235 posts
Latest Posts by jjgaut - Page 8
My review of Kill the Moon, in which, to the surprise of a disturbing number of characters, there is gravity on the moon.
Man, Clara is a terrible liar.
My review of Time Heist.
... because Doctor Who just hasn't been depressing enough lately.
My review of Listen, and why it's better than Blink.
My review of Robot of Sherwood.
"The meeting between these two fantastic figures should be the most revolutionary and politically explosive episode since...
... oh, no, wait, it's a Gatiss script."
My review of Into the Dalek.
My review of Deep Breath, and why Madame Vastra is the best.
Well, except for Clara.
I sort of suspect this might still play into it - I always remember thinking that shot was weird. Remember the Mistress talking in one of the earlier episodes about how happy she was that she "chose" Clara. It wouldn't surprise me if this came back up as somehow the answer. Not sure how the ring fits in, but it's not like Stephen Moffat has never come up with clever explanations for tiny details before.
Although it might just be a bizarre artifact from using a long lens (or fully zoomed-in zoom lens) with a shallow focus in a fast shot with lots of movement. Nick Hurran's wild, unhinged use of the camera results in a number of bizarre moments, which are usually just kind of charming quirks as a side-effect of his visual flourishes.
When they get out of the painting. -unnoun
The hand is clearly Clara’s - the rings match. (Look a minute or two later, when she’s observing the board.) Whatever’s going on with the camera angle, it’s still clearly Clara.
An update to my blog, looking at the Eleventh Doctor's era.
The Terminator is having a bad day. It’s a muggy July afternoon in New Orleans—the temperature is loitering in the triple digits—and Arnold Schwarzenegger is...
Look, the title "Terminator: Genisys" actually getting through the sheer number of suits it had to have gone through for approval could just be a fluke. I mean, "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" must have had to get through just as many intelligent and/or marketing-minded adults.
Sure, it's written by the writers of, respectively, Alexander and the Dracula 2000 Trilogy. Good writers get screwed over by the system all the time. Looking at Andrew Kevin Walker's resume, you wonder how he could possibly have written something as brilliant as Se7en until you realize all his other scripts were shredded, mulched, and fed to the rats in the basement before they were filmed.
Sure, it's about a T-800 time-traveling to protect a young Connor (Sarah this time), making this a rehash of Terminator 3, which was itself a rehash of Terminator 2, which, let's be honest, was just a particularly brilliant rehash of The Terminator. There are good part 5s out there - Fast Five rocks, You Only Live Twice is... the worst of the 1960s Bond movies, but it had Little Nellie and that Volcano base and Donald Pleasance, and then there's... um... ah... does Batman Begins count as Batman 5?
But now we have pictures. And now we know that title wasn't a fluke. It was a warning.
Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese looks like a constipated kid at a water gun fight. Jason Clarke's John Connor could not look more bored. Matt Smith looks less like a tough soldier from the future and more like a paintball player worried about whether or not the turkey was overcooked in his TARDIS.
Emilia seems to be in the general realm of an actual character, even if that character is "waitress dressing as a biker for Halloween on a bad hair day". But then, here's the description of what Sarah Connor's up to:
Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.
“Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen,” says Ellison. “But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny.
So... they're not going with the compelling, relatable character from the first film, or the complex, unhinged badass from the second. Instead she's going to be emotionally distant like the second one but also not able to single-handedly take on an army (and with her combat skills apparently reduced to sniper instead of everything), so the worst of both worlds. And it looks like she'll have to be protected by both a Terminator and a buffer Kyle Reese. Hooray for feminism?
But hey, I was one of the poor unfortunate souls who liked Salvation and wanted a sequel to that, so maybe this just isn't directed at me.
On the other hand, they actually named it Terminator Genisys.
An update to my Doctor Who blog. (Only 10 months behind schedule this time!)
Finally started updating my Doctor Who blog again.
11 months late isn't that bad, right?
The first I ever watched of Firefly was seeing Serenity in the theater after a friend told me it was pretty much the greatest thing ever. (It was actually the first 'pure' Whedon I watched. I had seen Toy Story, Speed, Alien Resurrection, and Titan AE, but all of those are heavily filtered through other visions.)
Without having seen the show, I absolutely loved the movie; it's self-contained enough for the story to make sense, and sets up the characters with extraordinary efficiency. Of course it worked even better after catching up with the show, given that it follows through on a bunch of arcs there, but it holds together on its own extremely well.
It really does play a little more like a season finale with a huge budget than a movie; I don't think any of the show's charms are lost as a film in that case.
There's a movie, is the thing, where the Reavers are super-important. So.
I’ve heard they play a sizable role in the movie.
I’m honestly considering not watching Serenity. I’m loving the show, but I also love it as television - so much of what Firefly does well is done on the episodic level, to the extent that I can’t imagine that a tie-in movie - which are prone to trying to make the “definitive” take on a franchise - will do the series justice. I have to assume that “my Firefly" will basically be ignored in favor of trying to fit in as much of the iconography and answering as many of the unanswered questions (that I don’t particularly care about) as possible.
I mean, realistically, I’ll probably watch it, because I only have one episode of Firefly left and I want to squeeze out as much of this show as I possibly can, but I’m not optimistic.
12. If I acknowledge that Ark is a brilliant masterpiece that massively advances what the series is capable of, can I prefer Genesis anyway?
16. Better than Morbius? Best solo one, sure, but...
22. Revelation? Not as good as Vengeance and flops at the end, but not embarrassing.
6-2. Can I agree that it technically accomplishes that but still prefer Let's Kill Hitler and Wedding of River Song for actually being fun?
8-2. What if I liked the idea of Kill the Moon but not the execution?
Just seeing if there are mitigating factors to at least reduce the sentencing down from eternity.
Edge of Destruction is better than The Daleks
The Rescue is better than The Dalek Invasion of Earth
The Gunfighters is better than The Celestial Toymaker
Power of the Daleks is better than everything, ever.
Enemy of the World is better than Web of Fear
The Mind Robber is better than The...
On the other hand, Hayles' script for The Celestial Toymaker was completely rewritten by Donald Tosh (including using the Mandarin second meaning of the title), to the point where Hayles was supposed to just be credited for the idea. Which was then again completely rewritten by Gerry Davis to the point where Tosh refused to take credit, and Hayles was ultimately credited on a technicality.
Similarly, Letts and Dicks had Hayles completely revamp his Monster of Peladon script once, and then Dicks did was was apparently a pretty major rewrite of his own.
Which is to say, doesn't it almost seem like cheating to choose a guy whose bad scripts were basically written by other people?
On the other hand (or back on the original hand?), that's a lovely essay.
Which writers have written the Doctor Who episodes most varied in quality? Gaiman? Aaronovitch?
This is framed interestingly, and I like it.
The two proposed are, of course, writers of two episodes of decidedly different receptions. But both have an all-time classic and a lesser work. Neither Nightmare in Silver nor Battlefield are unwatchable lows of the series that curl your toes and make you wish you had never taken that DVD off the shelf, and Doctor Who has those.
But by picking writers who have done more than two stories, you can get ones who have written things that are the equal of The Doctor’s Wife and Remembrance of the Daleks and who have also written ungodly horrors. There is a perspective in which it is hilarious that the writer of Listen also wrote The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe. Robert Holmes presents himself as another good target here. The mighty writer of The Ark in Space and Carnival of Monsters, the genius behind The Ribos Operation and The Deadly Assassin, who also gave us The Krotons. Though I actually like that one, so let’s do The Mysterious Planet. Or The Power of Kroll. Ouch. I mean, have you sat down and watched The Power of Kroll lately, because I fucking won’t. I will not sit down with that voluntarily. There’s no reason to do that to a man more than once.
Of course, in that regard, the really tempting answer is Robert Holmes for The Talons of Weng-Chiang and The Talons of Weng-Chiang, that being the single most pathological object in the history of Doctor Who. I mean, don’t get near a discussion of something so complex as rape culture with someone who doesn’t get that this is something you should be embarrassed to have on your DVD shelf because it is fucking called The Talons of Weng-Chiang. And yet, of course, it is full of witty dialogue and charming atmosphere, and is brilliant and beautiful and feels exactly like 1970s Doctor Who costume drama should feel, and on top of that it has that gorgeous giant rat, which you look at and your heart breaks and you just think, “oh, bless you for even trying, Philip Hinchcliffe, bless you for even trying.”
But that is, perhaps, too esoteric a point. It is a clever answer, and would satisfy the question, but one suspects that The Power of Kroll was the more revealing option.
In other words, I think you get the really interesting results when you look at stories that are among the absolute worst ever. Sure, some of them are by one-flop-wonders like Anthony “exploding typewriter” Steven, but others are things like The Dominators, written by the same people who brought us The Web of Fear. And while The Web of Fear is not the outstanding miracle that people think it is, and is self-evidently inferior to the story before it, it is a fuck of a lot better than the sodding Dominators. In this regard it is also tempting to say something like Planet of the Dead and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, if only to make a point about rewrites.
Similarly, a really strong case can be made for Terry Nation, who really does swing into the extremes. I mean, there’s no excuse for some of Nation’s not-in-any-meaningful-sense-scripts… but Genesis of the Daleks really is good. So are the first two, even if there’s no real reason to have tried the tentacle monsters in the first place. He embodies the ridiculous and the sublime of Doctor Who in the same way that The Talons of Weng-Chiang does, but he does it with astonishing gulfs in basic visual literacy.
But another name jumps out, and I think it is particularly worthwhile. Brian Hayles, who is credited with both The Celestial Toymaker and The Monster of Peladon, is the rare writer to land two stories on the all-time worst list, and I’m willing to say that even if we apply the Talons of Weng-Chiang principle. To either of them. And yet between them he has The Ice Warriors, The Seeds of Death, and The Curse of Peladon, two of which are absolutely fantastic things that just thinking about makes me want to watch again, and the third of which I’ll admit is worth a revisit once every couple of years.
Because, I mean, they weren’t stories I ranted and raved about like I did in my “holy shit how is this not one of the all-time classics of the Patrick Troughton era” of Enemy of the World, but that’s still just caught up in the gulf between people who think the point of the Troughton era was the monsters and the people who think the point of it was that it started with Power of the Daleks. But The Ice Warriors is the sort of thing that proves that the base under siege could work. You can do gripping tension with relative cheapness. The Ice Warriors is an incredibly smooth viewing experience, and was even before the animation. And The Curse of Peladon, man, that’s just a beautiful, mad thing that only Doctor Who would ever do. There’s a Doctor Who tradition that consists of that, The Ribos Operation, and Warrior’s Gate that you just constantly hope they’ll try again. (Period alien planets. Work every time. Well. Every time that it isn’t The Monster of Peladon.)
That’s a very, very strange gulf in quality there, purely because of the widely varied circumstances of all of them. And I really do think it’s the widest, simply because of how passionately I am personally led to love and hate the particular extremes. And the weirdness that there’s a Peladon story at each end too.
Yeah. Brian Hayles.
Okay, not quite. I was spot-on with what Guardians would make, but I really thought Turtles would drop faster. Also, that Expendables wouldn't completely bomb. Which is too bad; I was hoping they'd stick around long enough to make a genuinely satisfying entry. You know, with a story and some nice character work and a classic action sequence and maybe even, I don't know, living up to the title and giving its stars some good death scenes.
Box Office Prediction (August 15-17)
I know it’s a long shot, but I’m calling Guardians of the Galaxy to retake the number one spot this weekend, though it won’t be until the weekend actuals are released on Monday that we’ll know.
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Box Office Prediction (August 15-17)
I know it's a long shot, but I'm calling Guardians of the Galaxy to retake the number one spot this weekend, though it won't be until the weekend actuals are released on Monday that we'll know.
At any rate, Guardians, Expendables 3, and Ninja Turtles 5 will all make ~$25 million.
With mixed word of mouth and terrible reviews, the turtles should dive pretty fast, staunched only because family audiences hang on a little harder than teenagers; it'll lose around 60%.
Expendables should be able to open near the $28-$30 million of the first two, but the enjoyable yet underwhelming nature of the first films (and the growing consensus from critics and screenings that this one succeeds and fails similarly) combined with the usual diminishing returns for sequels means it probably won't be much over $25 million.
In its third weekend, Captain America 2 fell 49%; Guardians is being received even better than Cap, so it should end up hitting at least $22 million. I think, though, that on Sunday, it will take the top spot by enough of a margin that it will end up claiming the weekend.
Meanwhile, Let's Be Cops should do fine, but it'll burn off a lot of demand by opening on Wednesday. It should make $30ish million over the five days, but probably just under $20 million for the three-day weekend.
The Giver does not look very good. Certainly, it doesn't look all that much like the book, which will turn off a lot if its fans, and looks too generic to grab anyone else. It'll hit low teens at best.
PREDICTIONS:
Guardians - $25 million
Ninja Turtles - $24 million
Expendables - $23 million
Let's Be Cops - $19 million
The Giver - $13 million
The Hundred Foot Journey - $7 million
Into the Storm - $6 million
Lucy - $5 million
Hercules - $3 million
Step Up All In - $3 million
"My response to the “I am not a feminist” internet phenomenon…. First of all, it’s clear you don’t know what feminism is. But I’m not going to explain it to you. You can google it. To quote an old friend, “I’m not the feminist babysitter.” But here is what I think you should know. You’re insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for your right to vote, less than 100 years ago. You’re degrading every woman who has accessed a rape crisis center, which wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement. You’re undermining every woman who fought to make marital rape a crime (it was legal until 1993). You’re spitting on the legacy of every woman who fought for women to be allowed to own property (1848). For the abolition of slavery and the rise of the labor union. For the right to divorce. For women to be allowed to have access to birth control (Comstock laws). For middle and upper class women to be allowed to work outside the home (poor women have always worked outside the home). To make domestic violence a crime in the US (It is very much legal in many parts of the world). To make workplace sexual harassment a crime. In short, you know not what you speak of. You reap the rewards of these women’s sacrifices every day of your life. When you grin with your cutsey sign about how you’re not a feminist, you ignorantly spit on the sacred struggle of the past 200 years. You bite the hand that has fed you freedom, safety, and a voice. In short, kiss my ass, you ignorant little jerks.”
Libby Anne (via coachk13)
YES THIS A THOUSAND TIMES THIS.
(via spanglemaker9)
Luke and I were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era.
so yes this is LITERALLY the 600-years-old butt song from hell
While I kinda hate to add a giant block of text to Phil's beautiful explanation, if you want a more complex answer, here it is:
This is the box office chart on its opening weekend, new releases in bold:
1. The Expendables, $34 million
2. Eat Pray Love, $22 million
3. The Other Guys, $17 million
4. Inception, $11 million
5. Scott Pilgrim, $10 million
Different films attract different demographics, and a lot of Scott Pilgrim's were sucked away by its competition. Scott Pilgrim is a wacky, video game- and comic-book inspired romantic action comedy full of wild visual tricks, starring Michael Cera. Strangely, that doesn't appeal to everyone, but a lot of it is down to the other films.
The Expendables sounded like a spectacular idea, what with Stallone, Statham, Schwarzenegger, Willis, etc. in a violent, R-rated romp blessed with exceptional marketing; given the choice, older males flocked to that rather than the sillier, more romantic Scott Pilgram. (If you want the demographics, 61% of the audience was male, 60% over 25) Even if the movie ultimately stopped just short of delivering the goods, it had that first weekend in the bag.
Eat Pray Love was an adaptation of an incredibly popular book starring Julia Roberts, returning to the romantic comedy roots that made her so popular to begin with. In a choice between A) a romantic comedy that centered on a beloved actress, tackled relatable issues like depression and self-worth, and subtly indulged in a lot of fantasies that appeal to older women, and B) a flashy, video-game inspired fantasy about Michael Cera trying to win a girl's heart through fighting and modern indie rock The appeal for older women was naturally to Eat Pray Love. (in fact, 72% of its audience was women, 56% over 35)
As for teenager guys, the primary audience, a lot of them were showing up for the second weekend of the rather funny The Other Guys, which teamed Will Farrel with Mark Wahlberg, or finally catching up to (or watching for the second time) Inception, which was a word-of-mouth smash that, whatever its intellectual merits, was at the least a phenomenal action flick.
Finally, by the third weekend of August, most teen guys are a bit worn out from the deluge of movies targeting them through the summer and busy going back to school anyway; business really dies down around then.
On a cleaner weekend, it might have been an easier sell, but its wild genre-bending just didn't appeal to any individual audience as much as anything else.
And with the summer over, it's really hard for a non-drama release in the middle of August to catch on. There are exceptions (Superbad, Inglourious Basterds, District 9), but they're relatively rare. And with five wide releases on its second weekend, it didn't have much of a chance. For all that, $10 million does still seem a little on the low side, which suggests that the marketing couldn't figure out how to scale the cliffs it was facing.
The last piece of the puzzle is the film's quality - for all its dazzling visuals, originality, and clever comedy, it stops short of really connecting emotionally for most people, and that, more than anything, is what gets word-of-mouth going.
Which, as noted, is just too bad, because not only was it a good flick, but it should have been what launched Edgar Wright into the mainstream.
So why did the Scott Pilgrim movie flop?
Because not enough people bought tickets to see it. Which is sad, as it was pretty good.
Independence Day Marathon Part 1: Maleficent
To honor my country's existence, I decided to spend the entire day in the theater. I mapped out to spend a solid ten hours staring at just about everything Hollywood could throw at me, and came out mostly unscathed. I feel like it was a good way to celebrate Independence Day.
I started with Maleficent, a fairly shallow but enjoyable-enough Disney fantasy galvanized by Angelina Jolie's amazing performance. She's always had an otherworldly look about her, but nothing has taken advantage of it like this, and few roles have let her dig so far into such a fascinating character. Writer Linda Woolverton does a great job expanding on the character, giving Jolie a rich character arc to traverse, and building a lovely twist around the nature of True Love's Kiss. And with that to work with, Jolie ignites the screen every moment she's on it, and it's absolutely worth seeing just for her.
If she wasn't in it, though... it would be about like Snow White and the Huntsman - watchable and pretty, but there's not much else to it. No one can chew the scenery like Sharlto Copley, but his villain is pretty flat. His backstory has him go from a guy who gives up the only thing he has to be with his love, then show up years later totally evil. The narration suggests he was corrupted by the greed of mankind, which sounds fine, but burying it in the narration makes it abstract, and we never see any evidence of Man's Greed elsewhere in the film. Elle Fanning is perfectly likable as Aurora, but all she's asked to do is smile pleasantly.
And the three fairies are simply obnoxious. That's one of my favorite elements of the original Sleeping Beauty - the heroes are three bickering old ladies instead of the straight-arrow prince. But here, all they do is bicker endlessly, without ever accomplishing anything. I never thought I'd see Imelda Staunton or Juno Temple give performances I didn't enjoy, but I couldn't stand them here. (I'm not as familiar with Lesley Manville, but she was perfectly wonderful in An Adventure in Time And Space, so I'm disappointed there as well.) I really do blame the script here - making them incompetent and not giving them any non-bickering scenes really doesn't give the actors any room. And the hideous visual effects for the fairies are no help - they look like rubber masks of the actors pasted over awful CGI. (The effects are otherwise fine if overabundant - they're pretty to look at, but it feels like we're watching pretty special effects rather than a real, living world.)
I'm not really convinced the Mega-Happy Ending was earned, either. Maleficent's story is so laced with tragedy and Aurora is so underdeveloped that neither of their endings really worked for me.
But Jolie makes it all worthwhile, and Woolverton's take on the story is interesting enough to carry it through its weak spots.
Practical F/X vs. CGI in Willow
I finally caught up with the 1988 George Lucas / Ron Howard fantasy yarn Willow, and it's a blast. Not quite a classic, but spectacular, imaginative, thrilling, and charming in a way few blockbusters are.
The highlight for me - besides Val Kilmer's delightful rogue The Mad Martigan - is a battle sequence in a castle, where Martigan is basically taking on a few dozen villains on his own using a variety of tricks and tactics while Willow is busy trying to get his sorcery to work. There's a lot of other elements at play here - the villainous Princess Sorsha trying to figure out if she loves or hates Martigan, sorceress Raziel is stuck in a goat form, and trolls have encased all the inhabitants of the castle into stone and are still lurking around somewhere. It's a terrific scene as it is, but then Willow, trying to ward off a troll, accidentally turns it into a gigantic two-headed dragon known as the Eborsisk. And it's fantastic.
Later on, there's a scene widely praised at the time where Willow turns Raziel from a goat into an ostrich, a turtle, a tiger, and finally her own form in turn. It was the first CGI Morph in film, and led directly to The Abyss, which led to T2, which led to Jurassic Park, until now, when studios spend $250 million to make over-budgeted cartoons with live actors pasted in here and there.
Which got me thinking on the CGI vs. Practical Effects debate, since this is a nice example of the same effect being done both ways. Thinking about it, I think in both cases it was the right call.
The troll-to-dragon transformation is done with a combination of go-motion (an advanced version of stop-motion developed by Phil Tippett for the Hoth battle in The Empire Strikes Back) and animatronics. The effect is choppy and ugly, and the result is unsettling and creepy. It looks wrong, something that should not be.
It also necessitates cutting back to Willow's reaction shot. That's one of the things that makes the scene so good, really - Warwick Davis's look of "What the hell did I just do?" elevates both the horror and humor of the scene.
By contrast, the CGI morphing is smooth and fluid. It's no more or less realistic, but we're talking about magic here, so realism isn't exactly the goal. But this scene isn't Willow accidentally turning one monster into another, much more horrific monster; it's about Raziel becoming her own form again, and about the beauty and wonder of magic. It also allows the scene to take place in longer takes, but we don't especially need Willow's reaction until Raziel is herself.
Reversing the effects wouldn't have worked as well for the story - the smooth transformation would have looked like just a cool effect with the troll-to-dragon rather than horrifying (CGI can do a great many things well, but creepy just is not one of them), and Raziel's wouldn't have had the same sense of wonder and beauty with the grotesque look of go-motion. (The AT-ATs or ED-209 are exactly the sort of thing Go-Motion is good at)
Unfortunately, go-motion has largely gone extinct in the CGI era, as it's thought to be less "realistic", though I'm somewhat unconvinced given how cartoonish the effects look in mega-budget films like Days of Future Past (a phenomenal movie, by the way) or Amazing Spider-Man 2 (not a phenomenal film). Like makeup effects, bladders, models, matte paintings, and even celluloid film itself, go-motion is the older, harder method, but there are stories told better. Sometimes, like King Arthur in Excalibur, storytellers should charge into battle using the Old Ways.
On the other hand, sometimes you want a T-1000 to wreck up the place, and gotta bring in the computers.
Practical and digital are both tools, both with their function and form in stories. I hope going into the future, film makers remember the old methods and use them, and that cynical, f/x savvy viewers remember what beautiful things can be done with the new methods and don't dismiss them out of hand. (myself included)
Zach Snyder Sandwich
I originally posted this on the cracked forums in a discussion about the new Justice League movie, in particular the very mixed reaction to Man of Steel and Zach Snyder's work in general.
_____
I think the things that make Snyder both loved and reviled by such a variety of people can be explained in a metaphor. Movies are like sandwiches. There are basically three layers on which movies work:
Style. The visuals, the music, the pacing, the swell of emotion, etc. This is the bread – it won’t singlehandedly save a bad sandwich/movie, nor is it absolutely necessary that it’s brilliant, but it adds a lot to the experience, and some people experience a movie primarily like this.
Text. What the characters actually say and do, the story itself, and so forth. This is the meat, cheese, vegetables, condiments, all the substance. The actual quality and depth of the dialogue belongs here.
Subtext. What the writer/director is actually saying under the surface, whether intentional or not. This is the nutritional content. You usually have to be looking for it to properly appreciate this level of storytelling (or sandwich making), but it makes it a richer experience.
Most people experience movies in a mix of the first two levels. But people who really love movies and take the time to examine them tend to appreciate the third level a lot more. And different people care about different things. The film critic known only as Vern is the guy who wrote Seagalogy, which examined the movies of Steven Seagal for their themes, both individually and running, and took them seriously and critically as art. (It’s one of the best and most entertaining works of criticism I’ve ever read.) Like many Zach Snyder fans, Vern tends to be most interested in Style and Subtext, and wrote both a positive review and a later counter-post about some of the common arguments against it. The same goes for Phil Sandifer, who wrote an interesting defense of Man of Steel primarily on subtextual ground.
These levels can mix together different ways. Steven Spielberg movies are very consistent: the Style, Text, and Subtext are all doing exactly the same thing, and the result is a very smooth experience, regardless of quality (which is generally excellent).
But you don’t have to be that consistent to make it work. Take the Somewhere Over the Rainbow scene from Face/Off. The Style is beautiful and magical, while the Text is a kid watching a bunch of people getting brutally murdered. Consequently, the subtext is about how the pervasive tragedy and horror of violence affect even those who aren’t involved and may not even understand what’s happening, and the jarring contrast makes this all the more provocative.
Paul Verhoeven is a master of this sort of thing. Robocop, on the surface, is one of the most badass action flicks of the ‘80s. The text strongly resembles an unusually well-done Superhero origin story, with strong characters, memorable dialogue, and taut plotting. But the Subtext is a rich and hilarious satire of American culture that’s constantly criticizing its own story. It's a terrific movie on any of those three levels, but put together they become something truly special. It's like Judge Dredd enacting the life of Christ.
So a Spielberg Sandwich tastes different every time, but it’s always a perfectly balanced mix of ingredients, and it tastes exactly as healthy as it is (which also varies). A Verhoeven Sandwich tastes like junk food, but is surprisingly nutritious. A Michael Bay Sandwich is actually an entire bag of Oreos. The first bite is so delicious, but by halfway through you start to feel sick, by the end you actually are sick, and Heaven help you if you try a Bay marathon.
On those three levels, Zach Snyder is brilliant at Style, very clever at Subtext, but utterly clueless about Text, and ignorant about how the three fit together. Take Watchmen. It’s a gorgeously stylized realization of the comic, and all the rich themes are intact. But the violence (for example) is all wrong; one of the main themes is the awful pointlessness and tragedy of violence, and in the comic, it’s horrifying. That theme is still there, but Snyder shoots it fetishistically, Rodriguez-style, reveling in long fight scenes and beautiful splashes of blood and gore. The result is less provocative than confounding. Like, are we supposed to be having fun, or not? Similarly, the casting seems spot-on, yet the acting is incredibly uneven, because Snyder doesn’t adapt the dialogue to the rhythms that work when spoken aloud, and doesn’t adjust the flaws in the comic. Malin Ackerman got a lot of crap for her performance, but she plays Silk Spectre II perfectly as written. SS2 is a poorly-written character in the comic, spouting comic-book style dialogue.
Or Sucker Punch. It looks great, and thematically it’s an angry and brilliant condemnation of misogyny and sexism, but the characters are one-dimensional, the plotting is video-game level, and it fetishizes the characters too much for the criticism to actually stick correctly.
There’s probably no better representative of the good and bad points of Man of Steel than Jonathan Kent. Stylistically, Snyder’s vision of this small-town Kansas farmer is beautifully realized, full of gorgeous imagery and inspiring-sounding speeches about hope, all climaxing in his mythic death by tornado while saving others. And Kevin Costner pours his heart and soul into the role. But textually, he’s a stubborn jackass who tries to convince Superman to not save people. He dies because he goes back to save the dog, while telling Superman not to save him for no damn reason whatsoever. Meanwhile, the subtext is a provocative condemnation of the concept of small-town middle America being the heartland of the country; it’s turned ultra-conservative, and conservatism has degenerated into moral bankruptcy while loudly proclaiming its morality. So either the American heart is deeply corrupt, or Kansas ain’t in Kansas in more, if you catch my drift. (I’m not sure I catch my drift)
For some people, that imagery combined with Costner’s soulful performance makes the character work. For others, that subtext is intriguing enough to make it worthwhile. For the rest, it’s absolutely infuriating for obvious reasons – you hate him for being awful, and you subconsciously hate him for making the story so slow and pointlessly grim.
And, more to the point, doing all three of those together just doesn’t work. He can’t be the inspirational heart of the movie, and one of the principal antagonists, and also a satirical take on American Conservatism, while having anything remotely to do with god-like aliens punching each other over whose genocide is the morally correct one. The other problems largely fall into that.
So some people eat their Man of Steel Sandwich and go, “Man, this bread is off the hook!” (or whatever you kids are saying these days) Others say, “For something with this much junk in it, it’s surprisingly nutritious, and wrapped in a crust that’s quite exquisite.” And everyone else is like, “This is a terrible sandwich! Sure, the bread is good, but it doesn’t go with these ingredients at all! The meat is month-old bologna! The cheese is great (the cheese is Russell Crowe), but it’s only on the first half. There’s way too much lettuce, the tomatoes are bad, and the jalapenos somehow aren’t even spicy! And even if, for some insane reason, you actually want mustard, ketchup, mayo, and salsa on the same sandwich, you don’t drown the entire thing in all of them. By the end, you can’t even taste the bread!”
But hey, at least it’s not a bag of oreos.