Monthly Archives: October 2017

Top Ten Lists

Top Ten Favorite Villains in Disney Movies

Only a few months ago I shared with you my choices for the greatest heroes in Disney movies.  With Halloween just around the corner this year, I decided to look at the flip-side of the coin and share with you my choices for my favorite Disney villains.  The collection of Disney Villains is a fascinating one, considering the widespread popularity they enjoy.  In many cases, you’ll find that it is the villain that becomes the most popular character from the movie, and not the hero.  And why is that, particularly in Disney’s case?  I think that it’s because Disney has figured out , more than with any other type of characters, the formula for crafting memorable and captivating personalities that instantly pop out to us on the screen.  They are often flamboyant, passionate, and they revel in their dastardly deeds and are unapologetic about it.  It also helps that Disney makes them physically stand apart from the rest by color coding them most often in black clothing.   But, more than anything, I think that we respond to the Disney villains more passionately because they embody the earliest notions of evil and dark intentions that we all have growing up.  Disney movies were often intended as morality tales for younger audiences, and it is true that our first comprehension of social evils like greed, jealousy, prejudice, and violence often come from the ones we see committed by one of Disney’s many villainous characters; that is if those social evils aren’t already present in our lives when we are young.  With Disney villains, we see those evils distilled down (some would even say watered down) into vividly imagined antagonists, and that’s why they capture our imagination so much.  Disney has made their rogues gallery one of cinema’s most memorable, and with this list, I intend to share with you the ones that have stuck with me the most, both growing up and continuing on as an adult.

Before I get to that though, I would like to highlight some honorable mentions who fell short of this list: The Evil Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), The Coachman (Pinocchio), Chernabog (Fantasia), The Headless Horseman (The Adventures of Ichabod an Mr. Toad), The Queen of Hearts (Alice in Wonderland), Shere Khan (The Jungle Book), Gaston (Beauty and the Beast), Hades (Hercules), Dr. Facilier (The Princess and the Frog), and King Candy (Wreck-It Ralph).  Also, I’m limiting this list to just Disney Movies.  The characters can be adapted from classic literature, but they can’t come from a source acquired by Disney long after the original creation, so no Star Wars or Marvel villains here.  And with that, let’s count down the greatest Disney villains.

10.

YZMA from THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE (2000)

Voiced by Eartha Kitt

As far as Disney Villains go, Yzma is not your typical rogue.  Her fiendish plan ends up being one of the most incompetently executed, as her adversary is turned into a llama as opposed to being poisoned as intended.  Then her dimwitted accomplice ends up losing that same victim (the true ruler of the land by the way) and both him and her must trek aimlessly through the countryside in order to find them and finish the job right; which of course never happens.  As a villain, Yzma probably maintains the lowest batting average of success as anyone on this list.  So, what makes her so special?  In many ways, she earns this spot for being just a fantastic character all around, even with all of the missteps she faces.  Disney’s underrated comedy jem, The Emperor’s New Groove, is first and foremost a farce, often calling attention to and mocking tropes of past Disney films, and Yzma is a perfect villain for this type of comedic tale.  Most of the film’s funniest moments often come out of her constant frustration upon dealing with her incompetent sidekick, Kronk (voiced to perfection by Patrick Warburton).  I especially love the moments in the movie where she attempts to indulge in her sweet villainy, and the moment is broken apart by the ill-timed and idiotic interjections of Kronk.  A bit where Kronk means to gather information by speaking to a squirrel provides one of Yzma’s most hilarious breakdowns of frustration.  A large part of Yzma’s character comes through in the exceptional voice work by the legendary Eartha Kitt, and who would have thought that the screen and stage legend would have found her comedic match with Warburton of all people.  Together, they make the greatest pairing of villain and sidekick in any Disney movie.

9.

SCAR from THE LION KING (1994)

Voiced by Jeremy Irons

The Lion King  is often referred to as Hamlet in Africa, so it’s not at all surprising that it’s villain retains some Shakespearean qualities of his own.  Serving as a combination of Claudius from Hamlet (for the fratricide) and Edmund from King Lear (for being a second son manipulating politics behind the scenes in order to gain power), Scar is very much a villain formed out of literary inspiration.  But, even with those thoughts in mind, Scar is still a memorable character in his own right.  For one thing, he stands out among other Disney villains as being the first one to murder his victim on screen.  Other Disney films tend to value showing the aftermath of such a despicable act, but The Lion King did not shy away, showing Scar making the defining move to shove his brother Mufasa off of cliff and into a Wildebeest stampede.  This was different than say hearing a gunshot taking out Bambi’s mother off-screen.  Here, young audiences saw the terrible consequences of someone’s quest for more power, and it was terrifying.  Apart from that, Scar remains one of Disney’s most vivid portrayals of villainy; he’s deceitful and ruthless, but also consumed by a obsessive sense of self-worth.  He feels that powered is owed to him because he sees himself as smarter than everyone else.  But as we see the consequences of his actions, we come to learn that the “lion’s share” of brains does not equal noble leadership skills, and the scary thing is that Scar will never see that, and will destroy anyone who questions his role.  Disney was blessed to receive the talents of Oscar winner Jeremy Irons for the role, who really brought out the Shakespearean qualities in the character.  Motivated by a tragic sense of jealousy, Scar earns his place among the best Disney villains ever.

8.

PROFESSOR RATIGAN from THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE (1986)

Voiced by Vincent Price

Sometimes Disney gives their villains a more subtle portrayal that delves deeper into their character, and then other times, they drop all pretense and just let their baddies be evil for the sake of it.  And sometimes, even the less subtle villains are a lot of fun to watch.  Professor Ratigan is that kind of villain, done to absolute perfection.  He certainly has his source in literature too.  If his archnemisis, Basil of Baker Street, is Disney’s re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes, than it’s obvious that Ratigan is the stand-in for Holmes’ own nemesis, Professor James Moriarty.  And Disney did not waste their opportunity to exploit the best out of that legendary rivalry out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels.  Ratigan, probably more than anyone else on this list, relishes his role as a villain.  He even gets a song where he sings about all the evil plots he’s committed, with not an inkling of shame.  What I love best about the character is the unabashed delight that Ratigan takes in developing his schemes, providing an engaging balance between the humorous and the menacing.  A lot of this comes out of the vocal performance given by the legendary Vincent Price, who you can tell is having a blast playing this part.  Price rightly steers clear of his more macabre sounding line readings which he had long been famous for, and instead perfectly embodies the voice of a megalomaniac genius criminal thug.  One of my favorite bits in the movie is the geeky way that he spells out how he’s going to destroy Basil, by using all his weapons at once (“Snap, Boom, Twang, Thunk, SPLAT!!!”).  They don’t come any more dastardly than Ratigan and that’s why he has earned a spot here.

7.

CAPTAIN HOOK from PETER PAN (1953)

Voiced by Hans Conreid

One thing that usually defines many Disney villains is their often narrow minded commitment to a singular goal, with little consideration to anything else.  Oftentimes, their goal is either for power or for wealth, but there is one villain that lives to enact one goal that’s different than all the others; vengeance.  That is the primary motivation behind Captain Hook and it makes him quite unique in the Disney canon.  There have been many interpretations of James M. Barrie’s iconic swashbuckler, but I don’t think you’ll ever see one quite as memorable as Disney’s version.  In many ways, Disney brought a bit more nuance to the character than what had been there before.  This version of Hook is intimidating, but at times can be quite comical as well, with the movie never quite breaking that fine line between those two aspects in his character.  We’re able to laugh when he runs afoul of the man-eating Crocodile, in some brilliantly animated moments of physical comedy, but then feel chilled by the next scene where he deceitfully manipulates Tinker Bell into revealing the hideout of Peter Pan.  Disney does an amazing job of giving their version of Hook so many layers to his personality, and it makes him a magnetic presence in every scene he’s in.  I especially like the detail where he tries to maintain his identity as a “gentleman pirate;” going as far to keep a promise not to lay a finger (or hook) on Peter.  Of course, he works around that by using a bomb instead; further illustrating his cunning.  Veteran character actor Hans Conreid brings out all those aspects of the character, relishing the suaveness of Hook at his most deceitful and bellowing out the infantile cries for help to “SMEE” whenever the Crocodile is near.  Overall, he’s a perfect example of how Disney can turn an already iconic character and make him one of their own.

6.

JAFAR from ALADDIN (1992)

Voiced by Jonathan Freeman

One complaint that is leveled against some Disney villains is their often lack of subtlety, which as stated with Ratigan, is not necessarily a bad thing.  But, it can sometimes be a negative when it becomes clear that narrative shortcuts were made with the depictions of a films characters, especially villains.  This means falling back on overused tropes and stereotypes when crafting your character, and the villain of Disney’s Aladdin could have easily fallen into this trap.  I mean seriously, look at him.  How could any of the other characters in the movie not recognize that the guy dressed all in black and with a cobra shaped staff was up to no good?  And yet, Jafar manages to rise above those same tropes and manages to be not just the best villain for his particular story, but one of Disney’s best overall.  I think that he works as well as he does mainly because he perfectly fits the tone of Disney’s take on the Aladdin legend.  Aladdin was very much meant to be a homage to old Hollywood spectacle as well as over the top Broadway productions, and Jafar is a prime example of that kind of style choice.  Heavily inspired by Conrad Veidt’s portrayal of the evil vizier in Alexander Korda’s technicolor classic, The Thief of Baghdad (1940), Jafar is equal parts camp, class and menace.  The stuffiness of his character is perfect counterpart to the unhinged mania, which comes to the surface once he’s granted the wishes he’s always desired.  Broadway vet Jonathan Freeman was perfectly suited for the role, finding that right campy tone that fit with the character.  Interesting fact; many years later, when Disney brought the movie to the Broadway stage in a new adaptation, they gave the role of Jafar to Freeman, making him the only person to play the same role for Disney on both the stage and screen.  That tells you right there how much of an impact his performance left on audiences.  Jafar may be an obvious villain, but he is by no means a weak one, and it shows that sometimes even a stereotypical villain could be just what the story needs.

5.

URSULA from THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Voiced by Pat Carroll

In the years following Walt Disney’s untimely death, the company he founded was struggling to find it’s identity going forward.  Movies continued to be produced, but they were lacking some of the same qualities that were found in the movies from Walt’s time; namely, memorable villains.  Sure, Ratigan managed to stand out, but do many of you remember Madame Medusa, The Horned King, or Edgar the Butler as fondly.  When it came time for Disney to really stretch themselves again, and make an animated classic like they used to, it made sense for them to put a lot of effort into making a villain to stand among the all time greats.  Or in this case, swim.  Ursula was the realization of this renewed effort on Disney’s part, and along with the movie that she comes from (The Little Mermaid), she was a large part of the beginning of the Disney’s Renaissance.  Taking her inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s original unnamed Sea Witch, Ursula is a master class depiction of villainy.  What makes her so memorable is not just her design, which along is brilliant; taking inspiration from the body of an octopus.  It’s the depravity of her character that makes her so memorably loathsome; preying on desperate individuals, forcing them into contracts, and then collecting them into her grotesque garden of lost souls.  She knows how to manipulate the system by exploiting these “poor unfortunate souls” and do it all legally through contracts, which makes her villainy all the more hurtful.  She also is one of the most mesmerizing Disney villains, fully embracing her campy aspects.  Ursula was said to be inspired physically by famous drag queen Divine, which is a bold choice on Disney’s part.  Pat Carroll’s sultry voice also lends a lot to the character, reinforcing the camp aspect of the character.  Ursula, by being both groundbreaking and a return to form for Disney, easily earn her place among the best villains the studio has ever created.

4.

CRUELLA DE VIL from 101 DALMATIANS (1961)

Voiced by Betty Lou Gerson

There are few crimes out there that seem to be universally reviled as cruelty towards animals.  Combine that with an unglamourous portrayal of vanity taken to the extreme, and you’ve got the making of one of Disney’s most iconic villains.  Cruella De Vil is a classic villain in every sense.  Her character design as garish, aging fashionista along makes her easily identifiable, but that’s not the only thing that makes her memorable.  She is also one of the most exquisitely animated character in any Disney film, villain or otherwise.  Just look at the memorable introductory scene of her in the movie 101 Dalmatians, where she blows through Radcliffe household like a tornado demading to know where the puppies are, leaving a rotten trail of cigarette smoke in her wake.  Animated by legendary artist Marc Davis, this scene is a masterpiece of character animation, delivering all we need to know about the character in quick and often erratic gestures; her greediness, her lack of empathy, and her larger than life efforts to always be the center of attention.  As the movie goes on, we see the further depths of her character, as her plan to create dog skin coats from Dalmatian puppy fur unfolds, and she becomes one of the easiest Disney villains that we love to hate.  But, apart from her cartoonish aspects, she stands out as a fully realized interpretation of something very real that we see in our society; the self-obsessed social climber.  She not only has to be the center of attention; she has to do it in the most obscene way possible, including slaughtering puppies for her own fashion.  Of all the Disney villains, she has probably entered the cultural lexicon more than any other, as you often see many people dismiss self-obsessed divas in our culture as a “Cruella.”  Regardless of that, she certainly remains one of Disney’s greatest villains, being both a great symbol of evil as well as an entertaining character in general.

3.

LADY TREMAINE from CINDERELLA (1950)

Voiced by Eleanor Audley

Otherwise known as the Wicked Stepmother to Cinderella, Lady Tremaine is a perfect example of a villain that strays from the typical norm of Disney villains.   She has no magical powers, nor any murderous plans.  She evil simply for the fact that she holds so much power over one person, and exploits it to an unforgivable degree.  In many ways, Lady Tremaine becomes one of Disney’s scariest villains because of how realistic she is.  It is conceivable that someone in real life is capable of the same evil acts that she commits in this movie; forcing our heroine into abject slavery and submitting her to humiliating torture both mental and physical by her own true born, selfish daughters.  Cinderella is the embodiment of a light shining through the darkest of times, and Lady Tremaine finds her evil identity by extinguishing that light at every turn, giving Cinderella less to hope for and manipulating her into thinking that this is the only thing she is good for.  Mental abuse is a very real evil act, and that’s what makes Lady Tremaine all the more vivid a villain in her film.  One scene in particular illustrates not only how evil she can be, but how diabolical she is with her darkness.  When she and her daughters prepare to leave for the ball, they are shocked to find that Cinderella is ready to go to, with a dress of her own.  Instead of stopping her, Tremaine deceitfully compliments the details of her dress, pointing out that it features scraps that her daughters had discarded, which then makes the selfish daughters turn possessive and start tearing Cinderella’s dress to pieces.  In this act, Lady Tremaine has simultaneously scarred and humiliated Cinderella without ever laying a finger on her, showing just how powerful and diabolical her villainy can be.  And let’s not forget, she has one of the most chilling stares ever committed to film; one that sinks into your soul.  Almost too real for comfort, Lady Tremaine is a masterfully realized villain.

2.

JUDGE CLAUDE FROLLO from THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1996)

Voiced by Tony Jay

This late Disney Renaissance film is mostly regarded as a classic, albeit with a few flaws.  But, if there is anything about Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame that has received universal praise, it’s with the villain, Judge Frollo.  It was a bold undertaking by Disney to find a way to turn Victor Hugo’s dark literary masterpiece into something that’s suitable for all audiences, but if there was anything that captured the essence of the original novel, it was Frollo.  Much like Lady Tremaine, Frollo is a villain whose frightening to audiences because of the realism of his villainy.  In fact, history has often seen too many people of Frollo’s ilk, especially in modern times.  The pious, xenophobic overlord uses his power to unjustly hunt and pursue gypsies that he believes are infesting his “pure” city.  In Hugo’s novel, Frollo was a man of the church, giving his villainous intents the air of hypocrisy as well.  Disney strips their Frollo of religious affiliation (probably to avoid complaint from religious viewers) but his character is no less hypocritical in his moral authority with which he uses to justify all of his horrible acts.  I believe this makes Frollo all the more frightening in his villainy, because there is no rhyme or reason to his bigotry; as is true in real life as well.  People are just inclined to hatred, and giving that kind of feeling power is the worst thing we can do as a society.  Disney’s Frollo is also given the grotesque aspect of having lustful feelings towards the heroine Esmerelda, which shows the even further depravity of his character.  But, more than anything, Frollo remains one of Disney’s greatest villains because of the sheer fearlessness that the filmmakers took in depicting his character.  There are no soft spots to mock about him, nor campy aspect that make him alluring.  He is the most vivid portrayal of unadulterated human evil that Disney has ever put on screen.  I also applaud Disney for casting the right voice for the character, which didn’t end up being a known celebrity, but instead went to veteran voice actor Tony Jay, who delivers a knockout performance.  Disney has rarely taken the steps to show real evil on screen, but with Frollo, they managed to do so in a captivating way.

1.

MALEFICENT from SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

Voiced by Eleanor Audley

Who better to top this list than the “mistress of all evil.”  Maleficent’s placement here shouldn’t be all that surprising to those of you that have read my list of the greatest movie villains of all time, seeing as how she was the only Disney villain to make it on that one.  But the main reason why I consider her the greatest Disney villain off all time is because she has since become the gold standard by which all others are judged by.  Walt Disney may have created the archetype of a Disney villain when he developed the Evil Queen from Snow White, but with Maleficent, he perfected it.  Maleficent is everything you want in a Disney villain; larger than life, uncompromising, exquisitely designed, and able to command every moment of screen time she’s in.  Even when Maleficent isn’t present on screen, you feel her presence, especially in the fear that all the other characters live under because of her.  King Stefan wouldn’t burn every spinning wheel in his kingdom, nor would the three good fairies live without magic for 16 years based on any idle threat.  They know what Maleficent is capable of and it terrifies them.  Maleficent certainly embodies these frightening aspects, but she is more than just that.  Her ethereal presence is also iconic in it’s own right, and is often imitated.  No one commands attention better than her, and she is well aware of it.  She almost relishes the flair she puts into her speeches, often adding plenty of poetic flourish to them.  This was also enhanced by the ideal casting of veteran character actor Eleanor Audley to the role (who also gave chilling voice to Lady Tremaine).   Maleficent also set the standard for villain designs in future animated films, with her long black robes, staff, and horned headdress.  I’ve heard Jafar from Aladdin referred to as the male Maleficent, which is not necessarily an insult.  He even makes a monstrous transformation near the end, just like Maleficent, which is another trope that she pioneered, through her iconic transformation into a fire-breathing dragon.  So much of our concepts of what makes a great Disney villain can all be traced back to her, and that in a nutshell is why she earns the top spot as the greatest Disney villain of all time.

So, there you have my choices for the greatest Disney villains.  In some of these cases you see them make definitive versions of already established characters, or create profound portrayals of villainy from scratch.  But, regardless of origin, they all share the same aspect of being iconic symbols of evil within the Disney canon, and by that extension, within cinema in general.  But, why do we love these characters so much despite the evil that they do.  It’s the same reason why we love Hannibal Lecter, or Darth Vader, or Hans Landa.  We are all attracted to great characters, and sometimes the best characters in any story are the villains.  We don’t condone what they do, but we hold them in high regard because they brought out something fantastical in their selective stories that we respond very highly to.  It’s something that occurred to me when I saw Rogue One last year, when I saw the last few minutes of the movie with Darth Vader.  While what Vader did in those few moments was horrifying (slaughtering a whole crew of soldiers) I found myself so overjoyed by the experience of seeing it, because I saw a return to form for the character that has been missing for years.  Essentially, I was happy that the movie stayed true to the darkness of the character and exploited that perfectly on screen.  For all these villains, they capture that same magnetic power that helps us to appreciate their selective stories even more, and helps us to enjoy the feeling hating a character so much that we love them for it.  That’s the power that Disney villains have had over the years, and you can see that cross over into several generations.  When I attended this most recent D23 Expo, I can tell you that I saw far more people cosplaying as villains than heroes.  In story-telling, you need to balance the light with the darkness, and Disney perhaps has done too good a job making their darker characters stand out.  But, that’s what makes their movies even better, so who can blame them for putting so much effort into making their villains so good.

Focus on a Franchise

Focus on a Franchise – The Exorcist

What scares us the most as an audience usually differs from person to person.  Any one of us could be scared of anything, from spiders to ghosts to even clowns.  But, what ends up making us scared comes from a personal place and what baggage we bring with ourselves in everyday life.  Fear is a personal manifestation of the feelings of rejection, revulsion, and anticipation that coagulate beneath the surface, and are triggered by an external force that brings all those feelings out at once.  And the strange thing is that many of us like the feeling of being scared, as long as we know that we’ll be alright in the end.  That is the feeling that Hollywood seeks to exploit when they try their hand at horror, but again, everyone’s fears are different.  There are some instances when everyone’s fears do line up and it ends up driving the best of horror movies to great success.  But, which example in the genre has managed to do that best.  Well, given my own personal reactions, I can tell you that one of the most effective and interesting franchises to ever come out of the horror genre is the Exorcist series.  The original film that started the franchise is of course an all time great, but what sets it apart, along with it’s follow-ups, is the effectiveness of it’s atmosphere and iconography.  With it’s Gothic imagery, it’s almost oppressive use of darkness, it’s unrelenting look into the mind of pure evil, and it’s occasional use of shocking horrific moments, The Exorcist movies stand as probably the bleakest of all horror to ever come out of the Hollywood machine.  It’s also a franchise that has not been immune to highs and lows in quality, but even that disparity between each installment is fascinating in it’s own right.  In this article, I will be looking at the franchise as a whole (the good and the bad) and see how it has made it’s mark within the horror genre, as well as look at how the peculiar sidetracks it has taken over the years have made it one of the most unique horror franchises in the industry as well.

THE EXORCIST (1973)

Directed by William Friedkin

There are few if any horror films that can claim the kind of prestige that The Exorcist has.  It is, without a doubt, a masterpiece of a film-making and an icon of the genre.  But, why did this film perform as well as it did?  To put it simply, it was a perfect example of everything falling into place at the right time, with a near flawless execution.  The story is simple enough.  A young child named Regan (Linda Blair), the daughter of a famed actress (Ellen Burstyn), suddenly begins behaving strangely at home, which then evolves into violent behavior.  Soon after, supernatural events occur and it dawns on the mother that her child might indeed be possessed by something evil.  She resorts to calling upon the help of a tormented priest named Father Karras (Jason Miller) who finds that the demon possessing Regan is no ordinary spirit but something far sinister and powerful, which then leads him to calling upon a renowned exorcist who has had a personal history with this particular demon; Father Merrin (Max von Sydow).  What most people remember most from the movie is the now iconic Exorcism itself, as Fathers Merrin and Karras perform one of the most harrowing rituals every put on screen.  This scene is chilling on it’s own, but it’s elevated even more by the exceptional building of tension that we’ve seen up to that point, watching poor Regan become tortured by the demon inside her, transforming her into a literal unholy monster.  It stands out so much from horror movies before or since it’s creation, and that’s because of the “matter of fact” way it was staged.  Director Friedkin, coming straight off his Oscar-winning success with The French Connection (1971), made the brilliant decision to shot the movie like a drama rather than a horror picture, and that perfectly heightens the terror on screen, because it feels so unnatural.

One thing you’ll notice about the movie is the brilliance of it’s stripped back aesthetic.  The movie doesn’t rely heavily on jump scares, dramatic lighting, nor music cues to heighten the tension of the movie.  It all builds naturally through the atmosphere in the movie, and seeing the slow degradation of Regan over time.  In fact, despite having one of the horror genre’s most famous musical themes (courtesy of Mike Oldfield), the film is devoid of any background music, giving it a stark realism it might not otherwise have had.  The cinematography also brilliantly conveys a natural, unfiltered dread as well.  Shot with mostly natural, diffused light, the film has this coldness that permeates the entire movie.  By the time you get to the exorcism finale, you have already been immersed in this moody, oppressive atmosphere long enough that you forget you’re watching a movie and instead feel like your seeing real life unfold; and it’s terrifying.  The cast likewise brilliantly adds to the level of authenticity to the production.  While veterans like Max von Sydow, Ellen Burstyn, and Lee J. Cobb all give exceptional performances, it’s Linda Blair in her breakout role that really makes the movie memorable.  The fact that an actress of her young age had to endure such painstaking feats in order to make you buy into her possession, including the groundbreaking make-up by Dick Smith, is really something amazing.  You see this little girl completely disappear into this demonic monster, and it is the stuff of nightmares.  Whether she’s mutilating herself with a crucifix, twisting her head all the way around, or floating feet off of her bed, Regan’s presence on screen has come to define the genre since.  Special mention should also go to actress Mercedes McCambridge, who went un-credited as the voice of the demon.  Her gravely delivery further drives home the chilling transformation.  The movie is considered a classic for all the right reasons, and it’s iconic status is rightfully deserved.  Few other movies in the horror genre can claim to be half as effective or scary as this restrained masterpiece.

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977)

Directed by John Boorman

Everything about the first Exorcist was justifiably celebrated; the atmosphere, the performances, the direction, everything.  But, what was most celebrated was the subtlety, and matter of fact-ness that it approached it’s subject matter with.  Now, imagine a sequel that was devoid of all that subtlety, as well as lacking any restraint whatsoever.  That is what we got with Exorcist II; not just one of the worst sequels to a horror movie ever made, but also one of the most baffling.  Director John Boorman brought his own cinematic style, which tended to favor the surreal over the terrifying, which he honed on quirky cult classics like Zardoz (1974).  While his style works just fine for films like Zardoz and later Excalibur (1981), it proved to be a terrible match for the Exorcist.  Linda Blair returns as Regan, who is now seeking therapy worrying that the demon who possessed her is still there.  She is also investigated by newcomer, Father Lamont (Richard Burton), who is seeking answers in the “spoilers” death of Father Merrin from the previous movie (Max von Sydow also returns in a few brief flashbacks).  The movie sets much of the action with the mental clinic that’s treating Regan, and the overly stylized setting as well as the flashy way in which it is used points to exactly why this movie failed.  It forgets exactly what made the original so terrifying, which was the show of restraint on the part of the filmmakers which heightened the realism.  Here, Boorman wants you to notice his direction, and while the movie is at times beautifully shot, it is never in any way scary.  The only redeeming value of the film is that it misses the mark so badly, that it can sometimes be hilarious to watch; but again that reflects terribly on it’s connection to the original.  It’s flashy and garish, and in no ways feels like a natural continuation of the original.  Richard Burton’s barely caring performance doesn’t help much either.  It should’ve been obvious to John Boorman that a swarm of locusts doesn’t come anywhere near as being scary as a possessed child vomiting green projectile while strapped to a bed.  And it’s a lesson in cinema showing that style cannot support moments of horror alone.  the more natural approach it turns out makes a movie much more terrifying.

THE EXORCIST III: LEGION (1990)

Directed by William Peter Blatty

After the baffling embarrassment that was Exorcist II, the franchise went into dormancy for over a decade.  Then, it found new life thanks to the efforts of the unlikeliest of saviors; it’s original creator.  Screenwriter turned novelist turned filmmaker Blatty was the man who crafted the original novel on which the first movie was based on.  When it came time to adapt The Exorcist’s literary sequel, conveniently titled legion, Blatty took it upon himself to not only adapt the book himself, but also assume duties as director as well.  And remarkably, he proved to be quite adept at it.  While, Exorcist III  is not as perfectly executed as the first movie, it nevertheless feels much closer in spirit to it’s predecessor.  It retains the right amount of atmosphere, it takes it’s story much more seriously, and it is genuinely terrifying at times.  The film centers this time around the character of Lt. William Kinderman, the detective from the first movie who was played by Lee J. Cobb.  Here, the character is played by George C. Scott, who does a commendable job of filling the late actor Cobb’s shoes.  In the movie, he’s investigating a series of murders that bear the trademarks of a notorious serial killer called the Gemini Killer.  Only one problem, the Gemini Killer has been dead for 15 years.  The investigation leads him to a mental hospital where he finds a horrifying discovery; one of the patients is the once thought deceased Father Karras (Jason Miller returning to the role).  Blatty’s film, whole not perfect, nevertheless does an excellent job of returning the franchise back to it’s roots.  In particular, the atmosphere is spot on, and subtle in all the best ways.  The movie also has what is widely considered to be the best jump scare in film history, which is a real testament to Blatty’s direction.  But, the movie’s true best element is the unforgettable performance of Brad Dourif as the Gemini Killer, who we learn is possessing Father Karras alongside the demon from the first movie.  Dourif is absolutely terrifying in the film, to the point of being hypnotic, and more than anything he is the reason this movie is worth watching.  It took a long time, but this was the movie brought this franchise right back to it’s place as one of the most terrifying in cinematic history.  Not bad for someone who literally wrote the book on this stuff.

EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING (2004)

Directed by Renny Harlin

The franchise would once again take a long sabbatical again until Hollywood would once again come calling.  This time, however, the results wouldn’t turn out quite so well.  But, strangely enough, this would also prove to be the most fascinating years out of the franchise because what we got was an unexpected experiment in film-making out of the Exorcist franchise that I don’t think anyone ever expected.  Started by rights holders, Morgan Creek Productions, the series was about to look back in time and present the untold story about how Father Merrin became an exorcist in the first place.  After the first director dropped out, the project was given over to writer turned director Paul Schrader; best known for his darker themed films like Affliction (1998) and Auto Focus (2002), as well as the screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976).  Schrader faithfully executed the script he was given, but the producers had second thoughts when they saw his more cerebral approach.  So, they chose to re-shoot the entire film under the direction of Renny Harlin, whose better known for his work in action films.  This move didn’t exactly work out either, and the film unsurprisingly flopped.  This movie, again, showed us exactly what doesn’t work in this franchise and that’s the lack of subtlety.  Renny Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning is a loud, in your face  gore fest that felt more akin to the style of it’s era rather than a natural continuation of the franchise.  The scares are predictable, and it makes heavy use of some truly awful CGI effects.  The only thing it shares with the other Exorcist movies is it’s name as well as the character of Father Merrin, this time played by a rather lost Stellan Skarsgard.  Nothing is added by this film overall to the franchise, making it just feel like a shameless cash grab as a result.  And for that, it marks a low point in the franchise, one which could have resulted differently, which we would soon could have happened.

DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST (2005)

Directed by Paul Schrader

When we hear about re-shoots, we often speculate about an alternate version of a movie that we’ll never be able to see.  Most of the time, a re-shoot happens to alter one or two scenes to help a struggling film feel more cohesive.  Rarely do you see that happen to an entire movie, and even rarer do you see that alternative version make it to theaters as it’s own film.  But, that’s exactly how we got this fifth installment in the Exorcist franchise; one that should’ve never happened in the first place.  After Beginning’s failure at the box office, Morgan Creek realized too late that they may have made a mistake shelving Paul Schrader’s version and decided to give it a theatrical release of it’s own.  Schrader was given the most minuscule of post-production budgets in order to finish his film, and while it does present something closer to his original vision, it still feels like one that is compromised.  Still, Dominion does have one benefit, which is that it feels more in character with the spirit of the franchise.  The film is interesting to watch alongside Renny Harlin’s version, because it shows how two different directors can take basically the same plot, which has Father Merrin investigating a submerged church in the Egyptian desert that’s built upon a pagan temple, and come up with a completely different feeling movie.  While it still pales in comparison to the terrifying moments of The Exorcist and Exorcist III, it does much better at maintaining a sense of Gothic atmosphere that Renny Harlin completely ignored.  Skarsgard also is much better in this version, bringing a lot more depth to the character of Father Merrin, as we see what evil drove him back into God’s service.  Neither this or Beginning stand very strong as horror movies, but together they make for one interesting lesson in storytelling on film; contrasting Schrader’s more subtle approach with Harlin’s flashier one.  Dominion did only slightly better among critics than Beginning, but it did receive some welcome praise from a high place, and that was from William Peter Blatty, who commended it as a film in the true spirit of the original.  Regardless, it’s still something of a miracle that Dominion saw the light of day at all, even with a rather lackluster roll out by the studios.   It’s not anywhere near the height of the franchise, due to it’s still lackluster story, but it at least made an attempt to feel like it belonged in the same family as it’s predecessors and not feel like a lame attempt to follow a trend.

So, while the results have been wildly incoherent, the Exorcist miraculously has become a franchise that still has legs many years later.  The original of course is a timeless masterpiece that still manages to remain chilling even today.  And Exorcist III has managed to climb out of the shadow of it’s predecessor and become a beloved cult hit in it’s own right.  The best thing though is that you don’t have to watch the whole of the series in order to appreciate it’s finer parts.  The first and third installments stand perfectly well on their own apart from their lackluster follow-ups.  Exorcist II basically serves as a bizarre cautionary tale about how not to make a sequel, and the two back to back prequels offer an interesting look at how a movie can differ so greatly depending on who’s directing it.  But, personally for me, I admire The Exorcist franchise (at it’s best) for taking it’s scares seriously and not exploit them for shock value.  I grew up in the Catholic church, so some of the themes and iconography were all very familiar in the films.  As I’ve grown older, my views on religion have changed significantly, but at the same time, it’s still be a part of me, and it’s what follows me into my experiences viewing these movies.  It’s my own kind of baggage that these movies prey upon to bring out my fears, and that’s probably why I find The Exorcist one of the most frightening films ever made.  For me, it brought out my worst fears, of losing my soul as well as control over my own self, and that’s what keeps it resonating for me so many years after viewing it for the first time.  I still marvel at the incredible seriousness that the movie takes with it’s subject, which as we’ve seen can be mishandled to the point of silliness in other films.  The Exorcist franchise is horror film-making taken beyond the point of simple scares, and into the realm of creating genuine dread.  Exorcisms may not in fact be a real thing, but these movies have sure convinced us all that they could be.  Nothing is scarier than feeling the sense that our worst fears can manifest into real terror, and The Exorcist managed to turn that kind of fear into high art and an unforgettable experience.

Editorials

They All Float Down Here – IT and the Return of Character in Hollywood Horror

Imagine the scenario.  James Bond, Batman, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jon Snow, and Marty McFly all find themselves trapped in a cell with no means of escape.  Within the cell, they find a revolver with 5 bullets.  They are told that the only way out is for one person to shoot and kill the others with one bullet each, with the lone survivor set free.  Now, with those six characters, who do you think will be the last one left.  There are a variety of answers given to that scenario, but in truth there is only one real answer.  None of those characters make it out because none of them exist.  And yet, we know these characters and care about them to wonder what might happen.  This is the fundamental rule of storytelling.  For a story to work, we must know who the players are, and want to follow their progression through the narrative.  It sounds easy enough to do, but more often than not, you see a lot of stories fall apart because they forget to make their characters interesting or relatable.  A lot of times, characters are often treated as pieces on a chess board, moved along as part of a grander plan on the part of the storyteller, who merely is concerned with moving from point A to point B.  But, characters shouldn’t function as pawns, they should function as people; and people are complex beings who have their own interests and concerns that run contrary to other people’s plans.  With this in mind, a storyteller can craft a much deeper storyline.  But, as with seen in Hollywood, concerns about character and story often take a back seat to being able to finish a product quickly and on budget.  Oftentimes, in order to capitalize on trends in the market, movies rush through production without devoting enough time to giving characters the development they need.  You see this a lot in genre flicks, and most recently, it was a problem in the Horror genre.

Horror is a genre as old as cinema itself.  Dating back to when German Expressionists revolutionized the use of shadows to convey terror, all the way through Universal’s monster flicks and the 1950’s B-movie craze, it has been a genre that has matured and found all sorts of different avenues to define itself.  But, along with some of the milestones of the genre, like Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), there has been nearly ten times as many copycats who capitalize on the success with diminishing results.  There are a lot of reasons why so many horror flicks fail in the long run, but what you’ll find most of the time is that a good deal of them forget to focus on their characters, and instead let the gimmicks of their plot run wild.  Going back to my opening scenario, we see that identifying who the characters are and what they might do is what ultimately drives the tension of the scene.  But, when you have a genre that’s built more around famous scenes rather than famous characters, which the Horror genre usually is, than you see more a tendency on the part of the filmmakers to forget to give their characters any interesting qualities.  For many years, primarily in the post-Saw (2004), gore-obsessed years of the 2000’s, it became almost commonplace for there to be thinly drawn characters in each film.  But, this was largely a problem of Hollywood’s own making.  Outside of Hollywood, a new type of Horror sub-class began to emerge, one that emphasized the psychological and macabre rather than the bloodied and the mangled.  More importantly, it was horror that returned to the idea that the best way to scare audiences was to make them feel the same thing that the characters are feeling, and this meant making more identifiable and interesting characters.  Steadily, these outsiders have built a quiet bit of success that is now influencing the industry in a positive way, and this has all culminated with the record breaking success of the remake to Stephen King’s IT, currently in theaters.

People expected IT to perform well, but I don’t think people expected these kinds of numbers from the grosses.  As of this writing, IT has grossed 310 million dollars domestic, surpassing The Exorcist (1974) as the highest grossing horror film of all time.  Some will probably point to the popularity of the now 30 year old novel it’s based on as the reason for doing so well, as well as the familiarity that people have with the 1990 made-for-TV miniseries staring Tim Curry.  But, I think that IT’s success comes from it’s embracing of a trend in Horror film-making that has finally gone mainstream.  We are finally moving out of a period where terror is conveyed not through blood but through mood.  We all know the feeling of isolation and the worry that something bad is right around the corner waiting to get us, and the only way to convey that in a film is to through the emotions of the characters.  Recent films made by independent filmmakers on significantly lower budgets have managed to make that work, because the limitations of their films make it so that they can utilize emotion much better in their movies.  Hollywood has more often chosen to force scares on their audience rather than earning them, and as a result, audiences have become less scared by their movies.  Working outside of what studios think is scary is a more freeing way to build genuine new ideas about how to make something scary and that’s what we’ve seen.  By showing less to an audience, it makes the scares have that much more of an impact.  The new IT applies that approach to something with broad commercial appeal, and thus we get the phenomena that is the record breaking box office.  But,  more fundamentally, it is carrying over something into Hollywood that it desperately needs, which is characters worth getting scared for.

One of the trends that IT and it’s peers have in common is it’s fearlessness in showing vulnerable people in peril.  The main characters of IT are children, all with distinctive personalities of their own.  Stephen King’s novel is all about the loss of innocence and that is no better conveyed than through the confrontation between a group of tormented kids in a small town and a blood-thirsty monster clown named Pennywise.  In the novel, every benign symbol of childhood, from balloons to cartoons, are turned on their head and become objects of terror, meant to drive the kids insane.  Adapting that kind of stuff to the big screen can be tricky, but can be done if we believe that the children themselves are scared by it.  That’s what the new IT has done so successfully; it put special emphasis in choosing the right kinds of child actors who could pull off feeling terrified on screen, even when it came to being terrorized by balloons.  For the longest time before, when a young actor made it into a horror movie, they felt out of place, especially in the gore fest films of the 90’s and 2000’s.  One of the more annoying trope of that time was the creepy kid cliche, which rarely came across as scary the more it was used.  You would see this in a lot of forgettable horror flicks like The Unborn (2009), Orphan (2009), Mama (2013), as well as a numerous amount of knockoffs and remakes in that time.  IT breaks from that trend by making the children the victims of the terror, rather than the harbingers of it, and that calls for younger actors who are more confident with this material.  In other words, the filmmakers didn’t cast children because of how well they could be scared, but rather by how well they could feel like real people.  If they are believable as characters, and they are terrified, then we will be too.

This also reverses a trend in horror films where the movie became defined more by the monsters rather than the people.  Sure, the monsters are interesting creations, but when they are only ones that are in their selective films, than it becomes less about the terror they inspire and more about seeing what horror they can do.  That, in a sense, is what made horror films less scary over time.  You would see this play out very distinctively in the post-Scream (1996) era, when it seemed that every horror film was following the same formula of a group of teenagers all falling victim to some shadowing serial killer who picks them off one by one.  Over time, this formula was repeated so much that the killers themselves became much less interesting.  Then, post-The Ring (2001), ghosts became the go to movie monster, and that began to grow stale after a while, especially deep into the Paranormal Activity (2007) era.  In a different era, a remake of IT would have done away with the interesting character dynamics with the child characters and instead just made Pennywise the focus, showing all the creepy and disgusting ways he could terrorize and feast on his victims.  It works far better to use far less of him in the film and only showcase him for the maximum impact.  As far as cinematic movie monsters go, Pennywise is certainly one of the more mysterious, and that’s a part of his appeal as a character.  Stephen King has never been one to really explain why something is evil; he just allows his creations to be evil for the sake of the story.  The hotel is haunted for no other reason than to drive Jack Torrence insane and want to murder his family, and that’s where the horror of The Shining comes from for example.  Combining believable victims of terror with an enigmatic, impulsive force that’s out to kill them, and you’ve got the makings of effective suspense.

IT’s predecessors managed to create the formula to help reverse a lot of the Hollywood cliches that had plagued the horror genre for years.  One place outside of Hollywood where that happened was oversees in Australia, where director Jennifer Kent created a breakthrough horror film called The Babadook (2014).  The movie flipped the monster film on it’s head by making the terror in the film come not from seeing the presence of the titular spirit, but through the psychological toll that fear takes on the mother and child at the center of the story.  In this film, we see that horror can be found in a story as simple as two people alone in a house, growing increasingly desperate and paranoid and what that ultimately leads to, making it irrelevant whether or not a creature like the Babadook even exists at all.  Another groundbreaking horror film, The Witch (2015), made the daring choice of setting it’s story in 17th century colonial America, utilizing the eeriness of the isolation in that time period to develop a sense of dread in the picture.  The way it was shot, with low lighting and soft contrast also elevated the uneasy creepiness of the setting to maximize the terror in the film.  The other most interesting trend setter of this period was the indie horror flick It Follows (2014).  It Follows won widespread praise for the effective way that it built it’s terror through the psychological degradation of it’s main characters.  In the movie, a young woman is continually followed by a supernatural force that haunts her constantly, which began after a sexual encounter early in the film.  Clearly a metaphor for a lot of things (STD’s or Sexual Assault) the specter is never clearly identified, and always appears on screen as a far off human-like figure that is walking towards our main character.  It’s a great execution of having the terror play off the emotions and internal terror of the main character, which is a cue that the new IT has taken to heart.  With renewed emphasis on character dynamics, psychological torture, and an unconventional use of time and place, we see how effectively IT managed to use these independent production’s breakthroughs in a way that helped them reach the mainstream.

But, even with their help, the horror genre is movie in a bolder new direction, and it’s not just on the back of the recent IT remake.  Filmmakers like James Wan, who pioneered the gore-fest trend with his first feature Saw, have also been moving away from Hollywood cliches and have been working to make horror films far more effective at scaring audiences again.  His 2013 film The Conjuring was a critical and financial success, and it managed to work by sticking to effective non flashy scares that never overshadowed the the story that he intended to tell.  Another breakthrough figure to emerge recently in the horror genre is producer Jason Blum.  His Blum House Production company has revolutionized the business by emphasizing novel new ideas in the horror and thriller genres, but also limiting them to tight micro budgets.  This has enabled his company to not go overboard with the productions of their films, while at the same time allowing new voices and ideas to flourish; in other words, keeping all of that Hollywood nonsense out of the way.  As a result, the horror genre not only has new films that are trying to do something different, but also have something to say as well, which few industry driven movies have been able to do in the genre overall.  One Blum House production earlier this year, Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), turned some heads when it not only worked as an effective terror-filled thriller, but also had some sharp satirical statements to make about race relations in the United States, proving that horror films could be political statements too.  Blum also got M. Night Shaymalan’s career back on track with the success of Split (2017) which is an achievement in itself.  It’s by allowing this freedom within a structure that we see a new identity emerging in the horror genre from Blum House and it’s contemporaries, and one that is only going to be emboldened by IT’s massive success.

So, IT by no means got to where it’s at on it’s own, but it nevertheless marks the significant arrival of a new trend in Hollywood horror.  We are finally getting back to having the characters matter in horror movies again, after it seemed like the industry had forgotten how important it was to make them connect with the audience.  IT works as a perfect catalyst to convince the industry as a whole that yes, it does matter to have characters we care about in horror movies.  Sure, there are more holdovers from a less creative time still making it to theaters, like The Bye Bye Man, which seems like it was pitched solely on it’s marketable slogan (“Don’t think it. Don’t Say it.”) or Ouija (2014) which shows that you can’t turn a board game into a scary movie.  But, remaking IT made sense because we are now at a time when we crave horror flicks that take their character’s plight seriously.  The loss of innocence is a universal fear, and nothing scares more than a scary clown hunting young children.  The film would have probably done well on it’s own, but became massive due to the fact that it culminated a larger trend within the industry.  Amazingly, it’s a trend that didn’t come to the horror genre internally, but from the outside, with different independent filmmakers rethinking the genre rules entirely.  A horror movie, as we’ve come to learn, doesn’t need to push jump scares on you every minute, but can instead build terror slowly through mood and emotion.  It can also trust the performers more in conveying that sense of terror to the audience; even when they are children.  We find this in all the most recent horror classics, with IT becoming the first real mainstream blockbuster to emerge from this new field.  It may not be the best example of all of these new horror techniques, but it’s the one that found the best use of them for mass appeal, and for that, it has left a positive mark on the Horror genre going forward.  A strong tide rises all ships, and as Pennywise the Clown continually says, they all float down here.

Movie Reviews

Blade Runner 2049 – Review

Some movies are instant classics, while others become classics over time; aging like fine wine.  When Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner came to theaters 35 years ago, it did not perform well at the box office.  Released in a rather remarkable summer season that also included the likes of John Carpenter’s The Thing, Disney’s Tron, Star Trek’s The Wrath of Khan, and Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner was viewed as too slow-paced and ponderous by critics and audiences at the time.  For a time, it seemed like the movie would remain a relic of it’s time and then something remarkable happened.  It found it’s audience, and turned not just into a cult hit, but became one of the most defining cinematic milestones of late 20th century.  You can see the influence of Blade Runner in everything from anime like Ghost in the Shell (1995), to The Matrix (1999), to even the visual pop of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) with all it’s flashy neon color.  The future that we also live in has somewhat seen an influence from the movie, including how some of it’s imagined future tech like video based communication, synthetic food and artificial intelligence have become a reality in our present day.  Truth be told, the then far off future date of 2019 looks far different than the reality that we see only 2 years out, but there is quite a lot that the movie did predict right. Also of note is the philosophical legacy that the movie has left behind.  Taking it’s cue from the original story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” from futurist Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner asked many questions that still are debated today; much of which centers around the basic idea of what it means to be human.  Several decades after it’s release, Blade Runner continues to be an influential film and it’s esteem only continues to grow; with more and more people claiming it as one of the best every made.  And now, 35 years later, Hollywood has done something thought unthinkable before; they made a sequel to Blade Runner.

Blade Runner 2049 is without a doubt a gamble.  One can see rebooting a franchise after a long absence if it’s got the kind of following that could justify it.  Sometimes it works out well (Mad Max: Fury Road, Tron: Legacy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), other times it does not (2016’s Ghostbusters).  But, what these successful reboots have in common was their basis in the action genre.  Blade Runner is considered by many to be a thinking man’s film.  Oh sure, there are action bits in it, but the movie takes it’s cues more from classic film noir, using mood and atmosphere to build the story.  The success of Blade Runner comes from it’s perfect execution of those noir tropes, transplanted into a sci-fi plot-line.  One of the biggest fears that fans of Blade Runner had going into this movie was the worry that it would be given the Hollywood treatment, meaning that the sequel would take out all the noir elements that made the first film great and replace it with a lot more action.  To many of them, the idea of a sequel at all seemed to be an insult, because the first film stood so well on it’s own; anything else would just spoil what was already there.  While some of those worries are justified, there was a lot of good omens leading up to the making of this movie.  Ridley Scott, who’s recent track record with sequels isn’t all that great (Alien: Covenant for example), wisely stepped aside and just assumed the role of producer this time, giving the reins over to rising star Denis Villeneuve.  The French Canadian filmmaker has been on a role recently with Prisoners (2013), Sicario (2015), and Arrival (2016) all winning critical acclaim, and he couldn’t be better suited to carry the mantle for this daunting project.  Couple that with Harrison Ford making another return to an iconic role, surrounded with a prestige cast and crew, and you’ve got the makings of an A-List production.  But, is it a film worthy to carry on the legacy of such an iconic film, or is it Hollywood once again milking a product and missing the point.

It’s hard to say much about the plot of Blade Runner 2049 without getting into spoilers, so I’ll try to keep the important stuff vague.  It is important to have some knowledge of the original movie in order to understand the intricacies of the plot, but at the same time it does a pretty decent job of laying that stuff out for you while at the same time feeling distinctly it’s own thing.  The movie is set in the year 2049, 30 years after the events of the first Blade Runner.  In that time, the earth’s climate has catastrophically changed, leading to a global shift in weather patterns.  Los Angeles, the setting for this story, is now cold and frigid, and sees frequent snowfalls.  Every part of the city is shrouded in a misty haze, and it is in this urban sprawl that we find a young “blade runner” named simply K (Ryan Gosling).  He is assigned by his superior, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright) to track down a rogue replicant named Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista).  The replicants (human-like androids with superior strength) have been used for the last several decades to colonize distant planets beyond Earth, but older generations were known to be rebellious against their masters.  The Tyrell Corporation that built them has long been defunct, with a new corporation run by enigmatic founder Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) built upon it’s foundations with a line of even more obedient replicants.  K finds Sapper’s compound and promptly “retires” him as all blade runners are ordered to do.  However, upon investigating the compound, K finds a tree with a mysterious box buried within it’s roots, along with a mysterious date carved into the tree; 6-10-21.  This finding leads him down a road towards learning about the old Tyrell replicants who held a lot more secrets than what was thought before, and K must now search for the man with the answers he needs; former blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford).

Blade Runner 2049 could have gone awry in so many different ways, as many sequels to great movies do, and I’m happy to say that this one thankfully accomplishes what it needed to do.  This is a very well crafted and masterful sequel that will please any Blade Runner fan out there.  In many ways, I was stunned just how well they pulled it off.  Watching this movie almost immediately after viewing the original makes this new film feel like the second part of a larger whole, which is exactly what it needed to do.  It expands and deepens the world of the first Blade Runner, while at the same time feeling fully complimentary to it as well.  The filmmakers did a fantastic job matching the aesthetic and thematic elements of the original film.  It is not a cheap retread at all, but a fully realized expansion, and it’s every bit a dream come true for those who worship all the bold cinematic choices that the original is known for.  In many ways, it probably worked to this film’s advantage that it came so long after the original.  It needed for film-making technology to catch up to see the vision fully realized.  The original film was groundbreaking itself, with Ridley Scott firmly making a name for himself as a visual artist, but it was also grounded by the limitations of the period.  Here, visual effects have advanced to the point where the limits are boundless, but at the same time, the filmmakers here have shown great restraint, choosing not to overload on the effects but instead use them to broaden the scope of what was already there.  The movie also needed to wait for a filmmaker of Denis Villaneuve’s ilk to give to take on the project with a degree of seriousness.  The movie also benefits having the original screenwriter Hampton Fancher on board, as it’s clear that he’s been refining this story out for decades, making sure that the next chapter in this story was worth the wait.

Now, while I am awed by the degree of success that this production managed to deliver on it’s promises and the remarkable skill put into it’s creation, there is an element to it that does keep it from being an overall great movie in my eyes.  And it’s something that more or less is tied to my feelings about the original as well.  While I did enjoy this movie quite a bit, it did have one fundamental flaw, and that’s pacing.  The original movie has pacing issues as well, but it managed to balance that out a bit more with a tighter edit (although the movie is notorious for having multiple edits, so it depends on which one you prefer).  Blade Runner 2049 runs at a staggering 165 minutes, which does make it feel more epic, yes, but also more bloated as well.  There are plenty of parts of this movie that do flow very well, and some of the slower paced scenes are welcome, if only for allowing us to soak in some of the incredible atmosphere of this film.  There are, however, plenty of moments in this new movie where the pacing drags out to a crawl which left me with a feeling of impatience at times.  One scene in particular, involving a wooden horse, is so drawn out that it actually left me rolling my eyes at one moment, almost begging for the movie to finally get one with it.  It may not be a big problem to some who are more absorbed into this world, but I just felt that some of these slower paced moments could have used a tighter edit.  In the end, it keeps the movie from really soaring in my opinion.  And again, it’s something that I felt the original had a fault with as well.  Blade Runner, I acknowledge is a great movie, but not among my own personal favorites.  It’s a movie that I find myself respecting more than loving, and that likewise is how I feel about 2049.

But there is a lot about the movie that I did love, and it mainly has to do with it’s exceptional production.  This is an Audible and Visual experience the likes that you’ll never forget.  This is by far the most beautifully shot film of the year, as well as one of the most dynamic sound edits I’ve heard in a long time.  The cinematography manages to evoke the look of the original Blade Runner, keeping it within the same visual realm, but elevates it with a far more dynamic color palette and richness to the textures.  It helps that the man behind the lens is none other than Roger Deakins, who is probably the greatest working cinematographer today and one of the best of all time.  Most famous as a collaborator with Coen Brothers, Deakins has already worked well alongside Denis Villenueve before on equally brilliant work in Sicario.  Here, working with a more substantial budget, Deakins and Villenueve create some of the year’s most staggering imagery on screen, filling every frame with eye-catching wonder.  I just love the way that Deakins captures the hidden shadows of colossal structures appearing out of the hazy smog like great symmetrical monoliths holding up the sky.  He also makes his compositions feel in character with the original, helping to honor it’s legacy while at the same time pushing out it’s boundaries.  One scene in particular in a Vegas nightclub is a tour de force in visuals that represents just how much creativity Deakins and Villeneuve can find in this world they’ve become the caretakers of.  The musical score is also a bold statement onto itself.  Composed by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, the music takes it’s inspiration from the original Vangelis melodies and takes it a whole other aural experience.  This movie has a musical score that will quite literally rattle your bones.  It’s pulsating and overwhelming, but at the same time perfect for this movie.  I could even swear that one of the themes felt inspired by the sound of a revved up Formula 1 engine.  I don’t know why it sounded like that, but it’s indeed unforgettable and worthy addition to the whole experience.  It overall makes this a remarkable cinematic experience, even if the plot itself suffers from slow pacing.

The movie also has a stellar cast, who for the most part do a fine job.  It’s neat to see Harrison Ford once again step into another one of his iconic roles so many years later and not miss a beat.  Only a short time after revisiting Han Solo, we find him returning to Rick Deckard with the same amount of passion and care put into the performance.  Deckard is a much trickier character to pull of, given the complexities that he’s got to encapsulate, but Ford does an incredible job not just returning to what he’s done before, but also finding new shades to his persona that give so many more layers to the character.  He doesn’t show up until very late into the movie, but it works to the benefit of the film because it makes his appearance all the more important when it happens; and plus, it’s not really Deckard’s story this time.  Ryan Gosling instead carries much of the weight of this film, and he does so quite admirably.  Some might find him a little dry, but I liked the restraint in his performance, which feels spiritually in line with what Harrison Ford brought to his role in the original film.  Much of the supporting cast does a great job as well.  My own particular favorite among the newcomers was actress Sylvia Hoeks as one of the Wallace Corporation’s more deadly replicant models, going by the ironic name of Luv.  There is also a nice tender performance from actress Ana de Armas who plays K’s artificial intelligence “girlfriend” Joi, who appears to him as a hologram.  It’s a tricky kind of role, but one that she brings a surprising amount of emotion into.  The only weak link in the cast would be Jared Leto’s Wallace, who while not terrible, is also not really fleshed out that well.  It’s a problem when he needs to act as your film’s antagonist, and I’m sorry he does not hold nearly half the menace nor the presence of Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty from the original Blade Runner.  Apart from this, it is a well rounded cast that helps to elevate the movie as a whole.

So, much like the original Blade Runner, 2049 is a movie that I can recognize as a great cinematic achievement, while at the same time feel a tiny bit underwhelmed.  Don’t get me wrong, it deserve every amount of praise that is going to come it’s way, and fans of the original are absolutely going to be satisfied by this one as well.  In that respect, this movie is an unequivocal triumph, because it took the daunting task of following up a widely regarded masterpiece with a bigger and louder sequel, and did so with in the best possible way.  It honors the original, while at the same time building upon it and expanding it into new horizons.  I can see why this movie is already being proclaimed as one of the year’s best.  The pacing problems were just too hard to forgive for me, and it keeps it from becoming a masterpiece in my eyes. I have the same reservations about the original as well, but feel that it holds up better because there were so much else about it that works.  I feel that Blade Runner 2049 should have been given another edit to tighten things up and remove some of the more bloated, unnecessarily drawn out moments.  Hell, more edits didn’t hurt the original in the long run, as Ridley Scott was better able to refine his masterpiece and find the version that both satisfied him artistically and appealed to audiences.  But, as it stands, the movie is still one of this year’s most impressive cinematic achievements, and one that will be deserving of it’s expected fan-base.  Few sequels, especially ones made so long after the original, ever come close to retaining the same level of quality as their predecessor, so the fact that this one was able to come so close is a bit of a Hollywood miracle in this day and age.  Keep in mind, I was born mere weeks after Blade Runner premiered originally in 1982, so this was a sequel that took my entire lifetime to become a reality and the fact that it turned out this good is a testament to the astounding hard work and seriousness that the filmmakers undertook in it’s making.

Rating: 8/10