So, I haven't posted anything in about a week. There are some personal/time-constraint reasons for that which are neither here nor there, but it was mainly an effect of not a terrible amount "going on" of late that I felt compelled to comment on. That part will change as we head into the "busy season" of movie screenings and conventions, but something else will likely be changing too. I'm actively exploring the "replacement" of both this blog and the Game OverThinker blog with something like a unified "official site." This was, some followers will remember, something that was supposed to already be happening but was delayed by my professional shakeup back in February. I'm probably leaning toward a Wordpress-type service (any advice from web-designer followers would be appreciated) and looking to keep Disqus for comments, but we'll see.
In any case, new content coming this week regardless. Until then, please enjoy this cool thing you probably already saw:
Exactly 1/2 of F. Gary Gray's STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON is thrilling, top-tier musical/biopic entertainment. It crackles with near-literal electricity from the first scenes of Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) dodging likely-impending death in a drug deal gone bad only "thanks" to the arrival of an even more fearsome LAPD right up through the formation, creation and pop-explosion of N.W.A and climaxes with a blowout setpiece where a live performance of "Fuck tha Police" in Detroit (which local cops had warned them not to perform) erupts into a riot that ends with N.W.A arrested yet symbolically victorious.
It's some of the coolest, most assured "mythic history" filmmaking of the year, alive with righteous anger, the thrill of creative inspiration and authentic-feeling early-90s Los Angeles milieu... and then that rapturous Detroit sequence concludes and the whole production slips back down to just "decent" territory - clearly unable to find a natural ending other than speeding through an at once over-sanitized and over-cranked highlight reel - focused mainly on contract disputes and paperwork, no less - to reach Eazy's AIDS death in 1995.
Ironically, what consigns the film to an almost-classic is an unwillingness to admit that the specific moment in hip-hop history N.W.A loomed so large in only really existed "authentically" for just that: Only a moment. Without the (explicit) truth of that shift up on screen, the film's second half just can't bring itself to be as raw about the end of the myth as the first is about the creation: Even if you don't know the story beforehand, it's easy to feel the missing spaces where Dr. Dre's (Corey Hawkins) history of abusing women, Ice Cube's (O'Shea Jackson, the real-life Cube's own son) immediate and savvy transition to Hollywood player and any other 90s rappers who weren't part of N.W.A's immediate orbit are supposed to fit - to say nothing of the increasingly-inconsistent characterizations.
Dre somehow "doesn't realize" that his Death Row Records partner Suge Knight is a monster until it's almost too late? Cube is sharp enough to know he's being taken advantage of by N.W.A's resident svengali Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) but not precisely how or well-enough to let it happen twice? Those are just the most incongruous and "sticking out" of the film: It's also odd to watch the infamous back-and-forth "diss track" feud that followed Cube's departure be played entirely sans-irony, as though N.W.A's played-for-the-press beefs of the 90s really were a real extension of the "gangsta" lifestyle none of them but Eazy had actually lived rather than the genesis of the pro-wrestling-style play-acting of inter-label "beefs" as actual gangland feuds that quickly became a staple of the genre.
Were the film (or, rather, it's producer/subjects) willing to "own up" to that narrative, there'd be room for a grand rise/fall/ressurection story worthy of Gray's filmmaking and the (mostly) newcomer cast's performances: N.W.A ignites a revolution in the hip-hop genre by bringing in an inner-city authenticity, but (perhaps as a darkly-ironic side-effect of them largely being pretenders to the scene) it quickly metastasizes into a creeping artifice that each member has varying difficulties ultimately escaping. That's not to say that the narrative it has, i.e. a crew of outsider-artists negotiating fame and fortune without the survival-skills artists on more traditional career-trajectories are afforded, is "bad" - just that the one closer to the truth (and peeking through at the margins) would've been even better. Again, that scene after scene of rappers leafing through stacks of paper is as compelling as it is is a credit to the film.
For all the (by now) well-worn talk of what the film omits (Dre's numerous abuses of women, Cube's tracks inciting violence against Korean grocers in Black neighborhoods, the generalized homophobia rampant in 90s hip-hop); it's mainly Dre's character who stands out as an issue: Cube's seemingly natural-born yet uneven business savvy works overall for an arc (towards the end he's pounding out the screenplay to FRIDAY at roughly the same point that Dre is nurturing newcomers Tupac and Snoop Dog) and since Eazy isn't around to object he gets to be a "full" character; but Dre remains an awkwardly inscrutable presence: His character is the most (blatantly) sanitized, but it was impossible for me not to imagine the real present-day Dr. Dre seeing it as an act of extreme transparency: "Okay, it took a long time but I'm finally okay admitting openly that I was a music geek pretending to be a gangsta." ...while meanwhile the audience is going "Dre, we knew that. Now, how 'bout all those women you beat up? And also, nobody believes you didn't know Suge was The Devil." So, it's a flawed film; but enough of it is great that it's also a pretty damn good one. Having all that lightning-in-a-bottle 90s West Coast hip-hop on the soundtrack certainly helps, but Gray makes even the least authentic moments (Eazy finding his rap-voice and donning his signature shades in the same moment is framed like a superhero origin sequence) feel alive and vibrant; though it's perhaps telling that the most arresting shot in the film - a pair of formerly-rival L.A. gang members advancing on cops during the Rodney King riots holding up conjoined blue and red bandanas - doesn't feature the main cast.
Perhaps, even, it says something profound that a group of young black men once declared (literal) enemies of the state over their music can get the kind of self-mythologizing biopic usually afforded only to aging white musicians: We've seen the "Wait, I can express myself creatively!?" moment of inspiration in hundreds of films, but seldom from characters who look like this or come from here - the realization that Dre telling Eazy "That shit was dope!" when he half-stumbles into a real rythym during a recording might be the first time he's received praise for something like that in his life an instantly iconic exchange.
Either way, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON is viscerally satisfying entertainment, and without question one of the few 2015 films we'll absolutely still be talking about years from now.
So. Today is exactly six months to the day that I was abruptly, without forewarning (rudely and rather unprofessionally, actually, now that I reflect on it) informed that my near-decade (8 years!) of tenure at The Escapist was at an end - just like that. I have no interest in elaborating any further than the originalposts on the matter in terms of "what went down" or "the REAL story," except to say that I have in fact become a bit more "enlightened" as to opinions held and things said about me and my work by... "persons" (or, perhaps, just "person") that I had naively considered friends or, at least, good-faith business partners that leave me deeply suspicious about the circumstances of my departure and profoundly disappointed in the behavior of... "persons," I'll leave it at that.
The six months since have been difficult. Film Criticism is a difficult career to make money in, and it requires an erratic schedule that makes secondary employment equally difficult to maintain. In addition, my personal life was rocked by a extremely painful and drawn-out family issue that nearly-drained what resolve I had been left with. And while yes, I can credit the decency and heartfelt support of my fans with my surviving all of this... the truth of the matter is that I don't think I would have yet made it without the support of my colleagues, my friends, my family and one special person ('nuff said) in particular who was a light in dark times when I needed one most.
I won't say that it's been easy: As "newly free" to work on other projects and give free time to my loved ones as I feel, I miss the reliable routine (and yes, the reliable paycheck) of Escape to The Movies. I miss The Big Picture achingly, and it breaks my heart every time a fan tells me how much those shows meant to them and how much they miss them, too. I had a wonderful space where I had an extraordinary amount of freedom (for awhile, anyway...) to say pretty-much whatever I wanted and have it published/broadcast on a major (or, rather, it used to be...) website - a privilege I worked hard to not abuse - and I am under no illusions that I'll easily find a space that good again. I am still pained, however fleetingly, to be without it and, yes, I have nothing but hatred in my heart for every force and circumstance that led to it's loss. That's probably a little immature, but it is what it is. I work hard to expel "pain" from my psyche, but the memories of people and things who have wronged me and mine I keep for a long, long time.
BUT! Fortunately, my propensity to not forgive does not keep me from moving on. And as I survey the last six months and the place I've come to, I feel a sense of overwhelming pride (and gratitude, to those who have helped) at where I have "arrived;" even though I have no intention of resting on my laurels or declaring that this is "good enough" - as some in my life have no doubt tired of hearing me say, "It's NEVER enough!" - this doesn't look too shabby:
THE MOVIEBOB PATREON is holding steady and allowing me to produce and deliver content to fans and Patrons while also maintaining a livable-life.
Escape to The Movies is gone, but MOVIEBOB REVIEWS are alive, well and popular on YouTube. REALLY THAT GOOD, a longform film-appreciation series that was an unrealized dream-project for years, is slowly becoming what I wanted it to be. THE GAME OVERTHINKER, my original passion-project, wrapped up after 100 episodes on MY terms, the way I wanted it to. I have re-affirmed my longstanding relationship with ScrewAttack - the web outlet that was the first to give me a shot as a viable content-creator back in the day and has been by far the most fair, honest and open business partners I have dealt with in my professional career. THE ALL-NEW GAME OVERTHINKER lives on as part of this relationship, and after a strong-showing in a six-episode "pilot" order, I am happy to announce that the series has been given a full bi-weekly order through 2016! Speaking of ScrewAttack, they are also responsible for helping the legacy of The Big Picture live on through IN BOB WE TRUST - ALSO newly-blessed with a full bi-weekly order through 2016! More recently, you may have heard that my review of PIXELS became a viral sensation, amassing nearly 2 million views and counting and even being featured on national stages like THE HOWARD STERN SHOW. Locally, the PIXELS review landed me a guest-spot on one of Boston's #1 radio shows, TOUCHER & RICH... ...And, perhaps my favorite "WTF am I doing HERE!?" moment of this most-recent roller-coaster: I was profiled in THE NEW YORKER.
And it goes beyond all that as well. The success of MOVIEBOB REVIEWS and the other projects has put me into contact with sources and opportunities that could well mean the next logical BIG steps of my career - including developments and avenues that I had never even considered open to me.
Make no mistake: I do not consider myself "back" or even close to "comfortable" - whatever that means. I have always had my eyes on bigger things, bigger opportunities and the capacity to dream bigger than I can even concieve of now... and then achieve those dreams so that I might conceive of even more. Frankly, I don't want to stop until I'm living whatever the film/gaming/geek-media version of Alexander weeping at the realization that there are no worlds left to conquer is (though, for now, regular access to a heated pool would be just swell.)
But I am happier than I expected to be six months ago. I am more stable than I expected to be six months ago. And despite how much I truly miss what was, warts and all, a job I really loved... I am on-balance better off than I was six months ago.
If you were among the folks who stepped up to dance on my "grave" when things looked bleakest... I can only say that I hope your life has gotten better from whatever pathetic state you must have been in for that to be a viable entertainment option for you - though if it hasn't, chances are you and misery deserve each other and I hope that seeing me not only survive but thrive causes you inexplicable suffering.
If you are among the "persons" whose decision-making contributed to me being (however briefly) "professionally-unmoored," shall we say... I hope the knowledge that the success I'm having and the career-growth I'm experiencing could also have benefited you and your outlets, but now won't. To be perfectly blunt, in fact: I hope the traffic, publicity and mainstream press attention for that independently-produced PIXELS review makes you GAG.
If you are among the people who supported me through this time personally... well, you already know how I feel, but thank you and I love you, anyway.
If you are among the fans, followers, viewers and Patreon supporters who've stuck with me and helped this ship through choppy waters: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. My I be ever worthy of you.
And... that's really all I've got to say at this time, save to note that in a few months I'm going to be an uncle for the first time in my life; and maybe it's old-fashioned but that sort of thing throws what matters into sharp relief. Six months later, I am undefeated. I am okay. I love and am loved. I am moving onward and upward. And I am alive. Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.
This piece and others like it are made possible by The MovieBob Patreon. Please take a moment and consider becoming a Patron.
One has to imagine that Roland Emmerich is genuinely surprised to be catching "friendly fire" over his gay rights historical drama STONEWALL. Sure, controversy was probably something he considered innevitable - even welcome, given the film's clear "Hey, awards season: Look at me!!!" Fall release and low-key hype machine - but surely the long-time "out" gay filmmaker and activist didn't expect to find himself under fire from elements within the LGBTQ community itself. To the degree that Emmerich self-identifies with the heroes of films, it's not hard to imagine that he feels a bit like an alternate-universe version of Bill Pullman's President Whitmore from INDEPENDENCE DAY: One who, upon delivering The Greatest Battle Speech Ever, found himself facing not applause but a chorus of indifference and even outrage: "Stuff your battle-plan, man!" "Who says we WANT to fight the aliens!?" "Since when are YOU in charge!?"
Now, as a straight white guy, I have just about the least authority imaginable about what anyone else should be upset about. But, since I am a film writer who recently released an entire video that (partly) deals with Emmerich as a political filmmaker and will almost certainly end up reviewing/covering STONEWALL a month or so from now, I think it's at least worth putting some (pre-viewing) thoughts on the matter down while we're all still considering what's to be made of this one.
It's an old joke that the worst thing that happens to a political party (or movement) is that it wins, because once the overall goal of victory is achieved the uneasy alliances ("strange bedfellows" and all that) have time to settle in, get comfortable and re-focus on all of the differences they'd temporarily set aside to take down their common adversary; often leading to renewed infighting and (sometimes) a weakening of newly-captured power. Relevant case in point: With events like the Supreme Court gay-marriage decision and an ever-growing public acceptance-tolerance thereof seemingly to signal a major generational win for LGBTQ activism; the "G" has found itself at odds with an L, B, T and Q who, rather than join in the victory celebration, would instead like to start talking about their own less "socially comfortable" concerns - the ones that they feel G forced/allowed to be "back-burnered" in favor of more immediately-attainable "foot in the door" goals.
STONEWALL (the movie-to-be and the actual event that inspired it) are uniquely emblematic of this schism. For those who don't know (and that a lot of people still don't is both the reason to make the movie and the reason to be upset about what form the movie takes) the story goes like this: Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in Greenwich Village, NY. On June 28 1969, an aggressive but by no means atypical police raid on the establishment spilled out in a mini-spectacle on the street that drew a growing crowd of onlookers. So goes the "historical legend" (an as recreated in the film's trailer) a young female patron being beaten by the police demanded "Why don't you guys do something!?" of the crowd, a which point a violent clash with the police began that ran on and off for several nights. In the aftermath, the Gay Liberation Front officially formed and the modern Gay Rights movement was essentially born.
That's the "pop-history" version of the Stonewall story, and you can see why it so appeals to Emmerich's sensibilities (his filmmaking sensibilities, I mean. Given that he was a gay teenager himself when Stonewall was news the personal appeal seems evident): His favorite story/theme is that of an individual (or an "individualist" identity) being woken up to the need for action on behalf of the greater good by an impossible-to-ignore inciting incident - think Earth's nations realizing the need for global-unity in the face of extinction in INDEPENDENCE DAY, or Mel Gibson's "I just want to keep MY land and family safe" avenging dad in THE PATRIOT, or the entire plots of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW or 2012. So it makes sense that his version of dramatizing STONEWALL is a story about a young gay man mainly looking to find his own safety/freedom in (relatively) tolerant urban New York being galvanized into revolutionary activism by being onhand for the "Stonewall Riots."
And from the trailer, that looks like exactly the movie Emmerich has made. Supposedly, he's been looking to make it for more than a decade, which might explain how old-fashioned a lot of this looks; right down to the TITANIC-style "make-believe people amidst the real history" plotting and the "Johnny All-American, but gay" lead hero - which is exactly the stuff a lot of people are having a problem with.
Granted, no one outside of the studio and filmmakers have seen the finished film, but the lack of real historic figures of the moment and the Hollywood-handsome white hero is enough to set off alarm bells that were already set to "skeptical" among many contemporary activists. The main issue: While it became the "battle flag" for the "mainstream" gay-rights movement, the events at Stonewall were largely driven by the actions of LGBTQ women and particularly transgender women of color (the specific crime the bar was being raided for was "cross-dressing," which was illegal at the time) - many of whom were not wide-eyed innocents waiting to be caught-up in the sweep of history but rather established activists in the own right.
This is essentially the recurring problem with the history of social-activism: The people who successfully media-manage social-movements understand that "Ordinary Person Rises To Greatness Thrust Upon Them" is a better, more "useful" story than the alternative (see: Rosa Parks was already a hard-working Civil Rights figure for almost a decade before the bus incident, not an unassuming everywoman who spoke up in the right moment), particularly in the way that it makes joining-up feel more welcoming to Johnny-Come-Lateleys: "I am ALSO only just now waking up to this injustice!" This means that the people who do the hard/dirty work end up getting the historical short-stick, and in this case it means that Stonewall, as a "story," is a longtime sticking-point for many in the "everybody else" wing of LGBTQ activism (and amid the additional myriad racial and class divisions therein) who've long felt that the movement has hitched it's win/loss narrative to issues of interest to "straight-acceptable" gay white men to the detriment of others' interests - "Hey, we're all happy for a win, but not ALL of us had 'being able to make it official and Mom & Dad being cool with it now because they enjoy those nice boys on MODERN FAMILY' as The Endgame here."
So it's beyond understandable that for those same people, Emmerich's STONEWALL positioning a fictional "generic" white dude (specifically, Jeremy Irvine as a studly Midwestern farm kid who flees homophobic persecution by his family/peers for the NYC gay scene) as it's main character is a continuation of "mainstream" (read: white/cisgender/male) gay activism co-opting their efforts while leaving them out of the subsequent decision-making. Hell, it's beyond "understandable," it's agreeable - even if you're going to go with a fictional lead to give you greater room to wring drama from the narrative, why does it have to be this fictional lead? Why not build the story around Ray Castro (the only "official" gay man actually arrested in the original riots) or Marsha P. Johnson (a New York drag queen already locally-famous before Stonewall) or Sylvia Rivera (a transgender activist and real-life GLF founding-member)? Are we really still, in 2015, assuming that a movie can't reach the biggest possible audience (and Emmerich's activist-filmmaking is always about getting The Message to "the masses") unless the audience-POV character looks like an archetypal handsome caucasian Prom King type?
On the other hand... I remain unconvinced that disappointment at how overly-conventional the film's story looks (like it or not, "look-conventional, message-radical" is Emmerich's default-setting for political filmmaking) is enough to indict it for "erasure," particularly with some kind of malicious intent. It would be one thing if the film was setting out to explicitly say "Marsha, Ray Castro, Sylvia Rivera etc. weren't the REAL heroes here - it was actually this white guy we made up!", that'd be monstrous, a clear case of outright malice against marginalized LGBTQ persons and the truth (and before you scoff: Emmerich's previous historical drama was about how William Shakespeare wasn't actually William Shakespeare) ...but that doesn't appear to be the film that's been made.
There is such a thing as historical fiction, and one of the ways it's most often employed is to give a narrative "arc" to real events without having to compromise the often "un-narrative-ness" of actual people's lives (the "fake" character gets the easy-to-follow 3-act-structure storyline, the "real" people he/she encounters are able to be themselves.) Another is the "mythic history" route, where the broad-strokes events are real but the people are made-up, usually as avatars of collective groups/ideas important to the time. STONEWALL appears to be splitting the difference: Johnson, Castro and other real-life figures are a part of the cast, but the main "hero" and his (notably diverse-looking) friends/allies are essentially symbolic stand-ins for "every" non-political LGBTQ person spurred to higher action by the events, "every" one who was unsure about that, "every" ally who joined the cause, etc. Again: It is a problem in itself that the film resorts to a white male (fictional) perspective of what was largely not a white male story; but this isn't an inherently "invalid" approach to this film.
Obviously, this is all hypothetical until the movie actually comes out, but for now you can count me (with reservations) in the "wait and see" camp. I can see where/why people are upset, and even now you can see potentially-problematic elements baked into the final product (the trailer makes it look like the brick Irvine's character throws is what "ignites" the riot, which would be both dramatically-cheezy and a provable rewriting of actual history, where it's Johnson whose reputed to have thrown the first brick); but on the other hand I can't not be a little bit optimistic about at least the "idea" that STONEWALL can even be imagined as a viable mainstream "crowd pleaser" issue-movie at this point.
Surely, the mere fact that a major-release "Where Pride began"-themed movie, complete with trailer-narration borrowed from The President of The United States, exists can be cause for (at least) admiration while also noting both its individual and broader systemic flaws at least until there's an actual full film to examine, can't it? That's not rhetorical, I'm asking because, like I said at the beginning, I don't equipped with the proper experience and perspective to have a "strong" opinion here one way or another: Does the obvious eye-rolling "Oh, come ON!" casting of the lead and the way it evokes broader historical instances of erasing the contributions of trans persons, women and people of color from the gay-rights narrative "indict" the whole film in and of itself, or is it possible for the finished product to have virtues (being a good movie, getting at least the basic thrust of the story in front of a huge worldwide audience) that mitigate those imperfections? My instinct is more in line with the second option, but
STONEWALL opens in U.S. theatres September 25th.
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What's this? Oh, nothing - just a write-up about/interview-with yours truly in THE NEW YORKER - only one of the most respected publications... pretty much ever, really.
Do I feel good about this? You bet your ass I do. But I feel even better about THIS passage making it into print:
"Donald Trump, for instance, gives ranters a bad name. "Fuck that guy,” Chipman said." My work here is done.
Despite the knowing self-mockery already displayed in the trailers, I feel like a certain amount of the new VACATION's success is going to depend on how audiences (in the U.S. at least) feel about its relationship to the VACATION franchise - not in terms of "continuity," but in terms of a vague sense of tonal-rightness: Of the now five "canonical" films in the series, on the first and third are in regular rotation, but they cast a long shadow over 80s and 90s comedy. People who've never even seen a VACATION movie feel they "know" what one is and/or should be, and I wonder if the "danger" for this continuation is that it's aiming squarely for the darker, more mean-spirited original... which I've long suspected has been deposed as the defining entry in the series by the more sentimentally-michevious CHRISTMAS VACATION.
The question of whether or not this new VACATION is any good or not, apart from whether audiences will actually embrace it, is a more complicated matter...
The original VACATION is a bizarre animal of a movie, stuck partway between the winding-down 70s vibe of coked-out, sexually-charged anarchy comedy and the revving-up of the glossy, high-concept vibe that would define the 80s. It's inspiration was a famously pitch-black short-story from John Hughes, "Vacation '58," that became a sensation in the pages of The National Lampoon. But where Hughes' story was a backwards-looking dressing-down of the mythology of post-WWII American Nuclear Family (related in dryly unself-conscious manner by the family's young son, it ends with the father being arrested after attempting to murder Walt Disney and the family not really caring all that much) the eventual film is about the Boomers who did that very dressing-down now trying to remake the myth and failing spectacularly.
Chevy Chase's Clark W. Griswold Jr. was a pathetic idiot, yes, but there was weird nobility in his idiocy. Exactly smart enough to know he was stupid and be constantly working to conceal that fact under quick-wit and an almost heroic degree of false confidence. He was the id of the lie that was the (then) just-beginning Reagan Era personified - the lie that if white Boomers would just abandon their "radicalism" for Fortress Suburbia they'd be allowed to remake a "real" version of the All-American childhoods most of them never got to have. His film-length breakdown as the truth of this situation becomes inescapable is the all-important theme that makes VACATION more than just a string of repeating "Well this seems pleasant... no it doesn't" setup/punchline sequences; and what makes CHRISTMAS VACATION the true sequel is that we see that theme pay off as Clark learns stop chasing an extension of that lie and build his own happiness.
This new VACATION indeed gets back to the spirit of the first: No muss, fuss, very little in the way of CHRISTMAS's sentimentality - its a road trip where everything goes wrong and that's that. The jokes are funny, the characters are enjoyable, it's got a decent energy and the gags land more often than they don't. What it's missing, sadly, is a theme to call its own: The story is the same, as is the "ugliness under the American Road-Trip Mythology" moral, but they aren't held together by anything that gives meaning to the mayhem. It'll probably earn its money back, and a few of the setpiece gags will likely have folks talking for months down the road... but there just isn't weight to any of it - a classic miscalculation in comedies of this type.
The best (or, at least, most VACATION-ish) joke hits right up front: Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) has grown up to be an airline pilot. It's a perfect gag because it makes sense connected to the rest of the series but also because it sets up his character as a separate entity from Clark. Rusty thrives on the comfort of the routine schedule, and when he learns by chance that the rest of his family (cheifly Christina Applegate as wife Debbie) isn't anywhere near as enamored of it as he is (particularly yearly summers at a lakeside cabin) it's a shock to the system; and to rectify things he goes with what worked for his own family once: A road-trip to Wally World.
If the premise has a central stumble, it's in assuming that it absolutely needed to be a road trip at all - the idea is even more an anachronism than it was in the 80s, and one can easily imagine a whole new crop of jokes could be mined from the nightmare of 21st century air travel (and also Ubers, AirBnB type scenarios, etc). But a road trip it is, and that means we're mainly watching updates to the broad strokes of the original, with mixed results: The ongoing "weird features" joke involving a foriegn rental car are mostly misses, outside of a gag involving the GPS voice getting stuck in Korean speech ("Why is it so much angrier than the others?") it's nowhere near as funny as the simple visual awfulness of the Wagon Queen; but an interlude with Griswold sister Audrey and her new ultra-rich Texan husband (Chris Hemsworth) is pretty amusing as an inversion of the Cousin Eddie sequence from the original, i.e. swapping "wealthy hyper-consuming ultra-conservatives" for "weirdo rednecks" in the "strange rural relatives" role. Funny stuff.
Unfortunately, the lack of theme keeps coming back, meaning that there's no overall meaning to connect what now feel more than ever like a lot of "and then..." beats stacked in a row. One potentially fun sequence finds Rusty deciding to take a detour to Applegate's old college, where it's revealed that her old sorority is/was a party-house and she was a legendarily uninhibited wild-child - great potential for fun with family dynamics, but instead it's just setup for an extended slapstick bit wherein Applegate attempts a drunken obstacle-course and ends up vomiting everywhere. Funny, sure, but it feels out of place in a way that becomes a repeating problem: The film is trying desperately to get back to the darkness of the original, but can't quite find the way there in a saleable way and instead settles for "gross."
Still, gross can be funny - and it's mostly funny here, especially a repeating bit where the film allows the audience to "get" what's happening to The Griswolds before they do, the standout being when they find themselves white-water rafting with a guide (Charlie Day) who has a suicidal episode mid-trip. I also imagine the "Griswold Springs" scene would've been a winner had they not spoiled it in every single trailer. On the lesser side, a series of gags about awful things happening to cows (obviously attempting to one-up the dog death from the first film) fall weirdly flat.
What's not a great idea is trying to divide the focus between the individual family members. It likely felt like a good update to give Applegate and the kids more agency whereas the original never really leaves Clark's perspective, but again: No theme. Their individual issues (Applegate is bored with marriage, the older brother is a sensitive kid bullied by his psychotic younger brother) don't sync up in any meaningful way, which is unfortunate since if they had a climactic beat involving a brawl with another family at Wally World might've had some real energy behind it. Instead, like the rest of the piece, it's conceptually amusing but lands much too lightly.
That pervasive "not enough" execution is unfortunately encapsulated by an Act 3 cameo by Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, which appears to arrive years late having not been informed of its own expiration. I won't lie - I got a little bit choked up when Clark (sort-of) saves the day by revealing that he's held onto a specific keepsake from their own Wally World journey (the reveal, complete with mandatory needle-drop, is really something) - but it's too little, too late.
VACATION is funny - exceptionally so at times, but my memory of it is already fading and I doubt we'll be thinking about it even two months from now. Whether or not that means the studio has their franchise back will be another story, but for now as comedies go you're better off seeing SPY or ANT-MAN again.
This piece made possible in part by The MovieBob Patreon For my international readers: American politics is still currently consumed by conspiracy theories surrounding the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. The event (which resulted in the deaths of multiple CIA operatives and at least two longtime American diplomats) is universally regarded as a tragedy, but differences in accounts of the day re: why relief was not deployed earlier and on whose authority have lead to widespread speculation and theories, most settling on a displacement of blame ("Someone important fucked up and their incompetence is being covered up"); but for a particular brand of unhinged paranoiac (read: The Republican voting-base) it's another insidious betrayal by President Evil - aka Barack Obama.
So goes some of the more popular lunacy: Obama and Hillary Clinton, in order to placate their respective Black Panther and Feminazi foot-soldiers (who are, for some reason, aligned with Islamic Fundamentalism in this scenario) "allowed" the Americans stationed there to die as some sort of sacrifice to either Al Qaeda, Gaia, or both. Or neither. Maybe they're just so evil it doesn't matter. Anyway, for obvious reasons it's not an issue that Democrats or "mainstream" Republicans are particularly hot to discuss (bringing it up during the last election led to one of Mitt Romney's most embarassing public gaffes), so the only time you really hear about it is when some hot-air escapes the right-wing talk radio echo-chamber.
In any case, you can see why this is fodder for a movie Hollywood would be desperate to make but almost no one would want to lend their name to: It's a more topical BLACK HAWK DOWN, with the potential to draw major box-office on curiosity alone... but it's also almost-certain to become co-opted by GOP/Tea-Party types and wind up bearing some super-ugly stigma. You'd basically need a major director who lives and breathes action, has a comfortable relationship with the "security community," desperately wants attention (and awards) as a Serious Filmmaker but also doesn't give a fuck about a bad media image.
Commissioner... get to the roof and light The BAY Signal...
For what it's worth, 13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI is based on a book compiled from eyewitness accounts by members of the ex-military contractor team at the story's focus; which aligns largely with the "known facts" of the events and maintains an "in the moment" perspective and doesn't get into the stateside political theories or implications - save for the suspicion among some of the contractors that their CIA handler - whom they claim ordered them to delay intervention by about 20 minutes, leading to the attack getting disasterously out of hand and ultimately preventing rescue - did so in order to further conceal Agency presence in Libya by trying to enlist local militia fighters instead.
I have no idea what Bay's politics are, save that he has very strong feelings about animal cruelty and the protection of endangered species in particular. For what it's worth... I think it looks pretty good. I don't always love the way he cuts/edits the final product together, but Bay really is something like a prodigy when it comes to composition and mood - and for better or worse it's obvious that military settings inspire him to really dig deep. Cinematography is by Dion Beebe this time around, though it's impressive how much of the expected Bay aesthetic shines through.
My sense of this is that any political "interest" he might have in Benghazi begins and ends with his obvious affection for various military branches and the ability of the word "Benghazi!" to get audiences into theaters and the movie into the Serious Discussion circuit - that January 15th release date almost-certainly means it'll be screening NY/LA and critics groups in December to qualify for Awards Season. Yup, 15 years after PEARL HARBOR, Michael Bay is ready to try for his Oscar again. That should be interesting.
Because you demanded it, here (after the jump) a text version of my now-famous PIXELS review. And hey, while you're here, maybe consider visiting The MovieBob Patreon?
I… have no words. I just don’t. I saw PIXELS mere hours ago as of this writing, and I find myself incapable of putting what I’m feeling into words – such is the magnitude of the disaster I’ve witnessed. Is this what Cavemen felt the first time they saw what, to them, looked like something was literally eating the Sun? Is this that Existential Horror thing Lovecraft was talking about… in between all the super-uncomfortable anti-semitic stuff?
PIXELS… is an unmitigated piece of godawful fucking dogshit. It’s existence feels like alternately like a poison or a genital infection. It is celluloid chlymidia. Cinematic strychnine. I shouldn’t even BE here – this isn’t my jurisdiction: I’m a film critic, and PIXELS isn’t a movie… it’s a motherfucking active crime scene. And the crime is cultural vandalism.
What we’re faced with here is not simply the almost-certainly WORST major Hollywood movie of the goddamn year and easily the worst Adam Sandler movie where he’s NOT doing a stupid fucking vocal-affectation, but the vomit-encrusted nadir of the unholy assembly-line transmutation of Generation-X nostalgia into the quote-unquote “geek” corporate-branded marketing identity – the Burning of The Library of Alexandria by way of Hot Topic t-shirt printing.
PIXELS is bad enough to make you hate the things you love, and watching it made me want to take a blowtorch to every scrap of video-game memorabilia… except then I’d only have like 2 decent t-shirts. I didn’t merely hate this movie – I wanted to beat it slowly to death with a fucking wiffle-ball bat. So it’d take longer. I was bored within 2 minutes, angry after 5 and by the time all 100 minutes had run out I was sad and numb… which has now simmered into pure, white hot pants-shitting rage. This is the kind of movie that shouldn’t be “reviewed” so much as fed through a malfunctioning industrial shredder… cock first, as I have to assume is the custom over at Happy Madison.
Egh… fuck everything. But anyway! The “plot” to this tepid cauldron of room-temperature yak piss (inspired by a charming animated short film from a few years ago whose creator I… hope was well fuckin’ compensated at least) is that a race of aliens have misinterpreted samples of Earth popular-culture contained in NASA probe for a declaration of war and have attacked the planet with an army of energy-creatures mimicking the forms of circa-1982 arcade games included among said samples.
That’s… not the “worst” mechanism for setting up what is effectively retro-game JUMANJI by way of a castrato-cover of MARS ATTACKS – assuming that’s something you’ve decided needs to exists for some shit-awful reason – but in Sandler’s typical combination of overwrought yet somehow still half-assed story-structure, it can’t just leave things there. Instead, PIXELS wants to shoe-horn in a metric-ton of Kevin Smith-style pop-reference pandering in the form of another tired-as-fuck manchild hero’s journey; so the invaders opt to challenge humanity to life-sized “real life” variations on one specific classic game at a time – leading Kevin James’ embattled United States President (fucking really!) to conscript Sandler, Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage as a team of former competitive arcade champs to lead the battle… mostly by engaging in tacky, dated stereotypes about these “loser weirdo” gaming-nerds having to prove themselves against the skepticism of the big meanie army guys.
SIDEBAR: The *hell* is Peter Dinklage doing in this pile of skidmarked Sumo thongs? I know a Lannister always pays his debts but what the FUCK? Did Sandler pull him out of a tire fire or something? He doesn’t have to do this shit! Hell, neither does Josh Gad – I’m pretty sure he gets paid every time someone buys one of those fuckin’ Olaf dolls!
Anyway... The whole “SCOTT PILGRIM but for assholes” routine with the game sequences is so overcomplicated yet poorly thought-out you’d think they shot the fuckin’ thing over a weekend if not for shamefully expensive it all looks. The rules, stakes and mechanic change with no rhyme or reason: The humans play the “good guy” player role for the Centipede scene but they have to be the Ghosts in the Pac-Man scene – why? Who the fuck knows and the movie doesn’t care. At one point entering a “cheat code” works for some reason without explaining how it was entered and why it mattered; and these aren’t tiny nitpicks – these are major plot developments getting ground up into some of the worst action-movie storytelling since TRANSFORMERS 2.
What do the Aliens even want? Nobody seems to care – sometimes they’re evil, then in the next scene it’s all about them being confused, at one point we’re flat-out told in a moment of important, highlighted exposition that they were peaceful until they got hold of our probe and could maybe be reasoned with… and it’s dropped ONE scene later never to come up again because there’s some Donkey Kong jokes we haven’t done yet! There’s the germ of an interesting idea dying from lack of oxygen within this shitstorm i.e. so muchof our popular-culture being grounded in the mythologizing of, competition and the arbitrary winner/loser binary why wouldn't they mistake it for us declaring war… but that might’ve been interesting and insightful, and PIXELS is clearly aiming more of an “advanced scrotum-cancer” kind of vibe.
But what really turns the whole thing from just one more stupid fucking waste-of-time Summer comedy into the waterfall of elephant jizz cascading into theaters this weekend is that it’s so oppressively, endlessly, bald-faced cynical about the disingenuous appropriation of its own supposed reason for existing. There’s not a single interesting joke or visual gag making use of the presence of all the classic gaming iconography Sandler and his goon-squad have been allowed to fuck around with. The supposed “humorous” use of every single Pixelated “thing” in the movie never ONCE rises beyond the level of “HAHAHAHAHA! I recognize that, which for some reason qualifies as a joke now!” This isn’t just keeping great art in a bad frame – this is using original Monets to wallpaper a port-a-potty at an IBS Symposium.
This is the kind of bad licensing-driven movie that’s so fucking glib and self-satisfied with its own sleazy cash-grab existence that it takes time out to make sure it ALSO shits on the sort of more earnest, heartfelt version of the same idea someone who gave two shits might’ve made – as you’ve already seen in the trailers with the weirdly mean-spirited "creator of Pac-Man" sequence.
But it get's worse: One of the dozen fucking go-nowhere nonsensical subplots is that the aliens beam down “good” incarantions of random game characters as “trophies” when the humans win a game, which literally ONLY exists so that Q*Bert can become a comic-relief sidekick midway through… except the aliens later refer to him a “traitor” which contradicts this and OH MY FUCKING GOD DID ANYONE PROOFREAD THE SHOOTING SCRIPT FOR GORILLA TURD!? Still… Q*Bert briefly becomes the only decent (if pointless) thing in the movie because he’s cute and its just kinda funny that he’s “there” …but they find a way to fuck it up.
See, another subplot is that Gad’s creepy basement-nerd caricature is obsessed with a made-up female game heroine who shows up as one of the Pixel-monsters but then switches sides and helps him fight because reasons… and then he’s sad vanishes with all the other aliens once the good guys win (SPOILER! Fuck you!) win because “they only get to keep the Trophies” ...which then causes Q*Bert to magically transform into that same heroine for some cocksmith’s idea of a fucking happy ending. So PIXELS *ends* with the only likable character and the only non-bullshit incarnation of it’s own premise blinking out of existence so that ONE of two vaguely-prominent women characters in the cast can serve as a literal trophy. Holy fucking shit.
That, above all else, is what’s so irrationally infuriating about this maggot-oozing head-wound of a movie: It plays at being this sentimental ode to the glory days of classic games, but clearly doesn’t have a fucking drop of sincere interest in what’s made these characters and imagery so enduring or even what made the games themselves so compelling! No matter how many classic cabinets and 80s MTV needle-drops PIXELS trots out, it’s always – nakedly! – the work of a bunch of shit-gargling fuckwits with zero love for or understanding OF this stuff beyond the ability to sell tickets based on “Hey! Remember PAC-MAN!? Remember SPACE INVADERS!? Remember when this guy was in GOOD MOVIES!?”
Fucking hell. Sandler’s literal character-arc in this movie is learning to let go of the pride he takes in having the skill to excel at these classic games and instead embrace an open-ended “what-ever!” just-try-not-to-die modern-gaming approach in order to succeed – “But hey! Don’t pay attention to all that, folks! Look! Stuff from JOUST! Remember JOUST!? Pay us money to remind that JOUST existed!!!” And the only thing worse… is that it’s probably going to work – one more bullshit movie-interlude for the masses to break up the monotony of our ongoing waddle toward IDIOCRACY.
Let me be crystal fucking clear here, folks: PIXELS is the *worst* thing to happen to video games since the CDi, Microtransactions, YouTube screamers, voice-chat and the death of the Dreamcast combined... but it would absolutely still be a festering ocean of stagnant koala feces no matter WHAT licensed-property nostalgia it was pretending to pander to – and probably will still be less than four fucking months from now in the form of that Jack Black GOOSEBUMPS movie. Every game company who let their creations turn up in this shitpile should be flogging themselves like a Catholic masturbator right now – yes, even you, Nintendo – fucking hell, you "swear off" Hollywood for like 20 years after one shitty Mario movie but NOW suddenly you’re totally okay with Mario, Donkey Kong and the Duck Hunt Dog showing up in this abortion? Classy. Real motherfuckin’ classy.
But for now, PIXELS is awful on a level that defies even the most negative conventions of review. Not a single joke lands, not a single performance works, the story is beyond lazy, the stakes make no sense, the staging is limp and lifeless and director Chris Columbus has finally made a movie worse than NINE MONTHS. It demands some sort of new metric below the “stars” or “thumbs” number-scales, like “How many fingers should the people responsible for this be allowed to keep?” I hate this movie so much I would’ve rather watched BLENDED again. I hate this movie so much I wish I’d caught up with PAUL BLART 2 instead. I hate this piece of shit so much I’m no longer rooting for Tyrion to make it out of Season 6 alive! I wanted to run this movie over with my car. Repeatedly. I wanted to ritually blind this movie with razor-wire.
As a film critic, I’m so used to Sandler sucking at this point that it’s a challenge not to start grading his bullshit on some kind of “curve,” but as some who actually loves all the stuff PIXELS fucks around *pretending* to appreciate it feels like the Pride of Manchester New Hampshire here broken into my fuckin’ house, took a bloody, backed-up post-Taco Bell Miralax-shit in the middle of my fuckin living room and now wants me to pay him for the goddamn privilege.
Fuck this movie. Fuck everyone who made this movie. And if you pay money to watch this movie? FUCK YOU TOO.
So... yeah, hypothetical "scriptment" pitches for hypothetical movie adaptations. Thought exercise and all that.
This one will be a touch on the different side, less of a blow-by-blow and more of an outline; since in this instance the "challenge" isn't to figure out how to turn the X-MEN franchise into a movie (that's been done) but to work out how a "reboot" of the series might be made to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe if and when the rights to the characters were to fall back under Marvel/Disney's control.
Principal aims: Work out the "purpose" of Mutants in an MCU which, within a few years, will likely have already burned through the "disenfranchised minority metaphor" business using THE INHUMANS. Renew focus on the sexual/relationship politics-dominated "soap opera" interplay that characterized the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne era wherein these characters became popular.
See what I came up with after the jump:
And here we go:
OPEN in 1834, the THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. Yup, we're going here: CHARLES DARWIN is investigating animals and cataloguing samples, gradually discovering the beginnings of his theory of Natural Selection... faster than one might have expected, thanks to some whisper-gentle nudging from a largely anonymous assistant who seems to already know as fact the theories he's subtly planting the seeds of in Darwin's head. His name is NATHANIEL ESSEX.
We move ahead to: WORLD WAR II, the liberation of a Concentration Camp by joint U.S. and Canadian forces including CAPTAIN AMERICA and The Howling Commandos. Cap is irritated by the fact that freeing these camps isn't higher on the Army's priority list, and that this is the first one his unit has been sent to - and not for the camp itself, but for what's "under it."
As if on cue, HYDRA troops appear from an underground bunker and a fight breaks out. While the Commandos protect the prisoners, Cap finds himself fighting into the bunker alongside a Canadian soldier posessed of superhuman strength. When asked who he is: "Would you believe 'Captain Canada?'" In short-order, Cap and yes-we-know-it's-WOLVERINE discover a HYDRA lab where experiments are being conducted on a boy of about 6 - ERIK LENSHER. The scientist in charge gives up rather easily and offers a fake name, but we can recognize Nathaniel Essex, looking not a day older than 1834.
Another leap, this time to 2015 (presume, for the sake of this exercise, that this film would not be produced until at least 2020 - one year after Marvel's last currently-slated feature is set to bow) and the offices of the AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. An update on the Inhumans "situation" is being presented, along with a theory that some of the assets classified as Inhuman are actually not - that they are mutations of ordinary humans, not descendants of alien interference.
These "Mutants" are a troubling prospect - born with powers nascent until their teens but biologically indistinct from humans and not requiring Terrigenesis to "activate" their abilities - but the talk is gently but firmly shot down by a Senior Agent - Essex, once again.
Finally, the PRESENT - a suburban Superintendent of Schools office late at night. Teenaged student KATHERINE "KITTY" PRYDE slips into the building to steal SAT answers - via the mutant power of walking through solid walls. But she's stopped by an oddly well-timed security guard - Essex again, brandishing a gun.
Kitty is saved by a voice in her head telling her to beware, followed by the appearance of CHARLES XAVIER (bald, wheelchair) and his much older companion - Erik Lensher (ancient-looking but strong, standing/walking with the aid of metal braces on his legs, back and arms.) Essex proves able to block Xavier's psychic attacks, but Lensher's metal-controlling powers bludgeon him badly enough that he reveals his monstrous-looking true form: MISTER SINISTER!
Enter THE X-MEN, in classic blue/gold uniforms, ages ranging from 19 to 22: CYCLOPS, JEAN GREY, ANGEL, PYRO and MYSTIQUE. Brawl ensues, Sinister escapes.
The X-Men bring Kitty aboard the BLACKBIRD jet and explain the scenario: Mankind isn't prepared to know about Mutants, fear of the recently-revealed Inhumans has made it worse, Xavier and Lensher operate XAVIER'S SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED to protect/nurture Mutant youth, the X-Men are onetime students graduated to teachers.
Recruitment to Xavier's School (via CEREBRO, which can discern Mutant from human/Inhuman where biology cannot) has been increased of late in order to checkmate abductions by MR. SINISTER (an augmented human via experiments on Mutants, which he believes he "discovered" in the mid-1700s) the reasons for which are yet unclear.
At the school, Kitty (yes, he's our audience-POV character for this one) meets her same-aged (mid-teens) student contemporaries; chiefly cocky athlete ICEMAN, gentle-giant COLOSSUS and withdrawn beauty ROGUE.
Xavier reaches out to a contact in S.H.I.E.L.D (or whatever the post-CIVIL WAR power-aparatus is), HANK "BEAST" MCCOY (non-furry version) for information about Sinister. Not much known, but his actions threaten to (finally) pull Mutants into the public sphere. Charles and Erik argue - Erik in favor of going public and starting a fight he believes will occur no matter what, Charles on the cautious side.
Also noted: The Inhumans have (off the record) refused to "cover" in the event of exposed Mutants by claiming them as part of their race.
While the machinations of the Bigger Story grind on in the backdrop with the "grownups" (short version: Sinister is collecting powerful Mutants for what he calls a "Brotherhood," promising that he can both keep them safe and improve their natural powers, Xavier has plotted out a list of likely targets to try and head him off) Kitty does the Harry Potter thing moving between the students and classes. All is not well: Growing "cliques" of students profess a psuedo-cultist fixation on "militant" essays (as opposed to Xavier's pacifist philosophy) Erik penned as a younger man...
...but Erik is ambivalent about those writings now, and gently dissuades his would-be acolytes. He develops a rapport with Kitty, explaining that his lifelong militancy softened fairly recently and for a specific reason: When Captain America (effectively) returned from the dead, he had a chance to meet and thank the man who'd saved his life as a boy and began to believe in second chances.
On a dare, Kitty sneaks onto the Blackbird for a mission - quietly observing the X-Men's recruitment of STORM (usual origin re: orphan worshiped as a goddess/witch in tribal Africa.) Back at school, she and Kitty become friendly.
Meanwhile, a Christian Fundamentalist religious sect called THE CHURCH OF NATURAL LAW (think Westboro Baptist, but fixated on hating aliens, Inhumans and superheroes) led by REVEREND WILLIAM STRIKER begins to make news with outlandish protests against various events/ideas referencing other recent story points in the MCU. Erik finds him especially disturbing.
Kitty and her friends discuss whether or not they'll also be X-Men as they get older. One thing they agree on: The blue/gold uniforms don't work for them, and they begin to discuss their own hypothetical gear/getup.
A later recruitment (with Beast tagging along for S.H.I.E.L.D reasons) does not go so well: The target, TOAD, has already sworn allegiance to Sinister - it's a trap! The X-Men escape, but not unscathed: Beast is hit with an "improvement" injection from Sinister and mutates into his blue furry form.
With the team's progress delayed, Xavier asks Erik to take a detachment of "advanced" students (Kitty, Iceman, Colossus, Rogue and Storm) to attempt contact with another potential target in rural Germany: Teleporter Kurt Wagner, NIGHTCRAWLER. It goes... awkwardly, but Nightcrawler ultimately agrees to come along because he's immediately smitten with Kitty.
All parties return to the School for some (relative) down-time. While the grownups compare notes (and Erik secretly agonizes over growing issues with his arthritis and bone problems), a group of "cool girls" (including JUBILEE, maybe?) goad Kitty into getting Nightcrawler to teleport them into a sold-out local concert by pop-star DAZZLER (think Miley Cyrus by way of Lady Gaga.)
At the Dazzler concert, Kitty feels bad about "using" Kurt, but he's already over it - he's noticed that Dazzler seems to be setting off light-effects on the stage without any means of ignition: She's a Mutant!
Something else they both notice (too late) "Nathaniel Essex" is in Dazzler's roadie crew! He sets off a chemical release which supercharges Dazzler's powers, causing he to fire destructive light-beams out of her fingertips. Footage makes the news, and just like that Mutants are now publically known.
The Federal government (particularly whatever superhuman governing-machinery is set post-CIVIL WAR) mobilizes hearings on "The Mutant Problem." With public hysteria growing, Erik presses a reluctant Xavier to hold a press-conference spearheaded by "a friend" (Tony Stark if that's still plausible, someone else if not) introducing/rebranding The X-Men as an Avengers-style superhero team to put public fears at ease.
Kitty is torn between the two "sides" in the school: Some want to go militant and prepare for war with humanity, others want to coexist. The only person she can fully confide in is Storm, who is thus far an observer not taking any full side.
During the press conference, a Mutant henchman of Sinister's hits Erik with the power-charging serum, resulting in a metal-controlling freakout that turns the assembled crowd (with goading from Stryker's "Church," who attended to heckle) against them.
Amid the chaos, Sinister appears in full regalia, feigning as though he's an ideological ally of the scattered, confused X-Men. His "Brotherhood" (a small army of B/C-list Mutants, have fun with it) attack the crowd, and by the time The X-Men can regroup to fight them everything has gone to shit. Sinister escapes, but before he does he hands Lensherr a vial of "something" and an ominous message: "Admit it. You enjoyed yourself back there. Here's another taste - if you want it. And you will." An analysis of the vial reveals that it contains (among other things) genetic material with a remarkable healing factor... but NOT the type that keeps Essex/Sinister effectively immortal. It's marking also trace back to an obscure decomissioned military facility in Canada's Northwest Territories. An obvious trap, but The X-Men (bringing an insistent Nightcrawler along for good measure) have no choice but to try.
Kitty (and the rest of the school) watch via video monitors as The X-Men attempt to raid the compound... only to find themselves attacked by amped-up Brotherhood henchmen and taken prisoner via mind-control devices of Sinister's design. When Xavier tries to reach out psychically to stop this, an already-ensnared Jean Grey telepathically knocks him unconscious. Nightcrawler barely manages to teleport himself and a badly-beaten Cyclops to safety, beginning a travel-by-teleport rush back to the Xavier School...
...which has problems of its own: A torches-and-pitchforks style mob, led by Reverend Stryker, has stormed the grounds, and without Xavier to hold them back things go straight to hell - including a brutal injury to Erik. The students are unable to coalesce in resistance (Kitty leads the "protect and de-escalate" side, with the militants outnumbering them) until...
Storm appears (classic costume, classic attitude), demands they fight together but backs Kitty's "just get them out of here, don't make things worse" approach. She does, however, use some extreme examples of her power to put the fear of God(dess) into Stryker before sending him on his way.
Xavier comes to amid the wreckage just as Cyclops and Nightcrawler teleport in, adamant that the X-Men have to be saved but unsure how to do it. Kitty proposes a solution: She, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Iceman and Storm should serve as a new/temporary X-Men team under Cyclops' leadership to go and rescue the others. He's unsure... but there's no other choice.
The "All-New X-Men" suit up in the unique costumes they'd discussed earlier (Cyclops trades his battered blue/gold uni for his 80s all-blue look) and head into battle.
Unseen in the rubble, Erik is alive... barely. He manages to get his hands on the vial from Sinister and, with nothing else to lose, drinks it. The effects are shocking and immediate - he begins to de-age into a remarkably fit-looking man possibly in his mid-30s, just with white hair.
The "new" X-Men fight through Sinister's goons, only to find themselves fighting the mind-controlled originals! After a difficult fight, all of the X-Men are now on the same team, and chase Sinister himself into the bowels of his base. There, Sinister reveals a mysterious form inside a tube of chemicals - a Mutant of "remarkable powers" whom Essex calls an "old friend" that had been turned into a bio-weapon by a Canadian military-backed science project. "The truth is, some people already DID know about Xavier's little Boy Scout troop, and wanted a checkmate. Enjoy your time with WEAPON X!" Sinister takes off as WEAPON X (Wolverine-but-not-with-that-name-yet from the prologue, duh) emerges, pops his claws and an all-against-one fight breaks out, eventually exploding out in the forest with both X-Men teams easily matched by this rampaging monster. Only a combined pooling of their various powers, with Kitty and Nightcrawler using phasing/teleporting in tandem to wear him down, prevails.
Jean Grey uses her powers to un-brainwash "Weapon X," who remembers nothing except the codename "Wolverine" - but he's immediately fond of the "lady head-doctor."
Back at the school, repairs are underway. Angel (real name Warren Worthington III) is reveal to have gotten his family business to donate much of the cost, but at a price: He's to finally take an active role on the board, meaning he must depart The X-Men. Also departing: Mystique and Pyro, who confide in eachother that after what they've seen from Stryker etc they can't believe in Mutant/Human coexistence anymore. Beast is headed to (an MCU science/research reference) but will be in touch.
Saddened but accepting of this change in personel, Xavier makes it official: Kitty, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Iceman, Colossus and Storm will join Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine as the new official X-Men team.
STINGER: Pyro and Mystique seek out "Mutant resistance" information in a secret location, only to hear talk of "TRUE Brotherhood" and the reveal of a still de-aged Erik Lensher, now wearing his classic uniform and calling himself MAGNETO.
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This is the "pilot pitch" for the upcoming ABC prime-time revival of THE MUPPET SHOW. It represents probably the best use anyone has made of these characters since at least MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND (and I liked the first of the two recent movies, so don't start any shit.)
I love The Muppets like few other things, and this feels like it could be something really spectacular. The movies have always been fine - at least three of them are great - but these characters belong on TV in this exact type of farce. So excited.
So. Just saw ANT-MAN for a second time, just because. Hold's up - this one really works. Not GUARDIANS-level transcendent, but really good.
Anyway! Long story short: By now you've heard that there's quite a bit of Universe-building business sprinkled throughout this one - multiple cameos, two post-credits beats and a no-name name-drop. But on my second viewing, I'm reasonably certain I caught a glimpse of something that's either a sly inside-reference, the most well-hidden Easter Egg since Cap's prototype shield on the workbench in IRON MAN (the first one) ...or I'm seeing things.
Obviously, to say/show more would be a MASSIVE SPOILER even if I'm wrong, given the sequence it occurs in. So I'll put the rest of this after the jump: / / / / / / / / / /
MAJOR SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: Okay. So, ANT-MAN's version of Chekhov's Gun Finishing-Move is "going subatomic," i.e. using the Ant-Man suit's shrinking capabilities to reduce one's size down below that of the building blocks of life - useful, but super-dangerous because if you shrink too far you hit the point where physics and reality no longer matter and start slipping through the cracks in space/time, and in the film's backstory, doing so led to the death of original Ant-Man's wife Janet "The Wasp" Van Dyne (hence why he's adamant that his daughter Hope not use the suit herself, hence the conscripting of Scott Lang as the new Ant-Man.) Using this technique ultimately turns out to be the only way for Scott to defeat YellowJacket in a deadly situation, and he winds up tumbling down through the Subatomic World in nifty, possibly COSMOS-inspired sequence (there's a Tardigrade!!!) that starts out straight-science and then goes all Cosmic Marvel.
At sub-atom size, Ant-Man continues to drift through the kind of hazy/colorful psychedelia Marvel has thus far used to represent "otherworldly" spaces like Thanos' domain, finally winding up in a fractal space where he's finally able to finagle an escape back to reality - though he can't remember anything he saw or did there. It's enough, however, for Pym to imply that he's keen to go looking for Janet again...
Anyway! At one point in the process (during both the "shrinking" and "escaping" shots), we pass through what vaugely looks like a cloudy mountain-range of some kind. In the upper right-hand corner of the frame, I'd swear you can see (partially masked by "clouds") what appears to be a gigantic humanoid figure looming over the scene. It's brief, it's not "pointed out" and it could be anything - but it sticks out to me because it's there both times.
Here's a snap from an in-theater recording I found online (I'm not linking to the original, I'm generally against phones/cameras in theaters and if there turns out to be an issue here I'll glady remove it.) Anyway:
And HERE'S a version I've highlighted to show where I'm seeing the "figure":
So. Assuming this is "something," who or what is it? Marvel overseer Kevin Feige has already confirmed that the subatomic/cosmic stuff in ANT-MAN is meant to be a really tiny tease at how "The Other Side" can look/work for DOCTOR STRANGE, so that leads me to think this could be an early sighting of either Eternity or Infinity - in the Marvel Universe, esoteric cosmic concepts (see also: Death, whom Thanos is in literal love with) have semi-physical embodiments that you can meet and talk to if you have the ability, and Stephen Strange is one of the folks most often doing that talking. Here's what they look like:
And yes, they do "present" as male and female - a couple whose "union" (all of space and all of time) encompasses the entirety of the Universe (in case you wondering - yes, there are dopplegangers of both in all the different adjacent Universes in the Marvel canon.)
On the other hand, it sort-of looks like there's a light-source coming from where the chest would be on the shape, so it could also be The Living Tribunal, the disagreement-arbiter and final authority over all cosmic entities like Eternity and Infinity. Basically, this is the on-paper powerhouse of the Marvel Cosmology - the last "guy" on the totem pole in terms of power and authority below "The One-Above-All," (aka The One True God - whose true form/identity/alignment/etc are never officially depicted.) He looks like THIS:
So. What say you, Internet? Have we seen our first Cosmic Entity in the MCU?
UPDATE: Some folks are chiming in to say it could just as easily be The Wasp, which is true enough. Meanwhile, here's director Peyton Reed saying on the record that "an object or a person" is indeed hiding within our view of subspace:
