Review: STAR WARS - EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENS (Updated: Now With VIDEO!)

NOTE: This review is possible in part through contributions to The MovieBob Patreon. If you enjoy it and want to see more, please consider becoming a patron.

It's fine. Relax.



SPOILERS (not big or important ones, but story details and allusions) FOLLOW: CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The weirdest moment in my evolution from movie fan to professional film critic (SHUT UP it is too a real job!) was when I realized that I had been both totally wrong and totally right about the STAR WARS prequels (SHUT UP *again!* - that era is now as over as it’s gonna get you got your way you can afford one more look back).

Viewed objectively, the prequels are “bad films” for the same reasons that plenty of other (substantially worse!) special-effects blockbusters are bad films: Poorly scripted, badly acted, tonally askew, etc. But as a young-ish fanboy back in the day, what really bugged me was that they didn’t “feel” STAR WARS enough, by which of course I mean that they didn’t remain slavishly devoted to the aesthetic and trappings I’d grown up obsessed with and didn’t throw out nearly enough references and callbacks and, well… “Star Wars” stuff. Whatever bad things you can say about THE PHANTOM MENACE, you can’t accuse George Lucas of pandering to the audience – that was ATTACK OF THE CLONES

My point is: I’ve long held a sneaky (and depressing) suspicion that if the prequels had been exactly as lacking on a technical filmmaking and storytelling level BUT had also been suitably packed to the gills with the requisite amount of fan-service, said fans would’ve largely overlooked those flaws and still be arguing their merits today.

And I’d been worried that I’d get a chance to test this hypothesis ever since it became clear that Disney and Lucasfilm were intent on selling THE FORCE AWAKENS based almost-exclusively around proving that they’d been listening to the last decade-plus of fanboy complaints; with a pre-release hype machine that ignored almost all discussion of story, themes or characters in favor of: “We’re using practical effects and models again!” “NO midichlorians!” “X-Wings and Tie-Fighters and Storm Troopers and The Falcon!” “Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie are all back!” Heck, they even went so far as to hire JJ Abrams – a remarkably UN-remarkable talent whose only skillset of genuine note is being an exceptional mimic of the style and feel of other peoples’ movies. If ever there was going to be a recipe to make O.G. STAR WARS fans spontaneously combust with joy *regardless* of whether or not the movie was actually any damn good, this was it.

BUT! My hypothesis will have to wait for another day. Because in spite of all that (and, if we’re being far, probably because of some of it) STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is a pretty damn good movie. And since it in no way needed to be, I suppose that’s damn impressive in its own right.

Make no mistake though: What we’ve got here is effectively the world’s first $200 million STAR WARS fan-film – and I don’t use that designation to be flippant nor entirely critical. THE FORCE AWAKENS is scratching a nostalgia itch out of pure profit motive, but for good or ill the attachment generations of filmgoers have to the sights, sounds and characters of the original trilogy is a real, palpable thing that exists on a level above the base toy-salesmanship that grew to feed off of it. Yes, the narrative is pretty much a leisurely stroll down memory lane (with frequent detours onto Homage Avenue) but mostly feels organic and natural about it at least until you stop and start questioning the coincidences that have always been a big part of the series’ storytelling.

Which, it turns out, is equal parts amusing and frustrating: Abrams isn’t even half as clever a storyteller as he thinks he is… but he IS pretty darn clever, and his sleight of hand trick here is to make both the cyclical nature of the STAR WARS canon and a mad drive to re-live (and live-up-to) the events of the Original Trilogy part of the subtext and “meta”-text of the overall piece; in as much as our new bad guys (The First Order) appear largely to be a cult of Empire-revivalists while our heroes (and at least one villain) are consumed with finding and honoring the spirit of the exploits of Luke and company which, to them, are the stuff of (literal) legend.

This, depending on your point of view, either necessitates or allows for Abrams’ most naked stroke of “fan-film”-ism: That the actual surface-level story of THE FORCE AWAKENS is a deliberate, near blow-for-blow retread of the original STAR WARS; as we once again concern ourselves with a droid who crash-lands on a desert planet carrying top-secret information regarding an old Jedi Master, a newly-completed planet-destroying battlestation and a high-ranking villain in a black mask who’s more personally invested than they’re letting on.

The film (and filmmakers) aren’t simply playing with the original series’ vintage toys, they’re using them to re-enact their favorite parts with their own tweaks and revisions. To be honest, if you can picture a modernized remake of the first movie but where they actually knew the big revelations from EMPIRE and could allude to them ad-nauseum (plus an admirable diversity-boost to main cast), you’re a long way to knowing more-or-less what you’re getting from EPISODE VII; with Abrams clearly feeling comfortable enough in his term-limited position as Star Wars Fanboy King For A Day to also find room for his own versions of Mysterious Uber-Villains Meant To Be Explained Later, a character with a cool, instantly-iconic look who gets a ton of tangential build-up but ultimately doesn’t really do anything and an angry confrontation about paternity on an absurdly-unsafe catwalk.

I’d be lying if I said that this level of reliance on mythic reference for gravity and scope doesn’t start to wear thin at the seams – Abrams is putting way more of his weight on Lucas than Lucas himself *ever* leaned on Joseph Campbell – but it eventually holds together and proves (mostly) able to stand up as its own thing thanks to the one Original Trilogy lesson it seems to have commited most of all to heart: That a lot can be forgiven with compelling characters and a sense of humor. Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron are all fun, engaging characters whose future exploits I’m already looking forward to; and despite all the homage and allusion the plot puts them through there is indeed a lot more to each of them than simply “the Luke” or “the Han” from scene to scene.

Boyega in particular essays a great likable everyman caught way above his head by his own good intentions, Ridley is compelling and strong even while saddled with the unfortunate duty of having every word spoken by or about her coming branded with a footnote reading: “THIS WILL MEAN SOMETHING IN EPISODE EIGHT!” But it’s Isaac who pretty-much walks away with every scene he’s in – making probably the biggest and most instantaneous turn from “Good actor you’ve seen around” to “HOLY SHIT this kid is a born movie star!!!” since… well, yeah. And speaking of which, while they occasionally get right up the line of it, the returning Hall of Famers acquit themselves admirably and largely avoid overstaying their welcome.

Possibly most interesting of all is Adam Driver as Kylo-Ren, ostensibly the "new" wannabe Darth. I say possibly both because his storyline is another one that's clearly being left half-realized so as to be a "to be continued" for the next movie, and also because it's not fully possible to talk about him without getting into a series of huge spoilers. Suffice it to say I was profoundly intrigued to see Abrams and company introduce a character whose (no exaggeration) entire being feels conceived as a pre-emptive "fuck off" to whiny, entitled, backwards-looking, legacy-obsessed, easily-enraged fanboy culture itself (think Superboy Prime) only to say: "Y'know what? This will work better if we're subtle about it." Of all the characters new or old, his is the story I'm most interested to see play out further.

If there’s a weak link, it’s in the writing. Not necessarily in the overall storytelling – the story they’ve got is fine even if you can hear the gears turning a little too loudly as they attempt to reverse-engineer Lucas’ original “think up a giant epic, then tell one small part of it” approach – although it does do a fine job of using the fallout from a casually-revealed, seemingly “major” plot detail that at first feels like it should have been a huge twist as a narrative smoke-screen to conceal a much bigger twist *almost* well enough that you’ll be irritated with yourself during the credits when you start thinking: “Wait a minute, that might be one astronomically massive coincidence too many.”

The problem, rather, comes in the dialogue – where too often a character’s already perfectly-clear reaction to something goes on several beats longer than it should while they lay out the emotional-exposition for said reaction to a third party. There isn’t too much of this, but there’s enough that you start wondering if there’s a joke being told that you don’t have the proper context for.

Ultimately, I’m not sure that it’s possible to give a fair and complete overview of THE FORCE AWAKENS that will stand the test of time – much like the Prequels, it feels structured around a sense of pre-planned inevitability in a way that frustratingly obscures which moments of under-writing or “plot-holes” are “bugs” of clunky screenwriting and which ones are “features” of setting up the next two movies: for example, DON’T go in expecting to find out WHY the First Order formed, HOW it’s buildup was accomplished or WHAT they’re grand scheme or unifying ideology is all about just yet.

For now, what I can safely say as a film critic is that – if the stated goal here was to emulate the original 1977 STAR WARS? Mission accomplished: Both films are energetic, hugely enjoyable, visually-spectacular space-adventure romps from imaginative filmmakers who are perhaps better as technicians than auteurs that are immensely fun to watch and contain intriguing glimpses of a bigger world and more substantive story just beyond the frame. And if this commitment to emulation continues, then here’s hoping next time we once again get the deeper, richer, more narratively-satisfying continuation made by a better director (they’ve already got that second part pretty-much locked-in.)

And as a STAR WARS fan? …yup, it’s pretty goddamn awesome. In the end my objectivity and detachment were no match for just how satisfying it is to see all The Good Stuff polished up like new and our Old Friends stepping back up to take their well-deserved bows; and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience visceral, powerful emotional response to a handful of big payoffs – even when you can see them coming from miles (or years away.) THE FORCE AWAKENS has practically been *genetically engineered* in the vast Disney manufacturing collective to make long-time STAR WARS fans shrug off the weight of Prequel Disappointment, get all misty and gratefully declare “Star Wars is back.” And… yeah, so be it, I’ll say it, you guys win:

STAR WARS is back.


NOTE: This review is possible in part through contributions to The MovieBob Patreon. If you enjoy it and want to see more, please consider becoming a patron.

"Well Played."

NOTE: Film coverage like this made possible in part through donations to The MovieBob Patreon.

I'm a confirmed "hater" of the JJ Abrams STAR TREK reboots so far. Bent over backwards trying to like the first one so as not to be judged as a change-averse reactionary, openly and utterly hated INTO DARKNESS on every conceivable level (mostly because it was bad on every conceivable level) and have pretty-much written the series off. And yet, the trailer for STAR TREK BEYOND just dropped and... I kind of like it? A lot?

...and I seem to be in the minority on that.

I won't say that I don't "get" why this has people apprehensive. The feel of the trailer, as an individual piece of work apart from what it's selling, is aggressively "anti-fanservice;" especially in that it's structured (seemingly deliberately) among the most obnoxiously in-your-face "Not your father's Star Trek!" things from the first reboot movie i.e. the anachronistic Beastie Boys track and super-obvious "extreme!" action beats (motorbike-jumping, in this case.) And yeah, that I can see - just like I can already hear the rage coming as people make the connection between "I saw a vehicle-stunt" and "Director from FAST & FURIOUS movies." The pitch here is entirely "Star Trek as an action flick," and if the very idea of that is anathema to you, well... yeah, anathema. There you go.

For me, though, the issue with Abrams' STAR TREK was never that he made it "action-y." Frankly, after multiple Generations (see what I did there?) of Trek being ponderous and navel-gazing, I was more than ready for a deliberate return to the "big ideas plus exciting pulpy space adventure" stylings which, from where I sit, defined the original series and was thus the true heart and soul of the franchise. Which is why it was all the more disappointing that Abrams' vision (over two movies) was not only not particularly exciting or adventurous, but also had nothing in the way of big ideas beyond references to better previous films, convoluted self-justification (the first one) or inane 9-11 "truther" allusions (INTO DARKNESS.)

Now, to be certain, the BEYOND trailer isn't exactly promising any big ideas (yet); although I am intrigued at hearing Idris Elba's (I think?) unidentified alien character talking about "The frontier pushing back" - If TREK has an under-explored element to itself, it's recognizing that it's Utopian progressive self-image is somewhat at odds with the Colonial/Expansionist undercurrent of the "To Boldly Go..." business. But so far that's just an inkling of potential in a trailer that's mainly selling a big-scale action/adventure movie in the TREK universe.

So why am I so enthused by this (and puzzled to the point of minor irritation that so many others seem to not be?) I'll be honest: It could just be that seeing actors in TOS-style uniforms scrambling around on colorful boulders with aliens in weird/elaborate makeup feels aesthetically closer to "Classic Trek" than everything else in the reboots so far and that I'm an unapologetic mark for exactly that, but mostly I just like that it looks like it's trying to be fun. And if there's one thing that's been missing from this series so far, fun would be it. Sure, there was plenty of action; but of the portentous, grim, "People sure seemed to love that DARK KNIGHT picture!" type - and that's never been STAR TREK, even at TNG's mopiest low-points.

What I think this exposes, at least to a degree we haven't really had to "confront" in awhile, is that there's still a fundamental split in STAR TREK fandom. For a long time "Trekkies" (or Trekkers, or whatever) have been treated like a monolith in the popular culture, particularly as the post-TNG aesthetic came to dominate the ancillary arms of the franchise and the revival of "Wars v Trek;" but it isn't. TOS vs TNG/etc is still very much a thing, and I feel like you can really see it (and will see more of it) in the reactions here.

See, I'm TOS/Kirk all the way. So for me, the mere presence of some bike-jumps and martial-arts (that's Sophia Boutella from KINGSMEN as the lady alien, incidentally) doesn't in itself undermine anything essential about STAR TREK - especially since it's the Kirk-era that's being rebooted here. Original-recipe TREK ("my" TREK) was always at its best balancing adventure and intrigue with big ideas and forward-thinking vision. Yes, it would explore out-there sci-fi concepts like parallel-evolution or time-travel and grapple with issues like race, class and philosophy, but it would also "hook" you with action, melodrama, alien monsters, etc. TOS would frequently (an unapologetically) use whatever space-magic it could conjure in order to throw Kirk and company into old-west gunfights, gladiator arenas, monster battles or whatever else - if they could've afforded a motocross stunt, I'm sure they'd have done it and Shatner etc would've been all over it.

But that's me, I'm a TOS guy. If you're coming from the (totally legitimate) place where THE NEXT GENERATION and it's progeny are the "true" STAR TREK, well... firstly I'm always interested to hear how that squares with the now widely-understood revelations that TNG was only able to flourish creatively when other writers and producers were able to wrest control away from Roddenberry. But beyond that, I "get" where this looks like a total pass for you.

Or I could be completely wrong. Right now, I'm digging the audacity (which is a different animal from from the plain "not getting it" of the Abrams movies) at play here, and it's not difficult for me to see where the mix of solid action chops and team-dynamic skills that Justin Lin brought to the FAST & FURIOUS movies could turn out to be what the franchise needs to salvage itself, even as its biggest liability (Chris Pine remains a charisma-vaccum in everything other than his INTO THE WOODS comic turn) continues to be present. But this could just as easily be a bad idea all-around. For now, though, I'm feeling good about it.

NOTE: Film coverage like this made possible in part through donations to The MovieBob Patreon.

ID4: RESURGENCE Trailer Debuts

Give Fox a certain level of credit for not promoting this over a year in advance. They've got a near-gauranteed gargantuan blockbuster on their hands just based on the title and hitting the Millennial Nostalgia market at what's probably going to be its peak (don't forget: JURASSIC WORLD just got done becoming the biggest hit ever) - regardless of how you feel about INDEPENDENCE DAY (I've made my position pretty clear) there's an audience to whom it's a generational touchstone who will turn out in force for this - so they can afford to not bury the planet in advertising before now:



In any case, I mostly like what I'm seeing. I'm curious to see how they solve the problem presented by the aliens (part of the charm of the original is that it treats "alien invasion" like an impersonal natural disaster that doesn't need much explanation or any background, but we'll probably need some of that this time) and it feels anticlimactic to lose Will Smith's character offscreen (see below), but otherwise it looks like the best pitch you could reasonably have for this. I'm especially interested in the idea that they're going with an significantly altered timeline (with the original invasion still dated to 1996 and this being an alternate 2016 world spinning out of those events) rather than futzing around trying to keep a "normal" present like the last three TERMINATOR sequels. Hell, given the ongoing state of the world, "endless war-preparation even as the inciting attack gets further and further into the past" is eerily appropriate.

Along with the trailer, they've also launch a "War of 1996" viral site to handle some inter-film worldbuilding. This is where we learn (among other things) that Stephen Hiller (Smith) died in a test-pilot accident (Jessie Usher is playing "Dylan Dubrow-Hiller," i.e. Jasmine's now-grownup kid from the first one) and that David (Jeff Goldblum) has become a sort of Steve-Job-but-for-weaponry guru leading the adoption of alien tech by humanity; along with other (potentially) interesting details like surviving Invaders still being alive (and fighting with human troops) in Africa.

So... call it a maybe. Well-intentioned failures aside, Emmerich remains one of the best action-spectacle filmmakers working, and I'm excited to see him return to full-on science fiction after all this time. We'll find out on June 24th (the July 4 weekend having been previously claimed by Spielberg's BFG adaptation and, for some reason, Warner Bros' new TARZAN movie.)


NOTE: Film coverage like this made possible in part through donations to The MovieBob Patreon.

"X-MEN: APOCALYPSE" First Trailer

So... yeah, they pretty much say right upfront that Apocalypse is, in fact, God - as in "the God." That's something you probably wouldn't have seen in a mainstream superhero movie a decade ago.



Beyond that? Looks okay. The lack of more than a handful of people in any given scene kind of undercuts the "epic" feel (scale, along with action, simply isn't Singer's forte) and it looks like Jennifer Lawrence is going to have to keep seeking out roles where "palpable lack of engagement" is the only appropriate trait to express; but it looks the least Bryan Singer-ish of anything in the franchise apart from FIRST CLASS, so that's a good thing - though I imagine plenty of people are going to be disappointed in Archangel looking like nothing so much as a fashion-show floorwalker.

TV RECAP: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Season 3 - Episode 10: "Ma'veth" (Midseason Finale)

...sigh.

Firstly, the reason there wasn't a recap for last week was because, while yes I was in fact busy with other work, when I did finally sit down to try and knock one out... nothing came. Apart from the big opening shocker (Ward kills [spoiler]) and the cliffhanger (Coulson jumps into the portal after Ward, Fitz and the HYDRA team) "Closure" was just a whole lot of running around and place-setting for this finale without a lot of meat on it's bones.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that there's ultimately not that much to "Ma'veth," either. If I weren't being an MCU completist about this stuff, I'd be hard-pressed to name anything that would be encouraging me to come back after the AGENT CARTER break.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!


At this point, it may just be best to start accepting that not only will Season 3 likely not wind up as strong as Season 2, but that Season 2 might be a total anomaly in and of itself. That midseason finale ("What They Become") and subsequent fallout felt like a long overdue realization of the series' original promise: An interesting storyline with great surprises of its own (Skye was an Inhuman AND an established Marvel heroine all along! Whitehall isn't the real threat! Evil Dad is Mr. Hyde! Jaiying was the bad guy!) that also tied-in/built-on the broader MCU.

More importantly, despite the constant pop-awareness of the restrictions the series is operating under (pretty much ALL of the "big" mysteries and MCU tie-ins have to be broadly-defined enough up until the last moment that they can be fit into whatever other "big stuff" the movies have either established or need to have established), it felt like the narrative was a cohesive thing of its own, not just playing catch-up or winking about future reveals it's only half-aware of.

But with "Ma'veth," you've got almost the exact opposite. Most of the major plot threads of the previous 9 episodes have been seemingly dropped (Price and the other named ATCU guy are dead, a bunch of the HYDRA-abducted Inhumans have been killed by Lash, who's escaped again) save for the Secret Warriors business, the innaugural "suiting up" of which was underwhelming, to say the least. The whole episode felt like that, as storylines that seemed to have a ways to grow yet (and now feel pointless without that growth) got resolved and filed away in a totally cursory fashion. To wit:

Will is coming back to Earth to create tension for Fitz/Simmons? Oh... nope, he's dead.

"Will" is actually the ancient HYDRA god? Oh, well when he gets to Earth that should be... oh, nope, that host is all burned up.

Ward is suddenly an enlightened "big picture guy" about HYDRA goals because he seems some alien ruins? That feels out of character but okay, lets see where this... oh, nope, Coulson killed him.

But, hey! Coulson killed a defenseless enemy in cold blood, and Fitz saw him do it. That's interesting. AND we're *finally* rid of Ward, who's been fun to watch but whose purposelessness has been showing more and m...

...oh. HYDRA god (which is a... worm?) possessed Ward and now he's on Earth. So much for that.

Like I said before, it really does feel, especially in regards to the new Big Bad, like the writers are back in the "every question has to have 20 possibly-correct answers until the movie guys tell us what we can/can't use yet" mode. So whereas HYDRA god could've been anything or anyone, it now appears we'll be getting some version of Hive. That's not terrible but it's not all that exciting either, especially since it likely means the good guys fighting waves of possessed "hosts" in the second half of the season instead of an interesting new villain. Maybe this is tipping the hat toward some stuff that won't matter until after CIVIL WAR ("alien possession" would be a plausible substituation for SECRET INVASION's "a bunch of people were Skrulls the whole time!" angle) but as of now it just feels lame.

Pitch Me, Mr. B: "CARE BEARS"

Well, then. We've finally reached the end point of this little experiment. With CAPTAIN PLANET, MEGA MAN (now to be a real thing, for better or worse) and X-MEN now written-up and accounted for, it now falls to me (at the behest of my readership) to try and find something interesting to do with a bunch of characters mainly created to appear on greeting cards:



Alright. So, after deep-diving into the CARE BEARS mythology (and yes, apparently there is such a thing) I decided that this experiment was going to work best with a narrow focus on the earliest incarnations of the property. For fans: For fans, that means the points-of-reference here are the original ten bears, the first wave of merchandising, the TV specials, the two movies and the DiC version of the TV series.

So, then...

WE OPEN in... nothingness, somewhere in deep space. A pair of huge, moving masses of sound and light are engaged in what can only be called a "fight" for space, dominion, etc. Gradually, they take more substantive shape as colossal, galaxy-dwarfing nebulas - one of fiery and red, one blue-ish clouds and light-beams.

As they finally coalesce into more familiar shapes (the blue a rotund humanoid form, the red something alternately like a dragon or octopus) we are informed that we are watching two Forces of Creation, "Chaos" and "Order," engaged in a conflict that has finally rendered them sentient. Ultimately, their "battle" settles over the newly-born planet Earth; whereupon Order gains an upper-hand with Chaos held (relatively) at bay for eons.

Moving ahead through countless ages, we find that Order has ultimately taken on a semi-corporeal form: That of a fat, jolly man with a white beard and overalls living among the clouds - THE CLOUD KEEPER - while Chaos (who does not yet appear to have a "true" form) has come be called DARK HEART.

We rejoin the action in modernity, wherein The Cloud Keeper - self-appointed gaurdian of happiness and "good feeling," i.e. stability - has come to fear that modern humanity is losing it's way (too much violence, fast-living, depression, the usual) which could both fuel and be fueled-by Dark Heart. In response, he has constructed an invisible city/base-of-operations in the clouds, "CARE-A-LOT," and willed into being a group of creatures gifted with tremendous powers and clear, childlike vision of right and wrong representing personified emotions. These are THE CARE BEARS - and they are charged with finding and helping people (especially children) in danger of giving in to anger, fear, hate, etc.

The initial lineup is strictly "first wave:" BEDTIME (sleepy/"chill" mellow guy), FUNSHINE (joker), BIRTHDAY (hyper, party-animal), CHEER (positive to the point of irritating), FRIEND (compromise-driven peacemaker), GRUMPY (self-explanatory, also the "tech guy"), LOVE-A-LOT (mama-hen/"matchmaker"), GOOD LUCK (Irish, the "pep-talk" guy) and WISH (eternal optimist) with TENDERHEART ("The Red Ranger," essentially) as the nominal leader.

As the main plot gets underway, we see the Care Bears going about their missions like a well-oiled "feel better" machine... except for Grumpy, who (for purposes of this origin story) is our main character.

Note: Ideally, all of the Bears would have more distinct voices and nuanced personalities than originally, but Grumpy is the biggest overhaul by far. No longer the "team downer," he's more of a world-weary cynic - as committed to doing good as the others, but jaded and skeptical (think Paul Giamatti/Philip Seymour Hoffman characters) and more than a little morose about it.

Grumpy Bear is becoming disillusioned with the Care-A-Lot way of doing things. While the other relentlessly-sunny Bears are happy to have him building/maintaining their equipment and vehicles, it's clear that his representative-emotion isn't as valued as the others' - after all, "grumpiness" is one of things they exist to CURE, not something helpful, right?

But as much as the others maintain their ever-upbeat positivity outwardly and are often dismissive of Grumpy's disposition, they have issues of their own. Good Luck has a crush on Wish, who appears oblivious to this. Cheer and Birthday both struggle with always being the ones giving the pep-talk or throwing the party but never getting the same in return. Tenderheart is caught in his position as leader - the Bears rely on him to be their go-between with The Cloud Keeper, but in truth their master's plan and doings are often as inscrutable to him as any of the others.

Meanwhile on Earth, a college science professor named GERHARDT is working on a groundbreaking project: Finding a way to chemically "sever" the heart/mind link in the hopes of creating a medication that would allow those in high-stress jobs to temporarily mute non-intellectual reactions. While looking into a microscope at a sample of his latest attempt, he is struck by a flash-vision of what we recognize as Dark Heart - a vision Cloud Keeper also senses.

The Bears are dispatched to (using Bedtime's special powers) visit Gerhardt in a dream (they only appear in-person to children) to dissuade him from his research, as he feels that the results could lead to a disastrous drop in caring worldwide.

In the dream, the Bears encounter a child-version of Gerhardt. The boy is sad, toiling in his room with a chemistry-set despite a sunny day outside. The Bears do their usual routine of trying to rouse him from depression with unrelenting positivity, and while the boy is amused (talking bears and all) it doesn't last and is clearly unwelcome. Grumpy opines that they should try to understand his sadness instead of forcing him to ignore it, but is ignored himself. Ultimately, the boy angrily resists and they're thrown from the dream with Gerhardt's mind unchanged - if anything, he's more resolved than ever.

Tenderheart tells Cloud Keeper the Bears can try to "help" Gerhardt again, but he intimates that others plans will be necessary there. Instead, the Bears are immediately dispatched to a seemingly routine visit to a kid with a similar "stays indoors and mopes" disposition to get more practice dealing with that issue - especially Grumpy, whom Keeper instructs Tenderheart to keep a tighter leash on.

Note: Yes, this is what I ultimately came up with: The Care Bears are Archangels, the Cloud Keeper is an Old Testament "god," Grumpy is a sympathetic Lucifer and this is (loosely) "Paradise Lost."

When the Bears take off, Cloud Keeper begins the procedure to create more Care Bears...

Gerhardt gives a lecture to his class on his research into the heart/mind split, explaining some of his rationale: What if a judge is biased because of an emotional trigger? What if a police officer or a firefighter was in a foul mood? What if a doctor... he doesn't finish that one. Unknown to all but the audience, a boy not among the already-seated students has slipped into the room, a red-haired student named KEVIN.

The Care Bears introduce themselves to Carol, a young quasi-"goth" type who has trouble making friends and prefers to stay indoors painting and playing music. She's indifferent to the Bears attempts at happy-making, which only makes them escalate to what soon feels more like "happy" bullying.

Finally, Grumpy get's pissed off and interjects: Maybe she has a good reason to feel bad, and maybe her way of dealing with it via painting etc is working for her - why should she change to meet their version of "happy?" A few of the others seem ready to consider this, but Tenderheart (remembering his orders) gets in his face: Carol is sitting indoors in the dark, her paintings and music are sad/"scary," how could she be happy? This leads to a shouting match and eventually the diminuitive teddy-bear version of a "brawl," which spills (via teleportation - one of Wish Bear's powers) outside.

Back at the College: following, the lecture, "Kevin" ingratiates himself to Gerhardt and is even shown some of the equipment the Professor is using in his experiments, which includes an apparatus containing cryo-frozen hearts and brains which he's nicknamed "The Freeze Machine." Unlike the Care Bears, Kevin listens as the Professor underlines his motivations: as a child, his mother died during what should have been a routine surgery - and Gerhardt had noticed the surgeon having a breakup argument with a nurse only an hour earlier.

Grumpy and Tenderheart, now in a wooded area near Carol's house, are still fighting. Finally, we see what the Bears' powers can actually do in "weaponized" form: primarily the energy-blasts from their tummy-symbols, but Grumpy (for example) causes storm clouds to gather as he gets angrier and can even call down lighting and rain (though this seems to surprise even him.) Outmatched, Tenderheart rallies the others for a "Care Bear Stare" - which they're only meant to use in emergencies, and are clearly reluctant to here. But before they have the chance...

...everything is disrupted by the appearance of two *new* Care Bears: CHAMP BEAR (macho athletic "bro") and SECRET BEAR (mute pantomime). Champ subdues Grumpy, while Secret conjures chains and a lock (a locket is his tummy-symbol) to hold him. Cloud Keeper appears in the sky and orders everyone back to Care-A-Lot: Except Grumpy, who is banished and stripped of nearly all his powers.

In Care-A-Lot, the Bears have mixed feelings about what happened to Grumpy, but dissent is now less welcome than ever. Everyone, including Tenderheart, is curious about their new members, but Cloud Keeper assures them that they are strictly onhand to provide the extra support that Grumpy "seldom did and now cannot."

However, we soon see that there's more to Champ and Secret: They report directly to Keeper for "delicate" missions that are even secret from Tenderheart. Case in point: They're first such mission is to sabotage Gerhardt's "uncaring" experiments before he gets any further.

As night falls on Earth, Grumpy seeks shelter in what turns out to be an old cemetery, but is threatened by a large angry dog. At the last moment he is saved by Carol, who opts to take him home.

Champ and Secret slip into Gerhardt's laboratory after hours and set the Freeze Machine up to break. Their exit is spied, from afar, by Kevin.

In Care-A-Lot, things are beginning to run less smoothly. Funshine is not doing great as Grumpy's replacement as tech-guy, Good Luck and Wish are suspicious of the two new Bears. Tenderheart is wrestling with doubts over his leadership and their mission in general. New orders arrive: Observe Professor Gerhardt's presentation of his latest findings - "IF something were to go wrong," he might be more open to their influence.

Grumpy takes up temporary residence in Carol's room, and they become friends. Carol opens up about her troubles: Her parents have been fighting and may split up, little if any attention is being paid to her and she feels that her "weirdness" isolates her from other kids. Grumpy has an idea from "a place he saw once."

At Gerhardt's presentation, the Freeze Machine breaks down. Champ and Secret look quietly pleased with themselves... until the machine EXPLODES, blasting the lecture hall with energy-waves that flash-freeze chunks of the room into solid ice! Gerhardt takes a direct-hit from such a blast, is engulfed by a strange blue mist and dives out a window! The Bears, along with everyone else, flee - though in retreat they do use a smattering of their powers to help people evade debris and other chaos.

Grumpy ("disguised" as a normal stuffed bear) directs Carol to the "art-scene" area of her city, where they take in everything from street performers to mimes to painters. Carol enjoys herself more than usual, but what *really* perks her up is a cafe where various poets/singer/etc are invited to the stage to perform open-mic style. One performer in particular is a standup-comic whose set segues from furious anger at everyday life to personal dissapointment to self-hatred, but ends on a cathartic note to huge applause. Grumpy explains that he found this place while on a mission once, and that it was the first time he'd seen people "Feel good by being honest about NOT feeling good." Inspired, Carol takes a flyer for prospective performers and signs up for the next available open spot - one week from today.

Back in Care-A-Lot, the Bears are in a state of confusion, panic and paranoia. How did it happen? Should they have done anything? What's more, none of their self-designated coping mechanisms seem to be helping: Wish, Funshine and Cheer can't seem to even brighten themselves up. Bedtime can't calm down. Good-Luck has no pep-talk to give. Birthday can't even manifest a proper cake. Love-a-Lot and Friend can only console eachother.

Tenderheart goes to The Cloudkeeper for counsel, but finds his Master largely indifferent to the event: Gerhardt's research was "uncaring," and could have led to a disaster even greater than this. As he's dismissed, Tenderheart passes Champ and Secret being called to a meeting of their own.

Deep in the bowels of an abandoned series of (now strangely frosted-over) subway passages, we find Professor Gerhardt staggering and lurching around as though severely injured and out of his mind. His body and face have been twisted into a ghoulish form, reminiscent of a troll or goblin, with his skin turned icy blue and his hair scraggly and chalk-white. Every thing he touches ices-over or freezes, and when he finally tumbles face-first into a shallow pool of water it solidifies and he becomes stuck...

...only to be freed, after a tense moment of struggle, by Kevin - who claims to have followed after him. Seeming now more like the teacher than the pupil, Kevin gently prods the Professor to not give up on his work, which is "so important," can "save the world from itself" and "must continue - no matter what!" We now see subtle hints of Kevin being somehow "more" than what he is: glimmers of a red glow in his eyes, an unnatural "hypnotic" deepending of his voice, etc. He changes tactics now, positing that the Freeze Machine has actually given Gerhardt a powerful gift that he can use not only for greater science but to right personal wrongs. "You could even do something, at last, about... him."

The apartment door of an elderly man is blown open by a blast of wind and snow. Into the main room storms Gerhardt, now clad in a ragged blue overcoat and long scarf. Words are exchanged, and while the old man is beffuddled and horrified, it becomes clear that this is the doctor Gerhardt blamed for his mother's death. The Professor freezes him, apparently to death, and storms off down the hall accompanied by Kevin, muttering that they have work to do and gifting himself a new name: "PROFESSOR COLDHEART."

Montage time: Grumpy and Carol get to work on a song and a painted-backdrop for her performance. Grumpy sees news of the frozen doctor on TV, looks him up, notes connection to Gerhardt. Professor Coldheart (and Kevin) reconfigure the Freeze Machine into... something else. The Bears go about their missions effectively, but lacking a certain spark in down-time - with Tenderheart looking weary. A week passes.

Carol performs a song about feeling alone and different at the open mic cafe. After a pause, she receives a standing ovation and the owners gift her with a special trophy given to especially strong first-timers. Excited, she and Grumpy hurry home to tell her parents about it...

...but they are waiting for her in the kitchen with bad news: They are separating. And when she is upset by this, they begin fighting again (over which of them upset her) and soon ignore her again. She runs to her room in tears, sobbing face-down on her bad after hastily locking the door - leaving Grumpy out in the hall, slumping defeatedly against a wall.

Professor Coldheart completes the "new" Freeze Machine, reconfigured into a hovering zeppelin-like aircraft equipped with a "ray-gun" that separates the emotion and logic centers of those hit by it's (otherwise "harmless") rays; effectively turning them into slow-moving, weirdly-reacting "zombies" milling around without purpose. As the Freeze Machine hovers over the rooftops, the city is soon filled with such people...

...unfortunately, the Machine's internal power source causes it to ALSO spread snow and cold air, meaning that the city is also icy and dangerous to manuver - especially for people now divorced from caring about their surroundings. Car-crashes, falls and chaos are soon unleashed, with even police/firefighters unable to care to do anything about it. Coldheart, of course, is by now too far gone to see that his work is having the exact opposite effect he'd wanted.

Hearing commotion downstairs, Grumpy is just in time to see a ray come from the kitchen window and strike Carol's parents, "zombie-fying" them. He races upstairs and forces his way into Carol's room, just in time to help her evade a second ray as the Freeze Machine passes their area. "We've got to get out of here!," Grumpy insists, and they do - with Carol shoving a few items (and her trophy) into a bag.

The Bears observe from Care-A-Lot, distraught at what to do. But before Tenderheart can even try to ask The Cloudkeeper, they see Secret and Champ zooming down to Earth in a Cloud-Car. Tenderheart has had enough. He hurries to talk to The Cloudkeeper, demanding to know why only the two "new Bears" are fighting The Freeze Machine; ultimately revealing that he's figured it out: "It's because that's what you MADE them to do, isn't it!?" Cloudkeeper refuses to answer, and warns Tenderheart from either taking action or making such accusations.

Angry (and not just "for a Care Bear,") Tenderheart returns to the others and declares that even though they're forbidden to fight the Machine, Cloudkeeper didn't say anything about going to Earth and using their powers to protect people from the ensuing chaos. "But that's not what we were made to do!" protests Bedtime. "We're not soldiers or paramedics or firemen or anything like that," observes Wish, "Why do WE go down into that?"

"Because we care."

Out in the collapsing city, Grumpy and Carol move from cover-spot to cover-spot, avoiding violence, falling debris, out-of-control cars and the rays of the Freeze Machine. Meanwhile, Kevin emerges on the roof of the tallest building and watches it all unfold with a smile.

Landing on the "blimp" part of the Freeze Machine, Champ and Secret begin their climb down to infiltrate the main cabin and confront Coldheart.

The Care Bears make ready to (quietly, so as not to alert Cloudkeeper) abscond to Earth in the remaining Cloud-Cars. Before they do, some brief reflections and soul-bearings are had: Love-A-Lot offers gifts to Birthday and Cheer, recognizing that they are celebrators who are not themselves celebrated enough. Good Luck confesses his feelings to Wish, who's wish is "to hear more about that - when we come back from this."

The Bears arrive in the city and begin using their various powers to minimize damage and protect the oblivious citizens. Lives are saved, but they're only holding back the flood, not defeating it.

Secret and Champ enter the Freeze Machine's main cabin and attack Coldheart. They put up a good fight, but his freezing powers are too much for them: They are zapped into blocks of ice and dropped out into open-air, falling to Earth. Overwhelmed by their own work on the ground, the Bears realize too late that their two (sort of) comrades are the ice-blocks falling to the ground nearby...

...but Grumpy comes running in out of nowhere, using what remains of his powers to create a small gray cloud which cushions their fall, saving them!

The others use their powers to thaw Secret and Champ, and Grumpy leads them all to an old garage where he and Carol have taken shelter. The "originals" have it out with the two newbies, who admit that Cloudkeeper made them specifically to do "the hard jobs;" but that they didn't know tampering with the Machine would have the results it did and now want to join their brothers/sisters and stop Coldheart and make ammends.

Tenderheart has a plan: They'll get to a roof and goad Coldheart into direct confrontation, not to "beat" him but to distract him while Grumpy ("the mechanic") can slip onto the ship and disarm it. Despite Grumpy's protest, Carol demands that she come along, too.

The Care Bears emerge onto a rooftop, not knowing that it's the same one Kevin is occupying (he ducks into hiding as soon as they arrive, watching.) They fire energy-burts toward the Machine, drawing the attention (and ice-beam attacks, as the ray-gun doesn't seem to effect them) of Coldheart.

Just as planned, Grumpy (Carol remains with the other Bears, though out of sight, because the Cloud-Cars cannot hold even child-sized humans) sneaks onto the ship and begins to dismantle its engine systems.

Down on the rooftop, Carol's hiding place is discovered by Kevin, who covers her mouth and pulls her into the shadows while the Bears are distracted. They struggle, but she pulls away and manages to knock him out (or, at least, knock him down for a bit) with a whack on the head from her trophy. She dashes out onto the main roof with the others just in time to see a series of sputtering explosions erupt from the Freeze Machine, which stalls and hovers in mid-air - unable to fire more rays!

Coldheart realizes what has happened just in time to see Grumpy escaping on his Cloud Car. As the blue Bear rejoins his friends, Coldheart leaps from the Machine and lands on the roof - enraged and ready for battle.

Grumpy confronts him. He says he knows who he is and why he's doing this, and that this isn't the answer. Coldheart doesn't want to hear it, and tries to blast him with ice - narrowly missing him.

The Bears attack, but the enemy moves with alarming speed to dodge their tummy-blasts. They try hand to hand, but he swats them away easily with the aid of his ice and snow-making powers. An all-at-once rush seemingly overwhelms him, but does manage to tear his coat - revealing that he's wearing a suit of powered-armor (similar to the makeup of he new Freeze Machine) underneath. Soon enough, the Bears have been bested - all either beaten or partially-frozen. He prepares to finish them off... until Carol comes forward.

Carol puts herself between Coldheart and the Bears, begging him to stop. She explains that Grumpy told her what he'd figured out, and passionately tells him that she understands feeling hurt and angry and needing to let it out. But also that she's learned you don't share bad feelings to spread them, like a disease - you share them to let people know who you are, and that you could use help or a friend. This seems to be reaching him, somewhat...

...until Kevin emerges. He snaps his fingers and a red glowing energy takes hold of Coldheart, moving him to blast Carol's legs - freezing her to the roof! He makes ready to freeze the rest of her... but he's stopped (and the red-glow "broken") after being hit in the face with a birthday cake! Birthday Bear, having summoned the last of his strength to do this, falls unconscious.

Champ, Good Luck and Tenderheart overwhelm Coldheart, with Secret Bear generating locks and chains to hold him down. This fight finished, the Bears help eachother to their feet and/or back to consciousness; as Tenderheart turns his attention to Kevin, whom he finally identifies: "Dark Heart."

"Kevin" vanishes, replaced instead by a huge churning red cloud (with glowing yellow "eyes") that hovers over the area, its booming voice laughing down at them. Tenderheart calls for a "Care Bear Stare" and the others all line up for it... but Dark Heart cuts off the call, noting that he *would* have had the power necessary to be a threat to them if he'd been able to spread Coldheart's "uncaring rays" beyond a single city, but that has been thwarted... "for now." The cloud departs, laughing.

"He's telling the truth."

It's the voice of The Cloudkeeper, who materializes (in "human" form) on the roof. He gravely informs the Bears that this is why all threats need to be neutralized before they are out of control, and orders them (in the spirit of this) to "destroy" Coldheart. But the Bears refuse to take a human life.

Cloudkeeper "powers up" to a glowing, giant-size form (think 25-30 feet) and vows that he'll kill Coldheart himself, but the Bears resist - even as their onetime Master tells them that they have no right, that they were made to serve and that they'll never manage without him. Tenderheart's response is to call for the lineup once again: "Care Bears... STARE!"

This is it: Our final battle, the Care Bears versus The Cloudkeeper - a revolt of The Angels against their self-appointed creator-god.

It's a titanic struggle - the Bears are almost pushed off the roof as Cloudkeeper resists the concussive blast of their group-spawned rainbow blast... but ultimately they prevail, with Cloudkeeper blasted into a non-corporeal cloud form of his own and dissipating into the wind - an immediate result of which is that Grumpy finds his powers restored. The day is saved, now for the cleanup.

The chained/unconscious Professor Coldheart is deposited at a police station.

The Bears reconfigure the Freeze Machine's ray-gun to instead project energies from Bedtime and Wish, which put the population of "zombies" to sleep with happy-dreams that will cure them of the original ray's effects.

"We could use this," observes Champ. "Put the whole world of humans to sleep, give them whatever dreams we wanted, make the whole world happy." Tenderheart says no, that's what Cloudkeeper would do - "...and that's not our way, anymore. If we care, that means we care enough to let people choose for themselves." He says this while laying a hand on Grumpy's shoulder, giving him an apologetic look.

The Bears drop Carol off at her home. Grumpy says his goodbye. Secret (silently) observes that both are smiling, but also crying, and makes a questioning gesture to Champ. "I think, sometimes... when something makes you sad, you can be happy to have cared about it enough in the first place."

Inside, Carol confronts her now-awake (and confused) parents. She tries to be indignant with them about not listening to her, not paying attention, being self-involved... but ultimately she breaks down and embraces both, begging them not to break up. They console her, and explain that they DO need to divorce, but NOT because of her. In fact, they now realize that they're bickering has made them neglect her, and that they need to "fix themselves" to stop hurting her and eachother. As the Bears quietly depart outside, the family sits down to talk it out - together, for eachother.

Back up in Care-A-Lot, Tenderheart presides over a ceremony (in the heart-shaped Great Hall building) wherein he reaffirms the Care Bears new mission, independent of Cloud Keeper. Grumpy calls for a leadership vote, and each Bear rises to unanimously elect Tenderheart to the post. Humbled, Tenderheart accepts - on the condition that Grumpy join him as second in command.

Grumpy accepts, and joins Tenderheart at the head of the table to massive applause as a party breaks out among the assembled bears: Birthday conjures an array of cakes and decorations, Cheer fills the hall with music. Good Luck and Wish embrace and begin to dance together. Friend and Champ begin a game of limbo, which others soon join, and so forth.

Tenderheart and Grumpy walk out to the balcony, looking at the stars and down at the faint glow of Earth's horizon below. Tenderheart reveals that as his first order of business, he wants Grumpy to figure out the workings of Cloud Keeper's creation-machines. "It's a big world down there. And it's going to need a lot more care. And we're going to need a lot more Care Bears."

ROLL CREDITS.

Post-Credits Stinger: At a run-down amusement park, a DELIVERY MAN (seen from the back) approaches a (currently closed) midway booth marked "The Great Fettuccini: Magician Extraordinaire!" at it's rare door, which is answered by the (sleeping) magician's gangly teenage apprentice - who is perplexed to receive a package for himself rather than his boss. He signs his name, NICHOLAS, anyway.

Inside the booth, Nicholas removes the packaging to reveal a large, old BOOK with a diary-style lock. Hearing something hard and metal hit the floor, he looks down to see the KEY - which gives off a faint but unmistakable red glow...

Outside, the Delivery Man walks away, a smile slowly creeping across his face - it's "Kevin."

Shane Black is a GOD

Welcome to the top of my 2016 must-see list, THE NICE GUYS.

Batman V Superman V The Element of Surprise

...Wow.

So. Were you hoping to be able to wait until you actually saw BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE to find out things like when/how Wonder Woman would be revealed, whether or not there'd be a major DC villain showing up besides Lex Luthor or, y'know, maybe the entire plot-structure of the movie from start to finish?

Well, too bad - Warner Bros is evidently so anxious to make sure that this thing does AVENGERS (or, now, JURASSIC WORLD) numbers, they've basically decided to go the CAST AWAY "McTrailer" route with the advertising: "Here's the ENTIRE movie, folks! Zero question about what you're getting for your money - just relax and a buy a ticket for "Thing You Already Liked Watching, Now Longer."



SPOILERS FOLLOW!


But yeah, now we know what the "V-ing" is all about (Batman and Superman both see eachother as extralegal vigilantes), the apparent plot-outline (Batman tries to fight Superman, he doesn't win, Lex Luthor does something fiendish, they team up), a rough estimate of when we'll see Wonder Woman (at the very end for the big fight, it looks like) and even the Big Secret WB has been (unsuccessfully) keeping mum about for months: Luthor turns the corpse of General Zod into Doomsday.

All of which jibes with most of the credible rumors from the set and early word on the script(s); namely that despite the "universe-building" task there's no elaborate or "twisty" storytelling planned here, aiming instead for a straightforward super-brawl movie. Given Doomsday's presence, though, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't "kill" Superman at the end as an impetus to form the Justice League i.e. "The big guy is gone, we need to consolidate firepower." That'd be... dumb, honestly, but sounds a lot like a WB studio committee answer to "Why do you need a whole team when you've got Superman?"

Looks like fun, though, and a substantial improvement on MAN OF STEEL in terms of style - I'd rather Zack Snyder BE Zack Snyder instead of aping the Nolans. I empathize with fans who feel cheated out of getting a DC Cinematic Universe that grooves on that source-reverent Gold/Silver Age sweet-spot the Marvel movies have mined so successfully, sure; but variety is nice and if WB/Snyder are indeed going whole-hog on Terrible 90s Comics: The Movie, well... at least it's a novel approach? Like I said, this is supposedly a spectacle-heavy, plot-light movie; and if there's a director more perfectly suited to deliver a succession of high-contrast Jim Lee splash-pages in motion than Snyder I can't think of them.

Well, one way or another we'll find out in about 4 months.

P.S. Who are the winged bug-men at the 2:00 mark? No idea. That whole sequence (Batman in desert-combat gear, Superman commanding some kind black-ops militia, is believed to be a dream/vision sequence - but they look awfully similar in silhouette to Parademons, the minions of Darkseid (himself widely believed to be the main heavy of either the first or second JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.)

Game OverThinker: "DUMBER ALIVE"

Whose Side Are You On?

And here we go...



What's impressive to me immediately is how much the in-trailer narrative here feels designed to alleviate concerns that this is more AVENGERS 2.5 than CAPTAIN AMERICA 3. Obviously, the ancillary marketing and pop-cultural "presence" will be leaning harder into "Hey guys! Here's The Avengers again - many with slightly-redesigned outfits so you have to re-buy some figures!," but as an introduction-trailer this drives home the idea that this is a natural continuation of the Steve/Bucky storyline with everyone else onhand because, hey, this is their social-circle.

In Bob We Trust: WHO'S THE BEST MARVEL VILLAIN?

Really That Good: SPIDER-MAN 1 & 2

Well. This took forever (over an hour long this time - wow!) and Sony immediately issued a YouTube copyright claim on it. Said claim is now in dispute, so watch this while you can! :)

TV RECAP: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Season 3 - Episode 8: "Many Heads, One Tale"

Well... that was pretty unexpected.

A weird thing about how AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D has evolved as a series is that the more both the series and the audience seem to have accepted its position as the redheaded stepchild of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the more cavalier it's gotten in playing around with the worldbuilding. Throughout most of Season 1, when the audience was still assuming/hoping that the series was going to be a mythology-packed weekly geek-out setting up dominoes for the movies to knock down, it operated strictly on the fringes of its own universe until it was more-or-less forced to use the good silverware because CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER's storyline made it unavoidable.

But now, with the audience effectively resigned to the idea that AGENTS is mostly going to do it's own thing as "NCIS: MARVEL UNIVERSE" and not have any real noteworthy impact on the movies (example: Multiple friends/colleagues of The Avengers know Coulson is alive now, but not The Avengers themselves for absolutely no good reason) ...the show is somehow now more emboldened about play with what feel like big, essential moving-parts of the Universe that you'd think the movies would get first-dibs on messing with: Last season got to introduce The Inhumans (whose movie doesn't come out until 2019) and start early on Marvel's long-term goal of turning them into Mutant/X-Men replacements; and now along with continuing that work Season 3 now gets to re-write a huge part of the MCU's history (on Earth, anyway) with a single conversation.

Specifically: HYDRA, the villainous group whose shenanigans have driven the plots of (so far) four movies and lurk (retroactively) in the background/mythos of all the rest, now has a brand-new, way way out there origin-story - which could be a signal that the movies are done using them or that the movie and TV sides of the MCU are about to start playing nice(er) with eachother.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:


"Many Heads, One Tale" is, like last week's "Chaos Theory," for the most part a plot-plot-plot affair (we are now racing toward the mid-season finale) with some long-awaited character moments dropped in for seasoning: Fitz/Simmons finally cry it out and kiss, Coulson and Price both show all their cards, we get official confirmation that Gideon Malick is the Security Council member Powers Boothe played in AVENGERS and a HYDRA bigwig to boot, we (apparently) learn what the ATCU is (and isn't) actually up to and May and Lincoln bury the hatchet...

...oh, and it turns out everything we thought we knew about HYDRA, one of the essential building-blocks of Marvel's continuity-experiment, is not only wrong - they're actually up to something that sounds (conceptually) like the biggest-scale villain plan any MCU villain has had outside of whatever Thanos is up to.

So let's get that out of the way first: As revealed to Ward by Malick, HYDRA is actually over a thousand years old, with The Red Skull's "Nazi Deep-Science Division" incarnation being merely HYDRA's "thing to do" in the 1940s. As it turns out, HYDRA's actual origin is a cult that worships an unnamed all-powerful Inhuman from ancient times who was exiled from Earth using The Monolith - their entire purpose, encompassing everything the organization has ever done, is to find a way to bring this Inhuman "god" back to Earth so he (she? it?) can conquer it.

...alright, then.

In light of that, the major revelations otherwise almost seem kind of perfunctory - even though they're directly tied-in: The ATCU has been run by HYDRA via Malick the whole time, but (apparently) without Rosalind Price's knowledge - oh, and they aren't "curing" Inhumans, they're working to make and conscript as many of them as they can. Astronaut Will's portal-crossing mission? HYDRA as well, with heavy implication that the shape-shifting, mind-controlling entity that bedeviled Will and Simmons on the alien planet is the unnamed Inhuman "god." Lash? Now in Malick/Ward/HYDRA's hands, seemingly on-track to be re-weaponized. So... a lot going on to deal with.

On the non-plot side, the reveal that Price has been played by the outfit she was supposedly running felt so weirdly clunky that I almost want it to be a double fake-out. I mean, seriously? All this time she's been confidently/assertively running an operation whose supposed sole reason to exist (warehousing and attempting to cure Inhumans) she was just "taking on faith" as existing because the work was being done in a room she wasn't supposed to go into? That's dumb.

I get the purpose of the fake-out: Get the audience all riled up to see Coulson pull a stone cold "Gotcha! I played you before you could play me!" move, then yank it away by contriving a scenario where Price was actually duped and acting in good faith - making Coulson (kind of) the asshole this time... but there had to be a better way. On the other hand, the actual reveal of this was a fine acting turn for both of them. It's always uncomfortable, in a modern context, to see a "good guy" doing the 60s James Bond seduce-to-manipulate thing; and it's especially strange when the perpetrator is a character like Coulson who's typically played as a boyish do-gooder. Credit that they pulled off what's a pretty dark turn (Coulson basically used and manipulated Price in an overall pretty cruel way in order to get at intel she wasn't hiding and didn't know herself) in a way that leaves new places for characters to go rather than just ruining the character (Coulson) forever.

Elsewhere, the "let's go undercover" infiltration scene with Hunter and Bobbi was fun, but it's also the kind of well the show has gone to too many times when it needs a "fun" was to dump a bunch of exposition and place-setting. Apart from the "Oh, it's HYDRA again and they're making their own Inhuman army" discovery, we get the debut of a new recurring Inhuman villain in Mark Dacascos "Giyera;" and while Dacascos is one of those hardworking B-movie martial-arts pros action fans are always glad to see (depending on your age/region he's immediately recognizable as either Wo Fat from the newer HAWAII FIVE-0, The Chairman from IRON CHEF AMERICA, Mani from BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF or Billy Lee from DOUBLE DRAGON) it's a little dissapointing that his Inhuman power turns out to be "Magneto, just without the name and outfit."


BULLET POINTS:

• Who/what is the ancient Inhuman that HYDRA has apparently been trying to bring to Earth this whole time? I don't know. I still have trouble believing that it's going to be one of the marquee Inhumans at this juncture, and it really could be any Cosmic Marvel fixture not yet claimed by the movies re-worked as "actually an Inhuman." So for now I guess everyone from Immortus to Death is on the table ("Ma'Veth," Hebrew for "Death," is the title of the mid-season finale.)
• That having been said, it could more narrowly be The Unspoken, who was the Inhumans' king before Black Bolt. OR, if we're supposed to glean anything from HYDRA's logo apparently having evolved from a ram skull, Pazuzu technically exists in Marvel as well.
• THAT having been said, some of the dialogue from Fitz/Simmons laying this all out mentioned "inspiring legends of devils." I wonder... could this be where/how we get an MCU version of Mephisto (who is not technically *the* devil, in the comics)?
• Over in Entertainment Weekly, Clark Gregg (Coulson) coyly refers to talk of the (now pretty obvious) emerging storyline of S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA both having Inhuman armies as "a war of some kind that will not be civil in nature, while at the same time being very civil in nature." Heh.
• But wait - it won't exactly be a surprise if AGENTS has to mention/incorporate the events of CIVIL WAR similarly to the way WINTER SOLDIER and AGE OF ULTRON worked, but does this mean S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA are taking "sides" in it? Hm. In the comics, "Civil War" was an organic ideological schism, but I can see the movies going with "HYDRA did stuff to trigger/escalate this fight."
• See also: Bret Dalton (Ward) has been teasing a "WINTER SOLDIER-level" twist for the mid-season. But short of "Coulson has been evil this whole time, somehow" I'm not sure what's left to do that could meet that challenge (and that would be stupid.)

NEXT WEEK: Nothing, because Thanksgiving. But the week after next brings "CLOSURE," the penultimate episode before the series breaks for Winter (and Season 2 of AGENT CARTER.)

TV RECAP: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Season 3 - Episode 7: "Chaos Theory"

Apologies, once again, for the delay. It won't repeat for tomorrow's show.

So! Once again, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D puts a big chunk of it's internal mysteries on the table and drops in a bunch of new ones. Clever storytelling? Side-effect of only having a general sense of where your story is "allowed" to go week to week? Who can tell, at this point...

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

We knew Andrew Gardner was Lash as of last episode, and now as of this one we know how he got that way (Jaiying rigged some of her personal-effects with Terrigen booby-traps, leading Andrew to be exposed and discover that he has been an Inhuman this whole time) and everyone is on the same page about it; with Lash himself now filed-away in the ATCU's holding-facility - which, under the circumstances, Daisy is now feeling less self-righteous about unilaterally opposing. Well, isn't that convenient.

A strong episode overall, though (apart from the aforementioned May/Andrew business) a little light on the character work in favor of the plot. It's nice to see the pieces continuing to move so quickly, since at this rate it feels like the current scenario(s) could well be totally upended by the time the AGENT CARTER break arrives; potentially giving us yet another new status-quo to look forward to in the second half. It would be in keeping with the speed at which things have moved this season, and I'm starting to wonder if we can actually hope for a significant CIVIL WAR lead-in.

...or not. In any case:

New mystery #1: What, exactly, was Lash trying to accomplish? Before he went down at May's hands (great performances from Blair Underwood and Ming-Na Wen, once again) his dialogue seemed to imply that he was going after Inhumans who'd done something "wrong." In the comics, Lash's deal is that he kills those who've turned without "earning" it whom he deems unworthy after the fact, but this doesn't appear to be that - particularly since he claimed to be using Jaiying's genealogy-charts as a hit-list. At this point, it would be a very "signature" AGENTS' moment for Lash to turn out to have been wrongly-fighting a yet-unknown threat, so...

New mystery #2: Who is Gideon Malick and what does he have to do with the ATCU? Last time, we learned that the (apparent) head of the S.H.I.E.L.D-overseeing Security Council played by Powers Boothe has a name and is apparently a bad guy (he's reached out to Ward and Nu-HYDRA.) Now, just as Coulson (and maybe the audience?) was getting ready to trust Rosalind Price - Daisy saving her life during a fight with Lash and all that - we (but not Coulson) learn that Malick has been in contact with her the whole time. Is he calling ATCU's shots?

New mystery #3: Who were the Monolith's pre-S.H.I.E.L.D owners? Should've seen this angle coming, but did not. So, good on you, writers. While continuing to look for ways to bring Simmons' astronaut boyfriend Will back to Earth with the Monolith/portal destroyed, Fitz lands on a big clue: A near-match to the insignia from the old castle where the device was hidden at some point before S.H.I.E.L.D had it appears to have been hidden in the design of Will's mission-patch, suggesting that it wasn't (only?) NASA backing his mission but some remnant of the occult-esque secret society that was using the Monolith for unknown purposes back in the day. Okay, so maybe there are more people out there who know about the portals and how to use them... but who are they?

No need for bullet-points theorizing this time, since it feels to me like they're heading for all of these stories to converge this time around. Here's the thing: We know that whoever the Monolith-cultists were, they were men of means and position. We know that S.H.I.E.L.D had the Monolith after them, but apparently no one we've yet met was high-grade enough to know when they got it or how. Now, we know that at some point at least 15 years ago, it was used in conjunction with a NASA mission likely at the behest of those same cultists. So it feels like a pretty easy guess that said cultists are connected-to S.H.I.E.L.D in such a way that they could use The Agency's "keep an eye on alien stuff" directives to hide the thing. Seems like something Malick would be involved with, if not in charge of, yes?

So who are they (the "cultists," that is)? Well, another tangent HYDRA seems like the obvious call, but maybe too obvious at this point. AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D could use a fresh(er) regular antagonist, so even if they are HYDRA I'd imagine they'll be a "related" branch that goes by a different name. My guess? The Serpent Society. Either way, I maintain my earlier guess about Malick being a "re-imagined" version of Albert Malik, aka the second Red Skull.

Extrapolating further: A big part of the post-CIVIL WAR Captain America comics involved the real Red Skull "possessing" a high-placed military/industrial figure, so it already wouldn't surprise me to see that plotline come up somewhere in the MCU in the near future. If so, I'd bet Malick isn't so much "Red Skull II" as the O.G. Skull, Johann Schmidt, wearing a new face. Keep in mind: The one thing we know about these people is that they owned and figured out how to control a space/time portal - wouldn't it be something if Schmidt (who was zapped off to who-knows-where by the similarly portal-centric Tessaract in FIRST AVENGER) found his way back that way and has been hiding out ever since? 

The cast and writers have been teasing a "WINTER SOLDIER-level" twist for the Winter Break, after all, and Powers Boothe pulling off his face the reveal that The Red Skull has been secretly hanging out this entire time would certainly qualify. Plus, if it means the Skull might concievably become available for the movies again (maybe as a secret CIVIL WAR heavy, dare I hope??) I'd be all for that. In the comics, Red Skull serves the vital purpose of providing a "baseline" of evil to give every other villain a degree of relative nuance (i.e. "Sure, I'm a pretty bad person - but that dude is, literally, a NAZI!") and it'd be fun to have an agitator onhand who's just bad for bad's sake if you need to get a plot going economically: "Why are they trying to blow up The Rainforest, exactly?" "Nazi With a Skeleton-Head!"

NEXT WEEK:

Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D are apparently double-dealing against ATCU even still in "Many Heads, One Tale." (okay, that title makes me feel even more secure in predicting The Serpent Society.)

UPDATES 11/16/15

Just a quick update: This last week (and counting) has been murder on my schedule, which is why a recap for S.H.I.E.L.D from the previous week didn't end up running. It will run sometime later this evening, and the regularly-scheduled one for tomorrow should run on time. Apologies for the delay.

In Bob We Trust: "WILL WARCRAFT BE ANY GOOD?"

WARCRAFT Trailer Finally Drops

This looks suuuuuuper goofy. So I'm totally onboard.



I really only have a passing familiarity with the "lore" of WARCRAFT (Paula Patton is a human/orc hybrid, I take it?) so my interest in this has been less about what it get's "right" than about what it does to justify its own existence in a tonal/aesthetic sense. For me, the main thing that's been kneecapping video-game movie thus far is that even densely-plotted stuff like WARCRAFT tends to be a melange of genre tropes where the originality comes either from unique design/character work or from the built-in strangeness that comes from interactive storytelling; but film adaptations have thus far tended to downplay much of the "video-gamey" weirdness - resulting in films that don't seem to have much reason to exist.

If nothing else, WARCRAFT seems to have those priorities straight. This first trailer feels cut/scored to feel as akin (plotwise) to yet another LOTR also-ran, dialing back the plot/character/mythos details to focus on getting a mass-audience onboard, so the more interesting storyline we've been assured is in there is taking a back seat to the look of the thing - but man, it's a hell of a look.

I'm especially liking that the design is very clearly erring on the side of new/different/interesting over "realistic." Much as I've enjoyed seeing most of the genre from LOTR to GAME OF THRONES find a working balance between classical high-fantasy art and practical reality, WARCRAFT's world is on a whole other bonkers level in terms of bizarre creatures and locations - half-measures in that direction were never going to cut it. I'd rather the Orcs be detailed and ridiculous-looking than photorealistic (the CGI is great, but we're in Hulk-territory here where nothing is going to fool you into thinking this being can physically exist), or the humans' armor/weapons to look like super-expensive cosplay, or the locations look absurdly over-designed than try to water down everything that makes this world worth inhabiting - I mean, I'm pretty sure that one gut at 1:07 has some kind of flint-activated shotgun in a medieval-fantasy setting. That's wacky.

I imagine the question will be how Universal/Legendary think they're going to sell a mainstream audience on this stuff. HARRY POTTER was the movie-arm of a once in a generation pop-literature phenomenon hitting at the zenith of its popularity. LOTR was already widely known and had the selling point of "You've never seen live-action fantasy look this huge before." By contrast, the WARCRAFT franchise's "moment" in terms of mainstream-ubiquity (i.e. WOW) feels like it came and went awhile ago, and "LOTR but twice as melodramatic and a thousand times more cartoonishly odd" doesn't sound like a sure thing.

I doubt the studio is too worried - Universal is sitting on a ridiculous mountain of cash after a year of absolutely massive smash-hits (they literally went from a struggling industry has-been to having JURASSIC WORLD, MINIONS, FURIOUS 7, PITCH PERFECT 2, 50 SHADES OF GREY and STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON all hit in the same year) and we're still in a gold-rush period where content-starved Russian and Chinese audiences are going to turn damn near any remotely-serviceable 3D-ready actioner into a moneymaker. But they're looking for this to be a long-term multimedia tentpole, and other studios with game-adaptations in the waiting are hoping that either this or ASSASSIN'S CREED do the deed of finally breaking the genre for Joe Popcorn. That sounds like an uphill climb (and one they should've been advertising for much earlier than this) but I'm rooting for it.

Review: THE PEANUTS MOVIE (2015)

NOTE: This review is possible in part through donations to The MovieBob Patreon.


First things first: Relax.

They didn't botch it. They didn't break it. They didn't screw it up. The Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus etc you'll be seeing up onscreen and/or introducing the next generation to are largely the same ones you grew up with; and they've arrived in a perfectly agreeable, modest, sweet little movie that should re-establish them as touchstones for another several decades to come. So if those were worries you'd been nursing about THE PEANUTS MOVIE, you can exhale: It's fine.



THE PEANUTS MOVIE is probably the first pop-culture "nostalgia revival" blockbuster in a good long while to face the (potential) hurdle of having to scale itself up to fit onto the big screen. Whereas other long-lived, mass-marketed intellectual properties like the Marvel movies or TRANSFORMERS land in development already dragging decades of mythology and narrative sprawl needing to be whittled down to manageable size for a feature film, Charles Schulz's PEANUTS is a gag-a-day newspaper comic strip built almost-exclusively around incidental observation that reached it's prior adaptation high-point in the form of 20-30 minute TV specials with prior attempts at movie-length adventures meeting a mixed reception.

The filmmakers solution to this problem, evidently, has been to eschew trying to "solve" it altogether: In lieu of trying to retrofit Charlie Brown's world into a space for feature-sized adventures, they've instead conceived a set of four individual mini-stories that feel very much of a kind to the classic TV specials the characters are arguably best known from, joined together by the relatively constrained scope of the action (school, the neighborhood and the individual kids' homes) and a narrative through-line about the ever-luckless Brown haphazardly trying to reinvent himself so that a new student (the enigmatic "Little Red-Haired Girl" of the comic-strip lore) might see him as something other than the "blockhead" everyone else has become accustomed to.

This kind of episodic storytelling, coupled with the gently-deliberate pacing that Schulz's world exudes as a matter of course, feels like something of a risk in an age of kids' movies where frenetic yet sprawling, plot-heavy quest narratives are the order of the day; but it pays off. The result is a quietly profound little gem that can't help but recall other classic child's-view-of-childhood vignettes like A CHRISTMAS STORY or Bradbury's DANDELION WINE. Rarefied company, yes, but well-earned - this might not be the best or most exciting children's movie of the year, but it's hard to imagine one more emotionally nutritious.

I'll admit: I was a little worried when the "Little Red Haired Girl" plot element reared it's head. Her function in the plot makes sense given her place in Peanuts canon, but in 2015 the last thing movies (especially movies aimed at the next-to-rise generation of little kids) need are more stories where a female character exists mainly for their affection to be a prize motivating the hero. Yes, LRHG gets a name and a face for this iteration, but she's still inhabiting the role of an out-of-reach ideal for Charlie Brown to strive for - not far removed from that football Lucy will never let him kick, come to think of it. He's effectively elected this person the arbiter of his own self-worth without asking if she has any interesting in that role, and the plot isn't terribly concerned with her agency or whom she might be beyond that.

So, yeah. That could be a bit (ugh) "problematic" in a modern context, but the specific context of the circumstances neutralize the issue almost immediately (or at least they did for me): These are very young kids, written and performed as such, and there's zero real sense of prurient interest at play in Charlie Brown's intentions (indeed, he's already decided that "the new kid" is a reason for him to fix himself before he knows anything else about him/her) or anyone else's. Yes, she's a (mostly-offscreen) metaphor for more powerful forces, much like the disembodied trombone-voiced adults or Snoopy's imagined Red Baron nemesis, but I'd say that's okay in a movie that has so many other rich and varied characters (male and female) otherwise.

More importantly, the story they're using this setup to tell works. Charlie Brown is uniquely defined as a pop-icon by the tragi-comic confluence of his innate goodness and the Universe's seeming utter disdain for him. Few characters have endured more martyrdom with less cause, and here he tries everything from flying a kite to a talent show to a school dance to a book report on "Leo's Toy Store by Warren Peace" to remake himself as... someone capable, basically, and is continually derailed either by his own selflessness (it's a wise stroke that we're made to understand that he's a fundamentally decent person every bit as much as a luckless one early one) or the cruel chaotic randomness of fate at every turn.

Yes, adults will see where this is all going a mile away: of course when this particular Job meets his "god" she'll have taken notice of his good intentions all along, and of course he'll come to understand that he was already worthwhile just as he is; but you know what? That's one of those lessons every new generation of kids could stand to learn as early and as often as possible, and who better to relay it to them than Good Ol' Charlie Brown?

And make no mistake: Despite the group-inclusive title, this is a Charlie Brown movie, through and through. The supporting Peanuts, though, get their room to shine. To a certain extent, the tertiary characters are the space where the film elects to go through its "greatest hits" catalog ("Dog germs!," Lucy's nickles, the stationary dance-cycles, the choral Christmas-carroling, etc), but what a catalog it is. The one spot where this begins to feel like a bit much are the Snoopy "WWI Flying Ace" fantasy-sequences that here do double-duty as act-breaks and showcases for more elaborate and 3D-friendly animation sequences. Don't get me wrong: These slapstick divergences are a PEANUTS staple, and this is the same method Blue Sky Studios perfected for keeping younger kids engaged with the suprisingly character/dialogue-heavy ICE AGE movies i.e. breaking up the more "serious" parts with cutaways to Scrat and his acorns. But they eventually run just a touch too long for my taste, relative to how much more invested I was in getting back to watching "Chuck" keep trying to kick that football.

On the other hand, what I will say for the story beats involving the other characters is that it was a huge relief to find a near-total lack of self-awareness or obvious pandering to the nostalgia set. Yes, when one of the classic Jazz tracks from the Halloween/Christmas specials kicks up on the soundtrack or the camera pans across the skating-pond or "The Wall" older fans are meant to smile or get a little misty-eyed (my near-Pavlovian response to hearing Linus casually mention The Great Pumpkin hit me with a force I imagine would've made the filmmaker's exchange satisfied high-fives) but if you've come for winking ROBOT CHICKEN-style asides to now-adult ground-floor fans about, say, Peppermint Patty and Marcie being "a thing" or whether or not Snoopy's angry unintelligible squawks at Lucy being something particularly "obscene," you won't find them here.

In fact, the lack of attention drawn to the fact that this even is a nostalgia-revival property is kind of remarkable. Even as I was appreciating the attention to detail in matching Schulz' original art-style and the unique limited-motion animation aesthetic of the cartoons (the 3D character-models are animated to look/feel more like embossed colorful stickers in stop-frame, with facial and motion-line details retaining a 2D line-art look), it took me until well after my initial viewing to realize how unusual it was that, despite no "time" being given for the setting, the characters are still using rotary phones, checking books out of libraries and otherwise existing in the same pre-computer, pre-internet, pre-iCulture world they're best remembered in.

That's almost-certainly a correct design choice (I shudder to think what a Charlie Brown with even less incentive to leave his room might be in 2015) but I'm strike by how effortless it feels where a lesser adaptation might've tried to hammer home some point about how much "better" childhood was under these circumstances. On the other hand, I look at scenes like an extended sequence where Snoopy and Woodstock try to negotiate a manual typewriter and I wonder if the youngest in the audience have any idea what that machine even is.

But those are minor quibbles, rendered barely worth a mention by how expertly the bulk of the film segues between the charming and the profound. THE PEANUTS MOVIE is a small, almost absurdly delicate thing in a world where even Dr. Seuss adaptations tend to become bloated, freewheeling pyrotechnic displays. But in it's own way it's an epic, understanding (in the way that only the very best movies about children and childhood do) how a "snow day" can feel like a miracle, how Summer can feel like a countdown, how time can compress and expand from fleeting the endless and back again between the seasons, or how things like a book report, a minor public embarrassment, the approval of a friend or the loyalty of a pet can be (if only for a moment) the most important thing in the world. It's a monument to that moment in time when the expanse between home, school and the playground was the breadth of the universe, and a reminder that there's a chance for even the chronically unlucky to be happy there - if only for that moment.

Hello again, Charlie Brown. And Snoopy. And all the rest. I missed you so much. Please don't stay away so long again.


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Review: BURNT (2015)

NOTE: Publication of this review is possible in part through contributions to The MovieBob Patreon.


Yeesh. What a bucket of suck this thing is.

I'm sorry. I try as best I'm able to save the more colorful witticisms for the video reviews, but some bad movies are exactly bad enough in such a particular way that it feels unjust to approach them with more civilized verbiage. BURNT, featuring one of current Hollywood's most overexposed performers inhabiting the apotheosis of his own most tiresome stock-persona in one of the most annoying recurring narratives of the last decade or so (the mercurial ultra-driven muy-macho auteur-badass who really is so damn good at his vocation that world is just going to have to learn to deal with it, bro!), is practically the Platonic ideal of this very type; with Bradley Cooper mugging, shouting and hard-staring his way through an "I'm a troubled genius, give me an Oscar!!!" turn that asks its audience: "Sure, you loved RATATOUILLE - but wouldn't you love it more with an abusive, too-cool-for-school douchebag whose talent justifies his every flaw?"



90% of what you need to know about BURNT is that it was originally titled simply "ADAM JONES," the name of Cooper's self-consciously cocky master chef who alternately stomps or strides through every scene like a nightmare-offspring of House M.D. and Bobby Flay. The story is ostensibly about Jones rebuilding his reputation as a world-class chef by retooling the upscale London restaurant of an old pal (Daniel Bruhl) and chasing an elusive Third Star from the Michelin Guide; but it's immediately apparent that the only story it has any real interest in telling is "Adam Jones is the coolest motherfucker walking the Earth, and Bradley Cooper totally deserves a Best Actor nomination for informing you of this fact."

Yes, Jones strut the streets (except for scenes where he drives them on a "borrowed" motorcycle), stalk back-alleys and stride through brushed-metal kitchens of London in a leather jacket and daytime-sunglasses like a mid-90s Zucker Bros parody of an early Tom Cruise role; but that's just for openers. He also flips tables in fits of artistic torment, shakes and shoves his underlings like a drill sergeant (which only makes them respect him more, naturally), flamed-out in glorious rock star fashion (he did all the drugs, you guys) because even he couldn't handle his own awesomeness yet has only become more ruggedly-handsome as a result. He righteously eschews fancy modern cooking devices in favor of classical techniques (no namby-pamby test-tube nerdery here, yo!), dodges/absorbs-blows-from the henchmen of an angry druglord, and returns from self-imposed exile only after completing a perfectly Hemmingway-esque blue collar self-flagellation ritual of shucking exactly one million oysters in a New Orleans steam-shack (no, really.)

It's the sort of "hero's journey" pastiche where nearly every character, friend or foe, is built with what they're words and actions can reinforce to us about Adam Jones as their sole and sufficient foundation. Sienna Miller's put-upon single mom and sou chef repays his bullying her (physical-assault included) into becoming her best possible self by falling in love with him. His arch-nemesis (Matthew Rhys) rescues him from a post-all-is-lost-moment bender and nurses him back to health because (I am not making this up) he needs a rival as potent as Adam Jones to make his life worth living. Uma Thurman's cameo as a food critic lasts exactly long enough for her to inform us that she set her lesbianism aside for at least one night to bed him, while Daniel Bruhl's quietly-reserved maitre'd is revealed as gay midway through the story exclusively so we can be assured that he, too, is along for the ride because he's desperately in love with Adam Jones.

I'll be honest: All this self-sustaining hero worship (the goddamn AVENGERS movies don't spend this much time establishing the awesomeness of their protagonists, and one of those guys is a literal god) had me longing for the (relative) subtlety of CHEF; which I'll remind you was about how Jon Favreau was such a transcendently great director chef that his post-Marvel movies cuban sandwiches were so scrumptious as to turn film food critics into business partners and no less than Scarlet Johansson and Sofia Vergara into salivating coital supplicants. At this rate the next "kitchen-skills-as-cock-size" vanity piece will be about an ex-Navy SEAL black-belt whose artisanal tilapia dumplings are capable of putting an entire stadium's worth of Victoria's Secret Angels into immediate post-multiorgasmic comas by their aroma alone.

Some of this might be forgivable if BURNT was at least stylish or had a modicum of humor about itself, but neither is the case. The proceedings are flatly directed John Wells, also responsible for the not-bad COMPANY MAN and the frankly embarassing AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY. Wells is mainly known as a celebrated TV producer, and there are spots where one can see where BURNT might have worked as a series where the peripheral characters could have more going on than reassuring us of what an incredible guy Adam Jones is. But even then, the casting is likely an impossible hurdle: Adam Jones is so perfectly a Bradley Cooper Role that Bradley Cooper should never have gone near it.

Cooper isn't a bad actor (he's pretty good, in fact) but his seemingly-natural cocksure persona has made him the latest actor thrust into the role of replacing "lovable asshole" titans in the vein of Bill Murray (or Harrison Ford) and he just doesn't have the sense of gravity (or mileage) about him to make it work. There's never enough "natural" depth to his turns in this vein to make him tolerable without some extra layer of mitigating distance (i.e. being the "Chaotic Neutral" member of THE HANGOVER or being a space raccoon in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) to let us regard him beyond the surface. Maybe an actor with a more authentically rough-feeling edge (Ryan Gosling, maybe?) or a built-in "opposite" persona to put us off guard (a teddy bear like Kevin James?) could've turned Adam Jones into someone sort-of worth following around for 100 minutes or so.

But as for Cooper, this isn't the one that's going to get him "there;" and should probably stop saying "yes" to screenplays that sound written with his headshot from THE HANGOVER taped to the wall.


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