I saw Pacific Rim again over the weekend. The movie was even better the second time around, because I wasn’t so focused on OH MY GOD SHINY SWORD BUTTON and paying more attention to the characters and what they were saying and doing.
Spoiler warnings for this whole thing since I am wibbling about the characters.
Saw this in Sunday after my century, so my memory of it isn’t as clear as maybe it could be, since I was already tired and thought three beers were an awesome idea. Also, I apparently missed the best fight scene of the entire movie because my brain still thought I was dehydrated and my bladder begged to differ.
That said, this movie was a lot of fun. This isn’t something I’m going to squee over or write blog post after blog post for. It’s not that kind of movie. It’s just fun. And everyone in that movie sure looks like they’re having a great time and were just nice enough to bring you along.
I think this is the only non-Batman DC comics movie franchise I have ever given a shit about. And frankly, given the choice between Batman and RED, most days I’d actually go for RED because its raison d’être isn’t the idea that western civilization is a crumbling, cynical wreck from which only a rich guy with awesome toys can save us. RED is brain candy where senior citizens blow shit up.
Basically, if you liked the first RED, you’ll like the second just as much. Same sort of humor, same sort of action, same poking fun at spy tropes. John Malkovitch was so intensely John Malkovitch that I may have sustained a slight John Malkovitch burn, which may some day give me skin cancer. Helen Mirren is still the most perfect. Anthony Hopkins is just gleeful.
I think Lee Byung-hun as the super assassin Han Jo-Bae was actually my favorite though. (Except Helen Mirren because she will forever be queen of my heart.) He starts out as just the creepy angry badass and then there’s some really fun development, just to turn that trope on its head. Oh, and his fight scenes were lovely. Hope to see him in more movies.
RED is an action world at 90 degrees off the normal plane and I enjoy it for that. It’s where age and treachery win every time, the ultimate sign of affection is giving someone a gun, and yes, that really is a stick of dynamite in John Malkovitch’s pocket, but he is happy to see you nonetheless. I’m not sure why the franchise never quite makes the leap for me into something truly memorable as comedy. Maybe because it is just about finding tropes and twisting their nipples in the must amusing way possible, but without much of a heart behind it all. It’s telling that I can remember all the actors by name, but couldn’t tell you what their characters are called to save my life. I’d watch it any time it was on TV, but I can’t say I’d bother to buy it.
But definitely worth seeing in the theater if you like that kind of movie. I will say of it’s the choice between this and Pacific Rim, you should see Pacific Rim instead. There’s so much more meat there, and it’s just as much fun.
Lionsgate has apparently copped to just how many people are pissed off about OSC being a giant homophobe. They’re hosting a benefit premiere of the movie for LGBT groups.
To a certain extent, I feel for them. Ender’s Game is a novel that’s been screaming for a movie for years. It has everything you could want. Except for the part that the author is a giant homophobe and people don’t want to support him because he gives money to anti-gay organizations. (Unsurprisingly, I am one of those people.) They picked up a good story with a giant lead weight attached to it, and they’ve been fighting against that ever since. That… really sucks. Honestly, Ender’s Game was a very special novel to me when I was growing up, and I wish I could feel good about going to watch the movie.
But then again, this should not have come as a surprise to them. It’s not like OSC waited until the movie was in production and then came out of the closet (hur hur hur) as a homophobe. He’s been saying that for years. In fact, I used to read his blogs and regular articles until the homophobia came up, at which point I had to stop because it was too upsetting. This happened over ten years ago, so yeah. It’s not a surprise.
Lionsgate trying to offer the olive branch with the benefit premiere just gives me even more conflicted feelings. Because it does make me happy that they’re trying to do something. But they’re the ones that stepped into the middle of this mess to begin with–did they think people wouldn’t notice? And would the amount of money coming in from such a benefit premiere outweigh the support given to the author? I have no idea.
I want there to be more good science fiction movies. I really do. I’d hope this would be one of them. But… but. I’m glad Lionsgate has stepped up, but why didn’t they see this coming from the beginning? It feels like a response to a PR nightmare, not necessarily a real acknowledgment of the fundamental problem.
Lionsgate would like us to separate the art from the artist. I wish I could. But not today, I’m afraid, and I don’t see that changing when the movie comes out. I wish things were different. I really do.
It has been noted by many (including myself) that Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel Test rather spectacularly. It has only two female characters of any note (Mako and half of the Russian Jaeger team, Lt. A Kaidonovsky) and they never have a conversation.
Thinking back on it, I desperately wish that had happened. That would have been amazing, maybe a conversation after Mako almost had her drift-induced disaster.
But I was thinking about it this morning, and the movie has something very few others have: two male characters talking about a woman and neither of them wants to fuck her. And it happens several times. And they talk about how competent she is, with the problem being Stacker is protective, not that she doesn’t have the chops.
That is refreshing. Even if I would have preferred a no bullshit female Jaeger pilot conversation and a little less Stacker and Raleigh butting heads.
I could go on about this movie forever. I need to see it again.
And a few more thoughts: [slight spoilers here]
Let me be clear: I was born to love this movie. I grew up watching Voltron, Power Rangers and other sentai shows, and kaiju movies. I was a giant Gundam weenie for years and years. (Evangelion not so much, but that’s a rant for a different time.) This movie was designed to hit every single nerd squee button I possess all at once and turn me into a shrieking explosion of popcorn and glitter. It’s GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING KAIJU HOW COOL IS THAT.
However, had it only been giant robots fighting monsters, I would have left the theater happy, but not been thrown into paroxysms of pure glee like I am now. Obviously, I’m capable of disliking movies that involve giant robots. I hated Transformers 2 and 3, after all.
But this movie was fun. And it was good. I’d even go so far as to call it groundbreaking, and let me explain why.
But there will be SPOILERS. [okay, I’m trying to use the “more” tag but I don’t know if it’s working, apologies if not.]
NGEMIOJREFWOEF-9230IK2P34T8U3540KQFWPSDVLWG-W4TJ24POMFWS;F,PSDCMOEF8Q0912!!!!!!!0WEJPOWEMFW;EFM3-012-13JGIRMWGE[VQ-9R1POLMGRGRJJWEFJEJR[KOQR3[[EKR AND A SWORD BUTTON THERE IS A MOTHERFUCKING SWORD BUTTON IN THIS MOVIE TAKE ME NOW JESUS I AM READY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Okay, I’ll write a real review tomorrow, I promise. I am so ridiculously tired right now you wouldn’t believe. (I rode 67 miles today and didn’t take a nap, so that might have something to do with it.)
BUT THIS MOVIE. YOU SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE.
So before Monsters University yesterday, one of the previews they played was this one for Frozen.
Now, this is still the description of the movie from the Disney site for Frozen.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, the studio behind “Tangled” and “Wreck-It Ralph,” presents “Frozen,” a stunning big-screen comedy adventure. Fearless optimist Anna (voice of Kristen Bell) sets off on an epic journey—teaming up with rugged mountain man Kristoff (voice of Jonathan Groff) and his loyal reindeer Sven—to find her sister Elsa (voice of Idina Menzel), whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. Encountering Everest-like conditions, mystical trolls and a hilarious snowman named Olaf, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom.
The trailer above is underwhelming to say the least. I am completely un-whelmed, really. If nothing else, it gives the impression that it’s a movie about Olaf the snowman. Or possibly just the cute animated short that will lead for the movie, since that seems to be a thing now for Disney. For a bonus, Olaf is also the character who shows up on the story page. (Though in the art there are some nice pictures of Anna and Kristoff.) Kind of makes it seem like this is a movie about a doofy reindeer and snowman combo (Ice Age-esque, really) and involves no humans, let alone any girl ones, at all.
The reason this gives me no warm fuzzies whatsoever reaches back to the debacle with the Rapunzel movie’s title being changed to Tangled because otherwise people would assume it was a girly movie or something. Yes, this is just a pre-pre-pre trailer, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like they’re trying to disguise what the movie is really about. Because girl stuff is yucky and we all know boys won’t watch girl stuff. (But girls totally watch boy stuff all the time. Because that is the natural order of things.)
Another bonus! This is what the Japanese trailer looks like!
Hint: Anna spends a lot of time in the trailer mentioning her sister and her sister’s magic. And Anna exists in the trailer! And is plainly the heroine of the story!
DOUBLE BONUS: The Japanese title of the movie is 『アナと雪の女王』–Translated: Anna and the Snow Queen. Not something as non-specific as Frozen.
Disney, why the fuck are you now trying to pretend women are not present in–nay, CENTRAL TO–your movies? Is it the same utter, contemptible bullshit that motivated the title change for Rapunzel? Well, little girls watch boy movies and then we can hook them in with the princess thing, but we shouldn’t even try to get little boys interested in movies with women? Is that the thing now?
This just infuriates me. I get that it makes marketing sense, if you think that’s what’ll get butts in the seats. That doesn’t make any less infuriating. Before The Princess and the Frog, there were plenty of Disney movies that had a title centered around the leading lady. But the issue has now been made into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Way to reinforce the idea that women in lead roles just don’t get butts in the seats by making them vanish.
Orson Scott Card would like us to be tolerant of his anti-gay marriage views, now that we’ve won. The point is, apparently “moot.” I call bullshit on that one. DOMA may be dead, and the language of that decision may be what will make the rest of the dominoes fall, so to speak. But the point is not moot. Gay and lesbian citizens still can’t get married in the majority of states in this country, many of which have enshrined homophobia in their constitutions. Transgendered Americans are still even further behind when it comes to having full rights to be who they are. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that there are rights beyond marriage.
So no, the issue is not moot. The issue will not be moot until every one of us is equal under the law. Telling ourselves that we have already won and stopping the fight before the finish line would be foolish indeed.
And even if victory is inevitable (oh how I hope that it is), OSC is still in prime position to fund the foot dragging and last tantrums of a lost conservative cause. So no, I don’t think it’s time to forget that yet, not when he hasn’t backed down, hasn’t changed his mind. He’s just been overruled.
What about separating the art from the artist? You don’t have to like someone and their views to like their art, to consume and support it you know.
I’ve had this argument with friends before, specifically in regards to Orson Scott Card. It’s an uncomfortable subject, and I have conflicted feelings about it. Not in the least of which is the fact that when I met OSC in person years ago, I thought he was a pretty nice guy, and he gave me some of the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten. He’s very likeable in person.
Then I remind myself that, as a bisexual woman, he thinks there’s something wrong with me and would want me to be a shamed, second-class citizen if I had fallen in love with a woman instead of a man.
But separate the art from the artist. It feels like a horrible twist on “love the sinner, hate the sin.”
There is a reason, for the most part, that I don’t actively seek out the opinions of artists. Sometimes knowing too much ruins it. Sometimes knowing too much means you can no longer read or watch or listen to a piece of art you enjoyed without thinking about how the artist has harmed something about which you care deeply. Sometimes you wish you just didn’t know.
But artists are people just like the rest of us, and they have opinions, and they have a right to express those opinions. Wil Wheaton points this out eloquently and often whenever someone complains about him daring to have politics out loud where people can see them. And like for everyone else, the freedom of an artist to express an opinion is not the same as the freedom to have no consequences because of it. When we’re talking about artists like OSC, his voice is louder than that of many others because of his art. He has a platform. We, his fans, built that platform for him with our support.
If we do not like what he is doing with that platform, I don’t think we are in any way obligated to continue that support.
But separate the art from the artist. Why can’t you do that? Shouldn’t you do that?
Does art happen in a vacuum? Is it truly a thing separate from the artist? This isn’t just an academic question for me, when it comes to Orson Scott Card. I read Ender’s Game as a teenager. I literally finished the book in twelve hours, unwilling to put it down. It had a lot of meaning to me.
And yet.
At the reading where I met OSC, someone in the audience asked him a question: As a Mormon, did he try to put his religion into his work? And OSC gave what I thought was a very true and important answer that has stuck with me—he doesn’t try to do that. Preaching at your audience never turns out well. But he said that his religion is fundamental to who he is, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out into his art in subtle ways.
Because as artists, even when we are imagining ourselves as other people, we are the ones doing the creating. I am a white, bisexual woman, and I’m sure that no matter how hard I try, my experiences will always subtly reflect in how I create. Because it is my art.
Can you truly separate art from the artist? How do you deal with, say, Chris Brown and Roman Polanski if you like their art but cannot support them as human beings?
Art does not occur in a vacuum. And while you can appreciate art as good or bad without knowing the person behind it, regardless of the person behind it, consuming that art does in fact mean you are supporting its creator. And by supporting them, you are complicit in their causes. I have joined in boycotts of companies when it was revealed they were donating money anti-gay groups. Why should an artist be any different? Because he wrote some books I like? I’ve eaten Chik-fil-A sandwiches and nuggets more often than I’ve re-read Ender’s Game.
If you can separate the art from the artist, maybe that makes you a better person than me. Feel that way if you like. But I cannot support someone who believes that me and many of the people I love and esteem are not full human beings. Orson Scott Card chose to use his platform to denigrate LGBT people. I can damn well choose to take a tiny sliver of his platform, a platform I joined with countless others to help build, away.
This is another movie I wasn’t that excited about, but I wanted to see a movie on Sunday, and I liked the sound of this one better than any of the alternatives. I liked Monsters, Inc. all right, but it’s not one of my Pixar favorites. I’ve seen it maybe twice and have felt no great desire to own a copy on DVD.
This one, I liked a lot better. It was what one expects from a Pixar movie–funny, with more than enough smart jokes to keep grown-ups happy, and appropriately heartwarming at the same time. The animation just keeps getting better and better between movies. It was fun to learn how Mike and Sully got to be friends, and to watch their relationship go from bitter rivals to the best of friends. It still followed the doofy buddies in college comedy in formula, which means nothing in the plot was all that surprising, if still amusing.
This next bit is about the overall message of the film and is thus SPOILER-Y.
What I found most interesting about the movie was the message, however. It wasn’t the standard “if you can dream it, you can be it.” Which always does seem like a heartwarming, nice message until you consider that sometimes people are just physically or mentally not capable of achieving whatever their big dream happens to be; for example, some people just are not physically set up to be ballet dancers or Olympic athletes. And so on.
So instead, the message became more about Mike finding what he was truly good at and truly loved doing, and doing that even though it was a different dream than the one he started with. He starts out wanting to be a Scarer, but through the course of the movie he displays again and again that he’s an amazing coach, and that he is simply not scary at all. So instead, at the end he and Sully achieve their dream job (after being expelled from school) by joining Monsters, Inc as entry-level employees and excelling at everything they do, thus working their way up the ladder.
This isn’t the normal course for kid’s movies.
Also, when Sully comes clean about cheating, he (and Mike) get expelled. Things only work out for the boys after that dishonesty because they change tracks and start over. I also don’t feel like this is the most common message.
There’s a lot about this kind of message that I actually like. Because it is a hard but true thing that you can’t necessarily be anything you dream to be. Happiness tends to be finding what you like doing and what you’re good at and doing that. And there is a lot to be said for the idea of rising through the ranks through hard work; on the other hand, there’s the never ending boot straps narrative that isn’t really true.
I’m kind of late to the party on this one. It wasn’t high on my list of movies to see, to be honest, and we only ended up going today because no one was that excited by the other available options this weekend. (BUT NEXT WEEKEND IS PACIFIC RIM MOTHERFUCKERS ARE YOU READY OR WHAT?) Anyway, I’m a bit familiar with World War Z the book, in that I listened to the audiobook. (Which is abridged.)
I thought the audiobook was… okay. The production values were great (one of the voice actors was Allen Alda) but the content itself didn’t excite me. Part of the issue was that it was written as a memoir, which is not really my favorite format. Secondarily, I got annoyed that apparently the survivors of the zombie apocalypse were 80% male if you went by just the selection of stories told. But it wasn’t a bad book. It helped me pass the time in the gym pleasantly.
Anyway, I think I would have been better off if I wasn’t familiar with the source material. I might have ended up marginally less annoyed, particularly with what turned out to be the dealbreaker for me in the movie.
I came out of World War Z the movie feeling like it was somehow significantly longer than its two hour running time, which is a bad sign when it’s an action/suspense movie. And you know how I said I couldn’t believe I wished there were fewer explosions in Man of Steel? I wish this movie had fewer action sequences; they were predictable, clunky, and endless, squeezing out any development that might have helped me like the characters. Literally, every time Gerry goes somewhere, there is an action sequence involving a mob of zombies basically destroying everything, and he barely escapes with his life. Every goddamn time. There was no suspense to these action sequences because we knew they were coming by the third one.
Gerry was all right as a character, I guess? The main problem is, you never get to know him. You know he loves his wife and his two incredibly annoying kids. You know he apparently is the kind of guy that will randomly welcome an orphan into his family (hello, token brown child who is eerily calm). But what did he once do for the UN? We know it was important and badass and has apparently taught him the art of bayonetting zombies, but we never really find out once. His character is nebulous in ways that really make it hard to connect with what he’s trying to do and how he feels about things, because there’s no clear place from which he comes. Honestly, in the entire movie, the only one I really liked was Segen, a female Israeli soldier who goes through most of the film with only one hand and is incredibly badass while simultaneously being human enough to feel pain. The rest? Meh.
At least the zombies were suitably creepy. The way they moved was just viscerally wrong. That wasn’t enough to salvage the movie, though. Perhaps because there were just too damn many of them. There are some nicely creepy moments, but they often do not make any sense at all in the context of what the film has established. (e.g.: if you shoot zombies in the head and/or burn them, they die. Why then, do we see a corpse that appears to have been reduced to crusty ash wiggling its fingers? Creepy, but nonsensical.) The solution to the zombie apocalypse was nonsensical. As far as I could tell, Gerry (Brad Pitt) only had a family for the sole purpose of them screwing something up so an action sequence would be required.
Also, the fact that it literally takes only ten seconds from initial infection to a person becoming a full fledged zombie, while occasionally worked to creepy effect, is stupid.
Let me go into a few more details, so SPOILERS BELOW.
So, of the material from the book that I could tell was preserved, the only major points were that the zombies were attracted to noise (not uncommon in zombie lore) and that Israel had saved itself by building a wall early on and hunkering down. That’s really it.
Of course, the inclusion of Israel as seen in the book ended up being the thing that made me say screw this movie, I’m out. In the book, Israel has built a wall around the entire country (if memory serves) and invited not just all the Jewish people of the world to come and be safe, but anyone (including Muslims) who were originally born of that region. That’s one of the rather pointed ironies of the book, I think, that it takes a zombie apocalypse to bring peace to the Middle East. But either way, Israel survives the entirety of World War Z.
And then in this movie, this fucking movie, Israel gets overrun by zombies in approximately ten minutes, because Gerry showed up and everything he touches is destined to get eaten by zombies I guess. And the way they do it just really annoyed me. Gerry is being shown around by an Israeli guy, who is proudly telling him how they’re welcoming everyone inside the walls, because every person they save inside means one less zombie they will eventually have to kill. Sounds good. A crowd of what are presumably Muslim men and women come in and are welcomed. There is singing. And then somehow, a couple of the women get microphones (how? doesn’t matter! we need an action sequence!) so they can sing over the PA (if they know zombies are attracted to noise by now, why is there a PA system? doesn’t matter! we need an action sequence!) and that attracts every zombie in the universe. The zombies promptly climb the walls, somehow missed by the entire fleet of helicopters circling the walls, and that’s it for Israel.
Well, that’s what you get for singing and cooperating, humans.
This was immediately followed by my second least favorite action sequence of the movie. Gerry and Segen escape on a commercial jet that flies away from the airport as it is being overrun. Somehow, a zombie has gotten on the plane! How? Doesn’t matter! It’s been ten minutes! Segen and Gerry might like talk and have character development if we don’t stop them! So the passengers in Gerry’s cabin try to stack up luggage to form a barrier, but someone drops a suitcase and so everyone gets eaten.
I have had enough of these motherfucking zombies of my motherfucking plane, man.
Neither of those action sequences was all that interesting, or even necessary to the plot. They didn’t ratchet the tension up any higher. We already know the world is boned, guys. Frankly, if anything they destroyed the feeling of tension because they were so contrived and we knew they were coming because this movie is incapable of giving the audience (and characters) a little breathing space so that something can actually have impact.
What makes a movie scary or suspenseful isn’t when every time you hear a noise, it’s the serial killer. Sometimes the noise really does need to be just the cat, so you can think for just a moment you might be safe.
Oh, and the solution to the zombie apocalypse? Apparently zombies (using super psychic zombie senses or something) can sense when somebody is terminally ill, and thus that person becomes a non-target to them. So the solution is to infect everyone with some kind of special strain of a deadly disease. I KNOW, RIGHT. SORRY FOR SPOILING THAT ONE FOR YOU.
In other news, I saw the trailer for the new Wolverine movie. I tried really, really, really hard and still could not give even the tiniest of craps.
But on the other hand, I kind of want to see this. It looks funny in a horrible way, I would wager due to the association with Edgar Wright.
Best line of the preview: “He’s not a person, Tina, he’s a Daily Mail reader.”