Rebel Moon Part Two: Not terrible. Its worse.

Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver (2024), Dir. Zack Snyder, 122 mins, Netflix

This was so bad. The bar was set pretty low after suffering through Rebel Moon Part One, but all the same, it still managed to disappoint.  The scary thing is, I really don’t think Zack Snyder can see it. He’s so out of touch with film-making reality, lost in his Snyder-verse of what makes a decent film, that he just cannot see it. There’s something genuinely tragic about that. This is a guy with considerable visual talent, but my goodness his flaws are like a gaping maw, swallowing his career up.

I liked his Dawn of the Dead remake more than I expected, and 300 was a pretty decent stab at converting a Frank Miller graphic novel to film, and I will always defend his Watchmen (even if Alan Moore won’t)  as one of those unfilmable projects that somehow worked out. But after that, its been a long slow slope of style over substance finally crashing into the rank cesspool that is the Rebel Moon project. It’s not like we couldn’t see its coming- Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League… they were all films with isolated moments of visual brilliance, moments of Pure Cinema, increasingly dragged down by abysmal plotting, cardboard characterisation and risible dialogue, steadily becoming more and more banal almost to the point of sheer lunacy. There is something increasingly juvenile, perhaps bordering on infantile, in how narrative functions in these films which curiously corresponds with his vociferous fanbase of teen nerds who refuse to grow up.

Nobody can really match him for his visual flair in transferring the energy of comicbook panels to the silver screen, so vividly managed in 300 that it has shaped -and limited- his career ever since. His slo-mo is the equivalent of Tarantino’s penchant for littering his own films with bad language, its become shorthand for his directorial method (but at least Tarantino can write, for all his own faults, his films at least make sense). But comics are dumb, (largely) made for kids- or at least kids who would later grow up and start reading proper books. There is a reason why, back in the 1970s, there was huge disbelief and media attention when the Salkind’s bet a fortune on making a big-budget, serious motion picture based on that old Superman comicbook. Comics were for kids, films were for adults. At least, that’s how it used to be. Has it gone full circle now, are the comics for the adults and the films for the kids?

Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver is so stupid, so badly written, that even the world’s finest actors couldn’t save its dialogue or plot- and this film’s actors are NOT the world’s finest actors. They are clearly not helped by Snyder’s direction, either, which I suspect primarily involved stand here, pose like this and frown, and repeat, etc. Even the action is boring and badly staged, and that’s usually Snyder’s prime selling point- here the endlessly repetitive slo-mo doesn’t intensify anything, instead it constantly veers into parody.  This film could be given a laugh track and it would probably work as some sit-com piss-take of Star Wars. I was watching it appalled at just how lazily it telegraphs everything, how badly it is paced and edited and how it is riddled with plot holes like the craters on the moon.

Basically, its a lesson in how not to make a movie, but more importantly, maybe its the film that wakes up Netflix and other streamers to how Hollywood creatives are taking them for a ride. Quality should mean something, it shouldn’t just be content for content’s sake, and the creatives should be taken to task for taking the piss like this. If this film crashed and burned at the box-office with huge noise and attention, instead of just disappearing on a streamer, it would likely derail Snyder’s career. Instead I guess he’ll just carry on as usual, and we’ll get more of the same.

Tales That Witness Madness: Hard to forgive

Tales That Witness Madness (1973), Dir. Freddie Francis, 90 mins, Talking Pictures TV (SD)

It was the cast that made a fool of me, suckered me in. Its an old film gambit that invariably works, and why some actors were paid well and always got work- past glories lending their casting some weight to undeserving movies. You’d think I’d learn by now. But I saw Kim Novak, Jack Hawkins, Donald Pleasence, Joan Collins and Michael Petrovitch in the cast and thought that it might be worth a watch… well, lets just say that this film is hardly the finest cinematic hour for any of them. The hard truth is, while some of us film fans like to think of film as an important art and craft with historical worth, for most of the folks in the business its just a pay cheque to keep the wolves from the door. Quality might even be accidental; I wonder if any of the thespians etc behind this film later looked back on it and thought, “that was my new car I bought back in 1974” or “well that paid for the swimming pool extension that year” and nothing more than  that. Is that, after all, all that films are?

The only slight plus is the irony of as wooden an actress as Joan Collins playing a wife competing with a dead tree for her husband’s affections… and losing. Its like some cruel microcosm of her career.

Mind, often even bad old movies have some worth to them, maybe some element of fun. Not so here with this frankly excretable horror feature from 1973.  Watching it, I wondered what people thought, actually paying hard-earned cash back then to watch rubbish like this in town cinemas. Maybe they expected less from movies; this film is terribly, nonsensically written, poorly cast, edited, directed, a stinker of the first order. I don’t know what the shooting schedule was like for films like this back then, but what, maybe two weeks, maybe? It looks like it was made by people tired of making movies,

Tales That Witness Madness is one of those portmanteau horror films that were popular back then, telling three of four short stories tied together by some over-arching narrative. In this case, its Dr. Tremayne (Donald Pleasence) working in an asylum recounting to his  summoned colleague Nicholas (Jack Hawkins) the case histories of four patients whose cases he has brilliantly ‘solved’. I don’t know if I actually fell asleep and missed something at the end, but I stuck with the film for just two reasons – a) to see what Kim Novak was doing in it (the buggers knew what they were doing, holding her segment till last) and b) to see what this cunning ‘solution’ actually was, that was the reason for the tales, hoping for some kind of clever twist. But as might have been expected, there’s no such genuine explanation, only a nonsensical cop-out in which Nicholas somehow gets attacked by the suddenly no-longer-invisible tiger from the first story. Its so stupid, I’m surprised the bar for what amounted to releasable films was so low back then- no wonder the industry was in dire trouble, it was hardly competing with television with dross such as this. Maybe audiences were more forgiving, too?

Civil War: Nobody wins

Civil War (2024) Dir. Alex Garland, 109 mins, Cinema

Not wholly convincing, perhaps, but nonetheless a pretty powerful piece of film-making, Alex Garland’s Civil War… well, it seems to have antagonised the extreme sides of the political divide if only because it tries so hard NOT to.  Some will argue its a weakness of the film that it doesn’t fall on either of the political sides wholeheartedly, for instance doubling-down on the President being some crazy far-right politician as some kind of hate figure and eulogising the Western Front forces as liberal saviours, or  maybe going into deep detail regards the two factions and what led to the war.  Things are kept deliberately vague- we are simply told that the sitting President is on his third term (breaking the historical two-term limit) and that he disbanded the FBI. We aren’t told there is any dubiety regards the previous Election results, or what political party he represents. We just know that a number of States seceded from the Union in protest at the third term and the Presidents presumably dictatorial decision-making, sparking (another) American Civil War.

I don’t think Garland could ever win, and commend his restraint on specifics and not baiting either side  (Republicans or Democrats) in what is already proving to a be a contentious election year (I can’t decide if the film is ill-timed or  is perfectly/cynically timed for boffo Box Office) – its easy to imagine how incendiary this film could have been, and that wouldn’t have helped anybody with how things are. Can you imagine if some gun-happy redneck went into a cinema shooting patrons because of some perceived slight on ‘his’ United States? Maybe it is a pity this film couldn’t have been a rampantly bold Oliver Stone kind of movie that deliberately provokes viewers, but I think that just reflects the time we are living in.

As I have noted, some factions are nonetheless angered by that restraint, perceived as ‘chickening out’ of making a stand on either side. The film is ‘seen’ from the viewpoint of press photographers/ journalists documenting the final days of the war as Western Front forces, contrary to the Presidents own confident speeches predicting victory, close in on Washington DC. This viewpoint is largely impartial, and while I think its clear the President has over-stood his authority and is responsible for splitting his own country from within, the press don’t seem to comment upon it too much (“Once you start asking those questions you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record so other people ask.” which I suppose is the mandate for the film).

Their attention is wholly upon the gig- getting to Washington in a race against time for, somehow, one last interview with the President before it all comes falling down. The film takes an episodic form documenting their road-trip across from New York and the broken America they pass through.

The film is a confident, coldly efficient work, pretty well-made considering its fairly low budget (although admittedly large for an indie like A24); there is a surprising sense of large-scale and reality to the brutal repercussions on American society.  If the film has a weak point, I think its the writing of some of the characters- particularly Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young wannabe press photographer who hitches a ride. She’s clearly supposed to represent our own befuddled viewpoint and general bemusement at what’s going on, a coming-of-age thing, but the part is weakly written, far too obvious. I’d have much preferred to have had more monologues from Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) offering some life-worn observation of the lost America he grew up in and the shit show it has become. What does Jessie know or understand, or have to offer the audience?

The central protagonist is Lee (Kirstin Dunst) who is a partly pragmatic, partly still-ambitious veteran photographer on one last big scoop who reluctantly becomes a mentor to Jessie. She’s seen things in her career that haunts her and one gets the impression this is one job too many- but she doesn’t really externalise that, the psyche shattered by seeing too often the worst of humanity. Maybe that’s the problem with the film skirting  taking a side, avoiding offending either Republican or Democrat audiences. The irony is that the film is stolen completely by Jesse Plemons, chillingly playing a solder who threatens the main characters- its pretty certain whose side he’s on (with a mass grave behind him filled with -presumably- the wrong kind of Americans).

For my part, I was appalled, fascinated and horrified at seeing Americans shooting Americans the way this film depicts, there is a tragedy to it all that, as an outsider from the UK, I found quite shocking. I suppose it could have been more horrific, more nightmarish, more polarising- but I suppose that’s left for some other movie.  I still think this proves a worthy effort.

Road House: an in-joke that sailed over my head

Road House (2024), Dir. Doug Liman, 121 mins, Amazon Prime,

I vaguely recall seeing the original (Patrick Swayze) Road House, but it was back in the VHS rental days over thirty years ago so can’t really remember anything of it – didn’t leave much of an impression with me to be honest, but I know its well-regarded by fans.

This new Road House though, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, well, I can’t imagine this one getting much of a fanbase, other than for connoisseurs  of appalling, so-bad-its-really-quite-good films but with this film that’s such a low benchmark…. I mean,  far as I’m concerned, its just plain bad and should be avoided, but other people’s mileage may vary.  Its just so lazy, formulaic, everything so telegraphed… is ‘violent comfort food’ a thing? That’s really all this has going for it, really- a lot of the old ultra violence, as Alex and his droogs might say (I guess they’d be fans of stuff like this). But even that is taken to ridiculous extremes, another one of those films where the action choreography leaves real-world physics behind in favour of Marvel comicbook nonsense.

Jake Gyllenhaal, the best Peter Parker/ Spider-Man we never had, is really pretty good to be fair- his performance likely the only plus this nonsense has going for it, but even that is horribly outweighed by Conor McGregor, who can’t even walk normally never mind act or speak dialogue. McGregor’s performance is so peculiar its almost a work of art- its almost terrifying, how bad it is. Physically he’s really imposing but its utterly diluted by what amounts to a bizarro caricature of a hulking brute, and his voice…. if ever someone needed a dialogue coach or maybe even a dub, its him- even the earliest example of Schwarzenegger’s worse accent was never as mystifying. But maybe I’m being unfair and its entirely intentional- you can’t really tell in films like this. There’s so much wrong and implausible one has to wonder if its actually deliberate, an in-joke that sailed over my head.

In the film, Gyllenhaal is a reluctant fighter who is haunted by something in his past, eventually gleaned through nightmare flashbacks, in which during a UFC fight he killed his opponent when overcome by rage. So through the film he always ties to rein himself in (while beating the shit out of everybody) to ensure things don’t get out of hand. I swear to God I kept on expecting him to cross the fourth wall and go all Bill Bixby saying  “don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” It was bordering on that kind of camp, what with McGregor clowning around.  The film doesn’t cross that line, but maybe it should.

I don’t know what in the world anyone was thinking, making this film, its so nuts. I thought The Beekeeper would be the worst action film inflicted upon me this year, but hey, we’ve got a contender….

Napoleon: Bland and bonkers

Napoleon (2023), Dir. Ridley Scott,  158 mins, Apple TV

Its inevitable that one compares Napoleon to Ridley Scott’s first film, The Duellists from 1977, because it shares the same period setting. It’s fascinating, really- The Duellists is a beautiful film that feels like an artefact of some other era,  a grim, subdued arthouse film with a gorgeous, hypnotic score by Howard Blake soaring over one of the moodiest, most beautiful closing shots in cinema history. Napoleon, meanwhile, is utterly bonkers.

The Duellists is like some delicate painting executed in minute detail with absolute care using the smallest of brushes, while Napoleon is slapped on its canvas with big sweeping brush strokes in wild abandon. I’m not suggesting the latter is the wrong approach but it does seem symptomatic of Scott’s output of late, cranking out films as if in a race against time. His speed shooting films no matter their complexity or scale is amazing, the very definition of efficiency on-set, it would seem. Doesn’t necessarily translate into accomplished films, though. Its curious to me that the characters in Napoleon feel very modern, whereas in The Duellists the characters all seem of their age, of the Napoleonic period, a little strange, a little alien.

I watched Napoleon once and I’m pretty fine with that, but I occasionally return to The Duellists and I’m always bewitched by its strangeness, there’s something just so interesting about it, its pace, lighting, how it sounds. I wouldn’t suggest it was any more historically accurate- some of the casting is frankly bizarre. But there’s something about The Duellists which calls me back for more viewings, and it remains one of my favourite Ridley Scott films.

Napoleon seems rather disposable in comparison. Maybe a directors cut would improve it- Scott did talk at length about a longer cut which was expected to surface on Apple TV eventually, but that’s all gone quiet of late. Its perhaps foolish to imagine a directors cut would ‘fix’ the film in the way that his Kingdom of Heaven was improved by its own directors cut, but you never know…

nobody needed CGI back in 1977….

Constellation: In either reality, what’s the odds of a second season?

Constellation Season One (2024),  Eight episodes, Apple TV

We seem to be in a renaissance of serious sci-fi on television of late (The Expanse, For All Mankind, Foundation,  Silo, 3 Body Problem) but I have to wonder if something like Constellation might burst that bubble.  I guess you can just try too hard or push things too far for even the geeks, never mind casual/mainstream audiences. The cast in this – Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, James D’Arcy – are excellent and the show, typically of Apple, is of a very high production quality, but it just falls apart in the execution. Maybe it credits the audience with too much patience and intelligence?

For my part, I enjoyed it and guessed the central conceit fairly early on but having said that,  I started to get confused by how it played out; they  (the writers/showrunners) just seem to lose control of it.  Its a tricky thing to pull off – actors playing alternate versions of characters, without the audience initially aware they are seeing alternate realities –  and they don’t manage it, frankly.  I don’t think they sufficiently state the internal logic, set the ground rules, so to speak, to ensure a concrete footing for the audience.  Instead, as the series progresses it unravels and becomes largely nonsensical towards the end. The whole concept of  space travel, Quantum physics and multiple realities is handled well and is intriguing enough to maintain interest, but alas becomes hopelessly muddled by soap opera relationships that irritate rather than engage.

I’m not sure whether it is in the writing or the editing, but something goes awry in the last few episodes. Worst of all,  the ending of this first season commits the unforgivable sin of not just closing this first season with a frustrating cliffhanger -predictable as that is, these days-  but one that frustratingly makes little sense.

Did Gerry Anderson’s 1969 sci-fi flick Doppelganger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) tell pretty much the same story, but better? I rather think it did, and it did so in well under two hours with beginning, middle and end without leaving a conclusion untold.

I suppose if Constellation gets a second season and finishes the story it might save itself with a satisfying and sensical conclusion, but I’m dubious it will even get that second season. I’d love to know how many people actually stuck it out for all eight episodes, and how many of those felt rather betrayed by that last episode’s  cliffhanger – indeed how many would even give a second season a chance? I have to confess to feeling vexed with the format of these prestige shows, running for eight or ten episodes and always relying on teases for second, then third, then maybe fourth, seasons, stretching things out into a long narrative over several years.  Its getting so that I’m wondering if its worth the commitment, especially if the show gets cancelled and that always-teased finale never transpires (so many guilty culprits, like The Expanse, Westworld etc). If individual seasons aren’t wholly satisfying, what is indeed the point?

I also suspect that, however the second season goes, it is quite conceivable that the same story could have been told sufficiently well in just those first eight episodes. Of course that’s just not how these shows are greenlit and made these days, with the cast likely already committed to multiple seasons when they sign on the dotted line. But its surely beholden upon the showrunners, the writers and editors to endure that individual seasons are well-enough structured that they are in themselves satisfying rather than quite as frustrating as this proves to be. Its a bad sign when after eight episodes the credits come up and I’m thinking what the f—-?

True Lies 4K: The ugly truth

James Cameron’s True Lies finally comes to home video in a 4K presentation- but that may not be the truth, it may be a lie. Depends on what 4K means, really… true lies indeed.

There doesn’t seem to be much love out there for True Lies these days (and will probably be even less after this release). The film seems to be widely considered something of a misfire for Schwarzenegger  and Cameron, although I always enjoyed it. I remember watching it back in 1994 knowing nothing about it, and instead of it being the straight action flick that I expected, it turned out to be something of a hoot. To be fair, nuclear-wielding terrorists seem to be an odd subject for a comedy but that’s essentially the b-plot, the main story being one of a spy’s marital strife when his lies catch up with him. The film isn’t perfect- Schwarzenegger seems rather out of his depth (imagine Bill Paxton playing that part instead!) and Cameron’s heart doesn’t really seem to be in it (it was a project brought to him by Schwarzenegger rather than something he instigated himself), but there’s an awful lot of good in the film- especially Jamie Lee Curtis who steals the show from everyone.

But this is another of those Cameron films – like The Abyss, in particular- that has a troubled history on home video beyond the DVD era, in that it hasn’t had one. This is a film that was never released on Blu-ray and looked increasingly unlikely of ever getting a 4K release. Even now, the lack of enthusiasm for the film from the Studio and Cameron seems to have resulted in a lacklustre/disastrous transfer, subjected to all sorts of nefarious A.I. shenanigans by Park Road Post, a New Zealand-based outfit using HAL 9000 by the look of it. The same A.I. tinkering has been inflicted upon Aliens and The Abyss, but for some reason True Lies has fared the worst.

What I suspect -and I may be wide of the mark, its only a suspicion- is that for all the talk of a new 4K scan of the original negative, I think this 4K master is based on a 2K scan done years ago when a Blu-ray release was mooted (and presumably stalled by Cameron, as was The Abyss). My suspicions are based on the fact that The Abyss looks so much better than this, and does seem to have had a new recent 4K scan – if that were also true of True Lies, it would seem reasonable to presume that the result would look very similar if not even better (much of The Abyss being pretty dark, True Lies shot often in bright sunlight). Instead, True Lies looks suspiciously like Park Road Post has up-rezzed a 2K scan to 4K, adding artificial detail and digital artefacts like edges,  and scrubbing out most of any film grain. If they DIDN’T, then something went wrong somewhere. Sometimes the film looks fine, even frustratingly good, while at others it looks almost as ugly as a DVD would.

The Abyss on 4K, while clearly looking processed, nonetheless looks very good indeed – but there’s something wrong with True Lies. Its not an unwatchable disaster by any means but if this thing has indeed had a new 4K scan then there’s something very wrong with that camera negative. I often thought while watching the film that maybe some of the shots had focus problems (happens more often in films than you’d think) and that the A.I. algorithms that Park Road Post are using just couldn’t fathom out how to fix it.  There’s an early shot when the credits are onscreen -text being an optical addition that can cause degradation anyway in the pre-digital days- when a driver pulls up to the security gate and his face looks so out of focus his features drop into smeary DVD territory, its pretty amazing and not something I think I’ve seen on a 4K disc before.  What I would like to know is, why would Cameron put up with that, why would he find that acceptable when he’s been delaying HD releases of these films for years.

I guess we’ll never know. The irony is that some effort has clearly been made for this release- there is a great new 43-minute featurette looking back on True Lies with many of the participants who are still around (its an older film than we’d like to admit when looking in the mirror),  chipping in with interesting observations and anecdotes. There’s many new releases and studio catalogue titles that don’t get features like this anymore, and I really enjoyed it. Its not exactly worth the price of the 4K disc but is a certain consolation.

At least I can watch True Lies though- my old DVD was from the R1-import days, I hadn’t seen the film in maybe fifteen to twenty years, possibly longer, so I had a great time with the film itself. Its been great being able to watch this and The Abyss again; films just aren’t the same as they used to be, these days, albeit I appreciate pink-tinted glasses of nostalgia may have a hand here.

Does anyone think we’ve missed the point of this release? That its some kind of grindhouse edition, approximating the look of my old fleapit ABC cinema in town during the 1980s? Don’t know why Cameron would aim for that, but… strange world.

The Bricklayer: He’s a total brick

The Bricklayer (2023), Dir. Renny Harlin, 110 mins, HD

Its this kind of movie that drives me nuts; its so bland, formulaic and tired. Not helped at all by the unfortunate timing, me feeling a rush of déjà vu having recently watched The Beekeeper.  That film featured a moody, craggy bloke who is a beekeeper who was also a one-man killing machine who used to work for a government agency, and this one features a moody, craggy bloke who is a bricklayer who was also a one-man killing machine who used to work for a government agency. I mean its as tired and lazy as that sounds. I couldn’t believe the similarities or how cynically both films seemed to be aiming at launching franchises, eager to get a slice of that John Wick action pie. Turns out making John Wick films must be trickier than it looks though, because like The Beekeeper, this film completely fumbles choreographing decent fight scenes, inducing utter boredom rather than any tension/excitement (the lesson for today is those John Wick films really are some kind of film-making genius).

Aaron Eckhart is better than this, but I guess he’s at that stage of his career (and, frankly, age) that he’s decided he needs to forget making good movies that challenge his craft and instead get in on some of that profitable action-movie biz that Liam Neeson is in on (or was, as Liam surely seems to be getting too long in the tooth for this kind of action nonsense now).

Anyway. I’m pleased to report that I cannot go into much more detail on this one because I bailed thirty minutes in, pressed that stop button to spare us the misery. It has to be a really, really bad film for me to give up on it, but even I have my limits. Life is too short.

The Abyss 4K: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the 4K

I received my 4K copy of The Abyss a few weeks back. With all the noise regards James Cameron enlisting AI to produce the new 4K masters for his films Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies, I was rather  trepidatious watching it; after all, this was one of my favourite films, certainly my favourite James Cameron film, and having waited so many years for a release of this film on home video…

A little history might help here, because for some of us this is a very special title. The Abyss was released back in 1989, and got home video releases as one might expect, originally on VHS and laserdisc (the former in 4.3 pan and scan, and later in widescreen) and then on non-anamorphic DVD, in early 2000. At the time, the DVD was  pretty much cutting-edge, with the two versions of the film (theatrical and Special Edition) via seamless branching and a massive amount of extras on a second disc. But times move on, and left that DVD far behind, with changing screen technology (we were mostly all watching CRTs back then) and advancing disc formats (Blu-ray and later even that being superseded by 4K), and during all that time, for The Abyss…nothing, nada. My multi-region DVD player with its transformer the size of a brick was consigned to the garage, and I only ever played that 2000 DVD on a cheap player very rarely, if ever, as it looked increasingly horrible as my screens improved- I can only imagine the horror of trying to watch it on a 55″ OLED.

So anyway, I watched the film on this shiny new 4K disc that we aren’t allowed to buy in the UK (that’s another story…) and was immediately relieved to see that The Abyss looks pretty good for a 1989 movie. Actually, it looks maybe TOO good for a 1989 picture- there’s a slightly ‘uncanny valley’ look to the film, like its a modern film shot on digital. Its lost some of the rough, grainy look that the film used to have (albeit a lot of that is likely my recollections of it on VHS). Its a little strange at first but I soon got accustomed to it. Detail and definition is very high- in some respects, this is possibly the best the film has ever looked (but then again, I can well recall the horrible colour-blooming of the reds in the Montana sequence at the beginning of the film and the murky blues of the sub exteriors in the VHS days, so my perspective may differ from many). I thought that on the whole the film looks pretty great on the 4K disc. There’s been some marked colour-timing changes, moving away from the deep blues that dominated the film before… its more of a steely-blue tone veering towards teal but not dominated by it. I know some people are less enthused by the films treatment than I, but I think its pretty strong indeed and am very pleased with it I still have a pinch-me moment when I see the film on my shelf- I mean, this is The Abyss, after all these years.

And the film still holds up. Its always been one of my favourite films, since I saw it in 1989. Its not perfect, but I just like the premise (if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best- in this case The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and how brilliantly its been executed (the underwater sets and filming is just extraordinary, especially today when films so often shoot dry for wet). I thoroughly enjoyed watching the film again, indeed so carried along with it that I stopped being distracted by how it looked just so different to how I remembered, and just enjoyed the film.  The acting (the film has a fantastic three leads) is a joy, the music is fine, the art direction brilliant. The miniature effects work looks as amazing as ever, hardly aged at all (maybe better than some of that CGI in Titanic even?).

Still cringe at some of that dialogue though (never Cameron’s strong point).

Dune: Part Two review gets a part two

I’ve been mulling over Dune: Part Two over the past few weeks- I hesitated over writing this particular post because I’d originally intended to go see the film again but circumstances as usual got in the way of that (and indeed in the way of writing any posts here of late). I suppose I could wait for the film to arrive in our homes but I suspect that its arrival on 4K disc may be later than many hope (some folks are quoting May release dates but that seems a bit early).

The funny thing is, Dune: Part Two has gotten me thinking of Tolkien fans, and Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy. The LOTR films were widely popular and hugely successful, admired by public and critics equally. They are great films, certainly better films than anyone had a right to hope for. I grew up part of that generation that thought that the book was unfilmable, and films such as Willow, Hawk the Slayer and Krull only seemed to prove it.  They may have been enjoyable fantasy films, but they were widely perceived as hardly something to take seriously – and readers did take Tolkien’s book very seriously. But it was a different time, back then in the 1970s and 1980s,  living in a world where we had limits- it feels these days like technology means anything is possible, they could make any book into a film now, the limits have gone even if the skills of the film-makers themselves haven’t scaled up with that tech. But when I was growing up it was clear LOTR just couldn’t be done without editing the book down into a pale shadow of itself- I remember reading in Starburst magazine of John Boorman trying to make it (he would make Excalibur instead) and remember being horrified by Ralph Bakshi’s ghastly animated version that only told half of the story.

Beyond the impossibly complicated logistics of bringing Tolkien’s epic canvas to the screen, there is also the issue of its complex lore- the detail and thought behind the page and woven within it (and all those appendices!) It isn’t ‘just’ a simple good versus evil adventure yarn.  The films may have succeeded beyond most people’s expectations, but Tolkien purists can be very dismissive of them, and I understand that Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, really didn’t like the films at all.  I suppose Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien purists who so disliked the LOTR films are outliers though-  many of the people who had read the book also loved the film, as did millions who had never read the book nor ever would.

For my part, I have always had a strange relationship with the LOTR films- I liked them, was impressed by them artistically and in awe of the sheer audacity of their scale and of them being made back to back. Not only did they make theatrical versions that worked, they even pulled off making extended editions that were arguably superior.  I bought the films on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, have the standard and extended soundtrack editions that came out (even bought the book ABOUT the music that came with yet ANOTHER compact disc). But I never really fell in love with the films, never considered them in any of my top ten lists over the years. Even to me this seemed odd. Yes I enjoy them whenever I watch them, particularly Fellowship of the Ring, which is all sorts of perfect and the best of the three. But I never fell in love with them- admiration , not adoration. They are not bad films, you understand,  I’m not suggesting that at all. Is it because I read the book first and there’s always this other voice in my head, judging the films as adaptation as much as films on their own terms?

Which brings me to Villeneuve’s Dune films. Again, clearly not bad films- they look amazing, and are certainly sincere in adaptation, and Villeneuve is clearly one of the very best directors working today. Considering where Hollywood has been of late with regards its popcorn blockbusters, its amazing how the Dune films have turned out as well as they have.

But I don’t love them. There’s just… something wrong. And I think, like with regards those Tolkien purists, its because I read the book all those years ago and loved it so much. The pictures in my head will always be different to what is on the screen. Sometimes Villeneuve’s images are superior to whatever I imagined, sometimes less so- I think its just that in my head, the book was stranger. The story takes place 20,000 years in the future, a future so far off that all the technology in it seems like magic, and the characters while human are almost as alien as anything in the Star Wars cantina.  In Villeneuve’s Dune, things often seem so… grounded, ordinary, relatable.

Well, of course it has to be relatable, it has to work with mainstream audiences not just hardcore sci-fi nerds who’ve been reading this stuff for decades. Its a decision that Jackson also made with his LOTR films, making buildings, costumes etc look grounded in the Viking-era or Medieval times in terms of ‘look’. Its just that in Villeneuve’s Dune, Arrakis seems so….

Ordinary? That might not be the right word here. But Arrakis does not feel as alien as I think it should (sure, giant sandworms not withstanding). I hoped for bigger space, stranger sounds, alien stars in a night sky of bizarre moons, a sense of somewhere unique and strange, the sheer distance of those 20,000- years and being on some impossibly distant world. The heat- I just never feel sense of the heat. Arrakis is deadly, but it never feels as hot as it purports to be. Dry and dusty, sure, but where’s the sweat, the scorched skin? Its a case of criticizing a film for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. Which is not at all fair and also possibly extremely  pointless.

But both Dune films also remind me of the worst failings of Christopher Nolan; darling of the cinematic firmament as he is, it might seem foolish of me to have something negative to say about Nolan at all.  But as I have noted before, his films always leave me cold and I just have such a similar feeling with the Dune films. I don’t FEEL anything. I don’t feel like I know any of the characters at all, any empathy with Paul or anyone, really, in the Dune films. Its like I’m coolly watching events unfold, and as technically profound as they may be, I just don’t feel involved in any of it. The Harkonnen attack on the Atreides in Part One looks impressive but I don’t feel any of the horror, the terror of it, that I should, and at the end of Part Two I don’t feel a cathartic sense of satisfaction with Paul’s victory, it doesn’t excite me (that last battle is also bloody short and anti climactic, the Fremen suddenly supermen and the Sardaukar suddenly weak and easily beaten). Maybe its Hans Zimmer’s music not working the way it might- most people seem fine with it but its curious that Zimmer composed scores for so many Nolan films too. Its gotten to the point now that Zimmer’s music has become so… generic? Which comes back to that nagging feeling I have that everything looks so ordinary- impressive, sure, but… you know, some of Lynch’s film, for all its own faults, some of its art direction at least looked more strange and unworldly, and the same applies to the music, maybe. I’m not suggesting that Villeneuve’s films needed a rock score or anything, but maybe more something that sounded more strange.  Like how strange Jerry Goldsmith’s score sounded for Alien. How exotic Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner seemed.

Is it a frustration born of knowing about the Butlerian Jihad that the films never refer to, or why there are Mentats, or what they are or what they do, or why there are no A.I. computers, or knowing details of the Spacing Guild and its navigators folding space, their dependence for Spice that drives everything we see happening in the Dune films. Its clear that Villeneuve was avoiding going the ‘info dump’ route that David Lynch felt compelled to in his own Dune film, but I do feel Villeneuve’s film suffers because of it. Again I think back on the LOTR films, and just how masterful and delicate all of the exposition in Fellowship of the Ring really was, how natural it was to the narrative. The sense of a backstory, of a mythology explaining the world we see.

Villeneuve’s Dune films come so close… but they just don’t click properly, not for me. Not quite the masterpiece everyone is telling me it is. Maybe the third one will prove the charm. Or maybe rewatching both Part One and Part Two at home in a few months time, it will finally work for me the way its seems that it does for others.