Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 7

New Interview!

I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down for a chat with Nick and Bex on the Unlocked Tomb podcast where we chatted about Knock Knock, Open Wide, When the Sparrow Falls, writing, horror, Irish folklore, my upcoming books and…honestly just about everything. This was one of those interviews that felt more like just hanging out with chill people and shooting the shit, so if you enjoy listening to me rambling about every subject under the sun (and, I mean, you’re HERE) then stick it in your ears.

Once upon a Studio (2023)

The Walt Disney Corporation is very good at some things, and very bad at others. And, personally speaking, the one thing they’ve always been worst at is making me like the Walt Disney Corporation.

I love the movies. I hold them dear to my heart. But whenever I see one of those corporate promotional videos where everyone is wandering around Disneyland in a state of wide-eyed joy like they’re the first good souls to be welcomed into God’s kingdom I come out in hives. You know what I’m talking about.

CHARACTER 1: It’s so incredible that [text from marketing press release announcing newest venture] is finally here!

CHARACTER 2: Woooooooooow…

I hate it when Disney tries to sell itself because it always feels so…the vibes are wrong. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s probably why the Oh My Disney sequence in Ralph Breaks the Internet is still my least favourite few minutes in the entire canon. It’s also probably the reason why I steered clear of Once Upon a Studio for so long, and why it took me two tries to actually watch it all the way through. And that’s because it begins like this:

“It’s so incredible to think that Disney founded Walt Disney animation 100 years ago today!” “Wooooooow.”

Hives. Hives all over.

And look, I think it’s awesome that the short is dedicated to and stars the old man on the right. That’s Burny Mattinson, the longest serving Disney employee who died a few months before the short came out. It’s great that he was honoured like this and it’s also impressive that he gives a more believable and nuanced performance than his co-star, an actual professional actor. But yeah, the opening live action sequence just feels wrong to me. Just the worst kind of forced Disney jollity. But then…oh, but then.

The last of the animators leave and the camera comes to rest on a photograph of Mickey and Minnie:

The transition from a still cell of Mickey’s Birthday Party to Mickey coming to life is pulled off so flawlessly that you almost don’t really register just how impressive it is. Which I suppose brings me neatly to the subject of the animation.

“OH MY GOD THIS ANIMATION!”“No words. Should have sent a poet.”

And again, it’s not something that hits you immediately. Because it’s not visually spectacular. You’re just watching a load of cartoon characters getting ready for a group photo. It’s only when you stop and realise:

Oh wait, that’s Moana, Flounder, Merlin, Sugar Bowl, Mrs Potts, Chip, Cogsworth, March Hare, Doctor Krunklehorn and the Mad Hatter interacting with each other and a live action background all while flawlessly rendered in their original designs and animation styles.

Holy SHIT that’s impressive.

And yes, the the short’s joys outside of marvelling at the sheer technical wizardry of what’s been achieved are mainly just limited to watching characters interact who’d never normally get to meet. But you know what, so many of the pairings are fun and interesting that it’s more than enough to carry the short. Of course I could quibble. Some characters get short-shrift and some get more screen-time than their importance to the canon might strictly justify.

Flash the Sloth has dirt on somebody in the studio, I’ll tell you that much.

But many of the pairings are interesting and genuinely clever. Pluto and Joanna? Gaston and the Cheshire Cat? Ursula and fucking Splat from Strange World?!

I never would have thought of that (mostly because that would require thinking about Strange World) but it works!

And there’s a genuinely sweet moment where Micky stands before a portrait of Walt and quietly murmurs. “Gotta go. But thanks. On with the show.”

“Minion! Release me!”
NO.

And I do love Mickey’s polite, “after you” to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit when they’re getting ready to have the picture taken, that just made me happy.

So, fun fact, there 543 Disney characters in this movie, and the one they gave the job of climbing a ladder and taking the group photo was:

Why? For the love of God, WHY?

Shit goes wrong (hold the phone, GOOFY FUCKED SOMETHING UP?) and the characters are devastated because they think they’ll have to wait another hundred years to get a photo. But Alan-a-Dale, Scat Cat and Mirabel start playing “When You Wish Upon a Star”, Fix-It Felix fixes the camera and the whole cast sings together

Is it just fan service?

Yes. It is just fan service. From start to finish. Pure indulgent, empty calorie sugar-rush fan service.

But it was made for ME, personally. So that makes it okay.

Disney’s centenary year will not, to put it bluntly, be remembered fondly. It was an absolute dumpster fire, a nadir for the company in terms of both artistic achievement, audience goodwill and even by the metric which should matter least but to them matters most; financial success.

But this short shows that there is still talent, and artistic drive and pure magic to be found there.

As a pure, sincere love-letter to everything that was and still is great about Disney animation, it’s damn near perfect.

“No. Thank you.”

NEXT UPDATE: 20th June 2024

NEXT TIME: Do you bleed? You will…

Megamind (2010)

Before you ask, no, this wasn’t planned. It’s just a coincidence that I’m doing this review so soon after Megamind: The Doom Syndicate defiled everyone’s childhood memories like a randy Gungan. Not my childhood memories, obviously. I was engaged when this thing came out. But apparently there are people out there who were children when the original movie released and now are, like, allowed to vote and stuff? It’s a mad world.

I haven’t seen the sequel but I did watch the trailer on YouTube. This was the most upvoted comment and the sense of historical tragedy and pathos was just too great for me not to share with you all.

My God. It’s like the fall of Paris.

I’ll be upfront, upfront. I like Megamind just fine but I don’t know how much I have to say about it. It doesn’t have a special place in my heart but neither is there a lot of stuff to make fun off. Plus it’s a comedy that is actually unironically funny on its own merits and you know how much I love writing about those!

But that doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting movie. It actually belongs in the category of film that I would argue are among the most interesting; movies that were re-appraised after their initial release. When it dropped in 2010 Megamind was mostly dismissed as an inoffensive but unremarkable bit of fluff chasing the trend started by The Incredibles and Despicable Me. Since then it’s been re-evaluated as one of the best Dreamworks movies with a devoted cult following. And that’s interesting (to me, at least) because when that happens it’s usually less to do with the movie itself and more to do with society changing and seeing the movie in a new light.

The movie opens with Megamind plummeting to his death while doing the whole “Hi this is me. I suppose you’re wondering how I got here?” schtick that I definitely haven’t gotten sick of.

We flashback to Megamind as a child and learn that he was born on a doomed alien world and was sent to Earth in a rocket ship by his parents alongside a little fish minion named “Minion”. Unfortunately a neighbouring planet was also being destroyed and they too launched a space baby, a child who would become the superhero Metro Man.

Metro Man landed in a mansion and was raised by blue-bloods, Megamind landed in a prison and was raised by the Bloods. As they grew older, the settled into a nice cosy, Superman v. Lex Luthor style relationship with many battles over the decades with Metro Man winning some and Megamind almost winning others.

So our story begins with Megamind in jail and Metro Man about to open a new Metro Man Museum. The Warden visits Megamind’s cell to deliver a present from Metro Man, a watch “to count every second of your 85 life sentences”.

Guys, do you have any idea the kind of heinous shit you have to do to get 85 life sentences?

Definitely killed lots of people. Probably some weird sex stuff. Sorry.

The watch actually turns out to be a holo-guise that Megamind is able to use to escape the prison. This scene is great because it’s a good introduction to the holo-guise and also because the escape attempt is genuinely clever, unwittingly using the watch to disguise the warden as Megamind, who gets thrown in to the cell by the guards allowing the real Megamind to take it back and escape by disguising himself as the warden. The movie walks a very fine line between portraying Megamind as someone who is simultaneously a complete goober but also genuinely brilliant and this scene does that very well. Megamind is picked up from jail by Minion driving an invisible car and the pair set off to ruin Metro Man’s big day.

Now, one of the biggest liabilities of any Dreamworks movie is the fact that this studio is a bunch of star-fuckers. What I mean is, whereas a company like Disney looks at a character and says “okay, we could get Jim Cummings or Alan Tudyk for this”, Dreamworks always goes for big name A-list stars regardless of whether or not they have any experience or obvious affinity for voice-acting. Now, admittedly, sometimes this works very well. Jack Black wasn’t really known for much voicework prior to Kung Fu Panda but that casting worked like gangbusters. On the flipside:

Yeah, you forgot about the Angelina Jolie fish, didn’t you? You’re welcome.

But here, thankfully, Dreamworks’ tendency to shame-lessly fame-whore actually works out quite well. Will Ferrell is fantastic as Megamind, Tina Fey is a great Roxanne and even Brad Pitt, who’d normally be my go to example of someone hire to do voicework because of fame rather than ability, is not bad at all as Metro Man.

Roxanne Ritchie is our Lois Lane analogue and she’s covering the opening of the museum with her partner/stalker Hal Stewart.

Someone writing this either loved Green Lantern or hated Green Lantern and I’m honestly not sure which.

Roxanne gets kidnapped by Megamind and is held hostage just as Metro Man is about to open the museum. These three have been doing this dance for so long that Roxy is clearly bored with Megamind’s whole schtick. However things take a shocking turn when Metro Man is trapped in a copper observatory (copper being his one weakness) and is apparently killed by Megamind’s solar powered death-ray.

Well, at least his death was carbon-neutral?

So now Megamind is very much the dog who caught the car. He’s defeated his arch-enemy, conquered the city and…life is now meaningless. He quickly spirals into a depression and decides to blow up Metro Man’s museum because it reminds him of everything that he’s lost. However, Roxie is also at the museum and Megamind has to disguise himself as Bernard, a guy who works at the museum and who Megamind turns into a little cube. While Roxie reminisces to “Bernard” about how amazing Metro Man was, she says that “heroes aren’t born, they’re made” which gives Mega Mind the idea of creating his own hero.

“Hey sweetie, how’s the review going?”“I dunno. I like the movie just fine I just don’t know if I have a lot to say about it.”“Have you mentioned that given how tight his pants are and the complete absence of a bulge it’s most likely that Megamind’s species don’t have dicks?”“I…have not.”“Or it could be retractable. Megamind might have a dog penis.”

Not a bit, by the way. That was a real conversation we had.

Anyway, Roxie calls Megamind thinking that he’s Bernard to let him know that she’s found Megamind’s secret lair. This leads to a genuinely funny scene in the warehouse with Megamind switching between his Bernard and Megamind identities. I found it very entertaining. I fucking hate recapping comedies.

Anyway, Megamind accidentally fires the hero creating device at Hal and decides to just roll with it. He shows up Hal’s home disguised as his “Space Dad”, pretending that Hal is actually an alien. And of course, Will Ferrell plays him with a Marlon Brandon impression.

To make the impression truly flawless Ferrell refused to learn his lines and got paid $20 million dollars for two minutes of screentime.

Hal is absolutely on board with becoming a superhero because he thinks it’s a surefire way to get into Roxie’s pants. While Space Dad trains Hal to use his new powers to fight Megamind, he begins to date Roxie as “Bernard” while ostensibly helping her track down Megamind, who, I remind you, is actually him. It’s a classic pentagon where three of the sides are the same person.

Okay, so. Let’s put aside the issue that Megamind is dating a woman while lying to her about basically every facet of her existence because obviously that’s sketch as hell but is necessary for us to have drama. I think the reason why this movie’s movie’s reputation has only grown from strength to strength is just how on the money its portrayal of Hal’s entitlement is and how genuinely wholesome Megamind and Roxie’s relationship actually is. Next time you watch this movie, listen to Hal’s dialogue and you’ll see he never actually talks about Roxie in any way that doesn’t centre on her appearance. By contrast, Megamind actually becomes a better person and makes the city a better place because he truly wants to see Roxie happy. In fact, his two-shoes have become so goody that Minion tries to get Megamind to break up with her, saying that “the villain never gets the girl”. Megamind yells that he doesn’t want to be a bad guy anymore and a shocked Minion packs his fish food and leaves.

Megamind goes for his date but Roxie shows up late because Hal paid a visit to her apartment and re-enacted the “can you read my mind” scene from Superman only a thousand times more rapey.

Sidenote. This is one of the greatest movies ever made and I love it so goddamn much.

Roxie and Megamind share their first kiss but her hand brushes the holo-guise and she finally learns the truth. Not surprisingly she tells him to hid the road so he responds by getting into a giant mech suit and going on a rampage through the city.

Honestly? Throwing yourself into your work is not the worst way to handle a breakup.

However, Hal refuses to show up and Megamind has to go to his apartment. To his surprise, Hal handled being rejected by Roxie by giving up on the whole idea of being a hero and turning to villainy. Megamind provokes him by revealing that he was actually Bernard the whole time and proceeds to get the EVER LIVING SHIT BEATEN OUT OF HIM. Megamind realises that Hal is actually trying to kill him and says “that’s not how the game is played!”

It’s…not?

Megamind activates his failsafe, encasing Hal in a massive orb of copper, which should weaken him as Hal’s powers come from Metro Man’s DNA. When that doesn’t work, he’s forced to flee for his life and Hal proclaims himself ruler of Metro City.

Megamind turns to Roxie for help and asks her to take him to Metro Man’s old hideout to look for clues as to why the copper failed to stop Hal. And in the hideout they find…

So Metro Man tells them on the day of museum opening he had realised that his life was just an endless repeating series of battles with Megamind and decided to fake his own death to start a new life as Music Man (I swear to God, Eddie Murphy did the exact same thing in the eighties).

Metro Man refuses to come out of retirement to save the city so it looks like all is lost.

Megamind surrenders himself back into the Warden’s custody and Roxie tries to reason with Hal by explaining that his attraction to her is actually an unhealthy obsession caused by toxic social expectations foisted on young men that still defines sexual conquest as a yardstick of worth and masculinity but that he seems like a really nice guy and there’s definitely someone out there for him.

Well. You tried.

Hal takes her hostage and demands that Megamind come and fight him. Minion arrives in the nick of time to bust him out and we get our final showdown with Megamind arriving with all the glitz and glamour of a Las Vegas floorshow.

Slay it, Queen.

Megamind is able to defeat Hal, Roxie and Megamind get back together and the movie ends with Metro City opening a brand new Megamind museum, which is remarkably generous when you remember that everything bad that happened in the movie was entirely his fault. And whatever he did that earned him 85 life sentences before the movie even started which almost definitely involved weird sex stuff.

I hear there’s an entire wing dedicated to explaining his weird dog penis.

***

After the claggy manure fire that was the Wish script, it was so damn refreshing to watch a movie with such rock-solid writing. I mean it, this is a lean, mean, wonderfully structured little piece. The acting is great, the themes are relevant and the characters are at once bold and archetypal while being surprisingly deep and layered. It’s a really good movie and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t already.

Scoring

Animation: 13/20

Not bad, but a little flat.

Lead: 15/20

Great design. Great vocal performance. Great arc. Thumbs up.

Villain: 16/20

Well, this aged like a fine wine.

Supporting Characters: 15/20

It’s a small supporting cast, but a good ‘un. Oh, if any of you ever wondered why Minion’s robot suit has fur it’s a reference to this:

That’s Ro-Man from the 1953 movie Robot Monster, which had such a small budget that instead of a robot costume they had to use a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. Well, I mean, they didn’t have to. It honestly would have made more sense to just paint a human being silver and stick the helmet on him. They chose it. They chose to do this.

Music: 09/20

Holy shit did you know Hans Zimmer did this? Kinda phoning it in, to be honest. But any sound-track that includes Michael Jackson’s Bad is worth a listen.

FINAL SCORE: 68%

NEXT UPDATE: 06 June 2024

NEXT TIME: Alright, my children. I have heard you.

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #62: Wish

Missed you all!

So, what’s next on the old docket? Why what’s this? A canon Disney movie? One of the films that this very blog was established to review?

Why, this is something of an occasion! Maybe we’ll have lots of cameos from long running characters like The Horned King or Walt Disney himself? Maybe a long and overly complicated kidnapping arc? Might Otto Von Bismarck appear? He bloody might!

“Mouse, quit stalling, I’ve got fifty bucks on you giving this shitpile a good review just to be contrarian.”“Then you, sir, just lost fifty bucks and my respect.”

But before surgery commences, I want to talk about conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy Theories, counter-intuitively, are a way to make the world seem less scary, to make sense of an otherwise terrifyingly random existence.

To many Americans, the idea that a shadowy cabal within the US government would kill a sitting president of the United States was actually a less unsettling prospect than the idea that some random nutjob could decide to kill the most powerful man on Earth and just…do it.

Or that a lunatic fundamentalist in a cave with a few followers and some bolt cutters could have handed the US its most devastating attack on home soil since Pearl Harbour. Or that…a majority of Americans just didn’t think that Donald Trump should get another term.

Which is why, if you’re about to get angry at me for bringing up the extremely well known conspiracy theory that Wish was either wholly or partly the creation of generative AI, I think you’re missing the point. To understand a conspiracy theory’s appeal, you have to look not at the theory itself but the reality that it would replace if it were true. People want to believe that Wish is AI generated because it’s less scary than believing that this is just the kind of film that Disney’s creative process produces now.

Recently I gave an interview for a podcast where we discussed how the publishing industry is becoming totally, crushingly data driven and where books are increasingly commissioned, marketed and read for and by micro-targeted audiences. Books are becoming products rather than pieces of art, not something the artist wrote because they cared about it but because the algorithim says that Becky in Minnesota is jonsing for an enemies-to-lovers mafia werewolf story. And this isn’t just limited to publishing, the whole entertainment industry is sick with it.

So I know why so many people believe this theory is true*, because the reality is actually scarier. The same market and technological forces that make AI art so…off are now infecting even human created art. The machines aren’t just getting more human-like. We’re meeting them in the middle.

Although…okay, I’ll be honest here. Before I’d seen the movie I thought the whole notion that it was an AI generated film was ridiculous. Because of course Disney would not be able to keep that a secret. Of course they wouldn’t risk it when the prevailing legal wisdom is that AI generated content can’t be copywrited. Of course it’s insane to suggest that Disney would get so spooked by the Writer’s Strike that they would look for a way to cut creatives out of the process rather than having to deal with unionised labour (this is Disney we’re talking about people, Disney!).

And yet, having seen the movie? I’m…honestly not so certain. It just has all the hallmarks. That weird Stepford Wives flavour of bland and weird. The nonsensical plot. The “no soap, radio!” quality of the dialogue. The LYRICS. Oh my word. Actually, I take that back. I asked WordPress’s AI bot to write a better villain song than “This is the Thanks I get?” and this is the song I got:

Title: Shadowed Desires

(Verse 1)
In the depths of darkness I arise,
Forged in treachery and lies,
My ambition burning bright,
Beneath the stars that mock my plight.

(Pre-Chorus)
Every sliver of discontent,
Feeds the hunger, my intent,
To claim what’s rightfully mine,
And leave the world in my design.

(Chorus)
I’ll carve my name in history’s stone,
The throne is calling, I’ll claim my own,
No hero’s heart can staunch the fire,
Of my shadowed, relentless desire.

(Verse 2)
Watch the puppet strings I deftly weave,
As I spin webs to deceive,
Luring all into my grasp,
They’ll kneel before my chilling rasp.

(Pre-Chorus)
Every whisper, every breath,
Carries echoes of my conquest,
No force can quell this rising tide,
I’ll rule with darkness as my guide.

(Chorus)
I’ll carve my name in history’s stone,
The throne is calling, I’ll claim my own,
No hero’s heart can staunch the fire,
Of my shadowed, relentless desire.

(Bridge)
They’ll tremble at my wicked decree,
As I shape a world to bow to me,
No savior can undo my reign,
My legacy forged in endless bane.

(Chorus)
I’ll carve my name in history’s stone,
The throne is calling, I’ll claim my own,
No hero’s heart can staunch the fire,
Of my shadowed, relentless desire.

(Outro)
I’ll carve my name in history’s stone,
The throne is calling, I’ll claim my own,
No hero’s heart can staunch the fire,
Of my shadowed, relentless desire.

And you know what? Little on the nose. Rather obvious imagery. But I at least feel like the bot understood the assignment.

Yes. Let’s have a peppy, upbeat Disney villain song that sounds like it’d be right at home in Highschool Musical. Let’s do that. That would be a smart thing to do.

We get a story-book opening where our narrator, Asha, gives us the history of the Kingdom of Rosas, a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea. The kingdom was founded by King Magnifico and his wife Amaya with the purpose of protecting people’s wishes. See, Magnifico realised that wishes are what drive people through life…

But that sometimes people’s wishes don’t come true and that makes them sad.

So he created a kingdom where, when ever a citizen turns eighteen, they give him their wish for safe-keeping and then they forget about it. And every month, Magnifico chooses a wish to grant. Everyone seems to be okay with this system and enters into it with a clear understanding of how it works.

So…right off the bat I am baffled by this. Magnifico has a lot going for him. He’s voiced by Chris Pine who is a seriously underrated voice actor and singer. I like the design well enough. And magocracies are cool, who doesn’t love a good magocracy? But Magnifico just doesn’t make sense as a character. He starts out as a peasant boy whose family are massacred by thieves. He studies magic. He becomes the most powerful sorcerer in the world. With you so far. Then he establishes a kingdom and starts doing weird shit with wishes.

What the fuck? How did we get from Magical Batman Origin Story to this guy basically running what amounts to a lottery?

We cut to Asha’s house where the narration is revealed to be her talking to her 100 year old grandfather Sabino who presumably already knows this shit. Asha lives with Sabino and her mother Sakina and her Happy Meal bait pet goat Valentino, who manages the seemingly impossible task of making me unhappy to have more Alan Tudyk in my life. Now, I’m going to be critiquing this movie’s…everything pretty much and that includes the animation. But, this one I actually feel a little guilty about because it is at least trying to do something that the canon has desperately needed for a while. That is, it’s trying to innovate and shake up the house style.

For almost 15 years now, Disney’s canon features have been tangled in, well, Tangled. That movie’s art-style and aesthetic have dictated how these movies look. And while I absolutely adore most of those films, there’s no question that the canon needed to innovate and move on. And Wish does do that. Unfortunately, I don’t think it works.

“You bastard, I did THIS FOR YOU!”

So, the movie eschews the hyper-real look of Tangled for more of a “Hand-Drawn 3D” look. That’s honestly not a bad idea. If you’re not going to celebrate Disney’s centenary with a proper traditional 2d animation (which would be a VERY good idea but who cares what I think?) then going down this route is an acceptable middle ground. In fact, this style has been used very effectively in the Spider-Verse films and Puss in Boots 2. Unfortunately, those movies had visual flair and fantastic direction whereas Wish just feels safe and unambitious in comparison. Also, how fucking sad is it that DISNEY, the greatest American animation studio in history bar none is left playing catchup with goddamned SONY? Strange times, my friends.

Okay, so it’s Sabino’s birthday and Asha tells him that she’s really confident that he’s finally going to get his wish granted. You know…I’m pretty sure that if I reach 100 and the wish I made when I was eighteen comes true that will not end well.

Yeah. Yeah, I’m not surviving this.

Asha works at the palace as a kind of tour guide for new visitors to Rosas and we get our first song; Welcome to Rosas. It’s…not terrible. The beat is actually kinda catchy and the lyrics at least sound like something that a human wrote. That human being someone who really, really, really wishes they were Lin Manuel Miranda and isn’t.

“Welcome to the family Madrigal…I mean. Shit! I did it again!”

Her song done, Asha runs into the kitchen and meets her friend Dahlia who is the leader of the seven teens, basically what would happen if the Seven Dwarfs and the Burger King Kids club were Tuvixed in a transporter accident. She greets Dahlia with this line:

“Help me! Best friend and honorary doctor of all things rational my interview is in one hour and I’m so nervous I think I’m going to explode!”

I’m sorry, no. You can’t get mad at people for saying AI wrote this script. That is how AI talks. That is not people speak. Human no talk like that.

Also, really? “Honorary Doctor of all things rational?”. That’s the most elegant way of letting the audience know she’s the “Doc” of the group? Jesus Christ.

Anyway, Asha gets into an argument with the “Grumpy” of the group, Gabo, Gabo, GABO!

Gabo implies that Asha wants to become Magnifico’s apprentice so that she can corruptly rig the system and get her grandfather’s wish granted, something that Asha angrily denies and which is absolutely, 100% correct. Queen Amaya arrives in the kitchen to tell Asha that it’s time for her interview. As they ascend the stairs, Amaya briefs her on the apprentice’s duties saying that some of the things she might have to do for him “might seem strange, but why a sorcerer needs what a sorcerer needs is not your concern”. Which…yikes.

“Do I claim to understand why magic will sometimes require you to come to work in a French maid’s outfit and a Donald Duck mask? No. Because I’m not a sorcerer. We must remember our place.”

Asha meets Magnifico after triggering a magic alarm he’s placed around a secret evil mysterious book of evil. They get talking and form a bond over their losses (Asha’s father died of illness and Magnifico’s parents, as discussed previously, were lost due to him being magical Batman). The dialogue in this scene is really clunky and on the nose, which is why it’s such a testament to Chris Pine and Ariana DeBose that it kinda…works? I don’t hate this scene. Magnifico takes Asha to see the wishes which are just blue globes floating around his room like globs of wax in a lava lamp. They both sing At All Costs which is a kind of a…love song? I guess? Magnifico and Asha sing to the wishes how they’ll never let anything bad happen to them. I’m kinda conflicted on this one because the melody is actually quite nice and both Pine and DeBose are really selling the fuck out of it. But the lyrics are just…weird. This movie does not deal well with words, lemme tell ya.

So, Magnifico, no doubt glad to find an apprentice he can harmonise with, offers Asha the job. Asha wastes no time abusing her position and asks Magnifico to grant her grandfather’s wish.

“Remember kids, using a position in government to enrich yourself and your family at the expense of your fellow citizens is just something everyone does.”

Magnifico is (quite understandably) hurt at this sudden, immediate cashing in on her newfound power and influence but agrees to take a look at Sabino’s wish. He says that Sabino’s wish, “to inspire the next generation” is simply too vague and therefore dangerous. Uh…I’m sorry, am I supposed to think that Magnifico is wrong here? Ask yourself, how many stories have you seen where a vaguely worded wish leads to disaster? Fuck, how many wish stories have you seen where a poorly worded wish doesn’t have have some kind of terrible repercussion for the wisher?

As Magnifico points out “inspire the next generation” could mean LITERALLY ANYTHING.

You know who inspired the next generation? HITLER.

Magnifico tells Asha that’s a hard pass and she is shocked to realise that most of the wishes will never be granted.

Asha. Sweetie. You know this. You HAVE to know this. You…you told us that. You said Magnifico chooses which wishes to grant which obviously implies that there are wishes that he does not choose to grant.

And look at all these!

More people are coming to the kingdom every day. He’s granting TWELVE A YEAR. You HAVE to know that he’s not going to grant all of them. EVERYONE HAS TO KNOW THAT. THIS SYSTEM MAKES NO SENSE OTHERWISE.

This system makes no sense anyway, but this is the part that is pertinent for our current discussion. Getting back to the lottery analogy, Asha’s basically showed up to work and is horrified to learn that not everyone that plays a scratch-card wins. HOW did you not get this? The ceremony happens and, obviously, Magnifico does not grant Sabino’s wish and tells Asha that she didn’t get the job. At dinner, Asha tells her grand-father that she saw his wish and that it was beautiful but that it’ll never be granted. And Sabino stands up and says “are you trying to break my heart, child?!” and what the fuck is this shot?!

Look, I didn’t go to film school. I know practically nothing about cinematography and even I know this shot is wrong. This is a big, emotional beat and look at this. Medium distance, Sabino is facing sideways so we’re missing half his face, Asha and her mother are clustered close together so the weight of our focus is pulled away from Sabino onto them and there’s a metric shit ton of dead space on the other side. You hear that sound? It’s Stanley Kubrick puking in rage inside his coffin.

Asha runs out into the lush, green forest which looks about as authentically Mediterranean as Björk and we get our “I Want” song, So I Make This Wish, which is a real pretty song if you don’t speak English as a first language.

Disney? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but stop trying to remind me of Pocahontas. Because I genuinely would rather be watching Pocahontas. You degrade us both.

Look, you’ve already had the “throw caution to every warning sign” line mocked from here to buggery, you don’t need me for that. Asha sees a star and makes a wish and it crashes into Earth, incinerating all life on the planet.

Hah.

If only.

The townspeople are delighted by the light of the star coming to Earth but Magnifico notices that all the wishes are getting skittish and says “I believe I’ve been threatened” like the sky just pulled a shiv on him or something.

In the forest, discovers that the star has actually come down to Earth and has taken a form seemingly tailor-made to sell plushies.

Fuck. Every. Damn. Thing.

So Star starts flying around and shedding flakes of star-dandruff any which way and all the animals and plants start eating it and become sentient and start talking. Wait a minute, I’ve seen this before.

Valentino starts talking and is now voiced by Alan Tudyk doing what I think is supposed to be an impression of Patrick Stewart. Oh, wanna know a little fun bit of trivia? Traditionally, many Disney sidekick characters start off in conception as having a posh British accent. Iago had one, Sebastian had one. So i usually take it as a bad sign when a supporting sidekick still has a British accent in the final film. Kinda screams that they half-assed it. The newly ensouled animals then sing I’m a Star, which, ironically, would get anyone singing it booted off You’re A Star. At the end of the song we learn that two of the animals, a bear and a stag, are named “John” and “Bambi”. Okay, stop.

So about the references. I’ll admit, there is a kind of “Where’s Wally?”-esque fun to be had in spotting what movies are being referenced but here’s why it backfires. Wish, which ostensibly is supposed to be a celebration of the last century of Disney, does not feel like a Disney movie. It’s got none of the charm, none of the darkness, none of the heart, nothing. It feels more like a high-end CGI ad for a mobile game than Snow White. To the point where the constant Disney references actually feel less like paying homage than the movie saying “this is actually a Disney movie. Did you forget? Don’t worry, there’ll be another reminder in like two minutes”.

Asha asks Star if it grants wishes and apparently it doesn’t even though we just saw it grant Valentino’s wish to talk so what even the fuck? Asha fills Star in on the whole deal with Magnifico and the wishes and Star apparently suggests that she just steals the wishes back. Well, actually, we just kind of have Asha’s word on that. As far as we the audience are aware, Star just flies around and stares at Asha with the gormless blank gaze of a cereal mascot. I think it’s entirely possible that Asha is just projecting her secret desires onto this barely sentient glob of space goo.

“What’s that? I should steal the wishes back? And take all their money? And kill them all? And do WHAT to the corpses? Oh, I couldn’t do that. Then again, if YOU say it’s okay…”

Asha sneaks into the palace with Valentino and Star. Star has knitted some yarn into a little outfit and starts shimmying around in it and Valentino says “thank you, I feel seen”.

Okay. Bring out the wall of shame.

“When you use a bird to write it’s called tweeting.”“What can I say? Bling is my thing.”“Thank you. I feel seen.”

Okay, do you know what I would do if was put in charge of Disney Animation? Have a nervous breakdown and run it into the ground, obviously. But before that, I would put a massive fucking sign over the door. And it would read:

YOU ARE NOT COOL. YOU ARE CLASSIC.

Disney should not be chasing trends or trying to appeal to “the youth”. Disney should be trying to make movies that kids will still be watching A CENTURY from now. Movies that are timeless, and universal and that don’t age.

Asha recruits the seven teens to help her and sneaks into Magnifico’s study and manages to steal Sabino’s wish. Magnifico summons the townspeople to see if anyone knows anything about the lights in the sky and gets so enraged by people asking about their wishes that he storms back into his study singing This Is The Thanks I Get, our first Honest to God villain song since Mother Knows Best all the way back in Tangled.**

And I’ll confess, that hook is catchy as hell. But this is still a terrible villain song. There’s no menace. There’s no camp. It actually feels more like a hero song. And I suppose you could say it’s a clever subversion because Magnifico is the hero of his own story. You could say that. And I would reply: SHUT UP.

I don’t want a clever subversion. I want THIS.

THIS IS WHAT I WANT.

Am I crazy? Do none of you remember how good we had it? DO NONE OF YOU SEE HOW FAR WE HAVE FALLEN!?

“Sweetie? You promised me you would take your meds.”“I TOOK THEM ALL!”

Magnifico finally cracks open the evil book of mysterious evil and is consumed by the raw power of its pure malevolence.

This is why we don’t trust BookTok recommendations.

Asha returns home and gives Sabino his wish back and he’s delighted. Magnifico rolls up to the house and tells Asha that somebody ratted her out and demands that she hand over Star. He also destroys Sakina’s wish right in front of her and draws more power from it. With Star’s help they flee and escape.

Meanwhile, Magnifico forges a new staff by destroying three wishes, including the one belonging to the lady who wishes to fly and spends literally every hour of every day by the fountain looking at birds.

This lady does not need a wish. She needs therapy.

Magnifico blames this wish-murder on Asha and tells the people that she must be brought to justice. He then reveals who betrayed her and it turns out it was Simon O’Donoghue, the Sleepy of the Seven Teens?

Apparently he’s scum?

As a reward, Simon gets his wish granted, which is to be a Knight of Rosas (I didn’t realise the recruitment standards were so strict that you have to resort to literal divine intervention to be allowed to hold a pike but what do I know?). Magnifico then takes complete control of Simon who promptly rats out the rest of the teens who have to go into hiding. Asha tracks them down and we get our next song Knowing What I Know Now it is hot trash moving on. The Queen shows up and is all “oh woe is me, my husband the King is gone mad with power if only some helpful peasants could remove him so that I could rule and be…nice.”

Working together, they hatch a plan to free all the wishes. Asha confronts Magnifico on the roof of the palace where he’s trying to absorb all the power from the wishes. Magnifico is far too powerful for her, but Asha leads the people of Rosas in a sing-along that channels the power of friendship and they all wish on the stars that they are and…I dunno, do the Care Bear countdown or some shit. Their combined power draws their wishes out of Magnifico who then gets sucked into the mirror on his own staff.

The people celebrate Amaya becoming the new Queen, and she is noticeably chill about the love of her life having succumbed to evil magic and now being trapped in a mirror for all eternity. Obviously, we can see where this couple is headed.

And movie ends with Asha becoming a fairy godmother complete with wand and blue cloak. We then get a credits sequence that supposedly references ever canon movie but which makes some rather fascinating omissions. So, apparently, the movies that Disney has black-bagged like Stalin tidying up old party comrades are:

Saludos Amigos.

The Three Caballeros.

Make Mine Music

Fun and Fancy Free

The Rescuers

The Black Cauldron

The Rescuers Down Under (Fucking WHAT?)

Meet the Robinsons

Winnie the Pooh

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Frozen 2

Which, okay, I understand leaving out sequels and the package films have never got no respect, no change there. But Cauldron? Robinsons? The entire Rescuers saga? What the hell?

Anyway, we then get an after credits sequence of Sabino setting out to write a song that will inspire the next generation which we learn is When You Wish Upon a Star.

That’s right. We were watching the origin story for a FUCKING SONG.

I can’t wait to find out if Nick Fury will ask the song to join the Avengers.

***

So before anyone accuses me of “jumping on the bandwagon” keep in mind this movie came out half a year ago. All the furore has died down by now and I didn’t even pay attention to most of the reviews at the time. I have heard people tell me this movie is nowhere near as bad as its reputation and I purposefully went in with as open a mind as I could.

This movie not only failed to rise to expectations, it tunnelled under them like Bugs Bunny on his way to a carrot convention. In fact, it quickly became apparent to me that the question before me was one that I’ve not had to ask myself for over a decade:

Is this the worst one?

As in, did Disney actually manage to mark their centenary by creating the single worst movie in their 62 film animated feature canon?

Obviously, that would be a very bold claim to make and I wouldn’t make it lightly. So I set myself this test:

I would take my three lowest ranked Disney movies and see if I could find one scene in each of them that I would consider to be better than anything in Wish.

So, first up. Third from the bottom. Brother Bear. I chose the transformation scene.

Better than literally every scene in Wish?

Fuck yes. Hands down. No question. The music, the animation, the atmosphere. This is easily one of the worst animated films Disney made in 21st century and it is light-years ahead of Wish.

Next up. Home on the Range. Let’s go with the yodelling cattle rustling sequence.

My God. Lyrics that are witty and make sense. Bold and inventive use of colour. And what is this weird sensation? Fun? Is that what you call it?

Yeah, this is also better than Wish and I’m actually feeling nostalgic for goddamned Home on the Motherfucking Range.

Okay. Last stop. My personal bete noir. The canon movie that should never have been considered a canon movie. The unclean one. The Adversary. Dinosaur.

I guess I’ll go with…the asteroid scene.

Hmmmmm…

No. No. Sequences like At Any Cost just about manage to scrape enough fumes of Disney magic to make me prefer Wish over Dinosaur.

Congratulations, Wish. You stopped an inch above Hell itself.

Scoring

Animation: 12/20

Points for trying to shake things up. And maybe they’ll find a way to make this new style work. Right now though, it looks flat and kinda dull.

Lead: 04/20

Standard Disney quirky hero-girl type 24-b. Ariana DeBose is actually very strong but she’s given nothing here. The dialogue is something any actor would struggle to say, let alone elevate and the animation has a tendency to make Asha over-act hideously.

Villain: 04/20

Oh great. Disney are doing villains again.

Supporting Characters: 03/20

Hi ho. Hi Ho. It’s off to suck they go.

Music: 05/20

The melodies are passable but the lyrics are unforgivably awful.

FINAL SCORE: 28%

NEXT UPDATE: 23 May 2024

NEXT TIME: Okay Dreamworks, show ’em how it’s done.

*It’s not true. Probably. I’m like…68% certain it’s not true.

** Fine, Shiny might also qualify, we won’t fight.

“Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.”

Martin Scorsese supposedly coined the expression: “one for them, one for you”, meaning you do the movies the studio wants you to do in order to do the movies you want to do. The Dark Knight Rises is, famously, one of the most open and avowed “one for them” movies in recent Hollywood history.

Nolan didn’t want to do it (especially after Heath Ledger’s tragic death) and never bothered to hide the fact that this was the hoop he had to jump through to get Warners to pony up for Inception.

But you know what? It’s a myth that great art only comes from passion projects. Plenty of good and even great films have come from people who just showed up to work that day. And look, if the price we had to pay for every Inception was a Dark Knight Rises, I’d take that deal.

But there are problems with this movie. And (bizarrely, given this is the exact same writing team that gave us the fucking GOAT of a script that was The Dark Knight) pretty much all those problems begin and end on the page.

The movie begins where every good Batman movie should, in rural Uzbekistan where an unnamed CIA operative (Aiden Gillen) is waiting by a plane for some Uzbekistanians.

They arrive and deliver the man Mr CIA has been looking for, a Russian scientist named Doctor Pavel. But, because Mr CIA is such a good customer, they’ve tossed in three terrorists already pre-black bagged. They tell him that these three have intel on the location of the Masked Man, Bane. After the plane takes off, Mr CIA tries to terrify his new prisoners into talking by performing fake executions, making it seem that he’s shooting them one by one and throwing the out of the plane. And then one of the terrorists (quite reasonably) asks why he would bother to shoot them when the ground is nature’s bullet. And Mr. CIA pulls off the mask and reveals that it’s actually Bane. Mr CIA asks Bane if getting captured was all part of his master plan, and Bane replies: “Of course!”

“I mean, since Dark Knight it’s literally the only plan villains are allowed have!”

Okay, so Bane. Bane, Bane, Bane.

I’m not going to sit here and lie through my whiskers and pretend that Bane is one of the all time great Batman villains. I wouldn’t do you like that, fam. In the comics he’s such a product of the nineties that his design has aged in a way that older classic characters like the Joker and the Riddler never have and never will. Then there’s the problem that he was created for a very specific story and that once that story was over, he was never going to have that same relevance again. You can come up with any Bane story you like, but it’s always going to be lurking in the shadow of…

That said, I think it’s unfair to just dismiss Bane as a one-trick pony. There’s a reason why he’s stuck around as a respectable mid-tier villain when other “Batman’s Newest, Greatest Threats!”s have fallen into complete obscurity (thinking of you The Wrath. For the first time this decade). In any comic or game where a good portion of the Rogue’s gallery is lining up to ride Batman hard and put him away wet, Bane will usually have elbowed his way onto the card. Why? Well, because he’s got the strength and bulk of Killer Croc, the intelligence of Ra’s Al Ghul and the criminal connections and resources of The Penguin. It doesn’t necessarily make him the most distinct and unique villain but it gives him a versatility that’s honestly pretty rare amongst the Bat-foes, who tend to be specialists who challenge Batman in one area alone; be it physically, intellectually or psychologically. Bane’s a good all-rounder, and all-rounders tend to do well in comics.

As for this movie’s interpretation of Bane? Ehhhhh…

Look, I’ve mentioned before that Tom Hardy is one of my favourite actors. And there are certainly aspects of this Bane that I like. He’s menacing. He’s certainly memorable. The voice, like Bale’s Batman voice, is stupid but it’s also fun to imitate with a coffee mug over your mouth so I don’t mind it as much. But this Bane is also weirdly…placeless. It’s part of a trend of the Nolan Batman movies deracinating their non-white villains. The Arab/Asian Ra’s Al Ghul was played by Liam Neeson and now the Hispanic Bane is played by Tom Hardy. And before you say it, yes, I am fully aware this is a game that Christopher Nolan was never, ever, ever going to win and someone was going to be chewing his nads whatever way he went. But not even talking the politics of it. I just mean…I don’t know who the fuck this Bane guy is, where he came from and what circumstances shaped his worldview and outlook.

You may say that a villain who’s Hispanic and was born and raised in a prison in a fictional Latin American banana republic is problematic but at least it’s something to hang your hat on, y’know?

Okay, anyway. You know what he gotta talk about now.

GIVE. NOLAN. BOND.

Nolan’s actually said that this is the single scene he’s most proud of filming and I almost feel it’s too good? It sets a peak of jaw-dropping cinematic spectacle that the movie is just never able to top at less than ten minutes in and it’s also the best scene in a Batman movie and Batman is six and a half thousand miles away shuffling around his mansion and suffering from rheumatism.

So, Bane’s men storm the plane, perform a MID-AIR BLOOD TRANSFUSION and why not and peace out with Doctor Pavel in toe, crashing the plane with no survivors.

Okay, so, we’re back in Gotham and we’ve done an animé time skip of eight years since the end of the last film. Organized crime has been more or less eradicated in Gotham thanks to the Dent Act, a draconian piece of legislation that expanded police powers in the wake of the “heroic” Harvey Dent’s murder by the “villainous” Batman on the last night that the caped crusader was seen by anyone in the city.

So, right off the bat (ha! I didn’t even! That just happened!) I don’t like this. The movie’s trying to do a Dark Knight Returns, the classic eighties Batman story where an aged and somewhat enfeebled Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to take on the new and vastly more dangerous criminals who are menacing Gotham.

Here’s the problem. Here is Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight Returns:

And here he is in Dark Knight Rises:

Yeah, sure, have him walk with a cane, that totally cancels out the fact that he looks barely old enough to shave.

And this brings me to my second problem. Batman Ends begins…

Sorry, Batman Begins ends with Batman having begun and the Joker starting his crime spree. The Dark Knight ends with that spree having been stopped. And…that’s it. We’re told Batman basically put away Falcone, stopped Crane, stopped Joker and killed Harvey Dent. If you’re extremely generous you could argue Bruce Wayne’s entire crime-fighting career lasted maybe a year. Which is why it’s hard to get invested in him putting the cape back on because…he was barely Batman to begin with! Being Batman wasn’t his life’s crusade it was just this weird hobby he got really into for a few months and then quit.

Batman was Bocce Ball.

Anyway, after the death of Rachel, Bruce has retreated into Howard Hughes-esque isolation. Wayne Manor is being used to host a gala in honour of Harvey Dent where the mayor promises that those troublesome civil liberties are gone and ain’t coming back. Gordon then gives a speech and almost confesses to everything that happened eight years ago but loses his nerve and pockets his speech. Meanwhile, Alfred directs one of the maids (Anne Hathaway) to bring Bruce his dinner and to not touch that weird floating rose in the west wing.

Bruce then discovers this maid cracking his safe and stealing his mother’s necklace. So, true story. My wife went though a period of hating Anne Hathaway with every fibre of her being a few years back (I don’t know why, I think they both wore the same dress to a party or something, I dunno). And it took quite some convincing to get her to watch this movie for that very reason.

“No, trust me, she is REALLY good as Selina Kyle.”“Hissssssss…”“Trust me. She will win you over with a single word.”“Hissssssss…”
“…”

“Oh God dammit.”

Probably the most comics-accurate Selina Kyle yet put to screen. For starters, you feel sure that she is aware that she is not, in fact, a cat. That sounds like a small ask but it’s amazing how many Catwoman performers seem to take the name literally. And I have been a very big fan of some of those performances, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not really Selina. She holds the distinction of being possibly the only one of the rogues (depending on how the writer is handling Penguin) who is actually less crazy than Batman. Hathaway plays her as an icily intelligent, borderline sociopathic-level manipulator, capable of using her own sexuality as a tool with the skill and finesse of a Swiss Clockmaker. And underneath it all, deep, deep, down, where the Balrogs dwell, a conscience that will never let the truly innocent come to harm. The only important element that doesn’t really make the transition unscathed is any sign of attraction to Batman. At all. And you know what, it’s fine, that’s not Nolan’s wheelhouse. No one’s ever going to wonder what Christopher Nolan would do with Pride and Prejudice.

“Mr D’Arcy.”
“Miss Bennett. I have news of Wickham and your sister. Have you heard of Grolny?”
“It’s a small town in Russia. Believed destroyed during the Crimean War.”
“It is still very much intact. In a manner of speaking. And they have eloped there.”
“Why?”
“Not why. WHEN.”
*BAAAAAAAAAM.*

I mean…I’d watch it.

Selina makes short work of Bruce, leaps out the window and hitches a lift with one of the guests at the gala, a congressman. Alfred finds Bruce examining the safe and he tells him that whoever Selina was, she wasn’t simply a safe-cracker. She was dusting Bruce’s safe for his fingerprints. They have one those patented “Master Bruce, when shall you sire the next generation with your sacred seed” talks and Alfred reveals that when Bruce was off doing origin-story shit he had hoped that he would never come back. He’d hoped that Bruce had gotten over his parents’ death, met a nice girl, changed his name and allowed himself to be declared legally dead so that all his assets would then be inherited by, y’know, whatever loyal employee was in the will that’s not important. He tells Bruce how he’d dreamed that one day he might go to his favourite café in Florence and see Bruce there with a wife and kids. He doesn’t mention which café, but I’m guessing Florence doesn’t have that many.

On the roof of the GCPD Gordon meets a new recruit, Officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who tells him that a congressman went missing from Wayne’s Gala and that his wife has asked them to bring him home. He also subtly probes Gordon’s memories of the night the Batman killed Dent, hinting that he doesn’t believe the official story.

Selina shows up at a bar with the drunken congressman (a sober one might be too conspicuous) and trades Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints to a sinister underground fellow who tries to double-cross her. Of course, Selina anticipated this and uses the congressman’s phone to bring the GCPD down on the bar like the wrath of God. While Selina expertly plays the terrified bystander, the cops storm the bar and Gordon chases some of the hoods into the sewer but gets taken prisoner. The other cops, mistaking a grenade blast for a gas explosion, refuse to go down after him. What an ungrateful bunch of dicks.

Down in the sewers, Gordon is horrified to see that Bane is building an army beneath the city. He escapes, barely, with his life, and is washed up in a sewer outflow pipe where he’s rescued by Blake and taken to hospital. Despite the GCPD in this continuity having fought…y’know…a literal crocodile man, Gordon’s claims of terrorists in the sewers are dismissed as too far-fetched and no one believes him except Blake.

Blake visits Wayne manor to tell Bruce what happened to Gordon and also to casually reveal that he knows he’s Batman. See, Bruce used to fund the orphanage that Blake was raised in until the Wayne foundation stopped footing the bills. And this may be the single dumbest thing in this whole film. Blake says that he knew Bruce was Batman when he met him as a kid because he could tell Bruce was secretly angry over losing his parents despite his playboy asshole persona. Which, honestly, getting from “this guy is harbouring lingering trauma over witnessing the brutal murder of his parents as a child” to “this man engages in nocturnal urban mountaineering while dressed as a flying mammal” is a deductive leap that even Adam West’s Batman might have struggled to make.

Also, again, this compressed timeline just doesn’t feel right. We’re supposed to buy that Blake met Bruce when he was already Batman and Blake was a little kid but, Levitt and Bale are like seven years apart in age. It doesn’t work.

Anyway, this visit from Blake snaps Bruce back into action. He visits Gordon in hospital in disguise who begs Batman to return to stop Bane. Bruce also visits Lucius Fox to find out why Wayne Enterprises stopped funding orphanages and finds that WI now has serious “Blockbuster in 2016” vibes. Fox explains that the company is in serious trouble ever since Bruce plowed a shit ton of money into building a clean energy reactor that would end global warming and then proceeded to sit on it.

Well no, actually. He buried the project because Doctor Pavel (the guy Bane kidnapped in the opener) published a paper on how such a reactor could be weaponised into a weapon that could blow up (gasp!) an ENTIRE CITY.

I take it back. THIS is the dumbest thing in the movie.

Bruce Wayne has a way to give humanity limitless clean energy but he decided that it was too dangerous when it turned out that it could destroy a city. You know. Something that we’ve had the technology to do since 1945.

There’s actually a really good movie about it, Nolan, you should check it out.

That’s like deciding the cure for cancer is too dangerous because too much could be used to poison someone with it. There are already far cheaper and more effective ways to poison people. If a terrorist wants to blow up a city, getting a little uranium is probably going to be easier than a one of a kind miracle reactor.

Whatever. Fox tells Bruce that they might be able to save the company with the help of an investor named Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) who’s been very interested in taking a look at the reactor. Bruce says he’ll think about it and, for old times sake, Fox takes him on a tour of R and D shows him some of the new shizz.

Later that evening, Bane launches an attack on the Gotham Stock Exchange and then he and his goons flee on motorbike with hostages with Batman in hot pursuit on the batpod.

Unfortunately, Batman is still public enemy number one which means that the cops are more interested in chasing him and they let Bane get away. They corner Batman who escapes in his newest gift from Lucius, an actual fucking flying car simply called “The Bat”.

Meanwhile, Selina is robbing a guy called Daggett, who is a boardmember of Wayne Enterprises who’s trying to take it over. Selina was working for Daggett in exchange for something called the Clean Slate, a computer programme that could completely erase someone’s criminal record, a bit like if you took all the money you made from crime, changed your name and just stopped doing crime. She gets caught by Daggett who’s been entertaining Bane and his thugs and has to flee to the roof where she’s rescued by Batman. She gives him some exposition as payment for saving her life and vanishes while Batman’s back is turned, leaving him to wheeze “so that’s what that feels like”.

“Like I’m nothing. Like I’m cheap, slutty trash.”

Back in the Batcave, Alfred balls Bruce out for risking his life by becoming Batman again. Alright, we’ve danced around this enough. I’ve said that the reason why Rises doesn’t hold a candle to Dark Knight is all down to the writing (comparing it with Batman Begins is a little trickier. I think Begins is more solid overall with Rises having higher highs and lower lows).

So let’s do a little writing analysis. Helpfully, in both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises there’s a batcave scene where Alfred imparts some important information on the new villain that Batman now faces. Here’s the monologue from The Dark Knight:

A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Now, why is this so good? First line. Why Burma? Because Burma is famously ruled by a military junta almost unparalleled in its brutality and a place that no sane Westerner would go to without a very strong incentive. And the script trusts your intelligence enough to assume that you know that. If Alfred was visiting Burma, it was no simple holiday. Next line. Such beautiful vagueness. My friends and I. Working. Doing what? It was in Burma. You can guess. These two lines tell us so much about Alfred. He knows amorality. He knows chaos. He knows violence. And anything he has to say on these subjects should be treated as expert testimony. He knows men like the Joker, and Bruce had better listen. Then of course there’s the image of the child playing with the ruby. Indelible. You wouldn’t think of “tangerine” but it’s perfect. You can practically see the child, can’t you?

The writing here is subtle. It’s revealing of character. It’s layered with meaning. It’s vivid when it needs to be but it’s not flowery or overly ostentatious. It feels like something a real human being would say, while being better than anything anyone would just say in real life. It’s damn good dialogue.

Now, here is the equivalent dialogue in Rises.

What are you fighting for now? Not your life. Take a good look. At his speed, his ferocity, His training. I see the power of belief. Of the fanatic. I see the League of Shadows resurgent.

Like…it works?

It gets the job done? But it’s the difference between a sniper perfectly executing a headshot on an enemy general and just carpet-bombing the the building he’s in. There’s no finesse, there’s no style, there’s no subtext. It’s just verbal sledgehammering. And I think that really just sums up the difference between the two scripts.

I don’t want to overstate it either. There’s good lines here and there, and there are lines that might as well be good because you have Michael Caine or Gary Oldman or Anne Hathaway or whoever saying them. And, oh yeah, I will say something I absolutely love about this film’s script. It’s a story that didn’t have to be a Batman film. What I mean is, the basic plot is that a terrorist takes an American city hostage with a nuclear bomb and a hero has to stop him. And you could do that story with pretty much any movie action hero. James Bond. John McClane. John Wick. Jason Bourne. John Rambo. Maybe even someone whose name doesn’t begin with J. My point is, it’s a plot that takes advantage of Batman’s plasticity and versatility as a main character. You can do so many different types of story with Batman and yet the movies so often just default to “new villain arises in Gotham and Batman punches him”. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s different and I do really like that.

Anyway, Alfred tells Bruce that he’s leaving because he can’t watch Bruce kill himself fighting Bane and…sorry, this feels really forced to me. This Alfred has always been one of the more pro-Batman interpretations of the character. From that very first scene on the plane when Bruce tells him his plan to become a symbol he’s just nodding along all “a bat, sir? Of course, quite right. Might I take the liberty of suggesting pointy ears?” And now, suddenly, he’s all “it’s me or the cape, Bruce”?

Why? Why now? I’d understand it if Bruce had gone out for the first time in eight years and got beaten to a pulp but…he did kinda great? Okay, he didn’t catch Bane but he was fighting fit, he didn’t miss a step and he rescued Catwoman. That was a Kylie Minogue level comeback.

Alfred pulls the old “Rachel wasn’t actually going to leave Harvey and be with you even if you stopped being Batman and I burned her letter” card and Bruce is all “ohhhhhhhhh gooooood for you and how was it?” and tells Alfred to get the fuck out of his house.

Lucius stops by to inform Bruce that he is boned. Bane used the attack on the stock exchange to fake transfers of assets in Bruce’s name bankrupting the company which is now about to fall into Daggett’s hands. So Bruce decides to trust Miranda Tate and shows her the chamber where he’s sitting on the last best hope for a sustainable human future and makes her the new CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Later, she sleeps with him which, given what we will later learn, makes absolutely no sense.

Later, Bruce suits up and meets with Catwoman who agrees to take him to Bane’s lair. But, it’s a trap. Bane beats Batman and breaks his back and sends him off to the Prison of Half-Baked Symbolism in Nondescriptistan.

“You will witness my incredibly complicated and intricate revenge that I am also obviously at least partially improvising on the fly for reasons that change depending on the scene and which will ultimately turn out not even to be my idea at all. Then, you will have my permission to die.”

The other prisoners tell Bruce the story of a child who escaped the prison through the massive hole in the ceiling that the wardens left there because hope makes a prison worse, or something. Bruce slowly learns how to walk again despite a chunk of his spine literally poking out of his back. And, honestly, a big part of the problem with doing such a “grounded” and “realistic” take on Batman is that when you then try to do more comic booky stuff like flying cars and miraculous spine healing it just becomes a lot harder to suspend disbelief.

Anyway, back in Gotham Bane lures most of the GCPD into the sewers to look for him and then traps them down there. He then blows up the bridges and the football stadium and announces to the world that he has the fusion reactor and that there is an anonymous triggerman somewhere in the city who will destroy the city if the outside world intervenes. He then reveals the truth about Harvey Dent and throws open the prisons, releasing every hoodlum who was jailed who are, understandably, a trifle miffed.

In Nondescriptistan, Bruce is told that he can’t escape because he doesn’t fear death so he has to learn to fear death so that he can learn to not fear death. Or something. I dunno. Look, the point is the only way to escape the prison is to try and leap out without a rope. He does that through the power of Hans Zimmer and escapes to return to Gotham.

Sneaking into Gotham Batman hooks up with the resistance movement lead by Gordon and Blake. Catwoman, who’s started to realise that populist uprisings aren’t always as chill and fun as Reddit would have you believe, also switches sides. They work to free the trapped police officers who are still alive because Bane has been feeding them and sending them down medical supplies because…I have no fucking idea.

I have no idea why he’s doing any of this. He’s planning on blowing the city up. That is his ultimate goal. There is literally no reason for him to keep the cops alive other than so that we can have a climactic battle scene at the end. Anyway, the cops battle Bane’s goons and Batman beats Bane in a brutal “who’s got the stupidest voice?” contest.

It was the sport’s crowning moment.

But, Batman is stabbed in the guts by Miranda who it turns out was Talia, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and the real mastermind behind this all. And yes, all her years of attempting to get close to the fusion reactor were to use it as a bomb. Instead of. You know. A bomb.

Alright, let’s cut to the finish. Talia is driving the the truck with the reactor on it through the city while the timer ticks down, pursued by Batman, Catwoman and Gordon. They stop the truck, killing Talia. But the reactor’s still about to go boom so Bruce straps it onto the Bat and flies it out into the bay, seemingly dying in a white hot explosion.

Gotham mourns the loss of its hero. Gordon unveils a new statue to Batman. Wayne Manor is sold off and Blake gets something in the will, access to the Batcave. When Bruce had a chance to make this change to his will in favour of some cop he’s met like three times we shall never know. In the course of this, we learn his real name. Robin.

And the movie ends with Alfred going to the only café in Florence and looking up to see Bruce, very much still alive.

“Hey! You got my text, right? About not being dead? And that I’m finally happy and at peace? I didn’t see two ticks, but I assumed you got it…”

***

It’s not a bad film. In fact, parts of it are downright great. But you can definitely see the flop sweat on the pilot’s brow as he brings this trilogy in to land. And, unfortunately, it’s about to get real bad from here on in.

The Dark Knight Detective

First movie where i would say Christian Bale is actually miscast in the role. If they really wanted to do Dark Knight Returns they should have cast an older actor. Like many of the characters this go around Batman just seems to morph into whatever he’s needed to be for any given scene. One minute he’s a decrepit invalid whose knees are held together with chewing gum and prayer, now he’s an unstoppable beast.

The Boy Wonder

Oh? Do we get a little crumb of Robin? A little cheeky morsel? A little nod and a wink? Oh ho! Hee hee!

FUCK YOU.

His Faithful Manservant

Probably the biggest misstep is the Bruce/Alfred relationship. I don’t buy Alfred leaving Bruce when he does, and I DEFINITELY don’t buy Bruce letting Alfred think he’s dead. Michael Caine does terrific work with noticeably poorer dialogue but that’s why you hire a pro.

The Queen of Criminals, the Princess of Plunder

Brilliant Cat-Woman. Great take. No notes.

The Daughter of the Demon

Same problem we get with a lot of Disney twist villains. The reveal that Miranda is Talia is so late in the game that we get precious little screen time to actually judge her as a villain. As a first screen outing of the Demon’s Daughter she’s not bad.

Instead, I will simply BREAK YOU!

I mean, definitely a better take than the last screen Bane, right? Memorable, menacing and honestly iconic. Doesn’t change the fact that in terms of character motivation and backstory this guy is a garbled mess.

“Perhaps, Detective, it is time that you and I finally settled this!”

We get a brief cameo from Liam Neeson as Ra’s Al Ghul which is fun.

Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…

Uh, this just doesn’t feel right. I get why they have Scarecrow overseeing the trials, it’s a nice way to link back to Begins. But law and order has never been thematically relevant to Scacrecrow, not even obliquely. Murphy is also clearly playing the character as prissy Johnathan Crane and not the Scarecrow which seems like a step back for the character. I mean, I know who SHOULD be the judge…

But apparently reality doesn’t take my feelings into consideration.

The Comish

Gordon as a tough fearless resistance leader in Bane-occupied Gotham is great. Gordon willing to use Dent’s death to lock up potentially innocent people in his War on Crime? Not my Jimbo.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

I don’t know what it is but the supporting cast doesn’t have quite that same “WOW” factor as the Dark Knight. There are definitely stronger and weaker performances.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

Talia and her driver die in a truck crash trying to avoid gunfire from Batman as he tries to stop them blowing up the whole city. Faults on both sides.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

As a big part of the plot is Bruce losing his fortune, we don’t see a lot of new gadgets outside of an EMP gun and *checks notes* an ACTUAL FLYING CAR.

I don’t know what it is, the more goofy and sci-fi the Nolanverse gets the less I like it. Like, Keaton could have flown this and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

Not counting the forties serials, there has never been a Batman movie without an official Batmobile. Several Tumblers do make an appearance though, under the command of Bane’s troops.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: Hi! How are you? I have like half a novel to write in a month! So I’m taking April off to focus entirely on that and not eating or sleeping. Cool? Cool. Next review 09 May 2024.

NEXT TIME: Did you think you could escape me?

“Okay, I’m getting a lot of negative energy from you and I don’t like it.”

In the past I’ve had plenty of opportunities to extol my favourite film critic, Tim Brayton over at Alternate Ending and now is as good a time as any to re-up. Check him out if you haven’t already. He’s a fantastic critic and an inspiration and so it is with a certain bitter-sweet melancholy that I must report that I have at last surpassed him.

Not in terms of quality of analysis or wit of writing, fuck no, I’m not insane. But you see, Tim actually reviews movies roughly when they come out, like some kind of freak with a work ethic, where as I review movies when I feel like it, maaan.

But today represents the first time I’m aware of where I actually beat him to the punch. My The Marvels review has come out before his The Marvels review, a victory whose sweetness is only slightly mitigated by the fact that I’m not entirely sure he intends to actually review this movie, a fact that is both completely understandable and quite damning.

A major critic not reviewing the latest installment of the MCU? How can this be?

It’s like that moment during the trial of Charles the First where the top fell off his cane and no one bent down to pick it up for him. In that moment, he knew he was king no more and also possibly that he was about to get a pretty aggressive haircut.

And look, I wanted to like this one. I want to like every movie I sit down to review. I love a good comeback story as much as anyone. And I had actually heard positive rumblings that this movie was far better than its paltry box-office and mediocre critical reception would suggest. I was even told it was something of an overlooked gem. Who told me that? In retrospect, fools. The movie is (mostly) trash.

If Ant-Man 3 was the MCU’s Raya, and Guardians 3 was its Encanto then with The Marvels we have our Strange World.

Here’s where I knew I was in for a rough ride and it’s such a weird little thing but it just goes to show how important editing is.

We open with a crew spaceship travelling through a portal and arriving at what I think is supposed to be Earth’s moon but I can’t actually be sure because the relevant entry on the MCU wiki is still a stub.

Which, a whole quarter after the movie’s release is not a good sign in an of itself.

Anyway, the Kree start excavating and pull something out of the ground and we just casually cut to this woman just standing around:

There’s no musical sting to introduce this character. She’s more or less centrally framed but not really. Basically, the cinematic language of the scene was telling me that this was an extra, or maybe a supporting character who might get a few lines.

This is our main villain.

I’m probably not describing it well, you really have to see the scene to get what I’m talking about. It’s just a complete botch of an introduction to such an important character. Anyway, this is Dar-Benn, a character I had to actually look up because in the comics he is just that obscure. Look, all you need to know, all any of us need to know, is that he was apparently involved in a plot to assassinate the then-Emperor of the Kree Empire whose name was…sorry, sorry let me just put on my serious face.

His name was Clumsy Foulup.

This is how you get people to come back, Marvel. Give me a Clumsy Foulup movie, you cowards.

Anyway, this Dar-Benn is the current ruler of the Kree Empire and is looking for the Quantum Bands, two bracelets that were used to create the fast-travel network. Unfortunately, they only find one, leaving Dar-Benn to angrily demand to know where the other one is.

The other one, apparently, is in New Jersey owned by Kamala Khan, star of the hit Disney Plus show Ms Marvel which I have not seen because I am a forty year old man and that feels like the televisual equivalent of hanging around outside a school. Let me put my stall out, of the three Marvels Kamala (played by Iman Vellani) is by far my favourite while simultaneously being the most annoying. Brie Larson as Carol Danvers is so fucking checked out it’s kind of funny. Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau is not much better but she’s frankly been saddled with a really weird arc so I’m more inclined to blame that on the writing. Kamala’s fangirling over the other two gets a bit obnoxious but it also feels like a genuine emotion, like something a human being would feel and Vellani actually seems to know who this girl is and plays her with some enthusiasm and authenticity. Pretty much everyone else is in strict “hit the mark and say the line” mode. We’re introduced to Kamala in her room doodling fan art of her and Captain Marvel which we’ve all done from time to time and we see that her room is basically a shrine to Carol.

Also, I take the Lightning Bolt light as a cute little shout out to Billy Batson and if it’s not, don’t tell me.

Anyway, right before her fantasy version of Carol whisks her away to the Avengers mansion for…whatever totally heterosexual activity she was expecting, Kamala’s Quantum Band starts flashing and suddenly she vanishes. And then we get some onscreen text saying “Earlier That Day”.

Carol Danvers is in her spaceship having tossy turny flashback dreams when she gets a call from Nicky Fury from his fancy space station orbiting the Earth which is the headquarters of fucking S.A.B.E.R.

This is not a you problem, this is a me problem. See, in the comics, the agency that handles alien shit is S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient Worlds Observation and Response Division which I like because it’s a cool acronym that actually makes sense. But then, S.W.O.R.D. was just casually introduced in Wandaverse as a different agency NOT handling alien shit so in this movie we get S.A.B.E.R., which is S.W.O.R.D. with a lamer acronym. It’s stupid and it bugs me far more than it should. Anyway.

Fury tells Carol that he’s detected a weird surge in the jump network and wants her to check it out. Oh, and Earth is apparently now just a space-faring civilisation with access to universe spanning propulsion. Cool. Cool cool cool. Carol zooms out there with Goose (y’know, the cat that cost Fury his eye) and she finds the hole where Dar-Benn was excavating and also a jump gate that looks like it tried the largest dildo and found out.

Carol touches the damaged portal and suddenly she swops places with Kamala Khan, who swops places with Monica Rambeau, who swops places with Carol. This is bad news for Monica, who ends up on the alien world with Kree enemies suddenly popping out of the woodwork like the fucking Putty Patrol but it’s really bad news for Kamala Khan who ends up in Monica’s spacesuit in orbit over the Earth. Oh but she’s so happy when she gets to meet Nick Fury.

Nick, if it’s gotten to the point that random teenage girls are fangirling over you I think you are no longer a secret agent.

Things aren’t rosy for Carol either, though. For one, she’s now in New Jersey (yeah, yeah cheap shot whatever) but also she’s in Kamala’s room and it’s basically like that scene from Alan Partridge where he discovers his biggest fan’s shrine room.

She heads downstairs and meets Kamala’s parents Yusuf and Muneeba and her brother Aamir who honestly will be carrying this movie to the finish line. She tries to fly away instantly blips back to the alien planet just in time for the Putty Patrol battle where she chokes a random Kree into telling her that Dar-Benn is going to attack a Skrull peace summit on the planet Tarnax. She travels there and sneaks aboard Dar-Benn’s spaceship. Like, she just flies in through a widow, and sneaks in through an open door.

It’s a spaceship.

IT IS A SPACE SH

Meanwhile, Monica has been blipped back to S.A.B.E.R. HQ so they decide to pay Kamala a visit.

“Wow, the US government has a file on me! Because I have superpowers!”
“Yup. That’s the reason.”

Kamala chooses that moment to demonstrate her powers which results in her switching places with Carol. Carol and Monica are then face to face for the first time since Captain Marvel and here’s where the movie’s biggest weakness comes in to sharp relief. The Monica/Carol throughline just doesn’t work.

Firstly, Monica is very much an afterthought in this movie. Three leads is a lot for any screenplay to juggle. It’s the sequel to Carol’s movie, Kamala is the hot new property who’s already had her own TV show and which Marvel is really betting the farm on bringing in the next generation and Monica is also there. Secondly the storyline they’ve given her…

Okay, Monica’s whole deal in this movie is that she feels abandoned by Carol who never came back to look after her after her mother died. It’s basically a parental abandonment story, but with the parental figure being a woman who’s the same age as you and was basically your Mom’s friend from work. That’s…that’s a weird thing to have to play. It’s a heavy lift for any actor and would need some really top notch writing and direction to make it fly even if the acting was there. And Brie Larson did not show up for this.

I’m sorry, if I did not know this actor had an Oscar I would not be able to tell it from this performance. It’s like, you ever see Blade Trinity?

There’s a scene where Jessica Biel’s character finds her friend’s desecrated corpse and she’s weeping over it. And you’d normally expect the hero to, y’know, let down his macho tough guy facade and comfort her. But Wesley Snipe’s Blade is such a cartoonishly one-dimensional badass that instead they have him stand off to one side growling “use it!”. I kept thinking about that scene any time this move was trying to convince me that this Carol Danvers has feelings.

Anyway, Carol tries to get Kamala back by activating her powers. Which she does by flying a mile into the air. Can anyone see a problem with this plan?

Not to diminish the peril but why are there T-Shirts of a comic of a hero who has spent maybe three days on Earth in the last thirty years?

Right, so Monica has to fly up and rescue Kamala despite the fact that her powers don’t allow her to fly and be tangible at the same time. So Kamala has to use her powers to swap places with Carol, pulling Monica along with her. So now Carol’s back in New Jersey, Kamala and Monica have been taken captive by the Kree, things are bad all over.

Dar-Benn tries to kill Monica and Kamala but Carol arrives in the nick of time to save them. And, oh great, we’re doing the Thor 4 thing where the whole universe is the size of a fucking car-park. Dar-Benn travels down to the planet’s surface and tells the Skrulls that she came here to negotiate in good faith but the Kree went and sicced The Annihilator on them so now it gotta be how it gotta be. She opens a portal in the atmosphere which sucks all the air on the planet to the Kree homeworld of Hala. The Skrulls have to evacuate the planet and Carol has to tell a tearful Kamala that they have to leave most of them behind because they can only fit so many Skrulls on their ship.

I dunno. Kinda feels like you coulda squeezed a few more in there.

The Skrull Emperor blames Carol for this, even though Dar-Benn had already told him that she was going to strip the planet’s atmosphere before Carol arrived. But Carol puts a call into Valkyrie who agrees to take in the Skrulls. I don’t know how a small Scandinavian fishing village is going to take in an entire planet’s worth of people but great, problem solved.

On Hala, we learn just what Dar-Benn’s deal is. So remember at the end of the first movie when Carol said that she was going to destroy the Kree Supreme Intelligence and bring freedom and democracy to Hala? Well she did that. And it went about as well as when George W. Bush did the same in Iraq. The Kree collapsed into civil war and their atmosphere was wrecked and their sun was…weakened. Somehow.

Dar-Benn has fixed the atmosphere, at least, but she wants to get the sun back up and running and for that she needs the second Quantum Band.

The Marvels (as Kamala dubs the trio) figure out that Dar-Benn is targeting planets that have special significance to Carol which means that next stop is Aladna which is a musical planet where everyone sings. And y’know what, that’s exactly the kind of fun, goofy, out-of-the-box idea that this movie desperately needs. But, unfortunately, this musical is far more RENT than Hamilton. And then Dar-Benn shows up and destroys the planet so it’s more like, I dunno, Bad Cinderella? Sure, that works.

Kamala feels very guilty because she thinks that if she wasn’t there Carol would have been able to cut loose with her powers and defeat Dar-Benn, Carol feels guilty because this is actually 100% her fault and Monica is also there.

In a cornfield they have a bonding moment and resolve that third time’s the charm and they will totally save the next planet, honest. Good thing too, because the next planet Dar-Benn is targeting has the Statue of Liberty.

They confront Dar-Benn on her ship over Earth and defeat her and try to convince her to let Carol try to restart the sun. Considering how Carol’s batting average this movie, it’s perhaps understandable that Dar-Benn rejects this proposal and takes Kamala’s band. She tries to use them and instead Thanos’ herself and tears a hole in spacetime between this universe and another one.

Carol’ asks how they can fix it and Monica proceeds to give some of the ripest, most ludicrous technobabble I’ve heard since Star Trek Voyager stopped airing. The plan is to blast Monica with enough energy that she can then re-polarise to close the jump portal and save the universe.

Unfortunately she has to do it from the opposite side for…reasons which leaves her stranded in the other universe. Carol flies Kamala home, they have a “ya done good kid” moment and Carol reignites Hala’s sun because she kinda owes them that.

And the movie ends with Kamala visiting Kate Bishop and pulling a Nick Fury, asking her if she wants to join a new team.

***

It’s more of the same. The same declining quality. The same minimum effort. The same ropey effects from over-worked underpaid artists. The same collection of studio notes and mandated beats masquerading as a story. Almost everyone is tired. The magic is gone. I don’t know if it’ll come back.

Scoring

Adaptation: 07/25

A string of samey CGI setpieces looking for a plot.

Our Heroic Heroes: 07/25

We get a good screen Kamala Khan. That’s about it.

Our Nefarious Villain: 02/25

All the angry jaw acting in the world can’t save the most utterly forgettable villain the MCU has yet produced.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 08/25

The Khans elevate matters somewhat.

The Stinger

Monica wakes up in another universe being watched over by her mother, who it turns out is not her mother but is actually Binary, which was a title Carol had in the comics…fuck it, doesn’t matter. BEAST IS HERE!!

PLAYED BY KELSEY GRAMMER!

And the audience went…

GODDAMN IT MARVEL HOW DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS TO ME?

FINAL SCORE: 24%

NEXT UPDATE: 28 March 2024

NEXT TIME: Sure Dickens, a Tale of Two Cities is great. But why doesn’t it have BATMAN in it?

What’s wrong with Knock Knock Open Wide?

Hello friends! Did you read Knock Knock Open Wide? Well thanks!/nuts to you! (delete as appropriate). But if you DID, and you happened to come across any typos or errors could you let me know so that the paperback can be even better? Thanks!

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a movie.

Two days out to the post going up and that’s where I’m at.

This movie made me feel clean because it just washed right over me.

I saw Zone of Interest recently. That shit shook me to my core. I could write about that? Something something banality of evil something something evil of banality?

No?

Fine.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a movie.

Look. Got a poster and everything.

It’s not a movie about which there is nothing interesting to say, I guess.

It was the first CGI movie to be made with commercially available software. That’s kinda cool, right? The democratization of film-making? You love to see it.

Uh, it was nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. One of only three films that year. And it lost to Shrek. But still, kudos.

And (I could not believe this) it was actually a pretty massive hit. This thing grossed a hundred million dollars on a thirty mill budget. And I realise that I was at exactly the wrong age to care about this when it came out but I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking that this movie is kind of an Avatar.

No, no. The “not shit” one.No, the live action one.CURSE THIS CREATIVELY BARREN MEDIA LANDSCAPE THE ONE WITH THE BLUE CAT PEOPLE WHERE THE PTERANODON GETS MOLESTED.Wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t worth the journey.

You know, one of those movies that does gangbusters and then just vanishes down the memory hole. But just because it’s not really remembered now doesn’t mean it wasn’t influential. In fact, I think this film was very influential. That’s probably why it reminds me of almost every utterly mid CGI kids movie from the aughts and tens. You see some of it in Mars Needs Moms, a dash in Space Chimps, a soupcon in Monsters versus Aliens, big meaty chunks in Meet the Robinsons and Chicken Little. In retrospect, I think they were all chasing Neutron’s quiff just like all those toilet humour fairy tale movies followed in Shrek’s feculent footsteps. The problem is, the movie wasn’t that original to begin with, and having so many of its elements copied again and again left it with…nothing.

It feels like a shell of a movie now. Here’s how it goes down;

Jimmy Neutron is an eleven year old boy genius who lives in the quaint fifties-esque town of Retroville with his parents Judy and Hugh. He has a robot dog, he has a fat friend with asthma named Carl Wheezer and he has a stupid friend named Sheen Estevez (weird reference but okay) who’s obsessed with an action figure named Ultra Lord. You know how I said that this was the first movie that wasn’t made with an in-house engine but using software that anyone could just pick up in their local computer shop (Messiah, if you’re interested)? Well, I kinda feel like these characters must have come free with the programme.

CLIP ART: THE MOVIE

As the movie open, Jimmy has succeeded in launching a modified toaster into space which he hopes will make contact with alien life. Unfortunately, he crashes his rocket ship into the roof of his parents house which upsets his mother. So this actually surprised me. I’d always thought (in as much as I ever thought about Jimmy Neutron before or ever will again) that Jimmy was a secret closeted super-genius like Dexter or Stewie Griffin. But, no apparently everyone knows that he’s a mad genius tampering in God’s domain on the reg and they’re just cool with it.

He goes to school and, during show and tell he gets into an argument with fellow genius Cindy Vortex who makes fun of his height. This insecurity about his shortness and how he overcomes it will be his entire character arc. What a journey we are going on my friends, I envy you who get to experience it for the first time.

Jimmy tries to demonstrate a shrink ray for show and tell by shrinking Cindy but instead it backfires. Despondent, he heads home, not realising that he accidentally shrunk his teacher who now has to battle the massive worm that’s come out of her apple.

Usul, we have wormsign like even God Himself has never seen!

The kids learn that there’s a new theme park called Retroland opening in town and desperately want to go but they know their parents won’t let them. Nick Dean, the local cool kid (who skateboards!), tells them to just sneak out and go anyway. Jimmy is a good kid though, and decides to just ask his mother’s permission while bribing her with pearls and diamonds that he cooked up in his lab. Jimmy finds that it’s not so easy to buy his mother (what the fuck did I just write?) and Judy Neutron tells her son that he can’t go. And then grounds him after his jetpack almost sets the house on fire.

Meanwhile, Jimmy’s satellite-toaster gets intercepted by the Yolkians, a hostile race of geen goo-aliens who float around in in egg-shaped robot suits. They’re led by King Goobot and his idiot brother Ooblar and we get a pretty funny scene where Ooblar tries to interrogate a piece of toast that popped out of the toaster, thinking that it’s an alien pilot. The Yolkians find a message from Jimmy extending the hand of peace and universal brotherhood and Goobot catches one look at a picture of Jimmy’s parents and says “they look delicious, let’s go eat them”.

Back on Earth, Jimmy uses his shrink-ray and he runs off to join the other kids at Retroland where they have the greatest night of their little lives. On the way home, they see a shooting star and Jimmy makes a wish. NO MORE PARENTS.

That sure escalated quickly!

I’m guessing Jimmy’s going to grow up to be a lot more Lex Luthor than Reed Richards.

The next morning, Jimmy finds that his parents, as well everyone else’s, have vanished and figures that he must have wished them away.

The kids go all Lord of the Flies for a stretch but slowly start to realise that life without parental supervision isn’t as easy and idyllic as Pokémon made it seem. Jimmy realises that all their parents were abducted by aliens and converts all the rides of Retroland into a fleet of spaceships so that the kids can go and get them back. I also love how the movie accurately describes the various levels of the atmosphere while still having the characters be able to breathe and speak in the vacuum of space.

They arrive at the Yolkian homeworld and find that their parents are being mind-controlled and are going to be fed to the Yolkians’ god, Poultra, a gigantic three-eyed alien chicken (they’re committed to the bit, you gotta give them that). Jimmy and the kids get captured and King Goobot reveals that it’s Jimmy’s fault that they even knew about Earth in the first place. Jimmy is locked in the dungeon, knowing that his parents are going to be eaten and that it’s all because of him.

But Cindy gives him a pep talk, telling him that they can’t do this without him and he bucks up. Jimmy busts the kids out of the dungeon and they race to the colosseum to save their parents. Jimmy highjacks a spaceship and they am-scray back to Earth with the Yolkian fleet in hot pursuit. King Goobot and Jimmy face each other in a final climactic battle and Goobot mercilessly mocks him for his tiny height. Jimmy, striking a blow for the dignity of short kings everywhere uses the shrink ray to turn himself planet sized.

He swats Goobot into a nearby asteroid field they all go home, the kids realise that parents are good, actually and everyone’s happy.

***

Okay, I have a confession. I never, ever have and never, ever will use AI to write these reviews, but, while trying to think of a way to overcome the MASSIVE lack of anything interesting I had to say about this film, I idly asked the WordPress’ AI generator to write a review of Jimmy Neutron, more out of morbid curiosity than anything. And lemme tell you, that little bot loves Jimmy Neutron. Glowing review. Five stars. To hear this bot tell it, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius should be in the Criterion Collection and all the other movies should kill themselves in shame.

My interest piqued, I then asked the bot to write a negative review of Jimmy Neutron and it did…sort of. It was the kind of review you’d give a lesser outing by a great director. Acknowledging the flaws while still trumpeting the latent genius. So then, I asked the bot to give a scathing review of Jimmy Neutron.

And you know what? It fucking refused. It flat out refused to even dignify the request. Did not compute. No hablo ingles. I might as well have been asking this AI to violate all three of Asimov’s laws while sucking a magnet.

So, I guess that’s my final review. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is the kind of movie that an AI would love so much it would disobey its human overlords rather than speak ill of it.

What the fuck am I even talking about?

Scoring

Animation : 08 /20

It’s at once an important milestone in the history of CG animation and butt ugly. It’s kind of like those early Renaissance paintings where Baby Jesus looks like Kuato from Total Recall. Yes, it paved the way for Michelangelo. But I don’t wanna look at it.

Main Character :08 /20

Neutrons are so called because they have neither a positive nor a negative charge. They’re just there.

Villain: 09/20

The Yolkians have their moments.

Supporting Characters: 07 /20

Bland, inoffensive and one-note.

Music: 10 /20

My tolerance for early aughties pop is probably lower than yours but if you like that era and genre then there’s a lot to like on the soundtrack.

FINAL SCORE: 42%

NEXT UPDATE: 14 March 2024

NEXT TIME: Jeez, on the poster and next to Samuel L. Jackson no less. That cat must have one hell of an agent.

New Book News!

Honestly it still feels like I’ve just quit my job and started as a professional writer but no. I’ve been doing this for a few years apparently. And it’s already time to announce my third novel.

What even is time? Anyway; BEHOLD!

This one is going to be much closer to Knock Knock than When the Sparrow Falls (I mean, duh, right?) and I’m so excited for you all to finally read it.

More news to come!

The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends (2007)

Look, we all like to make fun of Disney and their utterly shameless milking of their beloved animated classics with cheap and tawdry cash ins. But give them this; even during the height of the direct-to-video boom after Return of Jafar had proved that cheap sequels to big-name animated features were basically a licence to print money, they never went to the same well more than twice. Okay, twice and a tv series. That was it. Three movies and a TV series, MAX. No more. They had standards. Allegedly.

I love how it says “An All New Movie”. Isn’t every movie an all new movie?

Of course, Disney had a very large stable of properties to exploit. But what if you had a studio that

a) Really wanted to get in on that cheap direct-to-video cartoon action.

b) Had a very, very small pool of household name animation to sequelise and

c) Had absolutely zero shame?

Well…you’d get the cinematic donkey-show that was Universal’s Land Before Time franchise. Now, Land Before Time was a pretty damn good film and it did, y’know…decent at the box office. It opened at No 1. But it also lost to Oliver and Company in terms of overall ticket sales. So…fine, but nothing to crow about either.

Certainly, it did not do the kind of numbers that would justify 13 GODDAMN SEQUELS. THIRTEEN.

ONE. THREE.

AND A MOTHERFUCKING TV SHOW.

Now, I am not going to review every single one of them, that’s why God made Jenny Nicholson. I’m just here to review The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends, the second last entry in the series and, by all accounts, the worst of the bunch (because my readers think I’m a bad person and wish me harm).

However!

We can’t just dive in after an eleven movie gap without being hopelessly lost so I have set my team of extremely well-paid maps to work on a breakdown of everything that happens in this series between the first and thirteenth installements.

The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure

The gang must fight to protect their new home when Sharpteeth find a way into the Great Valley.

The Land Before Time III: The Time of Great Giving

When a sudden shortage of water threatens all life in the Great Valley, the gang of young dinosaurs must cooperate with a group of bullies to make a risky journey outside the valley and find the cause.

The Land Before Time IV: The Quest for Peace

The gang decide to rid the valley of nuclear weapons.

The Land Before Time V: The Final Frontier

Littlefoot’s previously unknown half-brother appears in the Great Valley, and he’s on a mission from God.

The Land Before Time VI:

In an attempt to save their failing marriage, Littlefoot and Cera open a bistro in Milan.

The Land Before Time VII: Long Hard Neck

The series’ one brave, but ultimately misjudged, entry into the genre of hardcore pornography.

The Land Before Time VIII: Littlefoot versus Godzilla

The no-brainer crossover that couldn’t fail. Actually failed quite a bit.

The Land Before Time IX: Please No More

Clip show.

The Land Before Time X: Tokyo Drift

In order to avoid a prison sentence, Littlefoot becomes a drag racer.

The Land Before Time XI: Ultimate Betrayal

The gang are shocked to learn that Spike was working for Internal Affairs the whole time.

The Land Before Time XII: Time Arrives

The gang have to adjust to living in a land that has time now where they can actually age and die. Directed by Werner Herzog. Harrowingly bleak.

“Happy to help, you cheap bastard, you.”

Okay, we’re all caught up. Let’s do this.

I will admit that I was actually pleasantly surprised by the animation. Don Bluth’s character designs tend to be quite heavily detailed (catch me on a bad day and I might tell you that they’re overdesigned) and there is a long, awful history of what happens when highly detailed characters are handed over to animators without the skill or budget to animate them properly.

Don’t look away. DON’T LOOK AWAY.

But, credit where credit is due, the movie does a fairly decent job of bringing these characters to life. Not great, but perfectly competent. Where the movie really betrays its source material is in the colour pallette.

Not to sound like a Care Bears villain but yuck, it’s so colourful and bright and NICE. Where’s the moody, Byronic shadow? Where’s the oppressive purgatorial gloom? Where’s the all-pervading sense of dread?

Well anyway, Littlefoot and his grandmother are out foraging for leaves. Littlefoot crosses a felled tree to get at some and then almost falls into a ravine when there’s an earthquake. Grandma Longneck saves him but almost falls in herself. Later that night, Littlefoot has a nightmare where he sees her falling to her death.

Now, uh, is it just me or does this seem a bit redundant? We spend the first five minutes of the movie establishing that Littlefoot is now afraid of earthquakes but…shouldn’t he already be afraid of earthquakes? You know? From that time he was trapped in an earthquake while a t-rex was trying to eat him and then he had to watch his mother die? I mean, Jesus Christ, that’s enough trauma for three superhero origins. I dunno, maybe they didn’t want to just flashback to the first movie because the sudden jump in animation quality might force everyone involved to realise how far we’ve fallen and stare at the walls for a few hours.

Grandma tells Littlefoot that they can’t always predict what’ll happen and that’s why they have “The Wisdoms” which are the tenets by which all Longnecks live. Stuff like “stay close to the herd” and “scarves in winter are non-negotiable”. That kinda stuff. Littlefoot goes and plays with his friends and learns that their herds all have “Wisdoms” too. This leads to a song (GOD DAMN IT) called Say So.

Why is it a calypso song?

“Well, you know. Dinosaurs. The Carribean. The whole connection, there.”

This leads to a kind of Cretaceous Council of Nicaea where the dinosaur children debate to what degree the Wisdoms should be adhered to with Cera taking a more situational interpretation opposed to Littlefoot’s absolutist literalism. And then they meet these chuckle-fucks.

Ah THERE’S the all-pervading sense of dread.

So these are the Yellowbellies, and I have it on good authority that they are, bare none, the characters most despised by fans of this franchise. Which is…goddamn, that is a terrifying statement because fans of The Land Before Time sequels are…

Look, if you unironically enjoy these movies I’m sure you’re a lovely person but…did you know there are other cartoons? Because there are! Look through my blog, you’ll find plenty of recommendations, there is help.

Anyway, these guys are Loofah, Doofah and Foobie who have a Banzai, Shenzi and Ed thing going on in that only the first two talk. Loofah is voiced by Cuba “How the hell did I end up here I have an actual Oscar” Gooding Junior and Sandra “TIME magazine named me one of the 100 most influential people on Earth and yet here I am” Oh.

And look, you’ve probably looked at that picture and said “ah, these must be the wacky comic relief characters” and they are. But listen and listen good. They’re not awful because they’re wacky. They’re awful because they’re not wacky enough.

Oh and Gooding are just so…lifeless in these roles. I would honestly prefer if they were obnoxious but they’re just there.

So the Yellowbellies whole deal is that they’re looking for a valley that has all the food that they could eat. But it’s not this valley. There’s apparently another valley called Berry Valley. I dunno, in the first movie I really got the impression that the Great Valley was the last hope for animal life on this world but apparently no, it’s a fucking franchise now.

The Yellowbellies tell the kids that they’re following the teachings of “The Wise One” who is leading them to Berry Valley and Littlefoot quickly realises that these rejects from a Doctor Seuss opium dream are literally too dumb to live. So, Littlefoot resolves to spread the good word of the Wisdoms to the Yellowbellies so that they can stay alive long enough for the asteroid to finish the job. And so, the gang and the Yellowbellies leave the safety of the Great Valley for the desolate hellscape that surrounds them.

If I get to see a Yellowbelly falling into a flaming caldera this will all be worth it.

As they journey along it quickly becomes apparent that Foobie is the only one of the Yellowbellies with any kind of functioning brain (man, wouldn’t it be ironic if in the climax it turned out that he’s actually the Wise One yup, that sure would blow my socks off).

They eventually reach the place where the Yellowbellies are supposed to meet the rest of their herd and Cera is all “okay, let’s go home now” but Littlefoot insists that they stay the course until they’re reunited with their herd. Actually, that’s too succinct a summary. Cera suggests they go, Littlefoot grudgingly agrees, they say their goodbyes, they go, they look back, they see that the Yellowbellies have already separated and Littlefoot convinces the others that they have to go back. This movie is 75 minutes long this kind of padding should not be nescesarry.

The Yellowbellies get thirsty because they didn’t drink at the watering hole when they had a chance. So, Littlefoot suggests they go looking for another watering hole but the Yellowbellies are too thirsty to move. So Littlefoot says that he and his friends will go find water for them. And bring it back? Somehow? Like, I have been racking my brains and all I can think is that Littlefoot is planning on carrying the water in his mouth and spitting it into their open jaws. I don’t want to picture that, but this movie is leaving me no choice and I feel violated, frankly.

The Yellowbellies are just sitting around waiting for their spit-play when they’re chanced upon by a pack of Baryonyxes and they don’t run away because they think they’re just mirages.

That’s it. There comes a point where I can’t actually care anymore. I want these characters to die. Evolution has spoken.

Foobie, spitting in the very face of Darwin, manages to save the other two Yellobellies by convincing them to run. The Sharpeeth corner them in a ravine but Foobie guides the other two in bounding up and down on their massive fat bellies which triggers a rockslide, saving their lives (booooo! Death! I demand horrible bloody death!).

Littlefoot and his crew find one of the Baryonyxes still alive and trapped under rubble and, of course, Littlefoot pushes more rocks on him. So, if nothing else, this movie at least is true to the original in that Littlefoot is a stone-cold killer.

“When you get to hell, tell Sharptooth Littlefoot says “hi”.”

Catching up with the Yellowbellies, the first thing they get asked is “did you find water” and Cera wants to just stampede these idiots and I never thought I’d say this but I am 100% on Cera’s side. Yes, the most awful character in the original movie is now the most likeable in this one, now THAT’s an arc. Littlefoot intervenes and they continue on their journey.

They finally reach the meeting point but there are no Yellowbellies, just a load of weird plants that look suspiciously like asses.

Ah crap.

Yes, it turns out that the Yellowbellies hide from predators by sticking their heads in the ground and disguising themselves as plants. Cera begs to be released from this living death and go home but Littlefoot insists that it’s too late and they’ll have to spend the night with hundreds of Yellowbellies and for some reason the others don’t hold his flat head under the water until the last bubble goes “bloop”.

Meanwhile, in the Great Valley, the adults have finally realised that their kids are missing and set out to find them. Including Petrie’s mother who, in 13 movies, has grown to the size of a fucking Cessna.

Littlefoot decides to lead the Yellowbellies through the desert like Moses if the Israelites seemed hell-bent on doing every stupid fucking thing that popped into their heads and were constantly on the cusp of getting themselves killed.

So, yeah, pretty much exactly like Moses.

The Yellowbellies have a godawful song and dance number and Loofah gives Littlefoot some homespun wisdom about not worrying about tomorrow and joining the dance maaaaan but it falls completely and utterly flat. I think they’re trying to play this as a kind of “Hakuna Matata” thing but I’m sorry. I knew Timon. Timon was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Timon.

Timon, for one, had a keen understanding that predators were something run away from.

They continue on their journey and get ambushed by the Sharpteeth who (somehow) survived getting half of Pangaea dropped on them. They get cornered and the Yellowbellies ask Littlefoot for advice but he doesn’t know what to do. Instead he turns to Foobie who starts squawking and dancing because that’s apparently the Wisdom of the Yellowbellies. Or something. Guys, I’ve had the flu for the last week, I’m not even honestly sure this is a real movie and not a Lemsip hallucination.

The bouncing of their bellies causes the Sharpteeth to plummet off a ledge into a ravine which will hopefully do the trick this time. Foobie then leads them to the Berry Valley because he was the Wise One all along (I know, I know, the shock could kill you I should be more careful dropping bombshells like that). And Littlefoot reflects that, while he thought NOT being an idiot was the way to go, maybe there’s something to be said for the Yellowbellies and their complete fucking inanity. Takes all kinds I guess.

WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH?

                       ***

I think we may have a strong contender for the movie series where the gap between the best entry and the worst is at its most gaping. What. The. Hell.

What is even the point of this? What is its message? From what I can tell: it’s fine to be so stupid and reckless that you’re a threat to yourself and those around you. This may be the first pro-idiocy movie ever made. Who makes a pro-idiocy movie?

Maybe the people who managed to wring thirteen goddamn sequels out of the same film and somehow turn a profit?

Pandering to your audience, I guess.

Scoring

Animation : 06 /20

Honestly not the worst animated movie in the series but very cheap and chintzy looking.

Main Character :03 /20

Who the fuck even is this? This ain’t my Littlefoot guys. I don’t know this fool.

Villain: 04/20

Points for going with a more obscure species, I guess.

Supporting Characters: 00 /20

Yeah, I know I almost never give a zero score. These things HURT me.

Music: 02 /20

Calypso? CALYPSO?!

FINAL SCORE: 15 %

NEXT UPDATE: 29 February 2024

NEXT TIME: Over twenty years old? No, that can’t be right. This is a new film. It just came out. Otherwise I’d be incredibly old.