The last film you saw
- Thread starter Ellie
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Saw the movie Super yesterday. It is a great film by James Gunn that explores the subject of the superhero as self insertion revenge fantasy. Rainn Wilson plays a total loser who marries a recovering drug addict (Liv Tyler) who leaves him after falling off the wagon. Rainn Wilson's character decides to embark on a generally self serving revenge quest under the guise of taking up the altruistic mantle of a superhero crime fighter. Like the often compared to Kick Ass, Super features over the top violence for satirical purposes, but embraces brute reality over the gloss of typical action hero comic movies like Kick Ass. There are no Kung Fu blocks, running slides under peoples legs to jumping flips, flying through windows while gracefully ziplining, or any number of beautifully choreographed typical hollywood action verbiage. Instead it is Rainn Wilson in a badly made red costume clumsily caving in people's heads with a wrench. Action is often close quarters and forces the viewer to see the counterpoint to Rainn's character motivation. Rather than becoming invested in his revenge fantasy we are alienated enough at these moments to be skeptics about his plight. In those moments the worst of brutal juvenile fantasy is realized and we are forced to reflect for a moment on our own attraction to the much more sanitized and glossier version of this violence that we consume all the time. James Gunn's brilliance really shines in the fact that despite these really alienating things he has Rainn Wilson do he is able to balance him off with wonderful moments of tenderness and humanity in a really refreshing combination of brilliant subtlety (which is surprising since this is a movie about a guy who hits people in the fucking skull with a wrench). In a sense Rainn's character becomes a paradoxical receptacle for the best and worst attributes of superhero's and humanity. It is like a modern day retelling of Don Quixote where he is both the fool and the genius. Seriously this is a good fucking movie. Watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL57ncw2jr8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL57ncw2jr8
Injury, in addition to being a producer, Lindelof was the writer who was brought in to "fix" the script, because he's regarded as an edgy genius due to Lost, and Ridley Scott was worried that the script was too science fictiony (in the sense of serious science fiction like 2001 Space Odyssey). All of the shallow namedropping, empty ham-fisted attempts at metaphors and symbolism, incomprehensible character decisions, and goofy inexplicably absurd villainry can be attributable to him since it's the same shit we've seen his brain hatching since Lost. In the area of script writing blunders his wonderful contributions to Star Trek Into Darkness AKA The Wrath of Hannibal Cumberpatch Lecter Khan makes Prometheus look like Citizen Kane in comparison. I can't attest how he is as just a producer but it's clear he needs to stay out of the writing room.
To be fair neither Prometheus and Into Darkness are "bad" movies. They are just disappointing ones, salvaged by good directors from in one case a solid script that was ruined in the process of fixing it, and in the second case a script dead on arrival from a lazy process of collecting and rearranging old Star Trek references into a cacophonous symphony of nostalgia and shallowness. They were both pretty to look at and in at least the case of Prometheus you had to respect that Ridley Scott was trying to do something that was fresh and ambitious. He had some interesting themes that would have been better served by a better script. Into Darkness would be totally forgettable had they not verbatim re-shot the ending sequence from The Wrath of Khan. Everything in that movie that was an actual original idea (original in the sense that they didn't copy it line for line from some old Star Trek script) was total shit. Khan's plan to defeat Star Fleet is inexplicable as is the Admiral's plan and motivation for even waking Khan. Spock jr. is written as a brooding angsty teenager, and most character dialogue and decision making seemed to be motivated purely to move the characters from one action sequence to the next rather than to develop relationships and plot immersion. One thing is clear though, JJ Abrams is cut out for the job of directing the next Star Wars movies, because he made this shitty undeserving script watchable.
...but then I really, really liked Into Darkness, almost as much as the first film (which I have watched at least ten times at this point). I don't care who directed it, it was well directed, apart from a weak start I felt. Mainly this is down to the references to the original series though, and the way the characters act - they were mentored very well by the original cast to get them to have the same mannerisms and such - it just really worked for me and both films got my wildest orgasms in approval.
A film I hated though is Elysium. Actually, it wasn't bad, as just an action flick. But as an actual story it just did nothing for me. There was no twist, the fight scenes were unnecessary, it dragged on too long, and really it just felt like an episode of any TV sci-fi drawn out to film length. Utterly predictable ending with nothing unexpected. They set out what was going to happen and it happened.