While I've been a bit rubbish about blogging recently (hah - try this year! At this point, I've done less blogging throughout 2015 than in the first year of this blog, which was actually only the last three months of that year) I couldn't possibly go without mention of seeing the new Star Wars movie - Episode VII: The Force Awakens - without seeming to make a lie of my geekery and long-term love of the series.
Pretty much as soon as they went on sale, my girlfriend got us tickets to see the movie at the IMAX screen at the Science Museum. It's a bit out of the way, considering we have several cinemas closer to home, but it seemed like the right thing to do: one of the greatest franchises is Science Fiction movie history returns to the (very) big screen, and the Science Museum's IMAX screen is (apparently) the only screen in the UK showing the movie in its 70mm format... What could be better?
I'm going to try to keep this spoiler-free - I'm sure there are plenty of spoilers online already (not least because my girlfriend mentioned that Reddit moderators have had the movie comprehensively spoiled while trying to remove all Episode 7 spoilers from myriad Reddit threads), so there's no need to add my own.
The Force Awakens, unlike The Phantom Menace (just as an example) is a fairly low-key movie. It's all about introducing new characters and (after a while) catching up with some of the old ones, rather than grand CGI spectacle. The roller text at the beginning sets a simple scene, rather than spewing out hyperbolic political history which could have made for a vastly more interesting story had it been part of the movie rather than being reduced to introductory roller text. The opening banter between the first two characters - one of then being the "daring pilot" Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) - serves as a quick link between this movie and Episodes 4-6 before our new villain is introduced. Other than this action taking place planetside, Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) entrance is remarkably similar to that of Darth Vader in Episode 4. We stay with this situation long enough for more introduction the characters of Finn (John Boyega) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), as well as hinting at the rivalry between Kylo Ren and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) - both reporting to 'Supreme Leader' Snoke (voiced by Andy Serkis), before skipping to Tatooine-analogue Jakku to discover Rey (Daisy Ridley), the scavenger. From then on, the story moves very swiftly as paths cross and - just the first example of Star Wars déjà vu - critical information makes its way to its intended recipients in time for the climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.
For all its Sci-Fi trappings, there's always been a huge element of 'Swords and Sorcery'-type Fantasy to Star Wars (at least, in the good films - Episode 1 tried to smother 'the Force' in the pseudoscience of 'Midichlorians', a factor wisely abandoned in Episodes 2 and 3), and there's plenty of that in The Force Awakens. The title very subtly alludes to a particular character who, more than any other, seems to be swept up and along by events. A critical relic of the war with the Empire (seemingly thought to been a myth by some of the younger characters) turns up not in a high-tech holding facility, but in a battered wooden box in a dank, dungeon-like forgotten underground storeroom.
There are also plenty of references to the original trilogy, not least in the planet settings of the movie - from the desert planet (not-Tatooine) to the forest planet (not-Endor, and cause of a great line of dialogue from desert-dwelling Rey) to the ice planet (not-Hoth) - and some specific scenes hark back very clearly.
One of the best things about The Force Awakens is that it allows itself to be intentionally funny, without resorting to the visual slapstick or the comically exaggerated double-takes that plagued Episodes 1-3. There are a couple of moments where it goes too far (in my opinion) - Poe Dameron occasionally comes off a little too cocky and care-free, Finn's bluster in a couple of situations goes a little over the top, even considering the way his character is presented - but, for the most part, the balance is good. The same can be said of the visual spectacle - it's all there, but it's never unnecessary and never overwhelms the story to the extent of the sickly CGI visual opulence of the prequels. The first flight of the Millennium Falcon (shown briefly in the very first teaser, so I think it's safe enough to mention here without straying into spoilers) is truly a sight to behold... Though I'm none the wiser on how it actually flies given the way it moves in-atmosphere.
But there are downsides. Practical effects were used wherever possible, for the spacecraft, the creatures and the droids (BB-8 is a triumph of practical special effects - as believable as an autonomous droid as R2-D2 and C-3PO, both of whom had people inside them) so, wherever CGI comes into play for the finer details - be it a crumbling building, a particularly detailed alien face, or a towering communications hologram - it still seems incredibly false. Perhaps not to the extent it did in Episodes 1-3, but those kinds of effects have been done better. There's also a great long sequence, shortly after the re-introduction of Han Solo and Chewbacca, which very nearly strays into Prequel Slapstick territory with its CGI monsters. My main CGI gripe would be the wasted performances of a couple of actors, in particular Lupita Nyong'o. While I'm sure they captured the movement of her face to animate Maz Kanata, the end result still looks eerily like a pumpkin wearing goggles... And there seemed to be no point to her having that sort of appearance (except as a character possibly analogous to a certain diminutive Jedi Master). Granted, many actors lend their voices to all kinds of animated characters in all kinds of movies and TV shows, but I didn't see any obvious reason why Maz Kanata had to be CGI rather than Lupita Nyong'o in costume and makeup, and the end result of the latter would surely have looked more convincing.
Also, with so many new characters to introduce, none really took centre stage... that may have been intentional, with all the relationships and rivalries to be explored more fully in the next couple of films, but it left me wanting more from this movie. So many questions are raised about each character's identity, I felt that they could have split The Force Awakens into two movies and done both the enigmatic characters and the story better justice. It's very light on plot - possibly not even as much plot as Episode 4, which The Force Awakens seems to recycle on a lot of points - doing little more than establishing that 'First Order=BAD, Resistance=GOOD', with a few hints at the underlying politics of this region of space at this point in time after the fall of the Empire.
TL;DR: The Force Awakens is a worthy follow-up to the Star Wars I grew up with. I was utterly awestruck and, for the first time in ages, keen to see a film a second time, just so I can digest it properly (and also, hopefully, be somewhat less overwhelmed by the IMAX presentation - we arrived at the screen with about five minutes to go before the movie started, and had to sit right near the front as, bizarrely, it was free-seating throughout). I'm excited for the next installment but, with so many characters still shrouded in mystery after their screen time in The Force Awakens, it's difficult to know where it will go from here.
Sunday 20 December 2015
Monday 14 December 2015
Almost The Old-Style Bondage
By which I mean the new Bond movie, Spectre, which I finally went to see over the weekend with my best mate. He'd already seen it, but is usually willing to indulge me when I'm late to the game with movies. There honestly can't have been more than a dozen people in the IMAX theatre (as one of the other punters pithily observed "I guess this has been out for a while...") but that at least meant that the only interruptions to my enjoyment of the movie were the - not excessively frequent - coughing fits I've been experiencing lately.
When the movie first came out, I heard some mixed reviews. I work with a hardcore Bond-nut who went to see it on its opening night, and he reckoned it was the best Bond movie ever (I wonder now if his opinion has changed at all in retrospect). I also work with a guy who's ambivalent toward Bond movies, who asked me if Bond ever has a plan when he starts his 'investigations', because it seemed to him that the character was winging it all the way.
I'm more in the latter camp but, having seen all the others (yes, even the George Lazenby one - weirdly, that's actually one of my favourites), I know that Bond does tend to wing it once he's started, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Spectre has also been described as "a 'Best of Bond' compilation", which seems a little unfair given that everyone knows what to expect from a Bond movie these days, and it must be getting difficult to be truly original within the constraints of the genre of spy movies and, more specifically, Bond movies.
The opening scene, which plays out as one long shot, following Bond through a Day of the Dead celebration, was excellent. It's a trick you rarely see in movies due to the difficulty in getting everything to work in the one take, and one I'm particularly fond of. After that, it dropped into generic Bond territory (action, laughs, more action) quite quickly and then topped off the intro with that terrible song that's just too insipid for a series that has had songs sung by Shirley Bassey. The title sequence is certainly full of tentacles, representing Spectre and it's seven-legged Octopus insignia, but it's basically typical of the worst kind of 'tits not quite out for the lads' title sequence I'd hoped they'd left behind when I sat down to watch Casino Royale.
After that, there is quite a lot of stuff that has happened in older Bond movies, just starting with his suspension from active duty and the inevitable carrying on anyway (License to Kill). There's an awful lot of travel, and an awful lot of wasted actors (Monica Bellucci is in it for about five minutes, then never even referred to again, Dave Bautista's henchman role - very much in the style of Oddjob and Jaws, where he has a unique way of killing folks - is inexplicably silent until he's finally disposed of, when he utters a single word - my mate and I couldn't decide whether he said "shit" or "cheat", but that doesn't really matter... The most baffling part is his introduction, where he's supposedly taking over a seat at the Spectre table from a lieutenant of sorts, when he's clearly just a henchman.
There's a sense that the writers have been following current affairs, to a degree, but also a sense that they've nicked ideas from other movies - Captain America: The Winter Soldier sprang to mind, with its focus on intelligence paranoia. A couple of points really ruined it for me. First and foremost, it's a continuation of what I liked least about Skyfall - that the filmmakers, after fifty years of Bond movies, saw fit to force a backstory onto the character - and it takes the idea much too far, in my opinion. Giving Bond family is one thing, but the guiding force behind Spectre's central villain turns out to little more than an adolescent grudge. It also goes back on the idea that Bond was so traumatised by the loss of Vesper Lind on his first mission that he lost all interest in women beyond using them as tools for his purposes. Somehow, within moments of meeting the daughter of one of his former enemies, he's so taken with her that he later wants to spare her the truth of her father's death. Not only that, but we're expected to believe that she's so taken with him, she actually doesn't mind.
On the upside, while the end reminded me somewhat of the last few minutes of OHMSS (minus a certain critical event... so far as we saw...) that I can't believe they won't bring Daniel Craig back for at least one more... but, if they don't, it's easy enough to consider Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre as a self-contained mini-series, quite apart from the main Bond franchise, if only because they cover his development from rough and ready new recruit to seasoned - and refined - master spy... That said, Craig's Bond has retired twice now (before the beginning of Skyfall and, presumably, at the end of Spectre), so I'm not sure where they can go from there.
...But certainly having only just introduced one of the Bond franchise's biggest recurring villains, they can't really close it off entirely.
When the movie first came out, I heard some mixed reviews. I work with a hardcore Bond-nut who went to see it on its opening night, and he reckoned it was the best Bond movie ever (I wonder now if his opinion has changed at all in retrospect). I also work with a guy who's ambivalent toward Bond movies, who asked me if Bond ever has a plan when he starts his 'investigations', because it seemed to him that the character was winging it all the way.
I'm more in the latter camp but, having seen all the others (yes, even the George Lazenby one - weirdly, that's actually one of my favourites), I know that Bond does tend to wing it once he's started, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Spectre has also been described as "a 'Best of Bond' compilation", which seems a little unfair given that everyone knows what to expect from a Bond movie these days, and it must be getting difficult to be truly original within the constraints of the genre of spy movies and, more specifically, Bond movies.
The opening scene, which plays out as one long shot, following Bond through a Day of the Dead celebration, was excellent. It's a trick you rarely see in movies due to the difficulty in getting everything to work in the one take, and one I'm particularly fond of. After that, it dropped into generic Bond territory (action, laughs, more action) quite quickly and then topped off the intro with that terrible song that's just too insipid for a series that has had songs sung by Shirley Bassey. The title sequence is certainly full of tentacles, representing Spectre and it's seven-legged Octopus insignia, but it's basically typical of the worst kind of 'tits not quite out for the lads' title sequence I'd hoped they'd left behind when I sat down to watch Casino Royale.
After that, there is quite a lot of stuff that has happened in older Bond movies, just starting with his suspension from active duty and the inevitable carrying on anyway (License to Kill). There's an awful lot of travel, and an awful lot of wasted actors (Monica Bellucci is in it for about five minutes, then never even referred to again, Dave Bautista's henchman role - very much in the style of Oddjob and Jaws, where he has a unique way of killing folks - is inexplicably silent until he's finally disposed of, when he utters a single word - my mate and I couldn't decide whether he said "shit" or "cheat", but that doesn't really matter... The most baffling part is his introduction, where he's supposedly taking over a seat at the Spectre table from a lieutenant of sorts, when he's clearly just a henchman.
There's a sense that the writers have been following current affairs, to a degree, but also a sense that they've nicked ideas from other movies - Captain America: The Winter Soldier sprang to mind, with its focus on intelligence paranoia. A couple of points really ruined it for me. First and foremost, it's a continuation of what I liked least about Skyfall - that the filmmakers, after fifty years of Bond movies, saw fit to force a backstory onto the character - and it takes the idea much too far, in my opinion. Giving Bond family is one thing, but the guiding force behind Spectre's central villain turns out to little more than an adolescent grudge. It also goes back on the idea that Bond was so traumatised by the loss of Vesper Lind on his first mission that he lost all interest in women beyond using them as tools for his purposes. Somehow, within moments of meeting the daughter of one of his former enemies, he's so taken with her that he later wants to spare her the truth of her father's death. Not only that, but we're expected to believe that she's so taken with him, she actually doesn't mind.
On the upside, while the end reminded me somewhat of the last few minutes of OHMSS (minus a certain critical event... so far as we saw...) that I can't believe they won't bring Daniel Craig back for at least one more... but, if they don't, it's easy enough to consider Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre as a self-contained mini-series, quite apart from the main Bond franchise, if only because they cover his development from rough and ready new recruit to seasoned - and refined - master spy... That said, Craig's Bond has retired twice now (before the beginning of Skyfall and, presumably, at the end of Spectre), so I'm not sure where they can go from there.
...But certainly having only just introduced one of the Bond franchise's biggest recurring villains, they can't really close it off entirely.
Sunday 13 December 2015
A Hat Trick of Weird Dreams
My girlfriend tells me that she has dreams where she's cheating on me - in a variety of ways, and with a variety of people - on a semi-regular basis. Some she has described in detail, others she waves away as another symptom of her pervasive anxiety. It's quite strange from an outsider's point of view, and particularly because the closest I ever had to something similar was a dream (which I thought I'd written about here, but couldn't find quickly) in which it transpired that my girlfriend was secretly married to Simon Pegg. More recently, however, I had one where I was on my way to some kind of event - possibly a lecture - with one of my colleagues (marking the first time in a long while that I've had a dream involving anyone I've worked with). It was dark evening and, for the most part, we seemed to be walking through parkland - that is, there was lots of grass either side of a tarmac path, and streetlights regularly spaced along the path. We were walking along and chatting about work and geeky things, when we realised we could cut through some kind of shopping centre as a quicker route to our destination. The most direct route turned out to be through a shop with lots of glass cabinets - possibly one of those weird 'gift shop' things that has everything from dragon/fairy statues to model cars to novelty clocks to candles - run by a pair of young women. My colleague - actually engaged to be married - got chatting to one of the two while I browsed the shop on the way toward the exit. As he caught up, the woman he'd been talking to kissed him. I wondered out loud what his fiancée would make of that, and why I hadn't had the same treatment. There was no response to the first question (other than my colleague looking extremely pleased with himself), but she said I didn't get a kiss for a reason... I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of either "because you wouldn't have appreciated it" (and make of that what you will) or just that she "didn't think it would have gone down as well" with me as it did with my colleague. We made our exit and headed off down into what seemed to be a kind of underpass in the park on the other side of the shop... but I woke up before we reached our destination.
There are actually times, in real life, that I think I'm a terrible friend for my best mate - it used to be that we'd regularly go to the cinema (obviously depending on there being something worth seeing) or to conventions or other events. This year, due to my finances being quite precarious, generally feeling quite tired, and fairly often doing other things with my girlfriend, I haven't spent quite as much time with him as I used to, and I'm occasionally a bit worried by this. Most of my weekends seem to rocket by, either working on one of my other blogs, idly surfing the internet or just watching television, and it's not as if my girlfriend would mind if I went out... So there's a guilt element building up as well. That said, it's only been in the last week that I've had a dream where all this came to a head. I don't remember the details of the second dream at all, but I remember meeting up with this friend of mine and being all chummy as usual, but he was almost instantly hostile, pointing out in great detail how bad a friend I'd been lately - cancelling things, not being available for things, generally being a dick, those kinds of things - in such a vehement tone that it pretty much shocked me awake.
Rounding off this trio of strange vignettes was a little horror story involving possibly giant mutant/ghostly rats in a forest surrounding a cross between my old high school and Hogwarts. This dream appeared to come with a prequel or intro of some kind, where two young children (one evidently me) were wandering through a spooky forest at night, either with our father or looking for him. There was a sunken stream through the forest, small enough that we could jump from bank to bank, and we carried on, getting deeper and deeper into the forest until we came upon what must have been a nest of the creatures, as they started flooding out toward us. We ran, got out of the forest, and then - in true movie style - it cut to a sort of '30-ish years later' thing were I was attending a high school reunion, where the school buildings were a cross between those I remember of my actual school, those school buildings I've seen in TV shows and movies, and some kind of huge, sprawling, gothic castle. At one point, I was walking through the Science department, possibly hoping to meet some of my old teachers. At the end of the main corridor, the staircase I remember from my own high school lead down to a grand entrance hall, made up of ornately carved stone and lit by candles. A spiral staircase from there lead outside, to the non-existent foundations of the building - it appeared to be suspended only by the spiral staircase at this end, while the main part of the building was on a nearby area of raised ground. While it was sunny out, I noticed the forest nearby, and remembered the dark and spooky night from my youth, and headed back toward the entrance to the forest not quite sure how I hadn't previously realised how close the two places were... but woke up before reaching the treeline.
There are actually times, in real life, that I think I'm a terrible friend for my best mate - it used to be that we'd regularly go to the cinema (obviously depending on there being something worth seeing) or to conventions or other events. This year, due to my finances being quite precarious, generally feeling quite tired, and fairly often doing other things with my girlfriend, I haven't spent quite as much time with him as I used to, and I'm occasionally a bit worried by this. Most of my weekends seem to rocket by, either working on one of my other blogs, idly surfing the internet or just watching television, and it's not as if my girlfriend would mind if I went out... So there's a guilt element building up as well. That said, it's only been in the last week that I've had a dream where all this came to a head. I don't remember the details of the second dream at all, but I remember meeting up with this friend of mine and being all chummy as usual, but he was almost instantly hostile, pointing out in great detail how bad a friend I'd been lately - cancelling things, not being available for things, generally being a dick, those kinds of things - in such a vehement tone that it pretty much shocked me awake.
Rounding off this trio of strange vignettes was a little horror story involving possibly giant mutant/ghostly rats in a forest surrounding a cross between my old high school and Hogwarts. This dream appeared to come with a prequel or intro of some kind, where two young children (one evidently me) were wandering through a spooky forest at night, either with our father or looking for him. There was a sunken stream through the forest, small enough that we could jump from bank to bank, and we carried on, getting deeper and deeper into the forest until we came upon what must have been a nest of the creatures, as they started flooding out toward us. We ran, got out of the forest, and then - in true movie style - it cut to a sort of '30-ish years later' thing were I was attending a high school reunion, where the school buildings were a cross between those I remember of my actual school, those school buildings I've seen in TV shows and movies, and some kind of huge, sprawling, gothic castle. At one point, I was walking through the Science department, possibly hoping to meet some of my old teachers. At the end of the main corridor, the staircase I remember from my own high school lead down to a grand entrance hall, made up of ornately carved stone and lit by candles. A spiral staircase from there lead outside, to the non-existent foundations of the building - it appeared to be suspended only by the spiral staircase at this end, while the main part of the building was on a nearby area of raised ground. While it was sunny out, I noticed the forest nearby, and remembered the dark and spooky night from my youth, and headed back toward the entrance to the forest not quite sure how I hadn't previously realised how close the two places were... but woke up before reaching the treeline.
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