I'm impressed. They clearly learned from the mistakes of others in the last few years. This movie has a lot going for it. The pacing is very solid. Talky scenes are balanced off by more actiony scenes, not fights necessarily, but things happening, plot progressing, rather than just exposition. Jessica Alba has clearly taken some acting lessons. She's no longer a mannequin, although her skin and blue eyes/blond hair really don't work. She's Latina! You have to make that hair look like it could grow out of that head, and the blue contacts don't look great. I'm especially impressed that, over and above the pacing, the film is not three friggin' hours long. I believe it clocks in at around 100 minutes, but it still feels like a big film with its own subplots and dramatic/character moments. It doesn't feel short, it doesn't feel long. It's a tight little script.
My complaints, and they're relatively minor, are twofold. First, nobody, at any point, notes how odd it is that the US military just flies around the world without any contact with local government or military personnel. I mean, two military helicopters fly over London and there's no sign of the British army, there's representative of the UK government. It's simply taken for granted that the American army gets to do that, which is a huge oversight. Maybe there are deleted scenes that address it, maybe it's some kind of covert commentary (as in, I'm supposed to feel uncomfortable with them flying where ever the hell they want to). Either way, it bugged the crap out of me. Other than that, politically, I can't complain. It's pretty good. Oh wait, no. There is yet another completely contrived excuse to imply Alba's nudity, which is annoying.
The other complaint is the voice casting, and my friend Al pointed this out during the movie. Doom sounds a little too American. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that I agree. In their version of the story, Victor has been living in the US for a great deal of time. His accent is subtle and probably tweaked for maximum charisma (he's an egomaniac, after all), and part of me would be very bothered if he had a stereotypical "Slavic bad-guy" voice, but once he's puts on that helmet, I do want his voice to drop and octave and for him to speak of himself in the 3rd person. Ironically, I'd like him to have the Surfer's voice, which is the always wonderful Larry Fishbourne. It's ironic because I don't like his voice as Silver Surfer. Norin Radd is supposed to be kind of a milquetoast guy who was pulled into (he he) "cosmic" affairs. I've always imagined him with a very steady but not deep, booming, Darth Vadery kind of voice. I want him to be lighter, even a tad angelic. Flip those two voices, and I'd be happy.
But to get back to things I liked: they play up Reed's rising to the challenge of being team leader very well. His "No, I was a good little nerd" speech is great, and he has a couple of good take-charge moments. However, it's really not necessary for Mr. Fantastic to have bowling-ball shoulders. Just let him be a nerd. I also like the hints that Sue is discovering more and more just how powerful she is. It's been a known fact that she's the strongest of the group for quite some time. I'm glad to see her go from "Invisible Girl" (if briefly) to "I can kill you with my brain." In fact, the whole cast really jells into their roles, both the actors into their characters and the characters into their lives as superheroes. I'm especially happy to see Johnny and Ben have their moment of camaraderie, despite the bickering.
All in all, it's the consummate action movie. It doesn't mean anything, but it's damn fun.
The show is awful, just to clear that out of the air right away. Stilted dialogue, predictable character work, tired clichés, the works. It's like someone crossed Forever Knight with Blade: The Series and then turned the suck way, way up. What's really interesting, though, is how it constantly disavows its own target audience. It seems to happen on a couple of levels.
First we have the disavowal of place and nationality. The show constantly shows us images of Toronto, the CN tower, famous streets like Dundas or neighbourhoods like Spedina. I may have inverted those because I'm a West-Coast boy, but that's the really screwed-up part that we'll get to in a minute. Despite the obvious visual signifiers of Toronto, even the use of Canadian money (it flashes across the screen pretty fast in the pilot) the show refuses to actually say that it's set in Canada. In the Canuck TV business, that's called "approachability," which means that they make the show so that it could, conceivably, be watched by Americans would could, conceivably, fool themselves into thinking it's set in America. Heaven forbid that they actually watch a television show set in another country. I can't decide if I'm more insulting on behalf of Canadians, or on behalf of the worldliness of the Americans that that tactic vastly underestimates, but I digress. There's an implicit hierarchy of the visual versus the lingual, here. It's okay to show us that it's Toronto, but it's not okay to say it. Language is the ultimate signifier, which is ironic given that one of our lead characters creates a comicbook (which they insist on calling "graphic novels," even in casual dialogue... yeesh) because it combines his love of art and literature.
But okay, that's not anything stunningly new. The really weird part is that it's filmed in Vancouver. Yes, that's right, they're using Vancouver as a dummy city for Toronto. Zuh? Americans don't care one way or the other; only hockey fans know Canadian cities, so why bother with the T.O. stock footage? This is double disavowal. They're first disavowing Canadians by chickening out on naming the city the show's set in, and then they're disavowing Vancouver. I realize the show is based on a series of books, and those books are probably set in Toronto, so why not just film in Toronto? And if they have to film in Vancouver for practical reasons but still gloss over the city, why cling to Toronto as the setting? It's a genuinely odd set of choices, considering national and regional identity in this country.
The second layer of disavowal happens on the cultural, and indeed sub-cultural level. The fan-base for a show like this is people who watch sci-fi and fantasy, people who play D&D, people who are (and I say this with great love in my heart) huge nerds. So why in the world would they cast the main villain of the first episode as a pathetic, desperate nerd who's "played a little too much D&D" and decides to call up a demon to get him a girlfriend? What is the point of so directly insulting your target audience? Good sci-fi and fantasy on TV acknowledges that it's audience knows the source material, and it also acknowledges that for all that we might not be the most socially slick folks, us geeks are smart. We read. A lot. It's why we often don't date until we get to university. We can tell when people are making fun of us. We're especially sensitive to it, truth be told, and here's a TV show ostensibly aimed at us, but tossing out every stereotype in the book. We're dangerously obsessive. We're totally incapable of finding love. We can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. We're ugly. We dress funny. Blah blah blah. Setting aside how insulting it is, it's just plain dumb to do that to precisely the people that they should count on watching the show. Low-budget, occulty little shows like this should be aiming for us as their audience, not insulting us. Strategically, it's really really stupid.
One last note: the nerdlinger villain in the first episode is yet another example of the actually quite dangerous "desperate man turns rapist" narrative. It's metaphorical, but it's there. Rape is not about desperation. It's not about being so horny that men lose control. It's about power and domination and violence. The "desperate man" story is just a few steps away from the "she was asking for it" story, and that's more than just dumb and insulting. That's dangerous. That's a story we need to stop telling.
TO: BBC Whales
RE: Doctor Who
Please have Steven Moffat write all future episodes of Doctor Who. Forever.
That is all.
Two questions.
First, what the hell happened to Nick Cage's face? He was never an Adonis, but it's like all the skin on his face got hot in the sun and started to sag. I have no problem with letting actor's grow old gracefully, but to go from that young guy (who looks nothing like him... you couldn't find an Italian kid?) to Cage's Melty Face... it's a bad directing choice.
Second, why does every shot of Roxanne make her look like she's a teenaged girl who's posing for her prom picture? I don't think it's her fault. Partly, all the colour and angles around her just make her look fake, but she also has a 17-year-old girl's impression of "sexay" going on. The way she moves and turns and delivers lines. It's just awful.
I mean, seriously, what the hell was anybody thinking?
56:00
Are they serious with this shit? The fight scene was straight out of a twelve-year-old's power fantasy. This movie looks like crap. The special-effects consultant, the director, the cinematographer, the editor... what is wrong with these people? This is like a shitty cable show.
58:00
Sweet Jesus! They're actually doing the "reporter girlfriend" crap.
120:02
What fuck? "Fight fire with fire"? Who in their right mind thought this was good? I guess Nick Cage really was that desperate to be in a comicbook movie, but I'm still having trouble believing that someone poured money into this. Just proves that money people don't really know anything about movies.