I'm now at the age where a bunch of my friends have kids, which means that they no longer have time to go to the movies. That sounds like a horrifying reality that I want no part of, even though I do want kids eventually. It's a conundrum.
A few of my parent-friends (among others) have told me that they often don't listen to our Daley Screening podcast because they haven't had a chance to see the movie in question, which doesn't really make for an enjoyable listening experience. We initially tried to combat this by doing movie news stuff at the top of each episode, but eventually it just meant that episodes were approaching two hours in length which is a tad unwieldy and perhaps a bit daunting.
Problem solved!
Introducing the Daley Planet podcast, a spin-off of our original Daley Screening podcast. That's right, we're splitting up the podcast into two discreet branches. The Screening will continue to discuss new releases and some old throwbacks in great spoilery detail, while the Planet will focus entirely on the latest news, rumors, casting and trailers in the world of movie magic. We're still playing with the format a bit and working on some recurring bits to include, so if you have any suggestions (for either podcast) leave them in the comments below.
The good news is, because I don't want to pay double the web hosting fees, subscribing to our podcast feed either on iTunes or on SoundCloud will get you access to both shows as they become available. I'm trying to work out a more routine release schedule too; since we typically record on the weekends, I'm shooting for Planet episodes to be come out on Mondays and Screening episodes to come out on Wednesdays or Thursdays. We'll see how it works going forward. Some weeks we might only do one show or the other, as scheduling requires.
Check out our first episode below, in which we talk about Simon Pegg writing the next Star Trek, Tom Hardy's potential replacements on Suicide Squad, and the impending resurgence of The X-Files.
Bart and I felt it was our patriotic duty to make our first podcast of 2015 about Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's The Interview. It was, after all the biggest story of the holiday season. The great irony is that, had it not spurred an international incident, this would be a fairly amusing but ultimately somewhat forgettable film. There's plenty to laugh at, but it all feels fairly incidental. The Interview makes you chuckle, whereas Rogen and Goldberg's last movie This Is The End frequently made me lose my breath from laughing. Franco plays the whole thing SUPER broad, which most people will find either very funny or very off-putting. Bart is firmly in the latter while I err more towards the former, although I'm a bit of a Franco apologist.
We also delve a little bit into the Ant-Man teaser and Fast & Furious mastermind Justin Lin taking over as the director of the next Star Trek movie, as well as William Shatner's plan to drive cross-country in one of the strangest looking automobiles I've ever seen. But fear not, this is a relatively short episode. Next week we'll be committing to our new battle plan of two shorter podcasts: The Daley Planet will focus solely on movie news while The Daley Screening will break down a single movie each week. Who knows how long we can keep that going, but we'll soon find out.
I mentioned in last week's podcast (at the suggestion of my much wiser counterpart Jamie) that it might be time to shake up the format of the podcast a bit. I recognize that a 90+ minute podcast might be a bit much for some people, so we're trying something different this week. A bit more digestible.
So Episode 43 is just shy of 50 minutes and deals only with the movie news of the previous week. Bart and I discuss the new Mad Max trailer, the fallout of the Sony leak, Ghostbusters casting rumors, Star Trek director departures, Star Wars character names and Godzilla's return to Japan. We also dig into Marvel's Agents Of Shield, which Bart just recently finished binge watching.
I'm hoping to also lay down a movie-only podcast with Jamie in the next few days covering The Imitation Game, although scheduling may get in the way. We're still working on a name for this new podcast spinoff show, tentatively titled Newsbusters. I'm open to suggestions.
History is not always kind to movies. Particularly in the case of franchises, if a movie delivers a dramatic departure from the audience's expectations then the audience can turn on a film that's actually pretty good in its own right, thus souring the film for future generations based on reputation alone. I now believe Rambo III to be just such a movie. I also believe that anyone who tells you that Rambo II is the best of the franchise is functionally braindead.
The third entry in the Rambo series is far better than I remember it being, utilizing a clever role reversal by essentially having Stallone's musclebound super-soldier team up with the Soviet Union's version of the Viet Cong in Afghanistan while also delivering some of the best action in the franchise to date. I suspect that the long sections where Stallone halts the story to educate Americans as to the plight of the noble Afghan freedom fighters turned off audiences who just wanted to see Rambo stab the shit out of some Russians, but viewed through the lens of 2014 the film serves as a stark reminder that once upon a time our government considered the mujahideen to be heroes as opposed to terrorists.
Also, at one point Stallone sets his own spleen on fire.
Episode 33 of the podcast has some Rambo III talk at the end, but is mostly devoted to a discussion of whether or not William Shatner should return to the role of James T. Kirk in the next Star Trek film and the future of that franchise in general. Bart and I also chat at length about Netflix's upcoming sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and how the theatrical landscape continues to shift as theater owners refuse to screen the film in IMAX theaters. Taken alongside the announcement that Netflix has signed Adam Sandler to a four picture deal, it's hard not wonder how the one-time DVD rental service will continue to impact both the development and distribution process going forward. This episode marks a bit of a shift in the podcast's overall structure, focusing more on what's happening in Hollywood this week than just about the particular movie we screened. I'm hoping to continue down that same path going forward.
Next Week: Our Rambo Rewatch comes to a bloody, bloody end with Rambo.
We've now officially past the halfway mark of our Epic Rambo Rewatch, which is the part where I'm left scratching my head wondering, "Why were these movies so popular?" As we noted in last week's conversation about First Blood, when people think about the character of Rambo, they're usually thinking about him from Rambo: First Blood Part II. And yet, this Rambo is kind of...boring. Stallone is at his best when he's allowed to be just a touch goofy, but here Rambo has become an emotionless cypher of destruction, morosely slaughtering dozens of faceless Vietnamese and Soviet soldiers in his attempt to rescue a group of American POWs. At least in the first installment Rambo was dealing with some pretty serious emotional trauma, which made his violent behavior kind of fascinating. Now he's basically a killer robot, which is ironic considering the movie's clear-cut hatred of technology and rigid systems. Is this really what we wanted from our action heroes in the 80's? All righteous fury and no semblance of humanity?
And while Rambo is an absolute void of personality, the same can be said of the direction by George Cosmatos. Sure, you've got plenty of combat, chase sequences and machismo, but it's all fairly perfunctory with no trace of any real joy or style. Even the part where Rambo obliterates an enemy soldier with his one of those exploding arrowheads feels somehow unremarkable, which might be the film's single biggest crime. There's no actual tension to any of the action, nor do you ever emotionally invest in Rambo's need to liberate his fellow soldiers. It's almost hard to believe that this is the same guy who directed Tombstone. It's very easy to believe that this is the same guy who directed Cobra.
In our latest podcast, Bart and I delve into our disappointment over one of Stallone's signature roles while simultaneously discovering the joy that is Charles Napier's rich and varied filmography. We also question the likelihood of Ryan Reynolds' long delayed Deadpool movie, chuckle at the cast of Police Academy fending off lava-spewing giant spiders and the marvel at the possibility that William Shatner's greatest role might in fact be Denny Crane.
I know I said a few weeks back that I was going into media blackout mode regarding Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy, but last night I broke my own rules and attended a 17 minute free preview screening. I was initially very hesitant to go, but my wife (who is often smarter than I) went ahead and secured the tickets and it seemed like a fun sort of mini-date. I've done these sort of events before, notably when Warner Brothers debuted the opening mid-air attack sequence from The Dark Knight Rises, but never this close to a film's release date.
I'm not gonna give you a blow-by-blow of exactly what I saw on screen, mostly because I'm not a douche. But rather than give us the film's opening scene (which I expect will be mostly young Peter Quill getting abducted and sent hurtling into space) we're instead treated to a big action sequence set inside an intergalactic prison and it feels like it's the first time that Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot are forced to really come together and work as a team. It was a perfect introduction to each individual character and I was really struck by just how distinct and fascinating everyone was even with only minimal background information - Rocket doesn't know what a raccoon is and Drax is likely to emerge as an unlikely source of hilarity since he comes from a race of people who communicate everything literally, so the concept of a metaphor is completely foreign to him. (It's like the opposite of the "Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra" episode of Star Trek: TNG.) But the relationships between each character were also great - Rocket and Groot are already best buds, but their relationship with Peter Quill is a little more adversarial while Drax and Gamora seem to be tenuous allies at best.
On top of all that, we got a look at some great practical aliens, creative, fast-paced action, effective use of 3D and exactly the sense of humor and just plain old FUN that I've been hoping for from this movie. I didn't think it was possible, but it appears that I've somehow managed to underestimate Guardians Of The Galaxy. This thing is going to be a MONSTER. Get ready for lots of Rocket costumes this Halloween because 10-year-olds are going to absolutely flip their shit once they meet that foul-mouthed little hellion.
After the prison scene we were treated to a slightly longer version of the trailer below, which I think is still totally great in that there's lots of fun new characters revealed (Blue-skinned, mohawked Michael Rooker ahoy!) without giving away any real plot. Plus they've finally eschewed Blue Swede's Hooked On A Feeling, which was really starting to annoy, in favor of Cherry Bomb by The Runaways. So prepare to have that stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
I think that Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is going to seriously impress me this weekend, but after last night's preview event my expectations for Guardians Of The Galaxy could not possibly be any higher.
The weather was beautiful this past weekend, so the wife and I walked to the beach that's conveniently located a mere two blocks from our apartment and features a lovely view of the planes taxing around the runways at Logan Airport. After feasting upon a small mountain of fried clams, I pulled out my Kindle and finally set about the task of re-reading Ernie Cline's fantastic sci-fi novel Ready Player One. It's an engrossing read to be sure and once again I find myself unable to put the thing down. It only took me about ten pages before I found myself wondering whatever happened Warner Brothers' proposed film adaptation.
This morning that question was answered. According to The Wrap, Zak Penn has been hired to do a rewrite of the original script by Cline and Eric Eason. Warners won a significant bidding war for the project way back in 2010 and we haven't heard much about it since then. But it seems that the studio is gearing up to shop the project around to directors this fall. In a perfect world they'd capitalize on Disney's colossal fuck up and hire Edgar Wright for this, post haste. Sadly, I doubt we live in that world.
Penn has writing credits on a number of geek-friendly properties that are not exactly what you'd call highly regarded by their target audiences, stuff like X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk and Elektra. But he also wrote PCU and has a story credit on The Avengers, for what it's worth. That geek sensibility is crucial when it comes to Ready Player One, which centers around a teenager who navigates through a virtual reality simulation (the Oculus Rift is modeled after Cline's OASIS) searching for clues that will lead him to a vast fortune hidden by the simulation's creator. The virtual world is actually a whole universe made up of different regions drawing on popular sci-fi, fantasy and video game properties; the Firefly universe resides next to the Star Wars universe, which neighbors Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons and Lord Of The Rings.
The whole thing is a pastiche of every great genre franchise in the past 30 years, which makes any proposed film adaptation an intellectual property nightmare. According to Cline, he had such a miserable experience with his first film Fanboys that he intentionally wrote Ready Player One as something that no one would ever try to adapt for the big screen, but anyone who's read the book can tell you just how incredible it could potentially be if someone could somehow manage to pull it off. Plus I expect that folks like Nathan Fillion would totally be up for a fun cameo.
I had the chance to meet Cline briefly at South By Southwest this year and he's both down to Earth and totally hilarious. He signed a copy of the book for me, asking "Star Trek or Star Wars?" You can see my answer below, as well as an extra postscript he added once I showed him my then days-old Ghostbusters tattoo. If he trusts Penn to take a pass at the script (and Penn was apparently his choice after meeting him during the recent New Mexico excavation for long lost E.T. Atari cartridges) then I'm inclined to trust Cline. Besides, if this project ever does come to fruition, its success will truly rest on both the choice of director (seriously though, Edgar Wright) and what properties the studio can gain the rights to feature. If they half-ass it, then what's the point?
The first Star Trek reboot film is a tremendous piece of entertainment that works in spite of, not because of, its script. But that shoot went down in the midst of the writer's strike, so I was willing to give J.J. Abrams and writers Robeto Orci and Alex Kurtzman the benefit of the doubt that their next outing would be significantly improved. Then Star Trek Into Darkness happened.
When Abrams jumped shipped for Star Wars (a.k.a. the franchise he really wanted to direct in the first place) I had hopes that Orci and Kurtzman would move on as well. Perhaps the infusion of fresh blood might shake things up enough to get things back on track for Star Trek 3, currently scheduled to be released in time for the franchise's 50th anniversary in 2016.
So much for that idea.
Orci and Kurtzman have since gone their separate ways as writers, leaving Orci free to take on directing duties despite having absolutely zero experience directing so much as a TV commercial, much less a major franchise film with a budget of over $100 million. This is a massive disappointment on almost every level. I expect the Abrams visual palate to persist going forward (lens flares for everyone!) since Orci will essentially be learning on the job. I also expect an absurdly complicated and dramatically unsatisfying story that pays little to no respect to these legendary characters. (see: Khan) After all, Orci is one of the masterminds behind Bay's Trasnformers as well as The Amazing Spider-Man films, none of which make any damn sense.
He's also a little nuts - Orci is an avowed 9/11 Truther and that mentality has absolutely no place in Gene Roddenbury's vision of optimism and hope. Rumors persist that Orci essentially scared off every other (more qualified) director who was up for the job, including Attack The Block's Joe Cornish. I will, quite frankly, never forgive him for depriving me of that version of Star Trek.
At this point, the best hope for Trekkies everywhere is that eventually Trek will burn out in theaters and make its way back to television. Where it belongs.
Last week we talked about John Boyega leading the cast for the new Star Wars trilogy and Bart mentioned that he still hadn't seen Joe Cornish's incredible freshman film Attack The Block. This week we decided to rectify the situation. In truth we didn't actually end up talking about the movie for very long before the conversation steered its way onto a number of other topics, including Roberto Orci potentially taking the reins for the next Star Trek film, the inherent narrative problem with most prequels, the future of comic books on television (this fall will bring us Gotham, Constantine, Flash and Agent Carter to go with new seasons of Arrow and Agents Of SHIELD), and who should take fill Patrick Swayze's surfboard for the upcoming Point Break remake. We also discuss the recently announced Power Rangers movie, and I somehow get painted as some kind of secret hardcore fanboy. I'm still not really sure how that happened.
Don't take our lack of proper attention as an indictment of Attack The Block's quality. We all loved it unreservedly and it's one of those movies that I will totally watch at the drop of a hat. If you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it enough. Think Goonies vs alien monsters, but British and in the 'hood. Sadly, the film is not currently streaming on any major services, but you can get the DVD from Netflix or you can buy it on Blu-ray from Amazon for a paltry $15.
That being said, I'm rather fond of the meandering nature of this week's episode. We cover a lot of different ground and it feels representative of my favorite kind of conversations about movies. We're quickly entering the heart of summer movie season - Godzilla and X-Men hit theaters the next two weeks and then it's June and we're pretty much off to the races. Still, I'm working to try and balance the content of these sessions so the movie of the week and the general discussion of cinematic current events is a little more even.
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or SoundCloud, rate us and review us. And if you have any questions you'd like us to answer on the air or suggestions for topics you want to hear about, leave them in the comments below!
"Star Trek is more than just a show. It's a philosophy."
Last week was the 47th anniversary of the birth of Star Trek, which first aired on NBC the evening of September 8, 1966. Anyone who knows me can attest to the profound influence that show has had on my life. (I've read the Star Trek Encyclopedia cover to cover. Twice.) It hooked me when I was young and it's never really let go since. I may not have gone to a convention in a while, but I still identify myself as a Trekkie without a nanosecond of hesitation. In fact, since moving back to Boston, I've happily reconnected with a group of guys that I essentially became friends with in back 6th grade because we were all obsessed with the franchise. I still have a signed copy of Leonard Nimoy's I Am Not Spock from the time we all went to see him speak at Berklee. Even though we're all now adults (relatively speaking), we still talk about Trek with the same nerdtastic glee we had in middle school.
For me, Star Trek served as the gateway drug into the larger world of science fiction. I was a brainy, unpopular kid attending a Catholic elementary school and not quite buying into this whole "God and Jesus thing." While I certainly enjoyed the hell out of Star Wars, I loved Star Trek not only for its optimistic view of the future, but for its strong roots in the complex scientific theories that truly fascinated me. The only things I'd ever learned in a science class up to that point had been about the water cycle and diagramming the different parts of a flower. It makes me drowsy just remembering it. Aliens, time travel, alternate universes, faster-than-light spacecraft...this was the good stuff! More importantly, it felt real and immediate, while Jedis and The Force were a bit too mystical for my tastes. Once I sunk my teeth into concepts like evolution and the Big Bang, it was as if something clicked in my brain and I was irrevocably hooked. Thanks to Star Trek, I gobbled up all the science I could find, and once I got to high school I was eventually able to take fascinating classes like Cosmology, Advanced Physics and Astronomy.
Gene Roddenbury was the mastermind behind Star Trek, a show which he initially pitched as a sort of outer space western. ("Wagon Train to the stars" is a familiar phrase to any serious Trekkie.) Trek Nation, a documentary produced for the Science channel but now available on Netflix, details the journey of Roddenbury's son Rod as he visits conventions and interviews family friends, die hard fans, writers, producers and cast members in an effort to better understand the father who was beloved by millions but felt so distant from his own family. By Rod's own admission, he was never a very big Star Trek fan as a kid, a fact reinforced by old family photos of his multiple Star Wars themed childhood birthday parties. Rod never really understood the appeal of Trek; to him it was just the job that kept his father away from home for 12-14 hours a day. That youthful rebellion continued into Rod's high school and college days, as he moved east, took on the appearance of a surfer with long, bleached hair and studied to become an astrophysicist, only to discover he had no aptitude for the field. (I chuckled watching his older family friends politely refer to this period as the time when he was "off doing [his] own thing," as opposed to getting involved with the family business. Ironically, I assume this is how some of my own east coast family members refer to my time in Los Angeles. I guess that shit truly is universal.) Sadly, it wasn't until after Gene Roddenbury's death in 1991 that the younger Roddenbury really started to delve into the world of Star Trek in order to understand just how much his father's work meant to so many people across the globe.
My biggest criticism of Trek Nation is that it really feels like a documentary made for TV. It's way too trigger happy with its chyrons, constantly identifying people on screen multiple times when only one or sometimes even no ID is necessary. (I think Nichelle Nichols is named about six times.) The film also covers a lot of history that any Trekkie worth his salt should already be very familiar with and it often feels very disorganized, moving in a vaguely chronological order without ever feeling like it's telling an actual story. Obviously Rod has a lot of unresolved issues when it comes to his relationship with his father, and while he often says that his conversations with the fans helped him to better appreciate his father and Star Trek in general, we never really get to see any of that happening. It's mostly just a collection of short clips of Rod wandering around conventions and talking to strangers in costume. It's a real shame, as it feels like there's a lot going on just under the surface that never actually ends up on camera. Rod almost has the demeanor of a guy trying to evolve from being a privileged, angry youth who always thought his father's greatest achievement was totally lame, but by focusing more on the history of Trek than on his own personal journey, the film suffers from a lack of any true emotional throughline.
Trek Nation does make some great use of old interviews with cast and crew members as well as a lot of great archival footage, including some truly fantastic images of the very first Star Trek convention that I'd never seen before. It looks like a truly wacky event filled people wearing homemade costumes, often of generic aliens and creatures that aren't even Trek-related. And while I would have liked to see more of Rod's sense of discovery, we do get a lot of really great material featuring his late father, including multiple archival interviews and audio recordings. Rod even managed to sit down with both George Lucas and J.J. Abrams, who are each briefly entertaining but neither really contributes very much to the larger conversation. There is, however, a great moment where Rod shows Abrams an old interview in which Roddenbury says that he wants someone to eventually step in and revive his characters and the larger franchise almost exactly the way Abrams has done, much to the chagrin of all those Trekkies who love to hate on the rebooted Abrams-verse. It's not all hero worship though; Roddenbury frequently cheated on his wife Majel Barrett (who portrayed Nurse Chapel, Lwaxana Troi and the voice of every Federation Starship computer starting with The Next Generation) and he was notoriously difficult to work with, particularly in his later years. Rod doesn't shy away from any of the dark shadows on his father's personal or professional lives and, as Rod himself says, digging into Roddenbury's flaws actually humanizes the man who's reputation and personality were always larger than life.
I often feel that I owe the man a personal debt of gratitude. If not for Gene Roddenbury, I might never have been exposed to the wonderful writings of Hawking, Einstein and Feynman, or the musings of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ronald Mallett and Carl Sagan. If not for the Starship Enterprise, I might not have become so enthralled with computers and technology, a field which is currently paying my rent. And if not for the great storytelling and dynamic characters, I might not have studied acting and directing in college, leading me to move to Los Angeles and eventually meet my wife.
So thanks, Gene. You always dreamed of making the world a better place, and in my case you certainly succeeded.
--------------------------------------- Title: Trek Nation Director: Scott Colthorp Starring: Rod Roddenbury, Majel Barrett, J.J. Abrams, George Lucas, D.C. Fontana, Bjo Trimble, Rick Berman Year Of Release: 2013 Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (Laptop)
"Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?"
Alright, so this one is a bit of a cheat in that I watched it over a month ago, but it was part of the Brattle's Cornetto festivities so I'm counting it anyway. You see, not only did the Brattle program the Cornetto Trilogy triple feature, but they also took it upon themselves to select an "Alternate Universe Cornetto Trilogy" on the preceding day - three films that acted as spiritual companions to Edgar Wright's three part comedic genre opus. So yes, I spent back-to-back days at the Brattle watching a double triple feature.
Two of the films I was already very familiar with, but I'd yet to see either of them in a theater. First up was the one I was most excited about, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. If you're unfamiliar with this absurdly quotable New Zealand zombie gore-fest, man are you missing out. Dead Alive was a favorite of my high school A/V Crew, a movie that we had in our library of VHS tapes and played frequently after school or between classes. It's the tale of Lionel, a wimpy guy whose wealthy and overbearing mother gets bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey (rendered in grotesque stop-motion animation) and quickly morphs into a sort of zombified demon corpse. However, feeling guilty because she was attacked while he was on a date with the local shopkeeper, Lionel decides to hide her and an increasing number of victims in his basement while attempting to care for them so word doesn't get out around town. The film is equal parts disgusting and hysterical, utilizing buckets of blood and viscera splattered every which way until every inch of the frame is dripping red. The practical effects work is cartoonishly charming and by the time there's a demonic infant on the loose that is clearly a little person running around in baby pajamas and a rubber mask, I defy you not to have fallen in love with Dead Alive while simultaneously marveling that this is the same Oscar winning Peter Jackson who gave us the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
In lieu of Hot Fuzz, we were treated to one of Danny Butterman's favorites, Michael Bay's Bad Boys II. It's hardly what I would call a "good movie" and I probably would have preferred Danny's other action classic Point Break (directed by fellow Oscar winner Katherine Bigelow) but I understand the choice. While the tale of an FBI agent undercover with a gang of surfing bank robbers in U.S. President masks is easily the better flick, it lacks that buddy cop dynamic that's such a crucial component of Hot Fuzz. Still, if you're a fan of utterly mindless shoot outs and vehicular destruction on a massive scale, it's hard to top Bad Boys II.
Finally, our World's End surrogate was the 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers starring Donald Sutherland and Donald Sutherland's giant hair as a health inspector who discovers that people are becoming replaced with vacant, dead-eyed alien replicas. I remember reading Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters as a kid and hearing numerous comparisons between the two - there was even a film version of that book that also featured a much older Sutherland. In Puppet Masters the aliens are actually parasitic creatures that use humans as hosts, so I was somehow under the impression that Body Snatchers was the same, but the truth is far creepier. The film's fantastic opening depicts the alien organisms traveling through space "on solar winds," entering our atmosphere and blanketing the earth through condensation. The world's plant life is covered in alien tendrils that soon sprout flowers capable of duplicating sleeping humans through giant pods. The whole thing is actually played fairly subtle for a while, with omnipresent webs of wispy tendrils often visible in the background even before we start discovering the pod people. And the actual pods themselves are really fun to watch; at one point Sutherland falls asleep in a rooftop garden and we see a Sutherland-faced flower fetus taking shape next to him.
Jeff Goldblum is there doing Jeff Goldblum things, as is familiar "that lady" Veronica Cartwright, probably best known as "Not Sigourney Weaver" from Alien. But the one who really threw me for a loop was Leonard Fucking Nimoy as a famous psychiatrist. I have big love for Nimoy (a fellow Boston native) due to my many years as a Trekkie, but I'll admit that I'm largely unfamiliar with his work outside the context of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I know that after Star Trek went off the air in 1969 he had some trouble shaking off the image of Mr. Spock in the public consciousness, despite experiencing some moderate success with two seasons of Mission: Impossible. He even wrote a book called "I Am Not Spock", a title which helped foster the misconception that he actually hated Star Trek despite the fame it gave him. I understand that impulse as an actor, as success in Hollywood can often be a double edged sword. Once you gain notoriety for a role as iconic as Spock it becomes hard for audiences to accept you as anything else - they're just sitting there watching you in another movie thinking, "Hey look, that's Spock!" Within that in mind, Body Snatchers was kind of a brilliant move for Nimoy at the time. The heavy sci-fi subject matter and the fact that he's playing a largely cerebral psychoanalyst actually makes those Spock associations work in his favor, and when his character makes a dark turn late in the film it gets even better - now he's Evil Spock! Body Snatchers is the last film Nimoy made before returning to Starfleet in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and in a way that's kind of a shame. I'm curious where his career might have gone and what kind of movies Nimoy would have made without Star Trek to fall back on. He eventually got into directing (Three Men And A Baby!) but that stemmed largely from his success helming Star Trek III and IV, the latter of which was the most successful Star Trek movie of all time until J.J. Abrams showed up.
Body Snatchers obviously had a huge influence on The World's End. The idea of aliens who show up and replace/imitate humans is hardly special to Philip Kaufman's 1978 film, which is itself a remake of a 1956 film starring the great Kevin McCarthy, who also appears in this version. But the specific imagery of Kaufman's iteration is unmistakable in the third Cornetto film. The last shot of Body Snatchers is probably the single most memorable image of the whole film (I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, because it really is pretty great) and it's something that Wright utilizes throughout the film as the robots' signature attack move.
The Alternate Universe Cornetto Trilogy was a perfect warm up act to the main attraction, and part of what inspired me to ask Wright, Pegg and Frost for more viewing suggestions at their Q&A the following day. Looking back, I'm really glad that I did, as a week of movies that so clearly helped shape the minds of those three talented Brits really gave me a whole new appreciation for The World's End on my second viewing. None of these movies are requirements in order to enjoy the final flavor of Cornetto, but if you have the time and the opportunity to give some of them a look, I promise it will only enhance your experience.
--------------------------------------- Title: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Director: Philip Kaufman Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy, Kevin McCarthy Year Of Release: 1978 Viewing Method: Theatrical - Brattle Theater
"Is this who we are now? Because I thought we were explorers."
I'm done with J.J. Abrams's infamous "mystery box."
Let's get this out of the way right up front. It's Khan. We've all been saying he's Khan since Benicio del Toro was almost cast back in 2011. But Abrams and friends refused to acknowledge as much whenever asked, believing in this misguided marketing strategy centered around keeping the villain's identity a mystery. And yeah, that would've been cool if most of the English speaking world had spent the last few months convinced it was the wrong guy. In that case, the eventual reveal would have been shocking and made a real impact on the audience. But that's not what happened. As soon as everyone had worked out Benedict Cumberbatch's identity, Abrams and Paramount should have ditched the mystery box and been upfront with us: "Yeah, alright, he's Khan. But this Khan is different!" That at least would have been honest. Instead they chose to double down, telling us all that he was "John Harrison", which only further cemented everyone's belief that we'd be seeing Khan and annoyed people in the process.
Ironically, people have pointed out that Marvel actually played the villain shell game far more effectively with Iron Man 3. (Spoilers for IM3 too.) Everyone was so focused on Ben Kingsley's Mandarin that when he was revealed to simply be Aldrich Killian's puppet, audiences were truly caught off guard. Comparatively, when Cumberbatch growls, "My name...is Khan", the long awaited confirmation of the obvious lands with a wet thud. The parallel between Star Trek and Iron Man is ironic because in reality both movies are perpetrating almost identical bait-and-switch routines. It turns out that while Khan is certainly a criminal, the one who's actually pulling the strings is Admiral Robocop, who was secretly a militaristic asshole all along. It's hardly a shocking revelation, (especially since the very first announcement of Peter Weller's casting described him as another villain) but it certainly would have played better if most of the audience wasn't still fuming about being misled for a year and a half.
But this leads me to my biggest complaint with the movie: it's a waste of Khan. I always felt it was a mistake to revisit the character in the first place. The whole point of reforging the timeline was to give the filmmakers the creative freedom to blaze a new path through a familiar universe without being slaves to continuity. Immediately bringing back an old nemesis is dumb, especially someone as iconic as Khan. What's worse, they don't even use him intelligently! Khan is a genetically engineered "superman" who is always both the smartest and the strongest guy in the room. He's a master strategist, as ruthless as he is brilliant while also being charismatic as hell. What made him so memorable in Wrath Of Khan was seeing how that brilliance and charisma were twisted into mad vengeance after Kirk inadvertently banished him to a desert wasteland for 15 years. He may be a relic from 300 years in the past, but he's still always a step ahead. Doesn't that sound like a fascinating character?
Instead of all that, we get a guy with magic anti-death blood* who can punch hard.
No, seriously though. Like, SO HARD.
And he has no agenda of his own! Khan should be the evil mastermind, but instead he's just Peter Weller's attack dog that manages to break his leash. Khan attacks Starfleet because he thinks that Admiral Robocop killed his crew, and when he finds out they're still alive he manipulates Kirk in order to kill the Admiral and save his people so they can get back to the business of being badasses. He's a dick to Kirk, that much is sure, but Khan ultimately doesn't care about him one way or the other. Kirk's just a means to a very murky end. If it had been revealed that Khan was actually using Admiral Robocop all along for his own nefarious purposes...well at least that would have been worthy of the name Khan.
That's the other thing. When it comes right down to it, Cumberbatch's character is really Khan in name only. Let's ignore the fact that he's magically gone from Hispanic to British with utterly no explanation. (Carol Marcus is also British in this new timeline despite having an all American daddy.) His entire backstory is told in such broad strokes as to become practically irrelevant. Khan was originally a major historical figure, the Hitler of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990's. (How did I miss those?) He and his genetically enhanced followers sought to cleanse the Earth of inferior beings, so they were eventually captured, cryogenically frozen and shot out into space. All of that should remain the same even in the new Abrams timeline, but almost none of it is mentioned. Instead, we get a phone call to Old Spock (I love Leonard Nimoy, but that shit is just lazy) solely to assure us that Khan is indeed the most evil evil who ever evil-ed. Essentially, if you're not a Trekkie and you haven't seen Wrath Of Khan before walking into this movie, Cumberbatch's character is just another asshole with nebulous superhuman abilities. We're not presented with a version of Khan that is in any way compelling in his own right or even connected to Ricardo Montalban's Khan in any meaningful way. (Cumberbatch has said that he deliberately avoided watching Montalban in order to make the character his own.) The fact that he's named Khan is just this side of an easter egg. Within the context of Star Trek Into Darkness, he's just a hired gun who's gone rogue. To extend the Iron Man 3 comparison, he's not even Ben Kingsley. He's James Badge Dale.
It's ultimately indicative of a seeming bewilderment as to how to treat both the original canon and the Trekkies in the audience. Both of Abrams's movies are jam-packed with references both casual and overt to people, places and events from the original continuity. But in this latest outing there's no sense of direction within the material. Writers Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof seem intent on keeping as many familiar elements as possible, but are then willing to fundamentally change them for no discernible reason. It's almost as if they were given a mandate that the movie must contain X number of Trek references "to keep the nerds happy" but no one actually cared about how they were used. At it's heart, Star Trek Into Darkness is about the struggle for the soul of Starfleet. In light of Nero's attack and with the Klingon Empire looming on the horizon, Admiral Robocop is convinced that the galaxy is filled with nothing but dire threats to humanity. He wants to turn Starfleet away from exploration in favor of pure militarism and Kirk gets caught in the middle. On the one hand he wants revenge for the murder of Christopher Pike, but he's got Scotty and Spock rightfully pointing out the legal and moral quandaries of executing an accused criminal without trial. And that could be a very compelling story in its own right! Some of my favorite stuff from DS9 came from the years when they were engaged in a protracted war with The Dominion, forcing Sisko and crew to make some tough choices while grappling with their own consciences. My point is, Benedict Cumberbatch's character could have been just plain old "John Harrison," rogue agent of Section 31 who seeks revenge against the superiors who betrayed him and it wouldn't dramatically impact the story. It doesn't require that he be Khan. You tweak a few minor details and the movie remains essentially the same.
In fact, it probably would have been better. If not for Khan, we certainly would have been spared the rehashing of one of the greatest death scenes of all time. The moment is telegraphed from a mile away and much of the dialogue is identical just to drive the point home. Reversing the roles might seem like a good way to alter the dynamics of the scene, but it's dramatically stupid. That scene is so effective in Wrath Of Khan for a number of different reasons, including Spock's simulated death during the Kobayashi Maru sequence which deflates the audience's expectations and the fact that the whole movie is about how we choose to accept death and growing old. The scene carries so much weight because Spock and Kirk are lifelong friends with an incredibly rich history together. In Abrams's riff, not only do the characters lack the bond that drives that scene, but we all know that Kirk's not going to stay dead, giving the scene zero dramatic stakes.** At least when Spock died, he fucking DIED. Yeah, he came back in the next film, but there's a difference between spending an entire movie showing just how far Kirk and his crew are willing to go (including stealing and then sacrificing the Enterprise) just on the mere chance that they can restore their friend, versus sending Spock on a five minute footchase atop flying cars. The only reason the scene works on any level at all is due to the talents of Pine and Quinto, who really sell the shit out of it. Quinto even manages to make the infamous "KHAAAAAAAAN!" scream work, at least to the point where the audience didn't immediately burst out laughing and/or groaning.
But why do I need to see all that stuff AGAIN? If I want to watch Wrath Of Khan, I'll watch Wrath Of Khan. Who wants Diet Khan when you can have the real thing? I'm sure the writers think they're putting their own interesting spin on this stuff, but it ends up coming off as disrespectful to the source material. I've long maintained that the reason I hate CBS's The Big Bang Theory is because, while it gets all the references factually correct, the series lacks any true geek soul. It always feels like a show written by cool kids with some kind of Nerd Wikipedia. Somehow the same feeling persists throughout Star Trek Into Darkness. When it's all said and done, I can't tell who Abrams is trying to play to here: he bends over backwards to insert Khan into the story and bases the entire marketing strategy around his presence, but then doesn't actually DO ANYTHING with him. They essentially reshoot one of the single best scenes in the entire franchise, but eliminate everything that made it so great in the first place. It's like he's somehow kowtowing to fans while simultaneously spitting in their faces.
This is hard for me to write, because I really, really wanted to love this movie. My lifelong love of Star Trek has been well documented and when it came to this summer's big releases, Star Trek Into Darkness was one of those flicks for which I had some seriously high hopes. (As opposed to something like Pacific Rim, for which I have seriously high expectations - a subtle but important distinction.) Abrams's first Star Trek is a movie that works in spite of itself. I love the meandering, philosophical approach of most of the original Trek series as well as the focused storytelling of the good (i.e. even numbered) Trek movies but, much like the last few Brosnan-era Bond films, the franchise had become bloated and stale. It needed a good kick in the pants and that's exactly what Abrams managed to do with his alternate timeline reboot.
I really can't oversell just how miraculous that film's success truly was. The idea of revisiting iconic characters like Kirk, Spock and McCoy without Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly seemed like pure folly on paper, but Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and (surprisingly enough) Karl Urban all managed to charm the pants off of both diehard Trekkies and non-fans alike. Moreover, the script for that first movie is all over the fucking map, a result of going into production in the midst of the writers' strike and having to shape a fair amount of the story after the fact. Seriously, the entire second act of that movie is a mess; everything between the destruction of Vulcan and Kirk taking command of the Enterprise makes negative sense. But the cast is so charming and you're having so much damn fun that you barely notice until it's all over.
I wish I could say the same about Star Trek Into Darkness. (That title is still absurd. In the entirety of this franchise, the word "trek" has never and should never be used as a verb.) That's not to say the film is a total disaster. The opening scene is fun, if a bit braindead - Kirk fucking around with a race of primitives and stealing something solely because "they were worshiping it" is vintage Original Series, whereas Spock rappelling into a volcano is about six kinds of silly. And while lots of people complained about an underwater Enterprise, I'm more annoyed that the ship is constantly flying through planets' atmospheres. Starfleet ships don't land, that's why they have orbital spacedocks and are equipped with shuttlecraft. The Godfather III helicopter assassination scene at Starfleet HQ is a nice bit of action, as is the chase and accompanying shootout on Qo'nos (incorrectly spelled "Kronos" on screen for no particular reason) and Kirk and Khan's space jump. I would, however, like to request a moratorium on chase/fight scenes that take place in a shifting gravity field. Yes, it was awesome in Inception, but it was super-lame in Total Recall and just kind of dull here.
Pine and Quinto are both at the top of their game and Simon Pegg does really great work as Scotty this time around. Much like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, it's nice to see him actually get something to do in these movies. There isn't NEARLY enough of Karl Urban's Bones (a sentence I never thought I'd find myself typing before actually seeing him in the role) and Harold Sulu gets one really kickass moment before getting relegated to the background with a red shirted Checkov. (The look on Anton Yelchin's face when Kirk tells him to change shirts is pretty great.) I don't really have a problem with the Uhura/Spock romance. What I do have a problem with is that other than one staredown with a Klingon, Zoe Saldana doesn't do anything in this movie that isn't about their relationship. The woman has incredible screen presence and it's a shame to see her so stranded. Alice Eve is similarly wasted as Carol Marcus's Lingerie, although I suspect that the intention is to set up her love affair with Kirk in the next film. Benedict Cumberbatch is good because Benedict Cumberbatch is ALWAYS good, even in a role as ill-conceived as this one. And I'm always happy to see Peter Weller getting some work.
Star Trek Into Darkness is entertaining enough that non-Trekkies will have a blast while watching it and probably forgive the film's dumber moments. It's hardly the kind of thing that will put the franchise back in cryostasis (see what I did there?) and even with a somewhat disappointing box office draw, a third movie is assured. The film ends with the Enterprise heading out on its five year mission of exploration into deep space, a prospect which is still rife with intriguing possibilities. When Voyager premiered, I was excited at the prospect of a ship being stranded in the unknown, encountering all new aliens and natural phenomena. The sense of real exploration was one of the strengths of The Original Series and something that got lost as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine focused so much energy on familiar races like the Klingons and the Cardassians. It still feels very possible that Abrams is trying to set up some kind of huge conflict with the Klingons next time around. After all, they're a fan favorite who remain underexposed in this new timeline. But I'm hoping for more. I'm hoping for a story based on discovery, something entirely new from the established canon. I'm hoping for a movie that takes place way out on the galactic frontier, with Earth nowhere to be seen. I'm hoping for a movie that finally mines the wonderful threefold relationship between Kirk, Spock and Bones. I'm hoping for a movie in which Kirk actually wears his gold uniform shirt for more than 20 minutes of screen time, instead of constantly putting him in "cooler" looking uniforms and disguises.***
But most of all, I'm hoping for a brand new creative team next time around. The rebooted franchise has been defined by Abrams, Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof. But Abrams has Star Wars to deal with now (which is what he always wanted in the first place) and those writers have plenty of other projects to keep them busy. They did the impossible: they brought Star Trek back from the dead, found a capable group of actors to take up the mantle and managed to inject a sense of real adventure into a franchise that most considered intellectual and boring. I'll be forever grateful to them for reviving my favorite thing in the world. But now is the time to bring some fresh creative energy to the table. I'm sure there are no shortage of writers and directors who would love the chance to come play in the Starfleet sandbox, so let's hand over control to someone who will really focus on strong storytelling. (I'm looking at you, Brad Bird...) All the moving pieces are already in place and there are an infinite number of directions you can take the Enterprise and her crew from this point on.
Let's try to avoid space whales.
*Bones injecting Khan's blood into the dead tribble might be the clunkiest moment in the whole damn movie. It's like that shot of the cook in Hunt For Red October, only less subtle.
**It's also ridiculous that Bones can't use the magic blood from one of the 72 other frozen people sitting in sickbay to cure Kirk from acute death. It could have been explained away in a single throwaway line of technobabble and the fact that they didn't even try shows just how little regard the writers truly have for the audience.
***I'm convinced that someone involved thinks the classic uniforms look "too silly." It's this kind of thinking that has superheros like Spider-Man and Iron Man constantly taking off their masks throughout their respective movies, and it's dumb.
--------------------------------------- Title: Star Trek Into Darkness Director: J.J. Abrams Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bennedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, Alice Eve Year Of Release: 2013 Viewing Method: Theatrical - IMAX 3D
