Scott Mendelson

Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation

2013-03-28T11:02:18-04:00

G.I. Joe: Retaliation
2013
100 minutes
rated PG-13

It's no secret that I'm a fan of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (review). It's big, colorful, and filled with over-the-top action performed by larger-than-life heroes and villains. The first 90 minutes (I have issues with the finale) is basically, as I said back in 2009, what might happen if someone told the seven-year-old me to go play with my G.I. Joe action figures and gave me $175 million to spend on the resulting play-drama. But for whatever reason fan-boys and critics carped about the last picture, calling it too ridiculous and too silly for a, um, G.I. Joe movie. So now four years later, we have a somewhat stripped down and more 'realistic' sequel to Stephen Sommers's outlandish original. Jon Chu was under orders to make it cheaper and basically more 'grounded' than the last picture, and I suppose he has succeeded. G.I. Joe: Retaliation can best be described as G.I. Joe meets Act of Valor. I don't mean that as a compliment.

The film is both a reboot and a sequel, mostly because the cliffhanger at the end of Rise of Cobra was too juicy to ignore. But despite a few returning characters and a plot revolved around the idea of Zartan impersonating the president of the United States, this looks and feels absolutely nothing like the original picture. I will admit that G.I. Joe is an old enough property to have gone through many variations and that the version I prefer (the 80's cartoon show) may not be the one you like best. But even if we agree that this version is more rooted in the '80s Larry Hama comics (of which I've only read a handful), the resulting film is by itself a near train-wreck. There is barely a narrative, with so little plot and character work tossed out between the mostly mundane action sequences that one can presume that they shot the film without a full script and never bothered to play catch-up. There is barely a full film here, with -- for example -- nearly a full reel designated to a prison break that seemingly drags on forever (Walton Goggins has a token amount of fun as the warden.)

The film straddles the line between being a GI Joe adventure and being a Dwayne Johnson action vehicle that happens to exist in a GI Joe sandbox. Johnson is fine, although he's having less fun in this film than you'd expect. The first 25 minutes are halfway decent. Johnson sharing surprisingly strong chemistry with Channing Tatum (returning as Duke) while Jonathan Pryce has a wonderful scene conversing with himself as "Zartan as president" and the actual imprisoned commander in chief. But once the proverbial shit hits the fan (I'm being vague for the zero of you who don't know what happens), the film struggles to actually build a story until we wait for the inevitable confrontation between the Joes and the forces of Cobra.

We have dull interludes of Johnson and his compatriots attempting to decipher what we all know if we saw the last movie while moving from cheap interior set to cheap interior set. Aside from one center-piece action sequence set on a snowy mountain, pretty much all of the action is painfully mundane and weirdly small-scale. Said ninja showdown is indeed impressive, but it is so shoe-horned into the film that two full scenes of awesomely stupid exposition delivered terribly by RZA are required to justify its inclusion in the narrative. Shockingly, this sequel flirts with making the same major mistake that Rise of Cobra did, namely neutering one of its major villains for the sake of alleged thematic elements. Aside from The Rock being The Rock, none of the heroic Joes have much personality. Adrianne Palicki gives a better performance than her material deserves while I couldn't tell you anything else about the other Joes. Even Bruce Willis, knee-deep in "I don't give a shit" mode, bores himself and us silly and proves a useless addition to the team.

The film has the potential to be a satire of how the rest of the world sees America, but it punts the ball at every opportunity. It opens with an offhand line about how the president's approval numbers have gone up since he started blowing stuff up and the picture ends with Cobra revealing their existence and their agenda while armed with the awesome power of the American military industrial complex. But the film doesn't really play with these ideas, and it's one of those films where the film's marketing is more intelligent and thoughtful about its subject matter than the final product (a major city gets destroyed for narrative purpose other than having a cool five-second effects shot in the trailer). The notion of the United States government actually becoming a genuine force for megalomaniacal evil ends before it can really begin, which is either a failure of nerve or imagination. There is plenty of material here for a commentary on how the world views the 'world police' mentality of America, but not a moment is allotted for this kind of subtext.

Ironically, for a film that was delayed for a year in order to convert it to 3D for foreign markets, the film is less of an international spectacle than the first picture. Our heroes aren't larger-than-life super-soldiers from around the world but basically U.S. soldiers who do what U.S. soldiers generally do. The film flirts with manifest destiny in allowing the Joes to wantonly slaughter anyone in the world without regard to sovereignty. While the film tries to be a more 'realistic' version of G.I. Joe, it still has ridiculous moments like the one where the evil president openly and publicly flirts with and then borderline sexually harasses someone he believes to be a reporter with no thought to potential scandal. It also pays no heed to the after-affects of the U.S. president being impersonated by a genocidal super-villain and the obvious after-shocks that would be felt here and abroad.

In the end, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a stupid film that ignores the potent ideas seemingly right at the surface in favor of unimaginative action and bland characters. There are moments of amusement (I like how Palicki figures out that the president is not the president and there is a pretty fun third-act moment of chicken involving nukes) and that mountainside ninja fight-scene is impressive if somewhat repetitive (hey look, another ninja just fell to their death). But much of the character interaction and even much of action bores while lacking the gee-wiz factor of the original picture. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is no action classic (although I'd argue the mocked 'super-suit' chase through Paris is a fantastic action sequence) and G.I. Joe: Retaliation is not a complete failure. But G.I. Joe: Retaliation was handed a surplus of storytelling potential and squandered it to no good end and for no real purpose. The production feels cheap and the writing feels lazy and halfhearted. Yo Joe? No, Joe. No Joe at all...

PS -- The 3D is pretty terrible, with random objects pushed into the foreground even when they aren't supposed to be the center of attention. If you've ever tried watching television with a cat sitting in front of the television, you'll know what G.I. Joe: Retaliation looks like. But at least that random sign on Bruce Willis's lawn is totally coming right at you!

On the 'Morality' of Cinematic Action-Movie Massacres

2013-03-27T12:40:11-04:00

There is a moment at around the 20-minute mark of Olympus Has Fallen (review) where a giant airplane piloted by evil North Koreans shoots down an American fighter jet which then crashes not in the water or in an empty parking lot, but smack-dab into a suburban home. Considering the time of day the scene takes place, there's a pretty good chance whomever lived there was probably home at the time and was instantly burned to a crisp. That moment would have jolting enough, but the attack sequence that kicks off the plot goes on for a good 20 minutes, offering countless innocent bystanders being bloodily gunned down in the streets, along with others being crushed by falling monuments and blown up by various explosions set off during the White House siege. This isn't even counting the bazillion Secret Service agents who are slaughtered in the attack sequence, including a moment where enemy soldiers walk around the White House plugging wounded agents in the head (onscreen) for the crime of not being quite dead yet. Half of me was rather impressed by the rather horrifying onscreen body count. Half of me was debating whether to be offended or bothered by it.

As an action sequence and an orgy of violence, Olympus Has Fallen is pretty high up there in sheer carnage and no-punches-pulled bloodshed. It's the highlight of the film and is arguably worth seeing for the collage of escalating chaos alone. But for a film that was supposed to be a 'turn your brain off at the door' rollicking good time, this was some rather disturbing violence on display. Point being, does violence of this nature and/or magnitude belong in a movie that is supposed to be 'harmless popcorn entertainment'? And, without going into the would-be morality (that's a whole different can of worms), can a certain level or type of violence actually make a popcorn action film less enjoyable and/or null the would-be happy ending?

Obviously this is a huge grey area. What constitutes lightweight action fare versus more serious-minded entertainment? I might argue that The Peacemaker is an ahead-of-its-time action thriller that seriously deals with the concept of international blow-back and thus justifies its nuked Russia. You might say it's a silly George Clooney/Nicole Kidman action picture and nothing more. You may say Rambo is a brainless splatter-fest while I would argue it's Stallone's Unforgiven. Obviously your critical opinion of the film affects your thoughts on its high level of gruesome and gut-punching violence. So for the sake of this argument, let's presume that the films were dealing with are "officially" pure mass-market entertainments.

Would Die Hard have been less enjoyable had Hans Gruber actually succeeded in blowing up that roof with all of the hostages still standing on it? Is part of the reason that Raiders of the Lost Ark remains a timeless good-time action classic is that pretty much every single person who dies during its 111-minute running time is a 'bad guy'? Is it cheating to have Mission: Impossible II end up on a completely happy note while basically forgetting that Dougray Scott crashed a passenger jet into a mountain as phase one of his otherwise-thwarted evil plan? One of the things I've always liked about Katheryn Bigelow's action pictures (up to and including Zero Dark Thirty) is that they refuse to ignore the tragedy of their 'stock action-movie violence.' Keanu Reeves may eventually catch up to Patrick Swayze in Point Break, but once his surfer-bank robbers have shed innocent blood, any hope for a truly happy ending is out the window.

Any number of action films (Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, The Terminator) have the decency to either keep the collateral damage to a minimum or at least end on a less-than-completely happy ending, even if its just a token acknowledgment of what everyone went through. A random example, but Martin Campbell does it right in Vertical Limit, ending on a makeshift memorial for the lost souls who trekked up a mountain and never came back. If you want to craft an insanely violent action picture, you ought to at least have the decency to not shrug off the bloodshed during the film's would-be happy ending, as if the lives lost don't mattered because the bad guy died or someone important got rescued. You want to open Drop Zone with a mid-air prison break on a commercial jet where passengers are riddled with bullets and sucked out of the plane? Fine, but don't end your movie on a punchline which completely ignores the rather large numbers of people that Wesley Snipes absolutely failed to save.

It's not a deal-breaker and it's not a zero sum game. I still enjoy Mission: Impossible 2 and Drop Zone has more wrong with it than just its cruel streak. Wanted was a terrible movie even before the "hero" indirectly killed dozens (hundreds?) of innocent bystanders by causing a train crash. There are any number of good-to-great action pictures that involve massive and/or arbitrary casualties that mostly shrug it off at the end (Star Wars, nearly every Renny Harlin film, nearly every James Bond film). Air Force One tries to have it both ways, acknowledging the carnage in the early portions of the film but basically waving it away at the climax for a super-mega happy ending just because Harrison Ford got out of the plane. The finale of Speed has Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves making out on a crashed subway train completely oblivious to the bullet-riddled Richard Schiff that is probably right next to them (a completely gratuitous murder in a film that otherwise avoids gratuitous violence), yet it's still one of the best action films of the last 20 years or so.

Olympus Has Fallen briefly acknowledges the horror of its opening siege only to completely forget about it in the latter half of the film, to the point where (slight spoilers) a rather terrible act of violence right at the end is utterly ignored once its established that the president is still alive after all. It's an admittedly minor nitpick. I hesitate to dig any deeper into the cultural implications of action films that treat mass slaughter as 'no big deal' violence since part of the reason we enjoy action films is to enjoy the violence on display. But it's something that has occasionally bugged me over the years, as if the filmmakers aren't really paying attention to their own body count when they construct their super-mega-happy ending.

I have no profound conclusions about this. But I do know that I was bothered by the casual way in which random bystanders were sucked out of an airplane in Drop Zone and now I'm somewhat bothered by the mostly consequence-free carnage in Olympus Has Fallen. It's an imaginary and subjective line, but arguably there should be some kind of proverbial line in the sand when it comes to casual carnage in 'just for fun' action pictures. Or maybe I am just a little too empathetic for my own good. You decide...

Scott Mendelson

Review: Olympus Has Fallen

2013-03-22T09:32:34-04:00

Olympus Has Fallen
2013
120 minutes
Rated R

If taken at face value, Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen is pretty much morally indefensible. Written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, the film offers a level of jingoistic fear-mongering the likes of which are more commonly associated with a 1980s Chuck Norris vehicle and/or the likes of Cobra. It is astonishingly violent yet acts as if the safety of a single person is all that necessitates a happy ending. While the slightly similar 'president in peril' epic Air Force One at least implicitly asked what cost in lives should be spent to preserve the life of a man who happens to hold a certain elected office, Olympus Has Fallen has no such weighty ideas on its mind. It is not so much a Die Hard rip-off but a high-budget ($80 million) ode to the flurry of cheapie straight-to-VHS knock-offs that flourished in the late 1990s (essay), complete with simplistic plotting and implausible levels of violence. It isn't terribly smart and it peaks in the first act, but damned if I didn't enjoy the picture nonetheless.

A token amount of plot: The White House has been invaded and taken over by a group of heavily armed militants from North Korea. Led by the diabolical Kang (Rick Lune), they have kidnapped the president (Aaron Eckhart), the vice president, and several cabinet members, leaving the speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman) in command. Outside intervention seems hopeless, but as always, say it with me now... "There's one thing they didn't count on!" That one thing is Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), formally on the president's detail but now languishing in the Treasury following a tragedy. Can he redeem his past failing by sneaking into the White House and picking off the terrorists one-by-one? What is the terrorists' real motivation and can they be stopped in time? How is it that we've never had a Die Hard in the White House movie until now yet this year this is only the first of two such films?

This is all standard Die Hard material, but again feeling more like something like Chain of Command than Air Force One. The film's opening reel is quite compelling, establishing the main characters and the conflicts that must be overcome (sorry for the vagueness, I'm assuming some of you haven't seen the spoilery trailer). The opening siege is jaw-droppingly violent, with countless Secret Service agents, police officers, and innocent bystanders being slaughtered in a variety of colorful and brutally gruesome ways. The sequence goes on for what feels like a full reel and it really is a suburb action sequence even as we wonder just how 'fun' and 'escapist' this massacre is supposed to be. We see plenty of aftermath as well, with pretty much every subsequent scene littered with dead bodies and at least one moment of horribly wounded survivors filling up the local hospital. For what it's worth, it's somewhat of a testament to how far removed we've become from 9/11 that something like this can be in a popcorn entertainment.

The rest of the film follows the normal template, with hostages being menaced and occasionally executed, with Secret Service Agent Mike Banning dispatching one bad guy after another (in mostly uncreative but blood-drenched ways) while high-level politicians frantically try to figure out what to do from the situation room. Despite their high billing, Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett have little to do, and even Aaron Eckhart as President Asher has little to do other than show token resolve when the story demands in. Considering the quality of the cast, it's somewhat shocking how thin the characterizations are for pretty much everyone (I'll just say Melissa Leo deserves better and leave it at that). Ashley Judd cameos as the First Lady basically to pocket a quick paycheck to fund her upcoming Senate race against Mitch McConnell while Dylan McDermott seems to have been directed to go for Billy Zane-in-Titanic levels of bad acting as a former Secret Service agent now in the private sector. Radha Mitchell plays Butler's girlfriend, a thankless role in a pointless time-wasting 'subplot.' Rick Yune does what he can as the heavy and he is given a token amount of real-world motivation. Butler is okay, once again struggling with an American accent, but he is ably suited for the somewhat generic 'every man' hero that these films usually require.

I do like the cliches the film doesn't exploit. The above-noted girlfriend is not magically kidnapped and brought to the bunker for the finale.The president has a son hidden in the White House who does not end up in peril during the climax. In fact, the search for said child (Finley Jacobsen) provides what little suspense the film has to offer, and it gives Banning a specific task to accomplish during the opening half of the picture beyond just randomly killing bad guys. It also gives Banning's actions a genuine sense of purpose, as closer inspection post-viewing will make you realize how little good our would-be John McClane accomplished for most of the movie. I don't want to go into spoilers, but the film's violence is at such a level that we realize that what heroism Banning committed is pretty much confined to the very end of the film. Up to a point, the terrorists pretty much do all the horrible stuff they planned on doing anyway and, until a last-minute doomsday scenario, nothing Banning does really screws up their plans in any real way.

I'm not sure how seriously to take the film. Yes, it's mostly grim and humorless, with bland patriotic platitudes intended to give the film an alleged 'depth' or nationalistic pride (flag goes down = America doomed, flag goes up = America saved!). The picture is apolitical to an almost comical degree, ignoring even the idea of opposing political parties coming together to fend off foreign invasion. I love the bit where a villain launches into a brief 'why I did this' speech that seems to randomly include buzzwords he heard on CNN. But there is no disguising the xenophobia on display. The people who enter our sovereign borders and slaughter us wholesale are all very very Asian while the only ones who can save us are very very Caucasian (Freeman and Bassett do little to help). The film flirts with making Kang into a third-party terrorist but the implication is that it's North Korea's operation all the way, although I almost admire how the film doesn't attempt to make Kang a secret Neo-Nazi or in league with evil corporate baddies.

I'm torn between the sheer entertainment factor and the almost overt immorality on display, both in terms of its hardcore xenophobia and its use of astonishingly horrible violence in the service of what is supposed to be 'fun popcorn cinema.' I both disapprove of the emotionless and mostly consequence-free carnage and think it's kind of awesome in that "I'm an eight-year-old boy!" kind of way. It, along with The Gangster Squad (another terrible movie that I mostly enjoyed), may very well signal the twilight era of the neutered R-13 action picture. You want R-rated action? My lord, is this R-rated action! The opening siege is indeed a terrific action set-piece and the rest of the film gets by on the strength of its cast. Olympus Has Fallen may be a terrible film. But I won't pretend it's not a relentlessly entertaining movie. And it's certainly more of a Die Hard movie than the last so-called Die Hard movie.

Why Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters May Represent the Future of Big-scale Studio Movies

2013-03-20T15:44:27-04:00

I wrote several weeks ago about how something released this year or perhaps last year might be a signal for the future of the would-be blockbuster, a film whose respective success would spawn a decade or so of like-minded would-be tentpoles. What if I were to tell you that a possible template for future would-be blockbusters had already arrived this very year? What if I were to tell you that the future of big-scale filmmaking may be none-other than Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters? The picture is not only a hit, but has also resulted in Paramount green-lighting a sequel. Laugh if you wish, but let's take a look at what the film represents.

The rescheduled, heavily cut, and seemingly dumped January release may look and feel like both a punchline and a 'why they hate us' representation of everything wrong with popcorn filmmaking. But unlike certain re-imagined fairy-tales, it didn't cost $200 million. It cost just $50 million. As such, it would look like a break-even prospect based on its $54 million and counting domestic cume. But it's also done $151 million overseas, for a not-quite-done-yet worldwide total of $205 million. Come what may, Paramount will make a lot of money of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. And it will be primarily because of overseas dollars.

Yes, we all know that overseas business, which started growing in earnest around 2001, has reached a point where America is basically just another territory for the studios. We all know how Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides earned far less domestically than the previous Pirates of the Caribbean films but earned $1 billion worldwide anyway. We all know how Sony hit paydirt over the last several years with the international explosion for the recent sequels in the Resident Evil and Underworld franchises. Underworld: Retribution may have barely crossed $40 million domestic, but we're still getting a Resident Evil 6 in September 2014 because it also made $179 million overseas for a $221 million global gross on a $65 million budget.

And that's actually a step down from the astonishing $296 million global that Resident Evil: Afterlife earned in 2010. Underworld hasn't quite reached those heights, but the last entry still earned $160 million worldwide on a $70 million budget. Say what you will about the last Die Hard film, but the picture's $92 million budget means that the picture will make money even as it crashes and burns domestically while racing towards $250 million worldwide. I'd argue that the film would have done even better had it not looked like it cost $10 million, but I digress. What these films represent are B-level blockbusters that don't have to set box office records in order to be uber profitable.

Unlike Jack the Giant Slayer, Oz: The Great and Powerful, or pretty much every major film being released this summer, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters won't have financiers nervously waiting for that $600-$800 million global payday that is required just to break even. What's different about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is that it's not a sequel. Oh sure it's a fairy tale reworking, but it's technically an original picture. It's also the only one of the various Alice In Wonderland cash-ins that will actually make a tidy profit. Snow White and the Huntsman grossed $396 million but cost $170 million.

What we're heading toward is an industry where American grosses are next-to-irrelevant, especially when the budgets are kept in check. The path to profitability lies not in $250 million spectacles like The Lone Ranger (which could equal the worldwide take of the first Pirates of the Caribbean and still barely break even) or $200 million dice-rolls like 47 Ronin or R.I.P.D. but in cheaper tentpoles like the $90 million Matt Damon/Jodie Foster sci-fi adventure Elysium. The scary thing for we Americans is that the artistic quality of these films, as well as the general American reception to them, is becoming less and less relevant to their profitability. This is somewhat akin to the school of thought that states that the entire world should vote for the U.S. president since they probably should have a say in who gets the power to drop bombs on their country. Audiences can say 'No thank you!' to the likes of A Good Day To Die Hard or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, but as long as overseas audiences say "More, please!", we're technically powerless to control what kind of big-scale films get produced in what is still technically American cinema.

With its comparatively minuscule production costs and robust foreign reception, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters may in fact represent the future of big-scale studio filmmaking. That may or may not be terrifying to you, but just in case I'll leave you on an upbeat note. The emphasis on foreign dollars may also mean we see more stuff like Cloud Atlas. Remember that one? It stalled at $27 million over here but has already brought in $87 million worldwide with several markets yet uncounted. It may not make the film into a hit, but it means that overseas audiences may just help get the "next Cloud Atlas" funded, especially if they can do it for under $65 million this time around. And don't forget The Life of Pi, a $120 million nearly-silent 3D mediation on faith and survival. It earned a solid $121 million in the US but it just crossed $600 million worldwide. A global cinema with a bit of Cloud Atlas and a dash of Resident Evil won't be all bad, right?

Scott Mendelson

How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Veronica Mars Film

2013-03-19T11:12:48-04:00

30,000 people donated an average of $64 during a several hour period last week, and thus we will be getting a Veronica Mars movie sometime next summer. Creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell used Kickstarter to basically prove to Warner Bros. that there is indeed an interest in a continuation of the cult detective drama that ran for three low-rated seasons on the CW back in 2004-2007.

The deal was basically to raise $2 million in a month and Warner Bros. would agree to distribute and market the film, giving it a limited theatrical release and the various home-viewing options. They hit their target at 5:55 pm this evening. I made a bitchy joke earlier in that day about raising money to find domestic 'food insecurity' among American children by calling such an initiative 'Save Firefly!' or something to that effect. My first instincts were ones of priorities and what this said about our 'entitlement culture'. Upon reflection (I purposely didn't write anything immediately), I'm still not sure how I feel about this. This is indeed very interesting, it may even be *news*. But is it good news overall?

Obviously if you're among those who really really wanted a Veronica Mars movie or were involved in the Veronica Mars television series, then it's pretty good news. I don't know whether this will be a game-changer of any kind. I don't know if this will change how indies are funded or whether this is merely a variation on the 'get independent funding, then find a distributor' model of so many indie films. The idea of fans putting their money where their mouth is does have a certain worth. But I do know that thousands of people donated their money not to a charity or even to a proverbial starving artist, but to a multinational for-profit corporation with no promise of any kind of return on their investment. Thousands of people willingly donated their money to an incredibly wealthy corporation so that said corporation could make a movie which they would then theoretically pay $10 a piece (be it a theater ticket or a VOD price-point) to view in a year's time. They were basically paying Warner Bros. to do what Warner Bros. is supposed to do with the money they have already accumulated.

The Kickstarter page notes that a number of donors past the $10 range will receive various perks for their contribution (digital copies of the film, PDFs of the script, etc.). UPDATE: This fascinating article highlights the good news (most people who donated got something for their contribution) and the bad news (the rewards will be incredibly costly and time-consuming to produce) of the fundraising process. The donors receive no ownership stake in the final product, and the cost/reward is indeed something more akin to spending money to win tickets to buy a stuffed animal at a fair. It's not a complete wash, but it's along the lines of winning a stuffed bear worth $5 after spending $20 to accumulate the tickets. No one got ripped off since everyone knew that they were or were not getting for their contribution. For most, of course, the booty is merely beside the point, with the primary goal being merely the satisfaction of having donated in order to bring about a mainstream big-studio release based on a long-cancelled TV show. And that's the other part that really bugs me.

Veronica Mars was one of the best shows on television when it ran back in the mid-2000's. But it's been off the air for nearly six years. We live in an entertainment culture of presumed entitlement. We *deserve* more seasons of Arrested Development because uh... it ran for three solid seasons and only got cancelled when its ratings got so bad that they started dragging down the shows around them on Fox's schedule. John Carter absolutely deserves a sequel because the vast majority of critics and ticket-buyers just didn't get it and Disney really ought to sink another $250 million into a second chapter just because! In 1996, Mars Attacks! tanked at the box office. Burton fans such as myself licked our wounds and moved on. Today David Duchovny wants fans of The X-Files to start a letter-writing campaign because, bomb office catastrophe be damned, the fans obviously deserve a continuation of the nearly 20-year old television show. The idea that certain properties have a natural life cycle has given way to an entitled presumption that no franchise should die or end, ever.

I do worry about the various ways this can go horribly wrong. I do worry that studios will eventually start seeing this as a business model when dealing with geek properties. "Pay us $5 million and we won't cancel Revolution!" I worry that studios will demand some kind of Kickstarter upstart money before embarking on a film like (random example) Kick Ass. I worry that the allure of upfront investment from the very people who will buy tickets will make studios more likely to fund known properties as opposed to original pictures that won't necessarily drum up fanatical fan interest. I worry that geek-centric properties that are partially subsidized by fans will be even more dependent on giving the hardcores what they theoretically want and we'll end up with more 'Venom in Spider-Man 3' scenarios. On a societal level I worry that Kickstarter start-ups will get crowded out by rabid fans giving their money in order to buy an advance on an additional season of Jericho. And yes it does bother me that thousands of people basically made a charitable donation to a corporation. But there is indeed potential here.

If the announcement involved someone like George Lucas offering to help fund Guillermo del Toro's In the Mountains of Madness provided a certain financial goal-post was hit, after which Lucas donated the money to one of his charities, I'd admittedly feel better about it. If it were an announcement from Michael Moore offering to help fund a bunch of social issue-documentaries out of his own pocket provided there was financial interest, I might feel a little better about this. My misgivings are at least as much about what's being funded (Really? A Veronica Mars movie? They haven't moved on yet?) and who the money went to (again, basically it's a $2 million+ gift to Warner Bros.) than the concept at work. The idea of Kickstarter being used as a tool for raising capitol for well, anything at all, is of course the whole point of the program. That I really really don't think the world needs a Veronica Mars movie shouldn't preclude me from being happy for those who indeed voted with their wallet and made a pipe dream into a reality. I may have misgivings about what it all represents, but that doesn't mean I have to piss on everybody else's parade.

So in the meantime, mazel tov on the new Veronica Mars movie. I hope it's good, and I'll probably watch it when the time comes. But for now I'm hoping I'm wrong. I'm hoping that this indeed broadens the opportunities for aspiring filmmakers rather than leading to a bunch of Kickstarter projects intended to continue long-dead franchises. I hope studios don't look at this and see a way to offset at least a portion of their budget even for films they were going to make anyway ("We want to shoot Justice League entirely in IMAX, and $5 million can make it happen!"). And as for the other qualms, in terms of societal priorities and whether or not we just got somewhat grifted by a movie studio, it is what it is (it's not like I haven't severely cut back on charitable contributions since having kids). This is indeed something new and different that happened yesterday. Despite my misgivings and discomfort, I can at least take solace in the fact that A) something new and different happened yesterday and B) a lot of fans of a specific franchise are very very happy today. That's gotta count for something.

On the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion, Why Do We Praise the Converted Over the Initially Right?

2013-03-19T10:23:38-04:00

I think it's terrific that Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has come out in support of gay marriage. I think it's notable that he came to this conclusion after his 21-year old son came out of the closet, as the more would-be homophobes are forced to actually put a human face on the theoretical 'other' of homosexuality the faster this remaining prejudice will go away. One of the major cornerstones to doing away with institutionalized racism was the white World War II soldiers who served alongside African-American soldiers and realized that they weren't lesser creatures. But this news story ties into something that frankly I was going to write about today anyway, to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. In short, those in the mainstream media, especially in the Beltway press, seem to reserve a level of respect for those who once were blind but now can see.

Changing one's mind about an issue and coming into the proverbial light is seen as a sign of seriousness and credibility. And it certainly should be celebrated and commended. But I would argue that these converts are often taken more seriously and treated with more respect than those who were right from the very beginning. Current Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is among the many, many politicians who initially supported the war in Iraq but came to see the error of his ways after the occupation went to hell in a hand basket. Pretty much the only people left in mainstream American politics who still think the war was a good idea are Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and John McCain. Yet while the immorality and incompetence of that decade-long affair, which cost around 200,000 lives and $2.2 trillion thus far, has become the mostly been written off as a blunder, those who were right from the very beginning are still treated by the mainstream media as less serious than the grey-haired policy wonks who thought it would be a cakewalk.

We view former hawks-turned-doves as credible because they were able to see the errors of their thinking while still belittling the likes of Michael Moore and the thousands upon thousands of anti-war demonstrators who were in the right way back in 2002. When it comes to the Iraq invasion, much of this is rooted in the media's culpability. Better to lionize those who were wrong or felt duped after the fact than lionize those who called the media on their own inaccuracy from the start. Rachel Maddow's otherwise fine documentary Hubris, detailing the lies and false claims that led up to the war, ignores the media's prominent role in selling the lie ten years ago, lest it have to detail MSNBC's role as well. Let us remember that the now liberal news network fired Phil Donahue, their highest-rated host at the time, during the run-up to the invasion specifically because of his anti-war leanings. We ignore the mainstream entertainers like Conan O'Brian who had sketches mocking the alleged incompetence of UN weapons inspectors who couldn't find weapons that turned out not to exist.

The media sold the war both by trumpeting its supporters and marginalizing those who opposed it, writing off thousands of anti-war protesters and proverbial dirty-stinky hippies. The media would like to forget that they not only helped sell the war to the American people but helped sell the lie that Democrats voting against it would be hurt in the 2002 midterm elections, the midterm elections that I still believe were the primary motive for drumming up the case for Iraq's occupation when they did. As such, better to give airtime and presumed credibility to those who can claim that they have seen the light or were duped rather than face explicit criticism from those like Howard Dean who knew that it was a terrible and immoral idea from the start. We lionize those who were wrong but later changed their minds. It's arguably worth doing, as it gives merit to the notion of becoming wiser or coming to the correct conclusion later in life.

But while we salute Bill Clinton to writing an editorial decrying the Defense of Marriage Act, might we also bother to mention that he was the one who signed it into law in the first place? And while we praise and acknowledge the change of heart of someone like Senator Robert Byrd, former Klu-Klux-Klan member turned progressive congressman, should we not put him on an automatically lower platform than those who were always for racial integration and always against institutionalized and cultural racism? I respect Rob Portman's change of heart in regards to gay marriage and hope he will spur others to make the same leap. But in this issue I have a heck of a lot more respect for those in power who have been on the side of the angels from the beginning, even when it was unpopular and politically dangerous.

I'm thrilled that so many eventually came to see the fallacy of the Iraq war to the point where we elected a president who somewhat publicly opposed it from the get-go, I'd rather save my respect for those who knew that invading a foreign nation with no ties to 9/11 and no weapons of mass destruction was an immoral and stupid idea back when it might have made a difference.

Scott Mendelson

Review: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

2013-03-14T14:32:32-04:00

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

2013

100 minutes

Rated PG-13

Among its many other faults, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone makes a solid case for the old 'television is better than the movies' argument. The film is written by four different screenwriters all swimming in television writing experience and directed by a man who has directed almost nothing but television since 1990 and all of their various television projects are likely, by default, better than this film. It features two actresses (Olivia Wilde and Gillian Jacobs) who did shine or are currently shining in well-developed three-dimensional roles on episodic television and uses them here merely as props for the boys to screw or ogle. It contains a script seemingly written by committee that features less wit and smarts than any one of the 38 episodes of 30 Rock by director Don Scardino. But putting aside the film vs. TV debate, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is an inexplicable missed opportunity, showcasing subject matter that isn't the least bit timely and highlighting the unmerited 'redemption' of a pointlessly horrible human being whose downfall is completely his own fault. More importantly, save for Jim Carrey's supporting turn and a few grace notes along the way, it isn't very funny.

The film stars Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi as a pair of lifelong friends (Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelton) who spent thirty years doing magic tricks together and it picks up toward the end of their run. Carell immediately establishes himself as a genuine asshole, sexually harassing his various assistants, boning various groupies, glory-hogging, and abusing his put-upon fellow magician. So when the end invariably comes in the form of declining ticket sales and competition from a pain fetishist street magician (Jim Carrey, doing his best to make the film watchable with limited screen time), we aren't exactly busted up. That the filmmakers (Carell is among the producers) felt the need to make Wonderstone such a wholly unlikable character in the opening half is bewildering, as we find ourselves rooting for the success of everyone else around Wonderstone, be it Marvelton (whose post-break up ventures provide the rare insightful chuckles) or their former assistant Jane (Wilde). Even the allegedly villainous Steve Grey (Carrey) at least has the hunger for performance and the will to see his crazy stunts through. The film is basically Rocky III without the first two Rocky films to establish why we should care about "Rocky's" comeback.

The film briefly sneaks in a reference to Jane having stage fright (a late script addition by Wilde in a desperate attempt to flesh out her character) to explain why she never made an effort to become a magician herself, but she is really just another obviously talented female who patiently waits to be allowed to perform by the men around her. Wilde's duties mostly involve looking attractive and nodding her head in disapproval when Grey does something outrageous. This is another case of a film having a female lead purely for the sake of a contrived romantic subplot as well as having an attractive woman to use in the marketing. One can easily see a vastly superior film that's truly about the dueling ideas of mainstream magic, even if the proverbial David Copperfield vs. David Blaine debate hasn't been 'a thing' for ten years or so. One can also see pretty much the same story but rooted in a main character who isn't a pompous jerk, which would make his downfall and would-be redemption all-the-more compelling. The picture temporarily lights up in the latter acts as Carell encounters the aged legendary magician Lance Holloway (Alan Arkin) in a nursing home and the two have thoughtful conversations about why they did what they did. Contrived screenplay aside, the film almost works when Carell is allowed to be his low-key naturalistic self rather than attempting to create a bombastic Ron Burgendy-type character.

But the film fails to see the potential in its own scenario. There is a moment towards the start of the third act where Wonderstone and Grey end up competing in a bit of one-upmanship and all I could think about is how wonderful *that* magic act would be. We're supposed to be appalled when Carrey steals Carell's spotlight and/or humiliates him (Wilde certainly furrows her brow and disapproves), but the idea of a show combining old-school magic with somewhat more extreme performance art would be just the kind of thing I'd love to see on the Vegas strip. Moreover, the scene ends with a final 'humiliation' yet the movie doesn't seem to realize that Grey, who is constantly accused of not being a real magician, has in fact performed a couple pretty fantastic old-school magic tricks. Moreover, Burt and Anton's final illusion, the one meant to bring them back to glory, is not only closer to the 'extreme' tricks performed by Grey but, upon reflection, only a little less horrifying than Hugh Jackman's big trick from The Prestige. Aside from the moral and legal implications, it's also the kind of trick that can only be performed so many times before its secret is inevitably revealed.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone fails to illicit laughs out of its main scenario, expecting us to take a rooting interest in a pointlessly terrible human and rooting for his undeserved comeback. Jim Carrey gives it his all and its refreshing to see him merely as a force of comic chaos, merely there to get laughs and exit stage right accordingly (he's once again the creator of comedy rather than the straight man reactor to it). The rest of the cast, pushed out of the spotlight by Carell's apparent ego, fights for comedy scraps as the screenplay refuses to deviate from the contrived and the generic. It is yet another variation of a mainstream film technically aimed at adults or older kids yet pitched at the simplistic level of a grade-schooler. It's flat-footed, indifferent to its supporting characters, and mostly exists as an ego-stroking vanity project for Carell, a 50-year-old playing a 40-year-old chick magnet finding 'redemptive' romance with a woman 21 years younger than him. This is frankly a terrible film, but ever more disheartening because the material for a decent comedy so obviously exists within the botched final product. The Incredible Burt Wonderstoneis a missed opportunity. It is neither trick nor treat. Its only worth is in reminding me, right now, in this final sentence, to go and rent the delightful The Great Buck Howard.

The Good News/Bad News About Oz: The Great and Powerful's Complicated Gender Issues

2013-03-11T15:04:16-04:00

Full-on spoiler warning...

Unfortunately pretty much everything I feared about Oz: The Great and Powerful, right from the second trailer, turned out to be true, at least from a gender perspective. It is indeed about three seemingly powerful women sitting around and waiting for a random man who fell out of the sky to not only attempt to save Oz but, more importantly, shape all three of their respective destinies. The film also equates beauty with virtue in a rather explicit fashion, with somewhat laughable scenes of Rachel Weisz's Evanora complaining of jealousy over Michelle Williams 'pretty face' seemingly oblivious to the fact that said evil witch is played by *Rachel Weisz* (spoiler: Rachel Weisz is insanely hot). It's not just that Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams play seemingly strong female characters who constantly yap about needing some prophesied male wizard to swoop down and save their asses. The biggest problem in the film is that it allows its feeble and somewhat selfish male hero to basically define them and their actions.

Big spoiler here I suppose, but the creation of the iconic Wicked Witch is entirely a result of Mila Kunis's Theodora feeling spurned by James Franco's rather doltish Oz after an initial flirtation. Yes, her evil sister is indeed egging her on but at no point in the film, which otherwise I must confess works better than I expected, does anyone A) suggest that Theodora just get over what was indeed a momentary flirtation or B) suggest that Oz take some responsibility for leading her along during their initial encounter. The good news is that all of this may make for a fine teachable moment. Say what you will about the Twilight Saga (and I've said quite a bit), but the biggest problem with the franchise (which I otherwise enjoy of course) is that it presents what is arguably a happy ending for its somewhat disconcerting core relationship. It's tough to use the films as a discussion point because everything turns out hunky-dory for Bella and Edward. Obviously things go a little differently in Oz: The Great and Powerful. The film makes a halfway decent teaching tool of sorts for those who want to explain to their kids (sons and daughters) about how to deal with the opposite sex (or same sex if that applies, but I digress).

Girls: Don't go crazy just because a guy 'done you wrong' and/or mistake momentary flirtation with some kind of romantic commitment (a good lesson for young men too, natch). You are not defined by your relationships and/or which guys do or don't like you. Boys: Don't be a womanizing ass-hat. The women you might be tempted to treat like disposable napkins have feelings and aren't just there for your momentary amusement. Of course the film doesn't actually provide any such lessons as Franco's hero pretty much gets away with his disreputable behavior in the early reels. There's a moment right at the end where Oz basically tells Theodore that she's not entirely responsible for her wickedness and that if she feels like not being a super-villain she's welcome to return to Oz. It's a token acknowledgement of the tragedy of this Wicked Witch, a potentially good person with great power undone by her emotions and by her sister's deceptions. But Oz's admittedly intriguing olive branch (preemptive forgiveness is a rare thing in mainstream cinema) refers to Evanora's role in creating the Wicked Witch rather than his own. He, and by proxy the film, takes little responsibility for the actions that sent Theodora down the yellow brick road of evil.

Viewed purely on how it deals with gender, Oz: The Great and Powerful is indeed disconcerting, moreso arguably due to its simplistic writing as befits its intentions as a film for very young children. My five-year old liked Glinda because she was nice and didn't like the witches because they were evil. I'm sure she didn't really care about its deeper implications and it's easy enough for me to impart whatever wisdom I think should be gleaned from the film (see the prior paragraph) without marring her enjoyment of what is a rather visually dazzling big-screen entertainment. There is indeed something to be said of a major tent pole where three of the four main characters are female. It is worth acknowledging a major studio blockbuster where a female hero is captured by a female villain only to be rescued by another female hero (contrasted with the original Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is saved by her three male companions). And there is really something to be said of a major studio tent pole that has a climax where two major female characters are the ones who do battle.

I don't know enough about the Oz books to know whether the film represents a step back for feminism as Elisabeth Rappe argued last week (although I tend to agree with her more often than not). But merely in terms of tent pole film making, I'd argue it's a good news/bad news situation. The film may be technically about the hero's journey of a selfish cad who learns to be less of a jerk and save the day, but it gives most of the big scenes and big character moments to its various witches (and a heartbreaking china doll, natch). Its gender politics are disconcerting, but it also provides three or four larger-than-life female characters, even if the writing somewhat sells them short (it's not like Oz is a deeply written character either). And even if Mila Kunis (who is frankly terrible once she transforms) and especially Michelle Williams get little to do, Rachel Weisz brings class and grace to her role as the big bad. Girls old enough to appreciate a bad-ass villain will possibly find her to be their favorite character. It may be a little sad that I'm giving a film with serious gender issues a token pass because of how rare it is to even see multiple female characters in a film of this scale, but that's the world we live in right now.

The women of Oz: The Great and Powerful may have serious issues in how they are written and presented, but at least Oz: The Great and Powerful has women (plural) in it at all.

Weekend Box Office: Oz: The Great and Powerful Summons $80 Million, With All Signs Pointing Towards a Leggy Run

2013-03-10T13:02:16-04:00

I've said this before, but one of the problems with modern box office analysis is that it treats studio tracking numbers, which are supposed to be internal figures that can be used to adjust marketing in the run up to release, as ironclad box office predictions. More often than not, pundits use tracking in a way that creates a preemptive doom-and-gloom scenario where a new release is painted as a box office turkey before it even opens *or* its used to give unrealistic expectations to a new release so that studios are then forced to defend what is actually a solid debut. Such is the case with Oz: The Great and Powerful (trailer/posters). The $215 million Disney prequel debuted with a strong $80.3 million this weekend. Alas, due to rumblings and arbitrary presumptions that the film would open with as much as $100 million over the weekend, mostly due to the project's token similarities with Alice In Wonderland, Disney may now be forced to defend what is easily the biggest opening of 2013 by more than double and the third-biggest March debut ever behind Alice In Wonderland ($116 million) and The Hunger Games ($153 million).

So before we get into actual analysis, let's be very clear. Oz: The Great and Powerful just opened with $80 million. There was a time when $80 million would be an eye-popping unqualified success that absolutely no one could question. I would personally argue that with the very fewest exceptions it still is. Unless we're talking about something like Avatar 2 or Toy Story 4, this is a fantastic number. There really is no big secret behind the successful debut. Disney spent a lot of money to market the picture as the first big blockbuster of the year and pretty much everyone knows the original Wizard of Oz in one or more of its various incarnations. As I mentioned just over a week ago, the film benefited from having actual movie stars who could do mainstream press outlets and appear on magazine covers, as well as actually being appropriate for kids unlike a certain $200 million fantasy that dropped by about 65% this weekend.

The post-Thanksgiving movie going season has been absolutely barren for kids and families, with only a "who cares?" 3D reissue of Monsters Inc. and a second-rate Weinstein Company cartoon Escape From Planet Earth providing anything remotely kid-friendly. Families who like the movies desperately wanted something... anything they could see and responded to this all-inclusive package accordingly. Had there been more obvious family fare in the recent months, had Jack the Giant Slayer been PG, had there been less of a drought of family-friendly titles in the marketplace, well, okay, it wouldn't have made *that* much of a difference this weekend, but the barren marketplace certainly helped. Presuming it performs exactly like Alice In Wonderland, it will have a 2.88 weekend-to-final multiplier and end its domestic run with $230 million plus countless 3D-infused millions overseas. For the record, it earned another $69 million overseas for a worldwide debut of $150 million.

Frankly, while Oz: The Great and Powerful has its writing issues, it's a far more satisfying movie than Alice In Wonderland and I can confirm that it went over like gangbusters with the packed general audience crowd I saw it with Friday night (in 2D with my daughter in tow, natch). So a similar multiplier is arguably guaranteed although I hesitate to presume that it will have stronger legs. But yeah, especially if The Croods proves to be less leggy than How to Train Your Dragon, Oz: The Great and Powerful could flirt with $250-$300 million. The film pulled just 2.5% of its weekend gross at 9pm-to-midnight (compared to Alice In Wonderland's 3% midnight haul) and pulled a terrific 3.3x weekend multiplier off a $24 million opening day (Alice had a 2.8x weekend multiplier off a $41 million first Friday). And while the movie has issues (I am one of probably a million bloggers/pundits who will dissect the film's gender messaging), it works as impressive large-scale entertainment and it delivers the goods for general moviegoers.

So yeah, so far all the signs indicate that Oz: The Great and Powerful is in it for the long haul. The rest of the box office will have to wait, perhaps until next weekend. Dead Man Down (review) flopped as expected, with $5.3 million for the weekend (who here thought it would do remotely well this weekend?). Jack the Giant Slayer got crushed by Oz: The Great and Powerful, and that's pretty much it for this weekend. If apologies are required, they are extended accordingly...

For more of this nature, visit Mendelson's Memos.

Review: Dead Man Down

2013-03-08T11:06:05-05:00

Dead Man Down
2013
110 minutes
rated R

Up until the very end of the picture, Dead Man Down is a mostly serviceable crime drama. It has fine work from Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace along with worthwhile supporting turns by Terrance Howard and the always appreciated Domonic Cooper. It doesn't set out to turn heads or reinvent the wheel, but it tells its grim story of revenge and tortured romance with just enough aplomb to merit a casual viewing. But oh that ending... I have no idea what screenwriter J.H. Wyman or director Niels Arden Opley were thinking and I can theoretically give them the benefit of the doubt that they just couldn't decide on a thoughtful finale. I'd like to think they just gave up and went on 'bad screenwriting autopilot.' It's frightening to think that these two professionals thought that the last reel constituted a worthwhile conclusion to their otherwise worthwhile yarn. It's tough to review a movie where your biggest gripe involves the very end without actually revealing what happens at the end, so maybe we'll get to that later.

The proceeding 95 minutes or so tell the interlocking stories of Victor and Beatrice, two neighbors from across the street who form a connection of sorts over their shared pain. Beatrice is visibly scarred from an encounter with a drunk driver while Victor's trauma is kept hidden from us for at least the opening reels. We learn pretty quickly that Victor has been undercover of his own accord with the local organized criminals led by Alphonse (Howard) and Gordon (Armand Assante) and Beatrice uses at least a portion of this information to blackmail Victor into exacting revenge on the man who wrecked her face. It's not always plausible that a simple engineer with a background in the Hungarian military would have the skills and smarts to enact a rather complicated revenge plot, but Ferrell plays it low-key and doesn't really over-explain his character's disposition. The film has a few worthwhile action beats and refreshingly gets most of its slam-bang action out of the way in the first act.

But with the chips laid out and the characters properly established and the stakes appropriately raised, the film completely goes to pot in its final reel. The film (generalized spoiler warning...) dives headfirst into both misogynistic cliche and implausible spectacle, wrapping up its story not with character-driven pay offs or even the promised execution of a grand scheme, but with pointless violence and utterly bland carnage. Moreover, the film commits grand-scale cheating, spending most of its running time discussing the morality of its heroes' respective revenge schemes and then granting absolute and unquestionable moral license to play out 80's/90's action-hero fantasies. It's a shame, as the film mostly works up until then, offering the twin pleasures of Howard's low-key menace and a tense subplot whereby Cooper unwittingly tracks down secrets that may spell doom.

It is rare to see an otherwise decent film so brutally shoot itself in the foot in its final lap, but Dead Man Down completely blows all of its goodwill by virtue of its moronic conclusion. Up until its finale, Dead Man Down is a halfway decent B-movie action drama that gets by on atmosphere and its cast of characters. But its laughably dumb conclusion ends the picture on such a stupid, false, and tonally inconsistent note as to render the whole project asunder. That the ending is so botched is arguably a tragedy. But the ending is so botched and the film is so fatally harmed by its finale that in the end I'm merely glad that Dead Man Down wasn't a truly great film up until that point.

Movie Stars Aren't an Endangered Species, They Are More Vital Than Ever in the $200 Million Fantasy Tentpole Era

2013-03-04T19:08:56-05:00

For more like this, go to Mendelson's Memos...

There are $200 million fantasy spectaculars opening within two weeks of each other at the moment. If the $27 million opening for Jack the Giant Slayer is any indication, Warner Bros. is about to have its very own John Carter/Battleship ($70 million domestic finish, around $250 million worldwide at best). Conversely Walt Disney has let the embargo wall fall for its Sam Raimi-helmed Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is allegedly tracking to open at around $75 million. There are a number of reasons why Sam Raimi's fairy tale-redux is prime to perform better than Bryan Singer's such attempt. For one thing, I can take my daughter to the one that isn't PG-13 and doesn't involve giants biting peoples' heads off and/or setting them on fire. Also helping is the strength and confidence of Disney's marketing versus Warner's "we know we laid a financial egg" trepidation. But perhaps most importantly, Oz: The Great and Powerful has actual movie stars. What? I thought the era of the movie star was gone and the proverbial movie star was a relic of a bygone era? Well... it's actually only half-true.

Oh sure, James Franco, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, and Mila Kunis aren't "box office" per se, but they are known and relatively liked entities. They have several Oscar nominations between them, look good doing press, and make it that much easier to convince grown-ups to sit through a 127-minute prequel to a 74-year-old film that they've hopefully gotten around to showing their kids by now. Jack the Giant Slayer has Nicolas Hoult (nice actor, fine in Warm Bodies, but "Who?"), a complete unknown as the female lead (Eleanor Tomlinson), and a handful of "names" that may be recognizable but don't add one cent to would-be viewer interest in the realm of general/casual moviegoers. Look, I've been a fan of Stanley Tucci's since Murder One, but he's no more of a draw than Ewan McGregor or Ian McShane. I'm not saying that your fantasy picture is DOA if you don't have the star power of a Johnny Depp or a Will Smith, but you need someone... anyone of note to get people interested in that $200 million fairy-tale re-imagining.

Want to know why Alice In Wonderland made $1 billion three years ago? Well, aside from the whole "3D is *so* hot right now!" thing, it was a $200 million sequel to a beloved story that happened to star Johnny Depp (movie star!) and Anne Hathaway (movie star!) while being directed by Tim Burton (as far as directors go, movie star!). Want to know why Snow White and the Huntsman made $400 million last year? Was it because everybody wanted to see a dark-n-gritty Snow White film? No, it was because Kristen Stewart is a movie star, Chris Hemsworth was coming off The Avengers, and Charlize Theron added a certain promise of dignity and/or class to the proceedings (false promises, but I digress). Having a classic fairy tale to rework and $150-200 million worth of special effects is great, but it helps to have people onscreen that audiences actually like to see onscreen. Kristen Stewart may not turn On the Road into a blockbuster, but she has a huge fan base that flocked to see her in a medieval action fantasy that happened to be called Snow White.

It's not just the concept or the stars. It's not an either/or situation anymore. For these prices, it has to be both. The concept helps, but it's the concept combined with actual stars in front or and/or behind the camera that differentiates John Carter from Avatar. Yes, I'm damn well counting director James Cameron as a movie star, and in this respect you should, too. Tim Burton and James Cameron are indeed true behind-the-camera movie stars. Bryan Singer is not a name beyond the film nerd community and neither is Sam Raimi. Sometimes the concept is king, as it was with Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, although both filled their initial installments with somewhat recognizable actors and British prestige in order to assure newbies that they were in good hands. Even in an era where "concept is king," concept alone won't justify blockbuster budgets. You gotta have the kind of people who will attract the potentially unconverted.

Movie stars are still important in the selling of their films, especially ones that need to be blockbusters. They are the ones who show up on magazine covers and appear on talk shows that reach the "unwashed" cinematic masses. They may not be the main course, but they remain vital seasoning to the blockbuster stew. Oz: The Great And Powerful will open better than Jack the Giant Slayer at least partially because it has bigger and "better" movie stars filling its $200 million fantasy arena. It will earn more because it stars James Franco than it would if it didn't, and I'd argue it would have made even more with original picks Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr. After Earth will make more because it stars Will Smith than it would have if it starred pretty much anyone else, and truth be told, it will make more because it's an M. Night Shyamalan film (it's complicated, but I'd argue he's still a name worth noting).

Alice In Wonderland would have made far far less had it been directed by someone less famous than Tim Burton and/or didn't star the likes of Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway. And Battleship would have made quite a bit more with actual movie stars as opposed to (sorry Kitsch) glorified CW stars, super models, and pop stars in the lead roles. The idea that movie stars are dead is a frankly false one, it's just a more complicated situation. If you're going to spend $150 million-$200 million on your tent pole, you'd better have at least a couple of "movie stars" in front of or behind the camera. Because without a bulletproof concept and/or people on the poster who actually draw in general moviegoers, you've probably just pissed away $200 million.

Weekend Box Office Part I: Fee Fi Fo Flop: Jack the Giant Slayer Bombs Harder Than John Carter

2013-03-03T12:22:24-05:00

Pretty much everything I said last March about John Carter applies to Jack the Giant Slayer. There are a few differences. Jack and the Beanstalk is technically a well-known property and Bryan Singer had the live-action track record that Andrew Stanton did not. But otherwise it is pretty much the same fallacy with pretty much the same result: $200 million cost plus who knows how much in marketing for $27.9 million on opening weekend. No stars, source material no one really cared to see onscreen, marketing that didn't convince them that they should, a release date that put them within one week of a likely juggernaut, and mixed reviews. Like John Carter and Battleship, Jack the Giant Slayer was basically a $200 million variation on Generic Blockbuster: The Movie. Unlike Disney and Universal respectively, Warner Bros. seemed to see this one coming well in advance. They changed the release date from June 2012 to this weekend and changed the title from Jack the Giant Killer to 'appeal to families.' Yet they still spent $200 million on a would-be family film that I can't take my daughter to because it's PG-13 and (allegedly) features slightly toned down Lord of the Rings type violence. To be fair, some of that $200 million cost was due to reshoots and the date change, but why bother? Warner spent untold extra millions to get the exact same terrible result they got this weekend. And really the film's cost is as usual the prime offender.

The picture actually went up around 60% on Saturday from $7.7 million on Friday to $12 million on Saturday, and then earned another $8 million on Sunday showing that the film did play best as a film for kids somewhat older than mine. Had the film cost just, I dunno, $100 million, a $27.9 million opening, a B+ Cinemascore, and a pretty strong 3.6x weekend multiplier would be a pretty solid start for a film with strong international appeal. But once Warner Bros. made the same mistake as Disney and Universal, spending $200 million plus marketing on a film that had no plausible reason to make its money back let alone make a profit. This is a lower debut than the $30 million earned by John Carter but higher than the $25 million debuts of Battleship and Total Recall (saved only by the fact that Sony spent just $125 million on the $198 million-ww grosser). As such, we're probably looking at a finish between $61 million and $69 million. The above examples would imply that Jack the Giant Slayer would earn $150-$200 million overseas, but there is always a chance that it'll be ignored overseas ala Warner's Green Lantern two years ago. By the way, Green Lantern, which earned just $219 million on a $200 million budget, is actually a bigger flop than any of these allegedly legendary stinkers. Point being, Jack the Giant Slayer is DOA for reasons that should have caused the film to either not be greenlit or kept the budget under $120 million. It was far too expensive considering everything that it lacked, and it's going to get hammered next weekend even if Oz: The Great and Powerful (which at least has a liked brand and actual movie stars) doesn't open mega-huge. Lesson likely not learned.

For those who want the rest of the box office rundown for the weekend, go HERE for Part II.

Review: Stoker

2013-02-28T12:13:04-05:00

Stoker

2013
100 minutes
rated R

Park Chan-Wook's Stoker is a delicious hybrid of its influences, which mix into an engaging fable of its own. Written by Wentworth Miller (yeah, the Prison Break guy), the picture doesn't reinvent any wheels but offers strong genre pleasures for those who like 'this kind of thing'. To say it's well-acted is almost redundant when your film is toplined by Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman. Stoker is stylish, thoughtful and wears its influences on its sleeve while stilling spinning its own web. It is part Shadow of a Doubt, part Hamlet while finding new territory to explore in the somewhat well-worn road of 'a young girl's coming of age/sexual awakening'. It is a slow but ultimately hypnotic tale that is told with a certain tastefulness that makes its moments of misbehavior all the more jolting.

The plot merely concerns a young girl, India (Wasikowska), coping with the sudden death of her father and the equally sudden arrival of her mysterious Uncle Charlie (Goode). Already socially awkward and introverted, India finds herself initially ill-at-ease around Charlie, even as her bereaved mother (Kidman) finds herself flattered by the attentions of this dashing and handsome newcomer. More than that I don't need to reveal, only to say that the screenplay goes in both expected and unexpected directions with equal ease. Stoker takes place only within the confines of its sleepy isolated little town, with much of the film merely taking place in the rustic old family home. There is an obvious claustrophobia to the proceedings, however obviously symbolic that may be to the proceedings. The picture, the first such English language film from Chan-wook Park, says much with little dialogue, establishing tone and character with silent interaction.

Wasikowksa again proves to be among the more engaging performers of her generation, no small feat considering her competition these days. This is a true star vehicle, the kind that you hope will still be there when she's too old to play a teenager. Nicole Kidman is fantastic, per usual, creating a character who holds our sympathy despite questionable decisions along the way. Goode has the flashiest role, arguably the easiest as well, but he does exactly what is needed and no more. The film's moments of violence are indeed jolting, partially due to their relative understatement and the relative absence of explicit gore (there is blood when required, but not overwhelming amounts). There is at least one third-act image, during a key flashback, that is just horrifying in its implications, and the picture is all the more potent for what it merely suggests at key junctures. Even when it finds itself traveling along familiar paths (such as India being harassed by her seemingly blind male schoolmates, with predictable consequences), the destination is intriguing and the revelations are worth the journey.

Stoker just plain works. It is a genuinely tense and often absorbing slice of carnal life, establishing Wentworth Miller (with the help of Erin Cressida Wilson) as a screenwriter to watch out for over the next few years. That Chan-wook Park could make a movie like this almost went without saying, but it is still a worthwhile American debut for those who want to keep him on our shores for awhile. Obviously it plays with themes and ideas popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, but it also plays around with the templates established by Shakespeare as well. In the end, Stoker is its own thing, a fine and entertaining bit of off-center popcorn fun. It's a good bit of nasty business, and I mean that as a compliment.

Funny or Not, The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis Tweet Was Effective Satire That Reflected Back at Us

2013-02-27T14:57:45-05:00

That so many were so outraged this morning is precisely the point. Satire at its best highlights the lesser parts of society, using amplification to reflect it back at us and make us take notice of our own behavior. Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point. Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine-year-old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination. It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures (essay). This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar. Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a "cunt." Because we do that all the time.

Oh, we're fancier about it and we use nicer language. But we call women 'cunts' all the time. We do it when we complain that Anne Hathaway just annoys us for no good reason, or that she earns our ire because she's just too damn energetic or just wants "it" too badly. We do it when we obsess endlessly about Michelle Obama's new bangs or her bare arms. We do it when we ignore Angelina Jolie's humanitarian work and still see only 'that bitch' who stole Jennifer Aniston's man. We do it whenever we turn any slight disagreement between two females into a "feud" and/or "cat fight" or when Jessica Chastain has to publicly declare that she really isn't feuding with Jennifer Lawrence based purely on fabricated gossip. We do it when we obsess more about Jennifer Lawrence's success as a red carpet fashion princess than as a twice-Oscar nominated (and now Oscar-winning) actress. We do it when we express our alleged outrage at The Onion and then immediately click on a slideshow of the various dresses that the actresses wore in order to snark or pointlessly compare.

We do it when we lionize female stupidity and then decry that women made to be vain or stupid are considered role models (essay). We do it when we treat every accomplishment of every would-be successful woman as merely a prelude to the ultimate accomplishment that is childbearing. The message is clear: Women of accomplishment deserve our scorn rather than our admiration, and the only thing that should really be admired about a woman are her looks, her fashion sense, and/or her ability to be a mom. Those decrying the fact that Wallis is a nine-year-old African-American child only open themselves up to the fact that it would apparently be okay to call her a cunt if she were a 21-year old white lady. Those saying that Wallis's feelings may have been hurt are A) missing that she was merely a vessel for satire and not a target of criticism and B) she likely never would have found out about it had the outrage machine not charged in full force putting it to the front pages of the online news all day long.

Thanks to the outrage machine, a snarky satirical tweet about Ms. Wallis is now taking precedence over her Oscar nomination and/or her snagging the lead role in the new remake of Annie. Go ahead, Google her name and tell me what pops up first. Thanks to we the offended, Wallis is no longer a promising new actress but a damsel-in-distress in need of protecting from the scary men who would call her mean names. The good news is that maybe this will all possibly (hopefully) lead into a moment or two of self-reflection among the allegedly offended. The tweet in question was offensive precisely because it was directed at someone who was viewed in the eyes of society as a complete innocent. So the next question is why it is more acceptable to body-snark or arbitrarily criticize women who happen to be older than nine years old?

Why is it acceptable to fill our Twitter feeds or Facebook pages with arbitrary snark about famous women, often based on their fashion choices, opinions of their level of attractiveness, or even merely the fact that they seem to like being successful just as long as those women are of a certain age? What exactly is the right age to be called a cunt in public, be it overtly or through insinuation? What exactly is the right age to start being judged on their attractiveness or fashion choices? If you go by the tabloids, which routinely critique the styling of Suri Cruise and Shiloh Pitt, it would seem that anyone older than two months is fair game. The hope is that the alleged outrage over The Onion's offense will cause people to think twice when Quvenzhané Wallis gets old enough to get the "Gabby Douglas treatment." Maybe we won't turn on her and criticize her hair or her ambition or her arbitrary fashion choices. Maybe we'll just judge her on her work as opposed to imaginary standards that women, and only women, have to be subjected to.

The good news is that The Onion, perhaps unintentionally, got people talking in a roundabout way regarding how we judge women in the public eye. Maybe more people will see the irony in the coming days. Maybe we'll realize that we went from snarking on the likes of Anne Hathaway only to be outraged when that same level of snark was directed at a young child, minus the filter of polite discourse. Hopefully it will be a little less appropriate to make fun of Honey Boo Boo (what exactly did she ever do to you?). Because what The Onion apologized for is what we as a society do all the time, be it through reality shows, gossip magazines, infotainment, and the general emphasis on beauty and fashion or brains and talent. They just cut out the politeness and went for the throat. Maybe it failed because so few got the joke and merely took it at face value. But if it got people talking about how we talk about women and if that conversation continues, then The Onion will have provided a public service.

The Onion arguably took the fall for our national misogyny. Maybe they really are the satire we need, rather than the kind we think want. So belittle and criticize The Onion because it can take it. Because it may have just done a mitzvah. The Onion, by cutting through the niceties, has created what has the potential to be a teachable moment. For the fault lies not in The Onion, but in ourselves.

Because It Best Represents the Best Film Trends of 2012: The Oscar Case for Argo

2013-02-24T14:01:59-05:00

Argo (review) is not my favorite film of the year. It didn't even make my best-of-2012 list. It had to settle for the runners-up section along with fellow nominee/front-runner Lincoln, a choice that caused no end of consternation from my mother-in-law who considers both to among her favorite films of 2012. My favorite film of 2012 is Cabin In the Woods, a film that had about as much of a chance of winning Best Picture this year as Kung Fu Panda 2 did last year. My favorite film among those nominated is Zero Dark Thirty, which went from front-runner to also-ran after Sony made the financial choice to not fight back against the frankly shameful "this film endorses torture!" arguments until after the film's wide release. There are a few films that are nominated that I don't care for (Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook), but I'd have to say that if we're picking a Best Picture on a the basis of what film most positively represents the year that was 2012, Argo is the best and most logical choice.

As I've written before, 2012 brought about the full-scale return of "the movie." By that I mean the mid-budget, major-studio genre vehicle that used to be the industry's bread and butter. As I also discussed way back in June, 2012 also brought the return of the R rating. After a decade of post-Columbine fear and four-quadrant obsession, major studios have begun to release mainstream films with the once seemingly-scarlet R as a matter of course. It's not just violent action pictures or gruesome horror films, but mainstream films that don't necessarily require an R but nonetheless signal that they are intended for adult audiences. Finally, with a few exceptions, 2012 solidified a certain fiscal sanity in terms of budgets, something that arguably began in 2011. Oh, the blockbusters still cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but we saw reasonable costs for middle-of-the-road studio fare, budgets that meant that a film didn't need to become a global blockbuster or even play to all potential audience demographics to become a hit. Argo represents a top-notch example of all three positive developments.

It is R-rated not because its content required it but because it was an adult movie made for grownup audiences, another emerging trend in 2012. It is not bathed in gore or drowning in sexual content. Yes, it is profane, and the film's catch phrase ("Argo fuck yourself!") required the R rating, but that was a choice that Warner Bros. allowed the filmmakers to make without interference. Argo could very easily have been a PG-13 picture with minimal artistic compromise. But Warner Bros. allowed the film to go out as R just because it was the appropriate designation for the adult political thriller. It also delivered top-notch entertainment value and incredibly authentic production design at just $45 million. Thus, the film is already incredibly profitable just on the $127 million it's taken in the U.S. alone, to say nothing of its $200 million-plus global take and eventual home-viewing profits to come. Most importantly, Argo is just a damn good movie. It's intelligent, thoughtful, and just a little nutritious. It isn't political but still manages to include politics and a potent history lesson wrapped up in a mainstream popcorn entertainment. It's exactly the kind of movie that we say we want from the studios every time we roll our eyes at another alleged franchise reboot or needless sequel.

Argo is a populist mainstream genre entry of uncommon craft and intelligence, rooted in character and narrative. It is R-rated purely because it is intended for adults. It is cheap enough that its solid grosses will make the film hugely profitable for its backers, encouraging other such films of its ilk to be financed. In terms of the best representation of the best of what the year in film of 2012 had to offer, Argo is absolutely the movie of the year.