REVIEW: Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 (2013): Dir. Shane Black. Written by: Drew Pearce and Shane Black. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley. Rated PG-13 (Comic book explosions). Running time: 130 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

“You know who I am,” reads a name tag worn by multi-billionaire and generally charming egomaniac Tony Stark (played for a fourth time by Robert Downey Jr.) in Iron Man 3. After two Iron Man movies and last summer’s super-crossover mega-hit The Avengers, there will be few in the audience who do not already know this character.

This flippant, you-know-the-deal attitude runs throughout the film. The script, written by Drew Pearce and director Shane Black, takes a number of shortcuts, assuming (correctly) that we have seen enough superhero movies in the last ten years to fill in the blanks.

When an international terrorist known as The Mandarin (a bearded Ben Kingsley looking like Osama bin Laden) hijacks the nation’s TV stations, we only need to see a brief glimpse of viewers’ shocked reactions. The rest we can remember from when the Joker did the same in The Dark Knight. And when a brilliant geneticist named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) begins talking about tampering with human DNA to enhance the body’s regenerative powers, we know to be suspicious of him after seeing the mad scientists in Batman Begins, Captain America and just about every Spider-Man movie.

We have also heard enough of those concisely worded nuggets of advice that were so eloquently doled out by Michael Caine’s Alfred in the Batman movies. So Iron Man 3 does not subject us to any more of those. In fact, the characters in this film are particularly dismissive of that sort of pithy, fortune cookie wisdom. (The movie even takes an unintentionally silly moment to decry the very existence of fortune cookies.)

Part of this resistance to flowery phrases and grand themes comes from the brazen playboy persona of Tony Stark, who has no patience for sentimentality. The rest is the result of this movie’s sheer laziness. Like most of the Marvel Avengers movies before it, Iron Man 3 is almost pompously devoid of any real substance. This light-as-popcorn approach has worked in the past, notably in the first two Iron Man movies, but it is becoming less effective. This movie cannot cover up its own hollowness.

And as for Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. is still the best part of this franchise but there are signs his shtick is getting old. We can predict the rhythms of his witty comebacks before he says them and his dialogue feels written when it used to feel ad-libbed. We do see a few new angles to the Tony Stark character – he has a terrifically badass moment of James Bond gadgetry wearing not a suit (iron or otherwise) but a black hoodie, and he even does a bit of Sherlock Holmes sleuthing (a role Robert Downey Jr. is very familiar with) – but little real character development. There is a sudden shift in the final scenes that tries to give the character an arc but it feels forced and I didn’t buy it.

So should you spend your money to see this movie in theaters? Marvel Studios has gone through a great deal of effort and untold millions in marketing to convince moviegoers that every film in the Avengers franchise is essential and should be watched in order. This is, however, little more than a way to hide the fact that these movies’ plots are virtually interchangeable, that they are derivative of one another, and are each wholly disposable entertainment.

This is not to say that Iron Man 3 is bad entertainment but that at this point in the series a critical review of it is less applicable than a Consumer Reports checklist:

Love Interest: Good. Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, underused.

Villain(s): Fair. Mostly forgettable.

Sidekick: Poor. Colonel James Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, underused and unimportant.

Humor: Good. Frequent and usually funny.

Action scenes: Fair. Muddled and difficult to follow but plentiful.

If you are shopping around for a decent superhero movie at an affordable price, Iron Man 3 is a solid option. If you are looking for a movie that surprises and engages, this is not your movie. This movie is… Well, you know what this movie is.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/6/13

All Things Super

Part 1: How The Avengers Took Over the World

When I was a kid, I had a Captain America action figure. I don’t remember ever reading a Captain America comic book but I liked that action figure so much, my next birthday party was Captain America themed. I liked him because… I liked him. That was all there was to it. I just knew he was awesome, maybe even instinctively. You didn’t have to sell Little Steve on the idea.

Leaving the theater after seeing Thor last summer, I felt as though I had been handed one of those cheap plastic toys you get in a Happy Meal with “Collect All Four” printed on the package. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with the movie (and I’ll admit Marvel Studios is currently making some impressively flashy toys) but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The movie didn’t seem to care whether or not I enjoyed it, only that I had bought a ticket.

Well, not just one ticket. Six tickets (and counting!) if you’re keeping score. Each Marvel Avengers movie is entwined in a massive and knotty marketing campaign as staggering in relative size and ambition as the Large Hadron Collider. They have all been part of an ambitious setup building to The Avengers, which is really just a setup for The Avengers 2 anyways. And so we wait with bated breath for the next movie, which will then tell us what exciting movie is in store for us next. And so on.

Now, I’m being cynical and probably not giving these movies their full due. I’ve enjoyed most of them (Robert Downey Jr. has successfully carried two Iron Man movies, and Captain America had a giddy charm to it). Marvel’s mega-marketing scheme would hardly have paid off if the films weren’t entertaining. Still, there’s a nagging corporate agenda at work here that, at least for me, leaked into The Avengers and kept me from enjoying it. The movie never tried to win me over; I had already bought a ticket so why would it?

Part 2: Your Friendly Neighborhood Blockbuster

A number of people I have spoken to had similar feelings about The Amazing Spider-Man and several critics wrote perfectly reasonable reviews that mirror my own reaction to The Avengers. The latest Spidey adventure is a clear studio cash-grab; in order to keep the rights to the character, Sony had to make another movie. It is a faithful reworking of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film with just enough superficial differences to distinguish it from its predecessor – a new villain, a new cutie for Peter Parker to kiss – but it breaks no new ground.

What can I say? I fell for it anyways. Give me two likable romantic leads and throw them in a zippy energetic action movie and I’m happy.

But is this the best we can hope to get from superhero movies in 2012 and beyond? New versions of the same old and a fresh, young cast to replace the actors who have outgrown their roles? I don’t have the answer and as long as superhero movies are as fun as The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ll be too busy having a good time to even ask.

Part 3: The Dark Plight of the Superserious

There is, however, at least one filmmaker who believes superhero movies can give audiences more than disposable entertainment. Christopher Nolan has done an admirable job taking superheroes to a whole new level. In his hands, Batman, who had been languishing throughout the 90s in increasingly goofy (and decreasingly watchable) movies, gained some much-needed emotional heft and narrative sophistication.

Batman was always a childhood favorite of mine – Saturday mornings, I was reliably glued to the TV watching reruns of Batman: The Animated Series – and Christopher Nolan’s movies take the character every bit as seriously as I did when I was a kid. 2005’s Batman Begins and 2008’s The Dark Knight (still the high-water mark of the genre) are dark, brooding stories but they’re also great popcorn movies. Little Steve would have loved them.

With The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan has taken his series to its inevitable conclusion. Most everyone I know has been satisfied by its ending. It is a breathtaking movie and certainly one of the best-looking summer blockbusters in years. As Gotham City descends into anarchy in the dead of winter, its snow-covered streets are as gorgeous as they are ominous.

But Christopher Nolan gets so caught up in his bleak tragedy of a dying city that he neglects Batman. There is a half-baked love triangle and a full circle moment about falling to learn to get back up again, but these inclusions feel peripheral to the main story. The movie loads one grim development on top of another until it risks collapsing under its own weight. It may well be a satisfying finale to a gloomy series but somewhere in the middle of it, Little Steve walked off and started playing with a different toy.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/25/12

REVIEW: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Dir. Christopher Nolan. Written by: Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Story by: David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan. Based on characters created by: Bob Kane. Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Morgan Freeman. Rated PG-13 (Gloomy brooding and brawling). Running time: 165 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Eight years have passed in Gotham City since the events of The Dark Knight, when the Joker plagued the city, turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Gotham is a safer place now: the streets have been rid of organized crime and there is no need for the Batman, that masked vigilante the police mistakenly accused of murdering Harvey Dent.

On the streets, however, there is still belief in the Bat. The streets of Gotham also, for the first time in the series, actually feel part of a real city, one with food vendors and school playgrounds, suited investment bankers and cabbies. And director Christopher Nolan populates his city with some intriguing, well-developed characters.

Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is back, a tired man who’s probably getting too old for this sort of thing but just believes in it too much to quit. Gotham is in “peace time,” as one officer puts it, but Gordon has seen it at war and remains wary. It is his diehard commitment to justice that caused his wife to take off with the kids, leaving him alone to defend a city that does not currently need him but could at any moment.

Perhaps he is not alone though. John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young and ambitious officer, appears to be on hand to pick up the Commissioner’s torch of idealism. As an orphan, Blake looked up to Bruce Wayne, the parentless billionaire, but even more so, he idolized Batman. He has since lost faith in Wayne but still believes in Batman.

Speaking of Batman, where is he? He mysteriously vanished from Gotham following Dent’s death, we are told. (He also mysteriously vanishes for sizable chunks of this movie.) The man behind the suit, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), is still alive, living in self-imposed exile in Wayne Manor. Tending to him as always is the Wayne family butler, Michael Caine. Er, I mean, Alfred.

There is also Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a leather-clad femme fatale with hair so silky smooth you’d think she was strutting through a Pantene commercial. Selina is a cat burglar. She robs jewelry off the wealthy and while the movie is sneaky in the way it avoids flat-out calling her Catwoman, we know better by that sly, twinkling Hans Zimmer theme that accompanies her on the score in several scenes.

Coy though the movie is about her, she is one of the best parts of it. Ms. Hathaway is a nimble actress, both physically in combat scenes but even more so when playing the role of seductress, and she is a lot of fun to watch. She is the only glimmer of the wisecracking playfulness that was once (long ago) a hallmark of the superhero genre.

The rest of that freewheeling fun is buried deep under a heap of rubble by Bane (Tom Hardy), the joyless antagonist of The Dark Knight Rises. Bane is a terrorist who was excommunicated from the League of Shadows, that nefarious organization Batman worked so hard to defeat in Batman Begins. Bane, like Batman, wears a mask, except his only covers his mouth and distorts his British accent into a hissing Darth Vader-esque growl. This makes for an intimidating presence but also obscures roughly half the actor’s lines so that he sounds as though he is talking through a washing machine.

Bane seeks to burn Gotham to the ground and punish its citizens for their decadence. In turn, Christopher Nolan punishes us with an overlong and supremely decadent second half, which disappointingly goes on autopilot. The Dark Knight Rises is undoubtedly Mr. Nolan’s sloppiest script (he co-wrote it with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, from a story by David S. Goyer). It labors early on with expository backstory and neglects to surprise in its final act. The absence of surprise is the most lamentable aspect of this cheerless movie. Mr. Nolan is usually so good at keeping us on our toes; here he bores us by plodding through every plot point his characters have promised us will happen.

Much has been made of the dark tone Christopher Nolan adopts in his Batman films. That somber mood does play a crucial role in the success of the first two movies but even more important is the grandeur Mr. Nolan lends them. He treats these comic book stories as though they are classical myths.

But there is a fine line between grandeur and pretentiousness and The Dark Knight Rises hurtles right over it. Aside from Gordon and Blake (Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are Mr. Nolan’s two most valuable and underused assets), the movie is dominated not by people but by symbolic avatars used to bludgeon us over the head with the film’s thematic intent. Bane stands for anarchy. Batman stands for some vague notion of justice.

What made 2008’s The Dark Knight so much fun was its identity as a thrilling comic book movie elevated to the level of a crime epic. The Dark Knight Rises is all elevation and no entertainment. During that dreary slog of a second half, Christopher Nolan wants us to sit and be impressed by his movie, to be overcome with awe. I sat. I was impressed. Awe? Eh.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/20/12

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012): Dir. Marc Webb. Written by: James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves. Story by: James Vanderbilt. Based on the comics by: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. Rated PG-13 (No worse than a Saturday morning cartoon). Running time: 136 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Could it be the superhero genre is entering a period similar to, say, the western in its heyday, where originality is less important than deft execution of a sturdy formula? The Amazing Spider-Man is a bright and flashy reboot of the franchise, and more or less a remake of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film that kicked off Hollywood’s obsession with spandexed heroes ten summers ago.

In that intervening decade superhero movies have become increasingly bloated and out of hand, and I started to forget what it is I expect from them. The Amazing Spider-Man has a dashing and charming hero, a pretty girl and a bad guy to save her from. The movie is also marked with a cheerful levity; it doesn’t ham it up or anything but keeps in mind just how silly these movies are if you stop to think about them.

And you don’t have to think too much to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man. The script, written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, is clunky at times and rushes through a few key moments in the character’s early development. The previous telling of Spider-Man’s origin will be fresh in the minds of many and there are few surprises with regard to the basic story here. The surprises and pleasures of this movie instead come from director Marc Webb’s lightness of touch and the giddily fun moments he creates with his graceful cast.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a teenaged brainiac whose parents mysteriously left him in the care of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) and disappeared when he was a boy. He is a skateboarding loner with a love of photography and who occupies one of the lower rungs of the high school social ladder.

Mr. Garfield plays Peter as a goodhearted showboat, awkward and a little angsty but more than ready to take on the world when the time comes. Even after he dons the suit, Mr. Garfield does not lose the tics and mannerisms of an overexcited adolescent. These particularly come out in Peter’s scenes with Gwen Stacey (the always lively Emma Stone), a girl at his school who he is crushing on big time. They share some awkward flirtation and these scenes are the best in the film.

Marc Webb’s debut was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, the movie that revealed to America just how adorable Zooey Deschanel is, and he has a keen sensibility for the tone of these scenes. He gives his actors room to play, trusting that their onscreen chemistry will create a sweetly romantic atmosphere. Ms. Stone, a wonderfully subtle and immensely likable actress, understands her role – she is on hand to look cute and alternately cheer, gasp and smooch – and is no less appealing than usual, though she may be a bit underused.

Gwen works as an assistant for Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist who believes the regenerative powers of reptiles holds the key to curing countless injuries, not the least of which is his own severed right arm. And now we have our bad guy. Dr. Connors is that familiar movie scientist; he is noble and wise and working on something momumental, the power of which he does not yet fully grasp. Perhaps inevitably, he becomes (spoiler alert!) a giant lizard.

Dr. Connors is of particular interest to Peter, whose father once worked alongside Connors on some rather sensational projects. One of these involves genetically altered spiders that shoot webs with the strength of industrial cables. I don’t need to tell you one of these little guys bites Peter while he’s poking around in Dr. Connors’s lab.

Before long, Peter has designed a tight-fitting red-and-blue suit and a mechanism that shoots webs (both introduced in the requisite training montages), and becomes a masked vigilante. This draws the ire of Gwen’s father, Captain George Stacey (Denis Leary), who naturally sets the entire police force on a manhunt to catch Spider-Man.

There is something almost classical about this film’s approach, as though it were paying tribute to the 2002 film. This is, of course, ridiculous. The original Spider-Man is hardly old and, yes, a franchise reboot is totally unnecessary but the gluttonous studioheads have demanded it into existence and, like it or not, here it is. This is a gleeful, dopey, discardable bit of summer entertainment but something about it kept me hooked.

Like the best Hollywood formulas, the superhero movie is designed to entertain. In The Amazing Spider-Man, all the pieces are in place and it works. With no end in sight for the genre’s box office domination, these movies will continue to be produced for at least another decade if not longer. Some of them will be awful, others will hopefully be great. This is a good one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/7/12

REVIEW: The Avengers

The Avengers (2012): Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Story by: Zak Penn and Joss Whedon. Based on The Avengers comic books by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG-13 (Crash, bang, boom). Running time: 143 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

In The Avengers, we finally learn what happens when Thor’s mighty hammer comes crashing down on the impenetrable shield of Captain America. (Spoiler alert!) There is an explosion.

This is just one of many spectacles The Avengers offers, including an aircraft carrier soaring into the sky, a massive metal space worm demolishing Manhattan and the heaving bosom of Scarlett Johansson. If the idea of seeing Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America sharing the screen excites you beyond belief, then The Avengers is not just the best movie of the summer, or even the year; it is the greatest movie ever made.

Earth is once again in trouble and the head of the top-secret organization S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), at last has an opportunity to assemble the team of superheroes he has been recruiting over the course of five movies. There is the tech-savvy playboy Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), the scientist who turns into the not-so-jolly green giant The Hulk when enraged; the extraterrestrial Norse god Thor (Chris Hemsworth); and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), the cryogenically preserved WWII patriot Captain America.

Not that their personalities matter much in this film; the heroes only appear in diluted form in The Avengers. After all, with so many exciting things happening here, can you blame the film for skimping on something as inconsequential as characters? Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the greasy-haired estranged brother of Thor, has procured a magical blue cube that he will use to open a portal to a distant corner of the universe where a few of his alien cronies wait. He plans to enlist their help to decimate, and presumably take over, our planet.

As you can imagine, The Avengers will need all the help they can get, so Nick Fury has signed up a few more recruits for the forces of good. Jeremy Renner plays Hawkeye, an assassin whose marksmanship with a bow and arrow gives Katniss Everdeen a run for her money. Another invaluable member of the team is the sultry Russian agent, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Ms. Johansson, who excels at playing coy and aloof, need not worry here about her limited range as an actress. As it turns out, her body excels at wearing leather, and it is this skill that is called upon in The Avengers.

The clash of these titans of comic book lore is presented in several plodding action sequences, including an especially mechanical one on the aforementioned aircraft carrier-turned-aircraft. Another takes place on the streets of Manhattan, where product placement conveniently doubles as the mise en scène of billboards and taxicab ads. Just as Thor did, The Avengers gives itself up to corporate uncreativity; it is loud, flashy and fleetingly entertaining but ultimately hollow and pointless. The special effects are absolutely spectacular and utterly soulless.

The film was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who is considered a demigod in some nerd circles (with all due respect to Thor and his Asgardian brethren). Those expecting something witty or cheeky, however, such as Mr. Whedon’s recent horror movie mash-up The Cabin in the Woods, will be disappointed. Any semblance of cleverness in The Avengers is limited to what material Mr. Whedon supplies Robert Downey Jr., who struts around in a Black Sabbath tee shirt, spitting out snarky comments and poking fun at the other heroes. These spare kidding moments are all but drowned out by the deafening assault of the film’s pursuit of blockbuster colossality. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s usual verve feels muted by his busy surroundings.

What a shame, since many of the movie’s jokes are genuinely funny. The very concept of this movie is totally absurd, so why not embrace that silliness and allow the humor to carry over into more than a handful of one-liners?

The movie is also surprisingly boring at times. The first third, which is bogged down with an excess of incomprehensible exposition, is particularly dull. We are expected to wait patiently though, because a lot of cool stuff will surely follow all this tedious jabbering. It must be said though that Mr. Whedon does handle some of this cool stuff pretty well. When the camera whizzes around the streets of New York in a computer-animated frenzy, capturing all our heroes in a single, unbroken shot, it is hard not to momentarily get caught up in the movie’s love of awesomeness for the sake of awesomeness.

Joss Whedon does not include anything unexpected in The Avengers but, to make up for that, he includes a wealth of things we fully expect, and even demand, to see: superheroes smashing superheroes, superheroes smashing supervillains, monologues delivered in monotone, Earth in peril and (spoiler alert!) Earth saved. To try to do anything else would be to risk the film’s status as the greatest ever made.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/7/12

Summer Movie Survival Guide

The calendar on the wall says summer isn’t until June 20 but those who follow the Movie Calendar know summer starts this Friday with the release of The Avengers. From then until Labor Day, Hollywood will be in full-on blockbuster mode, for better or worse, and judging by the forecast, we’re in for a doozy.

Three movies in particular stand out to me. I hesitate to call them new lows because they very well may be good (and I genuinely hope they are), so let’s just call them firsts.

The aforementioned The Avengers is the first movie that audiences have already made a down payment on. If you’ve seen both Iron Man films, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and stuck around for all the Samuel L. Jackson cameos, you’re practically contractually obligated to be excited for this movie. Marvel’s mega tie-in has proven to be a major success from a business perspective, a debatable success from a creative perspective and a little wearying from this audience member’s perspective. You’re not going to be able to escape this one so you might as well see it. At least that’s the way the geniuses at Marvel’s marketing department seem to be pitching it.

On May 18 we have Battleship, based on the classic game of naval strategy from Milton Bradley. (Go ahead and read that sentence again if you don’t believe it.) The film, which looks as though it will feature Liam Neeson fighting off a water-based Transformers invasion (not an inherently bad idea), will also be the film debut of Rihanna (far from an inherently good idea). Disappointingly, she did not contribute a theme song to the film. (Am I the only one who feels “Baby, sink my battleship” would have made for a classic Rihannian innuendo?) This is the first movie based on a plotless board game and will paradoxically be cashing in on your recognition of the brand name while also trying to convince you that adapting the game to the screen is not a very, very stupid idea.

Then there’s The Amazing Spider-Man on July 3, not really a first as much as it is a new record. Only five summers after the disappointing Spider-Man 3, we’re to be treated to a new take on the photographer-turned-arachnid’s origins. Unnecessary? Of course. Excessive? Only if you see it in 3D! But, boy, that Emma Stone sure is cute. Who wants to bet whether or not Sam Jackson will mind his own business during the end credits of this one?

That Hollywood can’t come up with any original ideas has long been taken to be self-evident but the 2012 summer release schedule really seems to be pushing it, don’t you think? And I haven’t even mentioned Tim Burton’s recycling of the old TV show Dark Shadows, or Men in Black III, or Disney’s big-budget action treatment of Snow White, or Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie, or the latest in the Madagascar, Ice Age and Bourne franchises. We even had a sort of preamble this year with the 3D re-release of the ultimate summer blockbuster, Titanic (still great, by the way). How long can this possibly go on for before things get better?

The answer is forever, the December apocalypse notwithstanding. We’re living in the Golden Age of Movie Marketing. Advertisement saturation can ensure that even the worst ideas will yield big profits and movies like Battleship seem to be cruelly testing the limits of marketing’s power this year.

But I’m not being fair to these movies. Summer blockbusters have always been about making money. I’d be kidding myself if I tried to act jaded and claim they’re not what they used to be. And yet, are they?

If all goes well, summer movies are a win-win for everyone. Audiences love watching movie stars share the screen with special effects. Studio executives and filmmakers love that we love said stars and effects, and will spend our money to see them. And movie theater owners are happy to know that paying the air conditioning bill is still worthwhile.

What happens though when one of those groups is no longer as satisfied as the rest? What happens when quality stops being relevant and the movies start to suck? Apparently we still see them. Studios know we want big, loud, dumb (BLD) summer movies and will see them every summer even when the choices are slim pickings.

Is there nothing we can do about this? Are we doomed to obediently buy a ticket to every movie that studios want us to? Must we sit through endless hours of mediocrity or worse until we can no longer distinguish the good from the merely loud? Can’t we still enjoy ourselves at the movies this summer without succumbing to the conglomerate will of the powers that be? Or must we become hardened cynics who grumble until the end of days through a mouthful of popcorn about the way the movies used to be? Isn’t there another way?

Rest easy. There is.

The current state of the summer blockbuster has driven me (and I imagine many others) to a breaking point. I love BLD summer movies but it’s hard not to become disenchanted in times like this. So here are the questions I will be asking in order to stay sane this summer even as the hammer of Thor attempts to bash us all into passive submission:

1) Does this film care if I like it, or is it just trying to nab my cash on a weekend between superhero movies?

2) It doesn’t matter if a movie didn’t need to happen. Good movies can arise from bad ideas. Stranger things have happened. Given the circumstances, did the filmmakers shoot a decent movie, or was the bottom line more important?

3) Was anyone not invited to be in The Expendables 2? (Nick Fury, if nothing else, is a more selective recruiter.)

Here’s hoping summer 2012 is a good one for the movies. There are even alternative options to the above, including a handful of original concepts that seem promising. And if all else fails, you can always duck into an art house playing the new Wes Anderson movie. At least, that’s my Plan C.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/2/12

Why They Suck: The Two Breeds of Bad Movies

By now most critics and organizations have published their picks for the best movies of the year. Typically, I wait until February to make my Top 10 list so that I have an opportunity to catch up on holiday releases and movies I missed in theaters. In the meantime though, I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few 2011 films on the opposite end of the qualitative spectrum – the bad ones.

Not all bad movies are made alike and for me the sea of duds divides into two categories: artistic failures and commercial failures. Since cinema is as much a business as it is an art form, all movies must straddle this line. A.O. Scott summarizes the point nicely. “No filmmaker sets out to make a bad movie,” he says, “and no producer or studio executive sets out to lose money.”

Of course, bad movies still get made. Loads of them. And I find that a clunker’s failings can usually be attributed to choices made on one side or the other of the aforementioned balancing act.

The first example in this case study is Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, a truly awful bomb from earlier this year that I chalk up as an artistic failure. True, this orgy of computer animation could not have happened without major studio backing, but it was also the first opportunity Mr. Snyder had to develop an original story rather than work from previous source material. After making a series of hits within the studio system (Dawn of the Dead, 300 and, to a lesser degree, Watchmen), he was given creative license to direct another, this time from the ground up.

The result is a bombastic blast of misogyny that pitifully vies for fanboy love by emulating every known geek-approved genre and blending them into a self-absorbed mess. It is Kill Bill with none of Quentin Tarantino’s levity or reverence for his female leads. Still, Sucker Punch is the kind of disaster that can only come from someone with a bold, if perhaps misguided, vision, and it is endlessly more watchable than the alternative.

Enter Exhibit #2: Green Lantern, a movie that, on first glance, appears to have all the necessary components of a successful superhero origin story. Beneath the surface, however, the film is empty and hollow; it has no heart, no humor. The same may be said of its star, Ryan Reynolds, whose good looks are a shell that hides an utter vacancy of charm. There is no drive, or purpose, or love of the character behind the production.

The movie is the result of a green-lighting frenzy that occurred in the years following Spider-Man’s $100M+ opening box office weekend nearly a decade ago. Every studio had to have a superhero franchise they could bank on for huge profit. Five or six, if possible. Green Lantern is a product designed to sell Burger King onion rings as much as tickets. I would happily rewatch Sucker Punch, the badness of which has a kind of operatic grandeur to it, than endure the stale lifelessness of Green Lantern again.

My point is, both films suck, but one had the potential to not, while the other was doomed to fail. You can feel Mr. Snyder’s enthusiasm brimming from every over-stylized, color-saturated shot of Sucker Punch. This is part of the reason why, when it stumbles, it doesn’t do so gracefully. It smacks hard, face-first on the pavement. But no one can accuse Mr. Snyder of not making bold choices, something the by-the-numbers Green Lantern lacks. His choices are, for the most part, bad choices but he took a chance, a tactic that can lead to great success in a way that playing it safe never can.

I’ll leave open the possibility that Zack Snyder may yet make a great film or, at least, a few very good ones. Even taking into account a hunk of junk like Sucker Punch, he is on the right track. On the other hand, the only good that can come of Green Lantern 2, should it ever get made, will be the return of avocado paste at Subway. (I’m a big guacamole fan.)

- Steve Avigliano, 1/13/12

REVIEW: Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): Dir. Joe Johnston. Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Based on the comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Starring: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci and Dominic Cooper. Rated PG-13 (Mostly bloodless action). Running time: 124 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Captain America: The First Avenger knows exactly what it wants to be and has a lot of fun being it. That it should be several things at once – a winkingly self-aware superhero origin story, a history-free WWII action film and a better Indiana Jones movie than the last Indiana Jones movie – is part of its fun.

Captain America is not among the A-list of heroes every moviegoer is familiar with but unlike recent lower-tier superhero movies – I’m looking at you, Thor and Green Lantern – this shiny, new, multi-million dollar brand investment – that is to say, this movie – actually offers a likable screen character. You know the kind. The ones we are surprised to find ourselves rooting for and actually wouldn’t mind seeing in a sequel or two or four.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a scrawny kid from Brooklyn desperate to enlist in the armed forces and serve his nation at a time, 1942, when such desires carried a dreamy, youthful idealism, or at least they do in twenty-first century hindsight. In spite of persistent applications, however, the recruitment offices reject Rogers on the grounds of his numerous physical ailments. When asked why he wants to fight, Rogers responds that he doesn’t like bullies. In the present day that answer might sound naive but in the sepia-tinged 1940s of Captain America, its innocence feels genuine. He wants to deploy overseas and defeat the biggest bully of all, Adolf Hitler, not for political reasons but because he knows what it feels like to get pushed around.

We see him get pummeled in a back alley fight where punch after punch he gets back up for another. It’s the getting back up part that attracts the eye of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who believes Rogers is the ideal candidate for a special procedure that will transform an ordinary recruit into a physically enhanced super-soldier. Heading the experiment are Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), government scientist Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) and officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).

The project is in response to looming threats from Johann Schmidt a.k.a. Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). Schmidt is the leader of HYDRA, a Nazi organization that appears to be a subsection of the intelligence team Hitler once asked to search for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Schmidt and his team seek an ancient relic that will, naturally, help Schmidt take over the world. Weaving, a veteran of movie villainy, knows just how to play this sort of role. He goes far enough over-the-top that he comes back around to the bottom and is rather convincing delivering silly dialogue.

Captain America works because it acknowledges the campiness of its material then and uses this self-awareness to confidently march into the realm of comic book absurdities. The film knows that in order for its titular character to work in a 2011 Hollywood blockbuster, it must embrace and poke fun of the character’s wide-eyed patriotism. In the movie, Captain America becomes a national celebrity that the military parades around; he signs comic books for kids and performs with can-can dancers at USO shows. Too many recent superhero movies have their leather-clad crusaders saving the world in secrecy, which takes some of the fun out their derring-do and I appreciated that Captain America explored the public image of its hero.

The film’s only major misstep comes in its final two minutes. In the interest of remaining spoiler-free, I will not go into detail other than that the ending is an awkwardly inserted tie-in for next summer’s Avengers movie, which will feature a smorgasbord of Marvel characters including Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and now Captain America. The tie-in is a commercially motivated blunder that intrudes on the story and jams an annoying cliffhanger into the movie to ensure that audiences will buy a ticket to next summer’s big attraction.

But more on that gripe another time. Prior to its final moments, Captain America: The First Avenger is an entertaining standalone adventure and a reminder of how entertaining superhero movies can be when done right. The Marvel Studios marketing machine is already working on a sequel but for the first time in a while, here is a movie that deserves one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/30/11

REVIEW: Green Lantern

Green Lantern (2011): Dir. Martin Campbell. Screenplay by: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg. Story by: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim. Based on the comics by: John Broome and Gil Kane. Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action). Running time: 114 minutes.

1 star (out of four)

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) has the power to create anything he wants to fight his enemies with. Let that sink in for a moment. Anything. When called upon to use this power, he creates a chainsaw, a machine gun, a really big fist. If you were given the ability to create anything at all out of nothing, wouldn’t you feel obligated to be a little more creative than that?

Green Lantern is an uninspired bore; its script seems to have been written by someone who saw Spider-Man once and was asked to copy the structure of its superhero origin story from memory. Hal Jordan, a cocky Air Force pilot, is the unlikely recipient of a green ring that bears with it great responsibility. Jordan has been chosen by the ring’s magical powers to become a Green Lantern – a Guardian of the Universe – and we all know that you can’t argue with a magic ring’s decision.

In many recent superhero movies, there has been a touch of much-needed self-awareness. Audiences cannot be expected to sit through film after film of increasingly silly heroes without those films acknowledging that maybe these stories are a little silly. There are moments when Green Lantern tries this but more often these scenes come across as lazy writing. When Jordan is given the ring by an alien who crash-lands on Earth, he immediately calls his friend to the crash site and the following exchange occurs:

“Is that a spaceship?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it real?”

“Yeah.”

There is no sense of wonder or excitement in Green Lantern, just the obligatory motions of a story that is being told… Why? To ensure that the ever-profitable mines of superhero lore have been thoroughly exhausted?

After receiving the ring, Jordan travels to the planet Oa where he meets the thousands of other Lanterns whose appearances range from fishy humanoids to burly trolls. Their leader, Sinestro (Mark Strong) looks almost completely human except that he has reddish purple skin, pointy ears and even pointier eyebrows. The Lanterns are currently plagued by the evil Parallax, a former Guardian of the Universe turned giant cloudy beast. He seeks to destroy Oa using the yellow power of Fear (as opposed to the green power of Will) but for reasons I have forgotten, must first devour Earth. This is where Jordan comes in.

There is another villain back on Earth named Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard wearing a spectacular receding hairline and moustache), a science professor who is given the opportunity to study the body of the alien who crashed on Earth. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), he is exposed to a trace of Parallax’s yellow DNA and its evil powers soon overcome him.

Dr. Hammond is a sorry excuse for a villain. The DNA of Parallax allows him unspeakable powers but he wastes them in a pathetic fit of jealousy over Jordan’s love interest, the improbably beautiful Air Force pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). Dr. Hammond is so absorbed by his crush on Ferris that he is oblivious to Parallax’s plan for world devouring. Neither he nor Jordan have much of an understanding of what is going on and neither can think of anything better to do with their cool, new powers but use them against one another in a handful of dull, insipid fight scenes.

With the exception of the ghastly Parallax, the special effects in Green Lantern have a cartoonish silliness that might have been better suited to a children’s film. Come to think of it, Green Lantern on a whole might have been better off as a kids’ movie. The story’s simplicity might have been charming in a low-stakes PG outing but when blown-up to blockbuster proportions, one can only think about how little one cares about any of the characters onscreen.

I cannot say whether Green Lantern stays true to its comic book origins or not. I have had virtually no contact with the character or the world he is a part of prior to this movie. I do know, however, that the filmmakers behind Green Lantern could have made anything. Anything at all. And this is what they chose.

- Steven Avigliano, 6/29/11

REVIEW: X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011): Dir. Matthew Vaughn. Written by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Story by: Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer. Based on characters created by: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Chris Claremont. Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt and Kevin Bacon. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual content including brief partial nudity and language). Running time: 132 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

X-Men: First Class commits the cardinal sin of movie prequels. The film is all exposition, belaboring how the characters in previous films got to be who they are and why they believe what they believe. There are answers to questions I never particularly cared about – So that’s how Professor Xavier became paralyzed! – while others remain frustratingly unclear. The X-Men mythology has always suggested a great depth of storytelling possibilities but First Class is instead a by-the-numbers superhero flick, flat and forgettable.

As is typical for an X-Men film, First Class is crowded with storylines, some more satisfying than others. We meet Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner as the young Erik, and Michael Fassbender as the all grown-up version) in a concentration camp in 1944. Lehnsherr is a young boy when a German named Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) takes particular interest in his strange powers and separates him from his family. Shaw tortures the boy with cruel experiments that, years later, fuel an older Lehnsherr’s quest for revenge. We see how Lehnsherr’s tortured past leads him to become the nefarious Magneto and we are reminded of the old Yoda maxim about how hatred leads to suffering.

We jump ahead to 1962, where a college-aged Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is charming young women at the pub. There, a CIA agent (Rose Byrne) offers him a proposition. She has reason to believe some particularly nasty mutants led by none other than Sebastian Shaw may be behind a nuclear threat in Cuba and she enlists Xavier’s help. Xavier, in turn, begins recruiting some young mutants to join his team.

Between First Class’s dual protagonists and the several asides and tangents the film takes with its secondary characters, there is more than enough to fill one movie. Erik’s Nazi-revenge narrative offers some of the more entertaining scenes, capturing some of the gleeful violence that Tarantino tapped into for his Inglourious Basterds (which also featured Fassbender). Here, Fassbender is exceptional as the young Magneto. He sketches out his own dark and brooding take on the character while keeping in mind how the immortal Ian McKellen made Magneto the kind of villain we secretly root for. As the Nazi-turned-Soviet Shaw, Kevin Bacon is appropriately cartoonish, though he plays the role a few shades below Gary Oldman territory (the gold standard for over-the-top villainy).

Xavier’s storyline is less satisfying because it is bogged down in exposition that lays the groundwork for what we already know. As the wise mentor to the young mutants, McAvoy has clearly studied Patrick Stewart’s eloquent diction and knowing smile. Unfortunately, the script restricts him to establishing Stewart’s take on Xavier and unlike Fassbender, McAvoy does not have sufficient room to stretch out and make the role his own.

The alternate history is a letdown too. I usually enjoy this sort of history-twisting but First Class does not make the most of its Cuban Mutant Crisis, which neglects to explore the implications of its fictionalized version of the famous event. This is largely the fault of a dramatically clumsy script that often inserts scenes for mechanical plot purposes without adequately setting them up.

I must admit that I am not an expert on X-Men mythology, though I have always been intrigued by it. The second X-Men film, X2: X-Men United, does a wonderful job of exploring the X-Men universe, revealing the many fascinating ways in which mutants interact with humankind. After watching snippets of that film on TV again recently (the channel FX has been playing the earlier films ad nauseam in preparation for First Class), I was excited to see the new film, which I hoped would continue to flesh out the complex history of human/mutant relations.

Such subtleties are not to be found here. Aside from our two leads, each mutant is reduced to their respective power, dutifully performing their supernatural feats when the action demands they do so. Occasionally, they take on traits that roughly resemble character but only when convenient for the plot.

Am I alone in wanting to learn more about the world of X-Men? Why, for example, are some of the mutants’ powers extraordinary while others are little more than party tricks? How can so many different powers be unified as a single genetic trend?

There is another problem with X-Men: First Class that is indicative of a larger trend in today’s blockbusters. All of the important characters are without exception white men. Around the movie’s midpoint, however, a black mutant named Darwin (Edi Gathegi) is introduced. When another character describes how humans mistreat mutants, the camera cuts to Darwin on the word “enslavement,” as if his only purpose in the film is to underscore the parallels between the plight of mutants and real-life historical prejudices. He gets only two brief scenes prior to this and as the token black character in the movie, his fate can be guessed.

Then there is a very strange sexist joke late in the film involving Rose Byrne’s CIA agent. The line, which is laugh-out-loud funny if only because of its jarring placement in the film, reminds us how one-dimensional the women in First Class are. One of the mutants, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), has potential to be a fully developed character but the film spends more time emphasizing the physical developments of her scaly, blue body as she vies for the desires of up to three different men.

In today’s age, these glaring choices cannot be dismissed as incidental, and for such blatant discriminatory casting and writing I deducted a half star from my rating. Director Matthew Vaughn and his writers (listed above) should be ashamed of themselves. After last month’s Thor, which similarly degraded its token Asian character, and now this film, my mind drifts to the yet-to-be-released Green Lantern whose filmmakers opted for a white incarnation of the title character. For studios to be too timid to green-light anything but a sequel or a by-the-numbers superhero movie is one thing. That those same studios have become so afraid of damaging a film’s marketing potential that a role of substance cannot be played by anyone but a white male is, frankly, sad.

There is much to love about the world of X-Men and its mutated heroes, but First Class makes no effort to do anything new with that world. The film is a wasted opportunity to reinvigorate a flagging franchise and falls instead among the ranks of uninspired superhero outings.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/6/11

REVIEW: Thor

Thor (2011): Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Written by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zach Stentz and Don Payne. Story by: J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich. Based on the comics by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgård. Rated PG-13 (sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence). Running time: 114 minutes. 

2 stars (out of four)

Thor, the latest superhero flick to enjoy the Marvel Studios branding, is a slick and efficient product designed for summer consumption. Many of the Marvel movies in recent years have succeeded because, in spite of their big-budget excesses, they felt like labors of love, made by people with a real appreciation of the films’ characters and mythologies. Thor unfortunately appears to have been made more with product placement and the eventual Avengers tie-in in mind. The result is not a bad film but certainly a disposable one that does little to convince non-fans why the Norse god needed to be brought to screens.

Turns out Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is not actually Norwegian at all but an extraterrestrial being from the mythical world of Asgard where a monarchy is led by the wise King Odin (an eye-patch donning Anthony Hopkins). As the firstborn and rightful heir to the throne, Thor is anxious to begin his reign. Meanwhile, his younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steals jealous glances at the heir apparent. Naturally, no one takes heed of Loki’s less than subtle glowering until it is too late.

Another danger looms outside the kingdom – the age-old enemies of the Asgardians, the Frost Giants, who were long ago defeated by Odin and his army. When a few Frost Giants break into Odin’s palace to steal an ancient relic, Thor insists the formally vanquished enemies are gearing up for another fight. Eager to reignite war with the icy foes, Thor gathers a team of his warrior buddies to pay the villains a visit in spite of his father’s warnings not to. Odin punishes Thor for this disrespect by banishing him to a planet populated by wee mortals – Earth.

Shakespeare veteran Kenneth Branagh directs the film, an apt choice for this story of jealous heirs and regicide. Unfortunately, Branagh’s directorial talent cannot illuminate a dull and uninspired script. What pleasure there might have been in a twisted tale of royal family troubles is drained away by dialogue that relies on faux-fancy talk and characters over-explaining their thoughts and motivations. There are few details of the story that are not belabored in exposition-heavy dialogue.

Thor is not entirely without its entertaining moments though. Back on Earth a young astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) finds the exiled Thor in the New Mexico desert with a fellow scientist (Stellan Skarsgård) and their assistant (Kat Dennings). There are some amusing scenes of Thor adjusting to life on Earth providing some much-need comic relief from the stiffness of the antiquated speech found on Asgard. The film’s occasional sense of humor though rarely pokes fun the hamminess of Thor’s somber mythology. When Thor wields his hammer late in the film and Portman marvels, “Oh my God,” the irony of the line is lost.

The lack of self-awareness is a shame because the film’s extravagant visual design might have lent itself to camp. The costumes have a made-for-TV silliness about them, looking distinctly plastic when they are meant to resemble armor.

As a character, Thor is likable hero. He is a showman and a little cocky, and Chris Hemsworth, a relative newcomer from Australia, plays him well. In fight scenes, we catch him smiling at his own strength and he is amused by the quaint ways of the mortals he meets on Earth. Still, compared with the leads in more character-driven Marvel movies such as Spider-Man and Iron Man, Thor feels two-dimensional. Was this really a character that needed his own film? When he flies with his red cape billowing behind him, can anyone not think he of him as little more than a second-rate Superman?

Thor receives little help from his supporting cast, a wonderful batch of actors all given lifeless roles. Portman, cashing in her last big paycheck before she has a baby, has little to do. Her supposed romance with the hunky god is limited to a handful of flirtatious scenes but nothing that will get anyone’s heart rate up.

The ensemble of warriors that fight by Thor’s side, all of whom are interchangeable and easily discarded, is particularly troublesome. There is mention early on of Jaimie Alexander’s honored place as a woman in the army, but this hardly a consolation for a cardboard cutout character who serves no purpose in the story. And why, if everyone on Asgard talks in a British accent, is the only Asian (Tadanobu Asano) on the planet relegated to speaking monosyllabic Engrish? Similarly, Idris Elba, a black actor, spends the whole movie grunting and snarling. That these characters are included at all only serves as a reminder that all the heroics in the film are carried out by our dashing, blonde-haired, blue-eyed star.

Thor is not an especially bad movie but it makes no effort to surprise us. I have no problem with a movie of this kind featuring a formulaic or familiar story, but when the motions of the plot can be seen from the opening scenes the result is tedium. Escapism entertainment is one thing, but one feels trapped by Thor’s predetermined plotline.

No doubt the film will do well at the box office; saturation marketing ensures that much. But how much longer can studios expect audiences to plop down cash to see these costumed heroes without offering anything new? When I sit down to watch a movie, I’d like to be told a story, not sold a product.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/8/11

Kick-Ass and the Future of Superhero Movies

Superhero movies have been so popular in the last decade it’s almost difficult to imagine what our summer blockbusters were about before they seemingly all became about caped crusaders. There were, of course, hits made from superheroes before 2000 – Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) and Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) were both huge – but it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) along with Sam Raimi’s Spiderman (2002) that confirmed what had already been proven by those earlier films. Superheroes are ingrained deep enough into our pop culture consciousness that even the so-so ones have a decent shot at scoring a profit in their big screen adventures.
 

In 2010, superhero films are still going strong, but for how much longer? When will a lot become too many? Are superheroes headed for overexposure? Next summer, there will be three big ones. Thor comes out in May, followed closely by Captain America: The First Avenger in July, and sandwiched in between them will be Green Lantern in June. Thor and Captain America will both set up characters for the super-sized Marvel crossover, The Avengers, to be released the following summer. All of the aforementioned films will be released in 3D, which means studios anticipate audience members spending up to $45 on superheroes at the cinema next summer, not counting repeat viewings.
 

And those are just the summer offerings. There will be The Green Hornet in January and an X-Men prequel titled, X-Men: First Class to be released sometime in 2011. In the following year, there will be Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman movie, as well as a Spiderman reboot from Mark Webb, the director of (500) Days of Summer.

With all these movies still before us and many more behind us, it’s no wonder there have been some less conventional takes on the superhero genre. I’m tempted to label them “post-superhero” movies if it weren’t for the fact that they don’t offer much that’s truly contrary to the more traditional superhero tales.

The long-awaited adaptation of Alan Moore’s cult classic Watchmen (2009) had potential to give us something new, but under 300 helmer Zach Snyder’s direction, the film was underwhelming and confirmed many fans’ suspicions that the book was unfilmable.

The ads for Hancock (2008), an original story, suggested that Will Smith’s title character would be a change-of-pace from the typical, morally upstanding heroes. A film portraying a superhero as a drunk suffering from a poor public image was intriguing, but a sloppy script gave the film a muddled tone. As it turned out, even this supposedly tongue-in-cheek superhero movie succumbed to having a big-budget action finale.

Then there’s Kick-Ass, which I missed when it came out earlier this year but recently had the opportunity to watch on DVD. Kick-Ass is directed by Matthew Vaughn (who also directed the excellent pre-Bond Daniel Craig vehicle, Layer Cake) and based on a graphic novel that creator Mark Millar always intended to become a movie.

Kick-Ass begins as a satirical take on the genre, introducing Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) as a high-school nobody obsessed with comic books. He wonders why anybody hasn’t tried to be a real-life superhero yet and wants to be the first. He dismisses the way comics always give Joe Shmoe superpowers as a result of some freak accident, or how Bruce Wayne is able to afford all that cool equipment that doesn’t exist in reality. So he takes a DIY attitude to crime fighting, buys a wet suit and some nunchucks online and practices badass one-liners in the mirror. Like a true teenager, he calls himself Kick-Ass.

These scenes are wonderful as are the high school scenes, which take more than a few cues from Superbad (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. McLovin, is even here as the son of a wealthy mobster). There’s some funny stuff about how Dave unwittingly becomes the pseudo-gay friend of the girl he has a crush on, and some smart jokes about what a society populated with superheroes would really be like in the age of camera phones and online social networking. When Dave’s first successful scuffle with a couple of street thugs becomes a YouTube sensation, he wastes no time in creating a MySpace page for his alter ego and revels in the glory of the friend requests that come pouring in.

But Kick-Ass quickly breaks its own rules. After getting struck by a car, most of Dave’s bones are replaced with metal, and a lack of nerve endings allows him to get punched without feeling a thing. Maybe this twist is part of the film’s self-awareness and there’s a bit of irony in the fact that this miracle occurs after an embarrassing first attempt at heroism, but mostly it just takes the wind out of a clever premise. Then there is Damon Macready (Nicholas Cage) who goes by the alias Big Daddy and his daughter Mindy a.k.a. Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz). Much like Bruce Wayne, whom the film pokes fun at earlier, Macready sinks countless dollars into buying heavy artillery and trains his daughter in martial arts. Early in the film, there’s a joke that mocks the way superheroes are always given cheesy motives of vengeance, but Kick-Ass doesn’t hesitate to turn around a few scenes later and give Macready just that. He seeks to avenge the death of his wife, for which he blames the mobster, Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong).

Hit Girl is another source of problems for the film. I realize, yes, that the character is supposed to be provocative and controversial, but she’s all shock. Her father has trained her to be the perfect killer, which explains the violence, but why all the vulgarity? Macready notably avoids such language in her presence, giving her cutesy pet names even while he trains her to take bullets as she wears a Kevlar vest. That scene gets some laughs because of the disparity between Macready’s words and actions. Wouldn’t Hit Girl have been funnier if amidst all the carnage she paused every once in while and acted like the little girl she is? Then there might have been a dash of irony added to a character whose actions are just gratuitous. We watch as Hit Girl pumps lead into bad guy’s heads and slashes them up with knives bigger than she is, and the film expects us to laugh simply because it’s a little girl doing all this.

The performances are mostly good. Aaron Johnson brings the right mix of everyman qualities and teen perviness to the role, Nicholas Cage strikes a balance between understatement as the father and pure camp when he dons his mask, and Chloë Grace Moretz, for what it’s worth, has a lot of onscreen charisma.

Still, once we reach the blood-splattered finale, the movie is no different than the superhero films it parodies in the earlier scenes. Everyday characters achieve great physical feats in the name of awesome fight choreography and a complex plot is resolved with simple action. The movie wants to have its cake and blow it up too.

Kick-Ass was relatively cheap to make and did well enough at the box office to spawn a forthcoming sequel in graphic novel and movie form, but are movies like this the future of superheroes? I’m still waiting for someone to make a true anti-superhero movie, one that really skewers the conventions of the genre and commits to its satire.

In the mean time, there is a host of traditional superheroes lining up to receive our money in the form of ticket sales. My prediction though? After The Avengers and the third Batman movie come out in 2012, the Golden Age of superhero movies will end. They’ll still exist for sure, but will no longer be dependable megahits for studios. That day will be a bittersweet one. Fresh, new stories will hopefully find their way to multiplexes, and our favorite costumed heroes and heroines will return to the pages from whence they came. Before that happens, movies like Kick-Ass will no doubt try to change the direction of the tide, but will effectively only push us further into a superhero overload.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/19/10

REVIEW: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 (2010): Dir. Jon Favreau. Written by: Justin Theroux. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG-13 (sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language). Running time: 124 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Iron Man 2 is a sequel that takes everything that made the first enjoyable and, with freewheeling fun, revels in its own cartoonishness. This is a film where characters ask for music before they fight and Samuel L. Jackson is given an extended eye-patched cameo. Director Jon Favreau pushes the Iron Man universe into over-the-top territory, but we stay with him every step of the way because he does so with the cool confidence of Tony Stark himself.

The film picks up where the first left off, with Tony Stark revealing himself to the public as Iron Man and enjoying the increased media attention. News clippings in the opening titles inform us that Stark has used his Iron Man suit to end war in the Middle East, becoming an international icon. Stark hoards the suit for himself, however, resisting the U.S. government’s insistence that he turn over the technology, though his decision to do so seems to be as motivated by boastfulness as it is by political caution. These scenes are used more as plot devices than anything else, and the film largely abandons the first film’s tongue-in-cheek depiction of Stark’s all-American pro-gun stance. Still, Robert Downey Jr.’s charismatic performance owns the film. Even after learning that the chemicals that power his suit are slowly killing him, Stark is his usual cocky self, throwing himself a birthday bash and drunkenly using his suit for some pretty exciting party tricks.

Stark’s self-confidence comes into question when Ivan Vanko, a burly Russian played by Mickey Rourke, proves capable of recreating the arc reactor technology that makes the Iron Man suit so powerful. Vanko, whose father was an unsung co-developer of the arc reactor, seeks to take down the Stark family name by picking a fight with Stark at the Monaco Grand Prix car race, the first and most exciting action scene in the film. Vanko’s backstory and scheme are less important, however, than his size and attitude, and Rourke has a lot of fun grunting his way through his lines in a thick Russian accent, doing more grimacing than speaking.

Sam Rockwell, who plays the film’s secondary villain, a fast-talking rival weapons manufacturer named Justin Hammer, continues to prove himself one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, bringing his usual quirkiness and humor to the role. Hammer recruits Vanko to help build an Iron Man suit of his own, and the interplay between Rockwell and Rourke recall the strange relationship between Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare’s characters in Fargo. Favreau uses their scenes to emphasize the film’s lighthearted tone, but remains focused on Stark, utilizing Rourke and Rockwell as colorful side characters.

The remaining characters in the film, however, lack the zest and charm of the main players. Gwyneth Paltrow is charming enough as Pepper Potts, but her character’s origins remain a disconcerting mystery to me. I was willing to accept her in the first film as the Moneypenny to Stark’s Bond, existing to serve the dual purpose of helping the hero and providing some sexual tension, but this becomes difficult to believe when Stark appoints her CEO of the company. She makes a fine assistant to be sure, but where are her business credentials? Don Cheadle is a serviceable replacement for Terrence Howard as sidekick James Rhodes, but there is little Cheadle can do though to change what was, and remains, a dull supporting character.

While many recent superhero films have pretensions of grand drama, Iron Man 2 succeeds because it embraces its comic book origins and allows itself to go over-the-top with larger-than-life characters, plenty of pyrotechnics and a self-aware wit. Late in the film, Stark remarks to Rhodes, “I thought you were out of one-liners,” poking fun at the film while sneaking in another laugh. Then there’s Samuel L. Jackson as the mysterious Nick Fury, whose role is apparently just a setup for the Avengers crossover movie that’s coming out in 2012. The tie-in might have come off as an annoying marketing scheme if Jackson wasn’t so much fun in the role. He brings his typical relish to his lines and almost veers into self-parody (one scene in a donut shop seems a deliberate reference to Pulp Fiction), but he manages to keep the audience in on the fun. Scarlett Johansson shows up too as Stark’s new assistant and undercover agent, Black Widow, who Wikipedia informs me, is another tie-in to the upcoming Avengers film. Johansson’s role here confirms my suspicions about her as an actress. Most of her scenes consist of Stark ogling her until the end when she gets to do some sexy fighting, but nothing in the way of real acting.

Iron Man 2, much like Stark himself, is all about style. There are plenty of inventive action sequences and explosions to fit the summer blockbuster bill, but enough winking at the camera to remind everyone that it’s all in the name of fun. Like its predecessor, the rather complicated plot gets reduced in the end to an action scene, which is the norm for most superhero movies, but keeps Iron Man from reaching the bar Christopher Nolan set with the new Batman films. Still, this is a worthy sequel that, by celebrating the over-the-top nature of its comic book origins, becomes every bit as entertaining as the first.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/12/10