Harrowing trip into a bleak nuclear winter of the future offers a cautionary tale for today.
John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s widely-praised novel (adapted for the screen by Joe Penhall) presents what may well be one of the bleakest and most terrifying stories ever told on the big screen. THE ROAD follows the harrowing post-apocalyptic journey of a father and son, named simply “Man” and “Boy” (played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, respectively). The nature of the apocalypse is never described (nor does the novel explain it any more clearly than the film), but there is neither vegetation nor animals, and the landscape is covered in grey ash. It’s perpetually cloudy or raining, and bitterly cold. People are filthy and hollow-eyed, with ashen skin and torn fingernails, starving, homeless. The Man and the Boy are traveling on foot, pushing their meager belongings in a cart, heading vaguely south, determined to avoid another northern winter. They’re on foot not only because there is so little fuel and the roads are littered with abandoned cars and wrecked semis, but also because being on foot lets them hide easily, and in this post-disaster landscape, kindness and compassion have vanished as surely as apple blossoms and pizza.
Charlize Theron appears in flashback sequences; she is the “Woman” to Man and Boy, a wife and mother who gives birth the same night that the world turns upside down. After a few years, during which, we must assume, food has become scarce and daily existence has become dangerous, she determines that suicide is the only way out for her family. She says that eventually “they” (referring to the apparently-ubiquitous roving bands of murderous thugs: martial law gone real, real bad) will hunt them down, rape her, rape her son, and then kill and eat all three of them. Learning her husband has onlytwo bullets left, she is furious that this plan can’t work, and walks off into the night, alone, after telling her husband to travel south, as they can’t survive another winter where they are. The Man tearfully begs her to stay, but she refuses, emotionless and resigned to her decision. She clearly doesn’t want to die a victim, and yet it’s almost implausible that she could avoid such a fate. The Man has occasional dreams of her, lit with soft, golden light, full of the warm colors that have been drained out of the world in which he now lives.
For this world is a decidedly brutal one: early on the Man and the Boy meet a band of thugs traveling on a big truck, checking abandoned cars for fuel, searching for food. They try to hide but are discovered (by Garret Dillahunt, one of a number of fine actors in memorable cameos in this two-character story). With the Man’s gun trained on him, the thug offers to bring them along, says they have food, but his cracked, desperate smile and rotted teeth reveal he’s lying. He is the first of a number of bloodthirsty mercenaries the Man and Boy encounter. One terrifying sequence brings them to a seemingly deserted farmhouse that turns out to be a stronghold for a group of ruddy-faced villains who spend their days hunting. The signs are vague but unmistakable in the snowy yard: human skulls on spikes, an iron hook, freshly-split wood, a huge black cooking pot, and a pool of blood in varying shades of red, suggesting a series of slaughters over time.
It seems the primary danger in this cowardly new world is cannibalism, and the Boy understands this only too well; perhaps it’s why he’s quicker than his father to share their food with solitary strangers they meet (including Robert Duvall as an elderly, near-blind man shuffling along in shoes crafted of cardboard and plastic). Despite the Man’s insistence that they’re “the good guys” because they would never eat people, he nevertheless is slow to show compassion to others, believing his “every man for himself” approach is the only thing that will keep them alive. But keep them alive for what? There seems to be no imaginable future for them. Even a fortuitous discovery of an enormous cache of packaged foods doesn’t last. Their clothing is not sufficient to keep them warm; thieves take their survival necessities, and even if they reach the coast, it’s not clear anything will improve.
The Man has made it clear he’ll use his remaining bullet on the Boy to save him from a fate worse than fratricide; and the Boy realizes his father’s wracking cough is a harbinger of his uncertain future, when he’ll have to fend for himself. Of course, the Man is trying to give the Boy survival skills for this inevitability; but distrust and brutality don’t come naturally to a ten-year-old, even one who has been raised in a world as cruel and perilous as this one. THE ROAD suggests that human nature will adapt to anything, even the dissolution of humanity.
The film offers an ending that is perhaps more hopeful and redemptive than audiences should expect. But this brief respite from so much relentless brutality and despair cannot erase THE ROAD’s unforgettable imagery and indelible messages. It’s been said that starvation instills desperate behavior in humans. But the cannibalism of this post-apocalyptic world is not the drastic, apologetic action of a Donner Pass traveler. People in this post-disaster world seem to be steeped in aggressive cruelty and selfishness. Or, perhaps, those who still remain are so, because the compassionate and gentle were sacrificed long ago. Dreary weather, massive destruction and pillaging are nothing compared to the savagery of rape, murder, and cannibalism, and these atrocities pervade McCarthy’s vision of our possible future. If the loss of botanical beauty is heartbreaking, then seeing women and children sodomized and eaten is soul-breaking. It’s hard to see how any spiritual belief system could persist in such a world; but the Man talks of God to his Boy, and also sees his son as a god. Is it that the Boy’s innocence makes him holy? Or that blind faith in a once-powerful, all-forgiving deity is the only flicker of light in an utterly dark existence? When the everyday becomes unbearable, the survivors understandably see the beatific in the banal.
Is THE ROAD’s vision of the future plausible? It might be difficult to find an adult who has not contemplated what might happen were it all to come crashing down on us. Our world is full of nukes and chemical weapons and super-germs. One carefully-planned act of biological warfare would easily decimate the population, and one good natural disaster could shut down the pipeline of food and fuel to the world’s largest cities. We could be screwed almost instantly, and FEMA might well leave us, you’ll pardon the expression, high and dry. Cataclysm comes in many forms, and even in a wealthy, cushy country like the United States, our post 9/11, après-Katrina mindset has made disaster a plausible reality. It flashes through our minds every time we stock up on food for a winter storm, or hoard bottled water and batteries during hurricane season.
I’ve often wondered how our lives might look without the constant crutch of accessible personal technology, and how society would break down if it were taken away. What if we really had to fend for ourselves, forage for food, avoid thugs on a daily basis? Maybe some of us have even wondered what clothing we’d wear to venture out into that endless night, what weapons we’d carry, if any, what we’d do if confronted with our own imminent mortality, our humanity erased by the swift evil that descends in the wake of having our comforts and loved ones whisked away in the blink of an eye. Of course, some people in the world already live like this. THE ROAD is a murky harbinger of our future, but perhaps more urgently, a cautionary tale clearly reflecting our present.
THE ROAD (2009). Directed by John Hillcoat. Screenplay by Joe Penhall, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Michael K. Williams, Garret Dillahunt, Charlize Theron, Bob Jennings.
For many months now I have been looking forward to the release of James Cameron’s AVATAR. But with all the hype, much of it coming from Cameron himself, I was prepared to be mesmerized by the visual display, but to feel let down by the storyline. Thankfully, the visual elements lived up to the hype, and the story exceeded my expectations in a great holiday science fiction/fantasy film experience.
Synopsis
AVATAR is set in the future in space. As the story begins, we are introduced to Jake Sully, a marine who has lost the use of his legs and is confined to a wheelchair. He awakens from the suspended animation of space travel to arrive at the planet-like moon Pandora where he is given the mission of controlling a biological avatar genetically engineered with a combination of human and alien DNA from the Pandoran race of the Na’vi. Earth is in need of new natural resources, and Pandora is teeming with one particularly valuable one. A major corporation has been working with a paramilitary unit to gain the trust of the Na’vi in the hopes of convincing them to move away from the part of the land most rich in the precious metal, and with the clock winding down on the diplomatic efforts, the use of military force to secure the resource is threatening. Sully “drives” his Na’vi avatar and gains the trust of a tribe, at first to provide intelligence data in order to secure the planet’s resources; however, as his time with the Na’vi continues, he begins to sympathize with the race and their way of life. This complicates his military mission and sets the stage for the unfolding drama of the film.
Commentary
As many commentators have noted, the visual elements of AVATAR are impressive. In 1968 viewers were amazed at the realistic depiction of space flight created for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and in 1977 they were awed with STAR WARS’s swashbuckling variation on the theme. Cameron achieves a similar visual wonder with his new system of motion or performance capture, computer-generated animation, and digital imagery. Many previous attempts at generating the human form have been less than impressive, always having a very contrived look and feel to them. Although there have been exceptions, such as FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN, Cameron has taken this further, to the point where audiences forget that with the shift from the scientific and paramilitary compound to the realm of Pandora and the Na’vi, they are actually shifting from watching live action to watching human-like forms created in a computer.
Not only are the Na’vi rendered impressively; they live their lives and tell us their story in a lush fantasy realm of Pandora’s natural beauty. James Cameron and his cinematic team have brought the best of fantasy art’s depictions of alternative worlds to life with imaginative forms of landscapes, plants, and animal life. One minor critique from this reviewer comes in the form of the portions of the planet that have luminescence: although this feature is breathtaking at first, Cameron spends a little too much time on this aspect of Pandora’s landscape – to the point where it almost feels like an obsession with 1970s black light posters.
In terms of the storyline, I was expecting something that would struggle to keep pace with the visual effects, and which might come off more than a little “preachy” in terms of its anti-colonialism. As mentioned in the introduction, the story was better than I had hoped, and although the film does critique the West’s unfortunate history of colonialism, the abuse of indigenous peoples, and the plundering of natural resources, for those not overly sensitive to much of the contemporary angst and self-loathing that is expressed in Western self-critique in popular culture, it does not hit the viewer over the head and fits within the current cultural zeitgeist as the West reassess its historic past in interactions with those of other cultures.
Culture
Some of the more interesting features of AVATAR for this reviewer are its cultural and religious aspects. With the Na’vi, James Cameron has created an entire culture with a language, a way of life, a relationship with the land, and a religion or spirituality. This provides one of the entry ways for critique of the West, when we hear the corporation and the paramilitary organization with whom they are working refer to the Na’vi as savages and primitives who must obviously be backward because they live in trees rather than modern dwellings with all their technological comforts.
The religious beliefs of the Na’vi are belittled by most of those from Earth as well in favor of some kind of secular utilitarianism, with the Na’vi and their planet’s resources used as means to an end, rather than by way of contrast with some kind of monotheism. But Na’vi religious life, and its connection to nature, receives some level of respect from the scientific researchers as might be expected with a film that provides a duality and contrast between the evil corporation and paramilitary and the more benign group of scientists. Much like secular anthropologists who have studied Earth’s indigenous tribes and respected their beliefs even while viewing them as unenlightened and unscientific, the researchers in AVATAR do much the same with the spirituality of the Na’vi, even as they come to reassess the “validity” of these beliefs through their own experiences with the Na’vi and the land.
In regards to Na’vi religion, some commentators have referred to it as pantheism, but this is technically inaccurate. The Na’vi believe that Eywa, the divine “All Mother,” is connected to and in some sense “in” all things, but the “things” of the planet are not identical to Eywa and the All Mother is not the only reality. AVATAR’s religion may be more properly understood then as a form of panentheism and animism, the belief that deity resides within the world, including its animals and plants, but not that deity is the only reality.
An Internet search of “AVATAR and religion” yields a variety of perspectives, including many from those unhappy with the film’s religion. In one sense, it not well received due to the current culture wars between conservatives and progressives, but even so it would appear to fit well within the context of twenty-first century “progressive spirituality,” which meets current needs, according to scholars like Gordon Lynch, such as “the need for a credible religion for the modern age; the need for religion which is truly liberating and beneficial for women; the need to reconnect religion with scientific knowledge; and the need for a spirituality that can respond to our impending ecological crisis.” Religious conservatives on the right chafe at AVATAR’s depictions of deity and nature, but they might also pause to consider that it may have arisen as a response to perceived shortcomings or deficiencies in more traditional forms of Western religiosity.
Avatar Considerations
Finally, a few words need to be said in relation to the title of the film. AVATAR refers to a well known concept in cyberspace wherein a person creates a virtual embodiment of the self that represents them in the digital realm. The term “avatar” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the incarnation of a Hindu god, but in common usage today it refers to our use of virtual forms of embodiment. AVATAR takes the concept of virtual embodiment further than previous treatments of the concept, moving beyond mentally inhabiting digital representations in a computer-generated reality such as THE MATRIX, and beyond the mental control of robotic avatars in SURROGATES, to neurologically inhabiting and “driving” biological entities as the “alien” persons and living their lives through an embodied state.
This unique form of avatar incarnation can lead to interesting personal choices. At one point in AVATAR, Sully states that for him his alternating experiences between his personhood as Sully and his Na’vi identity have switched: who he is as Na’vi seems more real than who he is as Sully. In other words, he comes to prefer and identify more with his avatar than with the identity “driving” the avatar.
There are real world implications for this aspect of AVATAR. When we consider that millions of people inhabit cyberspace and utilize an array of avatars, and that according to Tom Bukowski’s anthropological exploration of Second Life, “[e]mbodiment can be physical, but ‘we are also bodies in a social and cultural sense, and we experience that, too’”, it should come as no surprise that many people struggle with a sense of identity, many times preferring their avatar and the alternative worlds they inhabit to the physical bodies and worlds in which they live. With this in mind, although AVATAR is a science-fiction-fantasy film, it touches on very real questions, as virtual worlds continue to overlap with the non-virtual, whether in the cinema or in cyberspace.
Conclusion
The critical commentary is still coming together for AVATAR, from those who love it and consider it one of the best science fiction films ever made, to those who hate it and consider it to be yet another product of the progressive left in their conflict with cultural conservatism. Beyond these extremes there is much to be appreciated in the film, and it is exciting to speculate upon what Cameron and others will achieve, cinematically and imaginatively, with the digital technology that has been created.
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It’s nice to finally see a Terry Gilliam film on the big screen again. It’s been a long time since the back-to-back box office debacles of BRAZIL (1985) and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988) sent him scurrying to prove that he could turn a profit by working more as a hired gun than an auteur, directing other people’s screenplays or adapting other people’s books instead creating his own original scenarios. The results have been sometimes satisfying (THE FISHER KING and 12 MONKEYS were not only entertaining; they also connected thematically with his own work), sometimes frustrating (FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS caught the ups and downs of a drug-fueled perspective but didn’t necessarily make us care about that perspective), and sometimes disappointing (THE BROTHERS GRIMM feels like an attempt to cram Gilliam’s usual concerns into the format of a commercial Hollywood film, with results that are not only dire but also dull). Good, bad, or indifferent, none of these titles quite qualifies as a genuine “Terry Gilliam Film” despite the possessory credit he managed to maintain on screen. (There was one near-miss: the aborted THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE, with a screenplay co-written by Gilliam, would have been a return to form, but it was felled by numerous disasters, as depicted in the documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA.)
After this long history of frustration and disappointments, the release of THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (which opens today in limited Oscar-qualifying engagements before widening next year) is a moment worth celebrating. This is an authentic Terry Gilliam film, written with long-time collaborator Charles McKeown (who co-scripted BRAZIL and MUNCHAUSEN), which traffics in themes that characterize Gilliam’s best work: It’s about the importance of imagination over pragmatism, about the capacity of fantasy to enrich souls deadened by the weight of too much reality. Or put another way, this is a film that celebrates the all important “Sense of Wonder” that is at the heart of the best cinefantastique.
It would be supremely satisfying, therefore, to announce that THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS is a triumphant return to form for Gilliam; unfortunately, the film represents a return of both the strengths and weaknesses inherent in his work. For all his extolling of the virtues of imagination and wonder, Gilliam often finds it difficult to capture that wonder on screen; the result is a little bit like listening to someone deliver a lecture on the benefits of humor, without being able to actually tell a funny joke. The silent, immobile stage presentation of Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) understandably fails to excite his audience.
Gilliam dramatizes his theme in the opening sequence: In modern day England, outside a night-club frequented by drunken dullards, an ancient traveling sideshow – the titular “Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” – roles out its wares for an unappreciative public. We immediately know that we are supposed identify with Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his traveling troup of performers, including the handsome young Anton (Andrew Garfield), the diminutive Percy (Verne Troyer, Mini-Me in the AUSTIN POWERS movies), and Parnassus’ daughter Valentina (Lily Cole); however, their performance is so dull that one easily understands the derisive reaction it receives. The show consists mostly of Parnassus sitting in an immobile trance, and things only get interesting when one obnoxious club-goer storms the stage and disappears through a mirror that takes him into an alternate reality. Confusion then ensues when Parnassus admonishes his daughter that this is never supposed to happen. (What? Parnassus expects his audiene to take his word for the wonders on the other side of the mirror?)
After this awkward opening, we go into a long stretch filling in the back story. Doctor Parnassus, we learn, is immortal, or at least very long-lived; he has spent decades if not centuries of millenia matching wits in an on-going contest with the devilish Mr. Nick (an excellent Tom Waits). The latest challenge involves who can be the first to save or damn a certain number of souls, with Valentina as the prize. Complicating matters is the fact that the young Valentina, who is about to become of age, yearns to leave behind the wonders of her father’s Imaginarium, in favor of a simple domestic life – one which the smitten Anton would love to bestow upon her, if only she would return his ardent love.
The set-up is rich with possibilities, presenting us with interesting variations on characters seen in previous Gilliam films. The aging Doctor Parnassus, with his tall tales of fantastic adventures, is another version of Baron Munchausen; as embodied by Plummer, he also bears a strong resemblance to the romantic idealist Don Quixote – a semblance further underlined by the presence of Troyer in what is essentially the “Sancho Panza” role – the voice of ironic pragmatism that calls Parnassus back to practical matters that he might overlook from having his head too far in the clouds. Likewise, Parnassus’s daughter Valentina is an older, post-adolescant version of the young girl from MUNCHAUSEN – the latest incarnation of a recurring character in Gilliam’s work, the next generation charged with taking up the baton from the old teller of wild tales. The ancient monastary where Doctor Parnassus first met the devilish Mr. Nick
Unfortunately, the story construction is delivered in the form of leaden exposition lacking any spark of creative life (even flashbacks of the first encounter between Parnassus and Mr. Nick do little to galvanize the tedious first act). The love story between Anton and Valentina is written in generic terms, and the performers, though appealing, are unequal to the tast of making us feel the desire, yearning, and passion that the script has not supplied. Consequently, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS begins to feel abstract and distant, a film about wonder without any actual wonder in it.
Fortunately for all concerned, the troop discovers a body hanging by his neck from a bridge. The not-quite-dead man turns out to be Tony (Heath Ledger), who has no memory of how he came to be in that near-fatal position – although the presence of a small metal tube in his throat, which prevented his wind pipe from being closed by the noose, suggests he escaped a murder attempt. By virtue of the mystery surrounding him, Tony is more interesting than the other characters; he has an ambiguity the others lack. He is also performed by an actor with the skill to take over the screen and breathe some life into the lethargic proceedings. Once Ledger appears, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS almost turns into another movie: What had seemed dry and academic up to this point becomes fun, entertaining, and even, at times, wonderful.
Tony immediately sees what has been obvious to the audience from the opening scene: the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is badly in need of an update for the 21st century. He radically revamps the presentation, easily luring in new customers who are enthralled and beguiled by their brief visits to the wonderland residing behind the magical irror. This leads to several sequences in which Gilliam shows off his patented visual flair for fantasy; although in this case the old hand-made style makes way for modern computer-generated effects, much of the old charm retains intact. The mysterious Tony, played by Heath Ledger in the "real" scenex and by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Collin Farrell in the fantasy scenes
These are also notable because they involve the three other actors as Tony: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. Although THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS should right be viewed as an auteur piece that resides comfortably within the context of of Terry Gilliam’s previous work, it will inevitable be regarded through the prism of the unfortunate circumstance of its creation: Heath Ledger died after completing all of the “reality” scenes, forcing Gilliam to recast Tony. Although certainly unusual, this is not a unique strategy; Luis Bunuel did something similar in THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977), with similar results: namely, making the character more abstract, more of a mystery, someone who presents more than one face to the world, leaving you to wonder which, if any, represents the reality of the identity within.
The result works perfectly on screen. If you happen to be one of the few ticket-buyers unaware of the film’s tragic history, the substition of alternate faces seems integral to the story (Tony enters the Imaginarium with different characters; each new appearance of his conforms to what these other characters want to see). For the majority of viewers, who do know the story behind the making of IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASUS, the sight of the late Ledger’s friends – Depp, Law, and Farrell – filling in for him is not only magical but sadly moving, as they channel some essence of inner character, suggesting an underlying continuity hidden behind their different faces. It is really not fair to judge a film’s achievements based on such a matter of necessity, but these moments really will bring a pang to your heart. In the past, Gilliam has spoken of his need to confront challenges in order to achieve his best results; faced with a seemingly insurmountable one, he managed to find a solution that serves both the film and the memory of its late star, acting as a fitting tribute (although the title card “A Film by Heath Ledger and his Friends” borders on exploiting the actor’s death).
In any case, thanks to Tony’s showmanship, Doctor Parnassus is soon reclaiming the souls of enough customers to edge ahead in his contest with Mr Nick – until complications set in. There are hints that Tony may have been involved in raising money for the poor, but a disreputable air hangs around him – the air of a con man. Valentina sees only the charm; Anton is of course suspicious. The love triangle leads to trouble, and in a rather unusual development, Valentina allows herself to be seduced by the mystery man. Her transformation from virginal innocence to post-coital bliss is one of the more striking images in the film, but it exists in a vacuum virtually without consequences (after its plot function is served, it is simply forgotten, with no effect on the character’s ultimate fate).
Eventually, the truth about Tony is revealed; Valentina rebels against her father; and Doctor Parnassus takes action to rescue Valentina from Tony and/or Mr. Nick, leading to the film’s other unusual element (for Gilliam at least): an ending in which conventional, boring, ordinary life is upheld as the ideal of happiness. The thematics are vaguely askew, perhaps just simply vague. The tryst between Tony and Valentine ignites the sparks lacking in the love story between Anton and Valentina, suggesting some schism between love and passion; it’s one step removed from the suggetion that female sexual satisfaction occurs only in a context of tawdry duplicity. Apparently having learned her lesson, Valentina retreats into a domestic life reminiscent of a sexless ’50s television show.
Regardless of whether the thematic threads can be sorted out in a satisfying way, the latter portions of THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS retain their appeal, rewarding the audience for sitting through the slow set-up. Plummer brings dignity and an air of sadness to the aging Parnassus, and Troyer’s Percy is the perfect foil for the old wizard. Waits is excellent as the unctuous Mr. Nick, sly and insinuating, always insisting that he enjoys the contest with Parnassus for the sport, not for a chance to win his soul. But above it all, the film is a triumph for Ledger. Although the role is no match for his insanely effective turn as the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT, his presence illustrates how a star can illuminate material that is otherwise not as bright as it should be. His presence lights up the film and goes a long way toward eclipsing its imperfections. Thanks to him, Gilliam fans in a forgiving frame of mind can leave the theatre feeling that THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS was almost everything it should have been. THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2009). Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown. Cast: Christopher Plummer, Andrew Garfield, Lily Cole, Verne Troyer, Tom Waits, Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare.
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It’s Christmas Eve, all, so we here at CinefantastiqueOnline.com want to wish you the very best of Christmas holidays and a most pleasant 2010! And in keeping with the jovial spirit of the season, we submit the following question: Does the world need another version of Charles Dickens’ 1843 perennial classic, A CHRISTMAS CAROL? Yep, there be yet another celluloid (and digital, too) incarnation of the beloved tale, entitled DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL (or A CHRISTMAS CAROL: AN IMAX 3D EXPERIENCE, depending on where you see it). The addition of IMAX and 3D may strike a note of fear in the heart of purists though: Has Dickens’ delicate tale been steam-rollered beneath a barage of Hollywood high technology? Read on for the answer…
Just in case you’ve been living on another world or in another dimension, the whole story kinda goes like this:
Seven years hence Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner (and probably only friend) Jacob Marley died and Scrooge has been greedily carrying on by his lonesome ever since. But this Christmas Eve Marley’s pained spirit pays Scrooge a visit to warn him that if he doesn’t change his ways he will suffer Marley’s fate and be forced to wonder eternity in misery and regret. Then Marley informs Scrooge that in order to aid his reclamation, three spirits will be sent to show him. You know them, right? The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come? In the end, does Mr. Scrooge become the penitent man he needs to? Ehhhhhh, could be.
But because you probably know the story as well as you know your own name you may be asking why yet another version? Just how many do we need, anyway? After all, it’s always the same story involving the same characters, right? It’s pretty much engrained in everyone’s head, isn’t it?
Well, I suppose one could argue that those are all valid questions. But then again, couldn’t a fan of the season retort with a simple Why not? And would that person really need logical force behind his or her defense? I mean, isn’t it rather like listening to a singer you like singing their version of a half-a-dozen loved Christmas carols?
In the case of the latter, one might simply say, “Let the folks who want it have it. ‘Tis the season, you know.” But in regard to the former one could point out that this rendition of A CHRISTMAS CAROL offers us the wild & wacky Jim Carrey (HORTON HEARS A WHO, LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS), a new animated take (in ‘state-of-the-art’ CGI, no less)…and 3-D!
In fact, Disney’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL does attempt to make its mark on each of those levels, and perhaps because I’m in the Christmas spirit – and because there is hardly another decent Christmas-themed movie out there right now – I’m going to tell you that it’s a pleasant effort, and you should go ahead and take the family to see it so that all of you may enjoy a relatively nice Christmas event in the theater. Allow me to explain why:
Several of the versions I’ve seen over the years tend to get lost in the classicness of Dickens’ tale; they take themselves a bit too seriously, becoming bogged down in their own form of stodginess, with Ebenezer Scrooge devolved into a heavy-feeling caricature rather than a flesh and blood character. Not all have been so – there is the notable exception of George C. Scott’s 1984 portrayal, and let’s not forget Alastair Sim’s famous 1951 incarnation – but enough have taken this approach to leave an indelible imprint on my mind. For example, one of the relatively recent incarnations stars Patrick Stewart (STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION), a solid thespian, yet the piece felt a tad stilted and heavy; it lacked a sense of holiday spirit, holiday fantasy fun.
Not so with new version directed by Robert Zemeckis’ (POLAR EXPRESS). Jim Carrey’s Scrooge fits in nicely with Mr. Dickens’ description of the character: “The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice ….” The new animated rendition of the old coot – achieved with motion-peformance capture technology – brings this description to life on screen. Marley's ghost may be a bit too scary for the kiddies in this version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Granted, this is another interpretation that descends to the level of caricature here and there, but it does so in the vein of fun. It’s an animated story; therefore, I allow it to indulge a bit more in playful qualities that will keep you generaly entertained (frankly, at a cost of about $200 million you’d better be). However, I should also like ready you in relation to a scene in which Jacob Marley’s ghost falls too much into the horror film category for a Christmas fantasy, to my way of thinking at any rate. There are also times where the film seems a shade more interested in taking us on roller coaster rides at the expensive of a building of character or a deepening of story or generating its own sense of reality, animated or not.
Still, at its heart, this A CHRISTMAS CAROL is a genial telling, which manages to be light and uplifting. Neither is the animation as eerie feeling as it is in POLAR EXPRESS. And its technique – which I was not anticipating with any great gusto – offers an intriguing vision of the story. The color scheme is appealing, as is the lighting design that illuminates Dickens’ Victorian world and places parts of it in shadow. And Alan Silvestri (who is to Zemeckis what John Williams is to Spielberg) delivers a score that adds to the jolly, joyful spirit of the fantasy. In other words, it is not miserly in design or execution.
So in the end, minor reservations aside, I can say to thee, put on thine ole Christmas cap, tuck away thine cynicism, and enjoy yet another version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. And God bless ye, every one.
DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Buena Vista; 2009; 96 min.) Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Produced by Jack Rapke, Steve Starkey, and Robert Zemeckis. Executive produced by Mark L. Rosen. Cinematography by Robert Presley. Production Design by Doug Chiang. Art Direction by Marc Gabbana, Norman Newberry, and Mike Stassi. Special Effects Supervision by Michael Lantieri. Visual Effects Supervision by George Murphy. Music by Alan Silvestri. Edited By Jeremiah O’Driscoll. Casting by Scot Boland, Victoria Burrows, and Nina Gold. Cast: Jim Carrey (in eight parts, no less), Steve Valentine, Daryl Sabara, Sage Ryan, Amber Gainey Meade, Ryan Ochoa, Bobbi Page, Ron Bottitta, Sammi Hanratty, Julian Holloway, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright Penn, Bob Hoskins, and Jacquie Barnbrook. MPAA Rating: PG for scary sequences and images.
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click to purchase It’s not easy being the self-proclaimed King of the World. How do you live up to the grandiosity of your own proclamation, after captaining TITANIC (1997) not only to the top of the all-time box office chart but also to multiple Oscar wins, including Best Picture and Best Director? The simple law of averages, the ebb and flow of life, with its inevitable ups and downs, almost assures beyond doubt that your next film cannot possibly top its predecessor and will, most likely, be perceived as a disappointment.1 If you’re James Cameron, and you’ve tucked away enough money to support yourself for a decade, you take so much time getting your next feature film to the big screen that, when it finally arrives twelve years later, it is virtually a come-back effort. This clever career move allows AVATAR to be judged as it deserves to be – on its own considerable merits, rather than a follow-up to the biggest blockbuster ever made.
AVATAR is an enormously entertaining piece of screen spectacle that goes a long way toward redeeming the somewhat debased concept of a Hollywood blockbuster: It is epic in scale and lavish in production, filled with qualities that can only be purchased with big bucks, and yet it never feels like a hollow money pit. It is loaded conventional commercial elements guaranteed to sell tickets worldwide, yet it does not feel “targeted” in the sense of simply throwing in a sop here or there to a particular demographic, regardless of whether it improves the film as a whole. Its scenario is built around familiar and easily accessible storytelling tropes, yet the film never feels dumbed-down or calculated. And though there may be merchandising tie-ins (including a videogame), AVATAR feels like a self-contained entity with its own internal integrity, not a two-hour-plus commercial.
In short, AVATAR aptly demonstrates the difference between Cameron and, say, Roland Emmerich: both are capable of piecing together the elements required to create a box office blockbuster, but Cameron knows how to make the result look like a seamless whole, conceived and painted on a canvas of its own dimensions, rather than a jig-saw puzzle of bits cut to fit together into a pre-sized frame.
WHITE MAN’S BURDEN
The story focuses on Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former marine who takes the place of his dead brother on a scientific mission on another planet, Pandora. The goal of the mission is to win the hearts and minds of the local population (the Na’vi) by interacting with them through “avatars” – bodies genetically engineered from a combination of human and Na’vi DNA. Jake, being an identical twin, is a perfect match for the avatar that was created (at great expense) for his late brother; also, being new to the mission, he is completely ignorant, which allows Cameron to fill him – and thus the audience – in on the details.
It soon becomes apparent that the Avatar project is a lame duck. Project leader Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) may legitimately want to establish peaceful communication with the Na’vi, but the economic interests funding the project have other priorities, namely mining a mineral (rather goofily called “unobtanium” – a pun so bad you expect it to be explained away as a bad joke by the characters). If Dr. Augustine can get the Na’vi to move out of the way, fine, but the working assumption is that the ultimate solution will be enforced relocation if not outright genocide.
As you can probably guess, the film follows Sully’s path from being a disinterested grunt to being reborn as a native sympathizer with a reverence for the natural wonders of Pandora. It is only here, in the thematic aspects of Sully’s journey, that Cameron flirts with disaster. Success in Hollywood – and the freedom that comes with it – often leads to pretension; it’s as if a filmmaker feels the need to justify huge ticket sales by proving he has something to say. Cameron is certainly no stranger to this syndrome, as the THE ABYSS (1989) showed (even TERMINATOR 2 couldn’t help getting a little preachy, with its talk of men creating evil things like SkyNet because they were incapable of creating life – i.e., giving birth – like a woman). In AVATAR, Cameron once again preaches an ecological theme with little subtlety; fortunately, here the alien setting – and the computerized special effects – help sell his message.
Other critics have already noted the similarity to 1990’s Best Picture DANCES WITH WOLVES (underlined by the casting of Wes Studi as the leader of the Na’vi). AVATAR is another film about a white man who “goes native” and switches sides – a theme also explored in DISTRICT 9, earlier this year. Interestingly, unlike Wikus in DISTRICT 9, Sully does not start out as a racist who hates the alien “other”; he’s just doing his job, gathering information that will help the inevitable military solution go more smoothly, in exchange for a promise of having his legs restored. (We are told that this type of surgery is easily within grasp of medical science but outside the pay range of a working soldier – or in this case, mercenary.)
Among other things, what these films have in common is a tendency to invert the cliche: instead of portraying the “other” (be it an alien or an Indian) as a utterly despicable, they are idealized as utterly righteous. Thus, in AVATAR, the Na’vi (who clearly stand in for Native Americans or any other indigenous people threatened by technologically advanced invaders) may be “primitive” in their use of tools, but they are morally advanced, clearly superior to the humans in every way. Not only are they tree-worshippers motivated by spirituality rather than greed; they don’t suffer from any of the less savory aspects one might expect to see in a small, tight-knit tribal community with a single over-powering belief system. (Although there appear to be gender roles in the leadership, there is little evidence of overt sexism, with women warriors taken for granted. There is also little sign of internal dissent, nor any hint of free-thinkers being persecuted for questioning their leaders, whose pronouncements are basically accepted as if they were the Word of God.)
In other words, once Sully’s mind enters his Avatar body, there is almost literally no reason for him not to join up with the Na’vi. His switch is less a choice than an inevitability, pre-determined by Cameron’s screenplay, which could easily be faulted for the simplicity of its presentation – and in fact has been, in a thoughtful review by Annalee Newitz, titled “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like AVATAR?”
Newitz objects to the familiar scenario: a white man, burdened by guilt, learns the errors of greedy capitalist ways and leads the oppressed racial minority to victory. In her estimation, this is simply a gloss on the old fantasies of colonization:
Sure, Avatar goes a little bit beyond the basic colonizing story. We are told in no uncertain terms that it’s wrong to colonize the lands of native people. Our hero chooses to join the Na’vi rather than abide the racist culture of his own people. But it is nevertheless a story that revisits the same old tropes of colonization. Whites still get to be leaders of the natives – just in a kinder, gentler way than they would have in an old Flash Gordon flick or in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels.
Seen in these terms, AVATAR is guilty as charged. Although Cameron treats corporate greed – as practised by white men – as unambiguously evil, he still focuses on a white male hero who is better at being a Na’vi than the Na’vi themselves and who ultimately saves them when they are incapable of saving themselves.
However, two points are worth making in AVATAR’s defense:
First, the film presents Jake not just as a heroic leader but also as a symbol who inspires the Na’vi to realize what they are capable of. The man himself, to a certain extent, is less important than the way he is perceived. Jake himself realizes that he, alone, is not enough to tip the balances – which is why he hitches a ride on the Great Leonopteryx, a task previously achieved only in legends of Na’vi leaders known by the title Toruk Makto. AVATAR is not saying this proves Jake is the reincarnation of a legendary figure, a hero whose destiny it is to lead the Na’vi to victory; he is still just Jake. He simply takes on the appearance of the mythical hero, and that appearance (rather than the reality) is what makes the difference.
Second, AVATAR is a fantasy. Yes, it is dressed up in science fiction finery, but underneath, it is a fantasy. Unlike films that deal with some semblance of reality – like, say DANCES WITH WOLVES – AVATAR cannot reasonably be criticized for being “unrealistic.” It is under no obligation to present a believable, warts-and-all presentation of the good and bad aspects of primitive tribal life. We may recognize parallels between the Na’vi and Native Americans (even the name suggests a similarity), but the film is violating no truth by presenting an air-glossed view of its aliens.
In fact, one might argue that a large part of the reason for making a film about aliens (instead of one about Indians) is that it allows the filmmaker the latitude to avoid the messy complications and ambiguities of reality. Instead, it can reach for the mythical grandeur that can only by achieved when dealing with larger-than-life archetypes. Part of what makes Sully’s journey so moving is that he is not merely switching sides; he is ascending to a higher order of being, becoming something better than he was. Whether or not this is believable, it is tremendously moving, and Cameron knows how to milk it for the emotional impact that makes AVATAR more than a special effect spectacle or a simple slam-bang action movie – all while serving up as many special effects and as much action as you will see in any other blockbuster.
So, sure, in AVATAR, killing and gutting animals is presented not as a leftover bit of barbarism but as almost a religious rite. As an animal rights activist and a vegetarian, I object to sanctifying this sort of behavior, but as a viewer I see it as part of the film’s fairy tale nature, and let’s be honest – it’s not as if they animals being killed are real – or even look particularly real.
LIVING IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
For all the talk about technological advances, AVATAR’s motion-performance capture and digital effects create the same old glossy sheen we have been seeing for well over a decade, rendering the characters in terms that usually look beautiful but not always believable. This becomes immediately obvious when Jake first awakens in his Avatar form: lying on a bed in the human hospital, he resembles an over-sized cartoon pasted on top of the live action. Fortunately, this has the (perhaps unintended) side effect of removing the story one more step from reality and thus attenuating the questionable aspects of the storyline, which become part of the film’s fantasy world.
To be fair, the effects often do look quite realistic, but usually this happens when the Na’vi are seen blending into their native surroundings. Especially in close-up, with shadier lighting that softens the bright blue of their skin tone, Jake and the Na’vi do look as convincing as any actors in makeup ever did.
The computer-generated imagery assist Cameron in achieving something seldom seen in his previous films: true visual beauty. As a director, his strength has always been the muscular way he presented strong action-packed story lines, using the camera to capture the narrative and the pyrotechnics without ever displaying much in the way of recognizable vision. Admittedly, there were a few flashes in TITANIC (a drowning victim floating in a silent underwater ballet, dress billowing with a beauty that belies the sadness of the image), but in AVATAR, for the first time, Cameron presents a film loaded with breath-taking imagery that overwhelms the senses on an immediate, primal level, regardless of how it advances the plot. The miracle here is that Cameron achieved this pictorial beauty without falling into the trap of letting it overwhelm the story-telling; the balance creates a near perfect piece of audience-pleasing entertainment.
LOVE AND WAR
Part of that balance involves a love story – an element that has been a part of Cameron’s films since THE TERMINATOR (1984). Canny commercial filmmaker that he is, Cameron knows that women will patronize action movies if they are given some emotional anchor; however, he has gotten into trouble in the past when he pushed the love story more into the foreground. THE ABYSS’s death-and-resurrection scene – with Virgil Brigman refusing to give up on the apparently drowned Lindsey Brigman – pushed histrionics to the point of bathos; TRUE LIES combo of marital discord and anti-spy terrorist was a muddled mess. No one thinks TITANIC’s Romeo-and-Juliet storyline was the most well-written cinematic love story, but at least there Cameron had the wisdom to ground it in a real-life disaster that lent the love story a gravitas it otherwise would have lacked.
You always suspected – and dreaded the suspicion – that Cameron was pushing toward the day when he could abandon the action altogether and simply tell a love story. With AVATAR, for the first time, you start to view this possibility with anticipation rather than dread. The romance between Jake and Neytiri (STAR TREK’s Zoe Saldana) is engaging on its own terms, regardless of the anticipated third-act conflict.
But don’t fear, action aficionados; we have not reached that point yet. A large part of the reason AVATAR holds interest is that Cameron continues to abide by the rules of his unwritten contract with the audience. He knows that romantic subplots and thematic concerns can increase audience identification and heighten rooting interest, but he also knows how to use that identification and interest to involve you in the battle scene you know is coming. Sure, it’s heart-warming to see Jake fall for Neytiri; it’s even more fun to imagine right-wing pundits suffering an epidemic of exploding heads as they see their former favorite war-monger2 go all Al Gore on them, but in the end we know that our patience for sitting through the love story and pro-ecology talk will be rewarded with a big bang (well, many big bangs) in the third act.
If there is a weakness here, it is that Cameron seems oblivious to the subject of collateral damage. Yes, we enjoy seeing Jake and his comardes turn the tables on the invaders, and we want to see them destroy the enemy airships, particularly the big one targeting the Tree of Souls (the center of the Na’vi’s spiritual life). Unfortunately, the fact remains that the ship crashes and blows up in a mass of flames in the middle of the Na’vi’s beloved forest – a monumental piece of destruction that is shrugged off without interest. We’re simply supposed to cheer, not stop and think, “But wait a minute – what about all the trees and animals that just got torched down there?”
To his credit, Cameron uses the action to comment on current events. The felling of the Na’vi’s homeland may recall uncomfortable memories of 9/11. More interestingly, the battle between the technologically superior humans and the natives defending their homeland stirs up interesting ideas about the morality – or lack thereof – involved in occupying someone else’s land, without ever specifically referencing Iraq or Afghanistan.
If anything, Cameron does not go far enough in this direction. After the initial battle has been won by the humans, you might expect Jake to conclude that straight-foward conflict is a no-winner and instead encourage the Na’vi to engage in guerrilla tactics, hitting soft targets in night-time raids and causing so much trouble that the greedy capitalists eventually decide it’s not worth their trouble to stay.
That, however, is a long-haul strategy not conducive to a quick, slam-bang finish, so Cameron opts for more of a ZULU DAWN approach, with the primitive local relying on sheer numbers to outweigh their opponents’ technological advantage. (As an added plus to balance the two sides, the planet of Pandora itself seems to chip in, with the local fauna – some of it enormous and quite ferocious joining forces with the Na’vi; as cornball as it sounds, it works like a charm on screen – not only exciting but even tear-jerking.) The David-and-Goliath battle, with viewers rooting for the out-matched little guy fighting off the big, bad invaders, may stretch credibility, but we are so invested in the outcome that we believe it anyway. (It is also amusing to imagine, as I often did while watching the locals defeat the superior forces of the invaders, that Cameron had made the whole film simply to remind us of how ridiculously unconvincing is the final battle between the Ewoks and the Empire in RETURN OF THE JEDI.3)
CONCLUSIONS
With all this thematic quibbling, why does AVATAR work so well? Because in a very real sense, these details do not matter, except as fodder for after-screening discussion. While the film is unspooling on the screen, it holds you under its spell because, whatever his weaknesses as a philosopher, Cameron is a master filmmaker who knows how to manipulate the elements to involve the audience, and once you’re engaged in the story, small flaws become eclipsed by the emotional impact achieved through a combination of engaging characters and exciting action.
Cameron is aided here by strong performances. Worthington initially looks a little bland to play a lead, but this turns out to be a clever gambit; he’s a bit of a blank, an unknown, who grows on us as we get to know him better. Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang give good turns as the insenstive corporate drone and his military enforcer, respectively; so much so that you almost wish Cameron had injected a little ambiguity into them, allowed at least a touch of sympathy. Sigourney Weaver is stalwart as Dr. Augustine; she works through the cliched arc of disliking Jake (the newcomer who has not properly trained for the mission) to respecting him while making it seem natural, not an obligation of the script. (I will continue to object to the Na’vi avatar of Weaver, however, whose thin frame and elongated limbs suggested an awkward teenager with even more awkward facial expressions.) And I must say it is nice to see Joel Moore graduate from the low-budget little-seen horror of HATCHET (2006) to a solid supporting role in a major nationwide release.
James Horner is back on board, providing the score, which is as big and bold as the images require. If the closing credits song suggests a deliberate reprise of TITANIC’s Oscar-winning formula (your ear keeps expecting Celine Dione’s voice to break through), well, at least this is the only time AVATAR falls prey to looking like an imitator that fails to match its enormous predecessor.
James Cameron faced a virtually impossible task: fashioning a follow-up to the biggest motion picture blockbuster of all time. Somehow, he succeeded, on both a critical and commercial level. AVATAR is too riddled with small imperfections to be reckoned a cinematic masterpiece; nevertheless, it is one of the most impressive science fiction films ever made. We may admire its glossy CGI and marvel at Cameron’s ability to beat the apparently unbeatable odds, but these are relatively minor achievements. What’s truly great about AVATAR is not that it’s a career achievement or a technological breakthrough. The real miracle is that we can forget all that baggage and simply enjoy it for the artistry visible on screen. The film's ecological message does not stand in the way of an action-packed third act (in which the concept of collateral damage is ignored). AVATAR (2009). Written and directed by James Cameron. Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi, Laz Alonso. FOOTNOTE:
Cinema history is checkered in this regard. On one hand, there is Robert Benton, who followed up the Best Pic winner KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979) with STILL OF THE NIGHT (1982), a failure in both box office and critical terms. On the other hand, there is Peter Jackson, who followed up LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING (2003) with KING KONG (2005) – a film that made hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide, yet which was still perceived as a disappointment compared to the expectations it had generated.
I’m probably not being quite fair to Cameron here. He’s not truly a war-monger, but despite giving occasional lip-service to anti-violent sentiments (as in T-2), his films portray armed conflict as being the best, quickest, and most effective way to settle a dispute. Even AVATAR, for all its ecological posturing, builds its plot around the basic assumption that negotiation and diplomacy are non-starters, on both sides; the only way to settle things is through battle.
Some may question whether the reference to RETURN OF THE JEDI is intentional, but I suspect it is. AVATAR is loaded with similar references. Besides DANCES WITH WOLVES and JEDI, the Na’vi ride winged creatures that suggest The Dragon Riders of Pern, not to mention DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. The concept of a primitive alien culture whose essence survives death by being absorbed into a plant-like network is lifted from George R. R. Martin’s novelette A Song for Lya. Cameron even lifts from himself; fortunately, he is clever enough to invert the repetitions, so this time we have the hero hanging off a missile on a jet plane rather than the villain as in TRUE LIES, and in the final face-off between an alien and a human in a mechanical exo-skeleton (a la ALIENS), we are rooting for the alien.
When I saw that tagline in the first trailer for PLANET 51, I thought folks could look forward to a nice little family-friendly animated film (and maybe I could get a clever Sci-Fi fix). It looked lively and I was rooting for it to be so.
Okay, so it isn’t all that. The concept is good, but nothing really materializes.
However, as I’ve said on behalf of a few other films, neither is it as bad as some critics have suggested. Then again, maybe I’m just an old softy…. Naw, that can’t be it. I’d say it’s more that I was willing to recognize the positives within it (I’m such a swell, open guy that way). That’s what I’m stickin’ to anyway.
For instance, the animation is more crisp and vibrant in spirit than many efforts from other smaller entities – although the movie was released in the U.S. by Sony’s TriStar Pictures division, its behind-the-scenes creative talent is comprised mainly of Spanish artisans. In fact, PLANET 51 was produced by Ilion Animation Studios and HandMade Films, both based in Spain’s capital (and largest) city of Madrid. This was a mighty interesting aspect of the production to me, and I was looking forward to watching work out of another country from which I don’t see a lot.
I did very much like the way the film moved. It had a blithe, well-paced click to it, and it was all quite colorful with plenty of potential to be entertaining. The concept itself is a likable aspect, too – it’s E.T.: THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL in reverse. Because it’s an animated film, however, it’s sillier – sometimes for good and sometimes not. Without giving away plot specifics, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell, folks: it’s a simple alien-out-of-element concept with a light-hearted twist. In addition, a respected lineup of voiceover talent was employed, most of whom delivered pleasant performances.
With each of these important elements coming together, all of the stars should be aligned, right? Um, not quite. All of the ingredients are there; they’re just not cooked quite right, because no one ever bothered to write a clever “recipe” that would blend them together properly: you know, a script. That all-too-important, pesky little aspect that many filmmakers try to pepper over with big talent, showy visuals and, yes, money. Either that or they don’t know from the outset that they’ve got a weak scenario. I dunno which one of those two was the case with the producers of PLANET 51, but the trouble basically began at the opening of act two and haunted the piece to varying degrees throughout.
I could easily picture PLANET 51’s writer Joe Stillman (SHRECK, SHREK 2, KING OF THE HILL, and even BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD) sitting around and saying to a drinking buddy or two, “Hey, what about doing something like E.T., but we’re the aliens?” Then everybody goes, “Yeah, that’s a great idea! Where do we start?” Then Joe says, “Well, we’ve got this quaint ‘alien’ world where everybody pretty much lives and acts like we would, see? And then this ship lands and this ‘weird’ looking thing – you know, a human – comes out and…well, we’ll figure the rest out as we go.”
Unfortunately, they never did figure out the rest. The film begins just fine as we’re introduced to the world of Planet 51 and its inhabitants. It’s an entertaining and colorful opening resembling our 1950’s white-picket-fence era, and I thought to myself, “Yep, I’m gonna have a lot of fun with this one.” I mean, what’s not to love about teenage ‘aliens’ watching a drive-in movie with a giant “Humaniac” wreaking havoc on their poor little planet?
Then something goes wrong. It occurs not long after the creature from another planet lands and sets out to explore this ‘new world.’ The script runs out of true creative steam, and most of the rest of PLANET 51 feels as though its makers are just trying to fill time before wrapping things up.
One of the elements that struck this big kid most in this little area was the approach to Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) from planet Earth. He’s a kind of a cocky, self-loving sort, which could have been fun, but because of a lack of development this aspect of his character feels a bit simple and forced, never really genuine. The filmmakers don’t strive for their own unique take on astronaut Captain Baker, and it hurts the overall tale. If this main character – the alien with whom the folks from Planet 51 must interact – isn’t well developed or at least more interesting than he turned out to be, there can be quite a bit of stumbling along the way. And so there was with the development of a few other characters and portions of story, too.
Still, I’d say PLANET 51 is worth seeing because its production design and general execution are snappy and fun to watch, and it’s one of the most ambitious animated films to come out of Spain (at a price tag of nearly $70 million, it’s certainly the most expensive). There are also plenty of references and homages that someone of (ahem) my age can generally enjoy. In the end I did admire what the filmmakers were trying to achieve. I just wish their mission had been fully accomplished.
PLANET 51 (Ilion Animation Studios, HandMade Films, TriStar Pictures, 2009; 91 min.) Directed by Jorge Blanco, Marcos Martinez and Javier Abad. Screenplay by Joe Stillman. Produced by Ignacio Pérez Dolset and Guy Collens. Lighting Supervision by Barbara Meyers. Production Design by Julian Muñoz Romero. Art Direction by Fernando Juárez. Visual Effects Supervision by Javier Romero Rodriguez. Music by James Seymour Brett. Edited By Alex Rodriguez. Casting By Ruth Lambert, Karen Lindsay-Stewart, and Robert McGee. Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel, Justin Long, Gary Oldman, Sean William Scott, John Cleese, Freddie Benedict, Alan Marriott, Mathew Horne, James Corden, Lewis, Macleod, Rupert Degas, Rebecca Front, Vincent Marzello, Emma Tate, Pete Atkin, Laurence Bouvard, and Brian Bowles. MPAA Rating: PG for mild sci-fi action and some suggestive humor.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON has to be the most anticipated film of the year, at least by high-school girls. I’ve read the Stephanie Meyer books on which this film and its predecessor, TWILIGHT, were based, and thought they told a great story. The first film, however, left me disappointed:TWILIGHT was not gritty enough, and the actors were not capable of expressing the deep emotions of the characters. The result was nice and charming but could have been much more. As a mother of a teenage daughter, there was no way NEW MOON was going to pass me by, and in any case, I hoped it’d be an improvement. Sadly it lacks even the charm of TWILIGHT, but that’s not to say it’s all bad.
I should start by saying that Pattinson is the most bizarre choice to play Edward! This is supposed to be the most gorgeous man imaginable – too beautiful to be human – and yet Pattinson, who looks fine from the front, has a profile that is stomach-churningly weird! (I have a feeling I’ll be getting hate mail for this!)
As a horror fan, I would prefer these films with a real element of danger in them; they could have – and should have – been at least a little bit scary. Instead, the filmmakers choose to focus almost entirely on the relationship between Bella and Edward, with the ‘vampire thing’ being the modern day version of dating a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. So what we have in New Moon is the second in a series of romances.
Edward is scared for Bella’s safety, knowing that so much as a paper cut has a certain member of his family licking his/her lips. So, with his usual pained expression, he tells Bella ‘This is the last time you’ll ever see me.’ Whilst we know this promise can’t possibly be true, there is a long period of screentime when I almost began to miss that weird looking vampire!
Initially distraught, Bella spends months crying in her room (this kind of obsession is unhealthy – and teenage girls need to know this!). Her father is worried, and threatens to send her home to her mother; Bella wants to stay in Forks, should Edward have a change of heart (although why Edward is so attracted to this clumsy, awkward girl, with no personality, remains a mystery!).
To appease her father Bella makes an effort to hang out with her mates, in particular Jacob. Realising that when she puts herself in danger, she sees crystal clear images of Edward acting like her guardian angel, Bella begins to put herself at risk, pulling increasingly dangerous stunts. Edward, believing one of these stunts has led to the demise of his beautiful Bella, goes insane with sorrow and rushes off on a suicide mission to Italy to reveal himself. The Volturi – the Godfathers of the vampire world – will kill him if he reveals himself for what he is. Bella and Alice are hot on his heels, but can they reach him in time?
Bella’s life has been further complicated by Jacob: he clearly adores Bella, and she definitely has feelings for him. While Edward is absent, Bella is tempted by Jacob; though I found their relationship unconvincing, I’m not surprised she would be interested: he’s beautiful, honest and reliable. Of course Jacob is no ordinary teenager, and it’s not just that he has a body hot enough to make the entire audience gasp the minute they see him – no, he’s a werewolf! Sworn to protect his turf from vampires, but torn because of his love for Bella and her love for Edward!
Man, this is complicated stuff; unfortunately, it is written for the teenage audience and therefore is simplified beyond belief. The film moves so abruptly through time that I am grateful I had read the book; otherwise, I’m sure I would have enjoyed New Moon even less.
Of course, there is no question that New Moon does exactly what was intended: it has teenage girls everywhere arguing about whether they are on Team Edward or Team Jacob! So what is it that makes Twilight so appealing in spite of the fact that it’s poorly acted and nothing near as good as it could be? Well, who doesn’t love the idea of invincible, beautiful vampires living amongst us? What could be sweeter than the thought that one of these divine creatures could fall for us, and maybe even take us with them into their world? What about werewolves who would die to protect us? It’s a nice idea, and certainly for girls, this idea coupled with the eye-candy is enough to keep us on tenterhooks for the next in the series – and once you’ve accepted that the Twilight series is not going to be the dark and sinister gritty tale it could have been, but rather a sweet, teenage romance with a twist, you might actually find yourself enjoying it! TWILIGHT: NEW MOON (2009). Directed by Chris Weitz. Screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephanie Meyer. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch, Justin Chon.
The Blu-ray disc provides a gorgeous transfer and good extras, but the film remains a high-sheen jumble designed for attention-deficit viewers.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s name and image were all over the publicity material for last summer’s G-Force, a manic kid’s film that blends digitally animated rodents with a live-action framework. And, if the film’s near $300 million world-wide gross is any indication, the movie-going populace believes(as Disney’s marketing team obviously do) that the Bruckheimer name is as specific a piece of corporate branding as the Good Housekeeping seal. If you ask a random sampling of Americans to describe a Bruckheimer film, it’s more than likely that you’ll hear dozens of descriptions of exactly the same film – one that might sound a lot like Con Air, or Bad Boys, or National Treasure, or…well, you get the picture – and G-Force is basically that film, scaled down to kid-size.
There’s a temptation to relate the experience of watching this film to a rollercoaster, but we’re hesitant to encourage the out-of-context use of the term for marketing fodder. The comparison is apt, however; the film begins so abruptly – almost in mid stride – that we thought the chapter skip button had been erroneously hit. We meet Ben (Zach Galifianakis, smartly cast for pre-Hangover money), a tech guru with some nebulous attachment to the FBI, giving a mission briefing to one of his operatives, a guinea pig named Darwin (voiced by Sam Rockwell). We later learn (though this information might have been better provided up front) that Ben has invented a device that allows communication between humans and the rodents, and has specially trained a team for intelligence gathering work, including guinea pigs Juarez (Penelope Cruz) and Blaster (Tracy Morgan), mole Speckles (Nicolas Cage) and Mooch the Fly (Dee Bradley Baker). Suspecting electronics mogul Leonard Saber (HRH, the martini-dry Bill Nighy) of masterminding some sort of evil plan utilizing his vast network of computers, Ben sends the self-proclaimed G-Force team on an unsanctioned investigation into the Saber mansion, where Mission: Impossible-style they retrieve what they believe to be the crucial data. Unfortunately, when it’s played for Ben’s FBI superior Kip (Will Arnett, criminally underused), all there appears to be are the specs for a new – and harmless – cappuccino machine. Enraged, Kip orders Ben’s program terminated and has the animals given over for medical experimentation. Ben manages to secret them out of the lab and into a pet store where they meet up with fellow guinea pig Hurley (John Favreau) and Bucky, an irascible hamster. Can the team break out of the confines of the pet store in time to clear their name and restore G-Force to the Bureau? G-Force is the directorial debut film for the improbably named Hoyt Yeatman, a visual effects artist who had worked for Bruckheimer on several features (and who helped craft the genuinely groundbreaking effects in The Abyss). He seems a likeable guy, at least whenever his candle isn’t utterly eclipsed by the Bruckheimer supernova, and with a serviceable story and a smarter script, there’s no telling how well he might have fared. G-Force, however, is a bit of a mess – a high-sheen, expensive, and hugely profitable mess. G-Force was designed from the ground up to be a 3D theatrical experience, and not having caught the film on the big screen, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that this mission was accomplished. There’s scarcely a moment of screentime devoid of some sort of frantic action, as if Bruckheimer were afraid of losing its grip on even the most ADD-addled child in the audience. Were we reviewing the 3D theatrical version, we would certainly take this into account, but Disney (to our knowledge) doesn’t attempt to reproduce the 3D experience at home, and for a near-carnival attraction like G-Force, that’s like reviewing a color film on a black and white television. Almost all filmmaking elements from script to casting to direction, is at the service of the 3D technology, as opposed to Pixar’s Up (2009), which was just the opposite.
There was a golden opportunity here for mega-producer Bruckheimer to poke gentle fun at a genre which all but bears his name, but either the screenwriters were too timid to risk insult or lacked the wit for the job. There are a few gags that register, like a fight with a particularly malevolent cappuccino machine, but most fall flat (at least to this 2D-only reviewer) because there’s almost no connective narrative tissue to bind these scenes together. In the end, G-Force isn’t all that different from the majority of Bruckheimer’s recent output – cinema that makes one feel like they’re watching with a impatient 10 year-old, skipping through every scene without some sort of action element to keep their interest.
And let’s not forget how awesomely ugly these creatures are to look at! I don’t know how far down guinea pigs rank on the list of “furry animals that haven’t been made the action hero of a Hollywood blockbuster yet,” but I’d assume they were near the bottom. With their scraggy buck teeth and indistinct features, we had a hard telling one from another.
That having been said, there certainly are impressive production values on display (the producer’s trademark look has been faithfully reproduced) and there are some impressive actors in the mix. It’s always fun to watch Bill Nighy, though we wish Galifianakis had more to do (his sections of the gag reel show how funny he could have been if given room to breathe). The voice casting, however, is a major letdown. Only Cage scores as Speckles, as the actor clearly delights in using one of his odder voices (we were reminded of Vampire’s Kiss – but that’s just us). The rest of the cast reads the mostly flat dialog in a deflated, disjointed style. Morgan and Cruz are on hand to contribute “urban” characterizations in a typically crass attempt by Disney to pull in money from all available revenue streams (watching their scenes is like staring at a Colt 45 billboard). Rockwell tries, but, like the other actors, seems to be working in a vacuum, and is unable to stitch a silk purse out of the material.
Those who do feel compelled to pick up the film certainly won’t be disappointed by the presentation. As with most of their animation films, the set we received for review contained a Blu-Ray disc, a standard-def DVD, and a 3rd disc holding a digital copy of the film. The 1080p image of the BD is as gorgeous as you’d expect, with rich, deep colors and inky blacks. However, the area in which we expected to notice quality right away – the digital rendering of the guinea pigs – left us rather cold (though this is the fault of the film’s effects rather than the quality of the disc).
Extras include being able to watch the film in Cine-Explore mode, a BD-only extra that plays like a supped-up commentary track, featuring interviews, bts footage, conceptual artwork, etc. while the film itself plays inside a smaller window. It’s a quality extra that Disney is getting better and better at putting together. There are two other features exclusive to BD, including a resolve-testing tribute to digital effects in Bruckheimer’s movies, and a featurette on the animation lab. There’s also the aforementioned bloopers, a collection of deleted scenes, and music videos.
Cinematical’s Todd Gilchrist interviews Peter Jackson about adapting THE LOVELY BONES to the big screen. Jackson relates that the thinks Alice Sebold’s novel tells the story in its purest form, and no film adaptation will ever compete with that, so the film had to be something different:
The Lovely Bones is a wonderful puzzle, it’s a terrific book that affects you emotionally, but the book doesn’t have a structure that immediately makes a film obvious in your mind. The book affects you on an emotional level, not a story level as such, and you delve into it and as a filmmaker you figure out a way in which you can tell the story on film as I said at the very beginning, not necessarily the perfect way, and not the way that other people would do it. You take 20 different filmmakers and give them a book like this – any book, really, but especially Lovely Bones – and you’ll have 20 completely different films, which is interesting. So the idea of certainly doing something that was a challenging new topic was absolutely of great interest to us.
Early reviews indicate that many critics feel Jackson and his collaborators on the screenplay were unsuccessful in capturing the heart and soul of the book, offering empty special effects spectacle instead. Over at the New Zealand Herald, Alistair Gray offers up a sampling of reactions, including this from Associated Press reviewer David Germain:
“The spectacle Jackson creates is showmanship, not storytelling, distracting from the mortal drama of regret and heartache he’s trying to tell.”
John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s widely-praised novel (adapted for the screen by Joe Penhall) presents what may well be one of the bleakest and most terrifying stories ever told on the big screen. THE ROAD follows the harrowing post-apocalyptic journey of a father and son, named simply “Man” and “Boy” (played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee, respectively). The nature of the apocalypse is never described (nor does the novel explain it any more clearly than the film), but there is neither vegetation nor animals, and the landscape is covered in grey ash. It’s perpetually cloudy or raining, and bitterly cold. People are filthy and hollow-eyed, with ashen skin and torn fingernails, starving, homeless. The Man and the Boy are traveling on foot, pushing their meager belongings in a cart, heading vaguely south, determined to avoid another northern winter. They’re on foot not only because there is so little fuel and the roads are littered with abandoned cars and wrecked semis, but also because being on foot lets them hide easily, and in this post-disaster landscape, kindness and compassion have vanished as surely as apple blossoms and pizza.
