Martin's Musings

The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan’s thrilling final entry in his Batman trilogy, begins with a breathtakingly impressive and awfully scary sequence.

Shot in IMAX, it involves Bane, the bulked-up villain who wears an intimidating crab-like mask, taking a plane full of men hostage. “Now is not the time for fear,” Bane says as the plane attaches to another, tilts 90 degrees, and he injects one of the passengers with a needle that draws out his blood. “That comes later.”

Coulda fooled me.

The scene, which was previewed before IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol last December, was shot largely with stunt actors in the air and not with green-screen-assisted computer effects. And yes, with those heavier, bulkier IMAX cameras.

It’s nothing short of amazing.

But that’s to be expected, given the way Nolan has rebooted the Batman story, infused it with such craftsmanship, and made each new film of his trilogy bigger and better than the last.

The Dark Knight Rises, while it may not be a better film than The Dark Knight, is certainly the most ambitious one of the three. And that opening scene sets our expectations pretty high (no pun intended). Continue reading →

It’s been said that superhero stories reflect the times in which they’re written.

In 2002, for example, Sam Raimi’s first Tobey Maguire–starring Spider-Man film clearly took place in the post-9/11 world, with lots of patriotism and New York rah-rah sentiment.

2008’s The Dark Knight undeniably made statements about the political climate and actions taken by George W. Bush’s Homeland Security team.

Now we have a reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, and it, too, feels timely.

The Amazing Spider-Man recasts Peter Parker as less of a nerd who gets strong and can defend his city, and more of a bullied loner who gets the chance to get even and show up those who have made him seem weak.

Instead of “With great power comes great responsibility,” now we get Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) telling his nephew, “If you have the ability to do good things for others, you have a moral responsibility to do those things. Not a choice; an obligation.”

So yes, this Spider-Man is about taking the (more heroic, sometimes lonelier) high road and standing up for the little guy who can’t help himself. It’s an anti-bullying message that feels appropriate for these times, and it’s a much more positive message than the Raimi series left us with in 2007, when Spider-Man 3 took a very dark (and not terribly satisfying) turn.

In fact, it’s not just the thematic nature of The Amazing Spider-Man that takes the high road. It’s the whole movie. Which makes it a welcome and pleasant surprise. Continue reading →

The superhero prequel X-Men: First Class imagines a reality in which mutants, led by Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), played a critical role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Fascinating stuff, and a pretty cool concept. It’s the execution here that’s the problem, and I hold Kevin Bacon to blame. Cast in the role of scientist and fellow mutant Sebastian Shaw, Bacon is worse than a villain; he’s someone you don’t even like watching. Oscar nominee (for Winter’s Bone) Jennifer Lawrence has the opposite problem; she doesn’t make much of an impact as Mystique, the shape-shifter who will grow up to look like Rebecca Romijn. The action and special effects here are cool, and I did like the revisionist history angle. But the metaphors were less a turnoff when they were more subtle, like in the second X-Men movie (seems no one learned from the last X-Men film). So I’m giving X-Men: First Class a B.

Part of the fun of superhero origin stories is watching how an ordinary person is changed when they’re given a super power. Think Peter Parker after he’s bitten by the radioactive spider. Or Bruce Banner, after he’s exposed to all those gamma rays. So it’s sort of a bummer when, early on in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we see that Wolverine has had claws all his life (though they’re bone, not adamantium ones), not to mention an ability to heal quickly and not age (how else to explain his ability to fight in the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War). Then again, Wolverine is a mutant, and he was born a mutant. Thus, this movie is not so much an origin story as it is the story of how Wolverine became a super mutant. Hmmmm … Perhaps the film should have been called X-Men Beginnings instead of X-Men Origins — or perhaps I shouldn’t take it quite so literally.

Title aside, Wolverine is pretty good, not great — it’s more X-Men: The Last Stand than the other two films in that series (i.e., it’s more an action film than anything of any higher meaning). Hugh Jackman, back again in the role that made him a star, still emits cool and the film does include some decent action scenes. On the other hand, the script isn’t really top-notch, and sometimes it veers into forced, lame comedy (like in the scene just after Wolverine’s injection where he has a mishap in he bathroom thanks to his new blades). It’s good to see that director Gavin Hood (who directed the truly awful Rendition) isn’t a total hack, but I wish he had allowed the actors to have a little more fun (for example, it’s nice to see Liev Schreiber playing a bad guy, but he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying himself very much).

Wolverine is definitely not essential viewing — especially if you saw X2: X-Men United, which also included Wolverine’s origin story. But it’s not the kind of movie you’ll regret paying eight or nine bucks for, either. It’s only May. Better films are still to come. For now, this one only gets a B– from me.

If you’re one of those people who think movies provide an escape in tough times, then by all means, stay far away from Watchmen. Based on the popular graphic novel (which Time magazine ranked as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century), Watchmen tells the unconventional story of a group of superheroes who live in an alternate version of reality: the year is 1985, Richard Nixon is still president (he’s won a fifth term), and superheroes have been banned. No wonder most of them have a pretty bleak outlook on the world. Narrated by the most pessimistic of them all, Rorschach, the story centers on a looming threat of nuclear war with the Russians. What role will (or can) our heroes have in stopping this? And will they find out who is trying to kill them before it’s too late?

Not that there’s anything wrong with conventional superhero movies, but for some reason Hollywood thinks we want to see something on the flipside right now. Here’s the thing, though: even Hancock had some laughs and didn’t take itself soooo seriously. Watchmen is a super-serious affair, with a very downbeat tone, and some heroes who aren’t really fighting for good. I don’t have a problem with unconventional stuff like that, or with the fact that this is based on a comic book. But perhaps there’s a reason I couldn’t really get into the graphic novel when I tried to read it last year, despite repeated attempts. And I think that reason is that the story’s just not terribly engaging or compelling, and the characters are not very likable. For example, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (Patrick Wilson and Malin Akerman, respectively) are actually pretty lame.

Which is not to say the movie’s awful. The actors all make valiant attempts to wring some credibility from the material — Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach), for all his character’s pessimism, gives the most notable performance (even if his face is obscured by a mask for most of the film). And the dark look notwithstanding, there are some impressive visual elements in the film, including the neat opening credits sequence. (No, I don’t include Dr. Manhattan’s junk in the list of “impressive visual elements.” We see more of his thang than we did of Jason Segel’s in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I mean, really. I know it’s CGI, but can’t the guy at least wear a thong or something? Even the Hulk wears shorts.) Ultimately, I just didn’t find Watchmen to be as fun, cool, or enjoyable as I’d hoped. It’s much ado about nothing, and that’s why I’m only giving it a C.

What you want to know is this: Is the new The Incredible Hulk movie better than Ang Lee’s Hulk movie from a few years back?

Not really.

But the good news is it’s not any worse. It’s just different.

For example, the story is much better, more focused, and more faithful to the comic book source material than Ang Lee’s daddy-issues epic was.

And the first two-thirds of this film are certainly more enjoyable than most of Ang Lee’s film was.

But that’s pretty much where the good stuff ends.

Continue reading →

Watching Iron Man, it’s almost as if the movie’s not based on a comic book.

Sure, it’s about a guy in a suit who fights evil, but Iron Man deals with contemporary issues — like terrorism — in such a serious way that it’s not as hokey as most other films in the genre typically are.

Not that a film like Batman Begins is hokey, per se, but given that the villains in those movies are all disfigured or “special” in some kind of way, having a bad guy who’s simply a businessman and arms dealer is sort of, ahem, disarming. Continue reading →

I guess I’ll cut right to the chase: Spider-Man 3 is the worst film in the series.

There’s just too much going on.

There’s too much hokey dialogue and stiff acting (even for a comic book movie).

There are too many attempts at easy laughs.

It’s too long.

And the finale just doesn’t have the same power as those in the other two films did.

But that’s not all. Continue reading →