Star Trek Beyond - Beyond What?

The latest of the new timeline Star Trek movies came out, so of course I saw it.  I loved the first two with Chris Pine, Zachery Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and Anton Yelchin.  I like that they don’t overwrite the canon of the original Star Trek universe, but diverge into an alternative universe, allowing for new adventures.

This latest installment is called Star Trek Beyond.  I wondered about the choice of that title.  After seeing the movie, I have some theories:

• Beyond expectations.  The early trailers for the movie did not look promising at all.  They were all but incoherent and the uniforms looked terrible.  When I saw the first trailer, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the movie.  But it’s Star Trek, so inevitably I gave it a go.  And I’m not sorry that I did!
• Beyond amazing action.  From space battles to phaser battles, the action was terrific.  Related to that, the special effects were very well done.  Without being specific, the scene with the motorcycle (yes, a real, internal combustion engine motorcycle in a sci fi movie) was one of my favorites.
• Beyond great character and ship designs.  For characters, I loved the look of the main helpful alien chick (the very pale one with black patterns on her face) and one of the crewmembers.  I found myself marveling at the variety that is possible, even when mostly limited to the human figure as a starting point.  For ships, the ones belonging to the bad guys weren’t necessarily super original in their look or the way they flew, but their method for fighting their enemies isn’t something that I’d seen before.  It was scarily impressive.
• Beyond dizzying.  The director seemed to love odd camera angles.  They were used rather often, making it look like people were standing on a wall until the camera rotated so that they were upright.  Doing that a time or two is okay, but the frequency exceeded what I enjoyed.  However, what was annoying when filming people was fantastic when depicting ships moving.  The reminder that there’s no up or down in space was subtle, but very welcome.
• Beyond convenient.  One of the struggles writers must have is trying to introduce things that are necessary later on in the story without making their introduction or usage seem contrived.  These writers (one of whom was Simon Pegg, aka Scotty) made a good attempt, but didn’t succeed terribly well.  That wasn’t enough to ruin the movie for me, though.  I liked the tech, items, and other things that were introduced.
• Beyond respectful.  One of the things that I have loved about this latest run of Star Trek movies are the nods and references to the original series.  As I stated at the beginning of this post, none of the old cannon has been dismissed.  Without spoiling anything, there was a really good tribute to Leonard Nemoy’s Spock, and a touching reminder of the rest of the original starship Enterprise crew.

I highly doubt that the people who named the film were thinking along the lines that I was, but Beyond is a very appropriate title!

The Legend of Tarzan - Apes Attack! Gnus Later!

Late again.  But I’m done traveling for a bit, so I hope that I’ll be more on time with watching movies and writing reviews.

I took the opportunity to see The Legend of Tarzan recently.  I had a peek at the Rotten Tomatoes ratings before seeing it:  The professional critics didn’t like it a whole lot, but movie goers were more positive about it.  The ads for it did a good job of piquing my interest, and I have to say that they represented it fairly well.

One of the things I was curious about was how everything would fit into the movie, specifically how Tarzan’s origin would be treated.  It seemed like a lot to try to shoehorn into a film that’s shy of 2 hours long.  I appreciated how the writers handled it, though.  Instead of telling a linear story, the origin was told in flashbacks.  We were given bits here and there as the movie went along.  And, credit to the writing/editing, they did not make the movie seem choppy and disjointed.  I thought there was a good flow throughout.

 Related to the story format, the movie was well paced.  It started with some action and set the stage for the rest of the film.  There was some decent character development—more with deeds than with words, which is a very good thing.  And even when there were down times between action scenes, I didn’t get bored.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to see some blood on the hero.  And there was some of that.  Tarzan wasn’t invulnerable.  But he could sure put up a fight!  And with a nicely sculpted torso, arms, and shoulders, too.  I did find myself wondering when he found time to shave, and where he carried his toiletry bag.

There were some clichéd bits here and there.  A bit of a spoiler here (be warned), Tarzan doesn’t want Jane to accompany him on the trip to Africa because of the danger.  Jane insists on going anyway.  And, surprise, she’s promptly captured by the bad guys and used as bait for her husband.  Granted that there wouldn’t have been as much of a story if she’d stayed home, but that plot device is way over used.  At least she wasn’t all wilty and whiny.  She put up a good fight, tried escaping, and facilitated the escape of some others.

A good portion of the animals that were characters in the film were (probably) motion capture CGI.  I have to say that I wasn’t all that impressed with the apes.  The most recent two Planet of the Apes movies did a phenomenal job with their motion captures apes (chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, mostly), and they set the standard going forward.  I didn’t think that Tarzan did nearly as good a job at making their gorillas (or gorilla-like apes) lifelike.  It was a bit distracting at first, but got better once I got used to the style.

Given the fantastical nature of the story (a man raised by apes, communicating with just about any animal in the jungle, swinging around on vines, fighting things two to three times his mass or more, etc.), I went in prepared with a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief.  And there was a time or two when I wondered if the vine Tarzan was swinging on was attached to a track of some kind, to allow him to travel on it as far as he did.  But there was a bit at the climax that I couldn’t get over.

**ALERT!  SPOILER AHEAD!**

Near the end of the movie, the army of bad guys is camped next to a port town in the Congo, right on the ocean.  And Tarzan and company cause a stampede of wildebeests (gnus) to overrun the camp and city, foiling the bad guys’ plans.  But wildebeests are savanna animals!  They would have had to stampede for hundreds of miles and through thick jungle to get there!  It bugged me so much that I had to go to the online source of all truth and knowledge (Wikipedia) to be sure that I wasn’t bothered by that for no reason.  And I wasn’t.  So be warned that there was a bit that my giant sized capacity for suspension of disbelief couldn’t handle.

There were some other great characters besides Tarzan, by the way.  Samuel L. Jackson did a great job in his role.  The main bad guy, Leon Rom, was played very well by the guy who was the main bad guy in the last Bond flick, Spectre.  Jane was played by Margot Robbie.  Other than her hair color (which bothered me for some reason), I thought she did a good job as well.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film—almost despite myself.  Aside from the ridiculousness near the end, it was a story that I liked quite a lot.  If you’re looking for a movie with a good amount of action, beautiful scenery, and nice retelling of an old story, this one is well worth watching.

Independence Day Resurgence - Bigger and Badder, Not Really Better

It’s been out less than a week, but I’m still a little late in seeing Independence Day Resurgence (IDR).  I took the opportunity to check it out today.  I have seen two new sequels in two days.  Where Finding Dory was well worth my time, I’m not sure that I can say the same about IDR.

If you press me, I’ll admit that the original Independence Day wasn’t a great movie. The story wasn’t all that great (glaring plot holes and unbelievable weaknesses in the aliens’ technology), but I did enjoy it.  There were likeable characters (along with some annoying ones), creepy aliens, good explosions, and Will Smith.  IDR has creepy aliens, good explosions, and plot holes.

I think my biggest problem with IDR was that I didn’t care about or even like most of the characters.  There were some old hats back for more: some of the heroes from the first invasion along with a couple of kids that had grown up.  New characters were introduced, both old and young.  It was the rising generation that I had a hard time caring about.  The old guard was mostly fine:  Jeff Goldblum was great; Bill Pullman did a decent job; Judd Hirsch’s and Brent Spiner’s characters were at about the same level of oddness as they were in the original.  What was really missing was the charisma of Will Smith.  His character’s placeholder, one of the grown up kids, doesn’t have nearly as much presence, and the film suffered for it.

There were things that I did enjoy.  I liked the fusion of the earth and alien technologies.  I also liked that the story was a continuation of the original, with all of the good and bad consequences of the events in the first story.  I was also very glad that the aliens learned from their earlier defeat, so that they couldn’t be defeated in the same way.

I won’t go into detail about the gripes I had with the “science”.  Needless to say, it left a lot to be desired.  There are some situations where I can ignore or forgive ignoring physics.  This wasn’t one of them.  Normally the reason for my irritation is because the movie takes itself seriously.  It was different this time.  The bad science was used to further the story.  It was lazy.  There were plenty of thing that the writers could have done to achieve the same effects with a bit of effort.

This sequel fit the stereotype of sequels: it wasn’t as good as the first one.  Maybe I wouldn’t mind it so much if that stereotype hadn’t been bucked so much in the last few years.  The movie wasn’t unwatchable, but it left a lot to be desired.

Finding Dory - More than One Journey in the Ocean

This review is for a movie that’s been out for a couple of weeks, but I finally just got a chance to see it.  So if you’ve already seen Finding Dory, please feel free to give me your take.

As always with Pixar, they’re pretty much in a class by themselves.  When considering how good a Pixar movie is, it’s almost a given that it’ll be better than just about any other studio’s offerings—though Disney has really stepped up their game for movies released strictly under the Disney flag (Zootopia, Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Tangled all come to mind).  On the Pixar scale, there’s The Incredibles and Inside Out at the top end, and Cars 2 at the bottom end.  Finding Dory is one of the good ones.  It isn’t quite as good as Finding Nemo, but it’s not far behind.

Somehow, I went into the movie expecting a story similar to Finding Nemo: a journey across the ocean with adventure along the way.  When that’s not what happened, I was briefly disappointed, thinking that it would be a very short movie.  But I should have trusted in the folks at Pixar.  They have made a name for themselves by presenting very original, fun movies, even their sequels.  So I got over my disappointment and sat back to enjoy the ride.

Finding Dory brought back a lot of favorites from Finding Nemo, but wasn’t overcrowded or overwhelmed by them.  The pit that many sequels fall into is old favorites returning and becoming overdone and irritating.  With few exceptions, Pixar as a whole, including this movie, manages to avoid that.  We were also introduced to some fun new characters.  The best of them is the “septapus” (octopus with one missing arm) Hank.  There’s also a trio of sea lions that provide some good comedic moments.

One of Pixar’s strengths is the range of emotions that are evoked during their movies.  In Finding Dory, there’s laughter, but there’s also tenderness.  There’s anxiety for how things are going to turn out, and there’s also a sense of fun for the adventure that’s unfolding.  And, unlike most of the previews that were shown, the story is appealing for a wide range of ages.

As with all of the Pixar movies, the animation is fantastic.  It amazes me how artists can come up with so many different designs for the same species of fish to make the different characters distinct and recognizable.  Then there’s the level of detail in the environments.  Animation has come a long way since Toy Story.  It’s becoming hard to tell if things like streets and plants are filmed rather than animated.  All of the characters are still cartoonish, but even the textures, details, and movements are getting better and better.

Bottom line.  Whether you go to appreciate a fine piece of animation or a funny and touching story, Finding Dory will satisfy.  It is a worthy entry in the Pixar library.