There are few titles in movie history as monumental as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).  Once considered Disney’s folly, the original Snow White became a landmark in movie history by becoming the first feature length animated film ever made.  And had it not also been a financial success, it’s possible that the animation industry would have looked a whole lot different.  While Mickey Mouse may have made Walt Disney Animation a household name, it was Snow White that turned Disney into an empire.  With the massive profits that Walt Disney gained from the record breaking box office of Snow White, he was able to build a new studio to house his rapidly growing company and continue to create more animated masterpieces in the same vein as Snow White.  But even as the years have passed, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has never lost it’s relevancy.  It is still celebrated today by all generations.  Even nearly 90 years later, young audiences still are discovering the film and becoming  whole new generation of fans.  Disney certainly still holds their crown jewel in high esteem.  Snow White as a character is still represented as a key member of their Disney Princess line-up, which has become an immensely powerful brand within itself.  Both her and the Dwarves are still visibly present in their theme parks around the world and have a strong presence in everything from books, to games, to all sorts of merchandise put out by the Disney company.  Snow White is still a valuable name in the animation business, and even if Disney doesn’t have a claim to the character due to public domain laws, their version of the character is still the one that most people will think of first.  Over the years, Snow White has also been a part of all the changing business plans of the Disney company as well.  In recent years, Disney has been revisiting all of their animated features of the past and giving them live action (ish) adaptations, hoping to generate more profits off of already built in fandom.  The results have been mixed creatively, but very fruitful financially.  It was hoped by many that Disney would leave the films of Walt’s era alone and just remake the more recent Disney movies, but alas in the last five years we’ve seen remakes for Dumbo (2019), Pinocchio (2022) and now Snow White (2025) gets the live action treatment.

Like I said, the Disney live action remake trend has been a mixed bag.  Sure, there are movies like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Lion King (2019) that fall way short of the original films creatively, but at the same time there’s a movie like The Little Mermaid (2023) that turns out to be a pleasant surprise.  And I would argue, some of their remakes measure up really well to the original like Cinderella (2015); a perfect example of taking the already familiar elements of a beloved animated classic and giving it a fresh re-imagination.  But, the fact that Disney has been relying on this trend a tad too heavily in place of taking any actual creative risks and making something new is leading to a lot of discontent with audiences and even fans.  For the most part, Disney has been playing things a bit too safe with their remakes, either just copy and pasting the animated films completely in fear of changing the formula, or making nonsensical changes that rob the films of the edges that made them stand out in the first place.  It making a lot of Disney fans nervous now that Disney is now taking the re-make approach to the movie that started it all.  Snow White holds a special place in Disney history, because without out it, none of what followed would have happened.  But, Disney has had a rough time financially in a post-pandemic and post-strike environment and love or hate the remakes, they have been making money for Disney.  Even the most hated ones of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King still grossed over a billion dollars each.  So, it’s inevitable that Disney was going to eventually get to Snow White.  The only thing we can hope for is that the execution of the remake does justice to the original.  Sadly, Disney has had a lot of struggles with this one.  With the shake-up during the strike, Snow White was delayed a full year from it’s original Spring 2024 release.  And there was plenty of controversy around the casting of the film, with Snow White being played by a non-Caucasian actress and the Dwarves not being played by actual little people but instead being animated.  And of course, this led to a pretty toxic discourse around the movie, especially targeted at actress Rachel Zegler who plays the title role.  Sadly this has created negative buzz around the movie and Disney could be seeing the folly of trying to remake one of their beloved classics.  But discourse aside, it ultimately comes down to whether it’s a good movie or not, and ultimately we shouldn’t judge this film unless we’ve seen it.  So, is Disney’s Snow White the fairest one of all or another poisoned apple?

It’s difficult to recap the plot to Snow White considering that it’s a re-telling of one of the most famous fairy tales in the world.  But, there little changes to the original tale that does make this a little different, so I’ll go through the basic details here.  After a peaceful kingdom loses their beloved and kind queen, the King (Hadley Fraser) falls into despair after the loss, but finds solace in the arrival of a beautiful young woman who comes to his court.  He takes her hand and remarries, giving the kingdom a new queen.  But The Queen (Gal Gadot) proves to be a deceiver and manipulates her way to the throne after tricking the King into going on a crusade far outside of the kingdom.  With the King gone, the Queen now has supreme power and she imposes her will on all her subjects.  The princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), is forced into servitude in the Queen’s castle and she spends her days wishing for an escape from the wicked queen’s rule.  One day, she finds a thief in the castle pantry named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) who proves himself to be shockingly defiant in response to the Queen’s oppression and he swears fealty to the true king; something that catches Snow White’s attention.  The queen dooms him to a slow death, but Snow White helps Jonathan escape, showing mercy that has too long disappeared in the kingdom.  Her kind action prompts the Queen to consult her magic mirror, to reaffirm that she is the “fairest one of all.”  But this time, the mirror reveals that Snow White has supplanted her as the fairest, and the Queen’s jealous temper erupts.  She instructs her Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take Snow White far outside the castle and have Snow White slain, with her heart returned to her in a jeweled case.  The Huntsman does not go through with the order and tells Snow White to hide far into the woods to escape the Queen’s wrath.  Snow White eventually finds shelter in a small cabin, where she finds tiny beds to sleep on.  But, the cabin belongs to the magical dwarves who mine diamonds in the mountains.  The dwarves, named Doc (Jeremy Swift), Grumpy (Martin Klebba), Happy (George Salazar), Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen) Sneezy (Jason Kravits), Bashful (Tituss Burgess), and Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman) agree to let Snow White stay so she can be safe.  But, Snow White means to find out what happened to her father the King, and doing so will put her in danger of being discovered by the Queen and her royal guard.  Will Snow White bring back peace to the kingdom and find a way to overcome the evil might of the Queen?

There’s really no way to compare this film to the original animated classic.  Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is one of the most monumental film achievements ever made.  It’s impossible to escape the long shadow that that movie cast, and really that has been the thing that has affected every adaptation that has come out since.  No other Snow White stands out against the classic animated one, because they inevitably have to be contrasted against it, and so far, all have come short.  This new Snow White, by being so closely tied with the original as it’s being released by the same studio, is almost inevitably going to end up the same way and that assertion is correct.  The live action remake of Snow White is undoubtedly inferior to the original in every way, but it’s a bit unfair to compare this new film to a long time established masterpiece.  So, yeah I’m grading on a curve, but I feel it’s more enlightening to put the movie in perspective of the kind of film it actually represents, and judge it on it’s merits based on that.  This film is part of a wave of live action remakes of Disney’s own animated classics, and that’s the field of films in which I’m judging the movie in it’s proper context.  So, how does it fare as a remake?  It’s frankly just average.  It is no where near the best of the remakes, nor is it anywhere near the worst.  There are things about the movie that I do genuinely think work and come close to making the film much better than expected.  But then, it also has things that absolutely don’t work at all and end up dragging the movie down.  The biggest problem with this movie is it’s inconsistency.  I do admire the effort that was put into the movie; it’s not a lazy copy and paste effort like The Lion King was, nor a overly produced mess like Beauty and the Beast.  It’s just that you can tell that there was a lack of focus in this movie.  There are islands of brilliance in the film, but they disconnected by a coherent vision.  The film was made by Mark Webb, who previously helmed the two Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies as well as the indie romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer (2009).  Webb is putting in a effort to make the movie feel grand and meaningful, but his limitations as a director, especially when directing musical numbers, is very apparent.

I have to compare this with what helped make The Little Mermaid (2023) work for me.  Mermaid was directed by Rob Marshall; someone with plenty of experience directing musicals both for the stage and on screen.  His musical numbers in Mermaid were visually inventive and kinetic, and that helped to make the movie a much more visual feast than it otherwise could have been.  Mark Webb’s background is more in drama and action, and while he puts that experience to good use in some of the more grounded moments in Snow White, his lack of musical direction is very apparent.  The musical sequences here, for the most part, are shot flat and without flair.  It especially doesn’t bode well for Snow White that it’s coming out on the heels of Universal’s mega-hit musical Wicked (2024), which featured extravagant musical sequences done by director Jon M. Chu; someone with a lot of experience directing to music.  While the original Snow White was itself a fully musical production, this film dispenses with all but two of the original songs from the animated classic, and instead creates almost an entirely new musical soundtrack, courtesy of the songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, best known for their work on La La Land (2016) and The Greatest Showman (2017).  The new songs here are not great but also not the worst I’ve ever heard, but they don’t really fit into this story either.  Really, the best musical sequences in the movie are the ones that reuse the songs from the original film, those being “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-Ho.”  It think it’s a lesson in not trying to reinvent the wheel.  It’s only more glaring how the new songs don’t work as well when you also include the classic songs which everyone already loves.  But, at the same time I still see passion put into trying to make the musical sequences work.  It’s not the butchering of the same songs that we saw in The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.  In a way, the fact that Snow White actually is attempting to do something new as opposed to constantly reminding us about something much better, is a plus in it’s favor.  Over time, I just accepted that it wasn’t going to follow the original exactly, and that helped to make most of the movie feel more surprising.  But, at the same time, the movies best moments are the one that come closest to how they played out in the animated film.

The movie does have one saving grace that helps to elevate it from being much worse than it could’ve been.  Ironically, it’s the thing that most internet naysayers thought was going to sink the film in the first place, and that’s the lead actress in the role of Snow White herself.  From the moment she was cast in the role, the worst corners of the internet immediately started to hound her.  The worst of them pointed out that she was a Latina actress playing a role that more often is played by white Caucasian performers, highlighting the line “skin white as snow” as gospel to the portrayal of the character.  Others were upset by public statements the actress made about politics and what she thinks about the more outdated aspects of Snow White’s story.  And to those complaints, I say who cares what she looks like or what she believes or says as a public figure.  What matters is can she do justice to the role of Snow White, and I can definitively say yes.  Rachel Zegler is far and away the best thing about this movie.  She has a wonderful singing voice and is a compelling actor as well.  And I think she pulled of the look of Snow White just fine, especially when she is wearing the iconic blue and yellow dress. A lot of other complaints and worries were leveled at the Seven Dwarves themselves.  Some speculated that the year long delay was due to an unconfirmed rumor that real little actors were being replaced with CGI characters, purely because actor Peter Dinklage made a complaint about it in an interview one time.  I don’t buy it because to me it seemed like the Dwarves here were always meant to be animated.  The problem is that making animated humanoid characters in a live action film runs the risk of heading into the uncanny valley with the final result.  The Dwarves here do take some getting used to, but ultimately I warmed up to them.  They are some of the more entertaining characters and I thought they worked well in relation to Zegler’s Snow White.  The portrayal of Dopey was especially well done, and there are some wonderful moments in the movie that center around his character.  Oddly enough, when the movie actually centers on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which is the very core of the story itself, that’s when the film actually works best.

It’s all of the stuff surrounding Snow White and the Dwarves that falls short.  Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the movie is the Queen herself.  The Evil Queen of the original animated is one of cinema’s most unforgettable and terrifying villains.  While the movie does a good job of making Gal Gadot look like the classic villainess with those incredible Sandy Powell designed dresses, everything else about the character pales in comparison.  The character is poorly written, and Gal’s performance tries to compensate by going full vamp and it just doesn’t work in the movie’s favor.  Gal Gadot also is not the greatest singer, and one can only imagine what it would’ve been like if someone with a more powerful voice had the part instead.  But not everything about her performance is a waste.  I actually thought her best work in the film came when she performs as the Old Hag.  Buried under some good make-up effects, Gal is able to disappear into a character, and she delivers some decent moments of menace there in disguise.  While definitely not as terrifying as the hag from the original, it at least allows Gal Gadot a chance to show some acting chops other than just looking the part.  One other wasted element of the movie is the romantic lead.  I understand the plan around changing this part of the story.  By removing the Prince from the original, and making Snow White fall in love with a brave commoner, it allows for her to have more agency over her own story rather than a damsel in distress.  But, the character of Jonathan does not have much character to speak of, so he’s little more than a plot device.  It would be an insult to the movie, but the Prince in the original was barely a character as well.  The actor Andrew Burnap does the best he can, and has a fine singing voice, but the character is fundamentally superfluous to the film overall, other than delivering on the love’s first kiss part of the story.

If you had been following any of the discourse around this movie, and God help you if you did, you would be led to believe that this movie was doomed from the very start, and that this is going to be the movie that destroys Disney.  The worst avenues of the internet has been especially cruel to the actors in this movie, particularly Rachel Zegler who it turns out is the saving grace of the movie.  My worst fear is that if this movie doesn’t perform well at the box office, Disney is going to take the wrong lesson and fault Rachel for the film’s failure, and that it will lead to more restrictions placed on actor’s being able to speak their minds (as is their right) during the making and promotions of the film.  Rachel Zegler never spoke ill of the movie she was working on and she’ll probably tell you that she adores the original animated film, but she just saw there were inherent problems in the original fairy tale itself that she was eager to deliver a modern reinterpretation of.  You may not have agreed with her opinions, but she should have the right to still say it.  And Disney should recognize that her role in this movie is the thing that helps to salvage it.  To the complaint that this movie is going to ruin Disney for good, I would say that if they were able to survive box office disasters like John Carter (2012), The Lone Ranger (2013) and Tomorrowland (2015), as well as surviving Covid and the string of flops they had in 2023, then they’ll weather it here as well if that’s what happens to Snow White.  Maybe Disney’s reliance on live action remakes will flounder after a disappointing run for this movie, but I doubt it, especially with the upcoming Lilo and Stitch remake already generating massive hype.  For me, I do wish I enjoyed this movie more, but at the same time it didn’t make me hate and resent the film either.  There are good things there, particularly Rachel Zegler’s spirited performance and surprisingly also the Dwarves.  In essence, there’s a good Snow White and the Seven Dwarves movie in there, surrounded by a lot of mediocrity in everything else.  It’s definitely not the fairest one of all, but at the same time it’s far from the worst.  It’s very, very average.  I definitely wouldn’t say that you should immediately Heigh-Ho off to the theater to see it, but if you have young children eager to watch it, I think they’ll have a good time.  Other than that, stick with the original classic and you’ve have a better happy ending.

Rating: 7/10

It’s been a long six years since Bong Joon-ho last had a new film hit theaters.  With his last film, Parasite (2019) taking him to the peak success of his celebrated career, winning both the Palme d’Or at Cannes as well as Best Picture at the Academy Awards, people were interested in what he was going to do for a follow-up.  Bong Joon-ho has been a filmmaker that has worked in two different worlds through his bod of work.  He has made small scale thrillers in his native South Korea, of which Parasite is one of them.  He also has worked in Hollywood, making ambitious high concept science fiction films like Snowpiercer (2014) and Okja (2017).  After achieving the industry’s highest honor with Parasite, there was a lot of speculation about what his next move would be.  Bong decided to jump on the capital he built through Parasite’s success and look to Hollywood once again for his follow-up project.  And indeed, he was making the most of the opportunity by getting a big studio like Warner Brothers on board.  For his new film, Bong found his project in the science fiction novel Mickey 7, about a space explorer who gets re-cloned every time he dies on an expedition.  No doubt he saw potential there in the idea of a man being re-carnated over and over again for the sake of science and exploration, as well a areas in which to inject some social and political satire into the story, which is another trait that his films all share.  It’s quite the shift for him given how Parasite was a far more scaled down production compared to what he had been making.  Would it be the right choice after winning over so much universal praise for his Oscar winner?  A lot of that would certainly ride upon the execution and whether he could hit the right tone and message with his story.

One thing to Bong’s benefit is that this movie put him on a collision course with actor Robert Pattinson.  The British actor who became a household name due to his work on the divisive Twilight movie series, has been spending the last decade trying to shake off the glittery vampire aura of that popular franchise and show the world what kind of actor he really wants to be.  Pattison in reality is a character actor who just also happens to have movie star good looks.  He could easily be the next Brad Pitt, but instead he wants to be the next Gary Oldman; an actor who prefers to disappear into a performance and even make some strange choices along the way.  He has been able to prove that through some bold choices in his roles, whether it’s playing a paranoid lighthouse keeper in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019) or a strung out bank robber in the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time (2017).  Even still, Pattison will occasionally use his star power to work in a big Hollywood film once and a while, like appearing as the caped crusader in Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022).  But in general, he has done a great job at redefining who he is as an actor to audiences, and I’m sure that he’s very happy that he’s no longer looked at as the “Twilight” actor anymore.  At this point in his career, it makes sense that he would want to work with Bong Joon-ho, because he’s a filmmaker who values actors giving unconventional performances in his movies.  Bong’s not afraid to let his actors go big and broad in their performances, and that seemed like the ideal parameters that Pattinson was looking for.  And with a movie like this that allows for him to play the same character in a multitude of different ways, the pairing of actor and director was a natural fit.  The only question is, does Mickey 17 manage to bring out the best in both the filmmaker and actor, or do their artistic instincts end up spoiling the potential of this movie?

The movie takes place a couple hundred years into the future.  Earth’s climate has been thrown into chaos by pollution and neglect, and human beings are looking to flee to other across the galaxy.  Meanwhile, the governments of Earth are also dealing with the ethical questions about human cloning as the science behind that has advance to the point that a human being can be 3D printed out like new.  Disgraced politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) proposes a solution for both problems.  He will command an expedition to another livable planet far beyond Earth and use human clones to do some of the more dangerous work on the expedition since the practice is not illegal in space.  He dubs the human clones that will be a part of the mission Expendables, and seeks willing volunteers for the mission.  Enter Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) who signs up for the Expendables program as a means of getting off the planet due to him and his business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) being hounded by a ruthless loan shark.  Mickey quickly learns that being an Expendable means that he’ll have to get used to dying.  By the time the expedition reaches the new, icy planet they’ve dubbed Nifelheim, Mickey has been re-printed a total of 16 times, after previous versions were killed due to solar radiation, temperature extremes, and air borne viruses.  But, even as the expedition advances, and is increasingly ruled over by Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) like a monarch through cult of personality, Mickey has found companionship with a fellow crew member named Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who becomes his girlfriend.  But, on one scouting expedition, Mickey 17 has come across the native creatures of the planet, giant pill bug looking beings they’ve dubbed Creepers.  He falls into their cave, but surprisingly doesn’t die.  In fact the Creepers help him out of the cave.  Mickey 17 does finally find a way back to base, but when he reaches his quarters, he finds a shocking surprise, that another version of him, Mickey 18 (also Pattinson) is already there.  Now both Mickeys have to deal with the dilemma of being “multiples” which is forbidden even in space.  The only question is, which one will get to live and who will get erased?

With a budget ranging around $120 million, this is Bong Joon-ho’s biggest budgeted film to date.  But the large scale of the production was not the only factor that accounted for the long gap between this and Parasite‘s release.  No doubt Covid delayed much of the development of this film, but even after cameras stopped rolling, it still took a while for his movie to make it to the big screen.  The first teaser for this film was release in early 2023, a full two years before it would actually hit theaters.  The change in management at the Warner Brothers studios no doubt also contributed to it’s delay, with the new regime under David Zaslev not quite sure what to do with this film, but also having it too far down the production pipeline to change course.  So, it kept getting pushed back as the studio kept re-shuffling their release calendar.  It went from a Spring 2024 release to getting delayed a full year to Spring 2025, but thankfully one final move actually moved it ahead a month to March instead of April, with it swapping places wit Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Sinners, which is the first sign of confidence that Warner Brothers has shown in this film.  And with all of those delays, one has to wonder if it did the movie any harm or good.  At least the film finally is getting the chance to be seen.  The only thing is that those unfamiliar with Bong Joon-ho’s style of filmmaking may find the experience to be a little jarring.  This movie has very little in common with Parasite, which while it had it’s bizarre and comical moments, was for the most part a thriller with social commentary behind it.  Mickey 17 is a far broader and less restrained film that harkens back a bit more to his earlier movies like The Host (2006) or Okja (2017), and like those films, Mickey 17 is heavy on the social commentary and broad when it comes to it’s sense of humor.  The only difference is he’s got a significantly larger budget to work with.  Sometimes a director may lose a bit of their sense of style when playing around with more resources at his disposal, but for the most part Mickey 17 still feels true to Bong’s sensibilities as a filmmaker.  Unfortunately, the bigger production also elevates his shortcomings as a director as well.

If Mickey 17 has a major flaw at it’s core, it’s that Bong Joon-ho can’t quite resolve the tone of the film.  The movie swings wildly from broad comedy to tense action thriller, and it doesn’t give you much time to connect with either side.  In it’s individual parts, it has really inspired moments, but puzzle just doesn’t have all the right pieces to full come together.  In general, the movie works best as a slapstick comedy, with Bong Joon-ho really unafraid to make the violence feel gratuitous to the point where you just have to laugh at it in how extreme it goes.  The social commentary, while a tad bit on the nose, also gets plenty of laughs as well, and I do appreciate just how much Bong is willing to mine the situations in the movie to the point of absurdity.  The way Nasha takes advantage of having two Mickeys in her company adds a hilarious wrinkle to her character, and yes the movie goes where you think it will with that aspect of their relationship.  The problem with the movie is that Bong kind of gets stuck within these scenes and makes them go longer than they should.  The film is nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes long, which is pretty lengthy for a film like this.  The fact that the scenes go longer than they should leads to the disjointed feeling that the movie has as a whole.  The transitions from the comedic to the thrilling don’t quite sync up and the movie as a result feels to be at war with itself.  The best was I would describe the film is that it’s Snowpiercer with Okja’s comedic tone, and it’s not a perfect marriage between those type of movies.  At the same time, you don’t get the sense that Bong Joon-ho is phoning it in.  He’s trying to make this movie work as best as he can, but the project just seems to have slipped out of his grasp and the result ends up being a bit messy.  The ambition is there, but the production just couldn’t quite come together.

If there is one thing that does help this movie rise above it’s failings, it’s Robert Pattinson’s outstanding performance.  He instantly makes Mickey a uniquely original character, putting on a showcase for his talents as a character driven actor.  You would hardly believe that this is the same actor who has recently donned the cape and cowl as Batman.  In both voice and physicality, Pattinson disappears into the character, and on top of that he even gets to play that character twice with distinct personalities that make them feel like different people.  The film of course follows it’s title, and makes Mickey 17 the main protagonist of the story.  Mickey 18 is identical in body and voice, but as we learn he is far more assertive and aggressive in his persona compared to Mickey 17’s shy and good-natured behavior.  This dynamic between the two really helps to fuel the best parts of the movie, and Pattison brilliantly makes each Mickey not only their own character, but also fully rounded and engaging as well.  It really mattered that Bong Joon-ho needed the right actor for this part, and he certainly landed on the perfect guy with Pattinson.  It’s the subtleties that really make the performance shine; from the different postures that the Mickeys have to the Steve Buscemi-like high pitched voice he uses and making two variations on that as well.  Pattison definitely carries the movie and helps to smooth out the short comings of the script.  He’s also supported by a strong supporting cast as well, all of whom are also delivering on the broad, screwball comedy aspect of the film.  Mark Ruffalo is also a standout as Kenneth Marshall.  He’s an obvious allegory for real life cult of personality demagogues we’ve seen in politics recently, and Ruffalo clearly knew the assignment well and makes Marshall as hilariously repulsive as possible.  Toni Colette, whose great in just about everything she’s in, also does a great send-up of the vapid politician’s wife.  A lot of the minor characters also are wonderful to watch in this movie, particularly in the way they show how amateurish this space expedition is to it’s core with the actors hilariously playing up the ineptitude they display in their daily roles.  But overall, it’s Robert Pattinson’s movie and this film is the best showcase yet for displaying his talents as a chameleon like actor.

When making a science fiction adventure, there inevitably needs to be some inspired, imaginative ideas on display in the story you are telling.  Mickey 17 I would say is half inspired.  There are some really fun sci-fi concepts found in this movie, but they are mostly centered around the space station setting where most of the film takes place.  It’s when they land on the planet Nifelheim that the movie starts to lose it’s creative spark.  The most creative moments involve the day to day atmosphere of the Marshall expedition’s home base, because you can just tell the half-assed nature of the entire operation just through the visual story-telling of the way that the base looks.  The space station looks very much like a hastily assembled factory where things are just duct taped together enough to keep from falling down completely.  And meanwhile, the Marshall’s living quarters are furnished with lavish furniture and bright colors, clearly showing the obvious class divide between management and the workers.  It is nice to see much of the movie relying on fully built sets rather than filling out the ship with green screen.  It works better for the message of the movie when the space ship is claustrophobic and full of cold, ugly steel.  The movie’s imagination unfortunately runs out once you leave the spaceship.  The planet Nifelheim is about as generic and unimaginative as you can imagine.  We’ve seen ice planets before in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Interstellar (2014), and they were far more visually interesting than what we see in this film.  Pretty much all we see is barren open tundra with no interesting features, and it’s all blurred out by an omnipresent snow storm.  Maybe this was to save on the budget with the visuals, but it just comes across as dull in the end.  Even the Creeper’s cave feels boring, with no visually imaginative touches to be seen.  The Creepers themselves are animated well, but the fact that they are just essentially giant versions of a bug we are all familiar with on Earth is another missed opportunity to show a little imagination with this science fiction concept.  So, the movie is half inspired as a science fiction fantasy, but there are so many missed opportunities that you can tell would have helped to make the movie better if they had gone a different way.

It’s hard to follow-up an Oscar winning film with something that can equally perform on the same level; even for some of the best filmmakers.  One cannot blame Bong Joon-ho for striking while the iron is hot and getting a major studio on board for his next, ambitious project.  And it certainly was not a wasted opportunity either.  You can definitely see that Bong put the money up on that screen and delivered a film that not only is ambitious, but also satisfies his tastes as a filmmaker.  It’s just unfortunate that all the pieces don’t quite come together despite all of his well-meaning efforts.  A lot of the elements in the movie, the screwball comedy, the high concept science fiction, and the social commentary just feel like they were done better in some of his other movies like Snowpiercer.  But, there are things about the movie that really do shine too.  The movie is definitely worth seeing for Robert Pattison’s performance alone.  He really did create a true original character that I’m sure is going to be endearing to most audiences who see this movie.  Even if the film gets mixed reviews, I feel like you’ll see almost universal praise for Pattison’s performance, and I hope it opens the door more for him to continue to play these kinds of oddball characters in future films.  And while the satirical elements are a bit on the nose they are still nevertheless funny and for the most part earn their laughs.  I just wish the overall movie had a tighter edit and a more imaginative setting on the alien planet that they ultimately land on.  In general, it’s a slightly above average movie mainly due to the performances, and especially because of it’s main character.  For Bong Joon-ho, it’s not easy getting a movie like this made and as it turned out it was a struggle getting it released as well.  But, I hope the experience doesn’t deter him from being a risk taker either.  It will be interesting to see where he goes from here; either staying in Hollywood or returning to his roots in Korean cinema.  Either way, Mickey 17 may be a flawed but still worthwhile experiment on his part and hopefully it’s a stepping stone to something even better for him as a filmmaker in the future.

Rating: 7/10

It’s interesting to see what taking some time off can do to your health.  For Marvel Studios, the post-Endgame years have been a bit of a roller coaster.  The delay in releases caused by the Covid-19 pandemic forced Marvel to reshuffle their plans, and this created a bit of a backlog for them as they were trying to move forward with their newest phases.  As a result, their yearly output nearly doubled, with as many as three or four new titles making it to theaters within a given year.  This was coupled with the studio also making their big push into streaming aboard their parent company’s newest platform, Disney+.  For a moment, audiences were happy to see the MCU back on the big screen, but as the bombardment of new titles kept coming as Marvel tried to relieve themselves of the backlog, audiences started to feel a sense of fatigue from all of the stuff Marvel had to offer.  Couple this with the inner turmoil at the Disney Corporate offices with the chaos caused in the short lived Chapek era, and people were starting to believe that Marvel had lost it’s magic touch.  The movies were not being received as warmly as the ones released in the lead up to the end of the Infinity Saga, and people cared even less about the shows that were appearing on Disney+, with some notable exceptions.  This growing super hero fatigue was also not unique to Marvel either, as DC was also experiencing the final death throws of their struggling DCEU.  It all came to a head in the year 2023, where Marvel saw it’s biggest losses as a brand.  Though Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 managed to succeed at the box office, the other films that year (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels) became the first ever money losers in MCU’s stellar history.  All of this led to Disney CEO Bob Iger making the decision to slam on the brakes with Marvel’s output and have the studio take a break in order to get things back on track.

In the whole of 2024, Marvel only had one film release in theaters; a significant reduction in their yearly output.  But, that single film would end up being the sure fire Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), a long awaited sequel to one of the bigger franchises around one of Marvel’s most popular characters.  While Marvel didn’t have the benefit of multiple mega-hits to carry them through the whole year, they still benefited from having Deadpool & Wolverine carry the spotlight all by itself.  The movie would end up grossing $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office, their biggest hit in years, and second only to Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) in the post-Endgame era.  The pause in the output also allowed the studio more time to re-organize themselves and put more work into the projects that were having trouble in production.  This year, Marvel is getting back to their regular ambitious output of 3 in one year.  Later this summer, we are getting the team up movie called Thunderbolts* (2025) and the long anticipated The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025).  But before then, we are getting the release of one of the more troubled productions Marvel has had in their whole history.  This new film is Captain America: Brave New World (2025), which is the fourth film centered around the iconic character, although this version is not the same Captain that we’ve known up to now.  At the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019), the original Captain America Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) literally aged out of the persona, and he left his iconic shield to his trusted friend Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka The Falcon.  In between then and now, there was a Disney+ plus series called The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which followed up the events of Endgame by having Sam Wilson make that transition even more towards accepting the role of Captain America, a position that he was reluctant to take before.  Now, having finally donned the red, white, and blue, Brave New World gives Sam Wilson’s Captain the full cinematic spotlight.  The only question is, does the new direction of Captain America as a character mark a fresh new path for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or does the film unfortunately still bear the scars of their misfortune and disorganization over the last couple of years.

The story of Brave New World begins after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.  Sam Wilson (Mackie) has fully assumed the mantle of Captain America, fulfilling the wishes of the late Steve Rogers who bestowed him the Vibranium shield.  The next generation Captain America has been conducting missions in assistance of the United States army alongside his wingman Joaquin Torres, who has inherited the role of The Falcon from him.  After successfully retrieving a key piece of cargo necessary for the US Government to sign a peace treaty, Wilson and Torres are invited to the White House to meet with the newly elected President, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford).  Ross wants Sam to rebuild the Avengers team, which is a shocking proposition from him considering he used his influence to dismantle the Avengers with the implementation of the Sakovia Accords, which landed Sam in prison for a brief while.  Along with Sam and Joaquin is an old friend named Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who is a super soldier serum enhanced fighter that later was abandoned by his country and thrown into prison for decades in order to hide the truth about his powers.  While President Ross is giving a presentation to world leaders at this White House Summit, Bradley suddenly stands up and attempts to assassinate him.  He is arrested and after questioning reveals that he has no memory of the incident.  Against the President’s wishes, Sam seeks answers and begins investigating further based on his assumption that Bradley had been set up.  He does some digging and finds a secluded, off the grid army base where it appears secret scientific experimentations had been taking place.  There, they find Dr. Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), who had been imprisoned there ever since he helped create the Abomination that attacked the Hulk over 16 years prior.  After being exposed to gamma radiation himself, Sterns’ brain had doubled in size and functionality, and he had been exploited for his intellect by then General Ross for all these years.  He’s now seeking revenge on Ross, and it involves manipulating world governments into fighting each other over a new element called Adamantium that was discovered in the newly emerged Celestial Island in the Indian Ocean.  Complicating matters even more, Captain America is also dealing with a rogue mercenary named Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), head of a group named Serpent.  Captain America and the Falcon must act fast in order to unravel Sterns’ master plan and clear Bradley’s name.  But Stern’s plans run even deeper than they thought, including a stealth plan in place involving President Ross himself.

The road to the big screen was not easy for Captain America: Brave New World.  Greenlit towards the end of the Chapek era, the movie seemed to struggle from the very beginning.  It was delayed multiple times, with a major one forced upon it in the middle of shooting by the strikes of 2023.  It also faced multiple rewrites and reshoots, as it seemed like Marvel and Disney were desperately trying to salvage what had been a poorly planned out production.  But, the movie has finally arrived in theaters at a time that Marvel hopes to start off a major revival of their struggling MCU.  And after all the trouble that went into making the movie, it unfortunately results in a movie that is just okay.  It’s far from the worst thing that Marvel has made, and yet it also pales in comparison to it’s best.  Of the four Captain America movies that have been made by Marvel, this is unfortunately the weakest one, which is a sad thing to say for a movie that is meant to introduce us to the next generation of the beloved character.  The main problem with the movie is that you can  really feel the mechanics of all the re-workings this movie went through.  The different acts of the film all feel like they came from entirely different drafts by different writing teams.  The first act is an exposition heavy re-introduction of the characters, while the middle act is a taut mystery thriller, and the final act is yet another bombastic, CGI-enhanced Marvel action sequence.  There are individual moments throughout that do work on their own, but the movie struggles to hold it all together.  And you can definitely feel where the reshoots happened in contrast with the other scenes; they stick out like sore thumbs.  Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder was one of those late editions to the film added in reshoots, and you can definitely tell that he was shoe-horned into the movie.  None of it though is exactly awful to watch; it’s just disappointing when all the different elements don’t lead to a cohesive whole.

One of Marvel’s major problems since Avengers: Endgame is that they have struggled to define their direction in the next phase.  The Multiverse Saga as it’s been defined has certainly had some high points, but the track record that Marvel had sustained for most of the last decade at a high point has more recently been more of a roller coaster.  The big problem is that more of their movies now feel more like a new episode of an on-going series rather than films that can stand well on their own.  That’s what made the MCU so special in the Infinity Saga years; that they were working with so many different flavors and allowing them to define themselves in addition to serving toward the ultimate goal of the Avengers films.  Now, each Marvel property is beginning to feel the same.  Some of it has still worked (Guardians, Deadpool), and I’ve been a bit more forgiving than other critics of Marvel’s recent direction, because as long as I come away entertained I will still give a movie a pass for some of it’s faults.  The problem with Brave New World is that the faults get in the way of the entertainment value of the movie.  It’s humorless for the most part, and the action scenes are showing me nothing new that I haven’t seen before from Marvel.  There is still some competency in it’s production that helps it to avoid the basement of the MCU.  I wasn’t angered by the film like I was by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or Iron Man 3 (2013).  But, the lack of anything special about the movie also leaves this in the bottom half of the MCU.  But, Marvel at it’s worst can still be better than most.  The best thing I can say about the movie is that I would definitely choose it over any of Sony’s Spiderverse films, but that’s a phenomenally low bar.  It’s about on par with some of the average DCEU films at worst.  Marvel definitely needs to relearn how to allow these movies to stand on their own again.  For this movie, not only is it necessary to have seen The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series, but the film also references the previous Captain America movies, the Avengers movies, 2008’s nearly long forgotten The Incredible Hulk, and surprisingly also Eternals, which thankfully gets a long overdue resolution to one of it’s hanging plot threads.  And with the introduction of Adamantium in this film, it’s likely that this movie will be a stepping stone for the eventual introduction of the X-Men in the MCU.  There’s a lot going on in this film, but what it’s not doing is making you care for the actual plot that’s happening in the moment within the movie.

The saving grace for this movie is the very talented and entirely game cast.  Anthony Mackie is charming as ever, and brings an infectious magnetism to the role.  While the character himself seems to feel lost in his own movie, Mackie’s performance still shines through and you can’t help but like the guy through all the movie’s faults.  What is really impressive though is just how well Harrison Ford fits in playing the role of President Ross.  Ford is taking over a role that had previously been played by the late William Hurt in a span of 13 years and 5 movies.  He had some big shoes to fill in a role that so many people associated with another legendary actor, and yet Ford manages to make the part his own and successfully carry on the legacy of the character into this new chapter.  I love the sincerity of Ford’s performance here.  Though this is Ford’s first ever performance in any super hero movie, let alone a Marvel one, he actually feels right at home and you quickly get used to him in the role of Thunderbolt Ross.  The villains of the movie also stand out.  Credit to Tim Blake Nelson for patiently waiting for his chance to return to the role of Samuel Sterns after a 16 year absence.  While some of his villainous plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the script, Nelson still gives Sterns a menacing presence that helps him to feel like an actual threat.  And despite feeling like a last minute addition shoehorned into an already crowded film, Giancarlo Esposito does make the most of his time and steals every scene he is in as Sidewinder.  But perhaps the best performance of the film belong to Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley.  He brings a subtle bit of gravitas to the character, and you really feel the weight of the history of this forgotten man.  He brings a lot of powerful emotion into the film that it otherwise lacks, and you can imagine a whole film’s worth of backstory that would be worth exploring about his character.  So while the script leaves a lot to be desired, the actors still make the film enjoyable enough to warrant at least a watch.

The visuals are a bit of a mixed bag.  In some moments, the movie feels flat like an episode of a Disney+ Marvel series.  But in other moments, it has some impressive visuals that live up to the high standards of the MCU.  The finale in particular really feels like it had the majority of the budget invested into it, as we see Captain America go into battle with a big CGI creature that you probably already can guess who it is.  The third act, which is by far the most cohesive part of the movie, feels like the section that experienced the least amount of changes during the re-working of the film, and it shows in the visuals.  The way that some scenes feel bland and lacking in style while others are inventive in their visuals is another tell tale sign of the re-shoots that occured after principle photography.  The re-shoots probably had a very different crew working on them, and that’s what leads to this feeling of inconsistency in the look of the film.  The movie definitely lacks the visual punch that the Russo Brothers brought to the other Captain America movies, or the distinct styles of Taika Waititi, James Gunn, or Ryan Coogler who left their mark on the MCU over the years.  Director Julius Onah is a competent enough director, but his approach here doesn’t deliver anything striking.  His style just falls into the same house style that Marvel movies have become increasingly more reliant upon.  The air battles in particular don’t have the visceral impact that they should.  Marvel probably should’ve taken some cues from the flight scenes in Top Gun: Maverick to help make their moments feel more exciting.  Again, it’s not terrible, but you really get the sense that it could have been better.  There’s no risk-taking involved in the making of this movie.  You can sense the makings of a great MCU movie within the ingredients on display here, but the complete product just stands as safe and predictable.  As Marvel heads towards their final phase of their Multiverse Saga, they need to do a bit better than safe and predictable.

Captain America: Brave New World has elements that work, and potential to be great; but unfortunately it just doesn’t justify it’s need to exist in the greater continuity of the MCU.  It’s a small chapter in a greater narrative, and one that most people are likely going to forget they even watched at all.  Marvel is loosing the way that their movies felt like events.  While they can still knock one out of the park occasionally, like last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, they are more often making films that just barely cross the line into acceptability.  There are some great performances in the film, notably from Mackie, Ford and Lumbly.  But, the plot feels thin and inconsequential compared to Marvel at it’s best.  The sad thing is that it undermines Anthony Mackie’s debut as the star of the Captain America franchise, which should matter especially if he’s got a bigger future as a part of the MCU going forward.  He’s demonstrated that he can fill the part quite well; it’s just that Marvel needs to find a better story to play to his strengths as an actor much more.  I would like to see a more about his friendship with Isiah Bradley, and why it matters to Sam Wilson to be carrying that torch of Captain America, which holds a special kind of burden in itself, especially given the fact that unlike Steve Rogers and Isaiah Bradley, he has not been enhanced with super soldier serum.  My hope is that the mediocre elements of this film were more of a bi-product of the tumultuous Chapek era, where Marvel had less in-house creative control, and that the future films in the MCU are able to stand well enough on their own in addition to being part of the cinematic universe.  I’m actually really looking forward to the rest of the 2025 MCU slate; especially with the very promising Fantastic Four reboot.  Captain America: Brave New World is a shining example of the things that Marvel has been loosing their grip with in terms of quality control in their movies, but hopefully it’s also the point where their creative backslide starts to reverse itself.  It’s hard to know if the reshoots did more good than bad for this film.  We do know that they weren’t enough to reverse course completely.  Brave New World still resulted in a flawed by still watchable film.  Longtime Marvel fans may get a kick out of some of the more fan service moments in this movie, but otherwise most people will move on quickly to the greener pastures that are on Marvel’s horizon coming later this year and into the future.

Rating: 6.5/10

No other studio can claim to be the one and only home of cinema’s greatest monsters as Universal Studios has become.  Going back to their early years, it can be said that Movie Monsters made Universal what it is today.  Whether it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Count Dracula, the Invisible Man or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, these monsters are an institution that Universal proudly claims as their own.  But, apart from the Creature from the Black Lagoon which is an original cinematic creation, none of the other movie monsters belong solely to Universal, mostly originating from literary sources well before cinema existed.  So, to keep their profile up as the kings of monster movies, Universal has had to find new ways to refresh their stable of monster characters for new generations.  One of the most ill-fated attempts to bring Universal Monsters back to the big screen was the bungled attempt at creating a Marvel style Cinematic Universe that tied all the monsters together called Dark Universe.  Universal had high hopes that they could sustain a blockbuster cinematic universe based around their monsters, and they were getting many big names on board to participate, including casting Javier Bardem for their Wolf Man and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.  Unfortunately, the Dark Universe flamed out fast due to the failure of The Mummy (2017), which even the star power of Tom Cruise couldn’t save.  The Wolf Man and Invisible Man films were quickly scrapped before they even started cameras rolling, and the Dark Universe was effectively deader than Dracula in less than a year.  With the future of the Universal Monsters in limbo, the studio needed to find a new path forward to help revitalize these characters again.  And they found their savior in a surprising collaborator that would turn out to be the ideal shepherds in giving new life for these monsters; a production company called Blumhouse.

Blumhouse, the company founded by producer Jason Blum, revolutionized the horror movie genre by putting an emphasis on economically made horror films that were more auteur driven.  Because their films were more experimental and cost a fraction of what other horror films were made with, Blumhouse managed to consistently turn a profit and this got the attention of Hollywood who saw their blueprint for success as a perfect way to revitalize a horror genre that had become bloated and stagnant.  Universal, who wanted to save face from the failure of the Dark Universe and bring new life to their monster properties, were eager to partner with Blumhouse, and so an exclusive pact was made by the two entities.  Blumhouse would now have the backing of a major studio, while Universal would have proven horror powerhouse managing their characters in a way that would peak audience interest again.  One of the key new horror filmmakers to emerge within the Blumhouse family was Australian actor turned director Leigh Whannell.  Whannell developed his horror resume as the writer for some of James Wan’s most notable films in the genre, namely Saw (2004) and Insidious (2010).  Starting with Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) he has been directing and writing horror films, and was given the opportunity by Blumhouse to launch their new partnership with Universal in re-imagining their stable of classic monsters.  His first feature under this experiment was a modern re-telling of The Invisible Man (2020).  Though the film had it’s box office run cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, it still managed to land well with both critics and audiences.  People praised it’s fresh take on the classic movie monster, with it’s POV shifted to the vicitim of the Invisible Man (an unforgettable Elisabeth Moss) whose story became an effective allegory about domestic violence committed on women.  For his follow-up, Whannell is now getting the chance to take on another classic Universal Monster with his re-imagining of the Wolf Man (2025).  The only question is, can it live up to the bold new take that we saw in The Invisible Man, or does it fall short and makes the Blumhouse experiment unfortunately short-lived.

The film opens 30 years in the past, where a young boy named Blake (Zac Chandler) is taken out hunting with his father Grady (Sam Jaeger).  Grady is tough on his son, wanting him to take the idea of hunting and survival in the wild seriously.  While deep in the woods in a secluded valley in the Oregon mountains, the encounter a mysterious creature that is unlike anything else they’ve seen before; something like a wolf, but one that can stand up straight like a human.  The close encounter spooks Grady and Blake, and they quickly retreat from the forest.  Locals consider Grady crazy, but he’s determined to get proof of what he saw.  Cut forward to the present day, grown up Blake (Christopher Abbott) is now a father himself, to a young girl named Ginger (Matilda Firth).  Both Blake and Ginger have a strong bond with each other, with Blake demonstrating a more compassionate hand at parenting than his father.  Ginger’s mom, Charlotte (Julia Garner) on the other hand is too pre-occupied with work to be invested in her daughters life, and it causes some friction between them as well as with Blake.  One day, Blake receives the news that his father, who has been missing for quite some time, has now been legally declared dead by authorities in the State of Oregon, and that Blake has now inherited the farm house that they used to live in 30 years ago.  Blake convinces his wife and daughter that they should get away from the city and stay at the farm for a couple of weeks in order to reconnect as a family.  On their way there, Blake swerves off the road after seeing a scary looking creature in the middle of the road.  After their camper crashes, Blake tries to escape the vehicle, but ends up getting his arm slashed by the same beast that caused him to crash in the first place.  They safely make it to the farm house, but while inside, Blake begins to feel very sick.  Over time, his illness worsens, upsetting his family.  More and more his body becomes more twisted and beast like, and he can no longer communicate with his family.  As the night goes further on, Charlotte and Ginger have to come to terms that their protector himself may in fact attack them as he slowly turns into a Wolf Man.

One thing that the movie has to contend with is the familiarity of the Wolf Man in cinema.  Lon Chaney Jr. famously brought the character to life originally on the big screen in 1941’s The Wolf Man.  Universal would once again revisit the character with the 2010 film starring Benicio Del Toro.  Both films are notable for setting the story within a Victorian setting, which Leigh Whannell departs from in his mostly original, modern adaptation of the classic story.  Here he leaves foggy, cold England for foggy, cold Oregon, which ultimately still works thematically for this story.  In general, Leigh makes quite a few changes to the overall character that I would say mostly benefits the story as a whole.  The thing that I like the most about the movie is the way it handles the transformation of the Blake into a Wolf Man.  It still follows the mythology that we all know, where the wolf’s curse is like a contagion; once you’ve been attacked by a Wolf Man and survive, you become one yourself.  The thing that this movie does different is that it’s not an instantaneous change.  Blake gradually turns into the Wolf Man, with the movie really selling us on the fact that it is a painful process.  The middle section of this movie, where most of the transformation is happening, is the strongest part, where you slowly see Blake’s humanity slipping away with every new wolf trait he develops.  It starts with a stronger sense of smell, then acute hearing, and then ultimately seeing the world through a broader color spectrum in a stunning visual.  The movie treats the tragedy of this Wolf Man curse more seriously than most other versions of this story we’ve seen, and it’s also fairly bleak about it too.  There’s no salvation for Blake; no reversal after the light of a full moon is gone.  Once he’s been bled by the creature, he’s already doomed.

The problem that keeps the movie from being a bigger success is that after the transformation happens, the movie gets a bit repetitive.  With the focus shifted to the characters of Charlotte and Ginger, they unfortunately spend the whole rest of the movie on the run from both Blake and the other Wolf Man haunting the woods around the farm.  There’s no more development to their characters other than that.  The movie could have played more into the mother and the daughter mending their strained relationship through the shared ordeal, but the movie doesn’t make a lot of time for that.  Instead, it sort of pads the run time, with the characters making decisions to run and hide in different ways.  The go outside for a bit, than run back into the farm house, then back outside again, and then back into the house.  The repetition of the third act really begins to undermine the stronger parts of the story found in the film’s first half.  None of it is bad per say, it makes you wish that the film had just a little bit more to say other than having it’s two main heroines constantly be put into harms’ way.  It’s a downgrade from what Whannell was able to do with The Invisible Man, which really did a great job of building the tension of the movie into something fresh and unexpected.  It was a movie that took the familiar movie monster and took the story in a different direction than what you’d expect, which really enhanced the tension and the fear factor as well.  There’s beginnings of some good ideas in the early part of this movie, and some of them lead to a great re-imagining of the wolf man’s transformation, but when the movie decides it wants to go into an action movie climax, that’s where it definitely falls short.

One the things that definitely holds the movie together are the performances.  Christopher Abbott in particular really shines in what is very much a demanding role.  A lot of the success of the transformation scenes has to come from the effectiveness of the performance of the actor.  Abbott does a great job of portraying a man going through a terrifying and painful transformation.  The best part of this is that he never goes over the top with any of it.  When he is dealing with the most painful parts of his transformation, he characterizes it like a man drowning in a deep fever, balled up and trembling.  And once he goes into the final steps of his transformation, he believably portrays the physicality of a wild creature.  There’s a chilling moment early on before he makes his full transformation, where he begins gnawing at his open wound on his arm, like how a real wolf would tackle a piece of meat.  It’s a moment in the performance where an actor could get the physicality wrong, and it shows that Christopher Abbott must have studied up on how to act like a wolf in that scene.  The make-up effects are pretty convincing too, which follows in the proud tradition of the Wolf Man being a ground-breaking character in the art of prosthetic make-up, going all the way back to when Cheney played him.  Abbott completely disappears once the creature takes his final form, and it’s a testament to the make-up artists and Abbott’s committed physical acting that helps to make the transformation feel believably realistic.  Julia Garner’s character may be a tad underwritten, but she still does a fine job acting in this role.  I like the fact that she refrains from going over the top in her more frightened scenes.  The way she plays it, as someone who tries to remain in control even as she is paralyzed with fear, is just the right angle to take with the character.  Matilda Firth also works well enough as Ginger, helping her feel natural as the child in this scenario.  She’s sweet, but not saccharine or creepy, which is the binary dynamic that most children in horror movies tend to fall on either side of.  The movie overall has a very limited cast to work with, and thankfully the three main players here all have strong on screen chemistry with each other.

While Leigh Whannell’s adaptation of the Wolf Man may lack something in it’s storytelling, it makes up for some of that with it’s style.  Whannell does some really creative things with this re-telling of the familiar story, particularly in the visuals and with the sound-editing.  One of the best visual ideas is in showing shifting perspectives between the characters once Blake begins his transformation.  This really helps to sell the horrifying change that is going on with his body.  He begins to have the eyesight of a wolf, which allows him to see things through an infrared spectrum.  He’s better able to see things in the dark, and all the colors are take on a weird psychedelic look too.  There’s a really effective scene where it shifts from his family’s perspective, where Charlotte and Ginger are hiding within pitch black darkness inside of a barn and the camera moves away from them and shifts midway through the shot into the night vision of Blake’s POV before shifting back to the darkness again, all in a oner shot.  The way that they use sound in the movie is also incredible.  The films does an effective job of creating the cacophony of exaggerated sound that Blake now hears after his transformation, and how he no longer can hear his family speak to him clearly anymore.  There’s also a grotesque, crunchiness to the sounds his body makes when the bones inside of him change during the transformation.  And once he is in wolf mode, the movie makes his deep breath growling sound all the more otherworldly.  There’s a lot of great craft put to use in this movie, and Whannell succeeds in grounding his Wolf Man story in an almost realistic portrayal.  You really get the visceral feel of the horrific transformation that Blake goes through, and it does builds the fear up of what this creature ultimately becomes, with something that both feels of the natural world but also out of pure fantasy as well.

Overall, Leigh Whannell does a good job of giving the classic character of the Wolf Man a fresh new portrayal on the big screen.  It does seem like he was overly concerned with getting the transformation part right, and the rest was treated more as an afterthought.  When Blake goes through his transformation, it’s where the movie works the best, and it’s a testament to the make-up effects team, the visual and audio effects engineers, and Christopher Abbott all delivering together for making this a more engaging experience overall.  It’s only when Leigh Whannell takes the movie into the repetitive final act that you see the shortcomings of this adaptation, because it ultimately leads nowhere.  The Invisible Man ultimately stood out much better because of the unexpected turns it took with it’s story, which also gave us an interesting twist on the narrative you wouldn’t have seen in any other version.  Ultimately, this Wolf Man does go down the road you expect it to, and that is disappointing, given all the other things it gets right.  The surprising thing is that it’s a very bleak take on the story.  There’s no salvation for Blake; once he’s infected, he’s done for, and the movie is a sad march to death for him as you see his humanity slip away.  Not every horror movie needs to have a message to it, but I would’ve liked to see the film present some idea of what this arc for Blake was all about.  Was it saying something about inherited trauma, and how violence is passed down through generations?  I just wish there was a more clever edge to this story.  In the end, it’s definitely a strong presentation of style, as Whannell does a great job with setting up atmosphere and giving a visceral portrayal of the horrific Wolf Man transformation.  It makes me wonder what other fresh new takes we’ll see of Universal’s Movie Monsters from Blumhouse in the coming years.  This movie, and to a greater extant The Invisible Man, demonstrate that it was a good idea for Universal to make Blumhouse the caretakers of these characters.  Let’s hope that both studios continue to do brave new things with these classic movie monsters so that more generations can continue to appreciate these icons for years to come.  It’s not a perfect horror adaptation, but it can still work as a howling good time with some really terrifying and effective horror elements there to give us a good fright.

Rating: 7/10