peter Pan cost him his hand and he essentially rules the seas around Neverland, so provoking a fight with Peter that could cause him to lose everything seems utterly moronic. Lacking a compelling villain who has a clear and compelling need for revenge, Hook becomes a somewhat ridiculous grudge match where one of the participants does not even bear a grudge!

Fortunately, Captain Hook is given the whole plotline that has him turning Jack Banning to his side, to drive a wedge between Peter and his own son. That concept at least makes Hook smart and gives Dustin Hoffman as Hook additional screentime.

But Hook is too straightforward otherwise to keep the interest of the viewer. Peter Banning was always going to go through the journey to realize that he was Peter Pan; everyone around him has been right all along. This was never going to be a reality-bending film experience where people surrounding Peter Banning are all crazy and they get wrong who Peter Pan has become. So, going into Hook, the deck is stacked against those hoping for an audacious film experience. Peter Banning’s arc from uptight lawyer to Peter Pan is actually remarkably good and well-developed. The entire film smartly moves Peter along on his journey of self-discovery (or rediscovery) in a way that works beautifully.

The acting in Hook is mediocre. Dustin Hoffman plays Hook as bored and goofy as opposed to truly menacing, so the hold Hook has over the other pirates does not seem at all realistic. Julia Roberts, due to the special effects process of making her appear smaller, seldom gets eyelines right for interacting with other actors. As a result, Tinkerbell seems disconnected from other characters and Roberts is clearly not interacting with Robin Williams or Dustin Hoffman in most of the scenes they share. Robin Williams is fine as Peter, though he has absolutely no on-screen chemistry with Caroline Goodall (who plays Peter’s wife, Moira) and he fails to land a key scene where Peter Pan tells Jack that the happy thought that allows him to fly is related to his son. Poor Bob Hoskins is relegated to the role of ridiculous Disney-style comic relief sidekick as Smee.

The result is that Hook has a clear beginning, middle, and end and a protagonist whose story develops, but none of it is truly compelling. Too slow to be a great kid’s movie, too goofy to entertain adults, Hook fizzles.

For other works with Caroline Goodall, please check out my reviews of:
My Life In Ruins
Alias - Season 5
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement
The Princess Diaries
The Mists Of Avalon
Schindler’s List

3/10

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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Middle-Of-The-Road Medical/Legal/Psychological Thriller, Malice Fails To Land.

The Good: Moments of character and plot development
The Bad: Most of the performances are unimpressive, Nothing stellar on the writing front.
The Basics: Malice is a largely underwhelming thriller that is hampered more by stiff acting and a mediocre sense of purpose.


With the return of The Newsroom (season 1 is reviewed here!), I am just as excited as other Aaron Sorkin fans to be a fan of the writing of Aaron Sorkin. However, unlike a large contingent of Sorkin fans, I’ve paid enough attention to his works to realize that Sorkin is a master recycler. He reuses character arcs, specific lines and conditions (just as in House, M.D. it’s never lupis, but lupis is always brought up as a potential diagnosis for a condition, it seems almost no one in the Sorkinverse has a baby without preeclampsia complicating the pregnancy). So, as excited as I was for the return of The Newsroom, I was actually more psyched to go backward in Sorkin’s career. To that end, I took in Malice, the 1993 thriller written by Sorkin that was his next project following his breakout hit A Few Good Men. While I’ve yet to re-watch and review A Few Good Men, until today I had never seen Malice, though one of my friends in high school was obsessed with the movie.

And, having seen Malice now, I see why the film is usually overlooked by Sorkin’s fans as being essential to his pantheon. Malice is a crime drama or thriller that progresses from a medical drama to a legal conflict and back to a character-centered mystery. Unfortunately, most of Malice lacks the spark and zest of all of his other works. The acting is fair at best (though Bebe Neuwirth is characteristically wonderful and it is fun to see a young Gwyneth Paltrow in a bit role), the characters are hardly interesting and it lacks truly memorable quotes. Fans of Sorkin’s other works will instantly recognize one of the early quotes in the film which he later recycled, but otherwise the movie is lacking in distinctive and fresh dialogue. The “I am god” speech is no “You can’t handle the truth!” That said, Malice has the benefit of being truly different from his other works.

Within nine hours of arriving in Massachusetts, Dr. Jed Hill saves the life of a college student who was brutally assaulted. Hill encounters Andy Safian, a college professor who married his favorite student, Tracy, years prior. Hill and Safian went to high school together and when a $13,000 plumbing bill is assessed against their house, Andy and Tracy reluctantly rent out their third floor to Hill. Tracy is quickly annoyed by both Andy’s overprotective nature and Hill’s womanizing with different women in the room above their head. When one of Andy’s students ends up as the victim of the serial rapist and is killed, Andy is a suspect. His old friend, Detective Dana Harris, quickly rules Andy out as a suspect, but while that is happening, Tracy’s chronic abdominal pain leads to her collapse.

Tracy, as it turns out, has a necrotic ovary and Dr. Hill is on call to perform surgery. Hill removes the necrotic ovary and he makes the decision to remove her other ovary on the belief that it is diseased as well. When the pathology on the other ovary comes back, it turns out it was healthy and Tracy – who long wanted children – is devastated. As Tracy goes litigious on Dr. Hill, Andy gets evidence that the fetus removed during Tracy’s surgery was not his, he goes on a personal mission to find out who was sleeping with his wife and, in the process, uncovers a conspiracy that challenges all he knows about the love of his life.

Dr. Jed Hill is an interesting enough villain, though he is presented with a pragmatism and a weird professional ethic that make it possible to care about him. His motivations are interesting enough, though how he and the film’s primary antagonist are truly connected is not made plausibly clear. Even the main antagonist in Malice includes enough backstory so their motivation makes sense, even if it does not make the film better.

One of the detractions to Malice is the acting. Malice is led on the acting front by Alec Baldwin, who is fine but completely unsurprising as the arrogant Dr. Hill, followed by Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman. Kidman travels through Malice looking like she is trying to remember not to speak with an accent (which she pulls off) and Bill Pullman is just stiff. In fact, Pullman is so stiff that even though director Harold Becker utilizes him in a similar niche to Jeff Daniels’ Will McAvoy and this is an Aaron Sorkin work, never once did I think Pullman could have been considered for the role in The Newsroom. Pullman and Kidman have no on-screen chemistry (he has more chemistry with the subtle relation he has on-screen with Bebe Neuwirth) and Alec Baldwin does not even tap into the full depth of his charm to make Hill a plausible womanizer. The result is that most of the acting in Malice fails to raise the limp writing into something magnetic or engaging.

Ironically, it is Bebe Neuwirth who steals her scenes. Her character of Detective Harris is running around the whole movie working on the serial rapist case (which, as it turns out, is only a tangent in Malice and is not meaningfully resolved) and when she pops up, Neuwirth presents the character as efficient, but in touch with her very human emotions (a very nice change from her popular character Lilith from Cheers and Frasier). Neuwirth plays the role of the determined detective very well and her presentation is so strong that it is almost enough to make the viewer lament that the plotline that seems to be the a-plot at the film’s outset is not the point of the movie.

In the end, Malice is an unremarkable “thriller” that is low on thrills. The film develops, but it is populated by unsympathetic characters who are not presented in a captivating way. In other words, Malice is very much the exception to the rule of Aaron Sorkin’s works.

For other works with Bill Pullman, please visit my reviews of:
Scary Movie 4
The Grudge
Independence Day

5/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Desperately Average Super Hero Films Work Up To An Impressive Film With Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled

The Good: The Avengers, Some decent performances, Blu-Ray bonus features
The Bad: Exceptionally repetitive plots, Character arcs are often repetitive as well
The Basics: The six-film Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled boxed set eliminates some of the fat from the first few serialized Marvel universe movies nevertheless presents in one place the films building up to and including The Avengers.


As Iron Man 3 (reviewed here!) continues its powerhouse run at the box office, it is fun to look back at how the film came to be. The films that led up to Iron Man 3 - and much more importantly, its cinematic predecessor The Avengers - have been collected on Blu-Ray in a new boxed set called the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled. The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled is six of the first seven Marvel Universe films that were loosely connected by background threads pertaining to the Avengers Initiative. In other words, it is the Marvel Universe without the X-Men franchise, The Fantastic Four or Spider-Man (or, for that matter, the vigilante Daredevil or the supernatural-based Marvel characters like Ghost Rider).

The boxed set of Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled does not include the film Hulk, which is somewhat ironic because it does include its sequel. The ten disc set, which is chock full of bonus features and an entire exclusive bonus disc that looks at the assembled films as a film franchise. The films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled boxed set includes:
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled has five movies that are only loosely tied to one another and then is paid off with a film that unites the protagonists from the prior four films. For those who have not seen them, the basic ideas behind the films are:

Iron Man has billionaire Tony Stark getting attacked and held hostage overseas. While being held hostage, he puts together a small device that keeps shrapnel from piercing his heart and he uses it to power a primitive suit of armor that facilitates his escape. Stark’s return to the United States and the industry of weapons engineering is met with mixed results. His loyal assistant, Pepper Potts, is thrilled he is alive, but his former mentor is actually dismayed in that Stark is still alive given that he has taken control over Stark Industries in Tony’s absence. Stark’s new pacifism and obsession with refining his armor to act as something of a one-man world peace force, upsets Stone and causes Tony’s former mentor to create a suit of his own to take on his protégé!

The Incredible Hulk finds Dr. Bruce Banner hiding out, having tried to keep his alter-ego, the Hulk, under control for years. He is hunted by a military-industrial complex that is determined to bring him in. In that pursuit, a villainous leader gives a seasoned officer a serum that creates another Hulk-like creature (the Abomination), who begins to lay waste, which requires the Hulk to intervene to save lives.

Iron Man 2 continues Tony Stark’s story after his revelation that he is Iron Man. With Congress looking to assimilate Stark’s technology while he resists, Stark fights two battles: one against the corporate leader of Hammer weapons and the other, in his suit, against the Russian villain Whiplash, who rises up to get revenge on Stark for stealing the technology his father developed.

In Thor the Norse God of Thunder coming to Earth as an outcast after his brother, Loki, discredits him on the astral planes. With Thor’s father in a coma, Thor ends up on Earth where he works to redeem himself and comes to care about the humans.

There is a trip to the past with Captain America: The First Avenger. During World War II, Steve Rogers is a weak young man who nevertheless wants to join the war effort to go to fight the Nazis. Instead, he is inducted into the super soldier program and given incredible strength, endurance and tactical ability. After a stint as a publicity tool for the U.S. military, Rogers as Captain America goes to free American prisoners of war and stop the evil HYDRA scientists who are threatening to unlock the massive power of a device from the astral planes, the tesseract.

The Tesseract pops back up as the object of concern in The Avengers. Loki has been tasked by a powerful alien being with recovering the Tesseract from Earth and he is ready to use it to wipe out humanity. To respond to the menace of Loki and the army he is ready to bring through a wormhole to lay waste to Earth (starting in New York City), Nick Fury – after an attack on a S.H.I.E.L.D. laboratory – works to bring together Earth’s greatest heroes to respond to the threat Loki represents.

All six films follow a similar basic format with the origin story of the super hero and the villain and the hero rising to stop them. These are all, in the end, “kill the villain” type films. Iron Man 2 has no time needed to establish Iron Man, but uses the time that these type movies to establish the heroes to remind the viewers who Iron Man and Tony Stark are and the villains are more developed in the movie. But, like the plots, the characters all have pretty obvious and repetitive journeys where, in each film, to defeat their custom villain, they must learn a Very Important Lesson about themselves.

While the films might lack a great resonance of character issues and development, the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled managed to get some pretty wonderful actors. The principle actors in this saga – Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Edward Norton (Bruce Banner – for The Incredible Hulk), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner – for The Avengers), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Chris Evans (Captain America), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), and Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) are wonderful and add and emotional resonance and realism to the movies that makes them feel grand and sophisticated beyond the simple plots and characters they portray. The supporting actors – Sir Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, William Hurt, and Liv Tyler – lend a professionalism to a movie series that could seem campy or utterly unrealistic without their gravitas.

Ultimately, the movies in Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One – Avengers Assembled are entertaining popcorn movies, but seeing them together in this set begins to reiterate the idea that some of the super heroes in the Marvel Universe are hardly all that special. These stories shake up the super powers and specific plots, but are in many ways the same essential story told six ways.

For similar boxed sets, please visit my reviews of:
The Star Trek Cinematic Boxed Set
The Lord Of The Rings
The Star Wars 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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The Much Tougher Sell Of Iron Man 3

The Good: Great effects, Good pacing, Moments of character.
The Bad: Nothing audacious on the acting front, Somewhat predictable.
The Basics: Kicking off the next round of Marvel Universe movies, Iron Man 3 is an awkward continuation to the story of Tony Stark as Iron Man.


Even as a fan, as a general rule, of super hero films, it is hard not to go into Iron Man 3 with a sense of trepidation. After all, Iron Man 3 follows The Avengers (reviewed here!) and with that being a sweeping film with world-shaking, epic consequences that required a whole team to thwart, it seems like it would be a step back to return to a single hero doing his own thing. The danger, of course, coming off a film like The Avengers is that the threat to the character is difficult to create in a compelling way. If the hero finds themselves overwhelmed, the audience will naturally ask, “Why doesn’t Tony Stark just call his Avengers buddies back up to help him?” (One can almost hear Thor complaining to his swordmates about the folks with fantastic powers he fought with on Earth, lamenting that his old friends from Asgaard seem pretty stale by comparison.). Conversely, if the threat is not big enough, it is virtually impossible to care. Iron Man 3 effectively wrestles with those problems by working Tony Stark to the point where he is forced to accept that no man, least of all him, is an island.

IronMan 3 straddles the problem by focusing, as much as possible, on Tony Stark – the man outside the suit. The result is a film that makes what appears to be the secondary villain, in this case Aldrich Killian, more important as the villain who is initially characterized as the primary. Just as when Batman Returns (reviewed here!) was initially released, the hype surrounded Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer, but going back and rewatching the film now, it is Christopher Walken’s Max Shrek who stands out as having a surprisingly large presence in the film, Iron Man 3 seems to be hyping Sir Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin, when it is Guy Pearce’s role as Aldrich Killian who actually has a substantive adversarial role in the movie. Just as in Iron Man 2 (reviewed here!), Tony Stark had to contend with Justin Hammer as a business competitor, Killian appears in Iron Man 3 developing technologies that unsettle Tony Stark and Pepper Potts (who is running Stark Industries).

Following the attack on New York by Loki and his interstellar minions, Tony Stark returns to his life with the feeling that his life is not all it can be. Having been a part of a team, Stark seems to realize that he is not the sole Alpha in the world and that leaves him unsettled. As he works on developing a new thought-responsive Iron Man suit, the United States is rocked by attacks from the mysterious terrorist, The Mandarin. In addition to shooting bombing Mann's Chinese Theater - an attack which seriously wounds Happy - the Mandarin marshals forces that level Tony Stark’s mansion. Maya Hansen, who confides to Pepper Potts that she believes her boss, Killian, is working with the Mandarin, uses the confusion following the attack on Stark's mansion to abduct Potts. Stark’s ally Rhodey comes to the defense of the United States as the newly revamped Iron Patriot.

With Stark adrift in Tennessee, looking for the origins of the Mandarin when he finds that some explosions domestically mirror the heat signatures from the Mandarin's untraceable bombs, Rhodey falls into the trap laid by the Mandarin. But in tracking the Mandarin, Tony learns the villain is not all he appears to be and the real adversary has built an army even he alone cannot hope to stop.

Iron Man 3 is satisfying in that there are real consequences to Tony Stark’s ego lingering from The Avengers. Stark is shaken and moody and his relationship with Pepper Potts has not solved all of his emotional problems. The time that Iron Man 3 spends focused on Tony Stark’s internal struggle is time well-spent. Stark makes for a compelling character when he is not brazenly baiting the Mandarin or being a cocky douche to Killian (by now, shouldn’t Stark realize that other people are up for the same contracts and have their own ideas on how to save the world?!), the movie presents that well.

Unfortunately, for those looking mostly for the compelling character study, Iron Man 3 is far too erratic. Instead, the movie turns to plot twists pertaining to trying to find the Mandarin (and later in the film, Pepper Potts), staving off A.I.M. and Killian, and making the film action-packed with big aerial battles and conflicts that degenerate into familiar chase/combat sequences. Those bits are certainly good, but they are hardly substantive or surprising. In fact, the action sequences in Iron Man 3 - while technically adept with the CG-effects – are hardly the most thrilling seen in a Marvel-based movie (or even an Iron Man film!).

As for the acting, it is a decided mixed bag. I was excited to see one of my perennial favorites, William Sadler in the substantive, but too brief role of Sal Kennedy. Sadler has the bearing and innate dignity to play the President and to see him do so in Iron Man 3 was a real treat. In a similar vein, Guy Pearce is good as Killian. Coming off Prometheus (reviewed here!), where he played an aged genius industrialist, Killian is hardly a stretch for his performing talents. Still, he fills the role well and he holds his own as far as gravitas opposite Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark very well. Moreover, Pearce and co-star Rebecca Hall (Maya Hansen) play off one another well. Their interplay makes their professional relationship entirely credible.

Sir Ben Kingsley is appropriately formidable as The Mandarin. While I usually associate him with the strong dignity of Gandhi, the anger and menace he presents as The Mandarin seems entirely unsurprising and well within the emotional range he can convincingly present. Kingsley makes for a good villain and the twist he presents is credible due to his performance. Even so, like so much in Iron Man 3 his performance seems familiar and smooth as opposed to surprising and new.

As for the rest of the performances, they are fluid and familiar. Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow are returning for their fourth times as Tony Stark and Pepper Pots. Don Cheadle retakes the mantle of James Rhodes, War Machine, Iron Patriot in a seamless way and Jon Favreau makes it through his scenes as Happy Hogan without projecting an attitude like “I could have directed this” (Shane Black directed this outing). All of them are good, but for Iron Man 3 they are hitting the consistency of returning to the screen characters who are more familiar than growing in challenging new ways.

Ultimately, Iron Man 3 will do what fans expect and it makes for a good action-adventure thriller, but it is lacking in a timeless quality that general moviegoers might want for their $8 (or more)!

For other movies based upon the Marvel comic books, please check out my reviews of:
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One
Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance
Captain America: The First Avenger
X-Men: First Class
Thor
The Incredible Hulk
Spider-Man 3
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Blade: Trinity
Elektra
Daredevil

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

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A Freakish Childhood Makes One Want To Be Running With Scissors Far And Away!

The Good: My gosh, it finally ends!, Moments of acting
The Bad: Much of the acting, The characters, Lack of plot, Plodding pace, Tone, Message, DVD extras
The Basics: In an overrated and terrible movie, Augusten Burroughs relates his traumatic childhood spent in the company of a crazy adopted family.


Augusten Burroughs is a boy growing up in the 1970s with a poet mother who desperately dreams of stardom and a father who is an alcoholic. Augusten's mother, Deirdre, soon divorces Norman at the recommendation of her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch. Finch encourages Deirdre's selfish behavior and Deirdre soon abandons Augusten to Dr. Finch and his family while she goes off to explore poetry and lesbianism.

Augusten, then, finds himself trapped within the hell that is Dr. Finch's household. Surrounded by children who poop behind the Christmas tree (which has been up for years), a mother-figure who eats dog food, a disco-dancing girl and a religious zealot, Augusten soon falls in with a schizophrenic older man who might just kill them all. Augusten works to survive by writing in a journal, becoming truant from school, and limiting his exposure to the craziness of his new family.

Augusten Burroughs, sadly, is not a fictional construct. The lone bonus feature I could bare to sit through (there were three featurettes and a bunch of previews on the DVD release of this film) introduced the author Augusten Burroughs who sits in denial telling the viewer how he survived and overcame his crappy childhood, which Running With Scissors is a memoir of. I write "sits in denial" because almost thirty years after the events that shaped his life from his childhood, he is still working through it by creating a movie. Regardless of what Burroughs declares in his on-screen endorsement of the film, this is not a celebration of a universal struggle that is immortalized on film.

Running With Scissors fails utterly because it is so insular, specific, and disturbing as to rob it of any real entertainment value. Some years ago, I wrote one of my first reviews on the book Lilliane: Resurrection Of The Daughter (reviewed here!) where I postulated that what made the book so pointless and difficult to read was that it captured reality too well. In the case of Running With Scissors, Burroughs and screenwriter-director Ryan Murphy create something that may accurately recreate the reality of Augusten's youth but is so outside the normal, interesting or entertaining as to be painful to watch.

As this film plodded on - the pacing is disastrously slow - scene after scene was agonizing to watch. After a slow start wherein Norman and Deirdre break up, partially at the behest of the quack Dr. Finch who insists he must observe the couple for five hours a day in order to save their marriage, Augusten and the viewer become condemned to a series of slow deliveries that agonizingly draw out a pointless experience that results in nothing so satisfying as a laugh.

Whatever niche Running With Scissors is trying to fit into, it fails. It's not funny, though moments of the film have the elements to be horrifying in a way humor can be when one steps away from the joke and thinks about what has actually happened or been said. It's not comedic, it's not so much dramatic as it is dull. That is to say that great character drama has a tension to it that absent from Running With Scissors. It does not take long before the viewer simply does not care about Augusten or his fate.

The reason is simple; Augusten is not a compelling character. All due respect to the real Augusten Burroughs (if this is a strict memoir, wow, t.f.b.), Augusten Burroughs from Running With Scissors is dull, uninspired and uninspiring. He is a youth who never takes control of his own destiny. Instead, he takes all the sh*t that is flung at him and he accepts it as the way it is. It's ironic because my mentor and I were debating social mobility this past weekend and after seeing Running With Scissors, I'm almost forced to concede the point that people trap themselves far too often within their own hells. In this context, Augusten is never so motivated by all of the factors that torment him to actually make the changes he would like, that he needs. The result, unsurprisingly, is that (author in reality) Augusten Burroughs is still processing his crappy childhood twenty years later. Condemning the viewer to share his crappy childhood is not entertaining and it is not revealing of the human condition.

Similarly, Deirdre is wholly unsympathetic and unempathetic. She is played by Annette Bening with little differentiation between Deirdre and her more compelling character from American Beauty (reviewed here!). Bening is a quieter form of crazy in Running With Scissors, but much of the performance feels the same or similar.

At this point, I believe it is relevant to compare Running With Scissors with a film that has a similar sensibility to it, but was vastly better. If Running With Scissors is at the bottom of the scale of the dysfunctional family drama, the foil movie is The Royal Tenenbaums (reviewed here!). The Royal Tenenbaums tells the story of the three children of Royal Tenenbaum as their adult lives collapse and his estranged wife looks to remarry. Much of the movie, like Running With Scissors happens in the confines of one house and neighborhood but what The Royal Tenenbaums does well is create characters that are empathetic. They are motivated by their pasts and their quirks embody their reactions to their stimuli. The assemblage of Running With Scissors is portrayed as crazy and esoteric for the sake of weird and shocking. So, for example, Gwyneth Paltrow plays Hope Finch in Running With Scissors, a religious zealot whose origins and motivations are never explained. She is crazy for the sake of crazy. Ironically, Paltrow also appears in The Royal Tenenbaums and even with years since I last saw it, I can easily recall that her character in that film was depressed and dysfunctional because her adopted father treated her different from his biological children, her plays had fizzled commercially and her marriage to a listless psychoanalyst had encouraged her to renew her addictions. There is nothing so deep from any of the principles of Running With Scissors.

As I watched this film last night, I was considering that this is Gay Pride Month and films like Running With Scissors were among the assemblage of flicks that just didn't help the cause. Deirdre, the character not whatever real poet exists outside the film, is a weak-willed doped up mother whose irresponsibility, drug use and ability to be influenced by Dr. Finch lead her to a witless exploration of lesbianism that is almost as canned as Augusten's own homosexuality. Augusten, getting a leap on his sexuality by having sex with his older brother-figure, Neil Bookman, a schizophrenic also adopted by Dr. Finch, is an entirely uninspiring role model for homosexuals of any age.

Granted, gays and lesbians - like ANY population - come in a wide array of heights, weights, skin colors, hair colors, and states of health (physical and mental). I recall going to a LGB community meeting when in high school and being mildly surprised to see a blind person there. Yes, it opened my eyes - pun intended - to the whole idea that the LGB community truly was like any other when I saw a blind lesbian. As a matter of gay pride, Running With Scissors is just abysmal and it opens the community up to a plethora of the worst, most stereotypical, arguments that most of us would like to see buried.

So, for example, throughout the movie, there is a strong incestuous relationship between Augusten and his mother, Deirdre. He brushes her hair, fawns over her as she practices poetry reading and emulates her. The film goes so far as to suggest that Augusten knows his mother so intimately as to effectively and realistically role play her when playing doctor with Natalie. As well, the film opens itself up to the tired comparisons of gays as pedophiles when Neil has sexual contact with Augusten when Augusten is fifteen (or less).

As well, all of the gay or lesbian characters in Running With Scissors are either crazy (Neil is schizophrenic), weak-willed (Deirdre's neighbor and lesbian practice toy Fern), opportunistic (Dorothy), idiotic (Augusten's lack of escape initiative can only be traced to innate stupidity) and/or drug addicted (Deirdre is both mentally ill and drug-addicted). As far as seeing characters from the community, Running With Scissors is terrible and frightening to any young people. As well, it showcases only the worst about these people. None of them have anything remotely redeemable about them. The other characters might be crazy, but most are defined by the idea that they are crazy by what they eat (dog food and a long-dead cat, in case you're curious). The most seriously ill characters in this film also happen to be the ones who are gay.

Finally, the problem is exacerbated by the lack of on-screen chemistry between Joseph Cross (Augusten) and Joseph Fiennes (Neil). Cross has more on-screen chemistry with costar Evan Rachel Wood who is relegated to a sisterly role as Natalie. But even more damning than the connection between Wood and Cross is the character interactions between the two. When Augusten becomes most desperate, he calls on Natalie to help him. Somewhere, there's a young hick saying "He's only gay because he's crazy." Sigh.

My point in all this is that Augusten Burroughs and Ryan Murphy create or recreate a story of a boy's witless adventures in growing up where he is pushed around by family members into a situation where he is simply stuck. It's made worse by the negative messages and themes which are so backwards and terrible that if they were happening to any other minorities other than gays and lesbians and the mentally ill, the film would have never been made (make a movie with a black mother eating dog food or a Japanese girl cooking her dead cat for joy and see how quickly the Anti-Defamation groups leap up!). I would say the writers and director ought to feel ashamed, but if I learned anything from Running With Scissors it was that Augusten Burroughs has already been in situations that were shaming enough; it is regrettable that he chose to share his insular and damaged experiences rather than seeking to truly survive them. Running With Scissors simply immortalizes them and it is not worth your time or attention.

For other works with Evan Rachel Wood, check out my takes on:
The Ides Of March
True Blood - Season Three
True Blood - Season Two
Across The Universe
Once And Again - Season Two
Once And Again - Season One
Practical Magic

2/10

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

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Too Close To The Reference Sinks The Attempt At Nostalgia That Is Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow!

The Good: I like the title
The Bad: Characters and plot is canned, Effects, Acting
The Basics: When writer-director Kerry Conran created a parody or recreation of the 1930s sci-fi serials, like Flash Gordon, he fell short of either.


There is an episode of The Simpsons that I have loathed for quite some time. Quite early in the series, The Simpsons did an episode where they showed clips from upcoming spin-off series', the last of which was "The Simpson Smiletime Variety Hour." It was a parody of the Sonny and Cher or Lawrence Welk style shows. The reason I loathe the episode is because that act so closely imitates what it is parodying, it becomes it. That is, instead of being an effective gag on the concept, it becomes all the worst parts of that type of show. Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is essentially the same thing, with the campy serialized sci-fi movies of the 30s as its subject.

When New York City is invaded by giant robots that steal a power generator, it appears the world is under attack by a force quite unlike anything the world has seen. In desperation, the military calls in the Sky Captain to fight off the robots and learn the truth behind them. With intrepid reporter Polly Perkins, technical sidekick Dex and his British counterpart Franky along, Joe - the Sky Captain - journeys from high in the sky to under the sea almost to outer space to discover the truth.

And it's not worth it.

Like that episode of The Simpsons, Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow creates something that exposes all the weaknesses of what it is calling back to by imitating them. And because the story needs to work, the writer/director Kerry Conran becomes trapped in the conventions of the story he is telling with the characters he is telling. The problem here is that the choice Conran is force to make is either to defy the conventions of the serialized hero movies and basically mortgage the audience on the idea that the first half of the movie was a parody or stick with the conventions and recreate a cinematic experience that is neither suspenseful nor unpredictable and basically subject the audience to an ultimately droll experience.

Conran seems unsure which way to go, in that on the story and character front, Conran takes the latter option. Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is a modern-day 1930s serial. It's silly, it's campy, it's predictable. It is laced with cliches and the actors are forced to play within them in order to tell the story as it is written. It feels inorganic, none of the characters pop out of their molds and this is truly unspectacular. Add to that, the annoyance of the music (which, admittedly should be in the "effects" column). It is soaring and completely telegraphs the emotions the movie is trying to evoke (that is to say on its own, the story and characters are not creating an emotional resonance, so the music tells the viewer how they ought to be feeling). Down to the punchline ending of the movie, this film is a predictable, faithful recreation of a style of storytelling that we are well beyond. In short, our society (surprisingly) has become sophisticated enough where we can handle stories that are more intelligent, character driven, realistic and genuinely adventurous than what the '30s audiences seemed to go for in this genre.

The problem is that while Conran remains faithful in the story and characters to the genre, his attempts with the effects that the route of mortgaging the faithfulness of the look and feel of the serials. The movie opens with a wonderful grainy quality, as if the movie were a black and white film that had been colorized. There is a washed out quality to the lighting that instantly transforms recognizable actors and actresses into heroes from days of yore. The problem is that while the lighting and grain quality is generally consistent, the mold gets broken in some of the battle sequences with clearly current special effect techniques. Those moments wrench the viewer out of the experience and beg the question, if you were trying to update the 30s serials, why didn't you go all the way? That is, what is the point of recreating the look and feel (through effects) of the old serial movies when you're just going to throw in a clearly computer-generated skeleton of a scientist who was just electrocuted? Moreover, the final sequences are ludicrously current in look and feel, which then makes the hammy overacting of the principles troubling.

There is not much to say on the character front. The Sky Captain is the Hero, Polly Perkins is the independent woman who still needs the hero to matter, and Dex and Franky are just types that play off those two archetypes. Unfortunately, this also means that there is little to say on this movie on the acting front. Perhaps it would have worked better if the bit part Angelina Jolie had had been credited as a surprise cameo as opposed to one of the three top-billed actors in the movie. She is barely in the film. Jude Law plays Joe and the truth is, I'm just realizing I can't remember ever liking a part he's played. Here he plays the role, but it is not an excessive challenge, it's an extended schtick.

Gwyneth Paltrow just made me sad for taking this role. There are moments she seems to be having fun and perhaps that's a good enough reason to take the part; it's fun. I suppose when you're rich, you can take a couple of months to shoot a movie essentially as play. The problem is, this film makes no real use of her talents.

There's a moment midway through this catastrophe that Paltrow as Perkins glares at Joe in an annoyed fashion. That exact expression mirrored how I felt about the movie at that point.

For other works with Bai Ling, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Angel - Season 1
Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith
Southland Tales
Lost - Season 3

3/10

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

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Joss Whedon Gets Closer To Perfection Than Any Other Marvel-Movie Director With The Avengers

The Good: Dialogue, Characters, Plot, Special effects, Most of the acting
The Bad: Some acting and plot inconsistencies.
The Basics: The Avengers is a decidedly average superhero movie that is made vastly better by Joss Whedon’s attention to character and witty dialogue.


The Avengers is the movie that Marvel Comics fans have been waiting for for years. That’s what pretty much all of the fans want to hear and it is pretty easy to write; The Avengers is a big team-up movie that puts some of the most significant non-X-Men characters in the Marvel Universe together in a single film. Most of the recent Marvel movies have been planting the seeds for The Avengers and it was only when I went to define the film with its number rating that I realized I had rated Iron Man 2 higher. (For the record, I enjoyed The Avengers more on my first viewing than I did Iron Man 2, but I generally do not go back and re-rate films once I have reviewed them, so . . .).

The Avengers is, arguably, the best Marvel Universe movie or, at the very least, the most initially enjoyable. Unlike some of the films that led to The Avengers, I was at no point bored while watching this movie. I was also not sitting and second-guessing the characters. Instead, with The Avengers, the movie makes sense and moves at a decent pace and it has enough emphasis on character to keep it viable and entertaining.

But, it’s not perfect.

Anyone looking for The Avengers for a perfect film will end up disappointed, not because it’s bad, but because it is more formulaic than it is truly inspired. Even so, writer and director Joss Whedon gets the movie as close as he could to perfection, without making it overly cluttered. The spark that is missing, before I go into a long, long stream of compliments about the movie, is a strong theme. The Avengers lacks a strong, mature theme, though it adequately beats to death the idea that working together is the only way to capitalize on strengths and minimize weaknesses. So, unlike The Dark Knight (reviewed here!) where there is a powerful statement about the nature of chaos and the role of law enforcement to stop genuine evil or the entire argument Watchmen (reviewed here!) makes about what is right is not necessarily what is legal is absent from The Avengers. The movie is about what it is; superheroes coming together to stop great evil because that is what they do.

In other words, the movie is not about high-minded debate or theories or abstracts. Instead, The Avengers defines a clear problem, a danger that must be stopped and one man’s vision on how to stop that is put into action. The main conflicts, then, come from executing that plan, as opposed to actually debating the validity of the plan. Even so, Joss Whedon makes a pretty direct “world is going to be destroyed by evil” plot feel surprisingly fresh again with The Avengers through interesting characters and his trademark witty dialogue.

Manipulated by Loki, Erik Selvig has managed to tap into the power of the Cosmic Cube from Asgard. A tesseract, it is a device of virtually limitless power and is connected to other realms. This puts Loki in command of a powerful army, armed with advanced weaponry, that is willing and able to do his bidding. When Loki takes Selvig, Agent Clint Barton (Hawkeye) and the tesseract while destroying the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, Nick Fury sees hope in the abandoned Avengers Initiative. Agent Coulson and Natasha Romanoff make a desperate attempt to gather the superheroes currently operating on Earth that Fury profiled for the Avengers Initiative. Appealing to Dr. Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, does not work out ideally – Stark is characteristically resistant to working with others and Thor is torn about going up against his brother in the way Fury’s plans dictate (when he enters the fray). As Banner wrestles with having to become what he has resisted for years (the Hulk) in order to be of greater use to the fight, Fury works to get the team to put their massive egos aside.

Things go from bad to worse when the team’s attempt to take down Loki’s forces leaves the group more shaken than successful. Regrouping, the Avengers take on Loki and his pawns as a last stand to stop Earth from being overrun and enslaved.

The Avengers is big and writers Joss Whedon and Zak Penn do an excellent job of both raising the stakes – making the Avengers Initiative one that is actually vital instead of a kind of keen idea Nick Fury is kicking around for no particular reason – and accommodating the big personalities of the characters involved. Tony Stark, Thor, Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers have all held their own as suitably important superheroes in their own films, so Whedon and Penn’s challenge is to keep their stature high and yet make it plausible that they would need to rely upon the other members of the team. And with that, Whedon certainly succeeds in The Avengers.

The task is made easy by some of the characters: the Avengers Initiative is Nick Fury’s brainchild, Agent Coulson is his loyal employee and Black Widow, Hawkeye and Captain America all respect authority and a clear chain of command. As a result, while all of the characters have their moments in The Avengers, those characters take a backseat to character conflicts and plot points that focus on Iron Man, Thor, Loki and the Hulk. Just as there will never be a Star Trek film that focuses on Dr. Crusher, a Buffyverse film where Xander gets the lionshare of the screentime or a big-budget Elastic Man film, Hawkeye and Agent Coulson are pretty much relegated to supporting roles for much of The Avengers. Captain America, as well, takes less of a priority role, compared to Banner, Stark, Thor and Loki.

Bruce Banner, especially, is given a decent character arc throughout The Avengers, which allows Mark Ruffalo to truly make the role his. Banner is characterized as appropriately conflicted and Whedon smartly uses Banner in an interesting role instead of just relegating him to the Hulk and saving him for big action sequences. Bruce Banner tries to use his scientific mind to find weak spots in Loki’s forces that the team might be able to exploit and the interactions between him and Tony Stark actually allow Banner to hold his own against the more charismatic Stark. Banner’s character arc really is that of the reluctant hero rising to become a part of something bigger than himself and Ruffalo does a good job of slowly transforming Bruce Banner from a very insular character to one who is willing to actively save the world. His body language throughout the movie illustrates a strong acting ability that makes Bruce Banner often much more interesting to watch than the Hulk.

It is worth noting at this juncture that the special effects in The Avengers are absolutely amazing. Joss Whedon and his CG team manage to do what none of the prior directors who have used the Hulk on screen have done, which is to create a giant, CG-beast and make him look like he absolutely belongs in the environment. The coloring, lighting, depth and shading of the Hulk finally look realistic in every frame of The Avengers and that allows the Hulk to interact seamlessly with other characters and creatures. This movie looks great on the big screen and the special effects are truly special.

As one might expect, Tony Stark has a great deal of importance to The Avengers. Whedon and his team manage to make sure the film never becomes lopsided in the Iron Man direction, but the film manages to provide Stark with an interesting character arc. In The Avengers, the one man army is forced to recognize – even though he may not admit it – that he is not invincible and that the Iron Man suit cannot solve all problems. After a disastrous encounter, Stark opens up to the idea that the team approach might have value, at least in the current invasion. The arc is not an instantaneous transformation, so the character is not at all cheapened and there is a rich direction for the character to explore in Iron Man 3.

But arguably the greatest character moments come from Thor and Loki. While Thor is disconnected from his friends and his familiar realm, he has a pretty absolute quality to him that tells him what is right and wrong. Despite his ego, he wants to help protect Earth and he struggles to operate with guidelines outside what a god might expect. On the flipside, Loki becomes the implicit example of what happens when godlike power remains unchecked. Not at all a monolithic villain, Loki has a strong drive to conquer and understandable, if not empathetic, motivations for what he does. Loki is played alternately with a cold, calculating quality and a righteous fury by Tom Hiddleston. Hiddleston does not lack the subtlety that he portrayed in Thor, but his character has changed enough that he presents him with both leadership qualities and a more overt sense of determination.

As for the rest of the acting, The Avengers does what it can to service all the characters and give the performers something to do, though most of them do what they did in their prior Marvel Universe movies. Samuel L. Jackson’s role as Nick Fury has more screentime, but he shows the viewer nothing we have not seen from him before in his many other roles. Is he bad? Not for a second, but his performance is exactly what one expects when they read that Samuel L. Jackson has been cast. Similarly, Clark Gregg, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, and Chris Hemsworth all perform well within expectations. Scarlett Johansson does fine with the physical role of Black Widow, but too often her interpretation of a Russian accent sounds like a Southern drawl. Conversely, Jeremy Renner plays Clint (Hawkeye) with a lack of uncertainty that makes Hawkeye surprisingly badass. Sure, he’s surrounded by a god, a mutant, a supersoldier and an inventor with a pretty powerful arsenal, but Hawkeye can hit things with a bow and arrow. Any actor who can make that role seem interesting amid explosions, guns and energy bolts deserves a few lines of praise!

The Avengers may well be the ultimate popcorn movie, but it has heart, just not enough soul to be considered enduringly great or visionary. Joss Whedon was given the task of bringing together one of the most iconic comic book superhero teams and he did that masterfully. Moreover, he made the film feel important and appropriately dark, without losing his sense of wit. The dialogue throughout The Avengers keeps the film fun to watch, even as it seems the world around the characters is going to hell. The result is a legitimate opening to Summer Blockbuster Season that does not feel forced or frivolous for a change.

For the Marvel movies that helped build up to this film, please check out my reviews of:
Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor
Iron Man 2
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man

8.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movies I have reviewed!

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