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The Last Jedi. This is not going to go the way you think.

The Last Jedi. This is not going to go the way you think.

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To quote C3PO, “Here we go again”.
Our nervous but ever faithful droid quips this as he accompanies the Rebels off on another dangerous mission in Return of the Jedi. When I took my seat in the Dublin IMAX (as is tradition now) for The Last Jedi it was those words that rung in my ears. Because despite The Force Awakens quelling my fears two years ago, in fact going further and being truly great, I was still worried for the 8th episode.

**some story spoilers ahead**

The Last Jedi starts strong. We watch as the Resistance make their evacuation and our daring heroes try their best to slow down the advancing First Order. The visual of the bombers slowly making their way to their target is incredible. The whole scene has weight and the right balance of will they or won’t they make it. Despite some oddly placed humour here and there I was settled and ready, The Last Jedi was starting off great. Then things got messy.

“After all these years of waiting to see and hear Luke again…”

The film cuts to the reason why we’re all here. Luke Skywalker. As I mentioned in my Force Awakens review, there was a tremendous amount of fear about how the new films would handle our beloved characters. Luke is the protagonist of the trilogy, Harrison Ford may have gone onto bigger things but Luke was the only one going through a full arc across the 3 films.
How would his character blend in with the new trilogy? How could an all powerful hero work with the new characters?
Ultimately the film creates a continuation of the character that gets so many things right and a few completely wrong. And it’s those wrongs that stuck with me the most post–viewing.
After all these years of waiting to see and hear Luke again, what he became after Return of the Jedi. After being teased in The Force Awakens,  The Last Jedi would reintroduce Luke to us. With his first act he stares at his father’s lightsaber, a sword Obi-Wan handed to him so many years ago, the first step on his journey and he throws it over his shoulder. Not back at Rey in anger, not onto the ground. An aloof throw over the shoulder that was directed and edited for a joke.
In the 2 screenings I saw this film the room was quiet because no one knew what to do. Were they meant to laugh? Mostly they were in shock. This is how Luke is presented in his first scene?It takes me a while to recover from this as the film presses on and that’s a shame because the rest of the scenes between Luke and Rey for the most part play out really well.
There’s been a lot of backlash on the idea of a Luke who gave up and ran away but personally I thought it fitted well. Here is a hero who one shotted the Empire’s ultimate weapon and brought the galaxy’s most evil villain back to the light. After all this his nephew still falls into darkness and the galaxy with him. Luke has given up because despite all he did… darkness still prevailed. When Rey comes asking for him to come back to the fight he rightfully replies , “what do you expect me to do?”.
The film is at its strongest during these exchanges. It’s interesting to watch a Luke who isn’t as idealistic anymore. More than 30 years have passed for this character and nearly all that he knew was good is gone.

“The story also leads Star Wars down an interesting path…”

Unfortunately the film has to cut back to one of the longest and dullest space chases ever. I guess there is meant to be some sort of nod to Empire here when the Falcon was being chased by Star Destroyers. But where that was exciting and character developing this is just… poor.
Everyone acts their parts really well, Oscar Isaac’s Poe is still firing on all cylinders and a delight to watch but in these scenes he’s relegated to a hot head who hasn’t been given the whole plan. This is something that kind of pays off in the end but nowhere near as much as the writer thinks it does.
It’s around here we get our side quest and a trip to a new planet. Despite the backlash to this sequence I think it’s simply fine. It’s too long and again thinks it’s setting up more than it really is but the spectacle of a Monte Carlo style planet is entertaining. The story also leads Star Wars down an interesting path where ultimately the rich and powerful control the war on both sides but I was left thinking if it really fitted in the Star Wars space opera fantasy universe.

Pacing is a major factor in this film. Overall it’s too long and it really shows as we draw towards the final battle. I felt film fatigued near the end when I knew I had to watch the Resistance set up for another battle they (again) weren’t going to win. This wasn’t like the equivalent to LOTR Helm’s Deep where the whole film is a set up for an impossible fight. This felt like an add on, as if the director had to end the film on another big fight.
It should be remembered that Empire doesn’t end on a big battle. It’s showpiece was at the very start on Hoth and the film gets quieter as it goes along. It ultimately ends on two characters in a duel and then a chase after the Falcon. There was tension in these simpler moments.
In The Last Jedi we do get our duel at the very end but the same or even greater effect from it could have been achieved without another speeder vs walker battle. But that duel… I honestly don’t understand the criticism for this finale as it was a perfect encapsulation of Luke Skywalker. The Jedi who threw away his weapon in Return of the Jedi once again found a way to win the day without violence. He makes good on the claim, “more powerful than you can possibly imagine” and pulls off a trick that made me smile and nod.

“Great moments but the film took awkward ways to get there.”

In the end The Last Jedi is a confusing film in both its edit and to me personally.
There are moments that I can put up there with my all time favourite in Star Wars. The conversation between Luke and R2 in particular misted my eyes. A poignant moment where R2 was able to remind Luke of his old self in such a simple and pure way… the original Leia hologram message. This scene pulled the strings of nostalgia perfectly.
Another is the final talk between Luke and Leia. A scene which unintentionally ended up having dual meaning now that Carrie is gone.
Great moments but the film took awkward ways to get there. I’m of course looking for perfection here and maybe that’s not fair but the original trilogy was perfect. Yes perfect. Yes even the Ewoks.
And they were perfect because they understood how to keep things simple. How to maintain a good pace and when comedy could be used and when it absolutely shouldn’t be.

The Last Jedi purposely sets out to circumvent nearly all your ideas of plot and characters post The Force Awakens. It goes so far with this idea that it nearly breaks the whole film.
Every important set up from the previous episode, Rey’s lineage, who is Snoke, how did the First Order come to be etc are either ignored or simply put down as no longer important.  You could call it brave writing and filmmaking but they wanted to stray from the expected sequel so much they ended up overdoing it.
Sometimes it’s okay to meet a general expectation. Sometimes simpler is better.

Arrival Film

Arrival – “What is your purpose here on Earth?”

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I grew up on Star Trek (of course) which depicted an idea that humanity will eventually come together for betterment of the planet. Their turning point was the arrival of aliens, their first contact as they called it.
I always loved this idea, that we needed the shock to the system of the news we weren’t alone. That we could think beyond the petty differences and open our eyes and mind wider than ever before.

I was reminded of this idea during Arrival but it’s a much more personal story than what’s come before in this genre. Instead of focusing on the world as a whole reacting to the arrival we experience it much more intimately with our lead Amy Adams.

The film opens to the beautiful yet sombre ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ by Max Richter a piece of music that has been used in a few films previously but only in Arrival did I feel it fitted best. We follow a broken looking Adams as she becomes wrapped up in the mission to communicate with the aliens. You could easily assume that our main character is chosen so she can have an eureka moment that wills her on to solve the puzzle of the language but these sequences are very carefully paced, there are no a eureka moments that come out of nowhere, each discovery is earned through long passages of time and arduous work. As you settle into the film you can’t help but get comfortable with an idea of how it will all play out. I sat there with all the hype talk in my head and while I was enjoying what I was watching very much I also believed I already knew what the rest of the run time would show me.
Then the film gave a hint of something bigger and all of a sudden it was clicking for me and I leaned forward a little as I started to realise there was something much more to this alien visitor film.

I don’t want to spoil this film in the slightest as to do so would rob you from what could be a highlight cinema experience this year but suffice to say Arrival is utterly heart-breaking yet hopeful all at the same time.
The plot has the humans continually ask the aliens “What is your purpose here on Earth?”, a question of real importance to them, but the real question the film ultimately asks is what is humanity’s purpose on Earth.
We get a very personal answer to this and it’s revealed to us in such a way that both the characters on screen and we the audience have to open our minds a little more than normal to fully understand.
It’s a film that stays with you on your way home as you unravel all those hints and marvel how they connected so perfectly. The more time I spent mulling this film over I kept finding a new layer, a new thing it was doing yet while I was watching it, it was all so effortless on screen.

Arrival is a film that seems so simple on first look but is all tied together with all the strings of complicated sci-fi (if you go looking) and has an emotional slow burn that reminded me so often of my all time favourite Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
It was exquisite cinema.

“Look! Up in the sky!”

“Look! Up in the sky!”

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One of my all time favourite moments of film was watching Superman rescue Lois Lane for the first time in the 1978 Superman. I was about 4 years old I think, watching it then in 1989 at home. It was in this scene Superman finally reveals himself to the world “look up there!” the people of Metropolis shout up as he catches Lois mid fall and then the crashing helicopter. In mere minutes the world has been gifted a hero and they cheer him on. There is no fear because immediately they are shown he has come to help them.
For me this is definitive Superman. A man who is an alien to this world, with his own home long gone and no one he can relate to, but a man who was raised by the best in humanity. He’s someone who wants to help not because he can but because he wants to.

This is not a complicated thing to do if you wish to make any subsequent films on the character but it seems this is difficult for director Zach Synder of the Man of Steel and Batman V Superman films. Synder prefers to make films about a dour, almost depressed Superman who for a good portion of Man of Steel avoids being the hero and symbol of hope the world need. When he finally does decide  to reveal himself collateral damage is never his concern.
There have been many complaints that in MoS the battles Superman takes on result in innocent lives being lost. The defence is usually “but he needed to stop the threat no matter what” and this irks me for a very simple reason. He is Superman. He can travel faster than sound itself. To him time moves slower than you can imagine. So when numerous civilians need to be saved from falling buildings, trust me he’s up to the task.

To counter these complaints the whole plot of BvS is based on this. We are introduced to a world 18 months later who mostly fear Superman (thanks to the numerous think pieces the film shows on tv). So instead of the symbol of hope for humanity we have the people asking for him to be regulated. This plot point is backed up with Batman’s fear of Superman and what he could do if left unchecked. And this “plot” is the majority of the film.
I won’t run down the details of the plot because I honestly can’t put its stupidity into words, besides it would only spoil the “fun”. But suffice it to say nearly every character is barely acting anything like their comic book counterpart. Especially our main “heroes”.
The Batman we get (while very impressive in his fight scenes) is fuelled by fear of the unknown. I don’t want to sound too fanboy here but Batman fears nothing. He is the fear. There is a particular thing they do with the character that is so insane, so blood boiling maddening that I could go on for a paragraph on but it would step into spoilers for those who care.
Superman is a depressed hero who lets negative press get to him. In several scenes where moments of peril for innocents are being hinted by a mile off to us audience he does nothing when disaster strikes. Read back to my note that Superman is.. you know really fast.
I think there is an attempt at creating a realistic Superman film with MoS and BvS. How would the world react right now if it happened. And to a degree that is an interesting idea. But that’s all it is, an idea. Because the better film to make is an actual heroic Superman film not some think piece of which the director and writer do not have anywhere near enough skill to accomplish.

There is also of course the attempt at setting up the expanded universe of the Justice League with the subtly of a hammer to the face. What I imagine has happened is for the past few years Warner Bros have been watching Disney Marvel getting all that comic book movie money and they want that too but they want it all right now. They don’t want to wait, they’re Warner Bros, they want it now.
Remember back to Iron Man in 2008. It was just an Iron Man movie, great trailer, great character and which in turn was a great film. But then you heard that there was a scene after the credits, new idea at the time. The scene was Nick Fury saying to Tony Stark “… I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative” That’s all it was. It was enough for the audience (in the know) to collectively go “oh dayum”. It wasn’t forced into the main film as a plot point and for the rest of the standalone Marvel films that’s what we continued to get, teases that built on each other until it cumulated in The Avengers. It was earned, it was done with skill.
BvS has no patience, they need to get Justice League cameos out of the way right now because that Justice League film is coming in two years.

It’s this lack of respect, subtly or elegance with the source material that angers the most. It’s bad enough to change major elements to the characters but to put them into film this boring is borderline unforgivable. And boring it is. If you’re turning up for the big fight advertised on the posters, trailers, toys, lunch boxes, then turn up 2 hours 20 later into it’s bloated 2 hours 30 run time. Nothing of genuine interest happens before that. Trust me.
From a film making point of view it is almost annoying to watch. The film cuts to scenes so frantically, so often and always with no effort in set up it starts to dizzy you. There’s a very simple thing you need to do in making a film, have an establishing shot and/or have a piece of dialogue in the previous scene to link to the next shot. In almost every case in BvS this isn’t done. All I can think of what happened here is Synder gave his editor the 3 hour cut and said it needed to be 2 hrs 30 by tomorrow. The result of this hacked edit is a film with such random narration and frankly odd flow to it.

To wrap up I’ll lament on the last great Superman film that unfortunately a lot of people didn’t like too much. It was Bryan Singer’s 2006 Superman Returns. Considered to be a “love letter” to Donner’s 1979 Superman and it was in my humble opinion.. perfection.
This was a direct sequel to Superman 2 where he’s left Earth for a while and the world had to find a way to move on without him. A heartbroken and angry Lois Lane writes a Pulitzer Prize winning article “Why the world doesn’t need Superman” and she too moves on personally. When Superman finally does return he for a brief moment takes the article to heart thinking he isn’t needed anymore. Disaster strikes of course and he realises he has to step up again and we’re treated to a moment that echoes that first rescue in 1978 Superman. The people look up. They cheer. “Superman Returns”

That film gave us the hero we knew but added its own layers. The loneliness of Superman was touched on but never so much that made him into some sort of depressed hero. It had ideas on what he thought his legacy would be and of the upmost importance it was fun.
BvS is not a fun film. It is the result of people thinking they know better with the comic book material and having little to no idea on how to construct what actually should be an easy story to write. It is bogged down by its own depression.
It made me angry to watch. And tired.

So instead, watch the Superman Returns plane rescue again. Feel the goosebumps and excitement again. And smile.

Star Wars. There has been an awakening

Star Wars. There has been an awakening

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*I don’t reveal any plot points in this review so there shouldn’t be spoilers as far as I can see but I would still recommend watching it first. Just incase*

This could quite possibly be the most difficult film for me to review. Mostly due to never even attempting to put into written words how much I adore the original trilogy. That would be like trying to review growing up, how those films stayed with me and as I changed the way I saw them changed.…

Steve Jobs Film

Steve Jobs. It was going to be “insanely great”

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The journey to getting this Steve Jobs film made was a long and arduous one. With directors, actors, composers and even studios being swapped out the build up all seemed to be a rush to get the thing to print and release. While behind the scenes info tells us the director and actors had more than normal time to rehearse their scenes before a single camera rolled I couldn’t help but feel the whole idea of the film was ultimately rushed.

The rehearsal I mention is certainly evident in everyone’s performance. Even Fassbender, who I do like, but have never been truly convinced in any role before this. Is he a good Steve Jobs? No, but he’s fine at it. Though I couldn’t help but imagine what the once promised Christian Bale would have been like. Seth Rogan tries his upmost as Steve Woz and delivers his parts well but he is the most unconvincing in the film. And that’s the start of the problems here.
Everyone is acting their roles well but never convinced me they were the people they portray. I think part of the problem here was I’ve watched a lot of interviews and keynotes of these people and knowing this little bit of extra information was distracting. Especially when you’re not completely convinced the words these actors are saying were actually said by the people they portray.

Comparisons to The Social Network are inevitable but when you have the same screen writer for both then you can’t blame it. This is a Sorkin script and as usual he goes full throttle. We are left breathless watching and listening to the quick fire back and forths, the signature walking and talking and the long exposition speeches and I will always love this. But where Sorkin succeeds as usual here, it’s his choice to write a film of 3 acts covering the Machintosh, NEXT and iMac launches (the first two being terrible failures in the history of Steve Jobs) that confuses me.
Having these acts play out almost exclusively behind the scenes of the upcoming keynote is an interesting and even entertaining watch but as I watched I kept thinking if this was the best story on Steve Jobs and Apple that could be told.

In The Social Network we are treated to an almost adventure style tale of starting something revolutionary from small beginnings, the highs and lows, the moments of genius and fate all flowing via two simultaneous court case narrations.
The story of Steve Jobs and Apple could have had the same adventure and what we got felt like snippets and frankly at times the worst parts of the story. Opening with the first great failure of Apple is a fine movie making  move but only if we get to see the great turn around and success the company and Jobs got round to making. In fact that would have been educational for today’s iPhone generation who only know Apple as the behemoth of tech.

Then there’s the constant banging on the head we get of “Steve Jobs is a mean asshole” that never stops during the runtime. For anyone who didn’t know Jobs was mostly a cold calculating businessman they got the idea after the first act. We didn’t need two more acts of this because there was more to Jobs than the meanness. He wasn’t a genius engineer or programmer but he did “play the orchestra” as the film says. He was borderline ruthless in his vision of the future of tech and while the film hints on this it never gives us the great stories we’ve heard over the years. He knew how to get the best out of people for example when first meeting Jonny Ive and asking him to work on something great, anything as long as it’s great. Ive went on to design the iPod, iMac, iPhone and iPad. This is a story I would have liked to see on screen.

That’s what this film comes down to in the end. It tells a fine story but never quite the great story it could have. I still love Sorkin’s script and Danny Boyle directs the fast paced exchanges well albeit a little restrained than what we usually get from him. We get some insights into the history and mind of Steve Jobs but the film is too involved with making him into an almost villain with a tiny moment of ending redemption that we are robbed of something that could have been “insanely great” to quote the man himself.

The feels of Inside Out

The feels of Inside Out

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Pixar in my opinion (and shared by many) have always been the masters of invoking true feelings from their films. Their stories are always quite simple, your toys are actually alive, a rat who wants to become a chef, a lonely robot who just wants love, a father searches for his lost son (and they’re fish). But in every story there’s always more to it than those plot lines. Pixar continually finds a way to connect with you no matter your age, and as many say, hit you right in the feels.

“Pixar have done it once again”

With Inside Out they’ve literally made a film based on feelings. It could have bordered on the meta, with the film becoming too much of a self reference and turn into a forced attempt of invoking your feelings. It doesn’t, Pixar have done it once again.
This is certainly helped in their continued great choice in directors and writers, with Inside Out we have Pete Docter returning in both roles. Incase the name isn’t familiar he wrote little classics such as Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Wall-E and Up to name the few.
Doctor has certainly set his sights a little lower in the age range this time, characters are just a little more animated than usual and some of the jokes are simpler. But the film never suffers because of it, this is an animation feature after all and it’s meant to be a family experience.

As usual with Pixar it isn’t the main story that’s genius here it’s how it’s all constructed and connected. The film had numerous moments where I couldn’t help but smile, the “train of thought” and “bright idea” being represented by a literal train and the latter as a light bulb. So simple and so effective. Docter has free reign here to play around with how our mind could work in a cartoon, there are no restrictions of reality or physics and in typical animation the more over the top representation of our mind the better it always came across.

As teased in the trailer the story doesn’t completely centre in our main character Riley’s mind. Some of the film’s best moments are when we jump into the parent’s minds and several strangers and it’s all done with great finesse. Each character jump has intention and not just for the sake of a gag. There’s a particular jump into a character at the end of the film that had me roaring over the cinema. No shame in it at all.

“There are lessons to be learnt from Inside Out even for the grown ups”

The great adventure the feelings characters of Riley go on could have been its own film but Docter so perfectly interweaves it to an overall story of what it’s like to grow up, how things can seem mixed up and confusing when the world around appears to be changing so much. In the film’s case moving house, school and friends.
There are lessons to be learnt from Inside Out even for the grown ups, you can’t be filled with joy all day every day and being sad doesn’t always mean it’s wrong. Simple things to learn but they are delivered in such clever little ways and that is exactly what I like to see in a Pixar film, the continued push to create tales. Simple stories that could last for generations. With every release it’s making more sense now why Disney purchased the company.

Leaving Inside Out as the credits rolled and I’m once again left in deep thought as usual after a Pixar film. Your heart has been pulled, you’ve laughed and sniffled but most importantly its made you think about things.