Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Worth the Wait?

Have you ever anticipated something so much, so excited about it that you could hardly stand it?  And then that something happened and it wasn’t at all what you had been hoping for and you were bitterly disappointed?  Like the promised showdown between good vampires and bad vampires, but all that happened was a very anticlimactic and lengthy conversation.  Or the bread that had smelled so wonderful while baking turned out to taste awful because the salt was forgotten.  Or you thought a vital piece of equipment at work was fixed, and then turned out to need yet more repair.

Well, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was not at all like any of those things.

From opening sounds of that famous theme and the appearance of the words “Episode VII” to the final fade to a field of stars, it was an incredible journey.  I’ve been trying for the last few hours to think of any gripes about the movie, but I’ve been hard pressed to come up with much.

Really, the only gripe that I have is that it took a significant amount of time for any of the original characters to make an appearance.  But the new characters were a lot a fun to be introduced to.  We get BB8, a new droid that has at least as much personality as R2-D2; Rey, a scavenger on a desert planet (who I have suspicions about that I won’t go into because they involve spoilers); Finn, a Storm Trooper deserter who takes most of the movie to find a spine; and Kylo Ren, who has a really bad temper.

When some of the original characters finally make their appearance, it is highly satisfying.  There have been changes.  Time has obviously passed since the end of “Return of the Jedi”.  Yet the characters are still themselves.  Han and Chewie are still best buds.  The Millenium Falcon is still super fast but unreliable.  Leia is still bossy and compassionate.  I can’t say much about Luke without giving stuff away—but I will say that the Darth Luke theories are inaccurate.

I know in my reviews of space sci fi flicks, I like to comment on the design of the ships.  In this case, there isn’t a ton that’s different between the ships in the original trilogy and this new movie.  Why mess with X-Wings, which are such a cool design for a space fighter, and TIE Fighters, which are properly menacing?  It does look like there were some upgrades to the TIEs.  They seem a bit bigger and more streamlined in the area between the wings.  Some of the X-Wings have different paint jobs.  For the rest of the space craft, they are essentially utilitarian military troop transports, the very familiar and intimidating Star Destroyers, and variations on ships like the Imperial Shuttle.  They all feel very Star Wars, which is a very good thing!

There is a good range of emotion in this movie.  There’s humor, suspense, tragedy, and anticipation.  There are also a good number of Easter eggs—little things that flashy by briefly, satisfying fans that everything that happened in the original movies is still part of the universe of Star Wars.  I caught sight of the ball that Luke used while learning to use the Force in conjunction with his light saber and the hologram game on the Falcon, to name a couple.  I noticed a few more, and I’m sure there are others that I missed.

One of the great things about the original trilogy was that the history was given a bit at a time as the story progressed.  It was a lot of “showing” instead of too much “telling”.  And that continued in “The Force Awakens”.  Hints were given about people and events, but no lectures were given about them.  I love it when a story gives its audience credit for having brains!

This movie was a continuation of the classic Star Wars saga.  It definitely was not a reboot.  It felt like the same universe.  The patience of the fans was well rewarded.  I’m looking forward to future installments!

Spectre - Even Numbers

“Spectre” is the fourth (and probably the last) of the Daniel Craig era of Bond.  And he’s done an amazing job in the role.  The tone of the series changed drastically—from somewhat cartoonish, punny sci-fi spy stories to grittier, more grounded (though still somewhat punny) spy stories.  The movies haven’t been perfect, but they have been a ton of fun to watch.  And Mr. Craig, though not particularly handsome, is still easy on the eyes.  I think it’s the charisma and confidence that he exudes that makes him such an amazing Bond.

There have been inconsistencies, though, in how good the Craig-Bond movies have been.  Opposite of the pattern of the pre-J.J. Abrams era of Star Trek movies (where the odd numbered flicks have been terrible), it is the even numbered entries that have left some to be desired.

“Casino Royale” was such a departure from the previous Bond that it was darkly refreshing.  Bond wasn’t invulnerable.  He didn’t have his gadgets (though he did have an amazing car).  There was probably one of the best foot chases ever in the sequence just after the opening (pretty well popularizing parkour).  And there was a nice twist that was not even close to being obvious.

I liked “Quantum of Solace” alright, but not nearly as much as “Casino Royale”.  The main villain wasn’t particularly memorable.  The girl wasn’t either.  But it was pretty cool to have the revelation of Quantum: what I thought of at the time as the precursor to S.P.E.C.T.R.E.—that bad guy organization from all the way back in the Connery-Bond days.

“Skyfall” was awesome.  Judi Dench had much more of a role than she’d ever had in a Bond film before.  And she was such a good M!  Javier Bardem’s Silva was properly scary—not overtly, but definitely undeniably.  The new Moneypenny was right on the money (sorry!).  And, as in “Casino Royale”, Bond wasn’t invincible.  It was nice to get a peek into his past, to see the parallel but diverging paths that he and Silva were on.

And now there’s “Spectre”.  This film was beautifully filmed.  The costuming in the opening sequence was gorgeous!  There were great action sequences—fights, car chases, and some non-traditional air combat (all I have to say is, that helicopter pilot was amazing).  There were fun references to earlier (and I mean 1960’s earlier) Bond adventures, and this one tied all of the Craig-Bond movies together, which I liked.  Also, Dave Bautista made great baddie-muscle.

But Bond wasn’t nearly as invulnerable as he had been in the previous three movies.  There was a fight scene that was truly brutal, but he didn’t have a mark on him afterward.  Call me weird, but I want to see at least a little blood on my hero.  (I kind of think that’s why I’m more of a Batman fan than Superman.)  So that was a bit of a disappointment.

Another thing that was a little bit of a letdown was that the “twist” wasn’t very twisty.  I saw it about a mile off.  I really want to be surprised by that sort of thing.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie.  I will buy it when it is available for purchase.  I just wish it was an odd numbered movie so that it could be a proper send-off for one of the best Bond’s ever: Daniel Craig.

Jurassic World - Raptors, Rexes, and Trikes! Oh My!

I cannot believe that it has been 22 years since Jurassic Park was first in theaters.  That was a great movie!  And it’s stood the test of time.  It’s still an enjoyable watch, and, most amazing of all, the special effects are still rather impressive.  There’s something to be said for really well done animatronics and puppeteering.  Add to that the masterful way Steven Spielberg was able to build up the tension and anticipation, and you have a movie that will be loved by generations.  I mean, who can forget the ripples in two cups of water heralding the first appearance of T. Rex?

Jurassic Park was followed by a couple of movies that did not live up to the original.  The Lost World (the second movie) was alright.  It brought back Jeff Goldblum’s fun Ian Malcolm.  But outside of that, it didn’t have much going for it, in my opinion.  We got a T. Rex rampage through San Francisco (or was that San Diego?), but that felt like more of a spoof of Godzilla than anything else.  After that came Jurassic Park III, which I think we could have lived without.  Téa Leoni was irritating.  William H. Macy (who I generally really like), wasn’t very interesting.  And the return of Dr. Grant was a bit of a letdown.  The introduction of the pterodactyls was probably the best thing that came out of that movie.

And now, 22 years after the original, 14 years after the last film, we get Jurassic World. 

(From here on, I’m going to do my best not to reveal anything about the story that wasn’t seen in the trailers.)

This installment was so much better than the previous two!  We finally get to see John Hammond’s vision brought to life: a theme park/zoo with live dinosaurs as the main attractions.  I have to be honest: when we got a first aerial view of the park with John Williams’ original Jurassic Park theme, I got a bit emotional.  It was brilliantly done.  And there was no let down as the movie went on.

I haven’t seen Chris Pratt in anything other than Guardians of the Galaxy (which I neglected to write a review of, but it was awesome!).  I’ve heard he was great in Parks and Rec.  This time, he didn’t get to do much funny, but he did well in his role as Owen Grady.  I kept getting the feeling that he was working hard to keep himself contained, like it wasn’t natural for him to be as serious as this movie asked him to be.  That said, it was loads of fun seeing him hunt with a pack of velociraptors.

Bryce Dallas Howard did extremely well as a control freak, anal, put-the-best-face-on-it, person in charge.  My only gripe there was that there was a set up for, and the beginning of head, butting between her character and Chris Pratt’s character, but it disappeared relatively quickly.  However, I think it would have gotten very old if it had gone on longer than it did.

The biggest surprise to me was Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance.  He’s kind of hit or miss for me.  He was in Netflix’s Daredevil, and I wasn’t all that impressed with him there.  A bit of over acting, words overly enunciated, things like that.  In Jurassic World, he gave one of the best performances that I’ve seen from him.  His look reminded me a bit of Brian Dennehy, and he was properly bull-headed and slimy.  A-plus for him!

There were lots of others in the cast, of course, but those three were the stand-outs, in my opinion.  The kids were necessary, but weren’t all that exciting to me.  There were a couple of other characters that I knew would get eaten when I first saw them.

The story was a lot of fun.  Basically, what would happen if a hybrid, super smart dinosaur was created and got loose in a zoo with 20,000 visitors?  Pretty simple, but allowing for a lot of cool special effects, suspense, action, and nostalgia.  It kept the feel of the original movie (wonder, nail-biting tension, and excitement).  I think one of the things I liked best was that it was a continuation, not a reboot.  And there were plenty of non-cheesy references to Jurassic Park.  We even got to see one of the original Jeeps!  And the climax (which I won’t spoil) featured some old “friends” in a slightly different relationship.

A few small complaints:

First, in just about any movie with some “science” behind it, there will be flaws.  For example, I don’t think just willy-nilly filling in genetic gaps with random DNA would produce some of the features that the hybrid dinosaur had, but then again, I’m no geneticist.

Second, there was an obligatory “let’s set up a sequel” scene.  I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that it was there—this is the 4^th film of a franchise, after all.  Franchises tend to get milked for all they’re worth.

Finally, (and I’m not sure if this is a complaint or just an observation) there was a lot of shameless product placement.  In some ways, it was so transparent that it was almost refreshing.  Obviously the film would have it, and instead of trying to awkwardly shoe-horn it in, it was embraced and made to flow.  The Mercedes logos were a bit in-your-face, though.

All in all, I would say this was a worthy entry in the Jurassic Park series.  Much better than the middle movies.  Very nearly as good as the original.  I was highly satisfied as I was leaving the theater!

Avengers: Age of Ultron - The Marvel Equation

My 7^th grade math teacher told me that the great thing about math is that in math, if it’s true once, it’s always true.  For example, two plus two will always be four.  That was hugely comforting to me.  So even though I hated math (though I was good at it) from about 8^th grade until my second college career when I had my next amazing math teacher, math always made sense because of its constancy.

Math is full of formulae.  They are extremely useful if you want to find the volume of a cube, the average of a set of numbers, or the percent of wax that a piece of corrugated board picked up in a wax cascade.  Of course, to get meaningful results, you need to plug the right numbers in the right places into the appropriate formula.

By now you’re probably thinking, “Is this a math lesson or a movie review—‘cause I don’t see any movies here.”  Don’t worry.  Just keep reading.

There are some entries into the visual media of television and movies that can be said to follow formulae.  Often times, that can make them (especially if they’re TV shows with a new episode nearly every week) very boring very quickly.  That happened with “House”.  It was interesting for a little while, but then it just became the same thing over and over again.  The “House” formula was:

Episode = R + B + H + D

Where:

                R = Rare disease

                B = Baffled doctors

                H = House has an epiphany

                D = A little bit of the current character drama

The formula was too simple, with too little variation.  After a couple seasons I couldn’t take it anymore, so I gave it up.  Personally, I think the writers were lazy.

There are other shows that are also formulaic, but the formula is more like a recipe where the writers tweak it—adding different spices here and there, cutting back on certain ingredients depending on their mood.  I think shows like “The Closer” and “Major Crimes” fit that bill.  The basic formula is very similar to that of “House”, but different things are emphasized from episode to episode that it takes much longer to get old.  So those formulae look more like this:

Episode = aC + bP + cS + dD

Where:

               a, b, c, and d are fractions and a+b+c+d = 4          

                C = Crime

                P = Police investigate

                S = Solved crime via confession, usually obtained through trickery

                D = Current character drama

Enough introduction.  Here’s the point I want to make.  The Marvel movies are formulaic.  There’s no getting around that.  In my opinion, this is what it looks like:

Marvel Movie = aI + bN + cF + dA + eT + fD + gH

Where:

                a, b, c, d, e, f and g are fractions and a+b+c+d+e+f+g = 7

                I = Introduction (often an initial triumph)

                N = New Situation (usually disasterous)

                F = Failure to Resolve the New Situation (possibly more than one try)

                A = Action (d is the largest of the fractions)

                T = Final Triumph

                D = Character Drama

                H = Humor

For the most part, Marvel movies have followed this formula with huge success.  There have been some that haven’t gotten the proportions quite right, but even the weakest of the entries since the first Iron Man have been very entertaining movies.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (hereafter Avengers 2) is one of the better entries in the Marvel cinematic universe.  In my opinion, the proportions of each element were nearly perfect.

Here are some specifics (hopefully without any spoilers).  The Avengers fought as a team—they relied on each other’s strengths and combined their abilities to great effect.  An effort was made to make the action sequences less confusing.  That was accomplished with the use of artful slo-mo.  There was still a lot going on, but it was shown at a speed that was easier to follow.  There was a good amount of fan service, rewarding those who have seen the previous movies with some Easter eggs and foreshadowing of where the overarching story might be heading.  (Admittedly, that last one could be a turn-off to people who haven’t seen certain previous movies in the Marvel collection.  I’ll supply a list of what I think is essential watching before watching this movie for maximum “understanding”.)  And one of the new characters introduced in this film was extremely well designed and acted.

My major gripe with Avengers 2 was the humor.  It was still very Joss Whedon-esque, as it was in Avengers, but this time it felt a lot more forced.  That didn’t detract much at all from my enjoyment of the movie.

In conclusion, Marvel has hit on a formula that works really well.  There are times when being called “formulaic” is a criticism.  I think that in Marvel’s case, it is not.

 

Watch list:

Avengers

Thor: The Dark World

Captain America: Winter Soldier

Guardians of the Galaxy