J.D. Hansel

Comic Book Movies

Wonder Woman Review

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This is the short version of this review.  I wrote a version that’s so long that a friend of mine found it absurd and practically unreadable.  So click here if you want my real thoughts on this movie, or read below to get some of the highlights.

I’m not wild about this film.  It’s sub-par.  My reasons for thinking this, however, are not all “film snob” reasons – I don’t care about perfect cinematography.  What I care about is whether or not the filmmakers gave a darn, and it seems to me that they generally didn’t.

I get annoyed when a movie gets away with pretending it’s more progressive than the cash-grab it is.  I get annoyed when a movie acts like it’s offering gritty realism when it’s really just color-graded to make everything gray.  I get annoyed when a movie is hailed for being original when its story follows the same beats as every Hollywood movie I’ve seen before.  I get annoyed when the editing is so unprofessional that I find myself and the viewers around me getting confused about what’s happening.  It’s the kind of laziness that makes me feel awfully disheartened by the state of movies today, and by the state of moviegoers.  We’ve grown to accept mediocrity.

I’ll give the movie some credit though.  I like a lot of its comedy.  Some of its scenes hit the nail on the head when it came to character development, cool-looking “superhero moments,” humor, and sentimentality.  Fine.  But I’m still upset.

The way in which feminism manifests itself in the film is largely through what I call “Mary Sue’s Revenge” moments.  These are scenes in which a female who is obviously highly competent is assumed to need the aid, protection, or mercy of a man, but immediately proves herself to be just as competent as literally anyone could tell she was.  The man’s surprise is always the butt of the joke.  This kind of scene can be found once in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, twice in The Force Awakens (as though it’s hard to tell that Rey can fend for herself), and a million times on the Disney Channel, to offer a few examples.  It’s old, it’s tired, it assumes men are stupid, it assumes that women being impressive should surprise us, and it’s been done to death.

This is balanced out with several scenes in which Diana is portrayed as a naive girl who believes in fairy tales and has no idea how the world works.  In many scenes, she’s the joke of the scene, and men have to explain everything to her, which concerns me.  In most other scenes, she proves everyone wrong in a manner like what I described in the last paragraph – demonstrating her unwarranted faith in a fairy tale to be apparently valid – which also concerns me.  Can we have one movie in which we’re not surprised when the women are capable, and we’re not rooting for the believer in silly old stories?  Heck – her unsupported belief that she had found Eros in Germany led her to kill the wrong man by mistake, and I don’t think of that as promoting positive values.

So here’s the deal.  I’m giving the movie an okay rating.  It’s not because I think the movie’s all that good.  It’s not because the Hollywood execs deserve praise for finally giving audiences what audiences asked for ten years ago.  It’s because it’s simply pragmatic for all of us to say we liked this movie so Hollywood will give us more super-heroine movies.  Only then can someone make one I’ll really enjoy.

 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Review

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People who have an obsessive passion for and enjoyment of Terry Gilliam films – or at least his more intense and bizarre creations like Time Bandits and Brazil – scare me.   Guillermo del Toro, for example, was overjoyed to see his young daughter giggle with delight at the end of Time Bandits when (spoiler alert) the young protagonist’s parents explode.  He’s happy that she found it funny that the boy’s parents died.  It’s disgusting, but it’s all part of Gilliam – he has a sense of humor that goes for extreme intensity even if it crosses ethical lines, and some film enthusiasts really go for that.  These films are, by and large, not too violent, but it’s often the merciless infliction of wild images and editing onto the audience mixed with the heartless infliction of “comedy without relief” onto the poor characters that makes these films so difficult for some to watch.  Interestingly, upon watching Brazil again many years later for an audio commentary track, Gilliam found he wasn’t sure he liked the film very much because of how brutal its comedy and story were, but it is precisely the fact that the film is too much to handle in one sitting that draws some filmmakers to it.

Edgar Wright is one of the filmmakers who absolutely adores Brazil, and I think it really shows in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the most relentless movie ever made.  It never stops.  It just keeps blasting the viewer with more unconventional and experimental insanity that is incredibly difficult to wrap one’s mind around, all while retaining a formulaic story that’s perfectly easy to follow.  The only way I was able to survive the movie was by taking breaks – I had to get up and walk to another room, or talk about what I’d just experienced with the friend of mine who so kindly subjected me to this film.  I think I also could have used a snack break, and maybe a few naps.  Technically, the film shouldn’t even be that hard to swallow: it’s not gory, it’s not scary, it’s not intensely dramatic (this film is, first and foremost, a comedy), it’s not addressing sensitive topics, it’s not making me feel “naked” the way The Graduate does, and it’s not flashing wild lights and vivid colors at me like that one irritating Canadian film.  It’s simply difficult to process.

What makes it difficult is the unhinged creativity.  There are no clear rules in this movie.  When a man shows up with sexy demon hipsters singing a musical number as he flies around, you have to accept it, even though there is no setup for it.  Honestly, the movie is so strange that, when one character’s ability to read minds is explained by the fact that he’s a vegan, I thought, “Oh, well that makes sense.”  Relatively, that does make sense.  It’s the best explanation you’ll get for anything in the movie.  The Hollywood-trained mind isn’t ready for this.

What the film shares with Terry Gilliam is an unsettling contentment with the awkwardly terrifying conditions of its reality.  There’s something very disturbing about seeing nobody react appropriately to the death of a boy’s parents – even if they are really bad parents – and watching old men in an office giddily force their bosses to walk off a blank from a skyscraper to fall to their whimsical deaths.  When something that should alarm people is met with the wrong response, it creates an effect that just feels wrong on a moral level, and that’s all over this film.  Right from the first fight scene, the way that other characters react to the brutality of what they’re witnessing feels off – it feels inhuman – and this makes the film tough to take on its first viewing (although I think it improves over time).  However, what makes it possible for the viewer to adjust as the film progresses is the fact that the movie is largely operating on video game logic, where the impossible is often normalized in ways that would be unsettling if we thought about it, and Edgar Wright has forced us to think about it.  He’s shown us a lot of our blind-spots in regards to video games simply by adapting the aspects of video games that no one has ever thought to adapt before.

I think that’s what I respect about the film.  It tells its story in the way that it believes is the most fun, the most exciting, and the most respectful to the source, regardless of whether or not it’s what people are used to.  There’s a sense that no one on set ever said, “Hey, this is going a bit too far, let’s dial it down.”  Instead, they just followed every urge to do something fresh and exciting, and this philosophy actually paid off with a lot of really funny scenes.  In fact, by putting the viewer in such a scared and vulnerable state, a lot of the comedy is made funnier, and the story’s messages are made more powerful.  So, sure, I may have lost a significant percentage of my sanity from watching this film, but it was absolutely worth it to receive all of the joy the story brings and all of the power a filmmakers can have when he dares to be relentless.

(Still, that demon musical number is just plain stupid.  Obviously.)

Batman Returns Review

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MINOR SPOILERS

A few years ago, I was browsing through channels to find something to watch while doing laundry when I put on a marathon of Batman movies on some cable channel, just so I could educate myself about the hero.  It included Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman Begins, and possibly one or two more, but this was before I cared about watching movies properly, so I didn’t make sure I’d seen each one of them all the way through.  I caught a significant portion of Batman Begins and most if not all of Batman Forever, but since I was occupied with some chores at the time, I wasn’t really paying much attention.  Batman Returns stuck out to me though.  I think I came in somewhere in the middle and checked out somewhere near the end, but I really liked the idea of a superhero and a villain falling in love out of costume and not knowing what to do once they figured out each other’s secret identity (all in a public place where they can’t fight, no less).  While this dramatic device may be the film’s greatest contribution to cinema, and it’s probably the most brilliant aspect of the film (if not of the franchise), I think there’s a lot more where that came from throughout the film.

This movie is probably one of the greatest sequels of all time because it doesn’t feel the need to repeat everything from the first film, nor does it just try to take everything to a much bigger scale like many sequels do – it just plays to the strengths and dynamics of a different set of characters.  True, the idea of the villain tricking “the people” into thinking the hero has turned on them is now a somewhat common sequel trope, but like most of the tropes in the movie, it’s all handled very well.  It helps that Danny DeVito is a practically perfect Penguin, and the rest of the cast is spot-on as well, making for a Gotham City that’s very much . . . itself.  I think that’s what I like about this movie – it loves being what it is, so it goes to the extreme.  Tim Burton also takes his style to an extreme here, showing his ability to capture the eerie quality of simple things, bring the maximum amount of “creepy” out of any scary things, find the beauty in fakeness, carefully integrate models with full-size sets, and light Batman perfectly.  What’s particularly impressive is how a movie filled with so much gray manages to retain warmth, theatricality, and a striking amount of vivid color, making for one of the best aesthetics any film has ever had and possibly surpassing its predecessor in its visual style.

While its ending is a little underwhelming for me and Burton’s pacing is typically slow, most of my problems with the film are mere nitpicks – in the end, this is what a Batman movie is supposed to feel like.  One thing that I think the film could use a little bit more of, however, is camp.  The movie certainly engages in over-the-top theatricality and a little silliness, but I think the Batman I best understand is Adam West’s.  Part of why the news of his passing has been harder for me to take than that of most other recent celebrity deaths is that I know we’ll never have another actor who can play a superhero in a way that makes you take him seriously when he needs to be taken seriously while also keeping him incredibly light, fun, silly, and jaunty.  Maybe we’ll never get another movie that captures the theatricality of Gotham the way the West, Burton, and Schumacher productions did either, but they’ve all been really inspirational to me.  I’ve always considered Spider-Man/Peter Parker to be the hero with whom I best relate, but it’s Batman productions like this one that fill me with excitement and enthusiasm for becoming a filmmaker, and for that I’m very thankful.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 Review

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In my recent UFC on the first guardians film, I mentioned that this movie went an extra mile in its celebration, or perhaps I should say “glorification,” of ’70s pop music in comparison to Volume 1.  So, I’m going to take a look at this in a little more depth.  My spoiler-free version of the review is: it’s really, really fun.  I had a great time.  See it.  Now here come some minor spoilers.

MINOR SPOILER WARNING

The very first scene in the film shows Peter’s mother singing along to the radio while on the road.  Ordinarily, songs playing on the radio, whether in movies or in real life, are seen as mere accompaniments not meant to steal the focus, but the way she throws herself into the song makes the important part of her experience of driving (that is, the part of the experience being celebrated) the song itself.  This is reflected on a larger scale in the next scene as a gigantic action sequence takes place in the background, with Groot in the foreground as he dances to “Mr. Blue Sky.”  This places what any film student raised on “visual medium” thinking would consider the point of the scene, the fight scene, in the role of adding ambiance (which is normally the role of the soundtrack) while the soundtrack takes the foreground.  In a later fight scene, Gunn is so intent on glorifying the song being played, “Come a Little Bit Closer,” that the orchestra and choir used for the score – which, in any other movie, would serve to add weight and scope only to visuals – actually play and sing along with “Come a Little Bit Closer,” making the song sound enormous.

This role-reversal of sight and sound is, in some respects, groundbreaking, but as I suggested in my UFC, one might look at it as a modern reworking of film theory explored in Disney’s Fantasia.  Rather than making the soundtrack subservient to visuals, Walt Disney made a whole movie out of visuals that are subservient to the soundtrack.  Gunn, in a sense, has done the same.  In Guardians 2, every song (if memory serves) is, at one point or another, diegetic, so the characters are generally acting in response to and in accord with the songs.  Furthermore, the songs on the soundtrack are not always entirely fitting for the scenes with which they are paired, instead contrasting with the visuals such that the soundtrack and the video track change each other’s meaning, arguably conforming to Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of “vertical montage.”

Why does this matter?  Because the first movie uses the glorification of the soundtrack as a celebratory experience binding us only to Peter Quill.  In this film, the music has had an effect on the whole guardians family, and it’s not only something that binds them, but binds us to them.  This makes us feel like we’re part of the family, and like we’re joining a ’70s music dance party with the guardians, which heightens the fun – even in comparison to the first film.  This is also helpful because this is meant to be the movie that lets us see how the guardians function now that they have spent more time bonding together and becoming a family, so using the music for this purpose seems just perfect.  (The soundtrack to this film is, for the record, just as good as the soundtrack to the first – if not better – this time using more tracks that are either very well-known or not very famous at all, which has introduced me to some of my new favorite songs.)

This film actually seems a little less slow and boring than the first, even though it engages in more “family drama.”  I think part of the reason why it can get away with this is that the family dynamics in this film are oddly very fascinating and lend themselves to captivating drama.  Another reason why this works is that Gunn carefully threw imagery relating to family, parenthood, and reproduction all throughout this film, making for a very adult commentary on these issues that seems smart, without losing its sense of fun.  Of course, all of this is balanced out with immature jokes and nods to ’80s nostalgia, so everything comes together here absolutely beautifully.  This is surely one of the best sequels to have ever come from Hollywood.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Upon Further Consideration…

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NOTE: This is an amendment to a previous review of the same film.

When I first reviewed this movie, I don’t think I gave it nearly enough credit for how important it is as a film.  In a way, it may be the most important film of 2014.

One reason I feel this way is that it presents a very different kind of comic book movie – one that doesn’t need to be taken seriously the way The Dark Knight does (in fact, its inclusion of Howard the Duck shows just how little it wants to be taken seriously) and that combines many genres.  It proves that a good Marvel comic book movie can also be a very good comedy film, without either genre taking away from the other, thus paving the way to Deadpool.  Its aim is to have a lot of fun exploring a cool, interesting, and fully-developed sci-fi world.  Consequently, and perhaps paradoxically, Guardians of the Galaxy is great sci-fi even though it isn’t great science fiction.  By that I mean it doesn’t present viewers with new and interesting concepts that scientists or philosophers may be interested in exploring the way that Jurassic Park, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and Ex Machina do, but it does present viewers with a world in which they’ll want to become fully immersed – we all want to live in that galaxy.  The action sequences are also quite impressive, making Guardians precisely the kind of action movie that I can get behind.

Another reason why Guardians is important is that it uses music differently from other films.  Obviously, most movies today (particularly family films) rely heavily on recognizable pop songs, and it is by no means uncommon for them to be songs from the 1970s – consider how Despicable Me uses “You Should Be Dancing” in its final scene even though the filmmakers had contemporary pop artists at their disposal.  What makes the use of music in Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel so interesting is that there is never a sense that the music is something added once the scene has already been shot; the songs in these films were famously written into the screenplays and woven into the plot.  This is generally considered a big no-no in Hollywood: every screenwriter who’s made it in the business knows the rule that specific songs are never named in screenplays because it makes the producers, studio heads, directors, readers, etc. think about how much it would cost to buy the rights to those songs.  I think this used to be a bigger issue than it is now because films rely on expensive pop songs more and more, so producers know to put them into the budget, but it can still be difficult to get the rights to specific songs since some artists require a lot of convincing (see this article and read about getting the rights to “Mr. Blue Sky” for Vol. 2).  For this reason it is a very big deal that Gunn has set precedents for successful screenwriters scripting the songs they need to make the scene work best, allowing for more carefully-tailored soundtracks in films to come.

This isn’t the only interesting aspect of Gunn’s use of music in the Guardians films.  The reason why most filmmakers and film studios haven’t seen much of a problem with making music choices an afterthought, I think, comes from the line of thinking that film is a visual medium.  Usually, a film’s score is seen as something meant to enhance what the characters are doing on screen, and this makes sense in the context of film history since silent films were often shown with a live pianist offering an accompaniment.  Disney’s Fantasia, on the other hand, runs contrary to this thinking about film – rather than making the soundtrack subservient to visuals, Disney made a whole movie out of visuals that are subservient to the soundtrack.  I argue that the Guardians movies work in part because the characters are listening to the music as they fight, fly, work, and play, letting the music guide them.  Both the characters in the film and the makers of the film are using their experiences to celebrate the music itself, and the audience is invited to join in that celebration.  This idea that the scene is subservient to the music and that the music itself is sort of the main attraction (almost something to be glorified) is explored most explicitly in the second film, but I’ll explore that more in my separate review dedicated to Vol. 2.

The importance of the Guardians series in terms of its visual/aesthetic contributions to cinema must not be overlooked either.  I’m sure a lot of critics think the main way in which this film is visually impressive is in its use of CGI, with Rocket Raccoon looking remarkably believable in most of his scenes, but I’m more interested in Gunn’s use of color.  Most movies (made for adults) from the past decade or so have had very muted palettes, whereas the color palette of this film is, while too digital to have all the warmth I might like, more vivid and beautiful than that of most contemporary fantasy films.  Most of Disney’s live-action films today look frighteningly cold and lifeless, with the Beauty and the Beast remake resembling the rotting corpse of its animated predecessor, but Guardians isn’t afraid to fill the screen with bright blues and purples, swirling around like a friggin’ van Gogh.  This, I think, is why more films from the past two or three years have started moving away from the gray pseudo-realism that has consumed so much of Hollywood cinema: Gunn tried being colorful and succeeded, so other directors are finally feeling free to use pretty pinks and deep blues again, sometimes openly contrasting them with the look that most films have had as of late.  Between Guardians and La La Land, I might see cinema come alive again within my lifetime, and that’s a very exciting thing.

As important as I believe Guardians is, what I realized when I watched it for my second time is just how much I simply love it as a movie.  I love the characters and the comedy, and I want to spend all the time I can in this world.  I consider the opening titles sequence to Guardians to be one of the best in history because of how joyous it is, and for that matter, there are very few films that manage to be as joyous throughout at Guardians.  Unfortunately, I found myself checking my watch a few times since the film feels rather long, which is something that hasn’t changed since I first saw the film in the theater, but my appreciation for the film still keeps growing anyway.  It’s truly amazing to me that a film this silly, this fun, and this special was made in such a boring time for cinema, and I’ll gladly keep tipping my hat to Perlman and Gunn ‘til my hand falls off.  Sure it has its problems, but it’s a true gem of cinema for which I’m forever grateful.

The Dark Knight Review

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I hate giving this film a positive review.  I really do hate to do it.  This film is just so gray and so obsessed with realism, whereas I like my Batman with color and camp.  This film more or less sums up everything I don’t like about DC’s current films – it’s all the top ways to ruin a superhero movie for J. D. Hansel all rolled into one package.  Every time I think the movie is finally starting to move towards the end, it takes another turn and goes off towards a different climax than I expected, drawing out the film as much as possible.  I know we’re all supposed to love this movie, or at the very least we’re supposed to love this version of The Joker, but even him I found irritating – he just never stopped talking with that annoying voice and dialect.  To put it simply, the version of Batman presented here is relentless in its efforts to make me take a grown man in a bat costume fighting a silly clown entirely seriously, and I just have to ask, why so serious?

Now, all of these complaints are issues I pretty much knew I would have with the film before I saw it, so my expectations were low to begin with, but there’s one thing that’s made me feel the need to give it credit: the screenplay.  Not everything about the writing tickles my fancy – I’ve already mentioned how lengthy and convoluted it seems – but this is to be expected since gritty action just isn’t my genre.  What I do know is that a good movie uses its first few minutes to build up “hype” for the rest of the film, and this film does just that, with an opening that is, again, not my cup of tea in terms of style, but still fun, captivating, and well-executed.  More importantly, I had no idea just how many quotes that are commonly used in pop culture – even used by me – come from this movie.  Watching The Dark Knight was, in this sense, like reading Shakespeare or The Bible because I kept learning more and more about where common phrases I take for granted (e.g. “Some people just want to watch the world burn”) originate.  For this reason, I’ll give it credit for bringing the superhero genre to a new level of classy, intelligent writing.