Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 8

“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.

The Land Before Time (1988)

You know the thing about the dinosaurs? It’s really, really sad when you think about it.

These beautiful animals lived for millions of years and then one day, literally one day, their world turned into a flaming hell and they died horribly. And they never understood why.

I was thinking about that a lot as I sat down to re-watch Don Bluth’s third film, The Land Before Time, and the last one he made before parting company with Stephen Spielberg. On one level, this is the least personal of Bluth’s early, pre-sellout films and the one that he had the least real affection for. Whereas Secret of Nimh and An American Tail were true collaborations, The Land Before Time seems to have been the point where Spielberg (and new producer George Lucas) really took the reigns and Bluth was more just the guy who animated what the execs wanted. Story-wise at least. Whatever you think about him as a film-maker, Bluth had a tendency to stamp his work very strongly and it does still very much feel like one of his films in terms of atmosphere, if not necessarily subject matter.

This feels like it came from Spielberg. Is that just me?

Bluth’s films are famously dark and melancholy and I think that’s why this one works.

More than any other movie, this one captures the essential truth that any story about dinosaurs is a tragedy.

So, in a land (before time, no less) the Earth has been struck by some kind of mysterious disaster and all the dinosaur herds are searching for food. Right off the bat, I absolutely love the opening of this movie. We start in the depths of the ocean, past mysterious and weird sea creatures before emerging on land and seeing the dinosaurs at their height. The score is by James Horner, one of my absolute favourite composers and one who did truly phenomenal work with Bluth.

The score is just perfect. Moody and elegiac and yet filled with wonder. I love it.

Also, I think this is a surprisingly well written movie. Like many a dark moody fantasy animation it has an opening narration, this one delivered by Pat Hingle:

“Once, upon this same Earth, beneath this same sun, long before you, before the ape and the elephant, as well, before the wolf, the bison, the whale, before the mammoth and the mastodon…was the time of the dinosaurs…Now the dinosaurs were of two kinds. Some had flat teeth, and ate the leaves of trees, and some had sharp teeth for eating meat, and they preyed upon the leaf-eaters. Then it happened that the trees began to die. The mighty beasts who appeared to rule the earth, were, in truth, ruled by the leaf. Desperate for food, some of the dinosaur herds struck out to the west, in search of the Great Valley, a land still lush and green. It was a journey toward life.”

That is a great opening exposition dump. If you need to have one, that’s an example of how you do that sucker right. First of all, it’s relatively short. It’s very easy to follow. It tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t laden you down with a lot of unnecessary lore and it stands up as a piece of writing in its own right. “Upon this same Earth, beneath this same sun”. That’s beautiful, because it captures the true appeal of dinosaurs. They were real. These fantastic monsters from your wildest imagination, these incredible dragons…they walked the same Earth you do. They looked up and saw the same sky and moon and sun.

Okay, before we go any further. Nit?

“Ahoy hoy?”“Take a walk, this movie’s not for you.”

Yeah, if you’re in any way a stickler for accuracy in your depictions of dinosaurs this movie will probably induce a seizure. And I’m not just talking about stuff that wasn’t known in the eighties, like feathers. I mean, this movie just took the entire Mesozoic era and put it in a blender. Let me put it this way, if someone made a movie about a modern human with a pet T-Rex, that would be less anachronistic than some of the species that are shown as being contemporaneous here.

Actually more historically accurate than Land Before Time.

You just gotta roll with it.

So our main character is a baby sauropod (“long neck” in the parlance of the movie) who is the youngest member of his herd which now consists of his mother, his grandmother and his grandmother (“he knew them by sight, by scent and by their love.”)

One criticism Don Bluth often gets is that, as his career went on, he betrayed his dark roots and “went Disney” but that’s incorrect. Disney has always been a huge influence on Bluth’s work (he was, after all, a Disney animator for much of his life) and this influence is probably more pronounced in Land Before Time than any other film. Firstly, let’s not be coy.

This movie is basically The Rite of Spring sequence from Fantasia stretched out to feature length. Everything from the design of the dinosaurs to the moody lighting to the depiction of the Earth as this weird, red rocky purgatory. I could literally put a screencap from one of these two movies up here and you might not be sure which one it was from:

Guess below in the comments. Boost that engagement and why not.

But the other big influence of course is Bambi, which Land Before Time baldly apes…

…up to and including the death of Littlefoot’s Mother, who gets eaten by a T-rex just like Bambi’s Mother.

I think. It’s been a while since I watched Bambi.

But we get ahead of ourselves. Littlefoot’s herd is questing for the Great Valley. Littlefoot ask’s his mother if she’s ever been there and she says “no” and so he, quite reasonaby, asks how she knows it’s even there. She tells him that some things you see with your eyes, and that others you see with your heart. On the way, Littefoot meets Cera, a little triceratops whose father doesn’t want his baby girl playing with filthy long-necks.

Trigger warning: Dinosaur Racism.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Do you know what he’s called?

Daddy Topps.

I swear to God. That’s in the fucking credits.

With one exception, all the dinosaur kids (at least the ones who speak) are voiced by actual children. And while this does result in the bad line read here and there I actually think it ends up helping the movie a great deal. Take Cera, for instance. Cera is, in many ways, just the worst. Rude, abrasive, stubbourn and yes, has inherited her father’s disdain for anyone who isn’t one of the Three-Horned Master Race. But the fact that she’s so clearly a child who doesn’t know any better makes it all a lot more forgivable.

There’s also a very subtle but satisfying moment where Daddy Topps growls that three-horns don’t play with long-necks and then looks up and sees Littlefoot’s mother and takes an involuntary step back because yeah, she could literally step on him.

I guess Daddy don’t always Topp?

Littlefoot asks he can’t play with Cera and his mother tells him that dinosaur segregation has just always been a thing and it’s best not to rock the boat. But later that night, Littlefoot runs off to play with Cera and the two have fun messing around in a swamp.

Well, it’s two characters have a quiet pleasant moment together in a Don Bluth movie, the camera has pulled back and the music had suddenly faded out. You know what that means kids? That’s right! CHILDHOOD TRAUMA!

I think I’d probably rank Sharptooth a respectable third place on my rankings of “Bluth villains who bought my child psychologist a car”, right after Dragon the Cat from NIMH and the LITERAL FUCKING DEVIL from All Dogs Go to Heaven.

The kids are rescued in the nick of time by Littlefoot’s mother who is badly injured battling Sharptooth. On top of everything else, a massive earthquake splits the Earth in two (Mondays, amirite?), Sharptooth falls into a chasm to his no-doubt permanent death and Littlefoot and his mother are stranded.

And then…

Onions. Shut up.

Here’s something I really respect this movie for; how it improves on Bambi.

In that movie, yeah, the death of the mother is shocking. But then it’s “your mother can’t be with you any more” and then smash cut to:

Yeah, not in Land Before Time. No birds chirping happily in the leaves, and not just because the leaves are all dead and the birds are all scaly and weigh as much as a truck.

The movie actually takes its time to show the effect this has on Littlefoot as he goes from grief to anger to crushing depression. And, what’s more, the death of his mother is something that effects Littlefoot’s character for the rest of the movie. It’s why he’s so desperate to look after his new friends, and why he’s willing to put up with Cera’s neverending bullshit because it’s better than her leaving.

Littlefoot meets a kindly older dinosaur named Rooter (voiced wonderfully by Pat Hingle) who tells him that it’s not his fault and that “the great circle of life has begun”. Later, Littlefoot hears his mother calling to him while he looks at his reflection and then sees an image of her in the clouds.

“Remember who you are. You are my son, and the one true king.”

Yeah, forget the Kimba the White Lion allegations, this is where your Lion King plagiarism action is.

Anyway, Littlefoot’s mother tells him how to reach the Great Valley and he sets off. The first dinosaur he meets is Cera, who’s also been seperated from her family and is *checks notes* still a massive tool.

Cera insists on going into the chasm and trying to climb out the other side and rejects Littlefoot’s offer of travelling together. Alone again, Littlefoot is left desolate but soon cheers up when he meets Ducky, a baby Saurolophus.

Jesus, what do I do?

I don’t think I can talk about it.

Sorry.

She’s wonderful. She gives a wonderful performance just so full of life and joy and innocence and it’s not right.

The fact that a part of her will always live on through this beautiful film doesn’t make it alright.

But it’s something. A candle in the dark.

They travel together and immediately you can see the change in Littlefoot. He’s laughing again. Playing again. Healing.

The two then run into Petrie, a baby Pteranodon who talk in skaven speak yes yes and who Mouse really not like, no no.

Probably because this is the only child character voiced by an adult but his schtick just rubs me up the wrong way. No disrespect to Will Ryan, who did a load of voice work for Bluth and also some for Disney (he was the sea-horse in Little Mermaid and voiced Pete in Get A Horse) but this character’s a miss for me. Obviously, we’re doing the Wizard of Oz thing so Petrie joins the other two and their off to the Great Valley.

Meanwhile, Cera is exploring in the chasm and comes across Sharptooth’s body and has the fabulous idea of using it for head-butting practice. This is the scene that forced my parents to sit me down and explain that characters in movies can’t actually hear you and that screaming at the screen doesn’t make them act differently and is a real good way to get taken away and put in the foster system.

Sharptooth wakes up and Cera runs off screaming where she runs into Littlefoot’s herd coming the other way. And don’t ask me how that’s supposed to make sense.

Paleontologists now believe the Triceratops could teleport like a frickin’ TARDIS.

Cera joins the group and quickly wins over Petrie and Ducky with all that girlboss energy. She tells them the Sharptooth’s still alive and Littlefoot’s all “until I put my hoof in the wounds in his side I shall not believe”. They also find a baby Stegosaurous named Spike who provides a little wordless comic relief and not much else.

The gang find some food and sleep in a big cuddle pile but when they wake up they almost get eaten by Sharptooth who is very much not unalive.

After barely escaping, Cera of course, has the class to not rub Littlefoot’s face in the fact that she was right and he was wrong I am of course lying through my teeth she’s a massive prick about it. But! They’re in luck, because they discover a mountain that looks like a long-neck which means that they’re on the right path to the Great Valley. Next up, rivers of boiling lava.

But after climbing over mountains and breathing volcanic ash, the climb the ridge only to discover not so much a Great Valley as a Truly Shitty Valley.

God the backgrounds in this movie just DRIP.

As often happens in times of suffering and deprivation, the dinosaurs start to think “hey, maybe we should put a massive asshole in charge?” and Ducky, Petrie and Spike decide to follow Cera on an easier route and abandon Littlefoot.

“So it’s treason, then?”

This little rebellion doesn’t last long, of course. Cera turns out to be an absolutely terrible leader and almost gets Petrie, Ducky and Spike killed while she herself almost gets head-butted to death by some Pachycephalosaurs.

These things aren’t actually predators. They just decided that Cera had to die. And frankly?

They’re all rescued by Littlefoot and, completely humiliated, Cera slinks away.

Much like Stalin, having purged the party of the enemy within, Littlefoot turns his attention to the enemy without. Sharptooth stands between our heroes and the Great Valley and that means that Littlefoot has to finish what his mother started and murder that punk.

To do this, he sends Ducky as bait to lure Sharptooth out in the open while he and Spike push a giant rock on his head.

This almost fails but at the last moment Cera arrives to help push the rock and Sharptooth is seemingly killed along with Petrie. Yeah, it’s your typical stupid fake-out death but at least they don’t milk it, Petrie’s fine.

And the movie ends with our heroes finally reaching the Great Valley and reuniting with their families. And, as the narrator solemnly tells us; they all grew up together in the valley, generation upon generation, each passing on to the next. The tale of their ancestors’ journey to the valley long ago.

                       ***

I’ve seen most of Don Bluth’s films (I think that if I died without seeing Bartok the Magnificent I could still consider it a life well lived) and I think this may be my favourite. It’s the movie where Bluth’s strengths are most on display and his weaknesses are least in evidence.

Scoring

Animation : 15/20

On the plus side; gorgeous backgrounds and atmospheric visuals and the movie lacks a lot of the flaws of Bluth’s other movies; over-designed characters and sometimes kludgey animation. On the downside, this movie was made as Sullivan Bluth was transferring from Los Angeles to Dublin and there’s definitely signs of, shall we say, inconsistency from one scene to the next. Sharptooth for instance seems to be evolving faster than a Pokémon from scene to scene. Also, some characters just change colour for no reason. On the whole though, a wonderfully animated film.

Main Character : 17/20

Gabriel Damon gives a great performance as Littlefoot. It’s a perfectly standard hero’s journey but executed very well.

Villain: 17/20

He may not be the most layered villain but to this day I can’t here the word “SHARPTOOTH!” without getting a panic attack.

Supporting Characters:  16/20

The decision to have mostly child actors play the child roles really works in the movie’s favour. And sure, the characters may be stock archetypes but archetypes work. Why do you think they were able to get so many sequels out of this. Wait a minute, let me check how many sequels there are OH JESUS CHRIST.

Music:  18/20

Phenomenally atmospheric and deeply moving.

FINAL SCORE:  83%

NEXT UPDATE: 15 February 2024

NEXT TIME: From the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows…

“We burned the forest down.”

Do you want to know how I got these scars into writing about movies?

My college had its own version of “The Onion” where I made my bones writing utterly run-of-the-mill edgy early 2000’s college humour (i.e. the kind of stuff that would get me cancelled today so fast it would break the laws of physics) and my editor asked me if I’d be interested in trying my hand at writing a movie review. And the very first movie I ever reviewed for them (if memory serves) was none other than The Dark Knight. And now you know my gritty origin story. And, if you are old enough to remember my earliest reviews (DON’T GO BACK AND READ THEM DON’T YOU DO IT I SWEAR TO GOD) you’ll remember that this movie was a BIG deal to me and those early reviews are chock full of references to it, even when they weren’t relevant or funny. Which was all the time. I see that now.

So, as you can imagine, I approached this one with a great deal of trepidation. Is it really as good as I remember?

No, actually.

In fact, in many ways, it’s better.

Now, it’s not perfect, by any means. But I was worried that this movie had aged. But, when compared to pretty much the entire superhero genre at the time of writing, TDK has aged like fine wine. For starters, this feels like, y’know, a movie. Not a piece of content. Not an advertisement for a streaming service. This is an actual proper dramatic film with , y’know, good writing. Excellent cinematography. Acting. Editing. Score. Tone. Themes. Aesthetics. WEIGHT. It feels weighty.

There are certainly criticisms you can level at it, as many have since its release. As with any popular piece of work that doesn’t make its political position blatantly clear, people have a tendency to project their own narratives onto it. I definitely think that it caught a lot of flak when, a mere seven years after 9/11, it asked the question:

“Are extraordinary measures ever justified when a democracy is threatened by extraordinary threats?”

and proceeded to give an answer more nuanced than…

That said, I think the critiques of the movie as pro-Neocon or even fascist are overblown in the extreme. Batman may beat the Joker in an interrogation room and, in doing so, loses everything.

It’s only by trusting in the inherent decency of ordinary people that Batman is able, finally, to defeat the clown.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

The movie announces itself with one of the best opening sequences in 21st century American cinema.

When we first see Ledger’s Joker he’s waiting by the side of the road, perfectly, utterly still. Not simply standing but almost…offline. Like a character in a joke, he doesn’t even exist until the joke is told. He gets picked up in a car by two other hoods wearing clown masks and they head off to the bank. Watching it again and knowing the twist makes the scene even better and even more darkly funny. I could gush all day about all the wonderful little details, like how the Joker is wearing a mask based on one used in an episode from, of all things, the sixties show. What we see in this sequence is the World According to Joker. No one can be trusted. Nothing is as it seems. Everything is a lie and everyone is being lied to, including us, the audience. As the clown robbers kill each other one after the other the bank manager (William Fichtner) comes out of his office blasting a shot gun because it turns out this is an eeeevil bank run by criminals.

Whatever joke you thought of, just imagine it here, this is going to be a long review and I don’t have time to go for the low hanging fruit.

Anyway, the bank manager sees the last clown murder his two comrades and laments that criminals used to have respect and a code of honour.

He yells at Joker, asking him what he believes in and Joker responds with the famous line “I believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you…stranger.”

Also, and I can’t believe I didn’t realise this before, but I always thought Joker then kills the bank manager. But instead, he puts a grenade in his mouth and pulls the pin as he drives off, only for the grenade to give off harmless smoke. One last joke.

Okay, so it’s been around a year since Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham and things are actually starting to look up for America’s Shittiest City. There’s a new District Attorney named Harvey Dent who has actually been making headway against the city’s criminals, the Batman is now an established and feared presence in the underworld and Jim Gordon has been put in charge of the Major Crimes Unit or MCU, (yes, yes, it’s very funny, settle down, settle down).

In fact, it’s become rather tough being a criminal in Gotham, which is why mobsters like The Chechen (Ritchie Coster) have to resort to freaks like The Scarecrow to source their drugs. This is something I love about this film; it’s a period piece. What I mean is, it’s a movie that chronicles a very specific moment in Gotham’s fictional history, where the old mobsters (awful but nonetheless with a certain code of conduct) gave way to the “Better Class of Criminal”, the deranged super-freaks that came to dominate its underworld. And it’s not just the villains who are getting crazier. The Chechen’s drug deal gets interrupted by three concerned citizens wearing Batman costumes and wielding shotguns. This little potential bloodbath gets broken up by the real Batman who arrests both the Scarecrow and the vigilantes, one of whom quite reasonably asks why his kind of vigilantism is okay and there’s isn’t. To which Batman growls “I’m not wearing hockey pants.”

Alright, let’s tackly the gravelly voiced elephant in the room.

Yes, the voice is dumb. Distractingly so. “Actively-makes-the-movie-worse” dumb. Which is galling for two reasons. Firstly, because Bale pretty much nailed the voice in Batman Begins and secondly because his Bruce Wayne is absolutely fantastic, really nailing the character’s asshole playboy persona.

At another ransacked bank, Gordon’s starting to get a little concerned about this clown fellow but Batman insists that he’s not the priority because he’s just one man (maybe he’s a symbol, Bruce?). Batman and Gordon have spent the last year planting irradiated dollar bills into the mob’s hands to allow them to identify the banks that the gangsters are using to launder their money. I don’t have proof that this is a reference to the irradiated dollar bills from the forties Batman and Robin but it’s the internet and I’m just going to say it and you’ll have to believe me. They now know the banks and Batman wants to strike. But Gordon says this job is too big for just the MCU and that means they’ll have to bring in the DA. Batman has concerns.

Of course, his suspicions of the new DA may not be entirely unbiased as Harvey is putting a Dent in Bruce’s chances of ever getting into Rachel Dawses’ pants again as they’re in luuuurve.

Harvey is currently prosecuting Sal Maroni who he suspects of running the Gotham Mob (given that he’s played by Eric Roberts, he is of course correct). Dent’s case collapses when his star witness turns hostile and pulls a gun on him in the courtroom so he agrees to meet with Gordon.

Gordon and Dent initially have a strained relationship as Dent investigated most of the MCU for corruption but, as Gordon points out, police corruption in Gotham is less a binary and more a beautiful, diverse spectrum.

Unofrtunately, the bust is a…bust. All the gangsters in Gotham are summoned to a meeting by their accountant, a Mr. Lau, who informs them that the police were going to take all their money but, fortunately for them, he was able to stash it somewhere secret while he am-scrays to Hong Kong where he can’t be extradited. Then we hear…laughter. Sort of.

Okay, so in my last review in this series I put out my stall that Scarecrow actually makes a more logical arch-nemesis for Batman than the Joker. And I do think that makes sense on paper…but…having thought about it some more I don’t think it works in practice. The reason why Joker works better as Batman’s arch-nemesis than any other character is that he’s the only one of the rogues who is as versatile and plastic as Batman himself. The sixties Batman never used Two-Face or Scarecrow because those characters were too dark. The Dark Knight series never used The Riddler or Kite-Man because they were too silly. But the Joker is one of the very, very few bat villains who can always adapt to the tone of the Batman story he’s in.

Heath Ledger’s Joker, apart from being just…a fucking phenomenal performance, demonstrates exactly why this character is such a gift for any actor and why there are honestly very few bad Joker performances (look, I’ll just come out and say it, Suicide Squad is a terrible movie, and Jared Leto is a pretty awful person, but he was a really good Joker). At the time the movie was being made, Nicholson’s Joker was haunting the role (just like Ledger’s haunts it now) and Ledger wanted above all else to create a character who wasn’t just a pale imitation of Jack Napier.

He did that, obviously. But what I think is even more impressive is that this Joker diverges real hard from the comics and still feels perfect. Let’s be clear, this is not a comics’ accurate Joker and the movie wastes no time telling you that.

GAMBOL: You’re crazy.

JOKER: I’m not. No. I’m not.

I mean…case closed. The comics Joker revels in his insanity, luxuriates in it. Ledger also shows why you have to master the rules before you can break them. Everything about his performance, the muttered delivery, the hunched posture, that would all kill any impact if employed by a less confident actor. He reminds me a lot of Tom Hardy, funnily enough, another actor who can be more arresting with a muttered grunt than a shouted monologue. You just…can’t…look…away…he is so fucking good.

Anyway, the Joker offers to kill the Batman in exchange for half of all their money which the mobsters naturally refuse, with one of them, Gambol, instead putting a hit on the Joker.

With Lau in the wind Dent and Gordon turn to Batman to get him back from Hong Kong. Funnily enough, this entire subplot was what convinced Warner Brothers to not even bother trying to get the movie past the Chinese censors which resulted in it becoming one of the most bootlegged movies in China’s history. Lau gets deposited on Gordon’s doorstep. Dent and Rachel offer Lau a deal; full immunity and he gets to keep the mob’s money in exchange for the names of all the mobsters he did business with. You know, in previous Batman reviews this would normally be the point where I’d be saying something like “Doctor Tornado and Mistress Nefaria decide to team up to steal the moon”. This feels more like I’m recapping American Gangster or something.

So with Lau in custody the mobsters get desperate and ask the Joker for help, in one stroke invalidating every single episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals.

Shortly after, Hockey Pads Man shows up dead (I suspect his archenemy, The Puck!). Strapped to the body is a joker card and footage of the Joker torturing the hapless vigilante and threatening to kill people until Batman reveals his identity (fun fact, all the Joker hostage videos were directed and shot by Heath Ledger and they are terrifying.) DNA samples found on the card tell Gordon that the Joker is going to target Harvey Dent, the judge trying the mob money case and Commissioner Loeb.

Bruce is so impressed with Harvey that he decides to throw him a fund-raiser.

And he’s doing that because he believes that Harvey Dent can clean up this stinkhole which means he can stop being Batman which means that he can steal Rachel back from under Harvey’s magnificently chiseled chin.

Bruce lays out what he’s doing to Rachel but she’s iffy. Harvey then proposes to Rachel and she’s iffy about that too. Poor Rachel, being fought over by two incredibly handsome wealthy men like a common YA protagonist. The Joker attacks with his goons looking for Harvey Dent. Bruce saves Harvey by stashing him in his saferoom and then changes into the Batsuit and saves Rachel when Joker pushes her out the window.

Later, in the Own Brand Batcave (if your mansion has burnt down, store-bought is fine) Bruce tries to figure out who this clown is and what are his goals, his hopes, his dreams. Alfred tells him a heart-warming story about propping up brutal dictatorships in South-East Asia (no sarcasm, the line “some friends and I were doing some work for the local government” is perfect in its banal euphemism). Alfred tells him about a bandit leader who was robbing shipments of precious jewels for fun and that some people just be cray, yo.

At Wayne Enterprises Lucius Fox is approached by an employee named Coleman Reese who’s uncovered that Bruce Wayne is Batman and tries to blackmail him. Fox calmly replies that he’s welcome to try if he wants to make an enemy of the most dangerous man on Earth but he does look at Reese’s notes and finds a project that he knew nothing about. When he asks Bruce about this, all Bruce says is that he’s playing this one close to the chest and far from the Bill of Rights.

“I’m sure this is fine.”

So at the commissioner’s funeral, a disguised Joker opens fire and seemingly kills Gordon. Dent, starting to break mentally, abducts one of the Joker’s henchmen and tries to psychologically torture him into giving the Joker up. Batman arrives and tells him that he can’t let the Joker bring him down to his level and tells him instead to call a press conference where Batman will reveal his secret identity.

Future historians will refer to 2008 as The Golden Age of Press Conference Superhero Identity Reveals.

Instead, Harvey decides to reveal that he is The Batman. Watching from Bruce’s penthouse, Rachel is disgusted with Bruce letting Harvey take the fall and gives Alfred a note to give to Bruce later.

Harvey gets transported across town to jail but the convey is attacked by the Joker’s goons in a scene that culminates in one of the most spectacular vehicle stunts of the 21st century.

“Watch me do a tumble Ma! OWWW!”

Joker tries to goad Batman into crashing into him but, oh, that one pesky rule. Batman gets knocked unconscious but is saved at the last minute by Jim Gordon!

Honestly, this is a rare bum note in the movie for me. I hate fake out deaths, and the fact that Gordon apparently sent cops to his wife TO TELL HER HE’D DIED just to make it more convincing kinda makes him look like an absolute asshole.

So the Joker’s been captured…

But neither Harvey Dent nor Rachel Dawes made it home safely.

So, all out of options, Gordon decides that only one man can make the Joker talk.

I know a couple who role-played this on their wedding night. Nothing to do with the movie, I just needed to get that out there.

Some of my absolute favourite scenes in all of Batman media are scenes where Batman and the Joker just sit down and…talk. The last scene of Killing Joke. Batman showing the Joker the Riddler’s file in The Batman. For all that this movie’s Joker is not comics accurate, the relationship these two have absolutely is. This potent mixture of repulsion, fascination and recognition. A hatred that, over eighty years, has become so old and passionate that it feels almost like love. Batman stares at the Joker like a horrific car-crash, not understanding why he can’t look away. And the Joker sees…a project? A chance to not be alone? A mirror image that’s just missing one tiny, thing. A smile.

They talk while Gordon watches, confident that Batman is in control. But Gordon’s made a crucial mistake. The Joker has Rachel, which means it’s not Batman in there. It’s Bruce Wayne. And he’s just a man.

Finally, after showing just how powerless all Batman’s threats really are, Joker gives a pity confession and tells him where Harvey and Rachel are being held. Batman races off to save Rachel, while Gordon goes to save Harvey, leaving the Joker in the interrogation room. With a single guard. Who’s also in the room with him.

“Uh…sure you don’t wanna put me in a cell?”

Meanwhile, Rachel and Harvey are being held in seperate warehouses but can communicate by radio. Rachel tells Harvey that if one of them is rescued the other will be blown up so she takes the opportunity to tell Harvey that she will marry him. Unfortunately, the Joker lied, which means Batman actually saves Harvey and Rachel is killed. In the explosion, half of Harvey’s face is burned off and this finally drives him over the edge.

Meanwhile, the Joker has escaped (shock! gasps! questions asked in Parliament!) and Gordon realises that (sing it with me) BEING CAPTURED WAS PART OF HIS PLAN ALL ALONG.

And, I swear to God kids, that was actually a cool twist way back before every other movie ran it into the fucking ground.

With the Joker escaped Gotham goes into full on panic. Coleman Reese decides to reveal Batman’s identity on live TV in the hope that this will stop the Joker’s rampage but Mister J has a change of heart and instead announces that he’ll blow up a hospital unless Reese is killed, forcing Bruce to save his life.

Joker visits Harvey in hospital dressed as a nurse (because, what else would you wear to a birth?) and gives Dent the last little push he needs into full on freakdom. Harvey finally embraces the coin, becomes Two-Face, and swears vengeance on the mob and the corrupt cops who love them.

CGI really peaked in the late aughties, didn’t it?

Meanwhile, two ferries leave Gotham. One carrying civilians fleeing the city’s carnage, and the other carrying prisoners deemed too dangerous to leave in the city during the crisis. Both ferries lose power and the Joker reveals his final game; a version of the prisoner’s dilemma. Each ferry has a detonator that will blow up the other and if neither detonator is activated before midnight both bombs will go off. This, as you can imagine, causes quite the stir.

Batman, desperate to find the Joker, shows Lucius that thing he was working on which turns out to be a way to monitor every cellphone in Gotham.

“Oh shit. It wasn’t fine.”

Lucius agrees to help Batman this one last time, but says that after that, he’s done. And yeah, it’s absolutely a little problematic that the movie shows illegal surveillance as the key to victory against terrorism. On the other hand, how many other movies in this genre would even take the time to acknowledge that this raises serious ethical questions? Like, I’m pretty sure if Iron Man had had a scene where he hacks every cellphone on Earth to find Ironmonger, that would have just been accepted as Iron Man doing regular Iron Man shit.

Anyway Batman tracks the Joker to where he’s holding a group of people hostage and has to battle not only the Joker and his goons but Gordon’s SWAT team because they don’t realise that Joker has disguised the hostages as clowns, the clowns as hostages, and himself as Batman, probably.

As the clock ticks down, both the civilians and the prisoners debate whether to blow the other ship up. One prisoner gets the warden to give up the detonator through sheer menace…and then proceeds to throw it out the window.

And I feel again the need to praise the casting in this movie. They didn’t need to get an actor of Tommy Lister Junior’s calibre to play this part. It’s not even a minute of screentime. Three lines tops. But it’s the fact that every single speaking role is cast with a fantastic actor is what makes this movie so special. Every scene has great acting work, it’s just pure quality from start to finish.

The civilians actually come closer to killing the prisoners, but at the last second no one actually has the stomach for murder.

The Joker, for the first time, is genuinely confused. He just can’t fathom that his worldview might be wrong. Batman stops him from blowing up the ships and leaves him dangling in the air. He tells Joker that he’s lost, but Joker counters that once Gotham sees what’s become of their saviour Harvey Dent, they’ll be well on their way to becoming like him. The Joker then muses that he and Batman will never be able to kill each other and that they’re going to be doing this forever.

What I say every day to my list of review requests, oddly enough.

Batman then has to race to the scene where Two-Face has kidnapped Gordon’s wife, son and daughter and is forcing Gordon to choose which one he shoots.

Look, I know this will sound cold but trust me, I’ve read the comics.
CHOOSE THE BOY.

Batman is forced to kill Harvey save Gordon’s son and, realising that Gotham needs the legend of Harvey Dent, decides to take the blame for all of his crimes. Alfred reads Rachel’s note which would have told Bruce that she was choosing Harvey and could never be with him and decides that Bruce has a had a bad enough day and burns it. Lucius shuts down the surveillance network, only to learn that Bruce rigged it to self-destruct so it could never be used or abused again. And the movie ends with Batman going on the run, hunted by the city that he saved.

***

Still, after all these years, probably the super-hero genre’s zenith. Fucking masterful.

The Dark Knight Detective

Though not perfect. This, regrettably, is where Bale’s Batman slips irrevocably into self parody. It should be a fatal weakness but, given how Batman is largely restricted to action scenes where he speaks very little, the movie survives. And this is still probably the best film Bruce Wayne.

His Faithful Manservant

Michael Caine gets some lovely moments here and it feels like he and Bale really found a groove in their scenes together. They feel a lot more like family this time around.

The Clown Prince of Crime

I mean, I don’t think I’m rocking any boats here. But Heath Ledger is quite good.

To put it another way, when he says that they were destined to do this forever, the fact that we never got to see him play this role again causes me deep spiritual pain.

Meet the most bizarre criminal of all time, a twentieth century Jekyll-Hyde!

Oh, what’s this? Not only do we get the best (arguably) screen Joker, we also get the best (FUCKING DEFINITELY) screen Two-Face. I would have liked to see a little more of Harvey’s backstory and some hints that he was grappling with Big Bad Harv’ even before the accident but I get it, the movie’s technically too long as it is. Again, a terrible waste that we never got to see Eckhart play Harvey again. The again, again, as I previously mentioned Two-Face is a character with a very short shelf-life. Once you’ve done the origin there’s not really that much left to do with him.

Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…

“Oh I wish Cillian Murphy wasn’t in that movie” said no one fucking ever. I love that Crane is much more light-hearted and fun-loving in this one. He’s lost all pretences of being a serious, normal person and is just embracing being a scary super villain. It’s great. Really brings home that crime in Gotham hasn’t been killed. It’s just getting stranger.

The Comish

THIS is the Gordon I want to see. Tough, brilliant, badass and heart-breakingly. Oldman’s delivery of “We have to save Dent! I have to save Dent!” still brings a lump to my throat.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

Without question the most stacked supporting cast of any Batman movie. There are no small characters in this. None. Take a character like the Chechen. Incredibly small part, but packed full of great lines and lovely, revealing character moments (his bromance with Maroni is genuinely kinda sweet). Maggie Gyllenhaal will have you asking “Katie Who?”

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

To quote Lady Bracknell, to have one Two-Face fall to his death under suspicious circumstances might be considered misfortune. Two looks like carelessness. Eminently justifiable homicide. Dubious intentionality. But yeah, Batman did kill Harvey Dent. No two (ha!) ways about it.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

As well as a new batsuit that allows Batman to turn his head (which might be useful in a fight) we also get Bat-Sonar, that allows Batman to use sonar to see like a submarine.

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

In keeping with the tradition that in every second movie of a Batman series the Batmobile dies, the Tumbler buys it, leaving us with the Bat-Pod, which will be Batman’s vehicle of choice for the remainder of the series.

Honestly, I prefer it. Simple, stripped back and actually suited for moving around a city.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 01 May 2024.

NEXT TIME: Come to me, my ageing millennials. I have nostalgia for you.

“There are the hands that made us. And then there are the hands that guide their hands.”

So, how did we get here?

The MCU fell from grace the way Hemingway’s Mike Campbell went bankrupt, slowly and then all at once.

I think we all felt it, didn’t we? At some point this year, probably in the summer when Barbenheimer was in full swing, there was a moment when all of us who had still not disembarked from the hype train took a look at the MCU and said “nah, I’m done”.

And you probably have your own explanation for why that is. Endgame was the peak and it’s all been downhill since then. Superhero fatigue. Bad writing. Too woke. Not woke enough. Too much CGI. Martin Scorsese dropping truth bombs. The pandemic. Whatever.

But ultimately, I think the real reason was just…time. The studio execs currently running around trying to figure out why audiences aren’t flocking to their superhero movies anymore are like surfers wondering why the tidal wave they were riding faded away into the ocean.

Guys. It was a wave. That’s what they do.

Granted, it was a wave like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Depending on when you consider the modern age of superhero movies to have begun (the first X-Men movie maybe?) we’ve been riding this wave for over twenty years with some of the biggest box-office numbers of all time. But, it really was just a bigger version of every other Hollywood trend, be that “make everything like the Matrix” or “make everything like Transformers” or (if you want to go old school) “make everything a Western”. And trends never last. That’s why they’re called “trends”.

And I’ve been burned enough times before to know not to make any big predictions. Maybe these last two years were just a brief blip in an unbroken streak of cinematic dominance that will stretch on to the death of the universe. But, right now, in the waning hours of 2023 it sure feels like the MCU is done. And I’m okay with that. And I don’t regret my time with it as long as I can pretend Thor 4 doesn’t exist.

Because, even if we got nothing else of value from this series of films, James Gunn got to make the Guardians trilogy, and I wouldn’t deny him that for the world.

Okay, so who here’s seen the Christmas special? Yeah, me neither. Alright, here’s what we need to get caught up on. Quill’s still super depressed because Gamora came back to life entirely uninterested in his human penis. Mantis and Quill are now treating each other as brother and sister because, well, yeah, I guess they are. The Guardians are now operating from Knowhere, they have a new larger spaceship called the Bowie and Kraglin and Cosmo the Psychic Soviet Dog are now full members of the Guardians.

Now read on.

After a brief flashback where we see a baby Rocket being grabbed by a mysterious hand, we find ourselves in Knowhere where Rocket is listening to Creep by Radiohead on Peter’s Zune. This is what happens in the opening scene, are you ready? Rocket walks around Knowhere listening to Creep, he sees Nebula putting up a sign and Mantis trying to get Drax to dance with her. Rocket walks into a bar where Peter is drunk off his ass. Peter yells at Rocket for taking his zune and then keels over. Nebula comes and gently carries Peter out of the bar while the other Guardians look on in concern. Title.

That’s it. That’s how this big budget space action movie opens. And I wouldn’t trade these two minutes for the entire Ant-Man trilogy. And it’s not even the best sequence of the movie! It just shows what’s been missing from so many of the other MCU films. Atmosphere. Pacing. Heart. Versimilitude. The sets and costumes look great, the CGI is flawless as usual (I don’t know how the same studio that gave us Rocket Racoon also gave us MODOK). And it’s just good. FILM GOOD.

The Guardians put Peter to bed and have to figure out what to do about the fact that their leader is spending all his time crying tears that could double as Polish vodka. Suddenly, Knowhere is attacked by Adam Fucking Warlock. Okay, this guy, this guy.

First introduced in Fantastic Four as a perfect being created to rule the world by a group of mad scientists, he was later spun off in his own series which was…the story of Jesus Christ but IN SPAAAAAACE!!! I haven’t read it (somehow!) but it sounds seventies as fuck. It also makes the character utterly redundant in my eyes. There are plenty of cosmic superheroes and the Marvel universe doesn’t need a new Jesus because the Jesus of the Marvel universe is Jesus (while I absolutely love that because Marvel used to publish religious comics Jesus has his own page on the Marvel wiki, I am extremely disappointed that it doesn’t answer the pressing theological question as to whether he could one-shot Galactus. I say he could, post-resurrection and with prep-time).

Anyway, the Adam Warlock of the MCU is actually an alien created by the Sovereign (those gold assholes from Guardians 2). Despite being a complete dork, Adam is a fucking powerhouse who tears through all of the Guardians before finally being stabbed by Nebula and having to flee. But it’s too late for Rocket who’s been shot in the chest. Quill tries to use a med-pack on Rocket which triggers a kill switch buried in the little critter because it turns out he was created by a dude called the High Evolutionary who likes people fixing his creations about as much as Apple does.

“If you don’t buy a new one, you’re basically stealing from us. You’re a dirty criminal”.

They manage to stabilise Rocket, but without a way to kill the kill switch his little fuzzy ass is on borrowed time. We now see Rocket’s early life in flashback. He was experimented on by the High Evolutionary and spent most of his time in a cage with three other cybernetically enhanced animals, an otter named Lylla, a Walrus named Teef and a bunny rabbit named Floor who looks like he was created by Sid from Toy Story. They bond, and dream of the beautiful world they’ll go to when the High Evolutionary finishes his project, with wide open skies forever.

Now, the easiest way to get me to absolutely loathe a film is emotional manipulation and I honestly don’t know how James Gunn gets away with this here. We basically have a little found family of adorable animal creatures who’ve been subjected to horrendous experiments and yet find love and joy with each other. On paper, it just sounds so fucking manipulative and yet…it works? I don’t know, it just feels so sincere and raw. I think a big part of that is how well the High Evolutionary works as a villain.

Chukwudi Iwuji is absolutely incredible in the part, preening ego and superficial charm masking volcanic, furious rage and poisonous resentment. But this is also a fantastically conceived villain on the writing level, a narcissistic, abusive parent as a cosmic god. Of course, that was also what Ego was. And Thanos too. It’s almost like this trilogy has a theme. But I think this is by far the most successful version of this Gunn has done. The interactions between the Evolutionary and Rocket all have a deeply upsetting air of authenticity. The scene where the Evolutionary staggers into Rocket’s cell, delirious and ranting after his “medical treatment” went wrong and starts yelling at the cowering racoon…strip out all the sci-fi trappings, yeah, you know what’s really going on there.

In the present, the Guardians learn that some of Rocket’s parts were built by a company called Orgocorp and start planning a raid and Nebula calls in a favour from the Ravagers, whose number now includes Gamora. This, as you can imagine, is no fun for anyone. Gamora has to deal with the fact that this guy she doesn’t know at all is still utterly heartbroken and pining for her, and the Guardians in general and Quill in particular have to deal with the fact that classic Gamora had, ahem, a bold personality.

The team infiltrate the Orgosphere, a massive gooey meatball in space. Honestly, the whole Orgosphere sequence should be a massive drag, it’s basically just there to pad out the run time because the team can’t just roll up at the High Evolutionary’s door at the start of the second act but it gets by on awesome character moments and sheer visual style.

There’s so much to love about this, Nathan Fillion’s cameo as a security guard, the kinder, gentler Guardians having to deal with Gamora’s more “Thanosy” approach to problem solving, Peter FINALLY getting to demonstrate that he’s actually a canny and intelligent hero and not the COLOSSAL idiot he was in Infinity War. Also, this:

I know it couldn’t happen. I know Peter realising he has to stop leaping from one woman to another like the world’s horniest frog is the entire point of his arc. I know it would have been terrible but…I really do love this pairing. I was never invested in Peter and Gamora but this I am here for. Plus, you know the sex would be amazing. For Peter.

While the gang get the information they need to find the High Evolutionary’s base, we get more flashbacks to Rocket’s childhood. The High Evolutionary discovered that Rocket had a genius level intellect and encouraged with love and affection. But then, once Rocket was able to fix a problem with his “Humanimals” (animal-human hybrids he was designing to be his “perfect” society) he coldly discarded him and told Rocket he would harvest his brain and euthanise all his friends.

So the reason the high Evolutionary is obsessed with Rocket is that he’s the only one of his creations who demonstrated true unique thinking rather than rote memorisation. This lends itself to an absolutely irresistable reading of the High Evolutionary as Disney and Rocket as James Gunn (or any actually creative person in their employ), with the Evolutionary trying and failing over and over again to mass produce genuine artistic creation and just not getting why it doesn’t work that way.

You know, I still haven’t seen it yet. Probably should stop dunking on it in case it turns out I love it. Hey, I liked Chicken Little. Weirder things have happened.

So Rocket planned a prison break which ended with Lylla, Teef and Floor getting shot right in front of his eyes.

This shot tears my fucking heart out, the starkness of it.

Rocket snaps and mauls the High Evolutionary’s face to puree and then steals a ship and flies off.

In the present, the Guardians arrive at Counter-Earth, the High Evolutionary’s latest attempt to create paradise which is basically if you asked an AI to create 1980s American suburbia and populated it with bat people.

It all looks normal until you start noticing weird little details that are just ever so slightly off (why do they have those weird little grassy verges between the road and the foot path? What’s that thing that looks like a cross between a sundial and a bird-bath? What’s with the weird buttons on the car doors?).

Peter, Groot and Nebula are able to get a steer to the High Evolutionary’s base while Mantis, Drax and Gamora stay behind to guard Rocket. Meanwhile Adam and his mother Ayesha (remember her from Guardians 2?) follow the Guardians to Counter-Earth because the Sovereign were also created by the High Evolutionary which, honestly, is one of the few things about this movie that I don’t like. If the High Evolutionary can create the Sovereign, a space-faring empire capable of creating super-beings like Adam, why the hell is he still tinkering around with the eighties bat-people? It just feels like a clunky way of linking the Evolutionary and the Sovereign which could probably have been done a bit more elegantly.

Anyway, on the drive over Peter, Groot and Gamora see that Counter-Earth is a failing society. They reach the HE’s HQ and Gamora has to stay outside because she’s carrying more firearms than the entire West Coast rap scene in the early nineties. Peter and Groot are brought into the Evolutionary’s presence and he explains that he once visited Earth and decided that it would make a great society if it weren’t for all the shittiness. Peter, who has heard enough supervillain monologues to last a lifetime and is so checked out, asks the HE if he really thinks Counter-Earth is perfect and he admits that no, obviously it isn’t. That’s why he’s blowing it up and starting again.

Back at the Bowie, Gamora has to defend the still unconscious Rocket from Adam Warlock but their battle is interrupted when the planet starts blowing up, which kills Ayesha, much to Adam’s grief. The High Evolutionary launches his headquarters into space, with Nebula, Drax and Mantis breaking in before take off to rescue Quill and Groot. BUT Quill and Groot have already shot their way out having gotten the code they need to deactivate Rocket’s kill switch so it’s just a mess and each group thinks the other is dead.

On the Bowie, Rocket dies and sees Lylla in the afterlife and, oh yeah, I pretty much start crying from this point and don’t stop until the credits. Bradley Cooper as Rocket in this scene, where he breaks down in tears over his guilt at letting her die…umpf. Lylla softly tells him that the sky is beautiful and it is forever. He asks if he can come with her, and she says yes. But not yet. He still has a purpose. He asks how can that be, as he was made to be thrown away.

“There are the hands that make us” she says. “And there are the hands that guide the hands.”

Fuck, I need a minute.

On the Evolutionary’s ship, Nebula, Drax and Mantis have a huge fight because Drax was supposed to stay with the ship and dragged Mantis along and now they’re all probably going to die because Drax is an idiot and Mantis is an idiot-enabler. But they then encounter the HE’s next experiments, an army of little mice-children and Drax is able to communicate with them because he’s really good with kids. Because, there are different kinds of intellifence.

Rocket returns to life and Nebula is able to get back in contact with them. But the High Evolutionary hijacks the signal and warns Peter to return Rocket to him his ASAP. Peter puts in a call to Kraglin who attacks the Evolutionary’s ship with Knowhere and we get an all out war. This gives us one of the best (and quite possibly last) truly great fight scenes of the MCU with a corridor battle between all of the Guardians and the HE’s goons that is just jaw-droppingly awesome.

While exploring the ship, Rocket discovers a lab full of Earth animals and realises that he is, in fact, a racoon after all. He gets ambushed by the High Evolutionary but the Guardians have Rocket’s back and proceed to administer the most satisfying villain beatdown in this 32 film cycle.

The others ask Rocket if he’s going to kill the now defeated Evolutionary and he says no, because he’s a Guardian of the Galaxy and they don’t kill. Apparently.

All these guys are just resting. In pieces.

The Guardians proceed to rescue everyone still trapped on the ship, not just the people but the animals too. Quill doesn’t make it off the ship in time and is left stranded in the vacuum of space and and freezes solid (this is the second time he’s done that and most doctors would recommend less than once). But, at the last moment he’s rescued by Adam Warlock who realised that the High Evolutionary was a bad one after he killed his mother.

If you think this imagery is unsubtle, you should read the original comics.

With the day saved, Peter decides to take his sister’s advice and to stop expecting the women in his life to make him whole. He announces that he’s leaving the Guardians to return home to Earth. There, he tearfully reunites with his grandfather, Jason Quill.

The movie ends with Rocket and the other Guardians sitting in Knowhere listening to Peter’s Zune. For the first time, he moves past Peter’s old music and picks something from the 2000’s, The Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine.

As the music plays over the speakers the people of Knowhere dance. Joyously. Ecstatically.

These characters, all of them, have been haunted by the past. Chained down by it. Lessened by it. Made crueller and meaner by it.

And now, at last, they’re free.

The dog days are over. The dog days are done.

***

Spouse of Mouse checked out of this series of movies a long time ago, but I was able to convince her to watch this one with me. After it was over she turned to me and said.

“Wow. That was the first good MCU movie I’ve seen in a long time.”

“Honey” I replied. “That may be the LAST good MCU movie you see in a long time.”

It may be. But it was worth it.

Scoring

Adaptation: 24/25

“Adaptation” is really the wrong word. The cosmos Gunn’s created in these movies is so much his own that any resemblance to the Marvel cosmic universe is often In Name Only. Who cares? This trilogy is the best space opera not named “Star Wars” and I’m not sure it’s not the best space opera period.

Our Heroic Heroes: 25/25

My GOD I will miss these guys.

Our Nefarious Villain: 25/25

Hey Marvel, now that Majors is out maybe take a look at what you got here?

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 24/25

I haven’t even mentioned the B story between Kraglin and Cosmo after he calls her a “Bad Dog”. I haven’t even mentioned a fraction of the weird kooky side-characters that populate this thing. An embarassment of riches, this movie.

The Stinger

On a distant planet we meet a new team of Guardians consisting of Rocket, Groot, Kraglin, Cosmo, Adam and one of the rescued children who is called *checks notes* oh holy shit, she’s Phyla Vell, apparently. Neat. Anyway, they leap into action to protect a village of aliens from attack. And the adventure continues.

And the audience went…

Yeah, I have about as much interest in seeing a James Gunn-less Guardians movie as I have in the exciting world of bear-baiting. Let it end, guys. There is literally nothing you could show me now that would pique my interest.

The Second Stinger

Peter and his grandfather have breakfast and bitch about Jason’s neighbour not mowing the lawn.

And the audience went…

I DEMAND to know the resolution of this plotline.

FINAL SCORE: 98%

NEXT UPDATE: Really sorry, I know I was late with this one but I have a shit ton of writing to catch up with so we’ll meet back here 18th January 2024.

NEXT TIME: Oh God, I hope it’s held up…

The summer of the soul in December

I swear to God, I wrote the end of year wrap up for 2022 last week, time is going too fast make it stop make it stop…

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, how are you all? How’s every little thing? Merry Christmas.

2023 was…a year. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Swings and roundabouts.

October saw the release of my second book, Knock Knock, Open Wide to polite, restrained acclaim. I must take the opportunity now to thank Alex Grecian and Brian Evenson for kindly providing blurbs, and oh my God, BIG thanks to Clay McLeod Chapman who was an absolute LEGEND promoting the book online. You should check out his novel What Kind of Mother, it’s a heartbreaking story of loss set in the backwoods of Virginia with terrifying yet symbolic crabs. Mouse recommends.

And, of course, if you were kind enough to support me by picking up a copy, you have my eternal thanks.

Anyway, this year’s reviews:

In 2023 I reviewed 1 Canon Disney movie, 3 MCU movies with another to follow before year end, 1 animé, 2 live action movies (I’m counting Dark Crystal as live action and not animation because it is), 4 non-Disney canon animated features, 1 TV series, 1 Bats versus Bolts (it lives again!), 6 Batman movies plus the Gotham Knight series of short films and one weird essay that was supposed to be a review of Inherit the Wind but turned into me having an existential breakdown over the impossibility of knowing objective truth.

This was definitely a year when I pulled back from my usual staples of the MCU and Disney Canon but…Jesus, can you blame me? Not a hot take, I know, but whenever I have a bad year I will remind myself that at least it wasn’t as bad as Disney’s 2023. Holy shit what a dumpster fire. And we’re not done yet.

You were supposed to be the Chosen One!

So, as a Disney reviewer and fan am I disheartened or saddened by this sudden, catastrophic reversal of the company’s fortunes? No, not at all. It’s a massive, rapacious corporation that doesn’t care in the slightest about any of us and thinking it’s your friend will get you eaten alive like that dude in Grizzly Man. If you do find yourself feeling sympathy, watch the Oh My Disney! sequence from Wreck It Ralph 2  to remind yourself of the rather sickening hubris that brought them to this point. Or, indeed, just watch any of their recent output. But the other reason why I’m not worried is because we have been here before. The canon always goes through highs and lows. They’ll course correct and come back stronger than ever. Happened after the second world war. Happened after the death of Walt, happened after the end of the Renaissance. Sunrise, sunset.

Anyway, my never-ending quest to clear my review backlog has reached some of the weirder and grungier items on the menu and this, combined with the aforementioned pant-shitting of two of my regular series, meant I honestly did not review that many good films this year. Best film?

Well spoilers, but yeah, it’s going to be Guardians 3. 

Worst film?

Holy moly, spoiled for choice. This year had no less than FOUR new entries into the Hall of Shame which I think may be a record? And while a fair man might say that Freddie as FR07  was the worst film I’ve seen this year, I am neither fair, nor a man. I fucking hate Thor: Love and Thunder and I want to get one more kick in the goolies before New Year.

And on that happy note, thanks so much for reading and commenting. You guys are, as always, the best.

Nollaig shona daoibh go léir,

Mouse.