From the delightful Cracked.com comes this list which explores the above, five films in which the villains, at some point in the film, did something that “stupidly” sabotaged their own goals:
The main reason I’m providing a link to this article is because of the very first item mentioned, a bit of silliness/nonsensical storytelling found in The Dark Knight Rises, the last of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie trilogy.
Now I know there are many who feel The Dark Knight Rises was the weakest of Nolan’s Batman films and there has been plenty of abuse heaped upon the film. However, I’m not one of those who “hated” it. In fact, I felt the film was on par with the other two: It was ambitious, at times wildly entertaining, yet at other times showed some glaring flaws.
I’ve mentioned many times before, for example, that the fate of Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins, where Batman simply allows the villain to die in the train crash, was wildly out of character for our hero. It was made even worse, in my opinion, with Batman’s silly reasoning for why he allowed Al Ghul to die. “I’m not killing you, I’m just not going to save you”.
Yeah, right.
Still, I could accept the flaws because the film makers were clearly trying their best to create something that rose above it being “just” a superhero film.
So, having said all that, that first item listed in the cracked article is one of those things that did indeed irk me about The Dark Knight Rises.
To wit, Miranda (who we will soon find out is actually villain Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter Talia Al Ghul and is secretly behind all the evil events in the film), encounters Batman/Bruce Wayne after he’s escaped the Lazarus Pit and returned to Gotham to save it from Bane and (what we assume are) his League of Assassins.
Again, not one of the heroes knows that Miranda is in reality Talia Al Gul. Batman/Bruce Wayne comes to her and she knows he’s back in Gotham! Instead of arranging a meeting with him somewhere she can have an army of assassins take him out, she continues to go along with her deception until almost the very last moment.
When the deception was revealed, I believe I actually groaned. There had been rumors/speculation for months before the film’s release that “Miranda” was in actuality Talia, so when the movie revelation was made, it didn’t come as a complete surprise. But in an otherwise pretty good film (IMHO!), this bit really struck me as a major story fail, in more ways than one.
Yes, as mentioned in the Cracked article, Miranda/Talia kept her deception with Batman/Bruce Wayne even though it no longer mattered and she could have easily taken him out when he revealed he was back in Gotham.
But even more frustrating, at least to me: Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, right? Yet until the moment Miranda/Talia plunged a knife into Batman’s side, which effectively ended her charade, our hero didn’t have the slightest idea she might be behind everything.
To me, that was the film’s Ra’s-dies-in-the-train moment.
Question: When do you know your personal movie collection is spiraling out of control?
Answer: When you find films you purchased years before and didn’t remember having them.
A little while back I wrote a review of Phantasm II and noted the following regarding the original Phantasm and its sequels:
Over … time I became aware that sequels were made to that original film. However, I missed pretty much all of them, only realizing there were sequels when the (I believe) third film was shown on TV one night. I found the sanitized version I saw Ok enough, but I was confused by the various characters and situations. It felt like I needed to brush up on the original and its sequel to understand what was happening now.
So the other day I’m going through my DVD/BluRay collection and its so damn large that its two rows deep, with the DVDs in the second row covered by those in the first. I move around a few DVDs and, viola, am shocked to find that I have a copy of the Anchor Bay release of Phantasm III! I grab it and realize that when I wrote the above paragraph regarding Phantasm and its sequels I had conflated two memories into one: I did indeed see a sanitized TV showing of Phantasm III at some point but obviously I had also purchased this DVD and must have seen it too… only I forgot most of what I saw.
This is not a terribly good sign, I’m afraid.
Still, after seeing Phantasm II so recently and having a more solid idea of where we were, story-wise, with the whole Phantasm universe, I eagerly popped my copy of Phantasm III into the DVD player and gave it a whirl. Would the fact that I had more of a backstory of what was going on make the difference? Would I react more positively to the film?
As it turned out, the answer is a definite “yes”.
Phantasm III compresses the entire second film into its first few minutes to give new viewers a sense of what happened before. But because what happened before was so out there, newbies might find the recap -as I originally did- more confusing than illuminating.
In one particular way, this film’s opening reminded me of Alien 3 in that it brutally eliminated one of the main characters featured in the second Phantasm movie in the opening minutes. Without getting into too many spoilers, the actor who played that particular role chose not to return to the third film and was therefore disposed of right away, a curious thing given how “important” the character was supposed to be to the Phantasm story…well, at least in Phantasm II.
The other big difference is that the original actor playing Mike returns to that role (Phantasm II was the only big studio release of the Phantasm series and the studios forced writer/director Don Coscarelli to feature a more prominent actor in that role).
For better or worse and depending on your views, this movie is very much in the vein of Phantasm II. In fact, at times I felt I was watching a in-tone/spirit remake of Phantasm II with Phantasm III rather than an entirely “new” film.
As I said before, depending on your views this will be a positive or not. For me, it proved to be a positive. Having a better understanding of the characters and situations thanks to having seen Phantasm II, I found Phantasm III a far more coherent affair than I remembered. The same mix of humor and suspense can be found within this film though clearly the budget was much lower this time around versus for the second studio paid film.
In sum, if you’re in the mood for an oddball horror film that features some genuinely creepy scenery along with some sly humor, you should check out Phantasm III…but I recommend doing so only after seeing Phantasm II.
Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 and, given that reality, the results don’t entirely surprise me, even if at least one of them I predicted beforehand.
Let’s start with that particular prediction, regarding THE big Memorial Day release, Tomorrowland. Directed by Brad Bird, when word first came that this would be the next movie he did after Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, and was a movie he chose to do instead of the new Star Wars film, people like me were naturally curious.
But as I pointed out in a blog posting from May 22, the very day of the film’s formal release (you can read the entry here), I sensed audiences might have a tepid at best reaction to Tomorrowland, at least based on the odd, uninformative trailers being released to allegedly hype the movie up.
As I said in that entry, I got the feeling well before the film’s release that its plot might be a mess, and based on critical reaction, that turned out to be the case.
So if Tomorrowland was looking shaky upon arrival, then what of the other films out there? As I mentioned in that same entry, it felt like the studios gave up on the Poltergeist remake. I hardly saw any advertisements for it and, while it made some money, it doesn’t surprise me the film didn’t storm out of the gates.
Which leaves us with the “older” films. Furious 7, while still in the top ten, is looking long in the tooth by this time. Those who wanted to see it have pretty much seen it. Still somewhat strong is Avengers: Age of Ultron, though I suspect that movie is falling into the same category.
The two big films of the previous week, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max Fury Road, still did well.
Pitch Perfect 2 was so outside my wheelhouse that I can’t even begin to offer theories on why it did as well as it did. Perhaps it was counterprogramming, giving audiences a welcome opposite of the typical big budget blockbusters. Perhaps in part it was due to good will from the first film (which I don’t know all that much about either). Regardless, the studios backing this movie have got to be smiling.
Which brings us to Mad Max Fury Road. While the film is a critical darling and the internet is filled with gushing posts from people who absolutely love the film, it was beaten, financially, in these two weeks by Pitch Perfect 2. That’s not to say the film is a financial failure. Not at all. However, one wonders, how did a comedy/musical wind up beating what looked, coming into the week before, to be a massive hit?
And here’s where my awesome powers of hindsight come into play…I suspect the thing that might have turned off some people from giving the movie a try was the fact that it looked a little too weird.
There’s a place for weird cinema but with the large summer audiences, one has to be careful to not go too far and potentially alienate these same audiences. My wife was reluctant to see the film because the commercials made it look too “out there” for her. Yet once I got her to the theater (no force involved! 😉 ), she came out with the opinion the film was far better than she thought it would be. How many more people are there out there like her, people who might ultimately like the film yet are reluctant to go see it -indeed, might not go see it!- because of that feeling?
My own opinion of Fury Road remains the same. I liked it but am not one of those people who absolutely loved it. As good as the movie was it didn’t totally blow me away like The Road Warrior did back in the day.
I suspect in the long run the film will more than make its money back and, hopefully, will even see a sequel.
Interestingly enough, I suspect Mad Max Fury Road might have done better had it be released this past week rather than the week before and against Pitch Perfect 2. I strongly believe the desire for people to see Tomorrowland was weaker than many thought.
As for the rest of summer…we’ll just have to wait and see. And when all is said and done, maybe I’ll offer another sterling 20/20 hindsight opinion! 😉
We’re quickly reaching deep into the summer movie season. Already released are perhaps the biggest of the big summer films, Furious 7, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, and Mad Max Fury Road. (I don’t mention the hit Pitch Perfect 2 only because it wasn’t on my radar at all, but credit where it is due, the film has proven to be a huge hit)
Looking over the remaining 2015 summer releases, only a precious few are left that intrigue me. One is Jurassic World, though to be honest most of the trailers released to date have lowered my interest…that could be just me. There’s Terminator: Genisys. Despite the groan inducing title and not all that impressive, at least at first, trailers, I’m intrigued enough to give it a shot. There’s Spy. I know many don’t like Melissa McCarthy but I’m not one of them. I think the various trailers to this film have proven themselves progressively funnier and funnier. Trainwreck also looks to be a humorous female-centric comedy. Finally, there’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, which has a pretty good trailer and looks to be another solid entry into the series.
I went to this page to check out the other 2015 summer releases and, while there are several other “big name” films, including Ant-Man, Vacation, Magic Mike XXL, Fantastic Four, etc., all these films, thus far, haven’t piqued my interest all that much.
There is at least one film I’m on the bubble with: The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which featured a good trailer but of which I’ve heard precious little of since.
Then there’s Tomorrowland (you knew I’d get there eventually, right?!).
When I first heard of this Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol) directed film, I was most curious. But as time passed and all we got were snippets of the movie’s story line but more information regarding who stars in the film (George Clooney) and that the film somehow featured the Disneyland/World Tomorrowland ride, I grew worried.
Disney has had both success (Pirates of the Caribbean) and failure (Haunted House) with their “rides being turned into movies” concept and given Brad Bird’s involvement, I was hoping this film might prove the former rather than the later.
But the seeming reticence to release actual story information made me wonder if the movie’s plot was a little too dense and not so easy for the studios/ad wo/men to describe. Then came the actual trailers and, frankly, they presented a bunch of intriguing images but continued to not give us much sense of what the movie’s actual story was.
The movie is being released today and, at this writing, is scoring a dead mediocre 51% approval on Rotten Tomatoes for critics and a higher 78% approval among audiences.
Many of the critical comments confirm what I feared: The plot of Tomorrowland is something of a mess, though even those whose opinions about it were ultimately negative did admire the effects and at least the opening sequences.
The only reason I’m writing this is because I’m curious to see how the film performs over the weekend. It is THE big Memorial Day Weekend release (yeah, I know the Poltergeist remake is also being released, but it feels like the studios have totally given up on it already) yet there seems to be very little passion for this film. Have others sensed what I have? Have the commercials/trailers failed to get people excited to see the film? Will I be proven completely wrong and will the film wind up being a huge hit?
I’ll be curious to see the numbers come Monday. I suspect, however, the film will not prove to be all that much of a success.
I suspect one of the more difficult things for successful actors to overcome is being typecast in certain roles/genres of film or TV.
While watching Mad Max Fury Road, this commercial for the upcoming film The Gift was shown:
Now, let me say this: I really, really like actor Jason Bateman. Even when he’s in mediocre to bad films, I have yet to feel he’s to blame for said work’s failing. He’s charismatic, sardonic (in a delightful way), and interesting to watch.
But boy oh boy do I have him typecast in my mind as a “comedic” actor and find it really difficult to switch gears and see him acting in a serious/suspense film.
When I saw the first, very short trailer to The Gift (it must have been on TV) I thought Mr. Bateman was all wrong for the role. This trailer, which is a little longer and may well give away more than it should regarding the film’s plot, made me feel more comfortable about the idea of Mr. Bateman tackling this mysterious, more “serious” role.
I said I’d see the film while it was in the theaters and early this morning, at the 10 A.M. 3D showing, I caught Mad Max Fury Road.
aaaaaannnndddd….
While I’m overall pleased with the film, I also have certain mixed feelings regarding the overall work, which I’ll get into below.
There are parts of the film that absolutely enraptured me. Hell, there were parts where I shed a tear or two (it was the dust in the theater…right?), yet despite so much to like, and there was an awful lot to like, I still feel the best Mad Max film remains The Road Warrior.
Having said that, I loved the fact that director/co-writer George Miller returned as strong as he did to the Mad Max universe. Sadly, we’ve recently seen damn good directors return to past triumphs and unfortunately fall on their faces (Spielberg/Lucas with Indiana Jones, Ridley Scott with the Alien universe). In this case, Mr. Miller delivers a film he has clearly thought about and tinkered with in pre-production for a long time. Word is that it took him ten years to get this film done and that thought process shows with a deceptively simple plot that nonetheless gives you plenty of characterization in its quiet moments and a logical story progression that continues the previous films’ exploration of mythology (Like The Road Warrior, Mad Max Fury Road is essentially an apocalyptic western with steel instead of flesh horses).
For those like me who wondered how this particular movie would fit in with the other three and the answer is: It doesn’t.
Mad Max Fury Road is a “soft” reboot of the Mad Max story. We get bits and pieces of Max’s (Tom Hardy taking over the role that made Mel Gibson famous) past in the form of flashbacks but these flashbacks don’t necessarily correspond with the other movies in the series, especially, the original Mad Max. Yes, Max is still a burned out ex-cop who lost his family and now roams the wasteland as a solitary soul, but the flashbacks point out something slightly different than what we saw in the previous films, including a much older daughter he lost (in the original Mad Max, he lost his wife and baby child) and an attack on him that was bigger in scale than the motorcycle gang that attacked him originally. Finally, Max still drives the car (mild spoilers) that was absolutely destroyed in The Road Warrior.
As the movie opens, Max is chased, captured, then taken to an oasis run by a fearsome fascistic individual named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne returning to the Mad Max universe as the villain of this movie…he was the badguy Toecutter in the original Mad Max!). Immortan Joe, to my eyes, is a mild re-tread of Auntie Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Shortly after Max’s arrival, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) heads off to transport a truck from the Oasis to a fueling station but, it turns out, she has other plans and leaves the designated route. This in turn causes a series of events to occur which eventually bring Max and Furiosa together as they try desperately to escape the forces of Immortan Joe while in search of a green paradise Furiosa insists still exists out there somewhere.
I don’t want to get into too many more spoilers but I will say this: Mad Max Fury Road’s story winds up using elements from both The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. In fact, one could say the film is something of a mash up of those two films.
If you’re as familiar with those earlier films as I am, you’ll see these similarities (like the one I pointed out above regarding Immortan Joe) and, while it does take away a little in terms of Mad Max Fury Road’s “originality”, given that it’s been some thirty years since Beyond Thunderdome’s release, you can sorta forgive this.
Now, to details: How is Tom Hardy as Max? I feel he was good in the role. Having said that, I can’t help but think Mel Gibson would have been better. Sure, Mr. Gibson’s much older now, perhaps too old for some of the stuntwork, but when he played the character he managed to convey something Mr. Hardy, as good as he is, never quite captures. It is my understanding Mr. Miller wanted Mel Gibson back but the actor declined, so I suppose its worthless to worry about that now.
Regardless, Max’s character in this film is interesting in another respect because despite the movie’s title, I would argue he isn’t the movie’s protagonist.
I won’t pretend to be the first person to point this out, but Mad Max Fury Road could just as easily been called Imperator Furiosa Fury Road. In fact, and I know I’m about to say a MAJOR heresy here, but I think the film might have been better had it NOT been a Mad Max film and instead a “sideways” sequel to the Mad Max films…set in the same universe but without the presence of Max.
Not that Max’s presence is unwelcome, its just that the contortions of getting him into the story early on could have been eliminated and I don’t think it would have hurt the film. In fact, it might well have helped it!
However, once he was part of the story things were fine, right?
Well…
In The Road Warrior, Mel Gibson’s Max was very much in the eye of the hurricane. Everything happens around his character and without him you wouldn’t have the movie. But in Mad Max Fury Road the eye of the hurricane, even when Max joins up with her, is Furiosa and it is she around which all occurs and it is she who is the core of the film while Max just kinda helps out after a fashion.
Mind you, this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but given the fact that I came into the film expecting a Mad Max feature and getting a Imperator Furiosa feature does take a little adjusting.
The second, somewhat smaller problem I had with the film was the admittedly incredible stuntwork. I’ve noted before reading a quote from a director or stuntman who stated something along the lines that with respect to stuntwork in movies, what you present should be about 30% more than what can happen in real life. The implication of this statement was that if you push things too far beyond that 30%, you run the risk of making a cartoon of your action scenes rather than something audiences might still take as “realistic” and therefore dangerous.
There are an awful lot of great stunts and effects in Mad Max Fury Road, but after a while (another heresy!) I felt they got so broad and exaggerated that it was hard to take them very seriously, especially toward the end when people are jumping from car to truck to car while engaged in a high speed chase.
This is, obviously, a personal issue to me. Others might not mind and your mileage, as they say, may vary.
So I’ve spent over a thousand words here and its time to wrap it up: Is Mad Max Fury Road worth your time?
Absolutely.
Despite the negatives mentioned above, the film nonetheless shows director George Miller remains one of the premiere action directors out there. While Mad Max Fury Road may not quite capture the lightning in a bottle magnificence of The Road Warrior, it nonetheless gives you a potent, grueling, and ultimately uplifting story that should have you on the edge of your seat.
Recommended.
A quick note: Since the movie’s release some far right conservative talking heads have criticized this film as a “feminist” work. Loathe though I am to agree with anything those on the far right say, they’re right here. Mad Max Fury Road does carry an undercurrent of feminist empowerment in it, up to and including the hot button issue of fertility and (yes) abortion. In this movie, we see a society run by a man who controls fertile women and forces them to have children against their wills. The movie’s central plot involves these same women, led by Imperator Furiosa, rebelling against this tyranny and taking control of their destiny and, yes, their bodies.
To those who weren’t around back then, there was a time in the pre-internet stone age when movies “snuck up” on you and suddenly there they were, released to movie theaters in all their glory…movies you hadn’t heard a thing about until literally they were days if not a couple of weeks from being released.
One such film that surprised me was 1981’s Escape From New York. Never heard so much as a word about it before being floored by the movie’s poster I saw in a theater no more than a couple of weeks before its release. While I’m sure there were articles about the movie in sci-fi magazines, back then you had to actually find the magazines in bookstores -remember them?- to read about those upcoming releases.
As I said, what really got me was the poster, presented below.
Pretty neat, no?
Another such film that really surprised me and had me instantly salivating to see it came out that same year, The Road Warrior.
I don’t know if I read the Time Magazine review first (It’s the second one quoted in the above poster) or saw a TV commercial or whathaveyou, but for me 1981 proved to be all about The Road Warrior. The movie literally blew me away and kept me coming back trying to sneak into theaters to see it (It was R rated and I was still too young to go into the movie without adult accompanyment…though with one exception that didn’t stop me from seeing the film three or four times upon its original release!).
As it turned out, 1981 proved a pretty spectacular year for movie releases. You have the two mentioned above along with Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Evil Dead, An American Werewolf in London, Stripes, For Your Eyes Only (perhaps my favorite Roger Moore James Bond film), Time Bandits, Outland, The Howling, Superman II, and Scanners, among others (you can find the full list here).
What I didn’t know back then, again, thanks to the stone age pre-internet days, was that Escape From New York and The Road Warrior had a common thread: They were both intricately tied to a low budget, practically unknown 1979 film by the name of Mad Max.
Of course, The Road Warrior was a sequel to Mad Max and was known as Mad Max 2 in foreign markets. I suppose the name was changed to The Road Warrior in the U.S.A. so that American audiences didn’t stay away from the theaters thinking they’d need to see the original to “get” the sequel. Escape From New York, on the other hand, was inspired at the very least visually for director/writer John Carpenter because he had seen Mad Max and loved the “look” of the film. Word is that Kurt Russel, the star of that film, was also a big fan of Mad Max.
Getting back to The Road Warrior, I absolutely loved Mel Gibson’s stoic, almost silent presence (he utters some 17 or so lines in the entire film). I loved the cast of characters around him, from the desperate surrounded town-folks to the larger than life villains. I loved the Gyro Captain (he was never given a formal name) and I really loved -and was heartbroken- by Max’s pet dog.
And that ending…so much going on, tragedy, triumph, what looked to be complete disaster only to be revealed as…Ah, but that would be spoiling.
The years that followed gave us one more Mel Gibson starring Mad Max film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. As excited as I was to see it, it proved to be a crushing disappointment. While I can understand the desire by director/writer George Miller to go a different route and give us something “new” with regard to Mad Max and his apocalyptic world, other than the magnetic presence of Tina Turner as the villainness this film was just too removed from what made the original two films such fascinating thrill rides and, to this day, I haven’t gone back to see it from start to finish.
I may have to revisit it, to see if perhaps I’m being too harsh.
Regardless, that brings us to today, with the release of the new Mad Max film Mad Max Fury Road. Sadly, Mel Gibson isn’t involved in this new feature and that is perhaps my biggest disappointment. Granted, Mr. Gibson’s strange behaviors a few years back made him a poison pill to many potential audience goers and (I imagine) financial backers and I can’t help but wonder if that, and his age (he ain’t no spring chicken anymore), might have played a role in his not returning for this film.
Still, that’s speculation and it isn’t the first time a popular star was replaced in a popular role.
So Tom Hardy takes over the role of Mad Max (I can’t complain, I like him) and the reviews for this film have been nothing short of stellar.
While it is difficult for me to get to the theaters to see first run films (hence so many belated reviews) I fully intend to see Mad Max Fury Road on IMAX as soon as I can, preferably in the next couple of days.
Will I be transported back to the magical year of 1981, a year when The Road Warrior quite literally blew me away?
Very fun little game presented on radiotimes.com which gives you a series of screenshots from various science fiction features, all involving computers/computer readouts and you’re asked to identify which movie/TV show they came from:
It boils down to this: Sometimes a movie’s “happy” ending, if you think about it, isn’t all that happy at all. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a very popular (and profitable) Steven Spielberg film that featured an ending that even as a youngster made me scratch my head for the very reasons pointed out in the article above:
Even Steven Spielberg and star Richard Dreyfus have realized the protagonist’s journey and ultimate resolution, presented so positively and with such a sense of Spielbergian wonder within the film itself, wasn’t quite as pleasant in retrospect. Mr. Spielberg, if memory serves, noted that when he made the film he was a young single man and, as he grew and married and had a family, realized the ending presented in this work makes Richard Dreyfus’ character a heel (and that’s putting it kindly).
Check out the others, they’re interesting as well!
Next up: 6 Terrible Scenes Wisely Left Out of Great Movies:
What we have here are six movies based on literary works wherein the movie wisely chose to eliminate or ignore certain elements of the book/original story it was based on. My favorite has to be the very first one presented, Die Hard. The original book it was based on, Roderick Thorp’s Nothing Lasts Forever sounds like a real downer of a novel compared to what was presented on screen. That’s not to say the other five didn’t wisely eliminate/alter material as well!
The only one I might quibble a little with is Up In The Air. Yeah, the twist ending might have been more of a downer than one would have liked, but for some reason the book’s idea of the main character (SPOILER!) being terminally ill makes a certain kind of sense in the context of what he does during the course of the story, though maybe less so as a surprise ending. Perhaps if it were part of the plot from the beginning…
Fascinating to see some famous faces pop up here (particularly Kurt Russell!), but in the end I guess they got the right actors to play the right roles.
