Ever wonder what happend to the Paul McGann version of Doctor Who? You know, the one who appeared in the 1996 film on Fox TV? Low ratings put that version of the Doctor in limbo, and the franchise remained dormant for years, until the BBC resurrected the iconic Time Lord for a revamped DOCTOR WHO television series in 2004, starring Christopher Eccleston. During the interim, McGann remained the “official” Doctor, in the sense that it was his likeness that appeared on merchandising tie-ins (novelizations, etc), but he never got another shot at playing the character on screen, until now.
THE NIGHT OF THE DOCTOR is a seven-minute short subject, billed as a prequel to THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR, the 50th anniversary special that will screen for one night only in U.S. theatres on November 25, two days after its premiere on British television. In this mini-episode, we finally learn the fate of the Eighth Doctor. We won’t give it away, except to say that, as you can probably guess, it involves a regeneration; John Hurt is involved in some way; and the time frame is during the devastating Dalek war referenced in the Eccleston episodes. This is just an appetizer, of course; but it certainly suggest that THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR will be something spectacular.
Tag: science fiction
The World's End: review
Sitting down after watching the third chapter in the “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” (a.k.a., the Cornetto Trilogy, so named for the brand of ice cream that appears in SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, and now THE WORLD’S END), I would like to write a lengthy, detailed review noting intricate virtues of the triumphant final flavor (mint chocolate chip, for those keeping track). Unfortunately, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg neglected to craft a triumphant film, so I cannot write that review. Far from the crowning conclusion, the third serving of Cornetto melts slowly for 109 minutes, its initial lustre resolving into a gooey, sticky mess on the sidewalk. Yes, technically it’s still mint chocolate chip, but you wouldn’t want to eat it, except to prove your unswerving fealty to the Wright-Pegg tribe.
This time out, Pegg plays Gary King, a middle aged former big fish in a small pond, who laboriously explains the back story in a prologue sequence that turns out to be a monologue at some kind of group therapy session. Gary regrets never finishing the quest he and his friends attempted years ago, to pub-crawl their way through all twelve local establishments in their home town. With nothing else going on in his life, Gary cajoles and badgers his old mates into having a second go. What follows is a fitfully amusing but dramatically trite exploration of middle age, but wait – and you knew this was coming – there’s a twist: the small British town has been taken over by alien robots!
The sci-fi element is intended to put a jolt into the otherwise mundane story (god knows that watching Gary and company work their way through a dozen pubs is not enough to sustain a feature film), and to some extent it does enliven the proceedings. Unfortunately, the alien invasion is also intended to lend a new perspective to Gary’s predicament, forcing him and his friends to realize what’s truly important in life. Well, sort of.
You see, what’s really happening is something else – perhaps not fully intentional, but not entirely accidental, either. Gary, frankly, is a self-centered jerk; although he presents the pub-crawl as a chance for him and his friends to reunite, the exercise really serves only his needs, and everyone else is just along for the ride, because he would feel incomplete without his posse. In his context, the threat of alien invasion does not force a revaluation of Gary’s personal priorities; it serves to reinforce – or at least, eclipse – his personal failings. Along with his friends on screen, we in the audience are supposed to forget about what a louse Gary is, because how important is that when the world’s end is nigh?
Unfortunately for THE WORLD’S END, it is nearly impossible to overlook Gary’s shortcomings, because Pegg nails them so perfectly in his first few minutes of screen time. What he never manages to do – ever – is convey the charm that would coax his friends into following him like trained puppy dogs. Throughout Gary’s interaction with Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine), Peter (Eddie Marsan), and Andy (Nick Frost), we wonder why they ever put up with him, let alone agreed to get back together with him. (He convinces Andy to come along by lying about his mother’s supposed death; Andy is too stupid to see through the obvious deceit, which the film reveals later as if it were a surprise.)
We also find ourselves yearning eagerly for one of Gary’s “friends” to punch him in the nose; when it finally happens in the third act, it is about an hour too late. By this time, whatever flavor the film had has melted away. Gary’s insistence on completing his quest – even after the aliens have snatched two of his friends – is incredible and absurd, but never really funny, and he never has a change of heart or one of those personal growth moments that might make us think there had been a reason for making him the protagonist.
Instead, THE WORLD’S END leads up to cornball conclusion in which the Voice of the “Network” (Bill Nighy) tries to coerce Gary into joining the aliens voluntarily. The aliens turn out to be less interested in violent take-over than a simple merger; they would rather win allies than replace them with Stepford Clones, but they are willing to use force if necessary, because otherwise it would not be so obvious that they were the bad guys – which is necessary in order to make Gary seem like a good guy. In response to the alien’s offer, Gary’s penchant for fucking up everything he touches is provided as a counter-point, as if it were a point of honor – proof of the superiority of the human race. We are supposed to cheer Gary’s individuality – his desire to be free and do what he wants to do* – but he provides such a miserable example of the human race, that it’s easy to see why the aliens thought we needed a little help up the evolutionary ladder. In fact, our final image of Gary sees him starting a bar fight – lethal judging by the weapons on display – over a drink of water, in the post-apocalyptic world that results from the aliens’ departure. Presumably, Wright and Pegg intend this message to be taken with a heavy dose of irony, but they offer no evidence for this onscreen.
In spite of everything that is wrong with THE WORLD’S END (the title is taken from the last pub the boys reach), Pegg and Wright are too talented to his their target completely. The supporting characters are nicely played, engendering whatever sympathy the film evokes. Pierce Brosnan shows up in a bit as a former professor, lending a touch of class that the rest of the proceedings lack: he almost sells you on the idea that the alien invasion is a good thing. The shift from character comedy to sci-fi spoof is handled in a nicely matter of fact way, and Wright is fine with handling the tonal shift. If nothing else, his films are a distinctive change from the usual cookie-cutter approach: AT THE WORLD’S END is not much better than THE WATCH, but at least is is disappointing in a more interesting way.
Wright’s handling of the fight scenes is mildly amusing in a dumb-movie kind of way. Our boys are surprisingly adept at defeating the supposedly intimidating aliens – at least until the the third act arrives and the script realizes it’s time to gin up a crisis, at which point our heroes start loosing or at least have a harder time winning.
THE WORLD’S END exudes the lazy, knock-off aura, examplified by by the appearance of a giant robot – that doesn’t actually do anything interesting – and by the title itself, which is justified in the final reel almost as an afterthought. The film may not, in a literal legal sense, but the equivalent of a “contractual obligation album,” but nine years after SHAUN OF THE DEAD, it certainly feels as if Wright and Pegg are simply delivering the film out of a sense of obligation to their fans, recycling the old motifs with little new inspiration. Once again we have the small English town with the sinister secret (HOT FUZZ), and once again we have Pegg as a man on a mission, which is interrupted by monsters (zombies instead of aliens in SHAUN OF THE DEAD).
The difference is Shaun, unlike Gary, wanted to win back his old girlfriend – a worthier goal than drinking twelve pints at twelve different pubs – and SHAUN OF THE DEAD truly felt like a Working Title romantic-comedy rammed headlong into a zombie apocalypse film, with all of the Working Title virtues intact and augmented by the bizarre context. THE WORLD’S END, on the other hand, has all the virtues of a pub-crawl – if any. Adding robot aliens into the mix does not create some brilliantly original genre hybrid, combining the best fo both. It just gives us a pub-crawl with alien robots.
THE WORLD’S END (August 23, 2013, A Universal Pictures Release of a Working Title Films production). Directed by Edgar Wright. Written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Rated R. 109 minutes. Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan.
[rating=2]
2 out of 5 on the CFQ Review Scale: not recommended, but with some redeeming qualities.
FOOTNOTE:
- Gary’s creedo is provided in voice via an audio clip from THE WILD ANGELS: “We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. … And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we are gonna do. We are gonna have a good time…”
Richard Matheson: He Was Legend
Influential author and screenwriter passes away. Works included I AM LEGEND and WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.
Multiple sources (including io9 and the Guardian Express) are reporting that author Richard Matheson – the man Stephen King cited as the greatest influence on his work – has passed away at the age of 87. The news originated with a Twitter post by his daughter, announcing that her father had passed away after a long illness.
It is quite literally impossible to exaggerate the significance of this news. The world of horror, fantasy, and science fiction has just become smaller, now that one of its major lights has been extinguished. Although Matheson’s heyday as a novelist and screenwriter was decades ago, his work continues to inspire others. The recent hit REEL STEEL (2011), starring Hugh Jackman, was inspired by his work, and Matheson had been shopping his back catalog (over 150 novels, short stories, and screenplays) around to studios, with the plan of bring the material to the screen only with the author’s oversight and approval.
Matheson’s horror, fantasy, and science fiction novels include I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, Bid Time Return, and What Dreams May Come, all of which were adapted into films, usually with the author working on the screenplay. His short stores filled over half a dozen paperback collections; many of them found their way in front of the camera, either for films or television.
Matheson got his break into the feature film business when Universal Pictures sought the rights to film The Shrinking Man, which became THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957). As part of the deal, Matheson insisted that he be allowed to write the adaptation. Although the final version was reworked by Richard Alan Simmons (to get rid of the flashback structure), Matheson received sole credit, and was pleased with the result, except for the ending, which he felt over-stated the point he made in his book, when protagonist Scott Carey shrinks to infinitesimal size but realizes he will not cease to exist because “to Nature there was no zero.” In the movie, the line became, “To God there is no zero. I still exist.”
I’m not sure whether it is on record anywhere, but Matheson’s attitude toward THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN mellowed in his later years. During a question-and-answer session after a screening in Hollywood a few years ago, he dismissed any ill feelings about the ending, saying it was essentially what he wrote. (Matheson may have “got religion” during the interim. His early science fiction novels have a strong existential streak running through them; his later fantasy stories often deal with life after death, particularly What Dreams May Come, which includes a legnthy bibliography of non-fiction source material.
After THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, Matheson went on to a busy career in films, which including adapting numerous other books and stories to the screen for such classic films as THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968, a.k.a. THE DEVIL’S BRIDE), starring Christopher Lee; BURN, WITCH, BURN (1962, a.k.a. NIGHT OF THE EAGLE), based on Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife; and MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961), based on two novels by Jules Verne.
For producer-director Roger Corman, Matheson stretched the work of Edgar Allan Poe to feature length, often expanding the short stories into what were essentially original screenplays: HOUSE OF USHER (1960), THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961), TALES OF TERROR (1962), and THE RAVEN (1963). The latter two added comedy to the horror mix, a formula Matheson attempted again with his original script for THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963), which was directed by Jacques Tourneur (I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE).
For the small screen, Matheson penned numerous episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, including two starring William Shatner (“Nick of Time” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”). He also scripted the STAR TREK episode “The Enemy Within,” which split Captain Kirk into his good and bad selves. His other episodic work includes WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE; HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL; THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR; THE GIRL FROM U.N.CL.E.; LATE NIGHT HORROR; JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN; Rod Serling’s NIGHT GALLERY; CIRCLE OF FEAR; and Steven Spielberg’s AMAZING STORIES.
In the 1970s, Matheson wrote several made-for-television movies, beginning with DUEL, based on his Playboy short story. Directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Dennis Weaver as a driver mercilessly hounded by a big rig truck apparently out to kill him for no reason, the film is a classic thriller.
Matheson then teamed up with producer Dan Curtis, scripting such telefilms as THE NIGHT STALKER, about a vampire in modern day Las Vegas. Other collaborations included THE NIGHT STRANGLER; TRILOGY OF TERROR; and DRACULA (whose lost-love-reincarnation plot greatly influenced Francis Ford Coppola’s BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA).
Later work included TWLIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1982) and JAWS 3-D (1983). Most of his subsequent screen credits (nearly 20 since 1990) are for previously published stories that were adapted into films, such as the big-budget version of I AM LEGEND (2007), starring Will Smith. He also wrote the novels Earthbound (1989) and Now You See It… (the latter adapted from his stage play).
Matheson’s influence on the horror genre is incalculable. Outside of the 1950s science fiction films, horror and monster movies tended to use period settings; the traditional Gothic atmosphere seemed essential to establishing an atmosphere that would make the incredible events believable. However, this also established a distance between the cinematic events and the every day life of the audience. Matheson pioneered the art of placing horror in suburbia – not in a forgotten European castle, but right next door, and sometimes not as far away as that.
In Matheson’s novels, all manner of strange and bizarre things can happen in your very home- such as a daughter disappearing into another dimension in the TWILIGHT ZONE episode “Little Girl Lost.” Even when Matheson did opt for an isolated location, as in Hell House (which became THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE on screen), the setting was contemporary, and there was a patina of scientific verisimilitude that made the horror convincing.
Besides the numerous official adaptations of his work, Matheson’s shadow extends far and wide, reaching all the way to the recent release of WORLD WAR Z. Matheson’s novel I Am Legend (about a world overrun by vampires, leaving only one human alive) provided the inspiration for George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) (which basically turned Matheson’s blood-drinkers into flesh-eaters). Romero’s later DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) expanded the first film’s narrow scope to an apocalyptic scale, suggesting that the walking dead were eclipsing humanity. This became the template for all the zombie apocalypse tales to follow, including not only WORLD WAR Z but also THE WALKING DEAD.
Sadly, the greatness of Matheson’s novel has never been captured in the official film adaptations, which shy away from the existential shock of the ending, in which hero Robert Neville realizes that, in a new world of vampires, he is the outcast; he is the monster:
Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.
[…] To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved ones. […]
Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. […] A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortresses of forever.
I am legend.
His fantasy novels What Dreams May Come and Bid Time Return (the latter adapted in 1980 as SOMEWHERE IN TIME) are marked by a deep commitment to romantic love – which is portrayed as strong enough to outlive time and survive death itself. The films, although earnest and sweet, do not live up to the source material, which in both cases strives to sell the potentially treacly ideas with genuine dramatic conviction. (Even confirmed atheist Harlan Ellison, in his Los Angeles Times review of What Dreams May Come, admitted that Matheson made a damn convincing emotional argument for the afterlife.)
That is the thought which I hold in my mind now, more than the handful of times when I saw him in person, affably answering questions about his work and autographic his books. I imagine him somewhere on the other side, whispering to us (or more probably to his surviving family members, like Robin Williams in the screen version of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME): “I still exist.”
Perhaps that is not quite the epitaph the author deserves. Better to note this profound truth:
For those of us with a Sense of Wonder, Richard Matheson was – and is – Legend.
CFQ Video Review: After Earth
In a belated edition of the Cinefantastique Video Review podcast, Steve Biodrowski dissects AFTER EARTH, the vanity project starring Will Smith and Jaden Smith, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film features one or two brights spots to remind us of Shyamalan’s once formidable talent, but the director over-emphasizes the sentimental aspects of a father-son trying to survive on a hostile planet, without generating any real drama or igniting the action scenes with any excitement.
LARGER VERSION BELOW
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Riddick in IMAX theatres September 6
Universal Pictures releases the next chapter in the Riddick saga, produced by One Race Productions and Radar Pictures. Vin Diesel returns as the titular anti-hero. The supporting cast includes Karl Urban (STAR TREK), Katee Sackhoff (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA), Nolan Gerard Funk, Dave Bautista, and Noah Danby.
David Twohy is back in the director’s chair, working from a script co-written with Oliver Butcher & Stephen Cornwell, based on characters created by Jim and Ken Wheat.
Rated R.
Theatrical Release: September 6, 2013
Trailer #1
Poster
CFQ Video Review: The Purge
A video review of THE PURGE, including film clips and excerpts from the trailer. The film’s premise (an annual 12-hour lawless free-for-all) is incredible, but THE PURGE stands as an effective political parable, earning 3 out of 5 stars on the Cinefantastique Review scale – that is, recommended viewing.
Please note: If you are wondering why the video shows up twice in this post, the second version is necessary in order to make the video show up in Cinefantastique’s podcast feed for iTunes.
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The Purge: review
THE PURGE is a tense thriller with a novel if incredible premise that combines bits of THE STRANGERS, PANIC ROOM, STRAW DOGS, the STAR TREK episode “Return of the Archons,” and Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (or at least an echo of the short story’s underlying concept, as inspired by the William James essay “The Moral Philospher and the Moral Life”). By reconfiguring its old formula – eliminating some elements, adding others – Blumhouse Productions (working in conjunction with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes) has crafted its best film in years, erasing memories of the terminally declining PARANORMAL ACTIVITY sequels and spin-offs. The result may not be perfectly satisfying, but the film earns the overused praise, “thought provoking.”
The usual Blumhouse spooks are gone, but the company’s traditional running time (under 90 minutes) and low-budget setting remains the same: the majority of the action plays out inside a single-family dwelling, a homestead under attack, the family within buffeted by brutal forces that cannot be kept at bay by locked doors. The premise this time is that, nine years from now, the United States is enjoying an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, thanks to the annual “Purge,” a twelve-hour period in which crime, even murder, is legalized, allowing the populace to release its simmering tension and hatred before returning to blissful normality for the rest of the year.
James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is a prime beneficiary of this status quo: he sells security systems to rich clients, who want to avoid being caught up in the Purge’s violence. Business is so good that he and his wife, Mary (Lena Headey) have added an extension to their mansion, incurring the envy of their neighbors. All is not well, however: son Charlie (Max Burkholder) is too young to understand the “necessity” of the Purge, and daughter Zoe (Adelaide Kane) is moody because her father disapproves of her older boyfriend, Henry (Tony Oller). Shortly after James puts the house on lockdown, Charlie raises the defenses to allow entrance by a frightened “Bloody Stranger” (as the character played by Edwin Hodge is referenced in the credits). This draws the attention of a gang led by the Polite Stranger (Rhys Wakefield), whose preturnatural poise masks a murderous desire to Purge his soul by killing the man who has taken refuge inside the Sandin’s home. He offers James a terrible choice: either turn over the Bloody Stranger , or the Polite Stranger and his friends will find a way inside and kill not only their intended victim but the Sandin family as well.
THE PURGE promises a chaotic free-for-all of citywide wilding; what it actually delivers is smaller in scope but bigger in concept: social satire that is sharper, and laced with far more conviction, than THE HUNGER GAMES. The film presents a clearly immoral situation that has been normalized and accepted, thanks to jingoistic patriotism, mixed with a touch of religious fervor. Those who benefit rationalize the Purge’s existence because of its benefits to society – by which, they mean benefits to themselves; those who stay safely locked inside, avoiding the ill-effects of the Purge, show their “support” by placing symbolic flowers outside their houses, as if that somehow forms a bond of solidarity with the less fortunate, who cannot protect themselves.
As drama, THE PURGE is built on an unbelievable premise: do we really accept that the population would let bygones be bygones after seeing loved ones brutally murdered by strangers and even acquaintances who were allowed to go free? Fortunately, credibility is not a problem, because the film works on the level of a parable, a variation on James’ theme that a blissful utopia where millions were happy at the expense of the suffering and torture of some far-off soul would be a “hideous thing.”
In the film, this suffering is inflicted on far more than a single soul, but it is embodied in the form of the Bloodied Stranger, a homeless black man (whose briefly glimpsed dog tags suggest a war veteran) whose plight moves Charlie to a human act of pity, with devastating consequences. For once, James Sandin is confronted with the reality that he has kept at bay, compartmentalized in his mind. At first, he is more than willing to sacrifice this lamb to the gang lurking outside like the zombies in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but his children are unwilling to accept the sacrifice their father is willing to make on their behalf, thus forcing James to rethink his assumptions.
The way this plays out is not always as clear and sharp as it should be. The geography of the Sandin house is never clearly established, which makes the action unclear (things in different rooms seems to be happening at the same time, but no one ever notices tell-tale voices or – more obviously – gunshots). Zoey’s moping catatonia is hardly endearing, and her schoolgirl outfit (skirt, white blouse, and tie) look less like a real uniform than a sexy schoolgirl costume. Last-minute reshooting may have left a few seams showing, with characters disappearing for extended periods: the Bloody Stranger (who clearly will have to have a large role in the film’s resolution) is sidelined far too long, even after James has relented his initial decision to toss him outside; meanwhile, James is given more STRAW DOGS-type action as he defends his home against the invaders. And writer-director james DeMonaco serves up approximately half a dozen variations on a scene that should never appear more than once in any film: a helpless, unarmed audience identification figure, about to be killed, is saved by a gunshot from an off-screen figure.
To its credit, THE PURGE does not lay out a moral to the story in a schematic way, leaving some room for interpretation. Although some characters are clearly bad, our “good guys” are no saints. James and Mary may not participate in the Purge, but they live with it happily – at arm’s length -and make a pretty penny off of it, even if they do not truly deserve their wealth. (One of the film’s sly jokes is that James is a bit of a con-man; his security systems are far from fool-proof, leaving even his own family at risk.) Despite the even-handedness, one suspects that the film is at least partially a jab at the concept of a religious right-wing political ascendancy. Rhys Wakefield’s artificially strained smile of politeness recalls Mitt Romney’s nickname “The Smiler,” and one briefly overheard news commentator suggests that the real purpose of the Purge is to thin society’s ranks of the poor and the unemployed – i.e., the “Takers” so reviled by the Right.
In the end, the good, upstanding folk of the restricted neighborhoods turn out to be at least as blood-thirsty as the supposed criminal underclass; they pretend that their temporarily de-criminalized behavior is a cleansing spiritual act. Clearly, class and racial lines are being crossed in a way that breaks down the “us versus them” mentality behind the Purge. Those who survive are willing to reconsider the system, or at least refuse to abide by its immoral strictures, while the embodiment of that system must finally pay the piper. It’s not a bad moral at all, and it vastly improves on the usual Blumhouse “twist,” in which everybody dies because it’s “unexpected” – regardless of whether that ends the story satisfactorily.
Teenagers expecting to vicariously enjoy a feature length riot in the streets may be disappointed by THE PURGE, but the film does what good speculative fiction should do: it asks, “What if?” THE PURGE may not be absolutely brilliant, but DeMonaco is clever enough to let his intriguing question speak for itself, provoking us to consider our own answers.
THE PURGE (Universal Pictures: June 7, 2013). A Blumhouse and Platinum Dune Production. Produced by Jason Blum and Michael Bay. Written and directed by James DeMonaco. Rated R. 85 minutes. Cast: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis, Tom Yi, Chris Mulkey, Tisha French.
After Earth review
At first glance, it might seem touching that Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith would produce a movie in order to turn their son into a star; after all, what parent does not want a child to follow in his/her footsteps? On closer inspection, however, AFTER EARTH borders on child abuse. Expected to exude macho charisma and dramatic gravitas, poor Jaden Smith (who was actually good in THE KARATE KID) winds up looking like a nervous child who, forced to play baseball by his father, strikes out with the bases loaded, his public humiliation aggravated by unrealistic paternal expectations. Not that Jaden Smith deserves to shoulder the blame: the film intended to serve as his star-vehicle is so badly written and directed that even Will Smith’s prodigious star charisma is dimmed to near invisibility.
There is a brief flash of interest at the very beginning, with a handful of shots cut together to show that Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) has been stranded on an unfamiliar world by the crash of a spaceship. Almost immediately, however, the succinct visual story-telling gives way to a voice-over exposition dump that sets the tone for the rest of the film: Humanity ruined Earth, so they had to move elsewhere, but we encountered aliens who bred monsters called Ursa that hunted us by smelling our fear. (Were we invading the alien’s planet, or were they trying to kick us out of our new home? This is never clarified.) Kitai’s father, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) learned to master fear, making himself invisible to the Ursa – a technique known as ghosting.
With that out of the way, we then embark on a flashback to set up the situation we have already seen. Cypher was on his way to a mission to release an Ursa; he brought estranged Kitai along in the hope of a little father-son bonding. After the crash, their only hope for survival is to secure a rescue beacon located in the tail section of the ship, which broke off and landed miles away.* With Cyper’s legs broken, it falls to Kitai to make the hazardous trek on his own. Unfortunately, he and his father are not quite the only survivors of the crash; the Ursa is out there roaming as well. Kitai, we learn from a later flash back (there are a few of them), was traumatized as a child when he saw his sister killed by an Ursa. Anyone want to guess what the dramatic conclusion of the film will be?
In case you missed the metaphor, AFTER EARTH is not only about living up to daddy’s expectations; it is also about mastering your fear. On screen, this translates to 90 minutes of Kitai sniveling, followed by the obligatory and totally expected final-reel moment when he man’s up, puts on his manly brave face, and bravely battles the Ursa. The sudden metamorphosis to virtual superhero, enhanced with computer-generated action gymnastics, reminds us of how much better this moment worked in THE MATRIX.
For such a simple – but potentially emotional – idea, AFTER EARTH is surprisingly muddled. For some reason, it is not enough that Kitai is emotionally scarred by the sight of his sister’s death; he also suffers from the belief that his father expected him to save her somehow – a ridiculously tall order for a mere toddler, and one that Cypher never contradicts (what a dad!). For some other reason, the adventure play out on Earth, which was supposedly destroyed by pollution and warfare but looks surprisingly verdant, all things considered. (Press notes indicate that a thousand years have passed, but viewers could hardly be blamed for thinking the emigration from Earth took place within living memory of the characters.) Also, we are told that everything on the planet has evolved to kill man, which seems rather extraordinary considering that no human has set foot there in a long time.
Director and co-writer M. Night Shyamalan (whose chance of recapturing his THE SIXTH SENSE glory seems to recede with each new film) emphasizes the sentimental aspects of the father-son relationship, to mawkish effect. He also seems unable to handle the heroics and the suspense convincingly; the film feels like an after-school special in which triumph of the young protagonist is a foregone conclusion. It hardly helps that the climax features Kitai wandering around a mountaintop with the rescue beacon held aloft like a cell phone in a “can you hear me now” commercial.
To be fair, Shymalan is saddled with the vehicle he was handed by Will Smith, which is not only misguided but also misleading. Though the trailer is cut to suggest a father-son adventure, the story is actually contrived to sideline the elder Smith so that Jaden can take center-stage for the majority of the running time, which he spends out in the wild while receiving motivational instructions via radio. With his usual jovial persona well submerged, Will Smith comes across as a stiff; his attempts to emote while stuck in a chair and watching the action from a distance become wearisome rather quickly. With other characters restricted mostly to flashbacks, that leaves little to break the tedium.
The result feels less like a drama than an instructional video: how to survive on an alien planet. And not a particularly inspirational one. “Fear is a choice” – the catchphrase emblazoned on the advertising art – is just not as pithy as, say, “Fear is the mind-killer.”
Technical credits are mostly impressive (Peter Suschitzky’s location photography makes the film look gorgeous), but some of the special effects have a slightly cartoon quality – which might be intentional, considering the overall juvenile tone.
There are one or two brights spots. In particular, there is a glorious eagle (computer-generated) who provides whatever heart the film has, easily upstaging Jaden Smith. For some reason, Shyamalan’s brand of hokum works well with animal characters, whose lack of complex, believable personalities is not an issue. The effectiveness of these moments suggests that AFTER EARTH might have worked better as an animated movie; the stylization of the form could have provided a buffer to help audiences swallow the treacle.
In any case, the old show biz adage about not working with children or animals now needs to be extended to include the phrase “even if the animal is CGI.” It is an amusing irony that, in a film designed to showcase the child, it turns out to be the animal who steals the show.
AFTER EARTH (Sony Pictures Release: May 31, 2013). Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Written by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan, from a story by Will Smith. Rated PG-13. 100 minutes. Cast: Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Sophie Okonedo, Zoe Kravitz, Glenn Morshower, Kristofer Hivju, Sacha Dhawan, Chris Geere.
FOOTNOTE
- Of all things I expected from AFTER EARTH, the least of them was that the plot would essentially reprise the set-up of KING OF THE LOST WORLD (2005), which also had crash survivors tracking down the missing half of their vehicle in order to phone home.
King of the Lost World (2005) review
If you have never heard of KING OF THE LOST WORLD, you’re lucky – or at least you were, until you started reading this review. Sorry about that, but if I had to suffer through watching this movie, the least you can do is suffer the knowledge of the film’s existence. Just be thankful I took the bullet for you.
Anyway, this paradigm of low-budget exploitation proceeds from The Asylum, a company whose rai·sons d’être is the creation of direct-to-video schlock cleverly titled to cash in on high-profile theatrical releases. Thus SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006) begat SNAKES ON A TRAIN (also 2006); even better, The Asylum’s I AM OMEGA (2007) conflated the title of 2007’s I AM LEGEND with its 1971 predecessor, THE OMEGA MAN. Continuing their strategy of expending more creative ingenuity on their titles than their films, The Asylum one-upped their word-splicing technique to create KING OF THE LOST WORLD, a moniker so loaded with potential it leaves you wondering just what, exactly, is being appropriated.
At first glance, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK (1997) looks like a good candidate, but the Asylum usually targets current releases, so perhaps KING KONG (2005) is the true source of “inspiration” – a theory buttressed by the presence of a giant ape on the cover art. But when you pop the disc into your player, the film starts with survivors of an airplane crash realizing they are stranded on an island filled with much mysterioso weirdness, and you realize that the LOST television series is being sourced as much as anything.
The screenplay pretends to be based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World, which is in the public domain and thus grants The Asylum license to riff on (or rip off) films with similar story lines – including the previously mentioned KING KONG. Oh well, what goes around comes around, I guess. Strictly speaking, the only connection between the book and the movie is some character names and the general idea of an isolated, prehistoric world surviving in present day.
Anyway, you’re probably wondering what happens in the movie, and the answer is: not much. We see bits and pieces of the crashed plane but not the whole thing because that would be too expensive. As Challenger, a mysterious man with a secret, Bruce Boxleitner (TRON, BABYLON 5) shows up to provide some name value, and like the pieces of the airplane, he is shown in brief cuts meant to convince us that he is, indeed, in the movie, though not always with the rest of the cast. (Steve Railsback shows up in a cave later to provide similar service.)
Our intrepid crew realize that this island is a graveyard for crashed planes. If they can just get to the other half of their plane (which somehow ended up miles away), maybe they can send out an SOS and get themselves rescued. Not much of a plan, but it gives them an excuse to trek across the island, encountering the occasional enlarged arachnid and some flying reptiles that look more like dragons than pterodactyls.
Eventually, the survivors find a primitive tribe that might not be indigenous: it kinda-sorta seems to be populated by previous crash victims – at least, we see some of our survivors subsumed into the group. The reasons for this development are not made clear; presumably it was to justify the casting of actors who do not particularly look as if they were born on an uncharted island.
Needless to say, being primitives, the “locals” (or are they “ferals”?) make sacrifices to their local deity, who turns out to be a furry, blurry piece of computer-generated imagery somewhat resembling a giant gorilla. He shows up in the last reel to justify the word “king” because if you rent a film called KING OF THE LOST WORLD, and there’s no giant gorilla in it, you’re going to be disappointed (as if you weren’t already).
The cast and crew apparently intended to make a decent B-flick rather than a send-up, but good intentions and halfway decent performances take you only so far. The dragons look goofy; the ape is worse. The plot threads do not so much tie these monster scenes together and string them along, and it is hard to get invested in the mystery (is Challenger a good guy or a bad guy, and does he know something that may help the survivors?) when said mystery plays out against a backdrop that includes a tribe of islanders whose members seem to have wandered in from a frat party.
As silly as all this sounds, none of it is really much fun, not even as deliberate camp. You would probably have a better time watching a man-in-a-suit stomp around some miniatures, instead of watching blurry pixels stutter across your screen. There are many films far cheesier and technically incompetent than KING OF THE LOST WORLD; ironically, some of those are far more entertaining.
KING OF THE LOST WORLD (The Asylum, 2005). Directed by Leigh Scott. Screenplay by Carlos De Los Rios, David Michael Latt, Leigh Scott, based on The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. 80 minutes. Rated R. Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Jeff Denton, Rhett Giles, Sarah Lieving, Christina Rosenberg, Steve Railsback.
Contaminated Man (2000) review
If nothing else, you have to give CONTAMINATED MAN credit for laying all its cards on the table: as you might have guessed from the title, it is indeed about a contaminated man. In a world of information overload, where ADHD video viewers might have skimmed past something titled “The Budapest Crisis” (or some such) without ever knowing the nature of the crisis, you can bet that, thanks to truth-in-titling, said viewers can quickly make an informed decision about whether or not they want to watch a movie about a contaminated man. If they opt in, they have no one to blame but themselves – well, and the filmmakers.
In 1986 Los Angeles, lab researcher David R. Whitman accidentally infects his wife and child with a deadly disease. How David can live long enough to pass on the disease, while his family perish in mere minutes, is a question the film will save for decades later, when we find Whitman, who has understandably left his previous employer, cleaning up toxic spills in Budapest. Meanwhile, Joseph Muller (Peter Weller) confronts the boss who just fired him from his job as a security at a chemical laboratory; an altercation leads to Muller being infected with a disease suspiciously similar to the one that afflicted Whitman. Whitman is called in to clean up the mess and track down Muller, but the situation is complicated by the presence of NSA agents Holly Anderson (Natascha McElhone) and Wyles (Michael Brandon), who suspect that terrorism may be afoot.
CONTAMINATED MAN begins with a hint of promise. The initial deaths are shocking and horrific, and Weller manages to disappear inside his character, offering a convincing and sympathetic portrait of a man driven by desperate circumstances. (Muller’s loss of employment affects his ability to pay alimony, which negates his child custody agreement with his former wife.)
Unfortunately, the conflict between Whitman and Wyles is leaden, turning what could have been a fascinating contamination-procedural thriller (a la 2011’s CONTAGION) into a B-movie spy thriller without any real spy. Despite the NSA agent’s’ suspicions, it is clear that Muller simply wants to return to Germany to reunite with his family.The only question is whether Whitman can convince Wyles to stand down, and the answer is a not very surprising: no.
Hurt strives to find some dramatic gravitas inside the formulaic script; his character senses the parallel between himself and Muller and hopes to redeem the horrible past by saving Muller’s family from a similar fate. However, the overblown melodrama ultimately defeats the actor, as the film subverts its few good qualities with gratuitous plot twists and a “surprise” revelation that ties the prologue in with present events: back in ’86, the NSA deliberately infected Whitman as a test-run of the disease. This leads to the predictable conclusion wherein Whitman settles the score with Wyles, turning the attempted story of personal redemption into pulp-style revenge.
The disease – created in the lab as a bio-weapon – has a rather convenient set of rules in order to keep the plot running: the carrier can live for up to a week without symptoms, and there is a simple antidote; those he touches, however, die almost instantly. If that were not contrived enough, Muller realizes early on that he is contaminated, but he makes only a token effort at avoiding contact with others (e.g., he avoids shaking hands, but he doesn’t wear gloves, and he doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed that he risks infecting his estranged family). With victims dropping like flies, you wonder why it is so hard to track down Muller (who by the way is surprisingly durable and athletic for such an old guy – at least in long shots when the stuntman can take over).
Eventually, CONTAMINATED MAN descends to milking “suspense” from sequences that simply have none to give. Whitman is re-infected with the disease; we assume he has immunity from his previous exposure, but the film presents this resolution as a surprise. Later, Muller puts his infected blood in a remote-controlled miniature submarine (a toy intended for his son) and threatens to explode it in the local water supply if his family is not brought to him. This leads to one of the most absurd action sequences in the history of film, with Whitman and Anderson tracking and capturing the sub, then racing to keep one step ahead – and thus out of remote-control range – as Muller follows them. The fact that they are on a motorboat halfway across a huge lake, while Muller is running on shore, makes the outcome a no-brainer, yet the sequences is cut to suggest that somehow, Muller might overtake them.
Oh well, sillier films have been entertaining. But that requires a little pizzazz from the cast and crew, which is in short supply here. McElhone is miscast as Agent Anderson; we can’t blame her for failing to gneerate sparks with the much older Hurt, but her attempts to talk tough are so unconvincing that romantic chemistry is the only possible justification for her presence. Brandon makes Wyles a convincing prick, but he never rises to the level of villainy that would make him a memorable “man you love to hate.”
Director Anthony Hickcox (who made some quirky horror comedies in the 1980s, such as WAXWORK and SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT) does competent but anonymous work here. The effects of the disease and handled with convincing horror, but he never comes to grips with the screenplay’s absurdities, presenting them with a straight face when it might have been better to send them up.
Only Peter Weller emerges with his dignity and reputation intact. He almost sells the film, but neither the writer nor the director are smart enough to that killing off the heart of your story leaves a big gaping hole that needs to be filled by something other than chase-scenes and cheesy payback.
But then again, if you watch a movie as bluntly titles as CONTAMINATED MAN, why would you expect anything more subtle?