J.D. Hansel

Sci-Fi

Rogue One Review

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MINOR SPOILER WARNING

By the end of 2016, it seemed as though everyone on the Internet was in the mood to rant about how every movie Hollywood makes is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or in-universe story.  This, of course, is not true – just watch the previews before one of the big hit dramas out in theaters today or check the homepage of Rotten Tomatoes.  Still, there is definitely a movement in cinema right now towards returning to the many stories it has told and trying to find something new here, to varying degrees of success.  Instead of relying just on the genre system that guided Classical Hollywood, which was essentially a means for the studios to make money by telling the same story over and over again, the ’80s have given us a blockbuster and franchise system, which is now moving further from focusing on original stories and towards revisiting familiar stories.  Perhaps the various modern twists on fairy tales are responsible for this obsession with re-visitation, and maybe Wicked is to blame for that trend, but regardless of the cause, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.  This just means that audiences have to learn to approach stories differently, particularly when dealing with in-universe stories that aren’t focused on the main characters from the original franchise.  This didn’t seem to be a problem for most people who saw Fantastic Beasts, but surprisingly, it has made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a very divisive film.

I think it’s safe to say that there are very few other films in history that have been designed specifically to both contextualize and by contextualized by another film on the level that Rogue One is.  This is very new for cinema, but it isn’t for Star Wars – they’ve had TV shows in this universe that were inspired by a single (almost insignificant) line of dialogue from New Hope, so this shouldn’t seem that strange to people.  Yet, somehow, the lack of an opening crawl is too much for some people to handle.  For me, it doesn’t matter whether or not it feels like a Star Wars movie, or even a Star Wars story, so long as I believe that it’s in the same universe as Star Wars and its story makes me look at the main films with greater understanding and appreciation of their context.  This is all true for me, so any reservations I might have have been appeased, allowing me to focus just on enjoying the story.

So is it a good story?  Well, at the very least it feels like an original story.  This is one quality that other films in the franchise have not had, much to their detriment.  The villains and side-characters are all great, but the two leads are fairly uninteresting.  I will say that I understood the protagonist’s perspective throughout, rooted for her, and could tell that she was not one to be trifled with – she was fierce.  Each of the characters serves his/her purpose, the drama is intense, the humor is hilarious, the action is more awesome and impactful that most of the action scenes I’ve ever seen, and the story plays with elements of the Star Wars universe well.  (Also, Vader is amazing, his first appearance sending chills down my spine, and his second blowing me away.)

With all this in mind, I have a difficult time understanding why so many people I know have been so disappointed.  This movie has the perfect balance of serious war themes and fun excitement.  Just imagine if a good fan project was given a huge load of money and told to go crazy.  That’s the feeling of this movie.  Because of how much it seems like a fanatic’s passion project, it really feels like a victory for the fans.  This is enough to make it satisfactory, but with the added bonuses of clever references to other characters and an amazing ending, it’s very pleasing.  Sure some of the CGI is terrible, but I still see this as a film that is paving the way to great things in cinema’s future, and for that I greatly appreciate it.

Terminator Review

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MINOR SPOILER ALERT

Oh, how I love the ’80s.  The ’80s developed the styles of particular cult ’70s musicals into a New Expressionism – one that emphasized deep, vivid colors and bright lights flashing through dark, gray cities.  This mix of warm grays, cold blues, and hot reds spread across theatrical sets was complimented by over-the-top acting of Lloyd, Fox, Moranis, Curry, and others, bringing a theatrical quality to cinema that had not been seen since the days of German Expressionism.  The use of electronic music made everyone feel like the future was just around the corner, but whether that future was exciting or dystopian depended on the movie.  There is, of course, a spectrum to ’80s cinema, and much of it was very light and clean and harmless, but the darker end of the spectrum was home to the dark, dystopian action films: Blade Runner, RoboCop, Aliens, Batman, and perhaps the most emblematic of them all, Terminator.

Regrettably, I didn’t love Terminator quite as much as I’d hoped.  I liked it just fine, but since I’m not usually a big fan of an action movie for action’s sake, I found it somewhat lacking.  Its characters could have been a little bit more interesting, although Schwarzenegger was about as fun to watch as I had expected, and the story could have been a little bit more dramatic or devious.  The ending left me a bit unsatisfied because it means that very little was actually accomplished apart from that which was necessitated by the rules of time – all of the events of the film (that take place in the ’80s) are already predestined, and couldn’t have possibly gone any other way.  The ending would have been more satisfying if their actions in the ’80s somehow prevented all the horrible robot wars of the future or had caused all of the horrible robot wars, but as it was it felt weak.  I don’t really consider this film to be a disappointment, however, because it was exactly what it needed to be – an excursion into fun science fiction with that beautiful ’80s charm.

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Contact Review

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Please, please read this review.

I don’t think the star rating is an accurate picture of what I think of this movie.  It is an absolutely brilliant drama, clearly showing off the storytelling skills of Carl Sagan, Robert Zemeckis, and Alan Silvestri at their finest.  At the same time, I don’t think this review is adequate either.  I sort of have a hatred for this film.  It’s one of those movies that I want to either give a very high rating or a very low rating, but I can’t decide which.  What makes the movie so difficult for me to process is this: Carl Sagan – one of the greatest champions of scientific, skeptical thinking – gave the world a story that makes a case for faith, and seems to make the case against skepticism itself.

This feels like an abominable treachery from one of the last men I would ever expect to be a turncoat in the movement for scientific reasoning.  While the very, very end of the movie seems to suggest that skepticism isn’t a bad thing, the conclusion of the movie essentially does.  The viewer is put in the position of assuming that the protagonist’s experience, for which she has no evidence, is entirely real, and not at all of her own imagination.  The skeptics, however, decide that her experience must be considered invalid.  We see the believers with their signs outside the courthouse claiming that she really did “contact” alien life, but these people (whom we are led to believe are correct) have no good evidence for their stance.  They are right by happenstance – because their unwarranted belief just so happened to be true – and that is not a healthy way to think.  The messages that this film promotes and the way in which it promotes them may be detrimental to the intellectual safety of anyone who takes this film seriously, which is a prospect that I frankly find horrifying and enraging.

The worst part of all this is that the film is perfect up until the ending.  It is one of the most thoughtful, provocative, intellectual, creative, realistic, imaginative, clever, emotional, smart, gripping, fun, and serious films I have ever seen.  It looks at the idea of alien contact in a way that makes it seem very, very real – both intellectually and emotionally.  I was completely sucked in, on the edge of my seat with my jaw on the floor for most of the film, and I was overwhelmingly impressed with perfect marriage of the screenplay Sagan and his wife had fashioned and the cinematic craftsmanship of Zemeckis.  When one considers that this is a drama, which I see as a genre that is generally intellectually inferior to comedy, it is amazing that its first two acts won me over to the extent that they did.  All it needed to do to be one of my top 25 favorite films of all time was show that the beauty of scientific discovery is directly linked to the beauty of skepticism, but instead its ending turned the film into the same drivel that most sappy dramedies end with: “no matter what anyone says, all that matters is that you believe in yourself.”  No, that’s not an actual quote from the film, but frankly it would have been fitting for the closing credits to feature this exact address from one of the Care Bears.

I will need to consider the film further and read more about Sagan’s view of skepticism, but from what I’ve read in interviews and articles thus far, he lacks a basic understanding of what skepticism is, what atheism is, and how to think with rationality about matters of faith in general.  I must concede, however, that the film is deserving of much praise for being incredibly well-made, and I would have to rate it fairly well.  At least it can be seen as inspirational to young women and girls who may leave this film with an eagerness to go into the scientific field, and whom I sincerely hope will learn for themselves just how beautiful true skepticism really is.

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Allegiant Review

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Um . . . okay.

There’s a part of me that wants to say Veronica Roth painted herself into a corner with Insurgent by pushing the story outside of the place that made it almost unique, so I want to go easy on the movie.  However, she really opened the door to speculation and imagination, because just about anything could have been beyond the wall, which makes me wonder why this part of the story wasn’t more intriguing and satisfying.  I have so little to say about the movie because it made me feel so little.  I think I’m experiencing from this movie what most “professional” critics experienced while watching the first two films in the series – a painful lack of inspired substance.

I do think there is enough cleverness and creativity in the world-building at play in this story for it to be a sufficient spectacle, and I also think that it did a good job at making me curious about what was to come.  I suppose when this is added to the simple pleasure of spending more time with already familiar characters, it really can be a pleasant film to watch, which is why I did not have a bad time seeing it.  In the future, however, I should hope that a movie with this large of a budget will do the work it takes to “wow” me.

104 Allegiant

Insurgent Review

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SPOILER ALERT

With a bad Italian accent a la The Amanda Show, say it with me: “This is better – much better!”

As we all should know because I’m super important, I have my issues with Divergent.  This world and its people are entirely nonsensical, and I had such a hard time taking it all halfway seriously.  Fortunately, this film is just the game-changer that the franchise required.  Never in a million years could I believe that these “founding fathers” thought it would be wise to separate the people into factions like this.  However, I’d totally buy that a bunch of people who’ve been driven to insanity by a terrible war decided to throw a bunch of people in a pen, separate them by their primary skills, and see who gets killed.  Furthermore, the experiment shows that Divergents can arise even in a world of just singularly skilled people.  The only way they could improve on this to clear up any other logical issues is if they explain that the premise of Divergent was actually just a table top game, but the experimenters got drunk and decided to make a government out of it.

With the structural mess out of the way, I can finally address everything else in this movie.  The score and soundtrack are drab as usual, and much of the screenplay is regrettably predictable, but aside from that, it’s a pretty decent flick.  Apparently, most critics thought this was a step back for the franchise, and the reviews for this film are much worse than those of the first.  I disagree, in part because I just like stories that serve as a bridge from the first story in the franchise to the climax (meaning there’s less exposition and more mystery and hype), but also because the plot simply gets more interesting.  One of the best things a story can do to add hype is make sure its characters on the run from a ticking time bomb of sorts, and they have to beat the clock.  While the Hunger Games films have an element of this, the games themselves don’t start until at least halfway through the movies, whereas Insurgent (knowing its characters aren’t quite compelling enough to pull off an hour of characters just hanging out, shooting promo videos, impressing sponsors, resting on trains, etc.) puts Tris on the run right from the get-go, and it’s only a matter of time until the powers that be track her down.

This movie also plays around with character dynamics a lot, which adds a touch more dimension to the characters that have been largely flat thus far.  Can Four’s mother be trusted, or is he right to suspect her of evil intentions?  Is Tris going to be able to keep from revealing that she killed her best friend’s brother?  Is Peter a good guy, a bad guy, or still figuring it out?  How much can Caleb trust that Jeanine won’t be too inhumane to his sister?  Can Four bring himself to shoot Eric?  And what do the founding fathers have to tell the people of the future?  Regardless of how predictable many parts of this movie may be, the lives of these characters get wonderfully messier, and things do take bigger and better turns and twists that make sure the audience is having a heck of a time.

88 Insurgent

Star Wars – The Force Awakens Review

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I love home video.  I absolutely adore it.  I get nostalgic about VHS tapes, I collect DVDs, I obsess over digital copies, and I drool at the majesty of a beautiful Blu-Ray on an HD screen.  I must emphasize this because I’m about to say something a wee bit unfavorable about home video: it may have ruined cinema.  Not completely, of course, but I think that we’ve lost something special about the movie theater experience.

Because home video has been so prominent since before I was born, I don’t know personally what going to the movies was like at the time, but I’ve heard the stories.  I’ve heard how the crowd cheered in joyous support at the premiere of Muppet Christmas Carol when the dedication to Jim Henson and Richard Hunt appeared on screen.  I’ve heard how the boys let out a snide “oooOOOooh…” in unison in the bedroom scene in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet.  I’ve heard how the test audience for Ghostbusters went wild when they saw “scene missing” as a placeholder for a shot that had yet to be composed.  I’ve heard how they edited silent pauses after the Marx Brothers’ jokes because the audience would laugh so long and loudly.  I’ve heard how much more of a community experience it used to be back before we got used to watching movies in private – before we trained ourselves to take no involvement in a collective movie experience.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens made the movie theater into the big, loud, excited, delighted, happy family it was meant to be.  There was applause for the Star Wars logo, applause for the Lucasfilm logo, and even for a spaceship.  Everybody could feel the immense joy in the room when a familiar face came on screen.  The jokes hit home with everyone.  The twists had us all on the edge of our seats.  Seeing this film was one of the best experiences of my life because, for the first time in a long while, I was truly experiencing a film rather than just looking at a film.  Not to mention, the movie itself floored me.

I felt like a child again, even though I didn’t watch Star Wars films much growing up.  This movie actually made me into a bigger Star Wars fan than I have ever been in my life.  I was simply reverted to a time when watching a movie was joyous and exciting, getting more delightful by the minute, and I couldn’t have been more excited.  When I remembered to use my grown up brain to analyze the film, I was impressed by the effects, the acting, the visuals, the score, the dialogue, the story structure – everything about it.  This is the kind of experience that the movies are all about, and I feel privileged to live in such a historic moment when the event of a lifetime is on big screens everywhere.

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