Disney Animation has gone through a bit of a reversal of fortune over the last 5 years.  After experiencing a resurgence in the 2010’s thanks to the like of mega hits such as Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Zootopia (2016), Disney was back in top form in the animation world and were looking for big things in the decade that followed.  They finished the decade strong in 2019 with Frozen II (2019) which grossed well over a billion and a half dollars at the global box office.  But, things were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic the following year.  Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) which was slated for a Thanksgiving 2020 release was pushed back into the following spring, and given a hybrid streaming and theatrical release due to the theaters not being fully re-opened at that point.  It was more than what Disney’s sister studio, Pixar, received as their movies just went straight to streaming with no wide theatrical plans.  Raya did about as well as it could given the circumstances, but it was miniscule box office compared to what Frozen II pulled in.  Later that year, Encanto (2021) fared better, but was still short of the $100 million threshold that Disney had before surpassed quite regularly.  Not only that, but Encanto became a bigger hit on streaming than it did in theaters.  The following two years weren’t any kinder to Disney’s box office woes.  Their next film Strange World (2022) was DOA upon it’s release, and Disney’s ambitious 100th anniversary celebration film Wish (2023) was a failure with both audiences and critics.  For a studio that was once the envy of all of Hollywood, they were now in a bit of a crisis mode.  And animation fans were beginning to worry, because Disney had long been the gold standard for quality animation and their success would help uplift the industry as a whole.  The lack of success for the animation studio could ultimately lead the corporate side of the company to invest less on newer projects and instead shift their priorities into more streaming and less theatrical

A lot of the problems for the studio stem from the fact that their slate of films during this pandemic period were all original projects that had no prior built in audience familiarity, and solely had to be sold on the Disney name alone.  If things were running as smoothly as they were in the 2010’s, then these original titles could have had better luck at the box office.  But with everything thrown into rebuild mode post-pandemic, the Disney brand alone wasn’t going to salvage these movies.  In the end, only Encanto emerged as a modest enough hit for Disney.  The failure of Strange World and Wish combined has especially put Disney in a bind.  Pixar itself experienced the same downward trend, though their misfortunes were also self made by Disney’s misguided plan to shove them straight to streaming for 2 whole years.  But thankfully Pixar was able to reverse their misfortunes this summer with their first, much needed hit of the decade with Inside Out 2 (2024).  Now the highest grossing animated film of all time, Inside Out 2 reveals a strategy moving forward that may save Disney Animation too, though it’s one that’s unfortunate for the sake of progress in the medium.  While Pixar has also put out a string of original films, their salvation was found in the release of a sequel to one of the their biggest past hits.  For Disney, they may need to rely upon safe bet sequels to help salvage their reputation for a while, at least until they can prove to the corporate side that Animation is a medium of filmmaking that is still worth investing in.  But what movie sequel would work in this case?  Well, for Disney, the best barometer for knowing what sequel to make came from how their past films have been performing since release on their new streaming platform Disney+.  And one film in particular that has consistently outperformed the rest, and has become one of the most viewed movies not just on Disney+ but on all streaming platforms in general, is the 2016 hit film Moana.  Hoping to bank on Moana’s high profile with fans in order to generate some much needed box office momentum for the studio, Disney has quickly rolled out Moana 2 for this Thanksgiving weekend.  The only question is does it live up to it’s predecessor, or is it already lost at sea?

Moana 2 takes place a few years after the events of the original.  Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) has been sailing from island to island searching for signs of other tribes that populate the numerous islands of the vast ocean.  While her search has proved to be fruitless for the most part, she does find a pottery fragment on one deserted isle, proving that there are other tribes still within reach.  She returns back to her home island of Motunui, where her mother and father Tui and Sina (Temura Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger) both still reside, plus her baby sister Simea (Khalessi Lambert-Tsuda).  While sharing her findings, she is sent a message from her ancestors about a sunken island named Motufetu that once connected all the ocean currents together and was destroyed by a vengeful storm god named Nalo, thereby keeping all the people of the ocean separated.  Moana now seeks to find Motufetu, and assembles a crew to sail with her, heading towards an island that no mortal can find.  On her boat, she has brought Loto (Rose Matafeo), a crafty shipbuilder; Kele (David Fane), a disgruntled old farmer; and Moni (Hualalai Chung), a resourceful historian, as well as her animal companions Pua the pig and Hei Hei the rooster.  While neither she nor her crew have any idea where this mythical island may be, she does have a good idea of someone who might; her old friend, the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson).  Unfortunately, Maui himself has been imprisoned by one of Nalo’s enforcers, the demigoddess Matangi (Awhimai Fraser).  Can Moana rescue her powerful ally and get him to use his mighty fishhook to lift Motufetu out of the sea in defiance of Nalo’s curse and help reunite all the islanders that have been walled off from one another?

Moana 2 has a lot of pressure riding on it, given the state of Disney Animation at the moment, as well as the high expectations of an audience that treats the original as a beloved classic.  Sequels can always be a gamble, even when they are safe bets when it comes to audience familiarity.  One thing that should be noted about this movie is that it didn’t start out as a film at all, but rather began it’s production planned as a mini-series for the Disney+ platform.  It was only at the 11th hour that Disney decided to re-work the program into a single film.  It makes sense, because given the enormous popularity of the first movie both in theaters and on streaming, that having a theatrical roll-out would be more beneficial in the end for the project.  This is definitely a huge reversal of Disney’s pandemic era plans, which put streaming above all else.  You have to wonder if Disney left a ton of money on the table by going all in on streaming rather than building their brand up again through theaters.  The downside though is that bringing something from streaming to theatrical has it’s drawbacks too, as the quality of the product might take a hit.  Going from a story meant for multiple parts and trying to force it into a theater friendly run time under 2 hours is a difficult task, especially late in the game, and I would be lying if I said that some of those issues are visible in the finished film that we do get.  But, does it make the overall movie bad?  Not at all.  While it is far from perfect, and also less successful than it’s beloved predecessor, it still manages to function as a solid entertaining adventure.  If the movie has a fatal flaw, it’s that the truncated story feels like just that; something that was planned to be much larger in it’s original plan, but was reduced to just the bare minimum in it’s switch to theatrical.

The film definitely misses some of the key ingredients of the first movie.  For one thing, it doesn’t have the deft guidance of legendary filmmakers at the helm anymore.  The original Moana was directed by Disney Legends John Musker and Ron Clements in what would be their final film for Disney Animation before their respective retirements, culminating over 30 years of work at Disney that included classics like The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), and The Princess and the Frog (2009).  Moana 2 has an entirely new team of directors behind it.  Given the difficult transition that this movie faced, I do think the new directors Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller and David Derrick Jr. did a commendable job of trying to make the film live up to original.  While they don’t have the same level of experience as Ron and John, they still keep the overall vibe of Moana’s next chapter feel tonally consistent.  While the episodic nature of the film belies it’s original format, and at times feels underdeveloped, there are still plenty of exciting big moments that have that right epic heft to them.  An encounter with a giant clam in the middle of the ocean is an especially impressive moment that certainly feels right at home on the big screen.  One of the things that definitely helps this movie is that it maintains the same screenwriter Jared Bush, who just recently was announced as the new Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation after the departure of Jennifer Lee.  Bush never looses the thread of the story, even as he had to cut down so much of the original plot in order to re-work this into a film.  The movie puts it’s focus on Moana and her journey, which is what the film needs the most, although character development is unfortunately minimal, as she doesn’t grow much as a character here compared with the original.  It’s essentially just a further adventures kind of story and nothing too groundbreaking apart from that.  Still, the movie doesn’t reflect poorly on what had been built before.  It’s just more of the same.  That may be enough for some, but it will probably also disappoint many other audiences too who are expecting something that blows them away like the first movie did.

One of the other unfortunate aspects of the film where it falls short of the original is in the music.  The original was blessed to have the talents of Lin Manuel-Miranda working as the songwriter, just fresh off of his record-setting run of the Broadway musical Hamilton.  His songs for the original Moana have likewise become huge hits for Disney, earning their place on the charts as well as becoming standards in many people’s go to play lists.  The new songs written for Moana 2 are not what I would consider awful, but they are far from memorable like the Lin Manuel-Miranda songs.  The new songs were written by newcomers Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear and are at best serviceable to the story, but they definitely won’t be anyone’s new favorites in the years ahead.  But, even if the songs are subpar, the performers are still giving it their all when performing them.  Auli’i Cravalho particularly remains as powerful a singer as she was in first film.  The sequel thankfully sees her return to the role, along with all the other voice actors from the original.  One of the things that definitely helps Moana 2 in the overall picture is just how good Moana and Maui’s relationship remains enjoyable to watch.  Auli’i and Dwayne Johnson may not have recorded their lines together, but their characters’ chemistry is still just as strong as ever, and both are great to listen to throughout the whole movie.  Johnson even gets some surprisingly heavy moments to work with in this film, and he does a remarkable job there too along with all of his humorous moments.  The downside of the re-working of the film is that all of the new characters feel like their development got heavily truncated.  The characters themselves are not particularly bad, but their purpose in the story just feel superfluous with all their scenes left on the cutting room floor.  The worst example of a character that got especially truncated is the character Matangi.  It feels like she was being set up to be much more of a villain in this story than she ends up being.  She even gets what sounds like a villain song.  But, not long after we first meet her, she just as quickly disappears, and we don’t even see her at all in the climatic third act.  The Moana/ Maui dynamic still thankfully carries the weight of the film, but it does feel like a lot was lost in transition with all of the other characters, and that’s unfortunate given that a few of them could’ve developed into something really interesting.

One thing that definitely doesn’t feel underwhelming about the movie is the animation.  Even when it was under development as a streaming series, Moana 2 was always going to be worked on by the same team at Disney Animation that works on all their theatrical films.  The character animation is especially on point, as Moana, Maui and all the other islanders all remain wonderfully expressive.  I also love what they do with the animals too, especially  Hei Hei, whose realistic chicken like movements still remain hilarious in the context of the movie scenes that he’s used in.  But the movie also ups the ante a bit from the first film with regard to it’s sense of scale.  The aforementioned encounter with the giant clam is an especially harrowing moment, as is the climatic confrontation with Nalo at the very end.  The stakes definitely feel higher as a result, and the animation team makes it all look very impressive.  The only downside is that Moana 2 loses the more cinematic widescreen presentation that the first film had in favor of a more streaming friendly 2.00:1 aspect ratio.  The film still feels big, but the widescreen format might have also helped to reinforce that feeling on a big screen a bit more.  At the same time, there are some great animation touches throughout.  While the songs themselves are forgettable, the staging of them is still spectacular.  Matangi’s song in particular has some great trippy visuals thrown in, with a lot of the colors going wild in that sequence.  Maui’s song is also visually dazzling, although that one isn’t as uniquely visual given that it echoes a lot of the same style as his song “Your Welcome” from the first Moana.  It’s not exactly a huge step ahead in animation from anything else Disney has made recently, but the last time Disney went experimental, we got Wish, so it’s not exactly a bad thing right now for Disney to keep doing the things they are good at while they rebuild their brand.  And in terms of the animation here, the execution is key and Moana 2 is undoubtedly beautiful, if familiar, achievement for the Disney Animation team.

I get the feeling that people will be mixed with their feelings on this film.  Sure, the movie delivers on everything we’d expect for another adventure with Moana and Maui, but it doesn’t deliver on anything more than that.  It is the very definition of a safe sequel; it does the bare minimum without contributing much more.  It’s chopped up storyline may also frustrate people expecting to find a more engaging plot as well.  For many critics, this will be regarded as a disappointment.  For me though, I am filtering this mostly through my experience with Disney movies as a whole.  Is it a downgrade from the first Moana?  Objectively yes, but not by a lot.  For me, I did still have a good time watching it, mainly because I like the characters and the performances that the actors put into them, especially Auli’i Cravalho as the titular heroine.  As long as they got that right, along with some stunning animation, I would still put this as a movie I would recommend.  I certainly thought it was lightyears ahead of the soulless Wish that we got last year.  And as far as sequels to Disney movies go, this is also a big improvement over the disappointing Frozen II.  It does enough stuff right to make it serviceable companion piece to the first film, even if it falls short as a successor.  The movie definitely leaves room open for another sequel, and my hopes is that by developing it from the beginning as a theatrical film that they’ll avoid the pitfalls that befell the project in it’s late transition from series to movie.  Regardless of what I think or what other critics think, this movie is almost certainly critic-proof and is going to make a ton of money over the holidays.  And that in the end is what Disney was hoping for; banking on the familiarity of the Moana brand to help boost this new film in theaters.  The downside is that Disney may become too comfortable with sequels driving their creative output instead of original films.  But, if Moana 2 can help reverse the fortunes of the studio, then maybe they might be able to balance new titles along with more sequels in the future.  That the hope anyway.  For now, it’s a worthwhile trip across the seas watching the further adventures of Moana on the big screen, and it’ll be exciting to see how much further she will go.

Rating: 7.5/10

When the first Gladiator (2000) was released in theaters at the turn of the millennium, it was part of a much different cinematic landscape.  The decade prior was one of the last eras that a type of movie known as the “prestige blockbuster” would dominate the landscape.  The “prestige blockbuster” was a film like a historical epic or an intimate drama that could perform at the box office the same way that a blockbuster action film would.  These were the kinds of movies that would win a bunch of awards while at the same time making profits in the hundreds of millions for their studios.  These were also sometimes big ambitious movies too, but with a much more serious tone than the average blockbuster.  The 90’s weren’t the first period of Hollywood’s history where these kinds of movies would dominate.  You can look back all the way to Gone With the Wind (1937) to see an example of a historical epic being a blockbuster success, and the trend would carry over into the 50’s and 60’s, with widescreen spectacles like Spartacus (1960) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) became monster hits in addition to winning lots of awards and acclaim.  The 1990’s in particular feels like one of the last big eras where these kinds of movies would prosper, starting off with Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves in 1990, and continuing with films like Forrest Gump (1994) and Braveheart (1995) soon after, and eventually peaking with Titanic in 1997.  The decade that would follow would see a major shift away from the “prestige blockbuster” as big historical epics would fail to ignite like they did in the 90’s and other genres like fantasy and comic book films would begin to take over.  It was a dramatic shift that probably took Hollywood a bit by surprise and it would take several more box office bombs to seal the “prestige blockbusters” fate.  Sure, there are standouts that still work, like last year’s Oppenheimer (2023), but the “prestige blockbuster” really feels like an anomaly now rather than a common occurrence.  And the movie that really did feel like the last of it’s kind for a while was Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.

When it first premiered, Gladiator was not exactly seen as anything special.  But after it’s modest opening in May 2000, Gladiator just kept sticking around, and by the end of that summer it was one of the highest grossing films of the season.  This was surprising given how old-fashioned it was.  It was definitely a throwback to the old sword and sandals epics of the past that had defined the last time the “prestige blockbuster” had ruled Hollywood.  Though it felt classic in it’s storytelling, it did feature some cutting edge visuals in it’s presentation.  The recreation of the Roman Coliseum in particular was a groundbreaking work of visual effects for it’s time, and the movie won it’s effects team an Oscar for the effort.  There was also the usual visual flair that Ridley Scott had been known for with movies like Blade Runner (1982) and Alien (1979) that helped it to stand out from other sword and sandal epics of the past.  But what I think helped to captivate audiences even more than that was the magnetic performance by Russell Crowe in the role of Maximus; the general who became a slave, who then became a gladiator who challenged an empire, as the tag line stated.  Maximus is one of cinema’s greatest heroes, and Crowe’s performance is widely praised even to this day.  The movie went on to win 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe, though sadly Ridley Scott went home empty handed.  In the years since, Scott has tried many times to replicate the magic that he succeeded to capture with Gladiator, but to little avail, with movies like Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Robin Hood (2010) and The Last Duel (2021) all falling short at the box office.  Still, he remains an active filmmaker well into his 80’s without showing any signs of slowing down.  Even after making Gladiator, he contemplated a return to the same story one day, trying to come up with different ideas about how to continue the story into another chapter.  It wouldn’t be easy, given that (spoilers) Maximus is dead at the end of the film.  He went through numerous drafts of a sequel, including a supernatural one written by musician Nick Cave.  But, 24 years later, Scott has finally landed on a story that he feels does justice to the original and now we have Gladiator II releasing into theaters.  The only quest remains is if it is a worthy successor, or are we not entertained.

Taking place 16 years after the events of the original Gladiator, we begin in the midst of a battle between a free city on the Northern African coast and the might of the Roman naval fleet.  Led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans take the city in quick order and imprison the soldiers on the other side.  Now slaves at the mercy of Rome, the remaining “barbarian” soldiers are taken to the gladiatorial arenas on the outskirts of the city where they are going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder looking for more stock to showcase at the fights in the mighty Coliseum.  One soldier named Hanno (Paul Mescal) proves to be an especially skilled fighter, and he peaks the interest of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former gladiator himself who now makes a fortune as supplier of goods for the Roman armies.  Macrinus sees the fury in Hanno’s eyes, with a will towards vengeance, and he hopes to use him as a weapon in his own ambitions for the control of the Roman Empire.  Meanwhile, General Acacius is secretly plotting his own challenge towards stopping the corruption that has infected Rome, with the twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) representing all the worst qualities of leadership in the crumbling empire.  Acacius is aided by a handful of senators who were loyal to the great Marcus Aurelius, as well as loyal to his surviving daughter Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), Acacius’ wife.  However, plans are turned on their head when Lucilla witnesses the gladiatorial fight set up to honor Acacius’ recent victory.  She sees Hanno fighting in the arena and immediately recognizes him as her son Lucius Verus Aurelius, the true heir to the throne of Caesar.  After the fall of Emperor Commodus and the death of Maximus in the Coliseum, Lucilla knew that her young son wouldn’t be safe in the power vacuum that followed, so she ensured that he would be taken far away from Rome so that he could survive.  But now he has return all these years later, with hatred for Rome in his heart.  And with many schemes all playing out in and around the heart of the Empire, what ultimate fate will Lucius bring to the the future of Rome.  Will he hasten it’s destruction or will he assume his birthright and end the corruption that has infected the Empire?

When the decision is made to do a legacy sequel to a beloved film many, many years after the fact, there are a lot of risks involved.  The primary risk is that the movie has to escape the shadow of the film that came before it.  People already have expectations about what they want based on what they love about the original film, and the sequel then has to both meet those expectations and then surpass them in order to justify it’s existence.  There are several examples of legacy sequels that hit their mark, like Creed (2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but there are also a lot of examples of sequels that completely dropped the ball like Blues Brothers 2000 (2000) and Independence Day: Resurgence (2016).  So, with 24 years in between the first and second films, how does Gladiator II stack up as a legacy sequel?  While it is far from being one of the worst legacy sequels ever made it is also sadly not very good.  The biggest problem with the movie is that it fails to escape the shadow of it’s far superior predecessor.  Ridley Scott’s original film had this operatic verve to it, with everything from the performances to the staging to the music all creating a spectacle that felt grand.  A lot of that is missing in Gladiator II.  While there are some things that Ridley Scott demonstrates that he can still do very well, namely directing the action set pieces, there are also many signs that he has lost a little bit of that golden touch as he’s gotten older.  Of course, it is still impressive that at the age of 86 that he’s still capable of pulling off a movie of this kind of scale.  At a time when many of his colleagues have either slowed down or have long retired, he’s still putting out a movie at the rate of one a year, which has only cemented his legendary status.  But, with Gladiator II and last year’s Napoleon (2023), Ridley is also showing signs that while he still has command over the visual style of his film he doesn’t quite have the command over the story anymore.

Where I think the problem lies is with the script to this movie.  It’s kind of remarkable that the original Gladiator, with it’s collection of three screenwriters (David Franzoni, William Nicholson, and John Logan) had a more coherent and memorable script than the one for the sequel written by a single screenwriter.  The original film had a singular focus to it’s story, and that was showing the incredible journey of Maximus as he goes from general, to slave, to a gladiator that challenged the Emperor.  Nearly a quarter century later, we still quote lines from Gladiator, and some of them are pretty profound.  One line in particular that I love is “What we do in life echoes in Eternity,” which this sequel also recognizes as a powerful statement as it gets quoted a lot.  The script for Gladiator II, written by David Scarpa (who also scripted Napoleon) doesn’t have anything profound to say, and it spends far too many scenes calling back to the superior writing of the original.  For the most part, the movie just ends up being a repeat of the first film; with Lucius following the same trajectory as Maximus.  And this leads to yet another big flaw with the film, which is the character of Lucius.  He is a pale imitation of the character of Maximus.  The film never allows him the time to develop as a character, other than just showing how he is driven by vengeance over the death of his loved one in battle.  Paul Mescal is certainly not a bad choice to play the role.  He’s a capable actor and he certainly has the impressive physique to play a gladiator.  But the script just gives him this hollow, ill-defined character to work with.  When Russell Crowe played Maximus, he created a iconic hero; a man you would want leading you into battle, and the movie clearly defined what motivated him, with his sense of justice and seeking to live up to the ideals of Rome that Marcus Aurelius instilled in him.  For Gladiator II, it seemed like Ridley Scott and David Scarpa were at a loss for how to continue on with the story since Maximus dies at the end of the original, and they just looked at the character of Lucius and decided he’ll do and tried to shoehorn his story into a Maximus 2.0.

While Lucius remains a sadly hollow focal point of this movie, there are still other elements of this film that actually help to lift it up from being a complete failure.  First and foremost, the presence of Denzel Washington helps to save this film.  Denzel is working on a whole different level than the entire rest of the cast, and he helps to breathe much needed life into the movie.  I love the fact that he doesn’t even bother doing an accent and just plays the role like it’s an extension of himself.  All the other actors are speaking with the usual dignified British accents that you hear in these kinds of period dramas, and Denzel sounds like he just walked off the set of American Gangster (2007).  It shouldn’t work, but it does and Denzel’s scenes are by far the best part of the movie.  You can tell he’s having the best time on screen as he gets to peacock around in flowing Roman robes.  He also gets all the best one-liners in the script, which he delivers with an incredible amount of swagger.  Sadly nothing else in the movie rises up to what Denzel is bringing into the film.  While it is nice to see Pedro Pascal present in a Roman epic like this, which he does seem to fit in well as that Roman soldier gear looks good on him, he sadly is underutilized in the story and his character General Acacius is kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things.  I kind of wonder if the movie would’ve been better if it centered on his character rather than on Lucius.  The performances of Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger as the twin emperors also feel like pale imitations when stacked up against Joaquin Phoenix’s memorably camp portrayal of Commodus in the original Gladiator.  And while it is nice to see Connie Nielsen return to the role she played 24 years ago in the first movie, she also does feel underutilized in the film.  Basically, in terms of the cast, the only ground where this movie surpasses the original is with the inclusion of Denzel Washington in the film, as he’s the only element of the movie that feels like something new.

In terms of Ridley Scott’s direction, he seems to be most at home with the battles in the Coliseum.  These moments are definitely the ones that feel most alive in the movie.  One thing that I was happy to see was Ridley Scott getting to finally realize an idea that he had to scrap in the first movie, which is a fight between the gladiators and a warrior riding a rhinoceros.  Probably due to the limitations of computer animation at the time, Ridley was not able to get a realistic looking rhino to work on screen in the original, but with the advancements over the last couple decades, he now is able to make this rhino fight look the way he wanted and it did work in this sequel.  There’s also a naval battle that takes place in a flooded Coliseum that while is completely at odd with the true history of the real arena nevertheless makes for an exciting moment in the film.  One thing for sure is that Ridley Scott is very good at making his movies look great on screen and Gladiator II is no different in that department.  The money put into the set designs and visual effects are all well spent and Scott can still deliver the goods in this regard.  But the sum of everything else just doesn’t gel together.  I’ll give the film this, it definitely doesn’t feel it’s 2 hour and 28 minute length, and it moves at a brisk pace.  But, the editing of the movie also doesn’t have the same flow as the original film does, which went a long way towards giving it that operatic feel.  Here, the editing is very basic and just becomes a means towards moving us from plot point to plot point.  Also a major downgrade from the first film; the music.  Hans Zimmer wrote the score for the first Gladiator, and it still stands as one of his greatest works, with tracks like “Now We Are Free” being some of the greatest pieces of music ever written for film.  Zimmer sadly didn’t return for this film, and instead Ridley Scott turned to Harry Gregson-Williams instead, who’s been writing the music for most or Scott’s more recent films.  He’s a decent composer, but his sound is a lot more basic than the experimental work that Hans Zimmer does with his scores, and that difference is palpable in this film.  The music just doesn’t have that grandiosity to it, and it even has the audacity to call back to Zimmer’s much better tracks in moments that don’t earn it.  It’s another element of the movie where you definitely notice the fall off from the first film, and it sadly also makes the experience that much more disappointing.

In the immediate years after it’s original release, Gladiator inspired this brief revival of the sword and sandals epic, with many of the big studios hoping to cash in on the same success that Gladiator achieved.  Unfortunately, it was short lived.  Warner Brothers struck out twice with both Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) and Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) back to back, and 20th Century Fox also failed with Ridley Scott’s own Kingdom of Heaven (2005).  Gladiator II feels like another one of those failed imitators that tried to be the next Gladiator but couldn’t muster it.  It seems like Ridley Scott himself has been trying to chase Gladiator many times over the years and always come up short, even with a movie that is directly tied with it.  While it is admirable that Ridley has managed to get this long in the making sequel across the finish line, it also will be looked at as an unfortunate footnote to one of his masterpieces rather than a classic that will stand strong on it’s own.  The only thing that stands out as better in this sequel is the performance of Denzel Washington, which gives this movie much needed life.  Otherwise, everything from the story to the characters just feels like a step down from the original film.  I don’t think it should reflect poorly on Ridley Scott.  He is a legend multiple times over and the fact that he’s still tireless in his old age is kind of inspiring.  But we can’t expect him to keep delivering Gladiator quality films anymore.  If anything, he’s been much better in recent years making movies that are different from his usual historical epic formula.  I really liked his historical drama The Last Duel (2021) which took an unconventional approach to the way it told it’s story through multiple points of view.  I think Scott can still deliver if he has an interesting script to work with.  Gladiator II just feels less like it’s own movie and more like an obligation.  Scott wanted to see if he could still make another Gladiator and he wanted to deliver on the promise that he made for a sequel to the original.  But honestly, he should have left Gladiator alone.  It was a perfectly constructed story that reached a definitive conclusion.  There was nothing more to say about the story of Maximus, and this sequel proves it with it’s own story just feeling like a hollow retread.  It’s not a complete, embarrassing failure as there are good things in it (namely everything Denzel bring to the film) but on the whole it will never be remembered as fondly as the original classic.  To sum it up, no I was not entertained.

Rating: 6/10

Five years ago, Warner Brothers and DC struck gold with a bold and ambitious movie centered around one of pop culture’s most infamous villains.  The movie Joker (2019) stood out from all the other comic book movies that were released towards the end of the 2010’s.  It was grounded, gritty and unforgiving in it’s tone.  The filmmaker behind it, Todd Philips was diverting far from his usual comfort zone in comedy and was taking a page from early Scorsese with this origin story centered around Gotham City’s “clown prince of crime.”  The Joker has always been a highly coveted role in the past for actors, because it’s a character that is all about extremes, especially when it comes to both humor and horror, and that’s a mix that many actors love to throw themselves into.  From Jack Nicholson to Heath Ledger, many great performances have helped to turn the Joker into a cinematic icon, but in the case of the Todd Phillips’ movie, the Joker was not just going to be a foil for the Batman this time; he was going to be the main character.  To make the movie work, they needed an actor who could not only pull off the grandiosity of the Joker persona but also someone who could find the human being underneath and make that aspect just as fascinating.  Joaquin Phoenix proved to be the ideal choice for the role, as he slipped into the clown shoes of this iconic villain and crafted an unforgettable performance that was both chilling and unhinged but also felt authentic.  The resulting film was a smash hit at the box office, becoming the first R-Rated film ever to gross over a billion dollars worldwide, a feat only matched this year by Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).  The film also received numerous accolades, including a Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival, and 11 Oscar nominations including Best Picture.  Joaquin ended up walking away with a Best Actor win for his performance, making him the second Oscar winner for a portrayal of the Joker, after Heath Ledger’s posthumous win in 2009 for The Dark Knight (2008).  In many senses, the timing of Joker’s release could not have been better to capture the zeitgeist of the comic book movie boom.

But, the success of Joker was not without controversy.  Many people were worried that the movie painted too sympathetic a portrait of the Joker character, and in a way they believed that the film was an endorsement for anti-social, anarchic behavior that often attributes itself to the Joker persona.  Only 7 years prior, the infamous mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado was attributed to a gunman who wore make-up similar to the Joker, which is a memory that still sticks with movie-goers to this day.  Because Joker is such an evocative idea of a villain, his persona has been unfortunately usurped by dangerous radicals in the online community, including incel movements and even white supremacist groups.  For many, the idea of this origin film giving a more nuanced look at the beginnings of this famous villain was like playing with fire in an already volatile cultural moment, with so many people getting radicalized into these extremist groups, particularly angst-y young men.  Now, Todd Philips and Joaquin Phoenix have always asserted that their movie is not an endorsement of the Joker’s actions, but rather that the movie is an examination of the way that societal problems and lack of care for mental illness leads to the creation of someone as bad as the Joker.  Like with heroes, villains are not born but made as a response to problems in society and the trauma it leaves behind.  Most audiences agreed and could see the nuance of the filmmaker’s intent, but there were many others, especially those in the radicalized community, that only saw the movie as a glorification of their anti-social behavior and they adopted the movie as a vindication for their extremism.  In the wake of this movie, particularly with the unrest of the pandemic and the 2020 election that saw rioters attack the Capitol, as well as the targeting of marginalized groups under the guise of “fighting the woke,” it’s easy to see why so many people were fearful of the message that the movie was sending, even if it was misinterpreted.  Still, Joker remains a controversial yet potent film that still sparks conversations today.  And perhaps in response, Todd Phillips and company are looking to provide an answer to the volatile impact of the first movie with a sequel called Joker: Folie a Deux.  The question is, does it offer up anything new or meaningful to the discussion?

Joker: Folie a Deux takes place not long after the events of the first film.  Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is being held at the Arkham Asylum where he is awaiting trial for murder.  His daily routine involves receiving medication to pacify his violent tendencies and he is allowed to roam around the courtyard under the watchful supervision of a group of rough and mean prison guards, led by officer Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson).  Not long before his trial starts, Sullivan decides to allow Arthur to attend an Asylum musical therapy group.  It is there that he meets another inmate at the asylum named, Harley Quinzel (Lady Gaga).  Harley it turns out has been infatuated by Arthur after seeing his crimes play out in the public eye, including the murder of talk show host Murray Franklin on live television.  Arthur takes a liking to her and they begin a courtship in the prison, leading to some mayhem along the way.  Meanwhile, Arthur’s lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) is trying to soften his persona in preparation for the trial, getting him on board with the idea of pleading insanity in order to get a lighter sentence.  His defense will be that he suffers from schizophrenia and that the Joker is a separate personality created out of the years of abuse he faced at home.  His defense is of course being disputed by the city that is seeking the death penalty in response to his murders.  On the other side of the courtroom, Arthur’s attorney is having to face off against the ambitious and skilled new Assistant DA, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey).  But, Ms. Stewart is noticing that Arthur has been under the influence of his extremely volatile new girlfriend, and that it’s bringing out all of the bad aspects of his character into full view.  She worries that the unstable relationship that Arthur is having with Harley is going to jeopardize his chances of avoiding the death penalty because the jurors are only going to see Arthur and Joker as being one in the same.  Will Harley and Joker’s whirlwind romance ultimately lead to Arthur’s end, or is she awakening something far worse in him than was ever there before.

Perhaps the boldest choice that Todd Phillips could’ve ever made in response to the reception of the original film was to decide to follow it up with a musical.  But, that’s exactly what he did.  Folie a deux is a French term for shared psychosis, and the use of it in this title is to explain that both the Joker and Harley are both feeding the psychotic states of each other, and that is manifested in the movie through song.  Music is the language that speaks to both of them, and so we see the descent of madness they both fall into being presented in the movie as lavish musical numbers.  Keep in mind, this isn’t a movie that has a song here and there; this is a full-on musical, with songs intended to underscore the story and everything.  This idea intrigued me, because it was such a departure from the original film which was a ground, gritty drama.  I was excited to see how well this change in genre would work within the same world.  Also, I wanted to see the anti-woke crowd have a meltdown, seeing their beloved Joker franchise take a decidedly more artsy direction that runs contradictory to their worldview, and would hopefully cause them to abandon their claim on the original so that it wouldn’t be co-opted by such a bad faith group of anti-fans.  Well, I can definitely say that the meltdown among those people is happening, and they are throwing a massive fit over the direction that Joker: Folie a Deux has taken the franchise.  Unfortunately, Todd Philips didn’t give much else to this movie to make those of us on the opposite side care either.  I don’t know if Joker: Folie a Deux was too much of an over-correction for the harder edges of Joker’s message, but the movie that we got just has nothing that appeals to either the “woke” or the “anti-woke” crowd.  The musical element is ambitious, but it rings hollow and doesn’t have the desired effect of creating a sense of awe with the audience.  In many ways, this is one example where I can say that the movie is made worse by the musical numbers and not better.  And most annoyingly, it seems like Todd Philips doesn’t really have a point to make in the end.  The first Joker, for all of it’s controversy, still had a clear sense of what it wanted to say.  Here, the movie just throws a lot of different big concepts all at us at once, and none of it lands.

What’s frustrating about Joker: Folie a Deux is that it ultimately feels toothless.  It becomes clearer the further you get into the movie that Todd Phillips had nowhere to go after the first Joker.  Whatever statement he was trying to make, he already made it clear before.  So, the choice he made with this sequel was to flip genres and go full surrealist with the musical twist.  The strange thing is that the movie is still in that gritty tone of the first movie, so the switch to musical numbers feel jarring and without meaning.  And it should be noted that this is a jukebox musical, meaning that all the songs are not original to this movie.  The film utilizes old standards of classic  Hollywood, such as “That’s Entertainment,” “If They Could See Me Know,” and “Put on a Happy Face” to name a few.  And you’ll notice that a lot of the song choices are very on the nose beating you over the head with their themes.  The movie has a very La La Land (2016) feel to it, where it bounces back and forth between the fantastical and the down to earth, but it doesn’t have any of the cohesive narrative that that revisionist musical had.  Perhaps the audience that’s going to feel the most frustrated with this movie’s lack of bite and cohesion are the comic book fans.  In Joker, they got a fascinating deep dive into one of the most iconic comic book characters of all time.  With this, the comic book connection is really treated like an afterthought.  There’s not a single mention of Bruce Wayne or any of the Wayne family in this movie, which is odd to see a Joker film that doesn’t have any connection at all to Batman.  At least the last film gave a hint at that future.  This movie almost feels disconnected completely from the comic book, like it could be about any other murder trial.  It’s only occasionally you’re reminded that there’s a character named Harvey Dent in this movie, because nothing distinguishes him as a character at all, and there’s not a single hint of his future as the villain Two-Face.  The movie doesn’t have anything to say as a musical, as a comic book movie, or as a social commentary.  It’s just feels like a 2 1/2 hour epilogue to the first movie with a few songs added in.  It offers nothing more than that.

And the sad thing is there is that the movie is still well crafted from a technical standpoint.  The period recreation carried over from the first movie, which depicts a Gotham City in the same vein as late 70’s/ early 80’s New York City, still looks incredible.  Lawrence Sher, who was also the cinematographer for the first Joker, returns to do the photography for this movie.  The film was shot digitally, but the team did a great job making it look like it was made with the same kind of film stock they would’ve used on the films in the 70’s.  And when the movie does go into the dreamlike musical sequences, Sher does make them feel bold and colorful.  And while the musical numbers are hit and miss (mostly miss), the one piece of the movie that still shines bright musically is the original score by Hildur Guonadottir.  Hildur was the recipient of the first Joker’s other Oscar win for Original Score and her haunting music is a perfect fit for gritty world that this film depicts.  The eeriness of her mix of low bass strings and horns fits very well with the fractured state of Joker’s personality in this film, and the score just does such a great job of setting the melancholy mood of the film.  You almost resent the fact that the movie interrupts itself to start playing a musical number as it takes away from the beautiful music in-between.  There’s definitely skill on display, and Todd Phillips definitely shows off his knowledge of classic films as the movie references not just old school Scorsese, but also has nods to the musicals of New Hollywood as well like New York, New York (1977), All That Jazz (1979) and Hair (1979).  Even older musicals like Singin’ in the Rain (1952),The Band Wagon (1953) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) get shout outs.  There is clearly love of movie musicals in this movie, but the love also seems to be misplaced.  The fact is, even with all the skill put into the musical numbers and the drama side of the story, the film never really commits to one or the other.  It’s hard to tell if there is sincerity in the musical numbers, as it feels like Phillips isn’t so much trying to create a new kind of musical as he seems to be using it more for parody.  Unfortunately, the movie never feels clever enough to get the ironic use of musical numbers to carry much of an impact.

For the musical numbers to also work, it also matters to have the right cast in place.  The musical is primarily sung through by only two performers in this movie; Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.  Phoenix is no stranger to singing on film, as he received an Oscar nomination for playing Johnny Cash in Walk the Line (2005), a film where he didn’t do any lip-synching in playing the country music legend.  For this film, he’s called upon to do some pretty big numbers which require a powerful singing voice, and strangely he still performs in character as Arthur Fleck, who he portrays as having a weak, damaged voice.  In a way, the strain in his voice makes sense, as it shows the struggle that Arthur Fleck has in controlling his emotions, showing the psychological damage he’s still dealing with.  And when we see him fully embrace his Joker side, his voice gets much bigger and commanding.  Joaquin plays both of these sides well and there’s a lot of crazy turns that he takes with the character in this movie.  Even as his character lacks the rich development that was found in the original film, he’s nevertheless giving it his all as an actor throughout the movie.  Of course, on the singing side, the movie benefits greatly by having Lady Gaga in the cast.  Here she’s taking over a role that in past films has been memorably played by Margot Robbie.  I find it refreshing that her version of Harley Quinn is nothing like Robbie’s bubbly little anarchist.  Her performance as Harley is definitely well suited for grittier version of the Joker mythos.  The only problem is that Harley Quinn is not as important to the overall plot as she should be.  We see her be a bad influence on Arthur Fleck in prison, but we don’t learn more about Harley outside of what Arthur sees with her.  Again, like the absence of Batman, we are denied the inclusion of seeing Joker and Harley committing crime together like they do in the comic books.  Harley is just there to be a motivator for the evolution of Joker’s story, and that sadly is another disappointing underuse of the potential of the character.  But, at least she sings the hell out of her songs in the film; far and away the best singer in the cast.  There isn’t much else to say about the cast other than there’s some decent work from a good collection of character actors, such as Cathrine Keener and Brendan Gleeson.  I also want to spotlight little person actor Leigh Gill, whose witness stand scene is a highlight in the film and he manages to steal the scene with a heartbreaking performance.

Joker: Folie a Deux is not the worst movie of the year, nor is it the worst comic book movie of the year; both easily go to the travesty that was Madame Web (2024).  But I will say that this is probably the most frustrating movie of the year, because of the waste of good talent that I saw on screen.  I was thinking back a lot to my experience watching Megalopolis the previous week.  Objectively, Megalopolis is a much sloppier, mismanaged movie than Folie a Deux, but it was also much more entertaining to watch.  Both movies are wild swings, but one of the movies misses and still manages to be memorable while the other misses and just makes you feel nothing.  There was little hope for Megalopolis, and yet I admire it’s audaciousness and the fact that it was just such a bizarre experience.  Joker: Folie a Deux wishes it could be bizarre.  Like I said before, there just seems to be this lack of committment to the bit from Todd Phillips.  He’s making a musical, but the musical numbers feel restrained to the point where they don’t soar, with Phillips still trying to tie it back into the grittiness of the original film.  And the fact that the movie never gives us anything more than a rundown of Joker’s criminal trial to center the story around also makes the movie feel small.  It’s barely a comic book movie adaptation, with a baffling absence of any hint of Batman. Lady Gaga is giving it her all in the belting out of her songs in the film, but her Harley Quinn has nothing else to offer and like everything else in the movie, she’s just there because she’s a piece of the Joker puzzle that ultimately never fully gets solved.  The must insulting part comes in the end, when Todd Phillips even appears to undermine the Joker origin that he set up in his original, beloved movie.  You leave the theater wondering what was the point in the end, and sadly there is none.  I get the feeling that Phillips was upset by just how many people misread the first film and he wanted to deconstruct the mythos that he himself had created as a means of getting the point across that he intended.  He wants us to see the way that fame and celebrity can corrupt, and that we as a society are embracing more and more people not for their good qualities but rather for their extreme personalities, and that can often lead to horrible consequences as villainous people can be elevated to heroes for the angry masses.  Unfortunately, too many people viewed the first film as a celebration of the extremes in society, and Folie a Deux feels too much like a not well thought out rebuttal to that misunderstood message of the first movie.  I imagine this is all we are going to get out of this brief else-world storyline from DC comics.  It’s not a good sign when you’re big musical comic book movie barely gets a reaction from even the most forgiving fans of the genre.  My screening was dead quiet by the end, and there were even walkouts before the credits rolled.  Joker will still live on in comics and on the big and little screen for years to come, but I doubt we’ll hear anymore singing from him for a while.

Rating: 5/10

There are many reasons why Francis Ford Coppola has been dubbed the “Godfather of Cinema.”  Of course the main reason is because he made the Godfather movies, but he has also earned the title because he was also a crucial figure in the re-shaping of cinema as we know it.  He was one of the batch of filmmakers that came to be known as the New Hollywood movement in the 1970’s, which steered the industry away from the old studio system and more towards auteur driven projects that were less glossy and more gritty.  While Coppola may not have been the one to start the movement, he was certainly the one who turned it into a powerful force, with The Godfather  (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) both rising out of this new style and becoming successes at both the box office and during awards season.  In the meantime, Coppola also steered himself away from Hollywood itself, choosing instead to craft his own mini industry in his home base of San Francisco.  His American Zoetrope company was a truly independent studio of it’s own, with it’s own soundstages, facilities for editing and post production, giving for the first time a Hollywood style level of filmmaking services outside the confines of Hollywood itself.  But, with that incredible progression of growth, there was inevitably going to be a fall of from grace too.  While Coppola did manage to achieve accolades for his ambitious war epic Apocalypse Now (1979), the production was a chaotic mess that began to take it’s toll on Coppola’s reputation in Hollywood.  And then the box office failure for the musical, One from the Heart (1981), put his company in a financial bind.  Coppola would work throughout the 80’s and 90’s on much smaller productions that while they did pay the bills and were generally well received they also were safe and not the kind of bold artistic statements that he used to make.  In that era, only Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) stood out as an artistically daring movie.  After 1996’s The Rainmaker, Coppola left filmmaking behind to focus more on his growing wine making business.

But, during those years in the wilderness, there was always this idea that was occupying his thoughts.  Coppola had long dreamed of making a Roman style epic, but have it set in modern day America.  His ambitious story would concern the theme of rising and falling empires, the disconnect between the patrician and plebian classes, and the new civilizations that grow out of the ashes of the old.  He dubbed this story, Megalopolis, and it was a story that was bold in concept but highly difficult to sell to potential investors.  Coppola would continue to work on the film periodically, but as the industry was changing and largely leaving him behind, the hopes of making the film a reality also diminished.  For the longest time, among fans of Coppola’s oeuvre, Megalopolis became this mythic thing; an unrealized project that we could only speculate what it may have been.  But, Coppola never gave up hope on it.  In the late 2000’s, Coppola regained some of his creative spark, and made three small scale films that while nowhere as ambitious as his earlier film were nevertheless granted him the creative freedom he desired; Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011).  But even with that late career resurgence, Hollywood still wasn’t interested in investing in Megalopolis.  As Coppola has entered his mid-eighties, he was at the point where he knew that if he wasn’t going to make Megalopolis now that it would never get made at all.  So, he took the drastic measure of self-financing Megalopolis himself, to the tune of $120 million.  To accomplish this, he sold half of his wine making business, which was a sacrifice he was willing to make since his own grown children were uninterested in inheriting it, given that they’re all successful filmmakers like him.  And now, with a good chunk of his fortune poured into the film, the once impossible dream of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is finally a reality and making it’s debut on the big screen.  The only question remains, was it worth all of the wait and the many years of hype.

The story takes place in a heightened version of New York City named New Rome.  New Rome has been going through many years of decline due to a volatile economy, and it’s up to a select few to fix it’s crumbling infrastructure.  Unfortunately, two sides are at wat over the vision of the future.  On one side is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who is inclined to keep the city budget minded and exactly as it is.  On the other side is popular architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) of the New Rome Design Authority, who has won the Nobel Prize for creating an environmentally adaptive building material known as Megalon.  Cesar’s dream of a utopia clashes with Cicero’s more pragmatic plans for the crumbling city, But, the mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) doesn’t agree with her father’s vision, and finds herself seeking to help Cesar fulfill his utopian dream.  Both rivals desire the favor of a patron in the form of New Rome resident and richest man in the word, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), who’s also Cesar’s uncle.  Unfortunately for both Cesar and Cicero, there are troublemakers seeking to disrupt the power structure of the city by exploiting the old man and his money.  One is Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a former news anchor who was once Cesar’s estranged girlfriend and is now the new wife of Hamilton.  The other is the old man’s grandson, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) who is interested in stoking up the resentful working class people in a rebellion against the people re-shaping the city, manipulating them to his own benefit.  While Cesar continues to draw up plans for his utopian vision of the city, he and Julia form a relationship that becomes more romantic over time.  But there is a dark secret to Cesar’s past that continues to haunt him and force him deeper into substance abuse.  Even under the observant eye of Ceasr’s assistant Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), Cesar can still let himself go too often and that creates an aura of scandal around him that could derail his vision.  Will Julia be that calming influence that helps Cesar literally re-shape New Rome into a modern utopia, or will the wolves at Cesar’s door be able to destroy him and wreck havoc on the city as a result.

I was one of those observant cinephiles who had heard of this mythic production called Megalopolis,  and I would say I’ve probably been aware of it maybe for over twenty years.  The genesis of the project went even further back, but by the time I started to hear about it, it still hadn’t advanced more than just a title and an outline of the concept.  For many years, I wondered like many about what Francis Ford Coppola was cooking up for us.  The idea sounded bold, and I was really eager to see Coppola go for something big again like he did with the films of his glory days,  But, as the years went on and Coppola distanced himself more and more from Hollywood, it seemed like Megalopolis was just going to be one of the great never made films in movie history.  So, color me surprised when I learned that Megalopolis was indeed being made.  With nothing left to lose, Coppola is taking one last big swing as a filmmaker and getting this dream project across the finish line before he himself has left this world behind.  That in itself is admirable, and I’m just glad that I can now actually see this mythic film for myself.  So, was it worth the wait.  Well, the answer is going to be a complicated one.  The film, I would say is objectively bad.  It is a colossal mess in terms of story, tone, and just general common sense with regards to logic.  But, is it also entertaining?  Absolutely.  In a strange way, everything that made this movie awful is also what kept me interested.  I was never bored watching this movie, and it’s probably one of the craziest movie experiences I’ve ever had in a theater.  This movie was a self-financed passion project and it shows; we are seeing Francis Ford Coppola’s unvarnished creative mind on display in all of it’s unfocused glory.  There is so much going wrong with this movie that it somehow goes all the way around and becomes it’s own beautiful thing.

There’s no doubt in my mind that many people are going to hate this movie.  Anyone expecting this to be another Godfather like masterpiece will be very disappointed.  This is a Coppola that is far closer to the gonzo weirdness of Apocalypse Now, though I will say it’s still no where near as masterful as that movie managed to be.  Apocalypse Now managed to somehow come together into a coherent narrative, but Megalopolis is far from coherent.  So much of the movie does not make sense.  Cesar has the ability to control time.  Is it ever explained why? Nope, and it doesn’t even have a purpose to play in the story itself.  Megalopolis is full of these incongruent elements, all thrown together into this melting pot of ideas that Coppola’s trying to force together into a story.  Francis’ overall thesis about this movie is that he wants to spark a debate about what should be done about our future.  But, he sadly undermines his own message by throwing so many ideas at us that it all gets muffled amidst all the noise.  And yet, there’s so much creativity abound in all the madness of this movie.  This movie really is unlike any other film I have seen.  At some points of the movie, there are moments that genuinely soar and show what the potential of the film could’ve been had there been more of a focus to it.  While this movie can in no way fall within the same category of beloved epics of the past, I do feel that it does stand out as something bold and original, which is welcome in a Hollywood market that has grown more homogenous in recent years.  It’s hard to tell if Coppola is aware of the oddball nature of this movie.  There are a lot of moments that I think were unintentionally hilarious that Coppola had maybe intended to be taken seriously.  But, then he’ll have an intentionally funny moment, and it’ll be actually funny.  So, I wonder if the weirdness was intentional and all of the abrupt tonal shift were actually all meant to be farce after all.  The movie is such a hodgepodge, I honesty could not peg down what Coppola was doing at all.

There’s definitely a lot to be said about the performances as well.  Anyone who accepted a role in this film must be commended for their bravery, because it must not have been easy.  Nobody talks like a real human being in this script; the whole thing is heighted with characters speaking in these grandiose terms and with grand soliloquies.  But, some actors are better equipped than others.  For one thing, I think the only leading man you could ask for to carry a movie like this is Adam Driver.  Driver has chosen to act in some very out there films recently, and he’s committed himself to the craft no matter how bizarre the film or role may be.  He brings that kind of energy to the role of Cesar Catalina, taking it big when he needs to go big, but also finding the moments to reign it in find the subtlety in the character when it’s called for.  While the character ultimately gel together on the page, with Coppola making him too enigmatic, Driver at least gets the job done in his performance.  He’s also got a great match in Giancarlo Esposito.  His performance as Cicero may be the best in the entire movie, because it’s the most grounded.  He definitely captures the grandiose nature of the character, but also finds the ability to make him feel like a real person as well, unlike so many of the other characters that come across more like caricatures.  The supporting roles are the most bizarre in the film.  Aubrey Plaza is really vamping it up as the character Wow Platinum, in a performance that leave no room at all for subtlety.  And the fact that she goes whole hog with this character makes her performance pretty fun to watch.  Shia LeBeouf is a bit more mixed, as he’s trying to be a bit more method while at the same time playing a character that’s supposed to be wildly erratic, and the mix doesn’t always work; though there are flashes of entertaining moments from him here and there.  And I honestly don’t know what Jon Voight is doing in his performance, but I’ll say this, he has one hell of a final scene that was ballsy for an actor of his age to be a part in.

With a $120 million price tag, you would imagine that a lot of that had to go into the visuals.  For quite a bit of the movie, Megalopolis is a visually impressive movie.  In terms of costuming and cinematography, the film does have some incredible craft behind it.  The film was shot by DP Mihai Malaimare Jr., who has worked on films as varied as Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012) and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (2019), as well as shooting all of Coppola’s last three films.  He manages to create some really beautiful shots throughout the movie, including a romantic scene that takes place among hanging steel beams high above the skyline of the city.  He also incorporates many beautiful uses of lighting, especially during some of the more dreamlike moments of the movie.  The costumes used in the film also are well crafted, giving the film it’s best connection to the underlying theme of this being a modern day Roman Empire.  The suits that the men wear all have these capes that the characters fling over their shoulder like the togas of a Roman senator, and the women’s dresses also carry over that Roman aesthetic, in a nice visual connection contributed by designer Milena Canonero, who had previously done costumes for another member of the Coppola family in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).  But, even with a $120 million budget, the film’s ambition seemed to still test the limits of the budget, and that unfortunately leads to some visual effects that don’t entirely work.  There’s a heavy use of some very obvious green screen that comes across as clunky in the final look on screen.  Also, the ill-defined substance Megalon that is supposed to be this game-changing building material never comes across as tangible and also it looks like a very low quality digital effect from decades ago.  But, as bad as some of the visual effects come across, there is still a sense of ambition behind all of it.  Coppola put his own money behind his vision and there are moments where the film does carry across some striking visuals.  The sequence with giant stone figures coming to life and growing weary may be a ham-fisted metaphor in the film, but it is visually striking at the same time.  It goes along with so much of what the rest of the movie represents; it’s messy, but it is also unique.

The best thing that I can say for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is that it will be remembered.  Whether that will be either infamously or lovingly is up for debate, but I am sure that anyone who sees this film will never forget it.  It is just this weird, anomaly of a movie that could only exist through the sheer will of a legendary filmmaker investing everything he has into it.  He may burn through more good will with casual filmgoers as a result, but he got this dream project to the finish line in his twilight years and that seems to be the goal in the end.  He’s not seeking to reclaim past glory and put himself back on top in Hollywood.  He wanted to make this movie for most of his career, and he lived long enough to see it through, and now it belongs to the world.  He’s not looking for the awards season gold anymore.  And he’s also very well aware that this movie will not see a return on investment, as the box office looks to be pretty weak.  It shouldn’t be surprising, given that he had trouble convincing any studio to help distribute the film, before Lionsgate ultimately stepped up.  It may be a box office flop, but I can see this film finding a cult following in the years ahead.  While the movie may have been a colossal mess, it did manage to entertain the audience at my screening.  They were laughing pretty consistently throughout at all the weirdness of the movie, including the clunky dialogue and the unexpected tonal shifts.  Every time you think the film has peaked with it’s craziness, it somehow finds another way to go a level beyond that, and that kind of is impressive.  I don’t think it will tarnish Coppola’s reputation at all; the Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now are still undeniable masterpieces that will continue to shine a bright light on Coppola’s legacy.  But I am happy to see him trying to swing hard at his advanced age, even if also becomes a big miss.  Megalopolis may be a mess, but it’s a very beautiful mess that gave me one of the best and most insane theatrical experiences I’ve had in a long time.  It’s almost impossible to really rate it like usual because it almost defies a quantitive value.  As a story, it is without a doubt in a 4/10 range, but as a theatrical experience, I would put it near an 8/10 or even a 9/10, just based on how much fun I had.  To split it down the middle, I’m giving the one below which is about how I feel as a whole.  In the end, it was worth the wait even with all those flaws I mentioned.  It’s no where near a masterpiece, but in a way I kind of love the movie for being an uncompromised work of originality that only a great, legendary filmmaker can make.

Rating: 7/10

When we look at the whole career thus far of Tim Burton, there is a definable split between the early years and the later years.  When Tim Burton was first starting out, he was a unique voice unlike any other in Hollywood.  He cut his teeth as an animator at Disney before expanding his talents in the realm of live action film-making.  He would get his first shot at directing when LA-based comedian Paul Reubens selected him to make a movie adaptation for his Pee Wee Herman character.  Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) certainly showed off the great creative mind that Burton had, but it would be his follow-up that people consider to be the first true Burton movie.  Beetlejuice (1988) was a true original.  It was bizarre and eerie, but in a way that was still appealing to a mass audience.  It was also irreverently hilarious in a way that many movies of it’s kind in the 80’s were too afraid of being.  Creating a oddball twist on the haunted house sub-genre, Tim Burton created this imaginative world where life and afterlife intersect.  The peaceful serenity of a small New England town becomes a gateway to a strange and otherworldly purgatory with “newly dead” tenants waiting for their turn to be processed through underworld bureaucracy.  And at it’s center is a ghoulish prankster who is too much to handle in both realities.  The titular “ghost with the most” Beetlejuice features remarkably briefly in the movie (less than 20 minutes), and yet he is the centerpiece of the whole movie.  Michael Keaton, the actor who played him, had been around for a while, but Beetlejuice was the character that catapulted him to super-stardom.  If Keaton hadn’t shown off his incredible talent as a performer as Beetlejuice, would Tim Burton have had the confidence to cast him as the caped crusader in his next film, Batman (1989), even when everyone else thought he was crazy.  Burton would have eventually found his footing as a filmmaker, but because of Beetlejuice, he was able to make a name for himself early without having to compromise his vision, and because of that, Burton movies are a category of their own.

But, like with most other filmmakers, it becomes difficult to try to live up to your own legacy.  That’s why the latter years of Tim Burton’s career have been a little more hit and miss.  When he was a much hungrier young filmmaker, he was more willing to take chances to prove himself.  That’s why that early run of movies feel so creatively vibrant.  From Pee Wee, to Beetlejuice, to Batman, to Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994), there was a sense of Tim Burton using his talents to transport audiences into another world that only he could imagine.  But, the latter half of his career seems to have lost a bit of that creative spark.  Movies like Planet of the Apes (2001), Alice in Wonderland (2010), or Dark Shadows (2012) feel more like parodies of a Tim Burton film rather than genuine artistic expressions.  As the Burton name has gained it’s reputation, so has the interest of Hollywood in using that to appeal to audiences.  And it seems like Tim Burton has become more inclined to bend to Hollywood’s will rather than them bending to his.  There are occasional flashes where Burton makes something that he feels genuinely invested in; like the Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) musical adaptation, or the Margaret Keane biopic Big Eyes (2014).  He’s also shown an interest in animation that has proved fruitful, going back to his dream project of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and continued through his adaptation of his own live action short, Frankenweenie (2012).  But, even still, he’ll still return to the Hollywood machine and make a soulless project like the Dumbo (2019) remake for Disney.  But, he recently found renewed creative and commercial success with the popular Netflix series Wednesday, which he produced and directed half the episodes for.  The home run that that show turned out to be is giving long time Burton fans hope that he is finding his creative mojo again, which is helping to build anticipation for his next project.  And what that project has turned out to be is a long in development sequel to the movie that defined his career from the start; the highly anticipated Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). The only question is whether or not the world is ready to bring this ghoul back from the dead again, or is it dead on arrival?

Set in the present day, decades after the events of the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice catches us up quickly with what has been going on with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder).  Her ability to speak with ghosts has turned her into a bit of a celebrity, with her own ghost hunting show, produced by her manager and romantic partner Rory (Justin Theroux).  Lydia’s show is interrupted one day when she receives the news from her quirky stepmother Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) that her father Charles has died. The news hits her hard, and it also means that she’ll have to return to the home that she thought she left behind years ago.  In addition, she has to break the news to her estranged daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega) in order to get her to come along.  Meanwhile, in the Netherworld, a malevolent ghost with the power to devour the souls of the dead named Delores (Monica Bellucci) has arisen from her exiled imprisonment and seeks to take revenge on the man who killed her; a familiar ghost by the name of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).  Beetlejuice is desperate to steer clear of his soul-sucking old flame Delores, and he seeks the help of a ghost cop named Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), who was an actor who played cops in his past life.  While Beetlejuice is on guard, Lydia finds it hard to balance the new life she has made with the life she once had, as it increasingly begins to intrude more with her return home.  Rory is also pushing her to make important life decisions that she is clearly not ready to make, such as getting married, and it’s creating even more of a wedge between her and Astrid.  In the midst of all this, she is having traumatic flashbacks to her original encounter with Beetlejuice, to the point where she’s starting to see him everywhere she goes.  Is she on an inevitable collision course with Beetlejuice once again, and is it possible that this time he may need her help more than she needs his.

A sequel to Beetlejuice has been in off and on development for over thirty years, and given that lengthy span of time, it’s a wonder that Burton and Company managed to actually get it to finally happen.  In many ways, the idea of a sequel seemed to be treated like a joke, with the movie at one point being called Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Obviously that version never happened, and I imagine nothing of that original treatment made it into this sequel, with Tim Burton opting to not stray too far from the original recipe.  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more or less covers much of the same ground as the original, which for many legacy sequels tends to be where they fall apart creatively.  Thankfully, this sequel manages to avoid most of the pitfalls that a long in the making follow-up falls into.  While Tim Burton is revisiting the same settings of the first film, he doesn’t turn Beetlejuice Beetlejuice into an endless string of memberberries.  There are a lot of new ideas thrown into the mix that builds upon the world of the first film rather than just exploiting it for cheap nostalgia. The most pleasing thing about this movie is that it’s the first Burton film in a long while that actually feels like a Burton film.  I think this is because he’s not working with an adaptation this time of someone else’s work; like a book adaptation or a Disney remake.  This time he’s working with a universe of his own creation and is allowed to expand upon it and even poke fun at it a little.  What is especially pleasing is that it shows that Tim Burton is still capable of making a movie like this after a decade or so of feeling like he’s just been coasting on his past glory.  Given the special place that Beetlejuice holds in his legacy as a filmmaker, you can see how he wanted to approach this movie with a bit more resolve to get it right, almost like he’s trying to prove himself once again just like he had with the original.

But, this movie is also far from perfect as well.  The big problem with the movie is that it’s unfocused.  There are half a dozen plots going on in this movie, and Tim Burton doesn’t seem to know which one he wants us to focus on.  There’s the Lydia/Astrid storyline, the Beetlejuice/ Delores storyline, a subplot with Astrid getting to know a local boy in town, Lydia’s trauma coming back to haunt her, and a few others thrown into the mix.  The problem is that none of those stories intersect in an organic way, and they all keep butting into each other.  When one storyline finally hits it’s footing, it will be undercut by another storyline, and in some cases, storyline’s that have potential will suddenly be dropped in favor of another.  The movie is missing a traditional three act structure, and is instead a bunch of fun but loosely connected scenes strung together in the hopes that it tells a cohesive story.  The biggest problems with this occur when it robs the effectiveness of the character development within the story.  Delores for example is a really interesting character, with a fantastic introduction scene.  But then she disappears for most of the movie, only becoming an active threat once again towards the end.  Too much of the other subplots got in the way of Delores’ development, and it lessens her presence as a villainous threat in the story.  The original film may not have been the tidiest of plots either, but it had a consistent through-line in it, with the Maitlands (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in that movie) being effective audience surrogates whose eyes are the ones we follow along with as they observe the weirdness of Beetlejuice’s world.  They were the cornerstones on which the rest of the movie could focus on.  This sequel seems to not know which character it should be focusing on; Lydia, Astrid, or Beetlejuice.  It’s the thing that makes this movie fall well short of it’s predecessor, even while hitting the right notes when it comes to the visuals and the humor.

One thing that certainly is pleasing to see with this film is the absence of CGI in the effects.  It really seems like Tim Burton made an effort to return to his roots with the way he made this sequel.  Instead of relying heavily on computer animation to recreate the world of Beetlejuice, Burton instead resorts to old school practical effects that feel like the ones he would’ve used back in his early days as a filmmaker.  For one example, the sandworms that make a return from the first film are animated in stop-motion.  This gives them a more dynamic presence than how they appeared in the first movie, which was done with puppets and models, while at the same time helping to retain the hand crafted effect that Tim Burton is striving for with this film.  There’s also some incredible make-up and puppetry work that help to make the more cartoonish moments of the movie feel genuinely in line with the original film’s low budget charm.  But, even with the drive to do everything with practical effects, Tim Burton doesn’t cut back on the scale of his film either.  The full practical sets of this movie are expansive and pretty incredible to look at as well. They definitely feel in line with the visual style that we all are familiar with when it comes to Tim Burton.  Some of the corridors still retain that off-kilter aesthetic that he’s known for, especially the ones with uneven floors.  And you can tell when watching the movie that these are real sets on real soundstages, with the minimalist of green screen enhancements.  These Netherworld sets also pair nicely with the actual, on location shooting that they did for the film, bringing a beautiful juxtaposition to the film between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Of course, the thing that matters most is how well the cast is able to perform in this imaginative Tim Burton world.  Michael Keaton and Tim Burton go way back, with their shared history obviously going back to the first.  And while this isn’t a long in the making reunion between the two, since Keaton had a part in his Dumbo remake in 2019, it is still very pleasing to see these two working together again on a character that matters a lot to both of their careers. Of course, even with the 36 year gap, Keaton doesn’t miss a beat playing Beetlejuice.  It’s a part that Keaton, whose in his 70’s now, can still play despite the passage of time, given that the character is literally a decaying corpse.  It’s also pleasing that he gets a lot more screen time in this film, though I still believe it’s a lot less than it should be.  Winona Ryder also gets to explore a bit more of Lydia’s character this time around.  It’s interesting how she is a much different person this time around now that she’s a mother, but at the same time, you still see the rebellious little goth girl underneath the surface.  The movie wouldn’t be the same without both Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder both on board, so it is pleasing to see them both say yes to being in this sequel.  Jenna Ortega became an audience favorite with her acclaimed performance as Wednesday Addams in the Wednesday series, and it’s nice to see Tim Burton bring her on board this project as well.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much to the character of Astrid, other than her being an angsty teen.  Jenna does her best with what she can with the role, but Astrid unfortunately is the least interesting character in the movie.  The always great Catherine O’Hara consistently steals every scene she’s in here, and it’s great to see her return as well.  Her throwaway one-liners may be the highlight of the screenplay all on their own, and she delivers them perfectly.  And while stars like Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci are sadly sidelined for much of the film, they still bring a strong presence to every scene that they are in.  The only actor I feel is wasted is Justin Theroux as Rory.  He’s a one-note character that sadly Theroux isn’t able to do much with, and in the end, it becomes an unfortunately underwhelming performance.  But, the highlights of the cast are the ones we were all hoping to see return, and Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara all look like they are having a blast being back in this world.  Burton certainly likes working with the same people over and over again in his movies, and it’s pleasing to see how far after the fact that his troop of stars are willing to get right back into this quirky world again.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is nowhere in the same league as the original film, but it’s not exactly going to reflect poorly on it either.  It’s flawed, but still entertaining enough to be worthy of being a continuation of the story.  The most positive thing about it is that it’s Tim Burton finding himself once again comfortable with making the kinds of movies that he made in his early career.  While I don’t think we will ever see him make a film again that hits the same way that his early films did, this sequel is certainly the closest he’s gotten in quite some time.  The movie is very funny in all the right ways, the visuals are distinctly Burton-esque, and there was an effort made to use real, practical effects in the making of this film.  All of that is a welcome change from the way Tim Burton was making movies over the last couple of years.  We may be witnessing a new, third phase of Burton’s career starting to emerge with this and the Wednesday series.  It would appear that Burton is no longer coasting on any big studio gig that he can get (though this film is still certainly that too).  He’s now starting to seek challenges again as a filmmaker, and trying to build upon his legacy rather than compete with it.  My hope is that he applies some of that renewed creativity into something original.  That’s the thing that we have been missing from Tim Burton over the last couple decades; an original concept brought to life on film.  Even still, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should still prove to be an audience pleaser.  Michael Keaton slips right back into Beetlejuice’s striped suit just like he’s never left, and it looks like he’s happy to be back, as does Winona Ryder.  A lot of things had to happen to make this sequel possible.  It helps that both of it’s stars have seen big career comebacks in the last decade, with Keaton earning an Oscar nomination for Birdman (2014) and Winona getting a boost from her role in the hit series Stranger Things.  Their hot streak, plus the addition of Jenna Ortega to the mix is almost certain to drive audiences to see this movie in massive numbers.  But hopefully, the biggest beneficiary will be Tim Burton, who needs his own Renaissance as a filmmaker.  While far from a perfect sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still delivers enough entertainment that’ll keep this franchise alive and far from dead and buried.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Alien franchise has gone through a rocky history since it’s inception back in the 70’s.  The original Ridley Scott directed film from 1979 was a breakthrough in both horror and science fiction film-making.  A truly terrifying experience that lived up to the film’s tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”  No other genre film looked like it and it completely raised the bar in how to make alien lifeforms a terrifying presence on the big screen.  Many would have thought that this kind of film would be a hard act to follow, but in 1986, James Cameron brought us a sequel to the original film called Aliens that not only matched it in popularity but was also in some ways superior.  What helped to make Aliens work as a sequel was that it didn’t just try to repeat the formula of the first.  Scott’s Alien was a haunted house movie in space, using atmosphere as a valuable tool in crafting the scares in the movie.  Cameron’s Aliens was an action film set within the same universe, still featuring the same scary xenomorph aliens but using a louder action heavy scenes to drive the thrills.  And it worked.  The thing that helped to connect the thread of both films was actress Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Ripley; the sole survivor of the first film and the main heroine of the second.  Weaver’s performance in the second film was so beloved that it even earned her an Oscar nomination; unheard of for a horror based sci-fi flick.  Unfortunately, the years after the success of these first two films wasn’t kind to the series.  The making of Alien3 (1992) was a production nightmare for everyone involved and almost prematurely ended the directing career of it’s then novice filmmaker, David Fincher.  And Alien Resurrection (1997) was an embarrassing misfire that killed the franchise for over a decade.  It might have been wise to potentially just leave the series as it was and move on, just so that the legacy of the original first two classics could be preserved.  But, as it is with every well known franchise, the end is never set in stone.

There was hope for a potential re-boot of the series being able to bring back the past glory of the Alien franchise.  In the 2010’s, it was announced that a prequel film set in the same universe as the original Alien was going to be made, and better yet, Ridley Scott himself was returning to direct.  This seemed like great news, because many believed that Ridley Scott would help bring the franchise back to it’s horror roots, though those hopes may have naive in the end.  Instead, Ridley was looking at making a film that was more sci-fi based than horror.  His film, Prometheus (2012) had all the visual hallmarks of the series, but was far more of an action film than a horror film; and it didn’t even feature one of the xenomorph aliens until literally the very last scene.  Suffice to say, audiences were mixed on the results.  Some liked the fact that Ridley Scott was doing more world building in this franchise and exploring the mythology a bit more; particularly when it came to the mysterious Sentinel being hinted at in the first film.  Others thought it was a dull, methodically paced movie that didn’t deliver on the thrills and was a far cry from the roots of the series that Ridley Scott himself established.  It didn’t help that the follow-up film to this one was a far inferior sequel itself, the universally reviled Alien: Covenant (2017), which was neither thrilling nor scary.  That film was also unfortunately directed by Scott as well, and it further tarnished his reputation as the shepherd of this franchise.  For the series to move forward, it needed to find an identity once again, because so many mediocre reboots and sequels were dragging the franchise down.  It would take a while though, as the franchise was put in limbo after it’s parent studio 20th Century Fox was being absorbed into the Disney Company.  Under new management, Alien had a chance to be looked at with a fresh perspective.  The only question was, how Disney would take the still valuable IP and work with it as a part of their cinematic output.  For some, it was pleasing to see that the plan was to bring the series back to it’s horror roots.  Horror film director Fede Alverez was brought on board to bring his own unique vision to the project.  The only question remains does the new film, Alien: Romulus, bring back the same chills that made the original so scary or is it yet another disappointment that falls far from the peak of this franchise.

Alien: Romulus begins on a remote planet that has been completely colonized and exploited by the Weyland Yutani Coporation.  Among all of the exploited workers, a young girl named Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is desperately trying to work her way off planet.  She is accompanied by her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), who is a synthetic humanoid drone that her late father save from the junkyard and reprogrammed to protect her.  After being rejected by her superiors for off planet privileges, she seeks the help of other space colonists  to give her passage.  She meets up with an old friend named Tyler (Archie Renaux) who is ready to take off from the colonized planet with his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), his associate Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and their pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu).  Just few days prior, they made the discovery of a derelict Weyland Yutani space vessel that has drifted into the orbit of their planet.  Their hope is to find still working cryo-chambers in the wreckage that can enable them to make deep space travel possible in the hopes of reaching a new inhabitable planet.  The only catch is that they need Andy’s droid clearance to access entry into the ship.  Rain and Andy agree to help them in exchange for their safe passage.  Once they reach the vessel, they find that it isn’t just a simple ship, but rather a full station, meant for research purposes.  Split into two sides, each one named Romulus and Remus, the station is a fortress and not so easy to enter.  One other complication, the station is drifting in orbit towards a ring system that encircles the planet, and they only have a short window to complete their mission before the station is destroyed.  Tyler, Bjorn and Andy make their way into the interior of the ship, finding the place to be a ghost town.  All the crew seems to have completely disappeared, and there are massive holes throughout the ship.  Some violent incident had to have happened and the crew decides to speed up their mission so as to not invite whatever caused the mayhem that destroyed the ship.  They find the cryo-chambers they need, but in the same room there are scary looking alien creatures that try to latch onto their faces.  These Facehuggers are dangerous, but as all the crew members soon learn, there are far greater dangers aboard the ship, and the mission soon becomes not just getting out of this world but just surviving long enough to get off the ship.

The bar for Alien movies can definitely be described by it’s extremes.  The original film and it’s direct sequel are absolute masterpieces of the genre where as everything that has come afterwards has been either disappointing or outright junk.  Alien: Romulus is seeking to bring the series back to it’s more grounded roots by leaning more heavily on the horror film side of the series.  The only question is if they managed to succeed.  Thankfully, I can say that Alien: Romulus is unequivocally the best Alien movie we’ve seen in almost 40 years.  But, even as I say that, I do also have to say that it is no where near perfect either.  The bar has been lowered so much over the years that being just better than average immediately puts the film in the upper half of the series.  There are flaws in this movie that did prevent it from being considered among the greats, but thankfully the pluses outshine the minuses.  For one thing, it is pleasing to see a film this in this series that actually is attempting to be scary rather than just being moody or grotesque.  There was effort towards getting this movie back to the simple horror of Ridley Scott’s original vision.  It helps that Scott is still slightly involved with this film as a producer, helping to guide this new generation in line with the legacy of what’s come before.  But make no mistake, this is thoroughly Fede Alverez’s movie, and you can tell that he put his own horror twist on this film that works very well, at least when it comes to making things genuinely scary.  For one thing, I really appreciated his use of sound in the movie.  Whether it’s the absence of it in outer space (including a very effective intro that is completely sound free) to the sudden bursts of loud noises once the mayhem starts.  You really have to appreciate how much the sound plays a role in generating the thrills, especially when there are monstrous creatures that could be lurking in the shadows.  It really is where I feel this movie definitely comes closest to getting back those roots that the series was built off of, and which have been lost ever since Scott and Cameron left their marks on this series long ago.

Unfortunately the flaw that I found with this movie is one that I see all too often with lazy horror movies.  It’s the cliché where your main cast of characters continuously make stupid decisions that end up getting themselves killed or attacked, all with the purpose of manipulating the plot.  There are a lot of out of character moments where the crew decides they are going to go into the obviously dangerous place for the flimsiest of reasons.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but there are decisions made where you know that the character is deciding to walk into a death trap and low and behold, they get themselves killed.  I have seen other horror movies do this cliché worst, but it is unfortunate to see this movie do it as well, especially after it gets so many other things right.  The other flaw of this movie is the way it shoe-horns fan service.  It takes you out of the movie when the film will suddenly throw an Easter egg at you, especially when a character recites a line that’s a catch phrase made famous by the other movies.  There’s no reason for the characters to say those lines.  It’s just there to make the audience laugh or cheer and it’s pandering.  I would have rather the movie just used it’s connection with being part of the same universe as the only thread between itself and the other movies.  Shoehorning in Easter eggs and catch phrases just seems like a desperate move to garner audience approval.  Like I said before, the movie stands well enough on it’s own without them.  Fede Alverez nails the atmosphere and the thrills of this series.  He doesn’t need the assist of fans service.  Thankfully, these elements don’t drag the movie down as a whole, and if you’re not a long time fan of the series and just coming to this film casually, these references will likely just fly over your head.  But, for someone that is familiar with the series, I did find them a bit distracting and it was one of the things that did knock the movie down a peg in terms of it’s place as a part of the series as a whole.

What does work wonderfully in this film is the craft behind it.  When I say that this movie marks a return to form for this series, that’s in response to seeing the return to old school tactics in the filmmaking process.  Unlike most other legacy sequels that we have seen, particularly in this franchise, this one is relying less on wall to wall CGI and instead uses a lot more practical effects.  Sure, there are plenty of CGI moments in this movie, but I was very pleased to see that whenever we got a close-up of the xenomorphs or the facehuggers, they were actually done with either puppetry or with robotics.  That was what made the original films so effective, that the aliens themselves were manufactured to be physically on set.  The xenomorphs themselves were sometimes even portrayed on screen with stunt actors in a rubber suit, and I was happy to see that they did that here are well.  Of course, the wide shots used for the aliens resort to CGI models, and I’m happy to say that those shots are done effectively as well.  It’s what a good action movie should do, which is to mix you effects so that it tricks the eye.  You use the CGI to show the agility of the aliens that otherwise would be impossible with practical effects, and then mix that with the up close shots of the physical puppets and you’ll get a better result in making the alien creatures feel real and threatening, which thankfully this movie does.  The movie also does a great job with it’s world building, especially when it comes to the sense of scale in the physical environments.  Fede Alverez does an effective job of conveying the epic scope of the Romulus space station, while at the same time making the tight corridors feel effectively claustrophobic and foreboding.  And there are some shots in this movie that are just outright beautiful to look at, especially towards the end when the looming ring system begins to near the orbit of the space station.  There are also some really imaginative moments in the movie that I thought brought something new to the series, especially one sequence involving the acidic alien blood.  In many ways, this film has felt the closest in a long time to being the best spiritual successor to Ridley Scott’s original classic, at least in terms of the visuals.

The performances in this movie are generally good as well, though the personalities of the characters are very thinly defined.  The easiest highlight of the film is David Jonsson’s performance as Andy.  The synthetics of the series have always been some of the most interesting characters in the series, dating back to Ian Holm’s Ash in the original film.  Jonsson manages to create a surprisingly complex character out of an android with many limitations.  He is shown to be partially functioning in the beginning, but when he is plugged, so to speak with the operating system of the Romulus station, he almost becomes a new character, and it’s really interesting to see the actor pull of those two different aspects almost like he’s playing different characters in each situation.  There isn’t a whole lot to Cailee Spaeny’s Rain; she’s pretty much there to be a substitute for Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley.  But, she does the best that she can do in the role, and she has excellent chemistry with David Jonsson in the film.  Their two characters are certainly the heart of the movie, so it is good to see the actors actually make that surrogate brother and sister dynamic work in the film.  The other actors in the movie are less well defined, but none of them are distractingly bad in their performances and for the most part are effective.  Let’s face it, these characters are just there to be lambs to the slaughter for aliens.  The movie doesn’t waste any time getting us to the gory parts of the movie so these characters don’t need to be particularly deeply defined personalities.  The movie does focus on the characters that matter and thankfully they are characters that we want to root for.  But at the same time, what we go to these movies for are the aliens themselves, and they’ve never been more complex than the deadly terror creatures that we’ve always known them to be.  The one caveat I will mention that I think might be divisive for many is the inclusion of a character loosely connected to the original film that they reference in this movie.  People are either going to love his inclusion here as an Easter egg or hate it and see it as pandering.  I was a bit iffy on it myself but it wasn’t a deal breaker for the experience as a whole, though it is another one of those things that does bring the movie down a peg.

In general, I would rank Alien: Romulus easily as the third best film in the series, though the gap between it and the two classics in front of it is vast.  The reason this gets the third spot is simply because we have been devoid of so many good films in this series that by being merely adequate enough it rises almost to the top.  What this movie gets right is it’s craft.  It has the look and feel of an Aliens film down, and it’s a great return to form for a series that sadly has lost it’s way over the years.  Just get things back to what works, which is scary aliens hunting humans in dark corridors, and that’s the bullseye that the movie manages to nearly hit.  The only thing that holds it back is the paper thin story behind it and the fact that it falls back on so many tired tropes.  I liked that the story was simple, but there has to be logic behind the characters’ motivations and sadly the movie just ends up making it’s characters look like idiots by having them resort to non-sensical actions to help propel the plot forward.  There are thankfully a couple characters that still garner sympathy, and thankfully they are the focus of the film.  I particularly was impressed with the work of David Jonsson, who brought a surprising amount of nuance to a character that otherwise would’ve been a tad bit unbelievable.  And what the movie does get especially right are the aliens themselves.  The xenomorphs are legit terrifying here, which is a welcome return to form after the unconvincing CGI versions that we saw in the movie Alien: Covenant.  It will be interesting to see what might happen next with this franchise; will it still lean into the horror aspect or will it become more action oriented.  I honestly would favor the former, because I’ve always associated Alien more with the horror genre.  My hope is that it stays in that vein in the future, but perhaps they can improve on it with a more grounded premise.  Perhaps a smaller cast of characters with which there will be more screen time devoted to building up their personalities.  Also, please refrain from shoe-horning Easter eggs and catch phrases into the film that don’t need to be there.  There are some frustrating fan service things about this movie, but I do feel that it does get a lot right as an experience, particularly in bringing back old filmmaking tactics that help to make it feel more timeless.  We’ll see what the future holds, and my hope is that Alien will hopefully become a franchise that once again brings out the terror of the unknown that awaits us in the vast darkness of space.

Rating: 7/10

For a few years, there wasn’t just one way to define a Marvel movie.  What we know now as the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) has over the past decade been the flagship of Marvel media, but there were still remnants of Marvel’s past franchises that were still trying to compete alongside the MCU.  Before Disney became the home base for the Comic book publisher, Marvel had spread it’s many characters across Hollywood, letting multiple different studios obtain the film rights.  But with the debut of Marvel Studios in 2008, the idea was to create a connected cinematic universe which unfortunately was going to be complicated because it would require the cooperation of different competing studios to allow it to happen.  When Disney bought Marvel, they now had a deep pocketed financier keen on executing this mighty vision, but the issue still persisted with the legacy rights held by the other studios.  Surprisingly, Paramount gave up the rights to Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor without a fight, which helped to get the Avengers team-up rolling without issue.  Sony, which holds the rights to Spider-Man, has been the only remaining hold out as they continue to roll out Spider-verse movies in order to still hold onto the lucrative character; many of which aren’t very good, which is probably why they made a good neighbor deal with Disney to allow shared profits on Spider-Man properties, so that Sony can still benefit from the success of the MCU.  And then there was Fox, which for a time was the most defiant in holding onto their rights.  They refused to allow their rights to revert to Disney, or make a neighborly deal like Sony did, so all of the characters they held onto would have had to sit out the connected storyline of the MCU, including the conclusion of their monumental Infinity Saga.  That meant that iconic Marvel characters like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men missed out on what was considered to be the pinnacle of super hero movie-making.

Fans of those franchise were upset and that was reflected in the box office for the Fox Marvel films.  Nobody was interested in the franchise anymore, because the MCU was what people were more interested.  Fox Marvel needed the MCU more than the MCU need Fox.  So, when it was announced that 20th Century Fox was about to be put on the market by it’s owner Rupert Murdoch in 2017, many comic book fans were hoping this would loosen up those rights to the Marvel characters, and allow for them to finally join the MCU.  In a record breaking deal that closed in 2019, Disney did end up acquiring 20th Century Fox’s entire film library which included the film rights to all the Marvel characters owned by the now absorbed studio. But now that all the characters were under the same roof, the question remained how they were going to be worked into the ongoing narrative of the MCU.  It wasn’t going to be easy, given the huge number of characters that exist under the X-Men banner alone.  One of the more bold choices of this new direction for Marvel was to make the next saga of the MCU be centered around the concept of the Multiverse.  Not only would exploring the multiverse help to expand the horizons of the stories that could be told, but it allowed Marvel to also canonize everything that had come before it.  With the Spider-Man sequel, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), they legitimized all the previous versions of the character, by allowing current Spider-Man Tom Holland to fight alongside his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) also introduced a What If? selection of Avengers, that including the introductions of Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart reprising his role) and Reed Richards (John Krasinski) into the MCU.  But thus far, an actual movie centered on one of the stars of the Fox Marvel canon has yet to surface as part of the MCU.  For those franchises to finally get their big debut into the MCU, Marvel and Disney needed to call upon their heaviest hitters, and that’s why we are getting a highly anticipated new feature that teams up two of the most popular super heroes of all time; Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Deadpool & Wolverine takes place not long after the events of Deadpool 2 (2018).   Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has hung up the red suit after setting all issues right in his universe thanks to the time travel device that he got from Cable.  However, not everything has worked out for him.  His relationship with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is on the rocks and he has ended up in a dead end job that his buddy Peter (Rob Delaney) managed to get him on.  Even still, he still finds love and support from his friends, including X-Men Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and Deadpool’s foul mouth roommate Blind Al (Leslie Uggams).  But, Deadpool’s time travel shenanigans have caught up to him, as he is captured by the Time Variance Authority (TVA), who are the police force of the multiverse.  After being taken to the TVA’s headquarters, Deadpool meets Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) who tells him that he has been granted the chance to join the Sacred Timeline, which is the MCU where all the Avengers live.  It has been Deadpool’s dream to join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but he soon learns there’s a catch; he can never return to his own timeline, because it is doomed to fade away.  Mr. Paradox tells him that the reason his universe is dying is because it has lost it’s Anchor Being, a figure who is key to the universe’s survival, and that Anchor Being just so happens to be Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  In order to save his universe, Deadpool travels the multiverse to find a replacement Wolverine, but the one he ends up bringing back is a drunken mess who was responsible for getting his entire X-Men family killed.  In order to prevent them from altering their plans, the TVA sends Deadpool and the down and out Wolverine to a place called the Void, a realm that exists at the end of time.  There, they find a renegade army of outcasts who are ruled over by a powerful mutant named Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), the exiled twin sister of Charles Xavier.  In order to survive, Deadpool and Wolverine must work out their differences if they’ll ever be able to survive the wrath of Cassandra Nova and a colossal being made of anti-matter called Alioth that feasts on everything that ends up in the realm, wiping it from time and space.

The arrival of Deadpool & Wolverine comes at an interesting time for Marvel Studios.  After experiencing unprecedented success over the last decade, the studio is experiencing something of a slump.  The movies are not performing like they used to at the box office, and their critical reception has also seen a down turn.  Now, I for one think that the online discourse is being wildly hyperbolic when it says that Marvel is dying.  The Marvel output is certainly not at it’s peak, but their movies on the whole are still wholly watchable and in many cases still better than most movies.  And a lot of their problems right now are really emblematic of the super hero genre as a whole and not exclusive to just them.  No matter what the discourse says, I still look at each movie on it’s own and judge it by it’s own merits, and to my surprise, the movies that people claim are Marvel’s biggest failures in recent years are actually among my favorites (2021’s Eternals and 2023’s The Marvels).  I will grant them the failure of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023); that was bad.  But, the Marvel like all the others have had to adjust their plans due to the shifting attitudes towards the genre as a whole.  Due to the disappointing box office last year, as well as the delays cause by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Marvel decided that they would only put out one movie this year in order for them to have time to re-organize.  And that put Marvel’s entire 2024 hopes on the return of Deadpool.  The first two Deadpool movies were monumental hits, and easily the most profitable from the Fox Marvel era, so you can see why Disney was eager to get Deadpool up and running as a franchise under their stewardship.  A positive sign was that Marvel Studios was going to keep this franchise R-rated, which is the only way a Deadpool movie could be made.  The even more promising news helping to spark interest for this movie was the long awaited team up between Deadpool and Wolverine, with Hugh Jackman returning to the character after initially retiring in the aftermath of the beloved film Logan (2017).  One thing is clear, this is the right movie to help revive Marvel’s fortunes at the box office; a surefire team up between their heaviest hitters.  But does it land as a cinematic experience.  The answer is a bit more complicated.

One of the hallmarks of the Deadpool franchise is it’s irreverent sense of humor.  Thankfully that has returned with Ryan Reynolds and company not missing a beat.  The movie is raunchy, subversive, and a laugh riot.  I found myself having quite a few great outbursts of laughter throughout this movie.  Nobody is spared in the crossfire of all the jokes; Marvel, Disney, Fox, the comic book genre as a whole, they all get savaged by the zingers in this movie.  But, it also in a way overwhelms the story that’s being told as well.  The movie doesn’t quite the narrative pull that it should.  It seems like most of the movie is just strung together to put Deadpool and Wolverine into different situations solely so that they can milk it for the comedy.  Thankfully, the comedy does carry the film, but when you think back on the experience, the plot feels very flimsy.  What is especially problematic is that character motivations throughout don’t make a whole lot of sense.  It’s understandable with Deadpool since he is an agent of chaos that just unpredictably goes with the flow.  But, we don’t get the deep character introspection with Wolverine that we should.  There’s only vague reference to what makes him tick, and Deadpool even makes the meta joke about waiting for a third act flashback to explain Logan’s backstory.  Thankfully, the movie doesn’t go for the easy cliché of actually cashing in that promise of a flashback, but we never really get closure on Wolverine as a character either.  He’s just along for the ride with Deadpool too.  For the most part, this movie is far more about the experience than the story and it does have some pretty incredible moments, mainly when the two leads share the screen.  But, the first two Deadpool movies balanced the story and comedy with a bit more care; which is mainly because those movies were a bit more budget conscious and had to make sure everything was clearly defined on screen.

Deadpool & Wolverine also feels a tad bit more generic stylistically than the past Deadpool movies.  I think this has to do with it being directed by Shawn Levy.  Levy is a capable filmmaker, and is clearly someone that Ryan Reynolds likes to work with, given that he directed two of his most recent movies (2021’s Free Guy and 2022’s The Adam Project).  But one area that I feel he lacks talent as a filmmaker is in the direction of the action scenes.  The first film made great use of a limited budget to create memorable and creative action sequences.  The second film leveled up even more by getting John Wick co-creator David Leitch to direct, and that film had some very stylish action set pieces that were stunning to look at.  In Deadpool & Wolverine, the results are mixed.  There are some neat action scenes, particularly in the beginning which has one of the greatest opening credits scenes I’ve seen in quite a while, and undoubtedly the best of this franchise yet.  But, there’s another fight scene halfway through that makes disappointing use of shaky cam.  The blandness of that shaky cam is extra insulting because there are unique character fighting styles that we really want to see in that moment, and it doesn’t give us a clear view of any of it.  It was a scene like that where you really want to see the Leitch style steady shots used more.  But where credit is due, Shawn Levy does deliver when it comes to the comedy.  There are some excellent prat fall moments in this film, and when the movie calls for some gratuitous violence delivered in a funny way, Levy does hit the mark.  But, given that this story was intended to have more of an action centric edge to it, it might have been better to get a director with more action movie experience than the guy behind the Night at the Museum franchise.  He’s good with comedy to be sure, but lacking in that thing that could have made the movie feel just that extra bit exciting.

The thing that undoubtedly is the best element of the movie is the performances.  It should be noted that the title Deadpool & Wolverine is a very good indicator of this film as a whole.  It is very much a two hander of film, with Wolverine getting just as much of the spotlight as Deadpool.  Ryan Reynolds of course is in his element as Deadpool.  This has been his baby now for nearly a decade, and you can tell that he brings his A-game every single time.   He doesn’t disappoint here at all, making Deadpool just as lovably raunchy and irresistibly funny throughout.  I especially love the fact that he is playing the character as just as big of a fanboy of the MCU as the audience who will be watching this movie.  Of course, getting Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine is another miraculous accomplishment for this film, and Hugh does not disappoint.  His performance here is especially strong, and amongst the best he has ever done for the character, managing to hit some surprisingly strong pathos in an otherwise silly movie.  And of course, the most talked about part of his return is that we finally get to see him in the comic book accurate blue and yellow costume, which Deadpool hilariously derides as making him look like a mascot for the LA Rams.  What is interesting is that the movie isn’t so much of a debut for Deadpool and Wolverine in the MCU as it is a swan song for the Fox Marvel universe.  Don’t go in expecting cameos from any Avengers, as the cast here is made up of familiar faces from Deadpool’s past.  It is good to see past cast members make a return, especially Leslie Uggams as Blind Al.  But, it does seem like Marvel is saving their encounters between Deadpool and the MCU for later.  There are still some incredible cameos in this movie; ones that I will spare spoiling here as they are a big surprise, including that made my jaw drop when I saw this character appear on screen.  The villains in this movie, Mr. Paradox and Cassandra Nova are fine, though not among the all time greats in the Marvel canon.  Emma Corrin in particular gets some nice scene chewing moments, and the visualization of her power is effectively disturbing.  Matthew Macfadyen also brings a nice bit of stuffy British humor to the role of Paradox.  The cast in general, with the two charismatic leads and some genuinely pleasing surprises will definitely leave audiences happy about this movie.

Regardless of the flaws that this movie has, it’s still going to be a fun experience at the movies.  It helps when you see this movie with an audience full of comic book nerds who will riotously cheer at all the big comic book and movie references thrown out in the film.  As an experience, this is absolutely a fun time.  I just wish that it held up better as a story.  In many ways, Marvel has become their own worst enemy because of how well all the story lines fell into place for their biggest hit, Avengers: Endgame (2019).  Now we seem to expect that for every movie that they make, which can never be the case because they aren’t movies that function on the same level.  While I do feel that Marvel is doing much better story wise than what the internet discourse is claiming to be a failure on all levels, there is no denying that they have had some struggles keeping the momentum going beyond Endgame, something that Deadpool even jokes about in the movie.  Does Deadpool & Wolverine fix all of those problems.  No, and in fact the symptoms are actually a bit more obvious in this movie than they are in other recent Marvel films.  But, it’s still a great fun experience when you go in just wanting to have a good laugh and see two Marvel icons team up for the first time.  Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have incredible chemistry on screen and that definitely helps to propel the film.  The jokes are also more hit than miss, so it definitely delivers on the comedy.  I definitely think that Marvel will get back on it’s footing after a tough couple of years.  I feel their biggest mistake post-Endgame was moving too fast, putting out too many movies and shows per year.  With Deadpool & Wolverine being their lone standard bearer this year, it will give Marvel the time to take a deep breath that it needs before starting the next act, which includes debuts of the Fantastic Four and more X-Men.  And, more than anything else, this movie shows that things work out better when a movie feels more like a labor of love than a mandate to fill a spot on a timeline.  The best thing about Deadpool & Wolverine is that it helps to renew our excitement for what Marvel has next for us in it’s future.  And given that the movie delivers Marvel’s first ever R-rated experience, that could be an open door for just about anything.

Rating: 8/10

It’s been a tough few years for Pixar Animation.  Towards the end of the last decade, the animation giant had two of the highest grossing animated movies of all time with Incredibles 2 (2018) and Toy Story 4 (2019).  It was an era of great success and massive expansion for the studio.  And then the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.  The theatrical run of their latest film Onward (2020) was cut abruptly short as theaters across the world would close for an indeterminate time.  But even as the pandemic raged across the world, Pixar adjusted by moving their work out of the Emeryville, CA campus and into the homes of all the digital artists from the studio.  The offices would be empty, but the show would go on.  Delays in the re-opening of theaters would later prompt Pixar’s parent company Disney to ultimately make the decision to release the next Pixar film, Soul (2020), straight to streaming during the holiday season.  It would be the first ever Pixar film to not get a theatrical release, but sadly it wouldn’t be the last.  With the streaming wars heating up in the post pandemic world, then Disney CEO Bob Chapek made the decision to release the next two Pixar films in development, Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022), as Disney+ exclusives, causing them to skip theaters as well.  Unfortunately, Disney+’s gain was Pixar’s loss, as the straight-to-streaming method had the unintended effect of diminishing the Pixar brand as a force at the box office.  And what’s worse, Pixar was being pushed to streaming while other parts of the Disney company were still allowed partial or full theatrical runs, including Disney’s own animation studio.  So while Pixar films were still being generally well received, they were not being given the proper debut on the big screen that they were intended for.  Once it was decided finally to give Pixar a chance to prove themselves again on the big screen, the damage to their brand value sadly became apparent.

The first Pixar film to be released theatrically post-pandemic was the Toy Story spin-off titled Lightyear (2022).  There was hope that familiarity with the character of Buzz Lightyear would help boost the box office back to levels of Pixar at it’s peak.  But, the film did not receive a warm welcome from fans.  While nowhere near the worst thing that Pixar has made (I’m looking at you Cars sequels), Lightyear nevertheless left audiences confused and underwhelmed and that was reflected in the disappointing box office.  While the opening weekend was strong, the movie fell back to earth and ended up being one of Pixar’s lowest grossing films ever; a rare money loser for the studio.  Due to the double blow of the pandemic diminishing the Pixar brand and the mismanagement of the Chapek regime at Disney, the once mighty studio looked like it had lost it’s magic touch and was quickly becoming a shell of it’s former self.  But then a miracle happened.  Despite opening to a catastrophic low box office opening weekend, the next Pixar film Elemental (2023) managed to ride a wave of positive word-of-mouth towards achieving a healthy final gross that turned a small profit for Disney; one of the few films from the studio that actually succeeded in that difficult year.  It did thankfully show that the Pixar magic was still alive and that even with all of the struggles laid at their feet, they were still capable of delivering movies that connected with audiences.  But, what Pixar really needs is a major box office hit, one that can show that they can still reach the astronomical heights of their glory days.  While some critics may see it as a selling out move, the best option right now for Pixar to build back it’s box office muscle is to work with an already established property that’s done well for them in the past and build upon it with a sure fire sequel.  One of the most popular film’s of theirs from the last decade was the imaginative Inside Out (2015), and this week we welcome the newest chapter to that beloved story with Inside Out 2 (2024), a film that Pixar is hopeful will put them back on top again.

Inside Out 2 picks up where we left off from the first movie.  Young Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman) has become a teenager, and with that milestone now here, changes are beginning to happen to her physically and mentally.  The emotions that have helped Riley become the person she is through her younger years, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) suddenly find their workplace disrupted by new construction.  The switchboard console that they use to steer Riley’s emotional state has been updated, mainly to accommodate the new emotions that are about to move in; the ones that are brought on board once puberty starts.  They include Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri) Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).  Anxiety immediately asserts herself in the “head” quarters, believing that the older emotions are incapable of adequately protecting Riley from all future threats.  So, she has the original five bottled up and locked away in a vault.  Not wanting to be suppressed emotions, Joy and the others break out and seek a way to get back to headquarters and restore Riley to her right state of mind.  As they navigate their way through the labyrinth of Riley’s increasingly more complex mind, the effects of Anxiety’s plan begin to affect Riley both emotionally and physically.  While attending an all girls Ice Hockey summer camp, Riley’s emotional mood swings begin to take their toll, and Anxiety and her team begin to realize that there are no simple solutions towards helping Riley become a better person.  The question remains if Joy and the other original emotions can get back in time to help settle Riley’s mind before too much damage is done.

The original Inside Out is widely considered to be one of the top tier films in the Pixar canon.  It was a massive box office success and would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature that year.  So, making a sequel to a film that beloved is certainly a risk, but it’s also one that Pixar has successfully pulled off many times in the past.  One thing that worried people was that the original creative team from the first movie would not be returning for Inside Out 2.  Director Pete Doctor has since risen in the ranks at Pixar to become the head of studio, and he has entrusted the future of his baby to longtime animator and first time director Kelsey Mann.  Thankfully, Mann has proven to be the right person for the job as Inside Out 2 does not miss a beat in following in the footsteps of it’s predecessor.  Truthfully, if there ever was a Pixar movie that perfectly lent itself to a sequel, it was Inside Out.  The original movie even had the right set up, with the Puberty Alarm making an appearance at the end of the film.  Like all the best sequels, Inside Out 2 build upon what has been built before but also doesn’t feel like it’s repeating the same beats.  The movie wisely takes the story in a more mature direction, as the complexities of changing emotions are very crucial to the narrative.  The movie ultimately is about emotions competing with each other, something that anyone can relate to as we’ve all experienced times when our emotions have gotten the better of us.  It really does appear that Pixar is aware that their audience has grown up since the time the original film was released (which has been 9 years) and it is choosing to address it’s story with that added complexity and not dumbing things down in order to reach a younger demographic.

At the same time, it still remains incredibly funny, just like the first film.  There certainly are the same puns and slapsticks moments that will keep the younger kids happy and entertained, but the movie also nails the more grown up jokes as well, especially the ones related to the awkwardness of becoming a teenager.  I also really appreciate the direction that the story takes.  While the original movie was an emotional journey to be sure, it was also one where the stakes weren’t terribly high.  In Inside Out 2, the stakes are a bit higher, and for the first time it includes a character that fills an antagonistic role.  The character of Anxiety is the best new addition to this franchise, because of the obstacle that she places in front of the characters that we love from the first movie.  She’s not exactly a villain per say; her motives are paved with good intentions (mainly wanting to protect Riley from potential threats), but she just takes things too far, and that’s a really engaging angle to take with the story.  It also makes her a good foil for Joy, who’s the other principle character of the story, and one whose personal journey has been about accepting that her place in Riley’s development may be diminishing for good.  The one fault this movie has is that with the expanded roster of characters, there is less room in the story to have all of them have their moment to shine.  One of my favorites from the original film, Sadness, unfortunately gets pushed more into the background, which is disappointing after seeing her play such a pivotal role in the first movie.  And while there are some brilliant, powerful moments in this movie, it doesn’t quite have that emotional gut punch that the original movie had where it left the audience in tears.  There’s no Bing Bong level moment to break your hearts, though some moments do come close.  Other than that, the movie is as satisfactory as a narrative as the original, and in some aspects it improves on the original.

The voice cast, as is usually true with most Pixar movies, is uniformly excellent.  Amy Poehler returns to voice Joy and doesn’t miss a beat.  Lewis Black and Phyllis Smith likewise perfectly re-settle into their iconic roles as Anger and Sadness respectively.  For whatever reason, the original voices of Fear and Disgust (Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling) did not return for this film, but thankfully their replacements Tony Hale and Liza Lapira are perfect in the roles.  I dare say, they may actually be even better as Fear and Disgust, as those characters shine a bit brighter in the way they are used in this story.  The newest cast members are also excellent.  Of course Maya Hawke is the standout as Anxiety.  She finds that perfect balance of making her the personification of an anxiety rattled mind, but having the restraint to also keep the character from being a one dimensional archetype.  Hawke’s performance also helps to bring out the complexity of the character, making her sympathetic all the while she is spreading chaos.  I also just love the design of the character, with Anxiety having this Muppet like profile with a giant grin that makes up like a third of her body, topped by bulging crazed eyes.  The other new cast members don’t quite get the same attention, but they still manage to perfectly round out the emotions that they are embodying.  I especially love Adele Exarchopoulos aloof performance as Ennui, who gets some of the best one-liners in the movie.  I also should point out the excellent performance of Kenisington Tallman as Riley, as she a great job of projecting all of the emotional strain that this experience with her battling emotions is having on her.   The movie does an excellent job of making all the scenes outside of Riley’s mind feel just as engaging as the one inside.  There’s a harrowing coming-of-age story playing out for Riley, as we see her grapple with all of her changes and getting to a point where she pushes herself too hard.  She becomes a well-rounded character in her own right, and not just the setting in which the more fantastical story is taking place.

The original film was widely celebrated for it’s beautiful animation, and time has only helped to improve what Pixar is capable of with regards to animation.  While  a lot of the movie still has a familiar aesthetic, it’s enhanced with the latest animation tools at Pixar’s disposal.  All the returning characters have upgraded models that look even more stunning, especially in close-ups where you can see the individual particle beads that each of them are built out of.  The same advancements goes for the character animation too.  Each of the characters are wonderfully expressive in ways that feel perfect to their respective emotion.  In particular, Anxiety is animated with quick, speedy actions that really fit the hyperactive persona she embodies.  On the opposite end, Ennui has this body that’s almost wormlike, and when she isn’t lounging on a chair, she appears to slither her way into a standing position, which the animators hilariously put into motion.  The visual aesthetic of the movie is also beautifully vibrant, with the inside of Riley’s mind being awash in this multi-color rainbow of a color spectrum, which extends into the characters.  And to balance that, the outside world is more subdued and naturalistic, which provides a nice contrast.  The original film also included much of the same beautiful contrast, but this film really extends the palette and goes bigger.  It’s interesting that Inside Out 2 goes with a wider frame of 2.40:1, compared with the original’s 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  It really helps to make the film feel a bit more epic despite covering a lot of the same environments as the first film.  The scope aspect ratio is definitely called for with some of the set pieces, especially in the climax.  One thing that especially benefits from the bigger frame is the added element of a personality tree that grows underneath headquarters.  This beautiful set piece feels like something out of the world of Avatar (2009), and I love how the animators make it look like something that is organic in nature.  It’s another wonderful addition that adds to what we’ve already seen in this world and makes the story richer.  While the story certainly is a fine return to form for Pixar animation, this movie also shows that they are still at the forefront of visual artistry as well.

The hope is that Inside Out 2 is the movie that will hopefully re-establish Pixar as a force at the box office after so many years of struggle and neglect that has diminished their once dominant brand.  The movie certainly earns any rewards it gets.  It was a daunting task for the filmmakers to pull off as the original Inside Out is hailed by many as a masterpiece.  If I were to compare the two, I’d still give the slight edge to the original, just because of the brilliance of that Bing Bing scene that we all remember cry over.  But Inside Out 2 comes ever so close to edging past it because it pretty much equals the original in almost every single way.  It’s emotionally involving, it’s incredibly funny, and it does a great job of taking the story into it’s next chapter without missing a beat.  As far as sequels to Pixar movies go, I would absolutely count this as one of the best.  It’s not quite at the level of brilliance as all three of the Toy Story sequels we’ve seen, but compared to all the ones that came out in the 2010’s, like Monsters University (2013), Finding Dory (2016) and Incredibles 2 (2018), this is the one that has come closest to matching it’s predecessor in quality.  And of course it is astronomically better than either of the Cars sequels.  It’s interesting to think of how kids who grew up with this movie over the last 9 years will respond to this sequel.  Many who were 5 or 6 when the original came out are probably the same age as teenage Riley in this film, so the movie may be extremely relatable to them.  The thing I love about these two Inside Out movies is that they treat their audience intelligently no matter what age they are.  There’s enough for the littlest of kids to be entertained with, but adults will also find a lot to think about with this movie.  These movies are incredible meditations about emotional intelligence, and they probably work as great tools for the psychological community to help explain complex concepts around therapy and emotional well being to the average lay person.  Pixar once again shows that they are at the top of their game with Inside Out 2, a sequel that is every bit as entertaining as it’s predecessor, and the hope is that it will also bring back good fortunes for the studio after a rough couple of years.  Especially in a year where people are worrying about the state of movie theaters, the best outcome would be for Pixar to come out looking like the savior of the Summer with a strong box office showing.  Now that would be something to be joyful about.

Rating: 8.75/ 10

It’s been a wild ride through the wastelands for the Mad Max franchise.  Began in 1979, Australian filmmaker George Miller created an icon with his shoestring budgeted original film.  And every movie since, he has upped the ante, making his world more dystopian and mythic in process.  The franchise helped to make a star out of Mel Gibson, and both he and Miller would continue to build their world with the even zanier sequels The Road Warrior  (1982) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).  After Thunderdome, Miller spent a long while figuring out where he wanted to take the adventures of Max Rockatansky next.  It would be another 30 years before the Wasteland would be seen once again on the big screen.  In that time, Miller spent his years dabbling in more family friendly fare like Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and Happy Feet (2006), but all the while he was continuing to brainstorm his next move with Mad Max.  Entering the 2010’s, he finally found the road he wanted to take, and he got Warner Brothers to bankroll his bold new vision for this classic action franchise.  But, there were going to have to be some changes.  For one, Mel Gibson had aged out of the part over the 30 plus years, in addition to a number of scandals that had diminished his star power.  In addition, the story would be less focused on continuing Max’s ongoing story and instead would be geared more around building the world around him into something far more epic and surreal.  It would still be a Mad Max movie, but it was about far more than one man’s journey.  And in particular, George Miller found himself becoming more intrigued about the possibilities involving a wholly new original character named Furiosa.  As we would soon discover, this new heroine would be the shining star of a new future for the Mad Max franchise.

The 30 year wait proved to be worth it, as Mad Max; Fury Road not only made a healthy gross at the box office but was also critically acclaimed as well.  Many even began to herald it as one of the greatest action films of all time, and it accomplished the unexpected task of earning 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, of which it ended up winning and impressive six total.  As far as action films go, Fury Road became a new high water mark for the industry, with audiences being wowed by it’s impressive stunt work and practical effects, as well as just the overall creative world-building throughout.  To create the film, Miller and his team spent months filming in the remote Namibian desert, which allowed them to create these massive scale stunts in a remote and desolate environment on a scale unseen before.  It very much invigorated the franchise in the way that George Miller had hoped for.  In addition, audiences loved the performances from the leads, with Tom Hardy filling the role of Max adequately and easily helping audiences get over the replacement of Mel Gibson in the role.  Charlize Theron brought an intensity to the role of Furiosa that made the character an instant favorite for both longtime fans and new ones as well.  It’s very clear that Furiosa and Mad Max are both the main character’s of Fury Road’s story and that Miller spent as much time figuring out her narrative as much as he had his iconic hero.  During all those 30 years in the process of making Fury Road, Miller had also spent years developing Furiosa’s backstory, including going so far as to writting a full draft of a movie that would have centered around her.  In his words, he wanted to fully understand her character before he made her such a central part of his new direction in the franchise.  After seeing Fury Road succeed as well as it did, Miller decided it was time to take another look at his script for a Furiosa movie, and he suddenly became interested in bringing it to the big screen as well.   It would take nearly another decade for that project to also become a reality, but now we George Miller making his return once again to the franchise that define his directorial career with this prequel adventure, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

The story begins many years before the events of Fury Road, where we find a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) living in the peaceful oasis known as the Green Place.  Outside of the Green Place is a vast desert known as the Wasteland, where the remnants of human civilization are scattered across as warring nomadic tribes.  One such tribe of motorcycle riding marauders invade the Green Place and kidnap Furiosa.  They take her back to their camp, where she meets their fearsome leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).  Her mother, Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser) tries to save her from the camp, but the valiant attempt at a rescue ultimately fails, and Dementus ends up executing her in front of Furiosa, an act that the young girl would hold a grudge over for many years after.  Eventually, Dementus and his gang arrive in a part of the Wastelands that is lorded over by a man named Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), who resides in the fortress called The Citadel.  Immortan Joe’s forces, including the cult like faction know as the War Boys, prove too overwhelming for Dementus, but the ambitious madman decides to make more trouble by capturing the important stronghold known as Gastown, which supplies The Citadel with all it’s fuel.  Dementus and Immortan Joe strike a truce, but part of the deal involves Furiosa remaining within The Citadel as a future bride for one of Joe’s sons, Scrotus (Josh Helman) and Erectus (Nathan Jones).  Furiosa initially escapes her new captors, and lives anonymously in The Citadel, eventually becoming one of the mechanics.  Grown up Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) eventually develops a partnership with The Citadel’s top rig driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) who helps her gain the skills she’ll need to survive in such a dangerous world.  But in all this time, her heart is set on two main goals, to get her revenge on Dementus and return home.

There’s no doubt that following up the success of Mad Max: Fury Road was going to be hard, even with George Miller still firmly holding the reigns.  Fury Road is considered an all time classic and one of the most celebrated movies of the last decade.  Still, you can feel the desire with George Miller to tell this story in particular, leaving out the namesake action hero we all know in favor of exploring someone else’s tale in this same world.  It’s a risk to be sure, but also one that does fit within the greater narrative that Miller wants to tell.  Furiosa was undoubtedly the breakout star of Fury Road, and many fans agreed that she was a character capable of carrying a film all on her own.  So, with the work already done before cameras even rolled on Fury Road, Miller had the story he needed to deliver on the promise of Furiosa’s own movie.  Now, going into this film myself, my expectations were perhaps a bit different than most other people.  It may shock you, but I’ve been a bit more lukewarm on my opinions of Fury Road.  I certainly liked it a lot, but I fell a little short of believing it to be this unassailable masterpiece that stands among the greatest movies of all time.  To me, it was an above average action film that certainly impressed me with it’s creativity and craft, but not much else.  For me, I found it a bit light on story, or at least lacking in a story that I could latch onto and make me want to revisit it countless times after.  So, heading into Furiosa, my expectations were certainly not low, but were also hedge a bit, and after seeing the movie, I’d say that it hit about where I thought it would.  Just like Fury Road, I found it to be an impressively mounted and fairly entertaining movie, but nothing that is going to stand out to me as a masterpiece of cinema either.  It is neither a step down from Fury Road, nor does it exceed expectations.  It accomplished what it needed to do and nothing more.

It will be interesting to see the overall reactions that will follow this movie.  I imagine most people will react to it the same way that they did with Fury Road, because if there is one thing that George Miller certainly hasn’t lost his touch with it’s his ability to film an engaging action sequence.  But, there may be many out there that will come away disappointed and that’s solely because they hold Fury Road in such high regard and expected too much out of this follow-up.  One thing that may drive some of the division on this movie is that it is very much a different kind of movie than Fury Road.  Fury Road by all accounts is one long action sequence stretched across the entire length of the movie, which was the most thrilling aspect of the movie for many people, but for others like me it was what made the story feel a little flimsy.  In this regard, I feel like Furiosa improved on it’s predecessor a bit, because here we actually get a deeper storyline that actually explores the world of the Wasteland much more, including telling us more about the cultures that have formed in this dystopian world.  There are still some impressively mounted action set pieces, but they are supported by more character developing moments.  We even get more involved back stories with Fury Road characters like Immortan Joe and his followers, making them much more interesting as a result.  Though strangely enough, while so much more of the world gets richer detail in Furiosa, the main character herself kind of gets overlooked in the story.  I feel like George Miller used all of his best character development for Furiosa in Fury Road, and gives little to work with in this film.  She really has nothing more to her character than just acting tough and being a survivor.  We know her motivations, but Miller doesn’t give us any time to see what’s going on inside her mind; at least not as much in this film as he did with Fury Road.

Despite the lack of character in the way that Furiosa is written, she still manages to make an engaging protagonist thanks to Anya-Taylor Joy’s intense performance.  She certainly has big shoes to fill, as Charlize Theron was so iconic in the role.  But what makes Ms. Joy’s performance work so well is how she acts non-verbally in the movie.  Furiosa is actually a character of very few words in the movie, but with the expressions that Joy can deliver through her very expressive face, as well as cold-dead stares through those large distinctive eyes, she makes Furiosa a very intimidating presence.  She also holds her own in much of the film’s complex action set pieces.  You can tell this was a demanding role for her physically, even with the aid of stunt performers.  Going back to the early days of Mad Max, Miller always wanted his actors to be as involved in the action as much as possible, from Mel Gibson all the way up to Tom Hardy.  It’s a testament to Anya-Taylor Joy that she does as much on-screen stunts as she does on this film.  She also is backed up by an excellent ensemble of the best Aussie character actors in the business, many of whom have been in George Miller’s circle for years and have appeared in a number of his other movies.  Credit certainly is due to Lachy Hulme who took over the iconic role of Immortan Joe from the late Hugh Keays-Byrne, and doesn’t miss a beat.  But, the whole film truly belongs to Chris Hemsworth who creates a scene-stealling iconic performance as the villainous Dementus.  He delivers one of the most cartoonish villains in recent memory and he is just a blast to watch through the entire film.  It seemed like George Miller just told him to ratchet up Chris’ Australian accent to 1000% and he went to Crocodile Dundee and beyond.  Dementus is such a great character to watch and Hemsworth’s performance is worth the price of admission alone.

One other thing that I liked about this movie is that Miller is expanding upon the world that he has built for this franchise.  His Wasteland feels even bigger and more epic than we’ve ever seen before.  We do revisit the iconic location of The Citadel from Fury Road, which we see slightly more of in this movie.  But, Miller also finally shows us locations that were hinted at in the previous movie, but are now fully realized here in Furiosa.  In this movie, we finally see Gastown and the Bullet Farm, which are incredible set pieces in their own right. They also help to give the film a grander sense of scale that seems to find George Miller at his most ambitious level to date.  Fury Road was certainly big, but not particularly expansive in it’s world building.  The one thing that I do think Fury Road does have over Furiosa is that the action sequences had a bit more authenticity to them.  There was a lot of DIY action filmmaking going on in Fury Road, with the film accomplishing a lot in camera.  In Furiosa, in order to create this more expansive view of the world, Miller also makes more use of CGI to create the action set pieces.  Most of it still looks good, but you do still lose some of that remarkable practicality in the process.  I do like however the way that Miller’s style comes through in the editing of the film.  There are several moments where Miller will suddenly speed up the film itself on certain shots, which creates this fun disorienting effect.  He uses this a lot especially with zoom in on his characters when they are behind the driver’s seat of the the many different hot rod vehicles in the film.  It’s something that he carried over from Fury Road, and it’s nice to see it still being utilized well here.  It definitely shows that Miller has a lot of trust in his crew, as many of them are returning from their work on Fury Road, including Oscar winners like costume designer Jenny Beavan, production designers Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson, as well as the nominated Visual Effects team and composer Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL), all of whom once again deliver the goods here.  Even while a lot of things still look and feel the same, I do appreciate that this movie is not simple retread of the Fury Road formula.  Many people returned to work with George Miller again on this film, but they also did their best to add something new to the mix too.

Overall, like Fury Road there is a lot to admire about Furiosa, but it also doesn’t rise to the level of all time greats, at least in my opinion.  In general, I see Furiosa as a slight improvement, but it’s also a movie that feels less focused than it’s predecessor.  Furiosa comes pretty close to feeling a bit bloated at times with it’s lengthy 2 1/2 hour run time, making it by far the longest movie in the franchise.  Fury Road’s story may not have been a deep one, but it was a tightly constructed 2 hour story.  At the same time, I do appreciate that George Miller uses that extra time to give us a bigger scope of the world itself.  There are some spectacularly mounted sequences in this movie that Miller gives the right amount of time to.   The movie also features one of my favorite villainous characters in quite a while with Chris Hemsworth’s gloriously demented role as Dementus. Again, the movie is worth seeing just for him alone.  Anya-Taylor Joy does a pretty great job too in the title role, though I feel like the best Furiosa moments still belong with Charlize’s performance in Fury Road.  While it may not be what I consider to be the peak of action filmmaking (honestly I’ve been more impressed recently with the John Wick and Dune movies in that regard) it is still something that I would recommend seeing, just for the big screen spectacle of it all.  If you were a huge Fury Road fan, I would imagine that this film will deliver what you’re looking for.  Just don’t go in expecting the same kind of movie.  Furiosa is a different animal of a movie, one focused more on character and world-building than action set pieces, so hedge your expectations around that.  For me, it delivered about what I was expecting.  For a more lukewarm appreciator of the Mad Max franchise, I generally was pleased by what I saw, but it’s not going to be one of those movies that I’m going to necessarily revisit over and over again.  But one thing that I do find enormously impressive is that at the age of 79, George Miller is still delivering massively entertaining action films on this kind of scale without losing any of his edge.  He’s continuing to hold action film-making to a high standard, and even teaching the younger generation a thing or two.  For a veteran filmmaker like him, it’s inspiring to see him continue to be a fury road warrior at a time when most other filmmakers fall off into the far horizon.

Rating: 8/10

The Planet of the Apes franchise has had one of the most interesting histories in Hollywood.  When the original 1968 film that launched the series first premiered, it was heralded as a landmark in science fiction, famous for it’s groundbreaking make-up turning human actors into simian characters as well as it’s infamous twist ending.  But, what was groundbreaking in it’s time would lose it’s luster the longer the series went on.  The studio behind the Apes franchise, 20th Century Fox, continued to release more movies throughout the 70’s, and each one saw diminishing returns and dwindling budgets, before ultimately being shelved after the mediocre box office of the fifth movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).  As the films began to feel antiquated in the blockbuster era that followed, Planet of the Apes became something of a punchline of how not to make a science fiction movie.  But the original film remained an untouchable classic to many, and it would remain an influential film for a new crop of filmmakers coming into Hollywood.  One such filmmaker, the visionary Tim Burton, tried to give the Planet of the Apes franchise a refresh in 2001.  Unfortunately, despite having some fairly impressive and more realistic looking make-up for his cast, Burton’s remake couldn’t hold a candle to the legacy of the original.  It would take another decade before there was another serious attempt at bringing the franchise back to it’s former glory.  With the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Fox managed to find renewed life in the series with a much more effective tool at their disposable; motion capture computer imaging.  The technology could effectively mimic an actors performance into a CGI sculpted model and have that digital creation feel authentically lifelike.  The rubber masks of the old Planet of the Apes were now obsolete, because an actor could now embody their characters fully within the skin of a real looking ape.

Of course, it also mattered who was in the digital monkey suit.  One of the reasons why the newer Planet of the Apes movies worked as well as they did is because they featured a standout performance from an actor who has made his whole career through excelling in motion capture performances.  Andy Serkis, who had also famously brought the creature Gollum to amazing life in The Lord of the Rings trilogy through the same motion capture process, helped to push the boundaries of this technology even further.  Each film in the most recent batch of Apes movies keeps improving on the technology to where the seams between the digital characters and the live action environments are pretty much seamless, and Andy Serkis is so comfortable performing with the technology that every subtle gesture gets perfectly translated.  And it helps that the story and characters are compelling enough to get us invested in the movie’s narrative.  For Andy Serkis, he couldn’t have asked for a better character to embody than the ape Caesar.  While Rise certainly laid the groundwork for a strong return of the franchise, it wasn’t really until director Matt Reeves took the helm that the franchise found it’s core strength and achieved it’s greatest success.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) were critically acclaimed epic adventures that really showed off the potential that this franchise had long promised.  With Serkis’ passionate performance, outstanding visual effects work, and intense action film-making, the Caesar Trilogy as it is now called has helped to bring Planet of the Apes  back to the high place it once had in the annals of great science fiction.  But, the Caesar trilogy also was a story with a definitive end, as the franchise also put to rest it’s central character in War with a heartfelt heroes exit.  For the franchise to continue, things were going to have to start fresh, especially after the Fox/Disney merger has shaken up things even more.  Still, 20th Century Studios knows the value of one of the marquee franchises, and a new era begins this weekend with the release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes takes place many generations into the future.  The remnants of human civilization have been reclaimed by nature, and the memory of Caesar has now evolved into the legend of Caesar.  Various tribes of Ape cultures now roam the planet, all with their own customs and beliefs that guide their internal societies.  We meet a young ape named Noa (Owen Teague) who belongs to a tribe of apes that have trained and domesticated eagles.  As part of a rite of passage, Noa must care for an unhatched eagle egg, but through an accident he has ended up smashing the one that was in his care.  Hoping to retrieve a replacement, Noa leaves his village in the middle of the night.  But on his way to the nesting grounds, he stumbles upon an ambush from another ape tribe, who are heading for his village.  He returns to find his home set afire and his whole family taken away as hostages.  With nothing left, Noa leaves his smoldering village behind to track down the marauding apes in hopes of rescuing the rest of his family.  Out in the wild, he stumbles upon the encampment of an old sage ape named Raka (Peter Macon), who devotes his life to spreading the teachings of Caesar to any civilized ape society that he can.  He agrees to help Noa on his quest, using his knowledge of the wider world to give them a better sense of where they must travel.  On the road, they discover that they are being followed by a human girl (Freya Allan).  Roka names the girl Nova, as he does for all humans, and Noa observes that she is smarter than most of the other humans that he has encountered.  Human kind has turned feral after the same virus that gave apes intelligence also took away their ability to speak, but Nova seems more aware of what the apes are saying to one another.  The trio of travelers soon find where Noa’s tribe has been taken.  They are being held at a makeshift fortress made out of old tanker ships, which is lorded over by a tyrannical ape lord named Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who keeps an intelligent human companion by his side named Trevathan (William H. Macy).  Can Noa save his family and stop Proximus from seeking more ultimate power as the ape lord attempts to open up an ancient human bunker?

One of the smart things that this movie does is that it doesn’t try to give you too much homework to digest upfront.  If you have never seen any Planet of the Apes movie before this, you’ll be able to catch on pretty quickly.  This is a complete refresh of the franchise, putting it somewhere in between the Caesar era where the origins of the Planet of the Apes started from and the far futuristic era of the original classic, allowing this movie to exist as it’s own thing.  Sure, if you have followed along with the franchise from the beginning, there are plenty of legacy call outs in the movie that will be fun Easter eggs for longtime fans, but they never take away from the story that this one is telling.  And as far as both a continuation of what’s come before as well as a kick off for what’s to come next, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes does an excellent job accomplishing it’s mission.  What I especially love about this movie is the world building.  Director Wes Ball previously worked on the Maze Runner series, and despite what you may think about the storytelling of those YA adaptations, the one thing that Ball does excel at is giving his worlds a very lived in feel.  In particular, he is excellent at blending the natural world with a mechanical one.  Here, this style is used effectively to convey a world where human civilization has fallen and all the infrastructure that we left behind has turned into ruin.  The way that Ball visualizes this is striking, with things like skyscrapers and bridges appearing as these silent sentinels in dense jungles the same way that we view the Mayan temples and the Pyramids of Giza today.  A lot of it is subtly placed in many scenes, as what looks like a cliff face at first glance reveals itself to be the wall of what once was a tall building.  The mix of the natural world and the crumbling remains of the modern world is effectively immersive in this movie and the overall effect helps to make the story all the more engaging.  It does make me excited about what director Wes Ball has next for us, as his next project will be a live action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda video game series; a job that I believe he is well suited for given what he has done here.

The film’s narrative is also effectively told, if at times a bit predictable.  One thing that I do like is that the movie keeps the focus small, even though the setting is epic.  Like the Caesar movies before it, Kingdom doesn’t try to telling a grander, global story and instead focuses on the the journey that our central characters take.  The previous films gave us a sense of the greater world conflict through just the eyes of Caesar, and this movie does the same with Noa.  It is ultimately his story, and the movie works best when it allows the world to unfold through his experience.  What I thought was especially surprising in this movie was the fact that it had some interesting things to say about religion.  We see both the good and the bad influences that religion can have on a society, especially one that is still in it’s infancy like those of the apes.  In this movie, Caesar has become something of a Christ figure to the apes, and their attempts at proto civilizations on the foundations of their newly enlightened consciousness seem to circle around their creation of a new faith.  In some cases, there are apes like Roka who take the teachings of Caesar and try to use them to seek peaceful ways of life.  Then there are others like Proximus who use the name and words of Caesar to justify his own evil deeds.  You can see the hallmarks of early Christianity in these different followers of Caesar, and I thought that it offered a very interesting subtext to the movie.  It also plays well into Noa’s story, as his journey begins without him being aware of this new religion to begin with.  By movie’s end, he soon learns that the apes view much of Caesar’s example through his own growth as a leader.  The movie also delivers this subtly, as it doesn’t try to hit you over the head with any obvious Christ allegory.  This is still a Planet of the Apes movie after all, and most of the film still centered around a lot of action, which can sometimes feel like overkill as it’s just adding more run time.  Still, allegory has also been a trademark of the Apes franchise, so it is still in character for the franchise.

With the story starting fresh, it is definitely important to create engaging characters for us to follow along with.  The issue that this movie had to overcome was that it was going to be missing the character of Caesar, who has been one of the most captivating characters in recent cinema history.  Andy Serkis also set a high bar when it comes to how to act through motion capture, as his performance was so nuanced and powerful even through the CGI transfer.  Thankfully, the cast of this movie manages to rise to the challenge.  It really shows how far this motion capture technology has advanced to where the filmmakers can confidently fill nearly all the roles with actors performing through CGI avatars.  As the newer Planet of the Apes movies have come along, the ratio of live action to motion capture characters has completely flipped.  Now the humans are greatly outnumbered by the apes, with only two major roles given to the humans this time around.  The most daunting assignment was to have a character to stand out in the place of Caesar as the new protagonist.  Thankfully, Noa is a compelling enough character to carry this movie.  It helps that he’s a bit more juvenile than Caesar was, only just reaching manhood and not as confident in his abilities from the start.  He’s a character with a lot of room to grow and that he does throughout the movie.  Owen Teague also does a fine job of making him a well rounded character as a result, and he perfectly picks up from where Andy Serkis left off in creating that balance between simian and human.  Peter Macon also brings some wonderful levity into the story as Raka, the one character who’s able to bring optimism and humor into an otherwise bleak world.  And though he doesn’t factor in until late into the movie, Kevin Durand is an effective menacing presence as Proximus.  Sadly it’s the human characters that feel the least fleshed out.  Freya Allan does the best she can as the human girl Nova, and she does convincingly shares her scenes with her digital co-stars, but the script sadly makes her character a bit too much of an enigma.

The film’s visual are also impressively realized.  I already talked a bunch about the world-building, but the reason why it works so well is because the film balances it’s visual and practical effects to perfection.  The practical elements work because there are actual actors interacting in natural environments.  The motion capture technology allows for actors to still perform their scenes on set with special tracking suits, and the technology has improved to the point where they can actually do this effect outdoors without the need for a controlled digital environment.  That’s why these Planet of the Apes movies have been the best showcase for this technology, because it’s been the best testing ground for every new challenge for the digital artists.  The CGI models for the apes are also becoming more impressive with each movie.  At times, even in fully sunlit scenes, the ape characters hold up really well and maintain their integrity to the point where you really believe that they are there.  The visual effects also do a great job of giving this movie an epic feel.  This movie definitely feel like the grandest we’ve seen so far in this series, and this is a movie that demands being seen on the biggest screen possible.  There’s also a lot of other things to like about the presentation of the movie, including the musical score.  Longtime Planet of the Apes fans will appreciate the call backs to past musical scores in the franchise, including an especially noticeable reference to the original film’s theme written by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith.  The new composer John Paesano clearly is familiar with the soundscape of this franchise, and this is one of the most ambitious sounding scores we have heard yet.  Overall, it elevates the Planet of the Apes  into a different register, and it’s a clear sign of the new direction that the series wants to take in the future, going from the camp of the original movies, to the grittiness of the Caesar Trilogy, to what is likely going to be a more epic adventure in what is anticipated to be a whole new trilogy.

Regardless of where the franchise goes next, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still a great stand alone movie on it’s own that both honors it’s legacy but also lays the groundwork for something special yet to come.  It shows that this half century old franchise still has a few tricks up it’s sleeve left to play.  What has really worked to the franchises favor is it’s embrace and practical use of motion capture technology.  The series knows how to make the best use of this tool by having it be no more than just the extension of the actors performance.  If the character and the actors portraying them weren’t compelling, no one would care and it would be just a gimmick.  But actors like Andy Serkis have shown that you can not only give a captivating performance through motion capture, you can even make it Oscar worthy, and it’s characters like Caesar that have proven how best to work with this kind of technology.  Kingdom shows us that we can now fill a whole cast of characters with actors performing through this technique, and that indicates some very promising new horizons that could be possible in the future for cinema.  Even still, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still a worthy addition to this long running franchise, and it is well worth seeing, especially on a big screen.  It’s lush world building and surprisingly philosophical story also make it a richer film experience than you would expect.  It may not consistently reach the emotional heights as some of the Caesar Trilogy movies, but there are still plenty of exciting and memorable moments to help make this more than just your average popcorn flick.  I certainly am excited to see where the series goes from here.  Will it actually dove tail into the events of the original classic? Imagine if all of this is going on while Charlton Heston’s astronaut is still lost in deep space.  I’m happy that this movie is dependent on trying to tie all the lore together, but rather is more interested creating new bits of lore to expand upon.  In any case, we have an exciting future to look forward to with this new chapter in the Apes franchise and Kingdom is an adventure worth taking this summer at the movies.

Rating: 8/10