Thor: Ragnarok Ramble

[Plot spoilers for Thor: Ragnarok. None of the major revelations but if you want to go in completely cold just ignore this one. Good film, though]

First up: judging by the presentation of Hela and Valkyrie the director of this film has some very specific fetishes and I approve of all of them.

On a more serious note I felt this was a very strong movie. I'm of the (mildly unpopular) opinion that the Thor movies are rather the weak link of the MCU: I found the first one a bit bland and the second one had a lot of issues, not least of which was its determination to waste just about every actor who wasn't Hemsworth or Hiddleston. Now, I like Loki as much as the next man (and members of every other gender regardless of orientation, Hiddleston's just that hot) but there was a lot more I felt could be done with that cast. Giving Christopher Ecclestone more lines in English, for a bloody start.

I was worried going in that the film might be biting off more than it could tell. I mean, the trailers were promising a story about Hela attacking Asgard and an adaptation of Planet Hulk. They also had to pay off the cliffhanger to Dark World and resolve the teaser from the end of Doctor Strange. That's a lot of plot but damn me if the movie didn't absolutely deliver.

Yes, its a lot funnier than the previous two even though Thor has probably been the most comedic member of the Avengers. There were a lot of laugh out loud moments in the cinema. Not least of which were the scenes where Anthony Hopkins is obviously loving playing Odin-who-is-secretly-Loki. The man doesn't get enough chances to play comedy since he became a venerable, wise looking old man several years before I was born and I hope people see this and realise there's potential there.

Loki, of course, is a big draw and his actions in this movie make me hope for a permanent face turn in the future. I say that as an unabashed fan of Keiron Gillen and Al Ewing's work on the character and wanting to see Hiddleston play the Agent of Asgard version of the character. The scene, released on YouTube and such as a teaser, between Thor and Loki in the elevator finally discussing their issues, is pitched perfectly and actually rather affecting.

Immigrant Song is actually a fantastic choice for a recurring song in this one, I can't say why but it works amazingly every time its used (and its used a lot). That wasn't just a trailer thing.

As the MCU goes on I begin to wonder if the Avengers films work as well as all that. The first one was a party in celebration of its own existence and the second was really just the first one again but with robots instead of aliens. Seeing as how well Hulk works in this film it might actually be a better approach to just have people turning up in each other's movies than just saving it all for a big team crossover every couple of years. Just a thought.

But, yeah, the Hulk works great here and there's even a scene where Banner and Thor talk super-science because even though Thor is a self-confessed non-scientist he comes from a culture so advanced that “not good at science” translates to “capable of rattling off theoretical physics” by Earth standards. Its also fun to have Thor and trying to bring Hulk down enough to get Banner back because of all the Avengers Thor is the least capable when it comes to emotions and this the funniest to put in a position where he has to be emotionally supportive and caring.

Speaking of Sakaar, Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster is Jeff Goldblum and if he isn't improvising half his lines its because the part was written perfectly for him. The whole set-up of Sakaar and its absolutely perfect live action adaptation of Jack Kirby's art style is a joy to watch, Its nice that Marvel managed something appropriate to the King's hundredth birthday somewhere. Pity it wasn't in an actual comic but there we are, let the Distinguished Competition corner that market.

Pillocks.

Oh, not to say how and why but at bloody last Marvel does something with the fact that Odin, as well as being a white bearded Christian-style paternal god, is also a trickster figure. That is a genuine problem I've always had with the Marvel version of Odin: the fact that he's only fifty percent Odinic. There's also a wonder moment of parallelism between Thor's development and the mythical origins of Odin but, again, can't say how because spoilers.

Cate Blanchett, of course, is amazing as Hela and if he sees this Peter Jackson is going to be kicking himself that he thought shooting a scene in green photographic negative was the best way to portray evil Blanchett. She's also ably assisted by an unexpected (at least to me) Karl Urban.

No Sif, sadly. Not for any great reason, it turns out. They just didn't contact the actress with filming dates soon enough and she was working on something else on another continent.

Still, we get Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and she is glorious. Appropriately for a character who is an independent hero in the comics she clearly has her own storyline and issues coming into the movie, some of which parallel Thor in the first film and come of which don't. If Marvel workshops this character for a while I think she could support her own feature, I really do and I'm not just saying that because she's a gorgeous woman in command of substantial firepower. Valkyrie being bi, incidentally, is entirely a decision of the actress (probably based on researching the character's recent comics history) and not actually something in the plot of the film. I mean, she does what I'm told is known as the “bisexual strut” in the final battle, Wonder Woman-style, but that's genuinely it.

All in all, a strong movie, one of my favourites of the MCU and, I'd argue, the strongest of the Thor movies by far. 

Film Review: Jupiter Ascending

Whatever flaws this film might have I genuinely recommend it for no other reason than I haven't seen design porn this good since The Fifth Element. This is a fantastic looking movie with every design department firing on all cylinders and for that alone it is worth seeing.

Mila Kunis plays Jupiter Jones, a young woman living in the first act of a romantic comedy. She's the daughter of a Russian immigrant (played with matriarchal relish by Maria Doyle Kennedy) working for her family's cleaning business as a maid. She's got the large, well-meaning but mildly unsupportive family; she's a romantic confidante to one of her wealthy clients; and she has a simple yet romantic aim to earn enough to buy a brass telescope like the one her deceased stargazer father owned. There's even a whole astrology theme about how her birth horoscope says she'll meet her one true love. If someone pitched you that set up you'd be confident in predicting where the film was going: she'd meet a man who combined her employer's wealth with her father's romanticism, class-based comedy would ensue and it would all end with them kissing under a starry sky.

Except instead aliens try to kill her at a fertility clinic and she's saved by a genetically engineered human-canine super-soldier called Caine.

This is the central gag of the film: Jupiter is from Romantic Comedy World but Caine drags her into Sweeping Space Opera World and the fun comes from the tension between the two. When it works it works fantastically, like the very Douglas Adams section where Jupiter plays the Arthur Dent role in an extended sketch about labyrinthine bureaucracy guest starring Terry Gilliam. A lot of times, though, the tension that should be animating the story disappears and we're left with Jupiter playing damsel to Caine the space hero.

But, my God, the visuals! One of the space villains has a private army of dragons wearing greatcoats; the spaceships look like flying cathedrals or mansions; Georgian fashion is all the rage in space; and all the space characters have this affected, performative delivery that works wonderfully to distinguish itself from the naturalistic style used by the Earth characters.

There are a lot of big ideas, this being a Wachowskis film, and being a Wachowskis film some of them are well-explored and some of them aren't. The outer space setting hinges on a large yet abstract atrocity that gets plentiful exploration while the smaller but more immediately relatable way in which Jupiter is connected to it remains strangely unexplored even though its the whole reason the powerful Abraxis family are alternately trying to murder, seduce and hoodwink her. There are times when I feel that what the Abraxis' think is happening with Jupiter and what is actually happening with her are completely different things.

So, all in all, a film well worth seeing even if it keeps working on separate levels instead of merging the different levels the way its better set pieces manage. 

Guardians of the Galaxy

Yesterday I read the somewhat surprising statistic that Guardians Of The Galaxy had the third highest grossing opening weekend of the year so far, after Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Transformers: Age Of Extinction. This is both easy to believe and kind of puzzling.

Colour Me Puzzled

Okay, so Marvel Studios' offerings are reliably good and even when I've called one weak (Thor: The Dark World springs to mind) they've been entertaining. There has always been the suspicion, though, that maybe their success is partially because they were presented as a serial. These films are split into phases that culminate in an Avengers film, the first Captain America movie was subtitled The First Avenger to stress this and directly lead into Avengers Assemble. Avengers Assemble was a huge film, Avengers: Age Of Ultron is going to be a huge film and people now know that they “should” watch Iron Man 3, The Winter Soldier and The Dark World to get the full experience.

Guardians Of The Galaxy doesn't have that, in theory. Yes, a recurring MacGuffin introduced in The Dark World makes an appearance, as do characters from Avengers Assemble and Dark World post-credits teasers but neither of these was advertised. What's more, the characters in this film just aren't known in the popular culture. We comic geeks know the Guardians as quirky fan-favourites but your average man on the street? Nothing, I'd bet. Captain America? Pop culture icon, often misunderstood as a character but a famous image. Iron Man and the Hulk have both had cartoons people my age would remember not to mention the well-remembered Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk live-action series. And Thor is, well... a mythological figure practically anyone in the Western world will have at least heard of.

Hell, August isn't even a month usually associated with big openings since most people in the northern hemisphere are too busy enjoying barbecue weather. This is genuinely the first Marvel Studios film in years that has had to sell itself purely on the studio's reputation. The trailers pretty much emphasis three things:

1. It's Marvel Studios, you know you can trust them.

2. It's space opera, maybe you like the genre and did we mention how our parent company has the Star Wars license these days?

3. Raccoon with a chuff-off big gun.

This film was trading on the reputation built up by the Marvel films over the last few years and it totally, totally lives up to that rep.

Come And Get Your Love

Back on topic, let's talk about the soundtrack first because it is a stroke of absolute genius. The initial set-up is that Peter Quill is abducted by aliens as a child in 1986 on the day his mother dies. His only real possession at that moment is a cassette walkman and a mixtape of '60s and '70s hits his mother made for him. We get a classic action movie suiting up scene for the Guardians set to The Runaways' Cherry Bomb, a prison break runs to the lyrics of Escape but not just any old song called “Escape”, its the one better known as “The Pina Colada Song”. Best of all are the opening titles because you think you know what you're getting there:

Peter Quill, now an adult space adventurer in a red leather trenchcoat and techy accoutrements that John Crichton would envy, walks across a desolate alien landscape with ruins in the distance. So far, so space opera, right? Then he takes off his space mask, puts on his earphones and Redbone's Come And Get Your Love starts up. He dances across the screen, disco slides, picks up an alien lizard-rat-thing and uses it as a hair-brush microphone! It is gorgeous.

Every one of these songs accompanies a scene it is completely unsuited to on paper and yet fits perfectly in practice.

Character, Visuals and Spiritual Succession

Star Wars is an obvious influence and not just because a couple of Lucasfilm companies were involved in production and we're blatantly looking at a tech demo for Disney's Episode VII. Guardians Of The Galaxy cleaves to that classic Star Wars formula of switching locations every twenty minutes or so to present you with another set of fantastic visuals and new dangers to fling its character into at high speed. It's not the only influence, though.

Quill himself, as a character, owes a lot to Farscape's John Crichton but he isn't a straight lift. For a start he isn't an entirely modern man thrust into the fantastic, he's grown up in space and is far more adjusted to it than Crichton ever was. Also, Crichton was a character who embodied the One Sane Man trope so he could comment on the absurdities of his world and here Peter Quill is as crazy and sci-fi as everyone else. If the film has a One Sane Man it is, without a doubt, Rocket Raccoon.

No, I'm perfectly serious. Almost every one of Bradley Cooper's lines is comedy gold and half of them are exasperated comments on the other members of the cast. This is clearly a character who lives his life in a constant state of “Oh God, what now?” but we get enough evidence of other emotions that he doesn't seem two-dimensional. Hell, he even has a speech I found emotionally affecting, I was close to tearing up because it frankly touches on issues of bullying that are somewhat close to my heart.

I wasn't actually tearing up, though, that was reserved for a certain moment in the final act with Groot.

Oh yes, and if it seemed to you a waste of time and effort on Marvel's part to employ Vin Diesel to do mo-cap and voice-acting for Groot I assure you it was money well-spent. I've never been a great believer in CGI over physical effects but Rocket and Groot are so well-realised and so well-acted (yes, I am applying the tag of acting to the process that brings Groot to life) I'm confident they'll be just as big breakout characters with the film audience as they were with comic fans.

Talking of big fellas: Dave Bautista, better known to me as The Monster Batista of WWE fame. Of all the characters Drax has changed the most between page and screen: he's no longer an augmented human but an alien from a very literal-minded race who don't understand metaphors, similes or anything of the like. The jokes are obvious and you see almost all of them coming but Bautista plays it so straight and with such conviction its endearing. And again, there's a speech that paints him as more than the 2D brawler he might be assumed to be.

Zoe Saldana rounds out the cast as Gamorra and adding green to the list of colours she's been in space. She's probably the least served by the script, if I'm being honest, as unlike the others her character starts off complex and we don't really get the easy hook for her before we're plunged into her backstory and the complexities of her motivations. None of this is bad, exactly, but the other characters benefit from a more leisurely introduction.

Thrown together they bicker, they talk at cross purposes, they get on each others' tits and, of course, they save the universe. Star Wars, Farscape and Firefly have all used this sort of formula for the simple reason that it works but none of the comparisons exactly matches. Starlord might be the obvious Han Solo analogy with his blaster and imperious female sidekick/boss (it's complicated, in both cases) but Rocket is as much a Han Solo type, especially since he has his own incomprehensible strongman alien friend in Groot. You could also compare Quill to Malcolm Reynolds except that Quill doesn't have even the dying embers of a cause going into the story. Guardians Of The Galaxy cribs from a lot of playbooks but doesn't copy any of them out word-for-word.

A Whole New Galaxy

The trailer promised that after the Avengers films we were getting “A Whole New Galaxy” and that's true: this film sets up the cornerstones of the cosmic Marvel properties so that even if this film had done badly there would be things to work on later. There are so many nods here for the comic fans to smile at: Knowhere makes an appearance, as does the Kyln penal colony, the Nova Corps (more of them, please), the Kree Empire, Benecio del Toro's Collector and even Cosmo the Space Dog in a, sadly, non-speaking role.

Oh, and NO SPOILERS but this film's post-credits teaser is one of the most ridiculous in-jokes I've seen in a film ever. Just remember that Star Wars license Disney now has, *wink wink*.

So, do you have any actual criticisms or are you just geeking out?

In all honesty there are only two flaws I see in the production and those are minor. The first is that there's a romantic subplot that doesn't quite come off but at least it has the decency to be underplayed. It's Starlord and Gamora incidentally, not to disappoint all those Drax/Groot shippers out there, and I don't quite buy the pairing but Saldana and Pratt have decent chemistry so it isn't offensive.

The second is that in a quite crowded film some of the guest actors don't get a chance to stand out. Glenn Close's Nova Prime shine in her every scene but is mostly a functional role and I know I'm biased but Karen Gillan doesn't get nearly enough to do as henchwoman Nebula. Definite sequel fodder there.

We've got a long way to go before the sequel (2017 was mentioned) but I have very high hopes for it. 

Random thoughts on Thor: The Dark World

SPOILER WARNING: Since the film has been out for a while (as evidence by my being 20% of the cinema audience) I don't see any reason to restrain myself.

The Mighty Thor in London

I rather like that the “Midgard” bits of the film are set in London. London does seem to attract the godly type of superhero these days what with Wonder Woman moving there a couple of years ago. The Greenwich Meridian seems to be the centre of the universe, which is a bit odd but rather sweet.

Asgard

The one thing I came out of the first film wanting was to see more of the Nine Realms. We got a lot more Asgard in this film, which makes sense, since the first film was about Thor in Jane's world this time we see her in his. She even meets his mum (who is absolutely hardcore, by the way). Natalie Portman wants out of the series after this point, which I don't blame her for as her character has a lot less to do this time round. Still, it might not be a bad thing to drop Jane here, now she's seen Thor's world there's nowhere else to take her really.

I hope they keep Darcy, though.

How to waste Christopher Ecclestone in one easy step

Christopher Ecclestone is a brilliant actor, I think most people will agree. He has a great deal of charisma, an imposing physical presence and great delivery. However, a lot of his power comes from his voice and so having him speaking elven gibberish for half the film was a mistake, there's no other way to put it.

Hogun the Grinning

They wrote him out because the actor was only available briefly, which I can understand, it was a job to do and it was done as well as could be expected.

Guardians of the Galaxy looks fun

The traditional tease for the next film saw Sif and Volstagg delivering the aether, aka the red Infinity Stone, to the Collector who was Benicio delToro acting bloody odd. He also had a bloody odd bright pink minion lady. The acting choices were jarring but I suppose it'll make sense when we see these characters in context with the film they're actually from.

It also makes sense of Thanos' cameo at the end of Avengers Assemble if the Infinity Gems are on the table for this phase of the films. I wonder if there are any other artefacts beyond the aether and the tesseract that might also be “Infinity Stones”.

Chris Evans' cameo

I loved that bit: Chris Evans playing Loki pretending to be Captain America. “Let's have a bracing conversation about truth!” and “Gee, fella!”. You can see the actor having a ball playing the straight aspects of his character for (louder) laughs than normal.

It's all about Loki

You wouldn't have to follow the comicbook sites to know which character from this film is getting his own comic. With Hogun off the board the other two Warriors Three and Lady Sif got a bit sidelined in favour of Loki. Ray Stevenson got some good lines as Vostagg but it really was all about Loki. Which is no bad thing, Tom Hiddlestone plays a great anti-hero/villain and his imprisonment in the earlier half of the film gave him a chance to really convey the character's psychology in ways his previous two turns didn't.

And that ending was a great tease for the next film whenever it's due to come out. 2016 I assume.

Coming soon...

The trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier looked amazing. They seem to be going to a Captain America vs. SHIELD idea. 47 Ronin seems interesting but I hope there's more reason for Keanu Reeves' headlining role than Hollywood not being able to handle non-white leading men even in a film clearly about an Asian fantasy world (I did actually think it was the second Last Airbender movie when the trailer started).