Thank God It’s Over! 2017: The Summer Of Suck! #ReviewRoundup
#Summer #2017
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| Enjoy This Picture Because It Is The Best Part Of Summer |
Jesus! Lord, where are you? They said the world would end on
September 23rd. Frankly, we needed to be put out of our
misery after this 2017 summer: The Summer Of Suck. There was so much
crap that came out as far as entertainment goes that I truly don’t
know where to start. Movies? Television? Music? I don’t know. It
was just so bad. So bad! This summer was worse than Sister Edna’s
Easter Sunday song where everybody in the church already know that
she don’t know half the words to the song and can’t actually sing
but the pastor let her get up and wail anyway because he don’t want
her to tell nobody about that one nasty thing they did with each
other way back in the summer of ‘78 before he met his wife. We all
know dang well that Edna cain’t (not can’t, cain’t) sing but we
all sit up here and nod our heads as we hold back laughter and say,
“Lord, bless her heart, bless her heart!”
To be honest, I’m not
even ready for this post. I took the summer off from much of my blog,
as you can see, and didn’t review some of the other movies that I
should have because I got too busy. And I’ve been writing and
editing like crazy (I know the editing here is about to be very wonky
but I have to get this out), but since summer is finally officially
over and the new TV season has started (at least in the traditional
sense), I am compelled to do this now. So hold on as I knock the dust
off of my critic’s hat and go to town. I promise I’ll be as
gentle as possible... but no promises. Yay! Let’s go.
Excuse me if I miss a few things. I just can’t see everything.
Also, my computer was going through something for the last week and I
didn’t know if I had a virus, had been hacked or if it was
overheating (I decided to work outside to take advantage of the last
warm days of summer. Why? I have no idea) or something else, so I
missed out on a little bit of pop culture and blah, blah, blah. I say
that because some of these jokes might not be as fresh as I’d like
them to be. With that being said, I’m bound to offend tons of
people for what I have to say in this post. Brace yourself because it
is going to be long.
As always, I have to put a disclaimer on this thing. As a creative
person myself and writer of a myriad of novels (The Writer out now,
Extraordinary out now, The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear coming soon,
The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming soon), I actually hate criticizing
the work of others. Not because I am afraid of being criticized
myself but because I am keenly aware of how hard it is to create
something, anything that is decent in anyway. I also am aware that
when people like something, regardless of how I feel about it, it is
there full right to like it. I would also say that the super-fans of
a lot of this summer’s junk I would be so blessed to have as my own
fans very soon. These people are loyal, they like what they like,
they big-up what they find to be good, and they are the type of
people to make careers or keep people working in the entire
entertainment industry. So, I admire both them and the creators of
the things that they enjoy. OK. We good? Everybody understand how
hard this is for me (even though the blog is based almost completely
around it)? Great.
MUSIC
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| Sorry, Tay, I Liked Bad Blood Better As A Song, But Loved This Video |
Let’s start easy. There was some OK music this summer, but as I sit
here listening to the Billboard top 100, I find that a lot of the
music is just meh! Granted, this is how it is every year—a few
really great songs and a few mediocre songs helped by a great music
video or catchy hook—but maybe I noticed it more this year because
most of the other entertainment was so bad, too. There seems to be
such a lack of style for most artists these days. On top of that, all
the songs talk about pretty much the same thing. Good dance music?
Sure. Fine. Good music? Eh. I didn’t like Katy’s Swish Swish,
Bodak Yellow is good but is everywhere, Taylor Swift’s Look What
You Made Me Do was, to me, not as good as Bad Blood, I’m tired of
hearing Despacito, and I have yet to hear Jay-Z’s 4:44. As an aside
on that last one, I’m tired of all these damn subscription services
for EVERYTHING, and that includes Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. Sure,
cutting the cable cord sounds good in theory, but if that’s going
to make me have to have more bills over the long haul just to see all
of the “prestigious, Emmy-award-winning, everybody’s talking
about them” shows, then I’m not sure it’s a very good deal.
Especially with Disney and ESPN announcing they’re going to do
their own streaming services, too, I wouldn’t be surprised if in
five to seven years, most people are all streamed out.
I won’t spend too much time on music because there is so much out there that it’s hard to criticize the entirety of what was released. But I will say that I probably enjoyed what the now-solo artists of the defunct group One Direction put out on their own. At first I didn’t like Harry’s Sign O’ The Times, but only because I was too quickly stereotyping him into what I would expect from all boy-banders post breakup. Instead of going Zayn’s route and keeping with the romance/pop/R&B for his first release like Malik’s PillowTalk last year (and I do like Zayn and what he’s done this year; love Dusk ‘Til Dawn), Styles went instead for a fusion of the Vietnam-War-era message-song that felt reminiscent of The Beetles or Janis Joplin, and a mix of the current Alt-Pop genre fare that still talks about relationships but tries to tell a deeper story than just how good the sex was. As a song based loosely about impending doom of the end of days and how that plays into a romance, it was alright.
MOVIES
I won’t spend too much time on music because there is so much out there that it’s hard to criticize the entirety of what was released. But I will say that I probably enjoyed what the now-solo artists of the defunct group One Direction put out on their own. At first I didn’t like Harry’s Sign O’ The Times, but only because I was too quickly stereotyping him into what I would expect from all boy-banders post breakup. Instead of going Zayn’s route and keeping with the romance/pop/R&B for his first release like Malik’s PillowTalk last year (and I do like Zayn and what he’s done this year; love Dusk ‘Til Dawn), Styles went instead for a fusion of the Vietnam-War-era message-song that felt reminiscent of The Beetles or Janis Joplin, and a mix of the current Alt-Pop genre fare that still talks about relationships but tries to tell a deeper story than just how good the sex was. As a song based loosely about impending doom of the end of days and how that plays into a romance, it was alright.
MOVIES
Moving on, let’s now go to the movies. Sigh! Oh boy. Oh boy! OK, so
I’ll start with the obvious one that I already reviewed:
Wonder
Woman. You are going to find that throughout this post, the theme of
me not knowing what the heck the critics were thinking will be
recurring frequently. In this case, I have a partial hint at what the
critics (and, to a greater extent, audiences) were thinking but still
don’t know what they were thinking when they rated this movie.
Yeah, that last sentence is driving you crazy isn’t it English
majors? Kinda like what the praise for this movie did to me. It was a
mediocre movie and it was just an OK comic book/superhero movie in a
time in which we are getting some pretty great superhero movies. Yes,
we all know that it was an improvement over Man of Steel and Batman
V. Superman (don’t even mention that Tragedy
Suicide Squad, however that did not merit the amount of lauding it
got. I’m not going to take a bunch of time and space to re-review
it now because you can go back and read my review of it that I did
when it first came out, but I’ll give you a quick rundown of my
thoughts.
I thought it was highly overrated, wasn’t very feminist (caveat: I am not a feminist and concede to anyone who identifies as such to judge it’s feminist qualities), had fairly poor acting from its titular character/star, didn’t have that great of a soundtrack, had a poor choice for a villain and had a ton of narrative/Wonder Woman lore problems (again, how do these people age on this island if that great battle occurred back during the Grecian empire? Is it the island that’s magic or the people? How are the women, Diana especially, able to be shot or stabbed—a scratch in Diana’s case—yet also be so indestructible that Wonder Woman can be thrown into the ground and smashed with tanks and stuff at the end of the film without sustaining a single scuff mark on her face?).
And why are we allowing blatant sexism from a woman go when if a man did it, it would’ve been labeled as being part of rape culture (“what, you’re afraid of sleeping with me?” Sure, send the message that being peer-pressured into “cuddling” is actually a good thing). It also somehow underutilized every woman except Wonder Woman in the entire movie—“Oh, we have a female villain! Yeah, but she’s really only evil because of what some man did to her.” It, in equal measure, somehow managed to infantilize its hero by not having her really learn anything (“Oh, I’ve got to kill Ares to stop the war.” Steve: “It doesn’t work that way. Mankind is more complicated and nuan--” Ares: “I’m Ares! You killed the wrong guy. Kill me and see what happens.” Steve: Oh, well, never mind about that last point) nor take responsibility for her own actions. All while imparting the very message that feminists are so quick to say they don’t believe: that modern feminism simply isn’t about blaming men for everything and idolizing the woman as superior. Here, a woman is only two things: a victim (Robin Wright’s character, Steve’s secretary, Dr. Poison) forced to do what she does under the hand of a man, or must dominate a man to show her strength. And the only truly equal relationship between Trevor and Diane must completely remove the man from the scenario in order for the woman to become the true heroine she was supposed to be.
And don’t get me started on the “love conquers all” cliché that, at this point in time, is dustier than grandpa balls, it’s so old. I remember sitting in the theater and audibly saying to the sparse crowd (this was an 11am showing on a Tuesday), “What!? Are they for realsies?” With this level of corniness playing out in massive cinemas and being fawned over so richly, I don’t doubt that we will (or should) see the wonder twins pop up at some point in future DCEU films. Form of: sanity! Shape of: dignity!
I thought it was highly overrated, wasn’t very feminist (caveat: I am not a feminist and concede to anyone who identifies as such to judge it’s feminist qualities), had fairly poor acting from its titular character/star, didn’t have that great of a soundtrack, had a poor choice for a villain and had a ton of narrative/Wonder Woman lore problems (again, how do these people age on this island if that great battle occurred back during the Grecian empire? Is it the island that’s magic or the people? How are the women, Diana especially, able to be shot or stabbed—a scratch in Diana’s case—yet also be so indestructible that Wonder Woman can be thrown into the ground and smashed with tanks and stuff at the end of the film without sustaining a single scuff mark on her face?).
And why are we allowing blatant sexism from a woman go when if a man did it, it would’ve been labeled as being part of rape culture (“what, you’re afraid of sleeping with me?” Sure, send the message that being peer-pressured into “cuddling” is actually a good thing). It also somehow underutilized every woman except Wonder Woman in the entire movie—“Oh, we have a female villain! Yeah, but she’s really only evil because of what some man did to her.” It, in equal measure, somehow managed to infantilize its hero by not having her really learn anything (“Oh, I’ve got to kill Ares to stop the war.” Steve: “It doesn’t work that way. Mankind is more complicated and nuan--” Ares: “I’m Ares! You killed the wrong guy. Kill me and see what happens.” Steve: Oh, well, never mind about that last point) nor take responsibility for her own actions. All while imparting the very message that feminists are so quick to say they don’t believe: that modern feminism simply isn’t about blaming men for everything and idolizing the woman as superior. Here, a woman is only two things: a victim (Robin Wright’s character, Steve’s secretary, Dr. Poison) forced to do what she does under the hand of a man, or must dominate a man to show her strength. And the only truly equal relationship between Trevor and Diane must completely remove the man from the scenario in order for the woman to become the true heroine she was supposed to be.
And don’t get me started on the “love conquers all” cliché that, at this point in time, is dustier than grandpa balls, it’s so old. I remember sitting in the theater and audibly saying to the sparse crowd (this was an 11am showing on a Tuesday), “What!? Are they for realsies?” With this level of corniness playing out in massive cinemas and being fawned over so richly, I don’t doubt that we will (or should) see the wonder twins pop up at some point in future DCEU films. Form of: sanity! Shape of: dignity!
Speaking of overly-hyped movies, can we talk about Spider-man:
Homecoming? Sigh! OK, to let you all know, yes, I will be jumping
around a lot between the different months. It’ll feel like I’m
skipping over movies (some I will have to skip) but I’m just trying
to cover this stuff as I think of it, so bare with me. I was going to
write a review of both Baby Driver and the new Spider-man in the same
week having seen them within days of each other, but got too busy
with The Writer and other writing projects. I’ll say right now that
I enjoyed Baby Driver but didn’t like Spider-man.
Here’s the thing, Wonder Woman I actually could enjoy for what it was: a 90s comic-book movie that strangely got made 20+ years after it should’ve been made (and that’s both referring to the hokeyness of the tone as well as the fact that it took so long to make a Wonder Woman film). Spider-man, however, I actually disliked. I don’t know if it was just how they wrote the character or if it was how Tom Holland played him or a mix of both, but I thought this Peter Parker/Spider-man was a jerk. In many scenes I thought he was a bigger dick than Tony Stark. And you can’t out-dick a dick like Tony Stark. Where Marvel was trying to have Tony sub in for Uncle Ben, they created a needless sounding board that amplified the Peter’s whinier qualities. There were so many “but why”-type scenes in the film that I started to think I was watching one of those parenting videos where the kid sits in the backseat of the car and asks a thousand questions that their parents don’t have the answer to, but the parents keep saying, “Because I said so,” or some total parent-lingo. It was funny in an annoying way. It should come as no surprise that the script felt like it was written by a bunch of Gen-Xers that see anybody younger than them as being loathsome and full of angst, lethargy and hatred for their values. Literally every aspect of the film felt like an old cranky man yelling about the young whipper-snappers that don’t respect anything while also talking about how great they were when they were young. Eye rolls. Hard eye rolls all around.
As Peter is becoming Iron Man—I mean, Spider-man. Ha! Sorry, I forgot this wasn’t an Iron-man movie seeing as how it was almost the exact same plot of the first Iron Man movie. He even got a tech suit that could talk to him and stuff. Anyways, as I was saying, even as he is becoming Spider-man, you never really get a sense that he is doing it for anything other than wanting to be cool or get the girl. On his own, he doesn’t feel that great responsibility because he’s too worried about becoming an Avenger and not about stopping the bad guys or NYC’s crime epidemic. Even the motivation behind his bus/car-crash-saving antics that we briefly glimpsed in Captain America: Civil War (and what got him on Tony’s radar) is never fully explored. There is no question of why try to fight crime when you’re a kid, AND what has changed now that you have a better suit. It’s just a lot of Avengers talk. Essentially, he sees the entirety of his first few months as Spider-man as nothing more than a video game, and stopping the bad guy is a way for him to level up. Even in saying that this was the partial point of the lesson he learned at the end of the film when he turns down Tony’s offer, it still comes off as shallow. There is a sense that he is only backing away from Tony’s offer to become an Avenger now because he doesn’t want to give up his current life and not because he fully understands the responsibilities of being a superhero or is driven by a need to stop bad guys. Sure the scene when he is trapped under the rubble was supposed to be this heart-wrenching, powerful scene about how he’ll have to do it himself and figure out who he is, and it is pretty good. However, it still doesn’t get to why he’d be doing this in the first. Tony’s end offer turns the film from video-gaming to him realizing that maybe he can’t stand the pressures of being one of the cool kids just yet, ala Mean Girls (a much better teen/coming-of-age movie).
And as far as Michael Keaton’s bad guy, was he serviceable? Yes. Was he one of Marvel’s greatest villains? Are you kidding me? I didn’t quite understand this supposition that I saw many a critic’s article make. Yes, they have weak villains, but that weak? Really? While I will laud him for being an every-man villain, and I do understand the appeal of him in that regard, and I did like his performance here, the actual way in which they wrote the villain was plainer than salt-less Saltines. His motivations were so weak that it was hard to see him as a villain. Some will argue, “Oh, that’s what makes a great villain.” No. Nope. No. For one, he doesn’t even fit the mold of a villain who, in his mind, is a hero. Heroes, antiheroes and even the villains that see themselves as heroes always have not just a motivation but a code by which they carry out that motivation, unless they are outside of the mold. For instance, The Joker is outside of the mold. He causes mayhem and doesn’t care about what goes on either way. But Bane, Ras Al Ghul, Obadiah Stone, Darth Vader, The Penguin, even Loki all have not only a motivation for their actions but a code by which they live and carry out those actions. It’s not enough for them to just kill our hero as Keaton’s Vulture threatens to do in the car, but these other villains think greatly about how the hero will suffer and die. For instance, Loki doesn’t just want to kill Thor, but he wants to prove that he is the better brother, the better ruler. In order to do that, he has a code that he can’t kill him without first embarrassing him, making him submit to him, to his rule. You see what I’m getting at here?
Here’s the thing, Wonder Woman I actually could enjoy for what it was: a 90s comic-book movie that strangely got made 20+ years after it should’ve been made (and that’s both referring to the hokeyness of the tone as well as the fact that it took so long to make a Wonder Woman film). Spider-man, however, I actually disliked. I don’t know if it was just how they wrote the character or if it was how Tom Holland played him or a mix of both, but I thought this Peter Parker/Spider-man was a jerk. In many scenes I thought he was a bigger dick than Tony Stark. And you can’t out-dick a dick like Tony Stark. Where Marvel was trying to have Tony sub in for Uncle Ben, they created a needless sounding board that amplified the Peter’s whinier qualities. There were so many “but why”-type scenes in the film that I started to think I was watching one of those parenting videos where the kid sits in the backseat of the car and asks a thousand questions that their parents don’t have the answer to, but the parents keep saying, “Because I said so,” or some total parent-lingo. It was funny in an annoying way. It should come as no surprise that the script felt like it was written by a bunch of Gen-Xers that see anybody younger than them as being loathsome and full of angst, lethargy and hatred for their values. Literally every aspect of the film felt like an old cranky man yelling about the young whipper-snappers that don’t respect anything while also talking about how great they were when they were young. Eye rolls. Hard eye rolls all around.
As Peter is becoming Iron Man—I mean, Spider-man. Ha! Sorry, I forgot this wasn’t an Iron-man movie seeing as how it was almost the exact same plot of the first Iron Man movie. He even got a tech suit that could talk to him and stuff. Anyways, as I was saying, even as he is becoming Spider-man, you never really get a sense that he is doing it for anything other than wanting to be cool or get the girl. On his own, he doesn’t feel that great responsibility because he’s too worried about becoming an Avenger and not about stopping the bad guys or NYC’s crime epidemic. Even the motivation behind his bus/car-crash-saving antics that we briefly glimpsed in Captain America: Civil War (and what got him on Tony’s radar) is never fully explored. There is no question of why try to fight crime when you’re a kid, AND what has changed now that you have a better suit. It’s just a lot of Avengers talk. Essentially, he sees the entirety of his first few months as Spider-man as nothing more than a video game, and stopping the bad guy is a way for him to level up. Even in saying that this was the partial point of the lesson he learned at the end of the film when he turns down Tony’s offer, it still comes off as shallow. There is a sense that he is only backing away from Tony’s offer to become an Avenger now because he doesn’t want to give up his current life and not because he fully understands the responsibilities of being a superhero or is driven by a need to stop bad guys. Sure the scene when he is trapped under the rubble was supposed to be this heart-wrenching, powerful scene about how he’ll have to do it himself and figure out who he is, and it is pretty good. However, it still doesn’t get to why he’d be doing this in the first. Tony’s end offer turns the film from video-gaming to him realizing that maybe he can’t stand the pressures of being one of the cool kids just yet, ala Mean Girls (a much better teen/coming-of-age movie).
And as far as Michael Keaton’s bad guy, was he serviceable? Yes. Was he one of Marvel’s greatest villains? Are you kidding me? I didn’t quite understand this supposition that I saw many a critic’s article make. Yes, they have weak villains, but that weak? Really? While I will laud him for being an every-man villain, and I do understand the appeal of him in that regard, and I did like his performance here, the actual way in which they wrote the villain was plainer than salt-less Saltines. His motivations were so weak that it was hard to see him as a villain. Some will argue, “Oh, that’s what makes a great villain.” No. Nope. No. For one, he doesn’t even fit the mold of a villain who, in his mind, is a hero. Heroes, antiheroes and even the villains that see themselves as heroes always have not just a motivation but a code by which they carry out that motivation, unless they are outside of the mold. For instance, The Joker is outside of the mold. He causes mayhem and doesn’t care about what goes on either way. But Bane, Ras Al Ghul, Obadiah Stone, Darth Vader, The Penguin, even Loki all have not only a motivation for their actions but a code by which they live and carry out those actions. It’s not enough for them to just kill our hero as Keaton’s Vulture threatens to do in the car, but these other villains think greatly about how the hero will suffer and die. For instance, Loki doesn’t just want to kill Thor, but he wants to prove that he is the better brother, the better ruler. In order to do that, he has a code that he can’t kill him without first embarrassing him, making him submit to him, to his rule. You see what I’m getting at here?
Vulture doesn’t have this code nor this motivation. Like so many
Millennials and people of younger generations are told, he should be
told to just get another job. I kept wondering that every time he was
on the screen. “Oh, I’m doing this for my family because they
have to eat.” Well, why don’t you just get another job doing
something else instead of, you know, illegal stuff? “Well... Um.
Huh? You know I don’t ever remember considering that. Ha! That’s
an idea.” Hard, hard eye roll.
I found the John Hughes comparisons to be downright stupid. For one, actually spoofing or paying homage to the Ferris Bueller scene felt cheap when it had already been compared to Hughes’ style. For two, we really need to stop harking back to the 80s as the decade where everything was so great. I have an entire post coming on this specific subject but I’ll say that we need to stop basing everything on that one decade.
In the end, I found Spider-man: Homecoming to be rather redundant, overly long, overly hyped and sorely lacking in soul. I don’t know about you all but I am very tired of, literally, every single villain in a Spider-man movie being related to Spider-man personally in some way, not to mention the fact that all of the first Spider-man movies in each of the franchises have been near carbon copies of each other: they all have an older man who was/is either a mentor to Peter or the father of someone in Peter’s inner-circle as the villain, all have a frazzled Aunt Mae, and all have a best friend who doesn’t quite seem to fit with their version of Peter Parker. Moving on!
I found the John Hughes comparisons to be downright stupid. For one, actually spoofing or paying homage to the Ferris Bueller scene felt cheap when it had already been compared to Hughes’ style. For two, we really need to stop harking back to the 80s as the decade where everything was so great. I have an entire post coming on this specific subject but I’ll say that we need to stop basing everything on that one decade.
In the end, I found Spider-man: Homecoming to be rather redundant, overly long, overly hyped and sorely lacking in soul. I don’t know about you all but I am very tired of, literally, every single villain in a Spider-man movie being related to Spider-man personally in some way, not to mention the fact that all of the first Spider-man movies in each of the franchises have been near carbon copies of each other: they all have an older man who was/is either a mentor to Peter or the father of someone in Peter’s inner-circle as the villain, all have a frazzled Aunt Mae, and all have a best friend who doesn’t quite seem to fit with their version of Peter Parker. Moving on!
Another one of my disappointments this summer: War for the Planet of
the Apes. Gahhh! OK, let me actually stop and explain why I was so
disappointed before the fans of this film jump on me. Let me also say
that the last sentence was completely superfluous because what I
really wanted to say is that I actually liked this movie. In fact, it
was probably on my favorites list for the summer releases. So why,
then, is this movie on my disappointments “Summer of Suck” list,
you ask? It’s simple and literally every person who saw the movie
knows EXACTLY what the hell I’m about to say. War for the Planet of
the Apes has got to be the most falsely advertised film I can
remember in recent years. We’re talking at least in the last 20
years. This was worse than that weird sex ad that had that pervert
show up to the two lesbians’ house on episode three of American
Horror Story: Cult. This was worse than the advertising for most of
my books (note, they might not be known but at least they aren’t
falsely advertised). This is worse advertising than that time that
you got catfished by the 23-year-old hot blonde who guaranteed you
that she’d totally do anything so long as you came to her house,
and it turned out that she was a 68-year-old recently widowed
half-deaf grandma who hasn’t had a proper orgasm since President
“Peanut” Jimmy Carter was in office but you still jumped them
dusty bones on the sneak because clearly you were desperate. Yo ass
got catfished! Duh!
That’s right, people who didn’t see it, there was no war in a film titled War for the Planet of the Apes. Literally the only other film that I could think of that took itself so seriously, promised us a war story and then delivered scant scenes of actual warfare is Kubrick’s brilliant Full Metal Jacket. But even that was more about the entirety of the experience of being a soldier in the Vietnam War. This movie... Gahhh! Wait, did I already sigh?
That’s right, people who didn’t see it, there was no war in a film titled War for the Planet of the Apes. Literally the only other film that I could think of that took itself so seriously, promised us a war story and then delivered scant scenes of actual warfare is Kubrick’s brilliant Full Metal Jacket. But even that was more about the entirety of the experience of being a soldier in the Vietnam War. This movie... Gahhh! Wait, did I already sigh?
OK, here’s the thing about War for the Planet of the Apes. It,
among the many over-hyped, overrated films of the summer, was
actually one of the few that lived up to its rating, however, the
lens through which this movie is viewed starts with the title.
Whereas Spider-man: Homecoming should have been called Iron Man in a
Spider-man Suit, this movie should not have had war anywhere in the
title. In fact, as I exited the theater, I had a great idea. I might
not have enough time to do this during my winter vacation around
Christmas but if I did, I would totally edit Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes and this film together into one big, long simian opera. If
you chop a few scenes from this film and swap them with a few scenes
from Dawn, you would not only make this movie better, you would
actually make both of them better and narratively stronger. Or just
switch the two movies titles. It is like the writers forgot that wars
generally have two sides that have to be close to equal in some
aspects (near equal because lopsided victories are not wars but
slaughters and genocides). There should be tension on both or all
sides, such as there was in Dawn. In dawn you had apes against apes,
humans against humans, and apes against humans. Here, however, you
really don’t have anything that marks the story as a war story but
more as a POW story. Look, I get the symbolism in the movie and the
references to Schindler’s list and other POW films. But there is
something to be said for giving the audience what you promised from
jump.
Not only is there little to no real conflict in the film but
the movie is almost devoid of character outside of the two main apes
and Woody Harrelson’s crazed military general character. While the
characters, both human and ape, had depth and complicated motivations
for their actions in Dawn, here you get one lone cult-leader-like
general who is so strong in his convictions that he is willing to
fight against his own kangaroo government because he believes it is
right (as a side note: This is what makes a good or great villain, or
at least would have had the director/writer given Harrelson more to
do than chew scenery, and boy is he at his scenery-chewing best). And
you know what, even though he’s the big bad and you have followed
Caesar and his crew the whole movie, there is some feeling that the
general is right. They do need to either exterminate and/or study the
apes. The problem, however, is that in coming to that conclusion,
there is still no inner-conflict for the viewer. I never really felt
the emotional pull of “oh man he’s trying to kill all the apes.
Nooo!” that the filmmakers wanted me to. I actually felt bad for
the humans.
But worst of all were the weaknesses that shone clear in Reed’s writing (I know he co-wrote the script, as he will do with his Batman film which I am not particularly looking forward to after this film). Of many, there was the fact that even though the movie was long at over two hours, it seemed to not spend time on building anything. For instance, the bond between the little girl and the big gorilla should have been stressed-out over a longer period of time and made stronger if you wanted the audience to feel the emotional heartbreak of losing him. Instead, the gesture of the flower that is supposed to mean so much in his death scene falls flat because it was literally not but two or three (maybe even one) scene after he gives her the flower that he dies. They were with each other for, what, a few days? In that time it wasn’t really like he saved her life countless times or anything. He was just there.
Then there’s the ending. The Deus ex machina or rather Deus ex Avalanchia pulled at the end of the movie felt like a true gut-punch because I was completely ready to see this all-out fight between apes and soldiers, and then, oh, you know... Snow! It felt so uncomfortable for me to watch as a writer because it stank of the writer scribing himself into a corner, then, instead of writing something brilliant to get out of the corner, simply third-wishing the story solved because he hadn’t the time to figure out a proper solution. I’ve done this before in stories. The first draft of my still-as-yet unbought Captain Planet script had this very problem. But that’s when you truly have to think and consider the audience, put yourself in their shows to figure out what they really want. In this case, a big battle would have been apt. Why? Well, before some cinephiles come in and talk about the poetry of not having a big battle and it being anticlimactic, you have to realize that the anticlimactic ending only works when a big battle has already been had, and that is outside of the opening sequence. Take, for instance, Kill Bill. When viewed as one movie as was originally intended by Tarantino, the ending of Vol. 2 makes poetic sense because it’s so against grain.
But worst of all were the weaknesses that shone clear in Reed’s writing (I know he co-wrote the script, as he will do with his Batman film which I am not particularly looking forward to after this film). Of many, there was the fact that even though the movie was long at over two hours, it seemed to not spend time on building anything. For instance, the bond between the little girl and the big gorilla should have been stressed-out over a longer period of time and made stronger if you wanted the audience to feel the emotional heartbreak of losing him. Instead, the gesture of the flower that is supposed to mean so much in his death scene falls flat because it was literally not but two or three (maybe even one) scene after he gives her the flower that he dies. They were with each other for, what, a few days? In that time it wasn’t really like he saved her life countless times or anything. He was just there.
Then there’s the ending. The Deus ex machina or rather Deus ex Avalanchia pulled at the end of the movie felt like a true gut-punch because I was completely ready to see this all-out fight between apes and soldiers, and then, oh, you know... Snow! It felt so uncomfortable for me to watch as a writer because it stank of the writer scribing himself into a corner, then, instead of writing something brilliant to get out of the corner, simply third-wishing the story solved because he hadn’t the time to figure out a proper solution. I’ve done this before in stories. The first draft of my still-as-yet unbought Captain Planet script had this very problem. But that’s when you truly have to think and consider the audience, put yourself in their shows to figure out what they really want. In this case, a big battle would have been apt. Why? Well, before some cinephiles come in and talk about the poetry of not having a big battle and it being anticlimactic, you have to realize that the anticlimactic ending only works when a big battle has already been had, and that is outside of the opening sequence. Take, for instance, Kill Bill. When viewed as one movie as was originally intended by Tarantino, the ending of Vol. 2 makes poetic sense because it’s so against grain.
In War, we are robbed not once but
twice of any good action, with Woody not engaging in a fantastic end
fight (which, if I had written this, I would have had him get sick in
the middle of a fight with Caesar as the ape is about to deliver the
final blow only for Caesar to drop his weapon and have pity on Woody
before the general turns from rage-fueled rampage to pathetic cult
leader who begs Caesar to kill him and do what’s necessary), and
the apes not ever engaging in a great fight either. This oversold the
title once more as it made the majority of the apes feel like an
afterthought in their own movie. This was humans bombing and shooting
at other humans as apes stood around and looked at them. Sigh!
Then we have Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Well, hmm. Yeah, this
was a good one, but not a great one and I’m still unsure if it
deserves the scores/ratings/accolades that it got. For starters, to
be an action-comedy movie, it really went heavy on the comedy and
very light on the action for me. OK, let me put on my writer cap here
again and look at this through the lens of film narrative. This film
went heavy for character development, which is good. Don’t get me
wrong, most films need to have character development to survive,
however, I will say that in telling a story the hardest part of the
job for a writer, or in the case of film the writer and director
(they have to work symbiotically in this pursuit), is to find a
proper balance between action and character development. In volume 1,
they did this almost perfectly.
In most film schools that concentrate
on film writing, they generally teach you how to break down a film
(note: I have never actually been to film school but if they don’t
teach this, then school is stupid) so that you can create a template
for your own films. I did one a while back on Guardians vol. 1 in
order to properly build my outline for a Captain Planet sequel if I
ever got to write one. I noted that vol. 1 had no less than five
major action scenes and at least three smaller scenes (the larger
ones being marked by duration, number of participants and use of
CGI). In other words, both the group/guardians and the film was
almost always doing something, being active in creating the universe
in which they live. That creates both tone and pace in the film. We
meet Starlord and he immediately escapes from some hunters; when he
and the group finally get together they are all fighting each other
in a town square; they have to fight to get out of the prison; they
have to fight when the blue dude shows up to the collector’s side
of the universe and the climax is one long half-hour fight scene that
ends in dancing. Throughout all of those scenes they are building
their own character and playing off of each other to build team
rapport while keeping the action humming. In vol. 2, however...
Sure, you get a lot more of Starlord’s background and what happened to him and his mother as a child and why she’s really gone now. But there’s really not a lot of stuff happening. See, this is the risk of going over-the-top with the action in the first one: you get performance syndrome where you think you can’t top yourself, so you don’t try. Was there some big fantastical galaxy fight? No. But there didn’t need to be so long as the film kept it moving. Here, you got long lulls where it felt like nothing was really happening. These were punctuated with a joke or two which would serve to keep your spirits high. But even that couldn’t band-aid the fact that this film was sorely lacking something.
And I would have to think that even the filmmakers knew this, seeing as how, once again a Deus ex machina was used here for no particular reason but to add another action scene and try furthering the plot. Yes, that would be the random hayfield/cave fight between Gamora and Nebula. When at first this seems perfectly timed, on second thought it makes the viewer beg a few questions. For instance, she flew all the way across the universe just to kill Gamora for what, really? Yes, we know that their sibling rivalry is very strong and her father used to pluck pieces from her every time she lost to Gamora, however, where in the first film she is given true purpose to pursue and act as adversary against her sister, here she’s just sort of there to be there.
Sure, you get a lot more of Starlord’s background and what happened to him and his mother as a child and why she’s really gone now. But there’s really not a lot of stuff happening. See, this is the risk of going over-the-top with the action in the first one: you get performance syndrome where you think you can’t top yourself, so you don’t try. Was there some big fantastical galaxy fight? No. But there didn’t need to be so long as the film kept it moving. Here, you got long lulls where it felt like nothing was really happening. These were punctuated with a joke or two which would serve to keep your spirits high. But even that couldn’t band-aid the fact that this film was sorely lacking something.
And I would have to think that even the filmmakers knew this, seeing as how, once again a Deus ex machina was used here for no particular reason but to add another action scene and try furthering the plot. Yes, that would be the random hayfield/cave fight between Gamora and Nebula. When at first this seems perfectly timed, on second thought it makes the viewer beg a few questions. For instance, she flew all the way across the universe just to kill Gamora for what, really? Yes, we know that their sibling rivalry is very strong and her father used to pluck pieces from her every time she lost to Gamora, however, where in the first film she is given true purpose to pursue and act as adversary against her sister, here she’s just sort of there to be there.
And how, after flying across the entire universe to come to
fight Gamora, does she find her sitting in an open field on the face
of an entire planet. Even if the planet is moon-sized and very small,
it still seems like she would have to traverse it for a good while
looking for this one tiny human-sized humanoid alien. And in that
time Ego would have known that someone arrived on his planet, or,
erm... Him. Yet, you have to suspend your belief in the movie’s own
logic to accept this scene and you do because it delivers a pretty
good action scene in the middle of an action drought in the story,
not to mention solves the narrative’s stagnated plot with the
discovery of the bodies.
Not only did it fail to reach the heights of action of the first one, but it also pushed the bounds of funny too far. No, it didn’t have inappropriate jokes but it did try too hard to be funny. It forced a lot of the humor, so much so that some of the back and forth quips between the guardians started to feel more like petty squabbling rather than funny good ribbing. It felt like they were always arguing and when they weren’t arguing they were thinking up jokes to tell for the next time they argued. Where Drax’s straight-faced humor was great in the first one, in this one he felt like an overgrown, immature frat bro who could just as easily have been Chad on FOX’s defunct Scream Queens. Or Chad on last summer’s The Bachelorette. Any Chad, really. Most are douches. Sorry. So the film just ended up being one long, bland “Oh that was nice.”
Not only did it fail to reach the heights of action of the first one, but it also pushed the bounds of funny too far. No, it didn’t have inappropriate jokes but it did try too hard to be funny. It forced a lot of the humor, so much so that some of the back and forth quips between the guardians started to feel more like petty squabbling rather than funny good ribbing. It felt like they were always arguing and when they weren’t arguing they were thinking up jokes to tell for the next time they argued. Where Drax’s straight-faced humor was great in the first one, in this one he felt like an overgrown, immature frat bro who could just as easily have been Chad on FOX’s defunct Scream Queens. Or Chad on last summer’s The Bachelorette. Any Chad, really. Most are douches. Sorry. So the film just ended up being one long, bland “Oh that was nice.”
And then there’s Alien: Covenant. Whyyyyyyyyy! OK, let me preface
this by saying that I am one of the few people who actually enjoyed
Prometheus for what it was. To me, that film was trying so hard to do
more than just make another horror/sci-fi film but actually wanted to
explore the meaning behind the alien’s existence, behind our
existence. It, in some form, paralleled the original Alien’s
premise that man births his own destruction (while the face sucker is
terrifying, it ultimately does nothing but use its victim as a mating
partner. It doesn’t kill you. The alien that bursts from your chest
or births from you is what kills you and others). Though it may have
failed to properly explore such themes and give meaningful
conclusions, it at least tried. In other words, I felt like the film
knew what it wanted to be but, like War for the Planet of the Apes,
failed to be what the audience wanted it to be.
Now we come to Alien: Covenant. This sequel/prequel had a hell of an uphill battle to climb. Outside of the fact that this franchise hasn’t made a decent movie since the 80s save for the much maligned fan-service that was AVP (which I am definitely assuming isn’t canon as it would make no since in the flow of this story), Covenant also had the on-set politics of having to deal with more writer problems, a film that abandoned the star that was going to be part of it and the studio promising that it would be more in line with what the audiences wanted, even going so far as to change the name to make sure that people knew it was an Alien-franchise film. The audiences wanted a straight horror film like the first two classic films. Others wanted a sequel to Prometheus if only to answer the questions that were posed in the first one. What we got was a film that failed in both aspects.
Was the film terrifying? Eh! It was OK. I will say that the white alien stalking through the field was the stuff of nightmares and when first seeing David’s lair with all of the different drawings and then seeing the woman who should have been the star of the film splayed on his science table made me sit up and pay attention. But outside of those two things (oh, and the woman’s head floating in that water), I wasn’t all that scared, or even grossed out.
I think that the main problem with the film on a horror front was that they, for not just this film but for Prometheus as well, made David the android the main villain, and not the actual aliens, which is why the films have failed. Was the android on the original alien ship scary? Sure, he was creepy in a I-don’t-know-what-he’s-going-to-do sort of way, but ultimately he was still out-shined by the alien. In the brilliant sequel, James Cameron decided to flip that paradigm and make the android one of the heroes rather than an antagonist to Ripley, even though she initially sees him as that. As a side note, Cameron is actually quite good at this as he did it to massively successful effect in not only Aliens but also in the Terminator series. It is rather interesting to me that Cameron doesn’t get credited more often for this trope as many movies in recent years have also done this to varying degrees of success (Thor: Dark World comes to mind).
The biggest problem with making David the main villain in these movies is that he is not and has not been especially scary. While I applaud Fassbender’s performance, the character has stayed just on the fray of everything. He’s just two steps away from being properly human and thus a complete mirror image of humanity’s own darkness, yet is also just two steps away from being a HAL-like nuisance who is driven solely by mission. Both in Prometheus and in Covenant, I saw his curiosity as unfounded and frustrating because it was not scientific enough for a computer. For instance, and this gets a little into the second reason of why this film fails, he and the doctor set off to find answers at the end of Prometheus because she wants to know why the Engineers did what they did and why did seeking answers in the cave lead to so many deaths. Funny enough, the creation/god-obsessed David has many of the same questions. While he goes about getting the answers in a different way in Prometheus, it makes far more sense in Covenant for the doctor and him to land on this new planet and interact with the very engineers they believe have said answers. Or at least figure out why this whole race of people is looking up at this donut-shaped ship as if it is their deity when they’ve seen this before. Many of them had a look on their face as if this ship came back from some great purpose. Like Jesus come to town on a donkey, they waited to herald its re-arrival. Or another good question: Why does this advanced race look as if they live in a primitive Greco-Roman village? Why are there so few of them? Was this, too, an outpost or colony? So many things to ask, yet upon arrival and after he killed his shipmate (don’t believe she died in crash), he releases the same black infectious stuff that they found in that cave, wholesale wiping them out without getting a single answer. Why?
My point is that this film didn’t make sense, and even more-so than Prometheus. With Prometheus you knew that it was the start of something so that while a great many questions are posed, you could wait to have those answered in a solid sequel. However, a sequel which not only doesn’t answer the burning questions from the first one but also fails to pose its own good questions and poses questions that make far less sense than the originals is not worth much. Why the hell did David kiss himself? I mean, really?
Now we come to Alien: Covenant. This sequel/prequel had a hell of an uphill battle to climb. Outside of the fact that this franchise hasn’t made a decent movie since the 80s save for the much maligned fan-service that was AVP (which I am definitely assuming isn’t canon as it would make no since in the flow of this story), Covenant also had the on-set politics of having to deal with more writer problems, a film that abandoned the star that was going to be part of it and the studio promising that it would be more in line with what the audiences wanted, even going so far as to change the name to make sure that people knew it was an Alien-franchise film. The audiences wanted a straight horror film like the first two classic films. Others wanted a sequel to Prometheus if only to answer the questions that were posed in the first one. What we got was a film that failed in both aspects.
Was the film terrifying? Eh! It was OK. I will say that the white alien stalking through the field was the stuff of nightmares and when first seeing David’s lair with all of the different drawings and then seeing the woman who should have been the star of the film splayed on his science table made me sit up and pay attention. But outside of those two things (oh, and the woman’s head floating in that water), I wasn’t all that scared, or even grossed out.
I think that the main problem with the film on a horror front was that they, for not just this film but for Prometheus as well, made David the android the main villain, and not the actual aliens, which is why the films have failed. Was the android on the original alien ship scary? Sure, he was creepy in a I-don’t-know-what-he’s-going-to-do sort of way, but ultimately he was still out-shined by the alien. In the brilliant sequel, James Cameron decided to flip that paradigm and make the android one of the heroes rather than an antagonist to Ripley, even though she initially sees him as that. As a side note, Cameron is actually quite good at this as he did it to massively successful effect in not only Aliens but also in the Terminator series. It is rather interesting to me that Cameron doesn’t get credited more often for this trope as many movies in recent years have also done this to varying degrees of success (Thor: Dark World comes to mind).
The biggest problem with making David the main villain in these movies is that he is not and has not been especially scary. While I applaud Fassbender’s performance, the character has stayed just on the fray of everything. He’s just two steps away from being properly human and thus a complete mirror image of humanity’s own darkness, yet is also just two steps away from being a HAL-like nuisance who is driven solely by mission. Both in Prometheus and in Covenant, I saw his curiosity as unfounded and frustrating because it was not scientific enough for a computer. For instance, and this gets a little into the second reason of why this film fails, he and the doctor set off to find answers at the end of Prometheus because she wants to know why the Engineers did what they did and why did seeking answers in the cave lead to so many deaths. Funny enough, the creation/god-obsessed David has many of the same questions. While he goes about getting the answers in a different way in Prometheus, it makes far more sense in Covenant for the doctor and him to land on this new planet and interact with the very engineers they believe have said answers. Or at least figure out why this whole race of people is looking up at this donut-shaped ship as if it is their deity when they’ve seen this before. Many of them had a look on their face as if this ship came back from some great purpose. Like Jesus come to town on a donkey, they waited to herald its re-arrival. Or another good question: Why does this advanced race look as if they live in a primitive Greco-Roman village? Why are there so few of them? Was this, too, an outpost or colony? So many things to ask, yet upon arrival and after he killed his shipmate (don’t believe she died in crash), he releases the same black infectious stuff that they found in that cave, wholesale wiping them out without getting a single answer. Why?
My point is that this film didn’t make sense, and even more-so than Prometheus. With Prometheus you knew that it was the start of something so that while a great many questions are posed, you could wait to have those answered in a solid sequel. However, a sequel which not only doesn’t answer the burning questions from the first one but also fails to pose its own good questions and poses questions that make far less sense than the originals is not worth much. Why the hell did David kiss himself? I mean, really?
Then there is The Dark Tower. To rewind, for me, summer doesn’t
officially end until it, well... officially ends. Really when the
traditional TV season premiere-week comes which is usually in one of
the last two weeks in September. So, that meant that IT also fell in
the summer, which meant that these two films, along with TV
adaptations Mr. Mercedes and The Mist made this the summer of Stephen
King. Now, we all know how great of an author King is and know that
regardless of how the adaptations in any form turn out, we always
still have the written words, but there is something to be said for
good or bad adaptations. While I’ll get to Mr. Mercedes and The
Mist in the Summer of Suck TV post, I will talk about IT a little
later.
Now, back to The Dark Tower. I will admit that I actually only read the first book of this so I don’t know how good or bad it gets as it goes on, but I have to say that I thought the movie was just alright. Here’s the thing, just as I thought Wonder Woman was overrated, I thought this film was underrated by most critics, especially by Rotten Tomatoes. Putting in all of the starting blocks for a film series is quite hard even when you know precisely where you want the story to go. Trying to make those films feel as epic as the story on which they are based is even harder. The problem so often with King adaptations is twofold: one, the adapters try to veer from the source material too much, or two, they do try to stay faithful but work from a mindset of assumption in which they figure that you as an audience member have read the book so they don’t have to explain every detail. This often leads to rushes in the narrative. Now, the third sin they do is to try to water him down, however I didn’t include this as one of the problems because while his books are filled with risque language and subject matter, many of his books have played out well on broadcast TV through the 90s, including his rendition of The Shining, Rose Red, the Langoliers, It, The Tommyknockers and a few others (some of which were never books). But I find that all authors’ work is watered down to some extent to make it more accessible to the viewing audience, and some stuff like poetic quality, you simply lose because that is the nature of image versus word.
All that to say that The Dark Tower, to me was decent but forgettable. The main premise isn’t ever fully explained in such a way that makes me root against the Man in Black. Sure, he wants the mind of kids because he wants to knock down the tower to let all the darkness in but why? Does he plan to rule over the darkness or is there something deeper he feels he needs to do? At first I got the sense that he needed the darkness to travel and have this immense power in any realm, but he traveled to earth so easily and used his stop-breathing power so frivolously that I began to wonder why he needed to have the darkness come in at all. You can kill people without lifting a finger, can travel anywhere you want and have tons of minions living in both worlds. What more could you want?
I thought Idris Elba was doing what he could with the script while Matt Mc was let too loose by the director in the same way that Jared Leto was left to flail in last year’s Suicide squad. What it created was a genuine-effort performance from our hero against a this-is-gonna-be-a-nice-paycheck performance from our villain. Forgettable lines, forgettable performance, mediocre acting. I didn’t mind the changes in the narrative but felt the film was far too short when trying to setup an epic battle. It’s strange but I actually missed the long shots of walking that Peter Jackson padded the Lord of the Rings films with. Show them struggling across the barren desert or something. It went by so quickly that I left the theater thinking, “Wow! Why didn’t Roland just kill the man in black a long time ago. It seemed so easy.” You have to build to an epic fight with your mortal enemy, often with previous skirmishes. Batman v. Superman failed to do that and so did The Dark Tower.
Now, back to The Dark Tower. I will admit that I actually only read the first book of this so I don’t know how good or bad it gets as it goes on, but I have to say that I thought the movie was just alright. Here’s the thing, just as I thought Wonder Woman was overrated, I thought this film was underrated by most critics, especially by Rotten Tomatoes. Putting in all of the starting blocks for a film series is quite hard even when you know precisely where you want the story to go. Trying to make those films feel as epic as the story on which they are based is even harder. The problem so often with King adaptations is twofold: one, the adapters try to veer from the source material too much, or two, they do try to stay faithful but work from a mindset of assumption in which they figure that you as an audience member have read the book so they don’t have to explain every detail. This often leads to rushes in the narrative. Now, the third sin they do is to try to water him down, however I didn’t include this as one of the problems because while his books are filled with risque language and subject matter, many of his books have played out well on broadcast TV through the 90s, including his rendition of The Shining, Rose Red, the Langoliers, It, The Tommyknockers and a few others (some of which were never books). But I find that all authors’ work is watered down to some extent to make it more accessible to the viewing audience, and some stuff like poetic quality, you simply lose because that is the nature of image versus word.
All that to say that The Dark Tower, to me was decent but forgettable. The main premise isn’t ever fully explained in such a way that makes me root against the Man in Black. Sure, he wants the mind of kids because he wants to knock down the tower to let all the darkness in but why? Does he plan to rule over the darkness or is there something deeper he feels he needs to do? At first I got the sense that he needed the darkness to travel and have this immense power in any realm, but he traveled to earth so easily and used his stop-breathing power so frivolously that I began to wonder why he needed to have the darkness come in at all. You can kill people without lifting a finger, can travel anywhere you want and have tons of minions living in both worlds. What more could you want?
I thought Idris Elba was doing what he could with the script while Matt Mc was let too loose by the director in the same way that Jared Leto was left to flail in last year’s Suicide squad. What it created was a genuine-effort performance from our hero against a this-is-gonna-be-a-nice-paycheck performance from our villain. Forgettable lines, forgettable performance, mediocre acting. I didn’t mind the changes in the narrative but felt the film was far too short when trying to setup an epic battle. It’s strange but I actually missed the long shots of walking that Peter Jackson padded the Lord of the Rings films with. Show them struggling across the barren desert or something. It went by so quickly that I left the theater thinking, “Wow! Why didn’t Roland just kill the man in black a long time ago. It seemed so easy.” You have to build to an epic fight with your mortal enemy, often with previous skirmishes. Batman v. Superman failed to do that and so did The Dark Tower.
Next up, Baywatch. Oh man, what to say about Baywatch? See, this is
the problem: I feel like almost every movie that came out this
summer, with the exception of Wonder Woman, people knew automatically
what was wrong with it, what was missing. A lot of times you can get
movies that are bad or that you don’t like, but you don’t fully
know why you don’t like it and it isn’t until you watch or read
someone else’s review online from somebody who really loves movies
but also hated the movie that you say, “Aw, that’s exactly what I
was trying to say!” But with War/Apes everybody knew, “There was
no war.” With Spider-man: Homecoming people knew, “He’s
Spider-man in an Iron Man suit, and you don’t web swing hardly at
all.” So when I say what was wrong with Baywatch, if you saw the
movie, you all should know what I’m saying.
The principle thing wrong with Baywatch is... well, I don’t want to sound like a chauvinist, pig, pervert, misogynist or anything like that but, uh... Where was dem titties at, doh? Like... Where dey was at? (Go on and laugh offended feminists. You know you want to. That goes for you too, prude and grammar nazi). This was an R-rated movie, OK. R! You had the hottest collection of actors and actresses probably in Hollywood right now of different races, colors, creeds and ages, and you did nothing with it? I don’t know which meme to search for to express my disappointment: the one of Viola Davis on How To Get Away With Murder grabbing her purse and leaving or the old standby of that burnt Muppet-looking prison dude leant to the side in that little boy’s face on Scared Straight. This truly was a travesty of untenable proportions.
Literally one of the best things about Baywatch that made it all the more popular during its time was the fact that over the course of the years throughout the 90s we got to see close to 1/3rd of the cast pose nude in Playboy or Playgirl (side note: three days after writing this post, Hugh Hefner died. RIP great playboy). It aired on broadcast TV at a time before HBO and other cable channels really took over and started showing everything. The cast and crew knew what we really wanted to see and they showed it to us off-show on numerous occasions. But now that we get an R-rated film where it is perfectly fine to show nudity we can’t even get one titty? What miserly producer was hording all the titties for his- or herself? Not even one is freed to roam on the prairie. My normal readers know this is serious because I rarely use perverse language on my blog. My books are a different story, but here? I try to keep it PG-13. And don’t get me wrong, I would have taken male nudity to, even though I don’t care to see it. But even I’m not going to deny that Zach Efron is objectively a beefcake, as is The Rock. But did we even get a great butt-shot from anyone, man or woman? No. All we got was a dead-guy’s penis and it wasn’t even on a dead-girl’s phone (I figured I had already made the HTGAWM reference above, why not circle back to it) and it was played for comedy. Womp-womp! Splat! Stupid, man! Stupid.
The principle thing wrong with Baywatch is... well, I don’t want to sound like a chauvinist, pig, pervert, misogynist or anything like that but, uh... Where was dem titties at, doh? Like... Where dey was at? (Go on and laugh offended feminists. You know you want to. That goes for you too, prude and grammar nazi). This was an R-rated movie, OK. R! You had the hottest collection of actors and actresses probably in Hollywood right now of different races, colors, creeds and ages, and you did nothing with it? I don’t know which meme to search for to express my disappointment: the one of Viola Davis on How To Get Away With Murder grabbing her purse and leaving or the old standby of that burnt Muppet-looking prison dude leant to the side in that little boy’s face on Scared Straight. This truly was a travesty of untenable proportions.
Literally one of the best things about Baywatch that made it all the more popular during its time was the fact that over the course of the years throughout the 90s we got to see close to 1/3rd of the cast pose nude in Playboy or Playgirl (side note: three days after writing this post, Hugh Hefner died. RIP great playboy). It aired on broadcast TV at a time before HBO and other cable channels really took over and started showing everything. The cast and crew knew what we really wanted to see and they showed it to us off-show on numerous occasions. But now that we get an R-rated film where it is perfectly fine to show nudity we can’t even get one titty? What miserly producer was hording all the titties for his- or herself? Not even one is freed to roam on the prairie. My normal readers know this is serious because I rarely use perverse language on my blog. My books are a different story, but here? I try to keep it PG-13. And don’t get me wrong, I would have taken male nudity to, even though I don’t care to see it. But even I’m not going to deny that Zach Efron is objectively a beefcake, as is The Rock. But did we even get a great butt-shot from anyone, man or woman? No. All we got was a dead-guy’s penis and it wasn’t even on a dead-girl’s phone (I figured I had already made the HTGAWM reference above, why not circle back to it) and it was played for comedy. Womp-womp! Splat! Stupid, man! Stupid.
You have Alexandria Daddario who is over thirty, yet is
one of those women who will probably be able to pass for 26 for a
really long time, and who has already appeared fully nude on HBO’s
True Detective and you don’t have her do it here? You even had her
fall in love with walking male flame-show Zach Efron in the film but
they don’t get a steamy sex scene? Zach doesn’t even get to give
us a Ben Affleck Gone-Girl-esque peekaboo chub. Again, even if they
had played Efron or The Rock fully nude in some misguided attempt to
try to seduce their respective love interests (and the black woman
who was also unbelievably fine, and who was supposed to be The Rock’s
love interest barely had any time or lines to build that supposed
chemistry) I would have maybe been disappointed for a minute but then
would have said, “Well played, Baywatch. Well played,” because I
know it would’ve possibly served to heat up my girlfriend. But
nope. We got nothin’! Who is sitting in these producer meetings
saying, “Oh yeah, we should make a dirty R-rated Baywatch and have
it be current and funny and filled with cussing.” “Yeah, and we
should show one of the hot girls naked, too.” [disgusted] “Ugh! I
can’t believe you would suggest such a thing, Carl. Do you know the
history of female nudity exploitation in film?”
Like, give me a
frickin’ break. Give me what I came to this stupid movie for and
let me wallow in my shame and guilt later. Hell, I’ve seen more of
Priyanka Chopra’s body on Quantico than I did in this film. The
story was actually decent, run-of-the-mill buddy-cop comedy not much
different than last year’s The Rock and Kevin Hart-led vehicle
Central Intelligence, or that other action movie The Rock did called
The Rundown, yet it was rated low I think because of expectations.
Listen, seeing Daddario and Efron trying awkwardly to get it on while
naked and sweaty on the beach would have healed over a lot of those
throwaway jokes. Instead, the movie was just stupid. Man, this movie
was so stupid it was dotarded.
For me, the best movie of the summer had to be Baby Driver. But even
this film was slightly overrated by my calculations. It was solid
film making that, unlike Wonder Woman, Baywatch and Guardians of the
Galaxy, properly hit its beats, both comedic and serious, almost
every single time. It had a good bit of character development and
never felt like it was too slow even though it was two hours long. It
also didn’t have too many superfluous scenes like Wonder Woman did
(you could cut maybe half an hour of that film and lose little to
nothing) and like what constituted almost the entirety of Spider-man:
Homecoming. It even had surprising twists. The death of Jamie Foxx’s
character, while telegraphed for over a minute, still came as a shock
to both me and a bunch of other people in the theater I saw it in.
That feeling of “He’s gonna kill him. Holy crap! He really did
kill him” felt great.
The only thing that I would say was a
downfall to the film is that it didn’t seem to have much driving.
Let’s see, it was the opening, the robbery mess-up with the
military guy and the final chase... sort of. I guess that’s
enough, but somehow that was the one thing in the film that seemed
lacking. In the two hour movie, maybe eight minutes of it was
actually driving. Also, I felt that the female characters were
grossly underdeveloped as is often standard in these kinds of movies.
Why was old girl so quick to just go with Baby when he wanted to
escape. She went from regular waitress to Bonnie in a few seconds
flat. “Oh, we’re gonna commit crime and be in love? OK.
La-Di-Da!” And that last scene where Jon Hamm somehow survived that
fall. At what point did he jump from the car? Seriously? More movie
magic than David Blaine could ever hope for.
There was also Hitman’s Bodyguard, which... I definitely think that
it was another film that, like The Dark Tower, was underrated and not
worth the hate it got from critics. I feel like everybody who saw the
trailer and wanted to see the film knew what they were getting. Was
it going to be some legendary thing? No. But I felt it fell into the
same category as the later Lethal Weapon films. It was a pretty
standard buddy film, but with a twist. Ryan Reynolds could have been
funnier. The script could have been tighter, filled with more jokes
or story and less cursing. Again, I’m hardly a prude but that line
where Reynolds said that Samuel L. actually ruined the word MFer is
kinda how I felt about the movie. That line would have been much
funnier if Reynolds’ character wasn’t always using the F-word,
too, or if he had pointed that out earlier in the film, then
referenced it twice more before pulling this line.
But I did laugh,
it did keep my attention for the full duration of the film and I
didn’t feel like they could’ve cut much to make the film better.
Some of the cheesier stuff, like the bar scene in which Samuel L. and
Salma met, called me back to comedic classics like Airplane’s club
scene, so I didn’t mind it or roll my eyes when I saw it. I
actually loved that part. Frankly, I don’t know what Reynolds has
to do to raise his game as a leading man in Hollywood. There is
something that he had in The Proposal and Deadpool that hasn’t
translated to other films. Maybe one day.
 |
| Hi, Georgie! |
Finally, there is IT. I already
said what I felt I needed to about Stephen King film and TV
adaptations in general. This was not the best one but it was far from
the worst one. As of now, the rankings for me stand as: Shawshank,
Green Mile, Misery, The Shining (Kubrick), The Mist (movie), Carrie
(Spacek-starring), Cujo, The Shining (TV mini-series), Langoliers
(though, was that an adaptation or original; mini-series), IT
(mini-series), and some where within the next two or three
adaptations is the new IT film. Again, that is actually saying quite
a bit as there are so many adaptations of his work. The man is
literally everywhere. But as an aside, let me speak to some of my
fellow authors. I don’t know if this is how it has worked out or if
King is a genius businessperson, too, but one of the reasons why his
stuff is always getting adapted is because of how terrible most of
the adaptations are.
Consider this, Carrie, his first professionally
published novel was adapted into an all-time great horror film. That,
no matter how good or bad your next book is, puts you on the map in
both Hollywood’s eyes and lets tons of other people know about your
work, thus securing your fanbase. Great move, right? Then when The
Shining is made and you don’t like it but the audience does, it
kind of doesn’t matter because your stories have been adapted twice
and made successful movies twice.
Now think about this for a minute,
those two films were nearly untouchable for years! Nobody wanted to
remake them because the originals were so good. Nobody wanted to make
a sequel for the same reason. His other works? Somebody wanted to
remake Cujo in the 90s. The original The Mist film is not even 15
years old but had a TV series remake this summer. Tons of directors
have been trying to remake both Pet Semetary (which got a sequel) and
The Stand literally since they came out in their respective years.
Tons of both his full-length novels and shorter novellas are in
constant development and being considered for remakes, reboots or
sequels, and why? I propose a thesis that it is because the originals
suck but are fondly remembered. For this reason, producers know that
if they can redevelop the property into something that will makeup
for the lacking original, they can have a cash cow. So for his 70th
birthday, King got the highest-grossing horror film in modern history
along with a slew of other adaptations. And the King machine keeps
churning. I can only hope I’m that successful.
As for this new IT, it is lacking. See, I finally realized why so much stuff isn’t worth a darn these days and why some things are overly praised even if they aren’t all that good (I’m looking at you Handmaid’s Tale; more action-less blank space than a Taylor Swift song). The reason is because nothing is really about anything any more. See, at least Handmaid’s Tale was about the oppression of society on women and I can respect that (I liked Big Little Lies better, but that’s just me). Most of these films, however, are nothing more than amalgamations of really nice scenes that can actually stand apart from the overall work. That’s not a good thing. Here, in IT, while it does have quite a few really good scenes (the back door of the butcher’s place, the garage slideshow, Georgie’s death, the finale fight in the floating room), it missed out on the one big theme that the novel harped on so much: fear.
As for this new IT, it is lacking. See, I finally realized why so much stuff isn’t worth a darn these days and why some things are overly praised even if they aren’t all that good (I’m looking at you Handmaid’s Tale; more action-less blank space than a Taylor Swift song). The reason is because nothing is really about anything any more. See, at least Handmaid’s Tale was about the oppression of society on women and I can respect that (I liked Big Little Lies better, but that’s just me). Most of these films, however, are nothing more than amalgamations of really nice scenes that can actually stand apart from the overall work. That’s not a good thing. Here, in IT, while it does have quite a few really good scenes (the back door of the butcher’s place, the garage slideshow, Georgie’s death, the finale fight in the floating room), it missed out on the one big theme that the novel harped on so much: fear.
In
King’s original novel (something the 2-part miniseries in the 90s
got right), the oppression that fear creates in the mind of a human,
especially a child and/or teen, and how that mirrors the fears of
becoming an adult are central to the plot. IT feeds on the fear. This
is why it likes to eat children especially, even though it will feed
on adults too. Children are able to more easily access their
emotions, thus more easily made to fear. And under the thin epidermis
of teens and preteens lives a bleak fear of the future. This fear of
growing up later translates into a disillusionment with adulthood.
They often feel that they have left something unfinished—that thing
being both the defeat of IT and the maintaining of their childhood
friendships. In other words, they still have fear but it has matured
from the fear of change to the fear of regret, loss being an
undercurrent in both of them.
This is not to criticize the fact that the movie didn’t cover their adult lives. Look, essentially this is still a mini-series but without the proper formatting that was shown in the book. The biggest problem is that it did little to properly establish the fear narrative. It shows that there are things the kids are scared of and mentions fear that one time but there is little deep-seeded fear within the story. It’s just some kids getting killed. It plays out more as a coming-of-age story than a battling against evil forces story. That alone makes it lose something vital from the book.
This is not to criticize the fact that the movie didn’t cover their adult lives. Look, essentially this is still a mini-series but without the proper formatting that was shown in the book. The biggest problem is that it did little to properly establish the fear narrative. It shows that there are things the kids are scared of and mentions fear that one time but there is little deep-seeded fear within the story. It’s just some kids getting killed. It plays out more as a coming-of-age story than a battling against evil forces story. That alone makes it lose something vital from the book.
Even
with that said, it is still a very good, solid horror movie. Though I
only found two scenes scary—the garage scene and that first time he
is chasing the fat kid through the library basement—I thought it
did its job in establishing the characters and making us believe that
they could defeat Pennywise. I enjoyed Skarsgard’s interpretation
of the clown and even enjoyed the costume of the character. Here,
with them saying that this thing has been there since before the town
was established, the costume makes semi-sense as something that an
18th or 19th century clown/jester might wear.
It is certainly the scariest King adaptation in years, not since
Darabont’s The Mist came out.
By now, you’ve noticed that one pretty big film is missing on this
list: Dunkirk. I don’t know if I wrote this in my Wonder Woman
review or if I just told this to a friend and then thought that I
wrote it, but I tend not to go to the theater to see straight war
films. I know Dunkirk was billed as a great, emotional, action-packed
film and the shortest Nolan film to date. And I also love Christopher
Nolan films. But I just don’t do war films at the cinema. I’m not
very entertained by seeing a bunch of dudes dying and crying against
Germans no matter which war it is. Superhero films are an exception.
I just often feel like, especially with this last full year of films,
TV and real life, we should all be tired of war in any form. For some
reason, because we haven’t had a big one in a long time, we have
fantasized war into being one of the greatest appeals in
entertainment of our time. I’m not going to go on an in-depth
admonishment of war films but suffice it to say that you don’t make
war films for profit nor even entertainment.
The sole purpose in
making a war film is for prestige/awards. All straight-up war films
are prestige films. They have no remake value and often take
themselves as serious cinema based solely on the fact that these
things actually happened. Frankly, I’d rather watch a documentary.
Most don’t make new statements anymore. Full Metal Jacket tried to
make a statement on not just the cruelty of war but the cruelty of
the preparation for war, which is something that almost no other film
did. There was always this notion that soldiers lost their mind on
the battlefield but this film questioned that by displaying how
soldiers can easily lose their mind or be on the verge of losing it
once all of their personality was ripped away in training. They are
already made into killing machines long before they do their first
bit of killing.
The latest war movies have said what? Have posed what question? Have made what statement? About 90% of all war movies released in the last thirty years say, “War is so bleakly terrible but the human spirit somehow endures! Huzzah and cheers for hope to live!” And it’s like, at the end of that, do I really care? Eh! Because nearly every dramatic film says that these days. So, I didn’t go see Dunkirk. I was not going to be fooled by critics again. If you haven’t noticed by now, critics have a strange but raging lust for most war films. If it pre-dates the Gulf War, they fawn over it like a newborn baby. Kill the Vietcong! Kill the Nazis (unless you’re Trump, in which case, those are good people)! Kill the Japanese! Yeah for war. Like, no! No. No. Stop with war films.
GENERAL MOVIES
The latest war movies have said what? Have posed what question? Have made what statement? About 90% of all war movies released in the last thirty years say, “War is so bleakly terrible but the human spirit somehow endures! Huzzah and cheers for hope to live!” And it’s like, at the end of that, do I really care? Eh! Because nearly every dramatic film says that these days. So, I didn’t go see Dunkirk. I was not going to be fooled by critics again. If you haven’t noticed by now, critics have a strange but raging lust for most war films. If it pre-dates the Gulf War, they fawn over it like a newborn baby. Kill the Vietcong! Kill the Nazis (unless you’re Trump, in which case, those are good people)! Kill the Japanese! Yeah for war. Like, no! No. No. Stop with war films.
GENERAL MOVIES
To zoom through some of the rest of the dreck that littered the
summer box office:
I found the latest Pirates of the Caribbean to be OK and serviceable
as an end to the franchise, if it was an end to the franchise. Great
movie? No. Not by a long shot, but I’ve been a fan of these films
since they came out. And going into the fifth film in a long-standing
near two decades old franchise that lost its steam in the middle of
the second film (although I really enjoyed the third film), I knew
what to expect and got exactly that. And I also enjoyed the cameos of
Will and Elizabeth.
Detroit was OK, although I just don’t understand why studios are trying to release depressing prestige/award-season films in the heat of summer. You can only do that for certain films and even then it’s hard to find an audience because a lot of the time people just aren’t interested. But Kathryn delivers another powerful film that takes on the race and police issue at the same time in which Charlottesville is happening. I think taking in both events made me dislike the film more than I should have because it made me so mad. Even worse, it didn’t make me the kind of get-up-and-do-something mad that would see me joining a protest but rather made me a what’s-the-use-in-trying mad seeing as how some of the same stuff that happened then is happening now. All those protests, all the laws, all the glad-handing, electing a black president, seeing more diversity in all businesses and in schools has gotten us what? How is the Detroit shown in the film any different than the country today? Films like this are supposed to be art pieces that we look back on and can learn something from. They’re supposed to serve as reminders and as warnings to current generations that we can’t go back to what we used to be, but making this picture now fails in that regard because we never fully got out of what we were. If this pic came out 10 years ago, it would’ve been more timely. It bears a repeat view closer to the Oscars season.
Detroit was OK, although I just don’t understand why studios are trying to release depressing prestige/award-season films in the heat of summer. You can only do that for certain films and even then it’s hard to find an audience because a lot of the time people just aren’t interested. But Kathryn delivers another powerful film that takes on the race and police issue at the same time in which Charlottesville is happening. I think taking in both events made me dislike the film more than I should have because it made me so mad. Even worse, it didn’t make me the kind of get-up-and-do-something mad that would see me joining a protest but rather made me a what’s-the-use-in-trying mad seeing as how some of the same stuff that happened then is happening now. All those protests, all the laws, all the glad-handing, electing a black president, seeing more diversity in all businesses and in schools has gotten us what? How is the Detroit shown in the film any different than the country today? Films like this are supposed to be art pieces that we look back on and can learn something from. They’re supposed to serve as reminders and as warnings to current generations that we can’t go back to what we used to be, but making this picture now fails in that regard because we never fully got out of what we were. If this pic came out 10 years ago, it would’ve been more timely. It bears a repeat view closer to the Oscars season.
I didn’t see Kidnap as it looked like a throwaway film. Didn’t
see Valerian even though I really wanted to but I just didn’t have
the time and I was a little put off by the fact that Dane DeHaan and
Cara Delvigne looked like they didn’t have chemistry even in the
trailers, so... Yeah. Didn’t see it. I thought 47 Meters Down was
pretty decent, however it didn’t do for me what The Shallows did
for me last summer. But it felt good to see Mandy Moore actually
still being a young woman in this film as opposed to This Is Us
where, even in the flashbacks when they were just about to have the
Twins, it felt like she was this rather old woman. The contrasts are
stark in appearance and feel.
I didn’t see Annabelle: Creation
because I thought that the first Annabelle was so weak. If I hadn’t
known that the first one was part of what is now a billion-dollar
extended universe franchise in The Conjuring, I would’ve thought it
was one of those cheap indie films that a group of friends got
together to make for fun and then released it on a whim. So, I
couldn’t bring myself to go see Creation, even though it did look
better to me in trailers. I didn’t like The Big Sick and didn’t
find it all that funny, but I wasn’t expecting much because most of
Judd Apatow movies (both directed and produced) are not really that
funny to me. He just doesn’t have my same sense of humor, which is
fine. It sort of reminded me of Funny People, which, strangely, I
found more appealing than most of his films.
Speaking of which, I do
know that he produced a few movies with Will Ferrell and those I did
like because I enjoy Ferrell. However, as much as I enjoy him and Amy
Poehler, I found The House to be rather tedious after 45 minutes.
Like most of these modern-day party movies, after a while it tends to
turn into a bunch of people wandering from room to room where some
crazy setup awaits in every third room. Kind of like the movie
Sisters with Amy and Tina Fey last winter. It felt like it stayed in
the same place for too long and slowly made the film smaller and
smaller in scale.
I didn’t see Wish Upon, though I thought it was a good premise and
wanted to see it but I couldn’t find the time. I heard the movie
floundered in its scares anyway. Can’t wait to see it on cable in
six months. Didn’t see Girls Trip because I didn’t have a lady to
go with me (no gf, no mom) and it was one of the few films I would’ve
felt awkward going to see alone because I know mostly women would’ve
been in the audience. But I heard from all the women in my life who
did go see it that it was a bomb (meaning good) movie and that
Tiffany Haddish was on fire. That, by default means that I also
didn’t go to see Rough Night for the same reasons, though I heard
that it wasn’t as funny.
Didn’t get to see Atomic Blond because I
didn’t have enough time and the more I watched the trailers, the
more I thought: You know, this looks like one of those direct-to-DVD
releases that all of our favorite action heroes from yesteryear are
constantly releasing (Bruce Willis literally is in a movie every
other month). I’m sure it had a higher quality than that but I will
have to wait for cable. I didn’t see the Emoji movie and didn’t
plan on seeing the emoji movie either. Don’t get me wrong, I
actually think it brave, bold and creative to create a full movie
based around the emojis and have an actual plot and everything like
Lego movie did, but I just wasn’t interested.
All Eyez On Me the Tupac biopic was... well, let’s say that it
certainly was no Straight Outta Compton. However, I have to give it
some credit for trying to fit so much of his story into the film. The
one thing is that they didn’t have a theme and didn’t stick to
one storyline. They more-so put together an amalgamation of pretty
much every iconic performance and/or image that we associate with
Pac. In that sense, it played like a love-letter to him instead of a
critical look into his life which is what most great biopics do. Pac
has taken on such an almost savior-like image in the eyes of his fans
that any movie made about him will inherently miss out on some aspect
of his personality (whether perceived or real) that fans love. You
will inevitably hear fans saying that, “Well, Pac stood for___ and
he meant___ to the people,” but the thing about that is that he has
become such a large figure that he stood for and meant hundreds of
different things—a different thing to each fan—so his entirety of
spirit may never be captured. But again, I commend the filmmakers for
at least trying to capture all sides of his personality.
I didn’t bother with Transformers. At this point they really need
to stop or reboot it or something. I also didn’t bother with Cars 3
nor any animated film. I found King Arthur to be better than I was
expecting and am a little sad that audiences didn’t take to it, but
I can understand that Guy Ritchie’s style isn’t for everybody and
doesn’t translate to everything. Here, unlike in Sherlock Holmes,
it didn’t shine. But I thought the performances were good even if
the story felt kind of weak. I also enjoyed the special effects and
think that Disney’s live adaptation of Aladdin (totally unnecessary
movie as was Beauty and the Beast) is in good hands with him. Hated
Snatched, though, to be far, I didn’t like Trainwreck either and I
am rather undecided on whether I like Amy Schumer or not at this
point. I enjoy her standup more than any of her acting so far. And I
rather felt like this movie could have been toned down.
But the biggest disappointment as far as movies went this summer
(this is hopes matched with actuality) has to be The Mummy. Before I
go all the way in on this tragedy of a film, let me start by saying
that I know the desires of some fans for The Mummy to return to the
scary like the original (for it’s time). Frankly, I don’t
particularly care how scary it is and yes I am a fan of the
90s/early-aughts versions with Brendan Fraser (side note: Isn’t it
kinda weird how Fraser starred in the films over twenty years ago and
in the third one they tried to usher in a younger star to take over
for him, but in 2017, a guy who is only slightly older than Fraser is
now is starring in the reboot? Hollywood is weird) and Rachel Weisz.
I thought they captured the exact tone that Universal would probably
love to have for this film and their Monster Dark Universe as a
whole. It was both funny and could have bits of real terror thrown in
for good measure.
In the new mummy, they failed to create one cohesive tone. Was it supposed to be scary or just a regular-old action/adventure film? Honestly, I don’t know what they were going for, and you know that you have a problem with your film when your audience doesn’t know what it wants to be or wants them to feel/think. It had really great moments: the plane crash, the mummy getting up out of the plane wreckage, the swimming zombies, and I enjoyed most of the special effects, but the plot was terrible and adding in that dead zombie/ghost guy (the Nick dude from New Girl) was a terrible idea. He played a similar role to the small guy in the original Werewolf in London. Cut him completely, make the film more brooding and stay with some of the jump-scares longer and this could actually have been a legitimately decent scary summer movie. Instead, we got Tom Cruise trying to be charming and overpowering a first-time director on a genre film in a genre that he has only ever successfully done once (Interview with the Vampire), and trying to turn it into some Mission Impossible/scary movie hybrid. But the Mission Impossible stuff came out closer to Knight and Day, and the scares were cheapened by the unnecessary humor that was decidedly slapstick rather than the preferred dark humor that would have fit into the dark tone of a horror film. This reeked of studio/star tampering as it came out as playing like two different films merged into one incohesive one.
In the new mummy, they failed to create one cohesive tone. Was it supposed to be scary or just a regular-old action/adventure film? Honestly, I don’t know what they were going for, and you know that you have a problem with your film when your audience doesn’t know what it wants to be or wants them to feel/think. It had really great moments: the plane crash, the mummy getting up out of the plane wreckage, the swimming zombies, and I enjoyed most of the special effects, but the plot was terrible and adding in that dead zombie/ghost guy (the Nick dude from New Girl) was a terrible idea. He played a similar role to the small guy in the original Werewolf in London. Cut him completely, make the film more brooding and stay with some of the jump-scares longer and this could actually have been a legitimately decent scary summer movie. Instead, we got Tom Cruise trying to be charming and overpowering a first-time director on a genre film in a genre that he has only ever successfully done once (Interview with the Vampire), and trying to turn it into some Mission Impossible/scary movie hybrid. But the Mission Impossible stuff came out closer to Knight and Day, and the scares were cheapened by the unnecessary humor that was decidedly slapstick rather than the preferred dark humor that would have fit into the dark tone of a horror film. This reeked of studio/star tampering as it came out as playing like two different films merged into one incohesive one.
Worst of all, really only Tom Cruise had any kind of personality in
it. Annabelle Wallis was there solely to look hot. She was as
cardboard in this role as Kirsten Stewart was in... well, everything.
In fact, I don’t know if I’ve seen Wallis in anything where she
looks like she’s doing more than just posing for the cameras yet. I
could barely remember her from King Arthur. I actually have to reach
back all the way to the defunct but intriguing Pan Am TV series from
ABC. I really liked that show and thought everyone was good in it,
but maybe it was good it was canceled after one brief season because
practically everyone on it went on to do bigger, better things.
Anyway, I found Russell Crowe’s role as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quite good, though I want to see a more monstrous transformation at some point in cinematic history. I’m tired of Hyde looking like nothing more than a slightly angrier version of the doctor. I want to see him look like an actual half-monster humpback as is intended. Show the truly dark nature of man in physical form.
And that’s it. Those were all of the movies that I either saw, wanted to see or couldn’t get out to see that released in my area for this summer. I can’t count mother! as I haven’t gotten a chance to see it and some of the shows were already premiering by the time it came out so I will have to count it as a fall release, however, if it really is as divisive as critics and audiences have said, I might do a review of it on its own in the next few weeks.
No wonder the box office was at a ten-year low this summer. A lot of the crap that Hollywood shoveled out was highly overrated by critics and easily forgotten. You know how sometimes when we have certain years in film, while we’re in them we say, “Oh, this is a pretty good year for film,” but once we look back with history’s eyes we say, “Holy crap, this was actually a lot better of a year for film than we originally thought.” Case in point: The year that Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Shawshank Redemption, Little Women, Legends of the Fall, Speed, The Mask, Clear and Present Danger, The Lion King and Interview with the Vampire all came out (1994). All of those films, depending on your age in life, can be viewed as classics. This year, however, I feel like the overall malaise we felt for all the films that came out we are going to look back on and think, “Wow, you know 2017 was actually even worse for film than we originally thought it was.” And that’s saying something seeing as how the year isn’t over, the awards season hasn’t started and we did get some highly-rated films this year.
Anyway, I found Russell Crowe’s role as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quite good, though I want to see a more monstrous transformation at some point in cinematic history. I’m tired of Hyde looking like nothing more than a slightly angrier version of the doctor. I want to see him look like an actual half-monster humpback as is intended. Show the truly dark nature of man in physical form.
And that’s it. Those were all of the movies that I either saw, wanted to see or couldn’t get out to see that released in my area for this summer. I can’t count mother! as I haven’t gotten a chance to see it and some of the shows were already premiering by the time it came out so I will have to count it as a fall release, however, if it really is as divisive as critics and audiences have said, I might do a review of it on its own in the next few weeks.
No wonder the box office was at a ten-year low this summer. A lot of the crap that Hollywood shoveled out was highly overrated by critics and easily forgotten. You know how sometimes when we have certain years in film, while we’re in them we say, “Oh, this is a pretty good year for film,” but once we look back with history’s eyes we say, “Holy crap, this was actually a lot better of a year for film than we originally thought.” Case in point: The year that Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Shawshank Redemption, Little Women, Legends of the Fall, Speed, The Mask, Clear and Present Danger, The Lion King and Interview with the Vampire all came out (1994). All of those films, depending on your age in life, can be viewed as classics. This year, however, I feel like the overall malaise we felt for all the films that came out we are going to look back on and think, “Wow, you know 2017 was actually even worse for film than we originally thought it was.” And that’s saying something seeing as how the year isn’t over, the awards season hasn’t started and we did get some highly-rated films this year.
Still, I think that at least half of the critically
well-received films from this year will be viewed ten or 20 years
from now as not very good, or “what the hell were they thinking?”
That includes: War for the Planet of the Apes, Spider-man Homecoming,
Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, IT, The Fate of
the Furious (it was a good movie but nowhere near Furious 7), LEGO
Batman and Wonder Woman. And to think that’s not even a list of the
worst movies of the year, just of the ones that should probably not
have received the amount of praise they got and fell on the spectrum
of mediocrity. Man, thank god TV was fantastic this summer. Wait,
what’s that, you say? TV wasn’t awesome this summer? Oh, that’s
right! TV was mingled deeply into the Summer of Suck, too. But since
this post is already waaaaayyyy too long, I’ll have to devote the
sucky TV to its own post. Stay tuned for Summer of Suck part two: TV.
What do you think? Am I overly critical of the films and songs that
came out this summer or do you feel that I hit the mark on more than
a few of my critiques? Which one of the films that I didn’t see
should I have seen? Which one of the films that I didn’t
particularly enjoy did you like the most (outside of Wonder Woman, if
you liked that)? And what movies are you most looking forward to this
fall/winter season? Do you go for more award-show fare or are you all
about the big boom and flash of Thor and Justice League or any
horror/holiday films? Let me know in the comments below.
If
you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel
#AFuriousWind, the
NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or
the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen.
For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult,
check out #TheWriter.
Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected
here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast
action/crime check out #ADangerousLow.
The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the
mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon.
Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels
The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming
this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on
the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to
talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with
that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “You like scary
movies?”
‘I really just like anything that’s
good, creepy voice on he other side of the phone.’
“Oh, I totally know, right? So long
as it has a decent plot, good acting and doesn’t have a ton of
holes then I’m so—uh! I mean, what’s your favorite scary
movie?”
P.S. It’s interesting to me to see how many films were supposed
horror films this summer, yet didn’t accomplish the main thrust of
their genre. The only thing horrifying this summer was... No. No,
Michael, don’t make that joke. You’re better than that. You’re
right. I am better than that.
P.P.S. Actually, I’m not better than that. The only thing
horrifying this summer was how horr-ible the movies were.
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