Category Archives: Movies

Voice Actors are not Interchangeable

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I had intended to write this yesterday but when you wake in the morning in the midst of a migraine your day is pretty much trash.

Monday, we learned that the talented performer James Earl Jones passed away at 93. With a career and noted performances well before his ascendency to fan stardom as the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars, Jones was a unique talent.

Jones was also not the person Lucas had in mind when he wanted someone to vocally perform for his space fantasy adventure, his first choice was Orson Welles. Jones proved to be the right choice. His voice was lesser known but nothing in the man’s multidecade history indicates that he was ever difficult to work with. Would Star Wars have reached the same heights with Welles providing the voice? Probably. The nation culturally was ready to turn the page on the cynicism of the 70s and Star Wars provided that new direction and escape, but I do think that Vader would have been lessened with another voice actor.

Vader wasn’t the only character transformed by their vocal performer.

C3PO is famously vocally performed by the character’s suit performer Anthony Daniels but that was not the intention.  Daniels had been hired to be the body on set, much as David Prowse had been Darth Vader on set.

Instead of a prissy English butler, C3PO’s conception of a character was closer akin to an untrustworthy used car salesman. Go back and listen to his dialog in the original film and note just how mean and cutting it is. 3PO is not a nice and likeable character as written, but only becoming endearing due to Daniels’ performance. It is my understanding that when they tried to record the lines as originally envisioned, everyone heard the disaster it was, and the role was then given to Daniels.

We often think of voice actors as lesser. That is unfair and probably due to the preponderance of terrible dubbing of foreign language films. In those case the artists are rarely given the time or direction to craft a real performance, a gross disservice.

Voice actors deserve the respect and admiration of the audience, and they are never interchangeable.

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Who is it at Disney/Marvel That Hates Sex?

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It’s been a few weeks since I watched Deadpool & Wolverine and the short comings of that film continue to live in my head, particularly the radical changes to some of the characters such as Vanessa.

A friend of mine, Tom, suggest in a replay that the changes to her profession and nature were dictated by studio notes I think he has a high chance of being right on that.

Marvel Studios/Disney

When Vanessa was introduced in Deadpool she was a sex worker. Not a glamorous, oh so sophisticated idealized version such as the actress role on Firefly, but a woman who sold sexual unions for cash. She was tough, took charge of her own life, and made her own decisions. The roman between her and Wade Wilson was the beating heart of the film. Their reunion at the end the emotional payoff for the audience. Though I have quibbles that in the final act her character was presented a little too ‘girlfriend passive’ for my tastes and shortchanged her a bit.

In the sequel she was so beloved that test audience reactions forced the denouement that resurrected her. Vanessa was a passionate, forceful, and importantly to her character, a sexual person in charge of her own agency.

All of that was stripped away in Deadpool & Wolverine with her character reduced to off screen motivations and her life shrunk to an office drone. All of the fire and every aspect of her sexual passion stripped away to leave nothing but an empty shell of a character.

But it was not just Vanessa who lost their mojo. Wade Wilson in both preceding films presented as a man secure in his quite fluid sexuality. In addition to his passion and deep love for Vanessa Wade displayed deep sexual attraction and flirtation with people across the gender spectrum.

Aside from a single fourth wall break this was removed from the character. The film neutered Wilson as thoroughly as it had Vanessa.

It is clear that Disney/Marvel in willing to continue the R-rated franchise tolerated violence and splattered blood what it dictated that could not exist is open, healthy, and vigorous sexuality.

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Remakes Aren’t So Terrible

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I missed making a post yesterday. I had a dental visit, now I have two new molars, and for most of the day a somewhat sore jaw.

This past week saw a remake of the 90s cult favorite The Crow. Now, I have seen the 90’s film, it didn’t work for me, and I found it quite dull, so this remake hasn’t interested me at all. Naturally, there have been various vocal critics not wanting to see a remake of a film that was beloved to them. I can understand that. Remakes are often, particularly in this day of studio and demographic polled directed artistic decisions, inferior copies of the originals. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still possessed nothing of the 1950’s film’s intelligence or pointed narrative. The remake quickly fell from cultural attention and has been largely forgotten. The original remains accessible and untouched.

There are loads of badly executed remakes, Flight of the Phoenix, Poseidon vs The Poseidon Adventure, The Manchurian Candidate, King Kong and its pair of remakes. In each of these cases the remakes failed to capture the mysterious elements that made the original such classics.

All art is a product of its time. The artists and the audience are baked in the cultural over of their lives and that impressions on the art. The magic that made the classic so unforgettable is from much the years in which they were crafted as much as the people who crafted them.

So, if remakes are so often lesser movies, then why did I title this that they aren’t so bad?

Because the originals remain. Sometimes they gain new life because of the attention created by the remake. And sometimes, quite rarely, the remake becomes the new classic. The Maltese Falcon is the 3rd film adapted from the novel, but it is the 3rd film that lives on as a timeless classic while the preceding movies, who undoubtedly had their fans, fades away.

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Alien Covenant and the Mainline Franchise

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I saw Prometheus in the theater, found it terribly disappointing and therefore skipped its direct sequel Alien: Covenant when it was released. Following the modestly entertaining Alien: Romulus I decided to watch Covenant since it was one of my streaming services.

20th Century Studios

The first hour of Alien: Covenant was pretty damn good. The science, while far from being ‘hard sf’ was insulting and the neither the script nor the characters mind numbingly stupid as they had been in the previous film.

Then they reached the point where it had to bring in Prometheus and the film died. The action was lackluster with a dropped frame style that made everything too much like a video game and the plot progressed predictably with every ‘reveal’ blindingly obvious.

So, how do I feel about this most inconsistent franchise?

The two best films in the series are easily Alien and Aliens.

Next would be Alien” Romulus, derivative but entertaining.

Next Alien: Resurrection, more action than anything else and populated with what feels like the ‘alpha’ version of the Firefly crew.

Everything else, Alien 3, the Predator crossovers, and the two prequels are the trash dump of the franchise.

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A Film I will Not Finish: Jackpot!

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Awkwafina and John Cena are both far too good for the material thrust upon with the sagging unfunny action-comedy Jackpot!

Amazon Studios

An aspiring actor returning to Los Angeles Awkwafina’s Katie becomes the subject of a lethal lottery when she wins the big prize in California’s monthly mega lottery. The wrinkle is that this new lottery will grant to prize to anyone who murders the person with the winning ticket if that murder happens before sundown and no guns are involved. Unaware of what has transpired with her winning because Katie has been living in Michigan dealing with her mother’s end of life care, she ends up with the services of John Cena’s Noel who is going to act as her bodyguard for 10 percent of the winning. There is a competing protect services offered by Simon Liu, but I did not get far enough into the film to see his character’s entrance.

Jackpot! fails on both of its critical levels. It is a comedy that provokes no laughter and an action movie with dull, uninspired, and poorly photographed stunt and fight work. Stunts, like dance, needs to be photographed so the audience can see the performers amazing physical prowess, not hidden behind fast choppy editing.

My sweetie-Wife and I gave the film 30 minutes of our time and we have no plan to return to see the remaining hour plus of the dull and uninteresting movie. Perhaps it gets better, perhaps it become more credible, but I harbor serious doubts based upon the movie’s uninspired start.

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Movie Review: Alien Romulus

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The seventh film in the Alien franchise Alien Romulus is set between the events of Alien and Aliens. The film is directed and co-written by Fede Alvarez and produced by Ridley Scott’s production company ‘Scott Free’ and Walter Hill’s ‘Brandywine.’

20th Century Studios

Romulus returns to the theme of ‘blue-collar’ workers in dire trouble established by the original 1979 feature film. In this story a collection of miners and other assorted low-value labor board a derelict station in hopes of obtained hyper-sleep pods that will allow them to escape their indentured servitude by making the 9-year voyage to the nearest planet not controlled by the corporation. the station however harbors secrets and dangers the characters are wholly unaware of and what started as a quest to escape rapidly become one of survival.

 

 

In my opinion Romulus ranks third in the franchise, directly after the original and Cameron’s direct sequel. Fede Alvarez and production designer Naaman Marshal have done a quite admirable job is creating a film that feels as though it is part of the world established by the original film and its sequel. Graphics recreated from those movies do not draw attention to themselves but create the familiar environment of those production. For the most part story beats and scenes that do call back to earlier movies do not feel as though they were forced into the film as some sort of obligatory ‘fan service.’

For the most part.

There are sadly several bits that do feel forced and contrived. I think in general it is preferrable to reference earlier films in a franchise with production design and props but not dialog. The dialog spoken by previous characters is theirs and it is unquestionably better to find the right words for you characters rather than take them from another.

The weakest section of the film for me is the final ten or fifteen minutes. Not only does it not feel earned and rather forced it extends a film that had reached a natural and satisfying conclusion with references to substandard entries in the franchise and caused the movie to end with more stolen dialog.

I find it ironic that the most enduring thematic element in the franchise is the one that screenwriter Dan O’Bannon objected to the most when it was inserted into his original script for Alien. The entire corporate conspiracy sub-plot, that the ship had been diverted deliberately and that the crew was considered expendable O’Bannon never liked but has become the defining theme of the films. It lives strong and proud in Romulus.

The next element of my review contains a spoiler so here’s a few thoughts before I continue.

Alien Romulus is a decent if somewhat flawed film that earns at least one viewing.

***SPOILER WARNING***

Through extensive and fairly well deployed CGI the filmmakers recreated on the screen Ian Holm, portraying another android in the same series that ‘Ash’ belonged to. There were some minor ‘uncanny valley’ issues, but they were well managed and actually fit the style of the film for an ‘artificial person.’

The fact that the plot revolves around a soulless corporation pushing workers to their death and seeking a way to extract value even beyond their death while the film literally extracts value from a deceased laborer is deeply ironic.

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Thematic Cohesion and the Challenge of Sequels

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Over on threads a response I made explaining why Alien 3‘s opening sequence is a mistake had prompted a little push back from fans of the 3rd film in the franchise.

What is posted was; ‘It’s worse than that. It’s telling the audience from Aliens that they were suckers for investing any emotional energy in Newt or Hicks. All of your emotional strain and joy — wasted — because we can’t give an ef what you feel.‘

The response that has intrigued me the most goes like this; ‘That’s life man. No rhyme, no reason, no ef’s given for your feelings. The people you love sometimes die in accidents, that doesn’t make you a sucker for loving them. Alien 3’s opening is gut-wrenchingly real.’

That response is a clear example of nihilism, that life and existence is essentially meaningless. The vast cold universe is utterly uncaring of your little concerns and your efforts to impose order and meaning are futile.

I myself am not a nihilist but it is a valid philosophical disciple, but does it negate the point I made about the betrayal of the audience with the uncaring killing off of the characters of Newt and Hicks?

Nihilistic art has its place and a long tradition even in cinema. The French film The Wages of Fear is famously nihilistic and its ending a somber examination that a person’s fight for life is futile and that death comes for all of us is woven into the films story and mood.

Alien and the direct sequel Aliens are not nihilistic pieces. Ripley survives the first film triumphant. Ridley Scott did not invoke The Wages of Fear and have an asteroid slam into Ripley’s shuttle after her defeat of the alien to demonstrate the futility of existence. James Cameron’s script and film for Aliens is a voyage of healing and becoming whole after a traumatic event. It contains not only message of hope that healing can be had but message against racism with Ripley’s acceptance of Bishop after her near murder by Ash. It is far from nihilistic.

This is what makes Alien 3 the sequel rejected by so many fans. The franchise had not been nihilistic. The series itself, born in the cinematic garden that followed Star Wars in rejecting the overly cynical mood of the 70s for a more upbeat and optimistic vision. While Alien and Alienscontained the sub-plot of the ‘Corporation’ and its corruption providing motivation for events absent in the original drafts of the script the overall tone of the films are is not cynical. The 1980s were not fertile ground for cynical stories, the audiences had experienced enough of them in the 1970s and wanted adventure and escapism, hence why two film now considered classics and masterpiece works, Blade Runner and The Thing failed utterly at the box office.

Alien 3‘s sharp turn to cynicism and nihilism is at odds with the previous films and with the mood of the audience. It is thematically divergent from the franchise and while each film must hold its own unique vision and theme to work within the franchise they must hold the encompassing theme of the greater work.

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Patriarchal Horror

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One of my regular podcasts The Evolution of Horror where each season a particular cinematic sub-genre of horror is examined in chronological order to study its origins and changes over the decades. Some of the sub-genres that have been explored are ghosts, the occult, and slashers to name just three.

Last night as sleep drifted into my brain I thought about another possible sub-genre, Patriarchal Horror. What I envisioned was something closely related to but distinct from feminist horror. I would categorize feminist horror about the claiming of power and agency by female characters but that does not require an explicit depiction of patriarchy to exist. For example, Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, a key film in the development of the slasher sub-genre coming a few years before Carpenter’s Halloween exploded in the culture is specifically about a sorority house dealing with a stalker and murderer but the men and the wider world that they inhabit aren’t depicted as subjugating or dominating the women. It is feminist without dealing with patriarchy.

An example of what I would call patriarchal horror is the original The Stepford Wives. In the film the men of small town of Stepford substitute their wives with perfect robotic replacements, ones that never challenge, always know their place, and perform all their wifely duties without complaint. It is the platonic ideal of horror that draws entirely from the patriarchy.

Promising Young Woman is often slotted into the ‘rape revenge’ sub-genre and that’s not a terrible fit even if the principal character exacting her revenge isn’t herself the rape survivor. It also neatly fits into patriarchal horror because the film depicts quite intentional the culture and male dominated systems that create the environment where men escape any form of consequence for their horrible actions.

What got me started on this line of speculation was this year’s outstanding horror film Immaculate. Starring and produced by Sydney Sweeny Immaculate is very much about men exercising power and domination over women’s bodies. About how control over oneself is a fundamental freedom and right.

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Movie Review: Longlegs

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From writer/director Osgood Perkins who gave us the disturbing possession tale The Black Coat’s Daughter comes the occult/police procedural Longlegs.

Neon

After junior FBI Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) displays an intuitive sense that borders on the clairvoyant she is reassigned to William Carter (Blair Underwood) to assist with a perplexing series of murders that stretches back decades. Entire families slaughtered by the father without any physical evidence of another person present but at each crime scene as coded cypher signed ‘Longlegs.’ The daughter of a religious mother (Alicia Witt) Lee is troubled by the strange apparently unrelated mass murders but with her added to the investigation what had been cold dead trails blossom with new leads and clues. By the end Lee discovers that ‘Longlegs’ is no garden variety serial killer and families can harbor dark dangerous secrets to safeguard their children.

Osgood Perkins does not make splatter horror. That is not to say his film are devoid of violence or blood but rather that the horror comes from a deeper character and human condition than any sudden explosion of on-screen violence. The adjective that best sums up the sensation of watched Longlegs is ‘unsettling.’ There are scenes where in terms of movement and action literally nothing is happening and yet the composition of the frame, the ingenuity of the sound design, and delivery by the performs combine into a miasma of uncanny dread.

Perkins and cinematographer Andres Arochi makes frequent uses of characters staring directly into the camera lens turning the fourth wall permeable, subtly drawing us into the scene. In The Silence of the Lambs when characters looked straight down the barrel of the camera it was from Starling’s Point of View, we were slotted into her perspective as a woman in what was perceived as ‘man’s world. With Longlegs it is rare that this is from a character’s point of view, but rather it is the audience that the performers are staring at and making complicit in the scene.

Another area where Perkin and editors Graham Fortin and Greg Ng break from convention is in how the film utilizes ‘jump scares.’ In the vast majority of horror cinema, a jump scare is telegraphed long before the director gooses the audience with a sudden sharp cut and sounds. The anticipation of the jump scare is part of the experience, the building dread and certainty that it cannot be avoided. The jump scares in longlegs are sudden and without any buildup or winding of tension. As much as the characters in the story, the audience is caught off guard by the sudden shift in perspective or revelation.

Longlegs in spite of how it begins as a pursuit of a serial killer movie is in fact an occult horror film and that becomes clear in the story’s final act when all is revealed, secrets bared, and terrible truths endured.

This is not a film for everyone. There are no rampaging monsters, nor an endless parade of scantily clad young adults meeting bloody ends for their adherence of drugs and premarital sex. Longlegs is much more akin to Hereditary in tone. It is unsettling, uncanny, and for many people unforgettable.

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Movie Review: Deadpool and Wolverine

Marvel Studios/Disney

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After thoroughly enjoying Deadpool and Deadpool 2 I was quite looking forward to Deadpool and Wolverine. Friday night I sacrificed a couple of hours of sleep by attending a late screening of the film at my local AMC and with the seat fully reclined laid back to enjoy the show.

I would have been happier with the sleep.

I can say with all honesty that the screening of Deadpool and Wolverine elicited just one emotion from me: boredom.

The credits list five writers for the screenplay and man oh man does it show. The film is wildly inconsistent lacking in any unifying vision, theme, or structure. It is almost as disrespectful to the Deadpool stories that preceded it as Alien 3 was to Aliens.

Characters exist within the context of the relationships if you break the relationships, you break the character. Deadpool and Wolverine shatters the relationships between Wade Wilson and the previous characters of the franchise.

The nature of Wade’s relationships with the various secondary characters is a crucial element in Wade’s own character. Mind you all these characters are present in the film, in a group scene that has all the emotion of a checklist.

The character disrespected the most, whose transformation is so at odds with their earlier incarnation is beggars belief to accept them as the same character is of course Vanessa.

Introduced in the first film Deadpool’s love interest Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) became an instant favorite for many people. Her sex worker character was neither tragic nor possessed of the trite and cliche ‘heart of gold’ but rather a suitable and equal foil for Wade Wilson’s massive presence. She had the vitality and sprit to occupy the screen and hold her own. The second film’s ending was reshot to satisfy audiences who were unwilling to accept such a dynamic character’s death for mere protagonist motivation points.

In Deadpool and Wolverine Vanessa now an office worker and manager has had all of that fire extinguished. The changes to her character is presented as the reason for the changes to Wade’s but are so totally at odds with what has been established as to make it all utterly meaningless.

Without the loving and interesting character relationships, Deadpool and Wolverine is simply meta references, gags, and pointless combat lacking in all tension.

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