When James Cameron became “king of the world” with his astronomical success making the movie Titanic (1997), many wondered what he would do for a follow-up.  Well, he did have an idea about what he wanted to do next, but we wouldn’t know what that would be for another 12 years.  Even before Titanic, Cameron had a seed of an idea for a movie set on an alien world very much like Earth, but with it’s natural beauty still unmarked by mankind.  It would be a world populated by creatures unlike anything we had ever seen on the big screen before, with a blue skinned tribal race known as the Na’vi being the most advanced civilization on this alien world.  With Titanic providing him with the capital to get anything he wanted to make in Hollywood greenlit, he decided that this would be his next project.  The only thing was, visual effects had not advanced to the level needed for what he envisioned.  He didn’t want his Na’vi characters to be simple computer animated creatures; he wanted them to have the full expressive range that a real physical actor could bring.  Motion capture technology made it possible for Cameron to bring his vision to reality, and he went to the digital artist who made that leap forward in visual effects possible to bring them on board to realize that vision.  The folks at Weta Digital, the Oscar winning team behind The Lord of the Rings, were now tasked with helping to push motion capture to the next level.  Cameron, as we have seen, is a patient man and he will not execute his vision unless he knows he has the tools necessary to make it happen.  It would be a process that would go on for a decade, but eventually James Cameron got to the point where he was satisfied with the results.  He was now able to get his actors’ performances to shine through with these digitally rendered puppets, and he had the confidence to finally get his vision on the big screen.  The movie, Avatar (2009) as it would be called, hit theaters in the same holiday time window that Titanic opened in, and while it started off with modest box office, it remarkably kept bringing in people week after week until Cameron managed to top his own record and have the highest grossing film of all time, 12 years after he did the same feat with Titanic.

Of course, after you’ve managed to take the box office crown twice in your lifetime, people are going to wonder if you could do it again.  James Cameron did have plans, but they would still remain in the Avatar world that he created.  In fact, he had ideas for as many as four more Avatar films.  People expected that he would quickly try to get another Avatar film out soon after the first, but it wouldn’t be that simple.  Ever the perfectionist, Cameron was not ready to dive back into the world of Avatar until he felt he was confident that he could pull it off.  With the first film, the challenge was in perfecting the look of the Na’vi characters.  For his next film, Cameron wanted to explore a different environmental setting within that same world of the first movie; one set around a lot of water.  Creating water in a digital environment had been tricky.  The way water physics work has been difficult to simulate with computer animation.  In most films up to that point, water effects often looked either plastic-y or were only possible with live action mattes.  For someone like James Cameron, who has spent a good portion of his adult life in and around water, both as the director of Titanic and as a deep sea explorer, he had a particular high standard for how water should look, and digital effects needed some extra time to advance to get to the point where it met his high standard.  But, the team at Weta Digital managed to finally crack that nut after another decade of work, and Cameron was finally able to get rolling on his next Avatar film, with a release date now a whole 13 years after the last one.  Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) had a lot to prove.  It had been so long since the last Avatar.  Would audiences still care?  It turns out they did.  The Way of Water performed at the box office nearly identical to how the original did, and while it didn’t achieve the same height at the box office, it came pretty close.  But, audiences wouldn’t have to suffer through another decade long wait for another Avatar.  Cameron planned to shoot two of these Avatar sequels back to back, utilizing the same crew and cast, and developing the visual effects in tandem.  So, only three years after the last one, we now have Avatar: Fire and Ash coming to theaters.  The only question is, can James Cameron do it again?

Avatar: Fire and Ash picks up right after the events of Way of Water.  Jake Sulley (Sam Worthington) and his family are still reeling from the loss of their eldest son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in their last battle with the human beings they call the Sky People.  Jake’s wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is particularly taking the loss very harshly, and has isolated herself from the others.  But their time of peace proves to be shortlived.  The human boy who lives with the Sulley family named Spider (Jack Champion) is running low on batteries for his oxygen mask, the thing that helps him to breathe because of the toxicity of the Pandoran atmosphere to human beings.  The Sulleys decide that it is safer for Spider to return to the research base where he was born, because they’ll have the supplies he needs to survive.  They say goodbye for now to the Metkayina clan that has protected them, including their Chief Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), and set out on their journey.  Unfortunately on their way, they are ambushed by a clan of volcano-dwelling Na’vi known as the Mangkwan, who are led by their blood-thirsty queen Varang (Oona Chaplin).  The skirmish ends up splitting the family up.  Neytiri becomes wounded but escapes.  Jake Sulley ends up getting captured by an old adversary, Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who keeps defying death and remains determined to destroy Jake and his family.  The children of the family try to remain hidden in the forests of Pandora, led by the now oldest son Lo’ak (Britain Dalton).  Unfortunately for them, Spider’s mask starts to malfunction, nearly out of juice.  The adopted Sully daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) uses her connection with the spirits of the natural world to try something to save Spider.  Miraculously, she manages to save him, and he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask.  This causes profound curiosity amongst both Na’vi and human alike.  What does it mean for Pandora and the Na’vi now that there is a way for the humans to freely breathe their air, and why was Spider saved by the goddess Eywa in this way and for what purpose?

There’s one thing going into any of the Avatar films that we all seem to understand, and that is that these movies are far more about spectacle than substance.  James Cameron is unequalled when it comes to crafting spectacle.  It is quite remarkable that even 3 movies into this series, he’s still able to create a sense of awe and wonder for his audience.  There is indeed a lot to admire with Avatar: Fire and Ash.  I for one still love the fact that Cameron allows for the movies to take their time, allowing us the chance to be immersed in this world.  The dedication to world building is incredible, and that is likely what Cameron loves most of all about making these movies.  He wants to make us all believe that Pandora is a living breathing world with sights and sounds unlike anything seen on the big screen before.  But, the Avatar movies also have the same weaknesses that most of Cameron’s other films have and that’s the story and writing itself.  Cameron, ever the perfectionist, is committed to putting his voice throughout all his movies, and that includes writing the screenplay.  While Cameron remains strong in plotting his movies (very few of his films ever feel like they drag) he unfortunately still proves to be very amateurish when it comes to dialogue, and Fire and Ash is no exception.  James Cameron is corny and prone to cliché, and his characters often feel more like archetypes than actual people.  While he can from time to time come up with a clever line, most of his films still show their weakness in the dialogue.  This was true even with his Oscar-winning Titanic.  While Fire and Ash continues Cameron’s trend of sophomoric level dialogue (just count how many times they say ‘bro’ in the movie), the movie thankfully still attains the director’s high level of visual storytelling.  The movie does soar when it’s using the mood and setting to tell part of the story.  There are some especially interesting uses of eclipses in this film, which provides some very striking visuals.

There’s one other issue that plagues this movie as well.  When Avatar came out 16 years ago, it stood out because it was unlike anything we had seen before.  The Way of Water managed to overcome the sophomore slump because it came out so long after the first one that it made us the audience feel like we were rediscovering the world of Pandora again because of that long absence.  Fire and Ash doesn’t have that benefit of re-discovery, because it’s getting released after a relatively short 3 year gap.  One thing that Cameron could have done with this movie to help make it feel new and fresh was to allow us to see a whole other biome of Pandora and spend most of the film there, making it distinct from the visuals of the other movies.  For a while, it looked like that’s what Cameron was about to do, given how prominently the character of Varang and her tribe or Ash Na’vi featured in the marketing of this movie.  But, alas, we only spend a brief time with her clan in their home environment, on the slopes of an active volcano.  It would’ve been very exciting to have used this ash covered wasteland as a key battleground within the story, but sadly that’s not what we get.  Instead, this story chooses to re-tread most of the same locations we saw before in the series; the forests and the oceans of Pandora.  It all makes Fire and Ash feel less like it’s own movie and more like The Way of Water Part II.  It’s also sad that even with a 3 hour and 17 minute run time (the longest so far in the series) the story still doesn’t feel like it advances that much more than Way of Water did.  At least Cameron keeps things active, so it’s not a dull three hours.  But, this is the first film in this series where I feel like the novelty is clearly wearing thin.  If James Cameron says there are still 2 more films to go in this series, he needs to shake things up big time from here out because otherwise audiences are going to stop caring.

At this point, it’s the visuals that are carrying the series more than anything else.  I feel like I got the most out of the experience based on my choice of presentation.  In a select few IMAX theaters nationwide, not only are audiences able to see the film projected in 3D, but also at a high frame rate.  The high frame rate craze never really took off in the 2010’s, with it quickly fizzling out after the mixed reactions from the Hobbit trilogy’s usage of the format. 3D as well has been in a steady decline over the years.  But, James Cameron is still choosing to present his Avatar movies with these gimmicks still a part of the experience, and strangely enough it actually kind of works.  The high frame rate does take some getting used to, but over time it actually looks quite good.  I think it has to do with the fact that the majority of the movie features digital animation (whether it’s the environment or the actor’s motion capture performances) which looks better in a higher frame rate than live action.  And without a doubt, the Avatar movies feature the best uses of 3D photography ever put on screen.  It helps that Cameron made these movies with high frame rate 3D in mind, and crafted his movies to better integrate the gimmicks into the experience.  One of the best uses of the formats is a scene when Quaritch meet with Varang, and she gives him a powerful hallucinagenic drug to allow her to read his mind.  Cameron allows us to see from Quaritch’s POV in this scene, so we get the full hallucinagenic experience, which looks wild in 3D and with the smoothness of the high frame rate.  While we aren’t seeing the giant leap forwards in visual effects that the first two films represented, the Weta Digital team still delivers some incredible visual treats throughout the film, and it’s good to see this legendary visual effects studio continue to push the limits thanks to the challenge of keeping up with James Cameron’s vision.  Even if you are unable to see this movie in the ideal High Frame Rate IMAX 3D experience, you’ll see be amazed by the imaginative things that Cameron and company came up with for this third chapter.

The movie does also benefit from a committed cast of actors who over time have gotten better working with the motion capture technology over these last 16 years.  Zoe Saldana still remains the MVP of the series.  While Neytiri takes a bit of a back seat in the plot of this movie, Zoe nevertheless still shines in every moment she appears on screen.  Sam Worthington also seems to improve his portrayal of Jake Sully with every new film.  Starting off as pretty wooden in the first film, he has managed to become more forceful with his portrayal in the these last two.  He’s also becoming more flawless with that American accent, to the point where you can’t even hear any trace of his natural Australian accent anymore.  But, much like with many other space fantasy films, it’s the villains that become the favorites.  Stephen Lang returns again as the primary antagonist Colonel Quaritch, and he still is a blast to watch with his scenery chewing performance.  But, the best thing about his role here is that they paired him with another equally fascinating villain to work off of.  Oona Chaplin is easily the best new member of this cast, delivering a delightfully deranged and venomous performance as Varang.  She is a very compelling villainess, and she brings an incredible, sinister presence into the movie.  I also love the unique design of her outfit too, with the mix of blacks and reds making her feel all the more twisted.  The best part is also how well she works off of Stephen Lang’s performance as the Colonel, making their scenes together all the more electrifying.  The downside of the cast in this movie is that Cameron perhaps has too many characters taking up space in the plot, to the point where some even get neglected despite there being 3 hours to tell the story.  The Sully’s youngest child Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) for instance is barely a presence at all throughout this story.  And some performances seem to suffer from that lack of focus.  I still find Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Kiri to be a little off.  It’s distracting when you are listening to a older aged woman attempting to play a teenager.  It’s clear that James Cameron and the actors love these characters, but it also feels like the movies are not doing them justice either with it’s odd choices in pacing and stilted, unnatural dialogue.

In the end, my feelings about Avatar: Fire and Ash are pretty much the same with regards to how I felt about the other two Avatar films; that they are good but fall short of being great.  There are many times throughout this franchise where I do feel James Cameron coming very close to achieving greatness with these movies.  But, then he’ll drop the ball by falling back on clichés and making his characters deliver some pretty clunky dialogue.  In comparison, I believe that Fire and Ash falls a bit short of The Way of Water, mainly because so much of it feels like a retread.  But, at the same time, I like both of the sequels better than the original.  As flawed as these sequels are, I still feel the ambition behind them, and Cameron is working with a full deck of spectacle that is far ahead of what we had seen in the original.  It’s quite a feat to make these two, 3 hour long epics feel like they breeze by.  Truth be told, I was feeling the movie drag in it’s last hour, especially with a battle scene that felt like it went on a beat too long, but it never got me to the point where I was checking my watch, hoping it would be over soon.  I feel like this movie is unlikely to sway audiences one way or another.  People who hated the other two will like hate this one as well, while people who loved the other movies will get exactly what they want with this new film.  I for one liked revisiting this beautifully realized alien world on the big screen once again, but I feel like the novelty has worn off as well and it’s time for James Cameron to start reconsidering where he should go with the next film.  It’s not enough to keep making the same style of movie over again.  There is potential to be mined here in the world of Avatar; like say taking us to a completely new location on Pandora, like maybe a desert or the frozen polar regions.  Avatar needs variety to help make us care about returning to these worlds.  That’s the thing that I felt was lacking the most with this new release.  At the same time, I was mostly having a good time watching the flick, because Cameron can still deliver some exhilarating action sequences.  We’ll see what the future holds for this record-shattering franchise as James Cameron maps out his final two chapters and whatever lies beyond.  For what it’s worth, he did manage to do it again, but again merely means making almost the same movie as the other two, and we’ll see if that’s enough to set a fire to the box office again.

Rating: 7/10

Animation is in a weird fluctuation state right now, where what worked in the past doesn’t seem to be sure bets anymore.  The last 20 years in animation has been dominated largely by the trifecta of Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks, all of whom have built their brands on the strength of their innovation and storytelling through computer animation.  But, the computer animation craze seems to have died out, as the artform no longer has the novelty it once had.  Animated movies are still being made with computers, but they no longer look like computer animation.  Now films are being made that blend 3D computer animation with what looks like traditional hand drawn artwork.  Sony Animation Studios has been leading this shift in the animation industry with their innovative work on the Spiderverse movies, as well as their breakout hit KPOP Demon Hunters (2025) this year.  We are also seeing small independent studios adopting this new look in animation as well, including this last year’s Oscar winning entry from the nation of Latvia called Flow (2024).  And the bigger animation giants are seeing the results of this shift as their own film have been losing audience interest to newcomers.  This has been effecting original films from the big studios more than anything.  Pixar, which previously had one of the strongest track records of any animation studio in the world, has recently been struggling getting audiences to come see their new original films, like Elemental (2023) and Elio (2025).  Elio became the first non pandemic effected film by Pixar to not turn a profit in it’s theatrical run.  But even while these newer, original films struggle, we are also seeing record breaking success with sequels to past animated classics.  Between Elemental and Elio, Pixar had it’s biggest hit ever with Inside Out 2 (2024), which shows us that the only way these traditional animation powers are able to stay on top at the moment is to capitalize on their past glories.

Pixar’s sister studio Walt Disney Animation is also experiencing this same kind of cycle.  After the release of Frozen II  (2019), Disney has seen all of their original films fall short of crossing the $100 million mark at the box office.  Sure, in the case of Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto (both 2021), they faced headwinds from the lingering effects of the pandemic, but even as audiences were returning to the theaters (especially for animated films) Disney still was struggling at the box office, with both Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023) both becoming big box office bombs.  So, what was Disney going to do to salvage their reputation at the box office?  The answer would come in capitalizing on their past wins.  During the 2010’s, Disney had a strong resurgence in box office fortune with a steady stream of hits that all were brand new stories.  Frozen (2013) certainly got the ball rolling, but they continued to build upon that success with movies that hit with both audiences and critics, such as Big Hero 6 (2014), Zootopia (2016) and Moana (2016).  And while the pandemic era threw a wrench into Disney’s plans at the turn of the decade, the popularity of these films only continued to grow.  What Disney saw with the launch of their streaming platform, Disney+, was dominant numbers being put up by these movies from the past decade.  Moana in fact is not just the most watched film on that platform, but one of the most streamed movies ever across all platforms, even beating out many Netflix titles in the same time frame.  So, with their original films struggling to find their audience, it was time to look back at what worked before and try to replicate it.  A Disney+ original Moana series was quickly reworked into a feature film, and even though critics found it to be a cheapened cash grab, the gamble still worked, and Disney Animation had it’s first billion dollar film in 5 years.  Unfortunately, this means that we are going to be in a period of sequelizing rather than taking a shot at making new and original films in animation when it comes to Disney and Pixar, because these are the only ones that are bring in the money right now.  We’ve already seen this work out for Moana 2 (2024), despite it being a quickly slapped together sequel.  Does Zootopia 2 manage to overcome it’s intentions as a cash grab and actually justify itself as a worthy follow-up to it’s predecessor?

The story of Zootopia 2 picks up right on the heels of the first film.  Police officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has finally earned the respect of her department as it’s first rabbit recruit after solving the case of 13 missing animals from the city.  Her accomplice in solving that crime, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) has also been accepted into the department and the duo have been assigned as partners in the Investigative division.  Unfortunately their different methods in solving crimes have led to some incidents that have gotten out of control, which has forced their superior Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) to declare a separation of their partnership, unless they seek counseling or voluntarily remove themselves from cases.  Despite Bogo’s warning, Judy is determined to follow up on the smuggling case they were just kicked off of.  It leads them to an elite party in the Tundra Town district of Zootopia, hosted by one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, The Lynxleys.  On display at the party is a historical artifact called the Lynxley Journal, which has the original plans and patent for the city’s weather walls.  While investigating, Nick and Judy catch a mysterious figure that has invaded the party.  The figure turns out to be snake, the first appearance of one in Zootopia for many years.  The snake makes off with the Journal, but when confronted by Judy, he reveals that snakes like him have been unfairly scapegoated by people like the Lynxleys and that the journal is the key to helping him return to his rightful home.  Judy seeks to learn more from the snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) but both her and Nick are threatened by the head of the Lynxley household Milton (David Strathairn), who commands great power in the city, with the support of his equally ruthless children Cattrick (Macaulay Culkin) and Kitty (Brenda Song), and less so from his black sheep son Pawbert (Andy Samberg).  The pursuit of the truth takes Judy and Nick deep into the less travelled sides of the city, including Marsh Market, where the duo recieves help from an eccentric beaver named Nibbles (Fortune Feimster).  Can they solve the mystery of Zootopia’s shady past and help the reptile population from being wiped out ever further by the Lynxley’s devious plans.

It’s not a huge surprise that Zootopia would get the sequel treatment, given that the story left things open for further adventures of Nick and Judy.  There’s a ton of justification for developing Zootopia into a franchise because the world of the film is so rich with detail that there is a lot to further explore.  The only question is, did they have the right kind of story to follow up the first.  For me personally, I had very high expectations for a Zootopia sequel.  The first film is easily my favorite animated film of the last decade, and it has a place on my list of the Top Ten Movies of the 2010’s, found here.  Suffice to say, even if the movie is very good, it still has to contend with a movie that I hold in very high regard.  So, how does Zootopia 2 contend?  While I do think it falls short of the original, there is still a lot to like about this movie.  What Zootopia 2 does really well is build upon the world created in the first movie.  One of the great things about the world of Zootopia is the way that animators put in all these details about how the society is built around the different shapes and sizes of the animals that inhabit it.  Animals big and small call Zootopia home, and the architecture reflects this mix, as the society accommodates all the different aspects of the animal kingdom while they live and work in a way that looks so much like human civilization.  Zootopia 2 continues this, and gives us a look at the parts of the city that went unexplored in the first film.  In particular, we get a better view of the parts of the city away from the city center, in what human society would consider the suburbs.  The movie also uses it’s animal puns well, including some blink and you’ll miss them ones, like “Gnu Jersey.”  I have a feeling that this movie will benefit from a lot of re-watches in order to catch all of the different details.  The movie knows it’s strengths and plays to them pretty well, allowing us to see more of the world while at the same time allowing it’s two charismatic leads, Nick and Judy, to carry us through it all.

The only thing that is lacking from the experience is the novelty of the original.  Zootopia was a genuine surprise when it first came out because I feel like a lot of people (including myself) weren’t expecting it to be as deep and thought-provoking as it turned out to be.  A lot of us came to Zootopia thinking it was just going to be a simple, harmless animated romp meant for the whole family.  What we were surprised to find was that Zootopia was actually a profound commentary about modern society with a shockingly poignant message about institutionalized racism and how it unfairly drives people apart.  Sure, the kids would still get all the funny little animal moments to be entertained by, but for the parents there was a thought-provoking subtext to it all that you really didn’t expect to find worked into a Disney cartoon.  That’s what helped to make Zootopia stand out so strongly when it first came out, and in the years since, it’s message has only become even more prescient.  Zootopia 2 doesn’t quite have that element of surprise, since you already know going in that there will be a message in there.  Not that the message is bad by any means.  Instead about being institutional racism woven into society, Zootopia 2 is more about red-lining and gentrification splitting generational communities apart, which in a way is just a branch off of the message of the first movie.  I do appreciate that the movie is still trying to say something about society, but it doesn’t have the same punch as the first film.  Also, the plot twists feel a tad too familiar compared to the first film.  At least this time, the antagonistic force is set up much earlier instead of feeling like an afterthought in the first movie.  We don’t have to wait until the third act to realize the Lynxley family are bad people.  But, most of the rest of the movie lacks the element of surprise that made the original film so shockingly refreshing.

One the things that hasn’t been lost between films is the perfect chemistry between the two leads.  Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are some of the best characters to come out of Disney Animation in recent years, and they continue to be endlessly engaging in this sequel.  Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman both return to these iconic roles, and haven’t missed a beat.  I’m still struck by how much heart Goodwin puts into her vocal performance, making Judy’s emotional moments feel genuinely profound, while also at the same time nailing the more comical moments as well with Judy’s bubbly personality.  And Jason Bateman again proves that his personality was perfectly suited for slick, wise-cracking fox.  A lot of the heart of this sequel still remains the remarkable chemistry between these two.  I really do wonder if there were scenes which they recorded together, because their banter feels so perfectly in sync.  If not, the film’s vocal directors deserve a lot of praise for making the back and forth of these characters feel so perfectly in tune.  There are a lot of returning favorites from the first movie, though a couple of them like Chief Bogo and Officer Clawhauser (Nate Torrence) get their screen time diminished significantly in favor of introducing a lot of new faces.  One of the chief newcomers is Gary De’Snake, whose the heart of the plot of this story.  Ke Huy Quan delivers a very heartfelt performance as the newcomer to this world.  Given that Quan’s own family came to America as refugees must make this portrayal of a displaced animal like Gary something very close to home for him.  One of my favorite new characters though is the new horse mayor of Zootopia named Mayor Winddancer, voiced by a scene-stealing Patrick Warburton, here in a new Disney character role 25 years after his first when he voiced Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000).  Also looking through the cast list of this movie you’re going to see a surprising amount of cameo voices from some pretty big names sprinkled throughout.  These include pro-wrestlers like CM Punk and Roman Raines playing “Ze-Bros,” or the real CEO of the Disney Company playing Bob Tiger.  It may be somewhat of a gimmick to give all of these cameos to big names, even if it’s just for one throw away line, but thankfully it doesn’t take away from the stand out performances of it’s lead actors.

Once again, the incredible design work of the animation team delivers some incredible visuals for us to enjoy in this film.  The movie sees the return of the original directors, Byron Howard and the newly promoted chief creative officer of Disney Animation Jared Bush, and they continue the same outlook over the world of Zootopia that they devoted to the first movie.  This time around, they get to showcase more of the city we haven’t seen, but still keep it familiar enough to feel like a natural extension of what we saw in the first movie.  We saw a little bit of Tundra Town in the first movie, but it was mostly limited to seeing an inner city environment in a deep freeze during the winter.  In this movie, Tundra Town is expanded out more, and the grounds around the Lynxley mansion has the feel of a ski resort after a winter storm.  There are also completely new places shown in this movie like Marsh Market, that definitely have a Deep South vibe to them.  The variety of animals are also incredibly realized.  One particular scene when Nick and Judy visit an underground hideout of reptiles shows just how much fun the filmmakers were having in using all of the characteristics we know about these animals get reworked into a human like behavior.  This film definitely has a more expansive scope to it than the first film, which largely stuck pretty close to the inner city.  You really get a sense of the scale of the city of Zootopia from this film, which includes not just urban centers, but mountain ranges and deserts as well.  It’s also great that we get a lot more of the lore of Zootopia in this city, particularly with regards to how it was all built.  The engineering of the weather walls becomes a crucial part of the plot, and in this movie we get a lot more detail about how it actually works.  For a lot of this movie, it does exactly what you want a good sequel to do which is to give you more; fleshing out ideas from the first movie and enriching it.  But, given the strength of the first movie and how it was so unexpectedly rich, I feel like it elevated it ahead of this one, which does the job right but doesn’t go any further than that.

As far as Disney animation sequels go, Zootopia 2 is undoubtedly one of the best ones.  It’s lightyears ahead of the travesty that was Frozen II and even though I liked Moana 2 better than most critics, I do recognize that it is a lot messier than the original film.  Zootopia 2 may fall short of it’s predecessor, but it still does enough to make it a worthy sequel.  I love the richness of the world it portrays and a lot of the new characters are a ton of fun to watch.  But, I doubt this movie is going to make my Best of the Decade list like the first film did, and it may miss out on my yearly list as well.  All that said, it’s still a film very much worth seeing; it just has the disadvantage of coming after a masterpiece.  Zootopia was going to be a hard act to follow no matter what.  It quite simply is one of the best animated films ever made; by Disney or anyone else.  I would say that it’s unfair to compare one with the other, but it was only a year ago where I saw Pixar follow up one of their best films with a sequel that surpassed it in almost every way, delivering one of the best best films ever with Inside Out 2.  Maybe I’m being a tad too critical because this sequel wasn’t as good as the original, but it’s only because the first Zootopia is still so fresh in my mind, and that affected my viewing of this film.  That said, it still is a worthy follow up to the sequel that doesn’t take anything away from the original and compliments it well.  No matter what I say, this is going to be another massive success for Disney Animation, giving them two wins in a row at the box office which they desperately needed.  I just hope that the success of Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 alongside Inside Out 2’s record breaking success doesn’t lead to a cycle of sequels for the foreseeable future.  It doesn’t bode well that we are getting another Toy Story next summer, and though I am still looking forward to that too, I just wish there was also news of more original films coming as well.  Disney and Pixar can’t just coast on sequels forever.  They need to find ways to improved their marketing of their fresh new films; and to also make them as good as they can be.  People do want to see new things; look at the buzz around KPOP Demon Hunters for example.  Disney has the talent to bring new, fresh ideas to reality; they just need to find ways to reconnect that desire to see new things from the audience to what they have being worked on in their studio.  Zootopia 2 is fun no matter what, but Disney needs to improve their game otherwise their output will just devolve over time into managing aging franchises.

Rating: 8/10

One can’t imagine a world in which we never had a story like The Wizard of Oz in our lives.  Since author L. Frank Baum wrote down his imaginative tome about the magical world of Oz and the little Kansas girl who found her way there, we have been collectively enchanted for generations, finding new and creative ways to bring Oz to life.  No other adaptation has had as deep an impact as the big screen MGM production in 1939; a technicolor masterpiece that has been declared the most watched movie in history.  The Wizard of Oz (1939) remains the gold standard for all adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s stories, particularly in the visual iconography it created.  But, that hasn’t stopped many other people from trying to put their own spin on the Oz mythos.  One of the more creative came in the 70’s, when the musical The Wiz premiered on the Broadway stage and infused the familiar story with contemporary African-American culture and music.  The musical would later be adapted into a movie by Sidney Lumet and starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.  But that wouldn’t be it for The Wizard of Oz on both the Broadway stage and on the big screen.  In 1995, writer Gregory Maguire wrote an alternate history version of Baum’s original tale, recounting the events of The Wizard of Oz, but from the point of view of it’s villain, the Wicked Witch of the West.  Maguire’s book used the Oz story to deconstruct the notion of evil in the stories we tell, and whether people are born wicked or are made to be wicked, and how stories often are used as weapons to villainize the wrong people.  It was a compelling re-imagining of the Oz narrative and that gained the attention of some key people in the musical theater world.  Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz had been wanting to do a musical themed around the Land of Oz and he was instantly drawn to Maguire’s book and found it to be a perfect subject for adaptation.  Working alongside stage book writer Winnie Holzman, Wicked was realized into a lavish, high spectacle musical in 2003, and it has been playing non-stop on the Broadway stage ever since, becoming one of the longest running and most profitable shows ever on the Great White Way.

With the enormous success of the Wicked stage show it was easy to think that a big screen musical adaptation would follow very soon after.  But, the show’s producer Marc Platt held off bringing it to the big screen for twenty years, despite the fact that Universal Pictures was involved in the development of the show for the stage.  Platt’s intention was to allow Wicked to have a full, uninterrupted run on the stage before bringing it too the screen.  People would be less inclined to pay $50-100 per showing for the stage show if they could buy a movie ticket for a fraction of that price or rent it for even less to watch at home.   The Broadway show needed to build up that following first, and thanks to it’s record success both in New York and through it’s worldwide touring company, Wicked didn’t wane over time; it just kept growing.  So, after 20 years of running on stage (minus the Covid shutdowns for one year) it was time to finally bring the hit musical to the big screen.  But, it was going to require the right team behind it.  Mark Platt and Universal ended up turning to director Jon M. Chu , who had come up through directing music videos for the likes of Justin Bieber and many other hip hop groups, but managed to find his biggest success as a film director with the hit film Crazy Rich Asians (2018).  He came into this project with a lot of experience behind him, but Wicked was going to be a much heftier undertaking than anything he had made before.  There was also controversy surrounding the casting of the two lead characters; Elphaba, the Wicked Witch and Glinda, the Good Witch.  A lot of fans of the show wanted to see the return of the show’s original stars, Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba, a role that won her a Tony Award, but it was decided by the production to tap new performers for the roles; in particular Tony Winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and recording artist Ariana Grande as Glinda.  Also controversial was the decision to break the musical up into two films, with a year long gap in between releases.  Despite the worries of many fans, Part 1 of Wicked (2024) premiered over the holiday season and became a smashing success, creating a lot of anticipation for it’s concluding chapter this year.  The only question is, does Wicked: For Good defy gravity, or does the yellow brick road lead to nowhere.

Some time has passed between Part One of Wicked and this second act of the story.  The first part of the tale showed us the start of the relationship at the heart of the story, that between Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda Upland (Ariana Grande).  Though they started out as rivals at the prestigious Shiz University of the Land of Oz, they found themselves becoming the closest of friends.  But, turmoil would once again test their friendship.  All across Oz, animal citizens continue to loose their rights to co-exist with the humans, leading many of them to be forced into cages which leads them to loosing their ability to speak.  Elphaba sees this injustice and becomes determined to help the animals that she sees being abused and scapegoated.  She believed that if she could make her case to the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) himself, he might be able to undo this injustice.  But unfortunately, upon arriving at the Emerald City, she finds out that not only is he complicit in the mistreatment of animals in Oz, but that he doesn’t have any magical power at all, and is just a con man trying to use her real magical abilities for his advantage.  Not only that, she also learns that the dean of her school, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) is also the master mind behind this deception, making her feel even more betrayed.  After standing up against the Wizard, Elphaba is labeled a traitor and a menace to Ozians through a propaganda campaign that paints her as a Wicked Witch.  She chooses to go into exile and acts to disrupt the Wizard’s regime through select attacks.  All the while, Glinda tries to keep up appearances as a Good Witch to counter the “threat” of the Wicked one, while at the same time trying to keep Elphaba’s true whereabouts hidden.  Glinda’s attempt to broker peace between Elphaba and the Wizard becomes increasingly difficult, and it drives a wedge between her and Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Baily), the captain of the Emerald City guards and her fiancée.  It turns out that Fiyero still has feelings for Elphaba, which also makes Glinda feel all the more betrayed by those she thought were her friends.  Is there hope that Elphaba and Glinda can bridge their differences once again and bring harmony to Oz, or are the betrayals too much to overcome?  And is it possible for Elphaba to be seen for the good that she does and not for the wickedness that the powerful have unjustly labeled her with?

For me personally, I came into the first Wicked movie completely cold.  I was familiar with the Broadway show, but I had never seen it performed live.  I also haven’t read the original Maguire novel it’s based on, so the only thing I brought with me going into the first movie was my knowledge of Oz lore from the original MGM classic.  I wasn’t expecting much, because I’ve had a particularly mixed experience with modern movie musicals based on hit Broadway shows.  Some have been pretty great over the years (Sweeny Todd, In the Heights, West Side Story) while others have been pretty dreadful (Les Miserables, Cats, Dear Evan Hansen).  Given how massive of a hit the show has been on the Broadway stage, I felt like there was no way they would be able to translate it successfully for the big screen, and splitting up the 2 1/2 stage show and blowing it up into a two part, 5 hour cinematic experience just spelt disaster.  So, color me pleasantly surprised when I walked out of the first part of Wicked having really enjoyed it.  I was pretty stunned by how well the movie ended up coming together.  The entire first film is longer than the whole of the Broadway show, running 160 minutes, and yet it never felt bloated or sagging.  It used it’s run time remarkably well, and it helped to immerse us the audience into this version of Oz which was incredibly imaginative and detailed.  The movie wound up winning very deserved Oscars for for it’s costumes and production design.  And Cynthia Erivo’s performance of the show’s signature song “Defying Gravity” was such a perfect high note to close the movie on and it really got me excited to watch the second film, which I’d have to wait a year for.  So, was it worth the wait.  Well, a lot of Broadway show fans will tell you that the musical peaks at “Defying Gravity” and the second half of the musical doesn’t quite match up with the first.  That’s true of the Broadway show, and sadly also true of the movie Wicked: For Good, but that doesn’t mean that the movie is bad; not at all.  It’s just not as good as it’s predecessor, and that flaw is not really a fault of the movie so much as a flaw built into the musical from the very start.  In order to be a faithful adaptation, Wicked had to take the bad along with the good.  One would have hoped that maybe the filmmakers would’ve found a work around to make the flaws of the stage show less of an issue here, but alas we see that they still made the translation to the big screen.

There’s still a lot of entertainment to be had here.  Jon M. Chu still proves to be a great stager of musical numbers.  One of the worries I had going into the first film was the fact that it was being directed by a man who cut his teeth as a director of musical videos.  I have long said that the MTV generation ruined movie musicals for a long time, because the prevailing style of quick edits that worked for snappy music videos on MTV did not translate well into musical adaptations for the cinema.  That’s why so many musicals over the last 20 or so years look so cheap, because the music video style just chops everything up in the edit and doesn’t allow for the musical numbers to really come alive.  You look at stage to screen musicals of the past like Oklahoma (1955) or The Music Man (1962), they relied on long takes that really showed off the incredible staging of the different musical numbers, immersing the audience the same way that the stage show would.  Thankfully, Jon M. Chu is not the kind of filmmaker to chop things up.  I think what helps is that in addition to directing music videos, he also directed concerts as well, and he was the creator of the choreography centered Step Up movies, so the man knows the importance of staging.  The musical numbers in Wicked are cinematic, but still feel true to their stage bound origins, and that remains true throughout both parts of the Wicked experience.  While none of the musical numbers here reach the epic heights of “Defying Gravity,” there’s still enough creativity in their staging to still make them feel immersive and visually pleasing.  There’s one particular number, a new original song for Glinda, that does some incredible things with mirrors that I thought really helped it to stand out in the movie.  Another highlight is the song “Wonderful” sung by Goldblum’s Wizard, which has some really great visual touches.  So, even while this is the lesser half of the narrative, there are still plenty of moments that will still enchant you while watching the movie.

I think one of the big issues that ends up hurting Wicked: For Good, which is a flaw inherent from the original show itself, is that it breaks up the heart of what made the first half so powerful, which is the chemistry between Elphaba and Glinda.  One of the best things about the Wicked movies is the absolutely perfect castings of the lead characters.  Cynthia Erivo of course has an angelic singing voice which made her a perfect candidate to fill Idina Menzel’s enormous shoes in the role of Elphaba.  But, she’s also a brilliant actor as well, bringing so much depth to this character.  And despite all of the naysayers who objected to her casting in the role, Ariana Grande has proven to be just as equally brilliant as Cynthia in her role as Glinda.  I would dare say that Ariana is the MVP of this whole endeavor, because so much of this movie rides on her ability to balance her performance between the silly comical aspects of Glinda’s character and the heavier emotional moments that she has to take very seriously.  So much of the movie relies on Cynthia and Ariana’s ability to work so harmoniously together and make this friendship the beating heart of the movie, and they pull it off magically.  It’s just unfortunate that they are apart for so much of Wicked: For Good.  The beautiful chemistry of these two actors is missing for a good chunk of the movie, and that unfortunately make a lot of the film feel like much of a drag.  But the highlights do come once they are finally sharing the screen again.  There’s an especially fun scene where Glinda tries to fight Elphaba one on one that is a hilarious high point in the film, and a much needed moment of levity in an otherwise darker second half.  Thankfully much of the returning supporting cast remain strong, though sadly with less to make them stand out.  Jeff Goldblum steals all of his scenes as the Wizard, strongly leaning into his own eccentric parody of himself, which matches the character well.  It’s also nice to see Michelle Yeoh really relishing her chance to play a villain, giving the character a nice menacing presence.  The one who unfortunately gets shorted the most in this second act is Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero.  He still has his moments here or there, but unfortunately the bulk of his character development and screen presence happened in Part One, so he more or less is just here to be a key supporting player.  It’s especially unfortunate since Part One showed off just how good of a musical performer he is.

The movie also does a great job of presenting such a rich, detailed version of the Land of Oz.  One of the best decisions that was made about the adaptation of this musical to big screen was splitting it up into two movies.  If the movie had adapted the story as it is from the stage production, it would have felt rushed and truncated on the big screen.  Making the whole thing a lavish 5 hour long production allows more space to really immerse us in the world of Oz over these two films.  That way we are better able to appreciate Nathan Crowley’s lavish sets and Paul Tazewell’s amazing costumes.  There’s a big difference between what works on the stage and what works on the screen, and the best movie musicals are the ones that find that right balance.  It’s also why so many movie musicals run between 2 1/2 to 3 hours in length, because movies really need that extra time for immersion into the world of their story.  Wicked was such a monumental undertaking that it all couldn’t be contained in just one movie, unless audiences were willing to sit for a 5 hour long show.  Wicked: For Good continues the high stand of the first film’s incredible production design.  The only downside is that because this is the second film of a two part production, the novelty of seeing it all for the first time is not there.  Apart from just a handful of new locations, like the castle that Elphaba holds refuge in, every other place in this movie are holdovers from the first.  It’s probably unlikely this movie will see the same success it enjoyed from last year’s Awards season, because it really isn’t showing much that we haven’t seen before.  But, at the same time, the movie still gives us plenty of time to appreciate all the work that went into the production.  Whether it’s the amazing Glinda dresses that Ariana gets to wear, or the graceful staging of the musical numbers that John M. Chu puts together, Wicked: For Good still succeeds as a visual feast for the eyes.

Despite the strengths comparable between the two films, taken as a whole these Wicked movies are a remarkable success.  There were a lot of high expectations surrounding these movies, especially given the universal success of the stage musical, which even after the release of these movies is still selling out shows across the world.  I really appreciate that the makers of these films didn’t just make a direct translation of the musical, but instead really explored what was possible in bringing this to the big screen.  Like the best movie musicals of the past, these movies understand what it takes to make what worked on the stage become a spectacle on the big screen.  Wicked is an epic just as much as it is musical, full of lavish detail that really makes the world of Oz come alive.  And “Defying Gravity” gives the experience a cliffhanger ending for Part One that even the likes of Marvel would be jealous of.  There’s no doubt that Wicked: For Good is the lesser of the two halves, and the one that is more reliant upon the other to give it meaning.  You unfortunately loose a bit of the magic if you only watch For Good independent of the other film.  The only way that this movie could ever match up with it’s predecessor is if it had that emotional high of the cliffhanger ending, and sadly that wasn’t meant to be since the musical itself couldn’t repeat that same emotional high.  But, there’s still a lot to like, particularly with the performances of the actors.  I also loved the way that, just like the stage show, the plot of the original Wizard of Oz is playing out in the background.  We never even see Dorothy’s face, which is as it should be, because this isn’t her story.  The movie expects us to know how the original story goes, and the charm of Wicked is in how it subverts the original Oz narrative.  Over time, I do see Wicked being celebrated among the likes of The Sound of Music (1965), My Fair Lady (1964), and West Side Story (1961) as one of the greatest stage to screen musical adaptations ever made, especially for how well the spectacle of it all was pulled off.  More than likely it will be because of the strength of the first half, but I hope many out there also see the bright points of Wicked: For Good as something worth celebrating as well.  It may not be a strong finish to this adaptation, which is more the original musical’s fault than anything, but it does do the best job it can to compliment it’s sister film.  And that’s something worth the journey over the rainbow for.

Rating: 7.5/10

There are movie franchises that often take their time in releasing new entries, but when it comes to the movie Tron (1982), it’s had perhaps the longest periods of fallow that any movie franchise has seen.  The original Tron was not exactly a mega hit when it first released in 1982.  Like so other movies that summer, it got overshadowed by the box office behemoth that was Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  It wasn’t until many years later that it received a re-evaluation by both critics and audiences.  Tron was a movie that in terms of the technology that went into it’s production was well ahead of it’s time.  It was the first studio production ever to utilize computer animation, which of course now has become omnipresent as a part of the film-making industry, to the point of replacing many once necessary jobs in the business.  The film’s story about rogue AI programs taking too much control also now seems prophetic, despite coming from very early on in the history of computing.  When computer animation started to take hold in Hollywood in the mid-90’s, a lot of the digital artists and animators often cited Tron as an inspiration.  Without Tron, we probably wouldn’t have had the digital revolution in film-making that we know of today.  And this digital revolution brought more attention to Tron itself.  Disney, the studio that made the film, put the movie out on DVD in 2002 for it’s 20th anniversary, and it became a strong seller for them, helping them to realize that the movie was indeed growing in esteem.  It was time to think about the possibility of a sequel, though this would be a gamble as well.  A lot of time had passed since the last Tron, and the world had advanced so much in those 20 plus years in terms of computer technology.  Was it possible to make a sequel to this film that would feel just as cutting edge as the original.  Despite some of those challenges, we did indeed see the Tron franchise finally come to fruition in 2010.

Tron: Legacy (2010) released into theaters during the holiday season that year.  While it did perform a lot better at the box office than the original film, it also didn’t exceed expectations either.  Audiences were mixed, as well as critics.  Much like the original film, Legacy was viewed as visually stunning but emotionally hollow.  The biggest praise for the movie went instead to the musical score written by the techno punk DJ group Daft Punk, who saw their soundtrack become an award winning best-seller.  Legacy was a valiant attempt to capture some of the unique charm of the original movie while at the same time trying to modernize it and make it relevant again.  But, Tron is still a franchise with a very niche fan base.  The people who are impressed with the Tron movies are usually people with a fair amount of knowledge about computer tech.  They recognize the technical achievements that these movies represent.  To think that the original Tron was rendered with megabyte levels of computing power is astounding.  Legacy also became one of the first movies ever to use digital de-aging on it’s actors, a tool that we are seeing being used more and more in big budget blockbusters.  But, casual audiences are not aware of those things, and the Tron films often feel too cold and detached from emotions to ever feel as thrilling as most other blockbusters from their respective eras.  But, just like with the original, Tron: Legacy has also received a bit of a re-assessment over the years.  While it’s not considered by many to be an all time great action flick, people have come to admire it’s ambition and unique style.  One thing that also has helped to give this movie some extra attention is that it was the first film directed by Joseph Kosinski, who has since gone on to become a very successful movie director in the 15 years since Legacy, including being a part of a little film called Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  With both movies now having some noteworthy attention paid to them, Disney seems to be convinced that it’s time to try again with this franchise, adding a new film into this trilogy.  The only question is, does Tron: Ares manage to justify making the return to the world of Tron after such a long absence, or is it game over for this franchise for good?

The story of Tron: Ares brings the story up to where we are in the present day.  Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the eccentric founder of the ENCOM corporation has been missing since 1989, becoming now more myth than man.  His son Sam has also abdicated his role as CEO of the company and is living off the grid, so ENCOM now lies in the guiding hands of Eve Kim (Greta Lee) who hopes to run the company in the same spirit as Flynn did.  But, she faces stiff competition from the Dillinger Corporation, run by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of it’s founder and former corrupt CEO of ENCOM Ed Dillinger.  Both companies are trying to create the next breakthrough in AI technology, which involves creating living matter out of 3D printing with AI to give them sentience.  The only problem is, the creations can only keep their structure together for a maximum of 29 minutes before they disintegrate.  Eve believes that Kevin Flynn managed to crack the code for this problem back when he was still the head of the company, creating what’s been dubbed the Permanence Code, and she’s been digging through decades old computer systems trying to find it.  She manages to find her answer in a secret lab in the frozen Arctic Circle and she hopes to bring it back home with the intent of using the Permanence Code to fix things like food and medicine shortage.  Dillinger, however, wants to use the code to mass produce soldiers and war technology.  In a desperate attempt to steal the Code, he sends out two of his most elite warrior programs, Ares (Jared Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith).  The two manage to track down and corner Eve, but Ares starts to question the motives behind his programming, believing that Dillinger is crossing the line by seeking to literally destroy his competition.  So, Ares goes rogue and elects to help Eve instead.  But, Dillinger doesn’t take the betrayal lightly, and he re-programs Athena to now hunt down both Ares and Eve together.  What follows is a battle of wills that chaotically shows what happens when AI programs with elite warrior skills take their battle out of the Grid and bring it into the real world.

As the third film in a long running series such as this, Tron: Ares will undoubtedly face immediate comparisons with it’s predecessors.  It’s also difficult to really stack up each film together, considering that each one came from such different eras of filmmaking, to the point where each one almost feel more of a product in it’s own time than cohesive whole.  Tron: Legacy almost felt more like a reboot of the series rather than a straight forward sequel, only loosely tying itself to the original film through the general premise and return of Jeff Bridges.  Tron: Ares pretty much feels the same way as well.  It’s almost like Disney is once again starting from scratch, with this movie choosing not to continue the story of Legacy and instead doing something new with a whole new set of characters.  In some ways that is both a blessing and a curse.  Tron: Ares does have a lot of things going for it that it does do a lot better than the previous films in this series, but it’s also lacking some of the things that made the other films stand out as well.  Truth be told, the Tron movies have never been known for having great stories.  It’s always been a film franchise built on style over substance.  Tron: Ares keeps up that tradition by being as cookie-cutter as possible with barely dimensional characters.  It’s an unfortunate problem that definitely weighs the movie down, but at the same time, it’s kind of par for the course for this series.  The only character of note from this entire series has been Kevin Flynn, and he only stands out because of Jeff Bridges natural magnetic charm.  But unfortunately, starting over again also undercuts most if not all of the previous world-building work that had been put into the series.  There are fleeting references to the previous films (plus one admittedly pretty cool nostalgia filled scene referencing the original Tron), but otherwise Tron: Ares is carving out it’s own path.  That can be good if you want the movie to stand on it’s own, but it also means that Ares also has to go through the whole world-building gauntlet again, and that unfortunately burdens the film more with a lot of unnecessary extra exposition.  It shows Disney being undecisive in their approach to this franchise.  They want to continue to bank on the nostalgia value of the Tron brand, but they also feel like audiences can’t be trusted to already be familiar with the lore of the previous films, so unfortunately we have to have it all spelled out for us again.

But, there is one area where Ares does outdo both of the previous Tron films and that is in the action scenes.  The original Tron certainly was limited by what was possible with computer animation at the time, and still managed to make the most of it.  The light cycle race in particular is still an iconic moment in cinema and remarkably harrowing given the primitive animation used to make it.  Legacy’s biggest problem was that while it was visually a big step up in visual effects, it was also a bit lackluster in the action scenes.  It lacked a visceral feeling, with more emphasis being put on the style of the action rather than any tangible impact; ironic given that the same director went on to make the immersive Top Gun: Maverick.  Tron: Ares actually manages to be the best of both worlds.  It manages to be as thrillingly impactful as the action scenes in the original Tron, while also having the advanced visual style of Tron: Legacy.  The movie hits a high point midway through the film when we have Ares and Athena drive their light cycles in the real world for the first time.  We’ve seen light cycle races in both of the previous Tron movies, but this film makes their scene much more thrilling.  Here we finally see how these things perform under real world physics, and it creates a stark contrast.  One of the great things about this scene is that it looks like they really built physical light cycles as a workable prop in the movie.  It reminded me a lot of the bat cycle scene from The Dark Knight (2008), with this out of this world vehicle cruising through a real city street.  Director Joachim Ronning also makes the wise artistic choice of mounting the camera on the cycle itself, placing us the audience in the drivers seat.  The Tron series has been lacking in action scenes that feel immersive and that’s what helps Ares to stand out.  And while the cycle scene is a definite highlight, the rest of the movie also manages to keep the tempo moving, with a lot of bombast and style working in tandem.  It’s only when the action set pieces stop that the movie starts to lag.  Thankfully, the movie is action heavy, much more so than Legacy, and that helps to make the film a mostly fun time.

One of the things that makes Ares feel different from the other Tron movies is it’s aesthetic.  The original Tron was unlike any other movie ever made, with the use of back-lighting giving both the environments and the characters themselves a neon like glow.  That has carried on throughout the franchise.  While Tron: Legacy added in more naturalistic color, especially on the facial tones of the characters, it also maintained the back-lighting aesthetic with lights built into the costumes.  Tron: Ares does that as well, but here they really upped the contrast between light and dark.  The warrior programs created by the Dillinger Corp. all have the color definition of red in their suits (a carry-over from the original Tron where all the bad guys were in red and the good guys were in blue).  Most of the movie takes place during the dead of night, so when Ares and Athena are out on their cycles or are brandishing their weapons, that red really stands out against the darkness.  This is definitely the darkest film in the series when it comes it’s visuals.  A big reason why the movie looks as good as it does is because it was shot by celebrated cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who has famously done many films for David Fincher including Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010).  He’s a master when it comes to creating dark scenes with stark lighting contrasts, which is probably why Disney sought him out.  Another element of the movie that really adds to the experience is it’s music.  Perhaps as an answer to the success of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, Disney wanted to get another famous rock band involved without having to go back to Daft Punk, who are not the kind of band intent on repeating themselves.  To give the movie a whole different sound, they went to Oscar winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.  The famed Nine Inch Nails members have been working in film composition for years now, including being employed by Disney before with their Oscar winning score for Pixar’s Soul (2020).  Given the synth style of music, they seemed like a perfect fit for Tron, but the duo went a bit further, deciding to get the entire band involved on this project.  It would have been unimaginable a decade ago that we’d see a Disney film scored by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, but that’s what make Tron so unique as a series.  And the NIN socre is perfectly suited for this movie, especially if the theater is equipped with a robust sound system.  This film score will definitely be rattling your bones with it’s aggressive sound.  Unfortunately, most of it all feels the same throughout the film, which does make it less memorable than Daft Punk’s Legacy score.  This is the one are where I feel Tron: Legacy was better, because Daft Punk put so much variety into the different themes, whereas Nine Inch Nails just stick with the same beat throughout.

One of the more controversial choices during the making of this movie was casting Jared Leto in the titular role of Ares.  Leto has, to put it lightly, been a controversial figure as of late.  Scandals aside, he’s also had a recent loosing streak at the box office, being a part of multiple box office bombs like House of Gucci (2001), Morbius (2022) and Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023).  Not just casting him in this multi-million dollar tentpole but also placing him at the center is a major risk on Disney’s part, but Leto is far from being the movie’s main problem.  If anything, he’s appropriately cast as Ares.  Ares is by design to be devoid of character; an AI in search of an identity.  It’s in this that Leto’s understated style of acting actually fits, and I’ll take understated Leto over whatever the hell he gave us in House of Gucci or his performance as the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016).  A lot of the other actors do what they can with characters that are unfortunately just as ill-defined as Ares.  Evan Peters has a presence on screen as Julian Dillinger, but his villain role is overly eccentric and cliché and beneath the talent that someone like Peters has shown in other roles.  You definitely miss the aura of grandeur that the late David Warner brought to his villainous role as Dillinger in the original Tron.  Greta Lee also tries her best to make the most of her character, who is also very thinly defined.  The actor who stands out the most is Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena.  She brings a real menacing presence to the film and helps to make her character a lot more memorable than probably was on the page.  What does become clear while watching the movie is that a lot of the performances feel like they were more fleshed out in longer cuts of the movie.  Disney seemed pretty adamant about keeping this movie under 2 hours, and the editing done on this film seems to have mostly centered on fleshing out the action scenes.  So, a lot of character development is missing in the final edit.  Truth be told, Tron has never had the most memorable characters, other than Bridges’ Flynn (who thankfully gets a nice extended cameo here), but you definitely get the feeling that the movie would be a lot more exciting if we actually cared more about what happens to these characters.

You would think that after 15 years of development that Disney would have cracked the code over how to make a Tron movie that actually lives up to it’s potential.  Instead Tron: Ares is just another generic, albeit we-crafted, action movie capitalizing on the nostalgia of it’s predecessors.  If you’re looking for Tron to finally break out and become an elite franchise in the same class as something like Star Wars, you’ll have to wait a bit more because Tron: Ares is not that movie.  It’s hard to tell if there is any future for Tron at all, given the amount of time that we’ve waited for each installment.  If this movie underperforms, Disney may just end up giving up on it entirely.  The one thing that Tron had going for it initially was it’s ground-breaking visual effects and unique aesthetic, and that perhaps was not enough to build a long lasting franchise on, even though 40 plus years later Disney was still trying.  The positive thing about Tron: Ares is that it didn’t solely capitalize on past nostalgia.  It attempted to do things a bit different, and the result did yield some pretty impressive action sequences.  The smart thing that the filmmakers did with Tron: Ares was to keep it from being too self-important, which was Tron: Legacy’s biggest flaw.  It knows that the big selling point is the visuals and the action, and that’s where the focus was put, and the result makes this a better than average action flick that is best appreciated on a big screen with a robust sound system.  I saw this movie in 3D IMAX, and it honestly had some of the best 3D I’ve seen in a long while.  I just wish that maybe Disney would’ve given the script just a little more polish, allowing for better character development so that we could appreciate the story more.  Overall, the original Tron still stands as the best in the series, thanks to it’s pioneering visuals and overall nostalgic charm, but Ares definitely has the best action scenes in the series while Legacy has the best soundtrack.  A lot of people may end up just skipping the movie and end up buying the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack by itself, which is fair.  The sad reality is that there may have been a time and place where Tron could have turned into one of the biggest franchises in movie history, but it’s timing was at the wrong time.  It was either too ahead of it’s time, or just missed out on the right moment to reach it’s audience.  It’s hard to say if Tron: Ares will get the same reassessment from audiences and critics that it’s predecessors did in the years ahead.  Given that Disney is less inclined to give their franchises time to gestate over multiple generations of audiences, it may indeed end up being the end of line for Tron. 

Rating: 7/10

Paul Thomas Anderson is in a class of his own as a filmmaker.  I don’t think there is any other director who balances tone better than he does.  His films could feature some of the darkest, most disturbing moments ever put on screen and then within a single scene transition he can shift to something hilariously comical, and it still would fit together.  He’s made a career out of delivering some of the darkest comedies, with movies like Boogie Nights (1997), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and Inherit Vice (2014) on his resume.  His movies have also either leaned more fully into the darker side, like There Will Be Blood (2007), or the more comical side like Licorice Pizza (2021).  But one thing that remains constant in his films is a sense of keeping his audience on the edge, making sure that they’ll never know which way his films are headed.  That has made him one of the most admired filmmakers still working in Hollywood today.  Every new film he puts out always garners our attention, because we know that it’s going to be unlike anything we have seen before.  And as a filmmaker, he’s done a lot of things that we’ve thought were impossible.  He’s the guy who showed us that Adam Sandler could actually give a great performance with Punch-Drunk Love, which we’ve now learned was no fluke thanks to the Safdie Brothers several years later.  Anderson has an eye for talent and visual storytelling that is truly unique, and it has earned him a strong place in the filmmaking community.  However, as beloved as Anderson is among filmmakers, his reach still feels a bit limited.  Because of the unusual nature of his films, his reach hasn’t really crossed into the mainstream in the same way that his contemporaries have like Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan.  While many of his films are big in concept and ambitious in execution, he’s still been playing with limited budgets and small art house premieres.  But that seems to have changed.

For his newest film, Anderson is getting something he’s never had before; a substantial budget.  With the financial backing of Warner Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time is making a film with a budget north of $100 million.  Thus far, we’ve seen him be a filmmaker who has done a lot with very little in the way of funds.  There Will Be Blood was one of the most impressive looking American epics of it’s time, and remarkably it was made for around $20 million.  While it does excite a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson fans to think about what he might do with a budget of that size given his overall track record, it also leaves a lot of people worried about what that might mean for his style of fillmaking as well.  Anderson has managed to thrive being something of an outsider from the studio system.  So seeing him working with a major studio and taking their money for a film budgeted over 5x more than his average film makes many of his fans worried that he might be selling out.  Will this new movie actually still feel like a Paul Thomas Anderson film, or will it be a soulless studio product?  One of the positive signs is that the movie is not a pre-existing IP, but rather a project of Anderson’s own choosing.  It’s a loose adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel called “Vineland” and it’s pretty clear that the reason he’s making this movie is not because he needed Warner Brothers money but rather because they wanted his new film.  Warner Brothers, despite some of their own misguided steps in the past, have actually been quite good at attracting prestige filmmakers to bring their big concept projects under their banner.  It’s something they did with Christopher Nolan for a while with his films Inception (2010) and Dunkirk (2017).  Just this year they also got a big win with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025).  So, they recognize that it’s worth the investment to give a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson the money he needs to make his big vision project come to life.  The only question is, does One Battle After Another prove that Anderson can still deliver on a much bigger scale, or does the movie fall apart under the weight of all those lofty ambitions?

The story of One Battle After Another is set in an America that’s been living under an authoritarian, militaristic regime that has been rounding up migrants and placing them in concentration camps.  Fighting back against this regime is a domestic terrorist group call the French 75.  Two of the members of this group are Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor).  The two revolutionaries have a fiery romance that builds while they conduct their many acts of resistance against the government.  But, their love affair and antigovernmental crusade hits a roadblock once Perfidia becomes pregnant.  Once their child is born, Perfidia begins to become unhinged and it results in botched raid that gets her arrested.  In order to save herself, and protect her daughter’s secret identity, she ends up naming names of the other French 75 members.  Bob ends up going on the run with his infant daughter, who will grow up believing that her mother died in prison.  16 years later, the young girl named Willa (Chase Infiniti) finds herself suddenly thrust into the chaotic world of her father’s past once an old adversary has picked up the trail.  Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an old enemy of the French 75 has now been given new authority to hunt down the remnants of the revolutionary group, and he’s got a personal matter involving Willa herself that he wants to settle once and for all.  While Bob is still very protective of his daughter, he’s also been out of the revolutionary game for many years, so a lot of his instincts are rusty.  He ends up seeking help from Willa’s karate teacher Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), who himself is involved in his own underground resistance movement.  As Willa becomes the target of this government crackdown, it becomes an endless race between two highly opposed forces; Bob using his network of revolutionaries to help him find his daughter’s safe house refuge, and Lockjaw using his military back might to get to her first.  And all the while, Willa desperately is trying to adapt to all the chaotic events that suddenly have been thrusted upon her.  With all that happens, it’s clear why this movie comes to us with the title One Battle After Another.

There is a lot that unfolds within the story of One Battle, but at the same time, the movie is very simple in it’s narrative.  In the end, it’s just a story about a father doing everything he can to save his daughter from a ruthless predator and the system that has propelled him to power.  A lot of people who have been worried that some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s style would get lost under the weight of a much bigger budget will be rest assured that this movie thankfully still feels like an Anderson film to it’s core.  It’s honestly kind of surprising that this movie actually cost as much as it did to make, because Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t really do much to flaunt the budget of this movie.  It still feels like one of his grounded, street level films that were made on significantly smaller budgets.  If expensive visual effects were used in the making of this movie, they are barely noticeable as the movie still feels like a very hand crafted film.  But, regardless of how the budget was used, this is undoubtedly another triumph for Paul Thomas Anderson.  It features all of the incredible filmmaking instincts that have made him one of our more exciting cinematic storytellers over the years, with perhaps a bit more scale to it.  I would also say that as entertaining as the film is, it also feels a bit slack in it’s pacing, especially compared to some of his much tighter films like There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love.  While the overall experience is still thrilling, you can feel at times when it slips into indulgence, which has hurt Anderson’s films sometimes.  But, it’s a minor nitpick on the film, because when the movie does get cooking it is an amazing thrill ride.  Again, Anderson’s skill with balancing tonal shifts is unmatched, and he does that a lot here.  At times you will be laughing hysterically at the absurdity going on in the film, and then a scene later the film will hit you with a gut punch of tension and gut-wrenching tragedy.  In many ways, that’s the biggest asset that this film has, because it is constantly leaving you unsure about what’s going to happen next, which is thrilling in it’s own way.  It’s a movie that only he can make, and that’s a rare specialty in cinema these days, especially when done on this scale.

What I especially love about what Paul Thomas Anderson does in One Battle After Another is the subtle world-building.  While there certainly are a lot of parallels in the film with regards to the state of the world today, the movie also creates this heightened world that only these kinds of characters could exist in.  The shadowy government organizations feel familiar to us, but Anderson also puts his own absurdist spin on them as well, making their secret organization a joke in of itself.  I also like how the revolutionary groups have become so entrenched in their routines, that their code speak way of communications has over time devolved into something like trying to reach customer service through a corporation’s hotline.  Everything is grounded and yet heightened at the same time.  There will probably be some discussion around this film that may make it controversial.  Certainly the mass incarceration of migrant people (primarily Latin American migrants as shown prominently in the film) is going to draw immediate parallels with the current situation in America.  Also the movie isn’t afraid to define the characters in clear black and white terms; the revolutionaries are definitely the good guys here and the white supremacists coded government figures are the bad guys.  The timing of this movie couldn’t be more prescient.  And yet, Anderson doesn’t use this movie to push any agenda either.  It’s merely the backdrop for this cat and mouse chase involving DiCaprio’s Bob, his daughter Willa, and Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw.  I do love that Anderson shows restraint here, because I can imagine this movie loosing all of it’s subtlety if it were given over to a less skilled storyteller.  Anderson certainly wants you to think about the injustices committed in this world and be conscientious, but at the same time he knows that the story must be engaging enough to guide us through this crazy world, and that’s why it remains focused on above all else.  It’s the thing that we all will engage with the most on our first watch of the movie, but I’m sure all the extra world details will help to make people want to revisit the film many times over in order to really absorb the world that Anderson created for this film.

The thing that I’m sure most people are going to take away from watching this movie are the performances.  Anderson has always been a great actor’s director, and he’ helped many of his performers deliver some of the greatest work of their careers.  He helped launch Mark Wahlberg’s career with Boogie Nights, showed us a different side of Tom Cruise in Magnolia (1999), made us believe in Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, and got Daniel Day-Lewis the second of his three Oscars for There Will Be Blood. Now, for the first time he gets to work with one of the greatest actors of his generation, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the long awaited team up does not disappoint.  What I especially love is how loose Anderson allowed DiCaprio to be in this movie.  One of DiCaprio’s most under-utilized talents as an actor has been his knack for comedy, which we’ve seen used only sparingly in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).  Thankfully, Paul Thomas Anderson uses DiCaprio’s comedic chops to great effect here.  It’s especially hilarious watching how clumsily DiCaprio’s Bob steps back into the revolutionary game after so many years out of loop, and his growing frustrations with how the network operates now as opposed to when he was in his prime.  DiCaprio has some pretty spectacular freak-outs in this character role, and a lot of the fun of this movie stems from his character.  But, the true scene-stealer is Sean Penn as Col. Lockjaw.  This is one of Penn’s best performances ever, and that’s saying a lot for the two time Oscar winner.  His Lockjaw is a true transformative performance.  There are so many layers to this character that Sean Penn brilliantly gets to peel back.  I love how his tough guy exterior is so extreme that all it does is spotlight his insecurities that much more.  I especially love that Penn even worked out a unusual gait to the way Lockjaw walks, like every muscle in his body is clenched at all times.  And he’s also not afraid to make Lockjaw as loathsome as he possibly can be, and that in a way makes him even more absurd of a figure.  This is the kind of performance that I’m sure we’re going to be hearing a lot about come Awards season.  The movie also gives us a breakout performance from Chase Infiniti as Willa.  This is her first ever film role, and it is an impressive debut.  She has to carry so much of the film given that so much of it centers around her character, and she manages to have an incredible on screen presence for someone fairly new to this.  It’s especially impressive, given that she’s able to command the screen even in the presence of heavyweights like DiCaprio and Penn.  And while their roles are minor in comparison, Teyana Taylor and Benicio Del Toro also manage to shine in their performances as well.  In addition, like with so many other Anderson films, even the side characters have a ton of personality.

One thing that Paul Thomas Anderson has never failed to deliver on is making his movies look good.  He always works with the best cinematographers in the business, and the production designs on his movies are always incredibly detailed.  He’s also been a purist when it comes to shooting his movies on film.  He’s worked with 70 mm photography on many of his past films, but with One Battle After Another he decided to do something different.  Here he’s working with 35mm film, but he shot the movie utilizing a Vistavision camera.  Vistavision is experiencing a rather surprising resurgence lately after going unused for decades in Hollywood.  A precursor of the IMAX process, Vistavision allowed for larger image captures on 35mm film stock by running the film horizontally through the shutter of the camera rather than vertically.  This allowed for an image that was 8 perforations wide rather than the standard 4, making the image captured twice as sharp and large as usual.  Over time, the format went out of style, but gained attention again last year thanks to the Oscar winning camera work on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024).  While The Brutalist used Vistavision for parts of the film, Anderson made use of it for the entire movie.  The result is really impressive, as it give the movie some really breathtaking visual flair.  While Anderson doesn’t go overboard with the photography, he nevertheless allows for the Vistavision image to do interesting things with depth of field and focus in many shots.  There is a spectacular sequence involving a car chase near the end of the movie that is one of the most breathtaking uses of camera work I’ve seen in a while.  The placement of the camera in that sequence is truly inspired.  Anderson is working with cinematographer Michael Bauman for the second time after their collaboration on Licorice Pizza, and this is his most dynamic camera work that we’ve seen yet.  Another excellent part of this movie is the musical score from Jonny Greenwood.  The Radiohead band member turned film composer has written music for every Anderson film since There Will Be Blood, and this is yet another brilliant piece of work from him.  The score at times plays like a heartbeat that just keeps pounding through the movie, driving up the tension.  It’s minimalist in the right ways, at times only consisting of one note played over and over again, but it perfectly fits with the chaos that’s unfolding on screen.  Both of these elements, combined with a film production that still feels hand crafted and lived in really helps to show that even with a larger budget at his disposal, Paul Thomas Anderson still can craft a film that feels distinctively him.

While I still hold a couple of Paul Thomas Anderson movies above this one, especially There Will Be Blood which is one of my favorite movies in general, I can definitely say that this is one of the year’s best films.  It’s just great to see one of cinema’s greatest talents still taking chances as a filmmaker and coming out with his integrity as an artist still in check.  It will hopefully bode well for filmmakers in general if this movie does very well at the box office, because it will allow the major studios to see the value in giving filmmakers like Anderson the money they need to make their big original concept films knowing that there is an audience out there for them.  Not every filmmaker manages to do that working under the judemental eye of studio executives.  But Anderson has built a respected reputation over the years as a filmmaker, one that only a fool would try to stand in the way of in Hollywood, and it’s great to see a studio like Warner Brothers recognizing that too.  They know that Paul Thomas Anderson can deliver on his promises as a filmmaker, and that’s why they allowed him to have the budget that he needed for this film.  As someone who has enjoyed many of his films, it is great to see Paul Thomas Anderson succeed so well in maintaining his unique cinematic voice while working within the studio system.  It may be a costlier movie, but it still maintains his signature to it’s core.  The performances are certainly worth the ticket price alone, especially with Sean Penn’s completely transformative work here.  And there is some thrilling camera work on display as well.  It will be interesting to see what kind of replay value this movie has with audiences over time.  I’m certainly eager to see it again, hopefully to catch all the things I missed the first time.  And thanks to the Vistavision photography, this is a movie that demands to be seen on a big screen.  I caught it in IMAX, and it made the experience all the more immersive.  That aforementioned car chase is especially breathtaking on a true IMAX screen.  But even so, this is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that is indeed going to please his long time fans, while also at the same time hopefully drawing in a few new ones.  He’s a one of a kind filmmaker who certainly deserves more attention, and while One Battle After Another may not be his magnum opus, it is still a masterpiece that hopefully will add onto his already legendary status in Hollywood.

Rating: 9/10

It has been an interesting run for Spike Lee as a filmmaker.  The Georgian born and New York raised cinema icon became a pioneering voice in Black Cinema during the late 80’s and early 90’s.  He quickly developed a reputation as a talent on the rise immediately after graduating from the prestigious Tisch School of Arts at NYU with his first two features She’s Gotta Have It (1985) and School Daze (1988).  But it was his third feature that really grabbed the world’s attention.  Do The Right Thing (1989), Spike’s multilayered meditation on racial tensions in America was a bombshell movie when it first released, bringing much needed dialogue to an issue that for the most part Hollywood had been too afraid to tackle.  The film garnered wide critical praise, was spotlighted at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, and also earned Spike his first Oscar nomination for his screenplay.  However, the movie did not earn a Best Picture or Directing nom that year as some had predicted, and the top awards that year went to another movie about race relations in America, but in a more “safe” fashion: Driving Miss Daisy (1989).  Despite the snub, Spike continued to press ahead and didn’t slow down.  He made two more smaller films, Mo Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991) before taking on his dream project; an epic historical biopic on the life of civil rights icon Malcolm X.  Malcolm X would be a monumental undertaking and it took everything he had learned up to that point as a filmmaker to pull it off.  One of the strongest assets he had at his side was an actor named Denzel Washington.  Washington had already won an Oscar for his supporting performance in the movie Glory (1989) and he got to work with Spike Lee for the first time on Mo Better Blues.  There would be no one better suited to bring Malcolm to life on screen than Denzel, and indeed it was a perfect match of actor and role, and a filmmaker to bring out the best in him.  Denzel would go on to earn his first Best Actor nomination for Malcolm X but would end up losing to Al Pacino that year.  Even still, Spike Lee and Denzel would prove to be a strong collaborative team that would over time span several films.

Though their career treks have taken different paths, both Lee and Washington have stayed good friends and this has resulted in three more films they have collaborated on.  There was the basketball themed He Got Game in 1998 and the bank heist thriller Inside Man in 2006.  But, after a long dry spell, the two are finally working together on a new film.  Denzel of course has remained a well respected fixture in Hollywood, finally winning that coveted Oscar for Best Actor in Training Day (2001) and becoming a consistent box office draw in films such as the Equalizer series.  Things have been a bit rockier for Spike Lee.  Though he has kept working all this time, both in narrative films and with documentaries, he hadn’t reached that high point he experienced in his early years with Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.  That was until 2018, when Spike delivered a critical and box office hit with the racially charged crime drama BlackKklansman.  The film was a welcome return to form for Spike, delivering a tension filled narrative that also was provocative in it’s tackling of racial issues.  In addition to the critical praise the film also finally earned Spike Lee his first Academy Award for the film’s screenplay.  Though, of course, the movie lost out on Best Picture to another “safe” movie about race in America called Green Book (2018).  But even still, Spike Lee had a renewed creative spark that he would further put to good use with his next film; the Vietnam vet drama Da 5 Bloods (2020).  Bloods received a lot of praise from critics, including myself as it made it all the way to #2 on my best of the year list for that year, but it’s visibility was limited as it was released solely on Netflix without a theatrical screening, due largely to the pandemic.  It’s a shame that Da 5 Bloods didn’t get a bigger release, because in my opinion it was Spike’s best film since Malcolm X.  But, after a couple years, Spike Lee was ready to take on another film project, and this time he finally had the project that would be perfect for both him and Denzel.  It would be a new adaptation of the 1959 Ed McBain novel King’s Ransom, which was famously adapted by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa into the film High and Low (1963).  That Kurosawa adaptation is particularly noteworthy as it’s what has inspired Spike Lee to adapt his own film, even inspiring the title itself, Highest 2 Lowest.  The only question is, can Spike Lee’s version stand up on it’s own against the Kurosawa classic, or is it a pale imitation?

The film is set in New York City, across the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.  David King (Denzel Washington) is one of the world’s most successful record producers, creating an empire that has launched the careers of many recording artists.  He lives the high life with his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and his teenage son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) in their penthouse Brooklyn apartment.  Also in the King family orbit is David’s assistant and chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), who has a teenage son of his own named Kyle (Elijah Wright) that’s one of Trey’s closest friends.  While the family is living comfortably, David is beginning to make plans behind the scenes to try to buy back the company he founded so that it isn’t sold to a corporate conglomerate that he’s fears will destroy everything he has built.  He convinces many of his business partners to give up their shares in the company in order to stave off the corporate take over, but at the same time it’s putting his financial stability at risk as getting the money is putting him in serious debt.  At the point where it looks like he might succeed in his buy outs, something tragic and unexpected happens.  He receives a cryptic phone call telling him that his son has been kidnapped and that he’ll only be returned if a ransom is paid.  David and his wife quickly get the police department involved as they try to find his son.  Detectives Bridges (John Douglas Thompson), Bell (LaChanze) and Higgins (Dean Winters) set up operations in the King’s apartment, hoping to track down the kidnapper (A$AP Rocky) once David receives another call.  Miraculously, they manage to find Trey King safe and sound.  It turns out the kidnapper made a mistake and grabbed Kyle instead, believing he was Trey.  Now, David is in the difficult position.  Does he still go through with paying the ransom to save the life of someone else’s kid, even though it will put himself at incredible financial risk?  A lot is at risk, especially when media attention is cast upon the case.  Does David King destroy his reputation in order to save his financial gamble, or does he do the selfless thing and help save his closest friend’s only son.

It’s interesting to think about Highest 2 Lowest in regards to it’s status as a remake of a Kurosawa film.  Akira Kurosawa has probably had more remakes made of his films than any other filmmaker around the world.  Sergio Leone turned Yojimbo (1961) into his spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964).  Hollywood would also adapt Seven Samurai (1954) into The Magnificent Seven (1960).  Even Star Wars (1977) has elements of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958) woven into it’s story.  So, it’s not surprising that Kurosawa’s High and Low would also inspire it’s own remake as well.  Truth be told, Spike Lee could’ve just said that this was just another adaptation of the original McBain novel, but giving it the title Highest 2 Lowest certainly is meant to invoke the memory of the Kurosawa classic.  Now there is the danger of doing a remake poorly.  There have certainly been many subpar adaptations of Kurosawa’s movies.  Also Spike Lee already has a bad history with remakes, given his misguided attempt to remake Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) in a 2013 film starring Josh Brolin.  One thing that works in this remake’s advantage is that it includes the involvement of Ko Kurosawa as a producer; grandson of Akira Kurosawa.  But even without that connection, this is a remake that does indeed reflect back positively on the original film.  I would say that the movie works in the same way that Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars adapted Yojimbo.  It’s tackling the same story and involves similar characters, but the film definitely feels uniquely tailored to the filmmaker working on it.  Make no mistake, this is a Spike Lee movie, complete with all the stylish editing and visual flair that he gives to all of his films, as well as his typical musings about race and class in society in modern America.  And that is what makes this remake work so well.  Spike Lee and Akira Kurosawa both were drawn to this story based on it’s provocative premise about class struggles, but their spins on the material are uniquely their own.  Kurosawa framed it through the lens of hierarchy in post-War Japan, while Spike Lee frames his story through the lens of racial identity and privilege in contemporary America.  Same story, and similar message, but in very different voices.

One of the great things to see in this film is how Spike Lee uses this particular story and makes it adhere to his own tastes.  He provides an interesting take on the material by making it a reflection about privilege in the African-American community.  David King lives a life of privilege that you realize over the course of the movie came from his commodification of black excellence for mass consumption.  Described as “the best ears in the business” he has indeed helped many black artists enter the mainstream, but over time it has also alienated him from that same community.  His take over bid for the company that he created is not about helping to preserve the cultural importance of the art that he helped create, but rather about him retaining his position as the gatekeeper of that art.  Sure, saving artistic integrity and keeping it in the hands of the black community rather than handing it over to a soulless corporation is a worthwhile thing, but in doing so, David King is also leaving many of those same black artists out of determining what they want to do with their music.  It’s a conundrum that comes to a head when David sees the faults of his own creed come back to bite him with this kidnapping plot.  When it becomes about saving someone who isn’t even his own flesh and blood, we see him fundamentally change, and that’s a compelling story no matter the story’s setting.  Spike Lee is telling more than just a story about wealth and power here.  He’s telling a story about black identity as well; how people in the community change once they do achieve wealth and success.  Whether or not David King goes through with paying the ransom or not is filtered through that perspective.  As a black man in America, he probably had to go through a lot more hurdles in order to become the tycoon that he is today, and that’s something that he doesn’t want to throw away so easily in response to this kidnapping.  That’s where Spike Lee finds his unique angle on the material, which helps to distinguish it from Kurosawa’s.  Both films still deliver on the crime procedural aspects taken from McBain’s novel, but they definitely hit their own outlooks on the themes of the story in their own special way.

Of course the main draw of this remake is undoubtedly the stellar lead performance of Denzel Washington as David King.  There’s a reason why Spike Lee and Denzel has had such a fruitful collaborative partnership over 5 films now; because they both bring out the best in each other.  Denzel is in top form in his performance here, completely commanding every scene that he is in.  It’s a very different performance than that of the legendary Toshiro Mifune in High and Low.  Mifune was very subdued in his role, brilliantly capturing a wide range of emotions with a great deal of subtlety.  Denzel is a lot more showy in his performance, but that works for this film and matches the kind of nature that this character needs to display.  Corporate culture is very different between Japan and America, with American CEO’s being more brash and flashier than their Japanese counterparts.  Plus, he’s the CEO of a music company, so he’s got to be someone who’s got to deal with a lot of clients who are as self-promoting as he is.  He is this way so that he can maintain his place at the top.  Denzel uses his magnetic charm perfectly in this role, and is able to make David King relatable while at the same time making him funny and intimidating depending on the circumstances.  It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of his performance involved a fair bit of improvisation.  But, Denzel isn’t the only standout in the cast.  Jeffrey Wright also delivers a solid performance as Paul.  His more subdued performance works perfectly against Denzel’s bombastic acting in the film.  He also perfectly conveys the internal pain that he’s dealing with, wondering if he’ll ever get his son back alive.  The trio of actors playing the detectives are also wonderful in their roles, which is actually an interesting change from Kurosawa’s version as their part to play in the story was only given to one character before, played by Kurosawa favorite Tatsuya Nakadai.  And though his onscreen role is pretty limited, rapper turned actor A$AP Rocky also stands out as the kidnapper.  His eventual scenes with Denzel near the end are definitely some of the movie’s highlights.

One of the things that Spike Lee likes to do in most of his movies is to pay tribute to his home turf of New York City, and this film is no different.  From the opening credits sequence that is entirely made up of aerial shots of the city, you know that this will be a love letter to NYC, and the city definitely becomes a character in it’s own right.  There are a great many glamour shots of city landmarks, particularly the Brooklyn Bridge, which becomes a pivotal setting at one point in the story.  The diversity of the people in New York is also an important factor.  One of the most pivotal scenes from Kurosawa’s film was the train sequence, where the money exchange takes place.  Spike Lee takes that same moment and does his own spin on it, utilizing all the flavors of New York to make the moment even more exhilarating.  Of course, the subway system of New York City is a natural substitute for the Japanese rail network of the original film.  But as Denzel’s David heads further down the line, a lot of Yankee fans start to fill up the train on their way to a game.  They start chanting and the film intercuts between this scene and the location of the drop off site, which happens to be where the Puerto Rican Day parade is taking place.  The mix of Puerto Rican music and the chanting of “Let’s Go Yankees” on the train makes for a beautifully chaotic sequence, and it’s a great testament to Spike Lee’s talents as a visual storyteller to create that atmosphere to set this pivotal moment in the movie within.  Lee works here with his frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique, and they create some beautiful sweeping shots of the city.  They also do a great job with the interior spaces of the Kings’ apartment.  Composer Howard Drossin also gives the film a beautifully rich score, which also cleverly weaves in some of the melodies that would be associated with the work that David King does.  Also, Spike Lee goes the extra length in his stylish presentation by cutting scenes together with graphical wipes; some of which even include the logo of his company, which is a very Spike Lee touch to add.  Overall, a very visually inventive and beautiful movie to witness on screen.

If you are a fan of the original film, be rest a assured that Spike Lee’s remake is reverential in all the right ways, but also is different enough to make it stand apart.  Kurosawa and Lee are very different filmmakers, and these two versions of the same story make that very clear.  But, it’s a remake that compliments it’s predecessor.  I have a feeling that one of Spike Lee’s intentions with this movie is to also shine a light on the original.  If you haven’t watched High and Low, I strongly recommend you see that as well.  It’s a genuine masterpiece and easily one of the best crime thrillers ever put on screen.  I also strongly recommend watching Spike Lee’s version as well.  Between the two, Kurosawa’s is the one I’d prefer more, but I am glad that this one exists now as well.  For one thing, it’s a great showcase for Denzel Washington in his top form.  He is clearly making a meal of his performance here, and it’s a lot of fun to watch.  The movie itself is also well crafted.  I already knew the direction of the story because I had seen the original, and even yet there were several points in the film that left me surprised.  And like a lot of Spike’s movies it’s got a great soundtrack and a visual flair that only he can deliver.  It’s a wonderful thing to see these two titans collaborating again, and hopefully it’s not the last.  This is definitely a movie worth seeing in a theater with an audience.  Unfortunately like Da 5 Bloods, this is a film made by a streaming platform; in this case Apple TV+.  Thankfully Apple (in partnership with A24) is giving this a limited theatrical run before it goes on Apple TV+ in September.  It’s a very theatrical film, so I strongly suggest seeing it on the big screen while you can.  I just wish the theatrical window was longer and the roll out a lot wider than just a handful of arts cinemas.  It’s a shame that so many streaming platforms are taking away so many great filmmakers out of the theatrical market, but at the same time, they are indeed the ones putting up the money to allow for filmmakers like Spike Lee to have the creative freedom to make movies like this.  Regardless, Highest 2 Lowest is another strong film from Spike Lee, who seems to be on a roll with his last 3 movies.  It’s a remake that does justice to the original while at the same time manages to be a great movie on it’s own.  Definitely seek out Kurosawa’s original if you haven’t watched it yet, but also give this newer one a watch as well.  It is definitely delivers far more highs than lows.

Rating: 8.5/10

Marvel has managed to get a remarkable amount of their comic book characters recognized around the world thanks to their movie adaptations.  But it has been a bit more difficult for one of their most popular titles.  Marvel’s first family, The Fantastic Four, started their life on the page in 1961.  Created by legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby and chief Marvel writer Stan Lee, the quartet of super powered beings have become one of Marvel’s best selling properties, managing to top the comic book charts even to this day.  It was also the first time a comic series was built from the ground up on a team dynamic, predating the X-Men and the Avengers.  What also set the Four apart was that they were a family unit as well.  Reed Richards and Sue Storm, known as Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl respectively, were a married couple, and their team also consisted of of Sue’s younger brother Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) and Reed’s best friend since childhood Ben Grimm (The Thing).  With that broad appeal thanks to their comic book success, it should have been very easy for them to translate to the silver screen.  This however has been more difficult than one would imagine.  Legendary B-Movie veteran Roger Corman took his stab at it in the early 90’s, and while earnest it’s safe to say that his version is not exactly an all time classic of the genre.  A decade later, after the comic book genre was finally starting to be taken seriously by Hollywood, 20th Century Fox tried to do their attempt at launching the Fantastic Four in it’s franchise.  There are good things to say about some of their Fantastic Four (2005), particularly with casting choices like Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, but it also paled in comparison to other comic book films of the time.  It did manage to spawn a 2007 sequel that introduced the Silver Surfer for the first time to the big screen, but it also bombed at the box office and killed any further attempts to grow the franchise.  By this time, Chris Evans had already taken on the role of Captain America as Marvel Studios was starting up their own line of films.  But, Fox still wanted to hold onto the rights to the Fantastic Four and keep it out of the hands of Marvel’s parent company Disney.  Sadly what resulted was one of the worst comic book movies in history.

2015’s Fant4stic is an epically bad movie, and a shining example of how not to adapt a comic book to the big screen.  For some reason, Fox wanted to give the usually bright and colorful Fantastic Four comics a dark and gritty adaptation, akin to what DC was currently doing with their Snyderverse movies.  The result was a movie that pleased no one and ended up destroying Fox’s share of the comic book movie market even more.  The sad thing is, because Fox refused to play ball with Disney, like what Sony did with their special arrangement that allowed Spider-man to be a part of the MCU, it prevented the Fantastic Four from being apart of the Marvel’s on-going story-line leading into the Infinity War arc.  But, things would change once Fox ended up being put on the market and were bought up by Disney in the process.  Now the Fantastic Four were finally home at Marvel Studios and could take their place in the MCU.  But, plans changed due to the Covid pandemic.  Because so many projects got pushed back, the world had to wait a bit longer to see Marvel’s first family make their debut in their new home.  And in those couple of years of waiting, Marvel’s box office track record started to wane.  The studio hadn’t been able to live up to the stellar box office results of the 2010’s, and it prompted Disney to start cutting back on the output of Marvel Studios.  But, thankfully the re-shuffling may have timed out right for the studio because in the last year it seems that a lot of the production woes that plagued the films of the previous couple of years are not dragging Marvel down anymore.  Their last film, Thunderbolts* (2025) had some of the best critical reviews that the studio has seen in many years, and that has helped to build some extra confidence for this new Fantastic Four adaptation heading into theaters right on it’s heels.  But what is interesting is just how exactly Marvel is fitting their first family into their on-going story.  The Fantastic Four are coming into the MCU pretty late into it’s history, which means their introduction can’t just be yet another origin story like all the others before.  The only question is, does The Fantastic Four: First Steps do justice to the comic book icons or does it continue the string of bad luck they’ve had up to now on the big screen.

One of the biggest gambles this movie takes is that it introduces the First Family of Marvel in an entirely separate universe than the one we are familiar with in the MCU.  This Fantastic Four exists on Earth 828, while the MCU is on Earth 616, dubbed the “Sacred Timeline.”  Given that Marvel is currently in it’s Multiverse phase, it stand to reason that these two parallel universes will collide eventually.  In this particular timeline, the Fantastic Four have been around as a team for the last 4 years, reaching a point where they have become the guardians of the Earth.  They are treated like celebrities in this world, which seems to be an advanced version of Mid-20th Century America.  While on break from their crime fighting duties, the Four make their home in the lavish Baxter Building in the heart of Manhattan.  One day, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) makes an important discovery that she immediately shares with her husband Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), the smarted man in the world.  She has learned that she’s pregnant.  Reed is excited, but also troubled, because he’s worried about the effect that the cosmic radiation that gave them their super powers may have on their unborn child.  The news of the welcome pregnancy is celebrated by both Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the world is collectively excited about the newest addition to the Fantastic family.  But the good times come to an end once a mysterious visitor comes to Earth.  The powerful alien being, named Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), aka the Silver Surfer, has come to deliver a message, heralding the coming of the planet devouring entity known as Galactus (Ralph Ineson).  The Fantastic Four vow to the people of Earth that they will protect them from this Galactus threat, so they head back to space, following the Silver Surfer’s power signature.  They arrive many light years away from home to find the destroyed remains of a planet that’s currently in the process of being consumed by Galactus’ enormous intergalactic ship.  They find the giant super being, who reveals that he has plans for something other than the destruction of Earth.  He gives the Fantastic Four the most difficult of ultimatums; he’ll spare the Earth if they give up their unborn child to him.  Given that impossible choice, which path will the Fantastic Four choose; save their world, or their son?

Up to this point the Fantastic Four were adrift in the old way of doing things with Marvel licenses where the studios had all the creative control and not Marvel themselves.  Now that the Fantastic Four are back in the fold with Marvel Studios firmly established, people are eagerly anticipating how they will be debuting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Considering what has come before, Marvel had a fairly low bar to cross, but this is also a time where Marvel has lost a step from their peak days.  So, how well did the Fantastic Four do in their big debut?  I’d say that the results vary depending on the way you look at it.  As far as Fantastic Four movies go, First Steps is far and away the best film we have seen yet from the super team.  For once we are actually seeing the Fantastic Four as more than just super heroes.  In this movie, they are an actual family and that dynamic is what drives most of the film’s best moments.  But, I also have to look at this film with regards to it’s place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has had a much stronger track record over the years than the Fantastic Four movies.  And viewing it through that, I’d say that First Steps is slightly above average for a MCU film.  It’s certainly a very good movie, and even at times great.  But it doesn’t quite grab a hold of you the same way that Marvel movies at their very best do.  I feel like a big part of that is because First Steps is trying to do a lot of heavy lifting in a short amount of time, and it comes at the cost of having moments where the movie is able to let us sit and absorb the film.  It also hurts the film that it comes so soon after DC’s Superman debuted; another movie that also had to speed through a lot of world-building in a short amount of time.  While I think that both movies are successful at what they set out to do, Superman just slightly beats it out thanks to it’s more graceful landing.  What First Steps manages to do is basically get it’s super hero quartet to be on par with what Marvel has done in the past.

Where the movie succeeds very well is establishing the Fantastic Four and their world which seems to be custom shaped just for them.  It’s an interesting creative choice to have this movie set in an alternate timeline, but it’s one that makes sense because it quickly distinguishes this film from all the other versions of the Fantastic Four that we’ve seen.  The movie is very much a love letter to Jack Kirby, even down to naming their universe Earth 828 (a reference to Kirby’s birthday of August 28).  We see the Four living in a Earth where the mid-century modern aesthetic took hold and continued to influence everything beyond, in architecture and fashion.  It’s a world permanently frozen in the 1960’s, but with all the same technological advances we’ve seen in the same 60 plus years since then.  Every travels in flying cars, but they all have that shiny chrome look of Cadillacs from that era.  The movie also pays homage to the Silver Age origins of the Fantastic Four by making references to all of the different foes that they fought through the years, including the very cheesy ones.  Giganto, the lizard like behemoth that appeared on the cover of Fantastic Four #1 even makes a cameo here.  But, when the movie moves away from the cheese towards heavier stuff, it also does a fairly good job of that too.  One of the biggest upgrades that this film has over past film versions is the villain Galactus.  While still a bit limited in character development, Galactus is nevertheless far better realized here than he was in his last appearance in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, where he was depicted as a giant dust cloud.  Here, we finally get a Galactus that is true to his comic book design, and to the movie’s credit, he is a fairly terrifying presence.  If you see this movie, please choose to watch this in IMAX, purely for the Galactus scenes alone, because he will indeed feel every bit as gargantuan as he’s meant to be.

One of the movie’s other strong points is it’s cast.  One thing that the movie had to get right was the line-up of actors who had to play the iconic characters, and I’d say that they did a great job with casting all of them.  The stand out here is Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm.  In all the past versions, Sue was often the least defined character of the group, because back when those movies were made we hadn’t really seen the genre define how to write for female super heroes.  Now in a world where both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have broken down barriers in the genre, we’re able to see the writers of these movie bring more depth to a character like Sue.  Vanessa Kirby has to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting in this movie and she really excels at portraying Sue as a mother who will move heaven and earth to protect her child.  Another character that also gets a lot more depth this time around is Johnny Storm.  It’s interesting how the movie portrays his brash personality and shows how it acts as a shield for some of his insecurity.  In the film, we learn that he wants to show his worth to the team beyond his super power to generate fire from his body, particularly when it comes to his intelligence.  Joseph Quinn does a great job of portraying this aspect, and he also still manages to successfully capture the playful side of Johnny too; which is pretty impressive considering the big shoes he had to fill inheriting the role from Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan.  Ebon Moss-Bachrach had a bit of an easier time considering that he’s playing the affable Ben Grimm, the movie’s most light hearted character.  At the same time, he’s also got to act through a CGI shell which is not easy, but somehow his personality manages to shine through the motion capture performance and he makes an instantly lovable Thing.  Unfortunately, with a cast of lead characters this big, one is inevitably going to get the short end of the stick, and that would be Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards.  Pedro’s performance is naturally very strong, but Reed is not really focused on in this movie.  He’s the guy who comes up with the solutions, but we don’t explore that much of his character beyond that.  It makes me think that a lot of his character development is being saved for future sequels, and of course the Avengers films.

The other spotlight of the movie is the way that it looks.  Of course the mid-century modern aesthetic is a bold choice on Marvel’s part, and it’s a great way to try something new and different with this property.  One of the biggest complaints levied at Marvel in recent years is that all their movies look the same, and it’s a criticism that is not unwarranted.  I can still remember just how bland and unremarkable Captain America: Brave New World (2025) was, and this is a vast improvement over that movie in every way.  The visual effects are also better utilized here than some of Marvel’s other recent movies.  The Thing in particular is a great achievement.  He looks so much like the Jack Kirby design, but you can still see the actor’s mannerisms shine through in the model without it looking off.  He very much looks like he’s occupying the same space with his live action co-stars, which is what the best CGI animated Marvel characters like Thanos and Rocket Raccoon have managed to do.  Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer is also beautifully realized.  I especially like that her silver skin is now perfectly polished either; that there’s tarnish in there as well, indicating that she’s a being of very advanced age as well.  The movie also does a great job of filling every scene with a lot of creative details.  It will probably take quite a few watches to spot all the little mid-century style touches they added to fill out their alternate timeline Manhattan skyline.  But, if there is one thing that I think will be far more memorable from this movie, it’s the musical score from Michael Giacchino.  The award winning composer (who’s also responsible for the Marvel Studios fanfare by the way) delivers some of his best work here, creating a score that could very well be as iconic as John Williams’ Superman them or Danny Elfman’s Batman theme.  Marvel has struggled to find music themes that become as iconic as the ones from DC, other than Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme itself, but I think Giacchino may have struck gold here with an epic score that not only feels right with the mid-century aesthetic, but also fits perfectly with these particular heroes.

So, while I would say that it just falls a bit short of top tier Marvel, I will without question also say that the Fantastic Four have finally broken their cinematic curse.  This is a movie that does justice to this super hero team, particularly the version of the team dreamed up by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.  I just think that there is room for improvement, and I have a feeling that we’ve got a lot to look forward to with regards to the Four in Marvel’s future.  We already know that they have a part to play in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday (2026), and the teaser at the end of Thunderbolts* hinted at just how they’ll be making their way into the MCU proper.  I would certainly like to see them explore Reed Richards as a character more in the Avengers movies, because it seemed to me that a talent as big as Pedro Pascal was underutilized in this movie.  But, nitpicks aside, there is still a lot to like about this movie.  The visuals are top notch, and the cast is likable and well-suited to their characters.  I also like the fact that even if you aren’t familiar with Silver Age Fantastic Four, you can still easily get into the flow of this movie.  Like James Gunn’s Superman, it foregoes the origin story and just throws you into the fray with the Fantastic Four already firmly established as a super hero team.  All we need is a short little montage to catch us up to speed, which this movie cleverly does through a TV special package, and then it’s all fun from there.  A lot of credit goes to director Matt Shakman for getting the tone of this film right.  He carried over his expertise of handling classic genres on television, including Marvel’s own Wandavision series, and helped give First Steps an authentic feel of the mid-century world it was supposed to convey.  Riding off the critical success of Thunderbolts*, as well as the strong responses to their TV properties Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart, it seems that Marvel has gotten a bit of their mojo back, and The Fantastic Four is continuing that win streak.  It’s coming at a good time too, as Avengers: Doomsday is just around the corner, as well as Secret Wars, which is supposed to culminate this current era of Marvel.  Marvel needed to find it’s footing again, and while First Steps isn’t top tier Marvel, it’s still a solid effort that shows they still got it, and that things are looking up as they head into the home stretch.  And that is just fantastic for all of us.

Rating: 8/10

It’s surprising that one of the characters that’s been the hardest for DC Comics to bring to the big screen is also their most iconic on the page.  Superman is undeniably one of the most well known comic book characters ever created, and probably the most famous one of all worldwide.  But, bringing him faithfully to the big screen has been somewhat of a challenge.  This is perhaps due to the fact that his first cinematic outing was just too hard of an act to follow.  Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) captured the character perfectly in a movie that honestly was the catalyst for the super hero boom that has happened in cinema over the last few decades.  While Donner’s direction was certainly a big part of making the film a success, the even bigger reason the movie worked as well as it did was because actor Christopher Reeve flawlessly embodied the character of Superman and made him a hero worth rooting for.  Reeve’s charm mixed in with his incredible physical presence really made us all believe that a man could fly.  And the part rightly came to define Reeve’s career, as well as his own life thereafter, especially after the tragic accident that left him paralyzed.  Over the years, DC and their parent company Warner Brothers came to realize that it was going to be very hard filling those bright red boots that Reeve wore on screen.  After the box office failure of the Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), it would be a whole 19 years before we would see Superman on the big screen again.  Unfortunately, Bryan Singer’s attempt at rebooting the franchise with Superman Returns (2006) was a pale imitation of Richard Donner’s original, despite a game performance from Brandon Routh taking over from Christopher Reeve.  While Superman was struggling to find his footing on film, his DC colleague Batman was taking charge at the box office thanks to Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy.  In order to capitalize on Batman’s success, Warner Brothers decided to apply it’s more gritty style to adaptations of all their Super Heroes, starting with Superman himself.  The studio looked to filmmaker Zach Snyder to revamp their iconic hero into something as iconic as their Batman, but this unfortunately didn’t work out as well as they hoped.

While Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) did deliver some strong box office numbers, it was also sharply criticized for missing the point about the character.  In Man of Steel, Superman resorts to killing the villainous General Zod in order to save people who were in the supervillain’s line of fire.  This was antithetical to the many years of comic book lore that showed Superman as being pure of heart and never once resorting to murder, even in justifiable cases.  It was a case where Snyder was conforming the character to his own storytelling sensibilities, which fell into a gloomier and hard edged viewing of the world.  This kind of grit is fine for heroes like Batman, but just feels wrong for the character of Superman.  Unfortunately, DC and Warner Brothers meant for Man of Steel to be the launching off point for a cinematic universe akin to their rivals over at Marvel.  The fact that they started off with such a divisive film like Man of Steel as their foundation is a testament to why the DCEU (also known as the Snyderverse) ultimately failed.  And this was truly unfortunate given that they had cast an actor like Henry Cavill who if placed in a more faithful adaptation of Superman on the big screen could’ve been as great as Christopher Reeve.  But, with Snyder out at DC, it’s time to take another shot at bringing Superman to life on screen.  After his departure from Marvel, director James Gunn found a new and welcome home at DC, where he was granted the opportunity to do his take on The Suicide Squad (2021).  Though the movie’s box office was dampened due to the Covid pandemic, Gunn nevertheless received high marks for Suicide Squad, and DC was eager to work with him again.  He was granted a quick return to Marvel to close out his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy before moving on this his next assignment, which became more than just one movie.  DC and Warner Brothers wanted him to take over as the Creative Director of their entire Cinematic Universe, becoming essentially DC’s equivalent of Kevin Feige over at Marvel.  Gunn would be the one who would decide which projects would be getting made, and it’s only natural that he would choose Superman to be the one who would help launch this new, revamped Cinematic Universe.  And, in taking on the duties of writer and director, he would be putting it on himself to get this relaunch on the right footing.  The only question is, does Superman soar or is cinema his unfortunate kryptonite.

In an interesting creative choice, James Gunn is re-launching Superman on the big screen without going over his entire backstory again like his previous films had.  In this version, we meet Superman (David Corenswet) as he is three years into the gig.  Despite being the world’s strongest hero, he still is struggling to do the right thing by saving as many people as he can.  He soon learns that a lot of his well intention deeds also run contrary to the rule of law.  In particular, his intervention between two warring nations called Boravia and Jarhanpur has made him run afoul of the US State department.  In order to reign in Superman, the government has granted billionaire tycoon Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) the opportunity to use his resources to contain Superman and hold him in captivity.  Lex has long resented Superman and other meta-humans that have called Earth their home, and he uses all the tools he has to bring Superman down.  Meanwhile, the reporters at the Daily Planet, where Superman works under his alias Clark Kent, are attempting to break apart the conspiracy that Lex has concocted in order to sour public opinion against Superman and learn about the whereabouts of where he’s being held prisoner.  Clark Kent’s colleague, and girlfriend, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) even seeks help from a group of corporate sponsored Super Heroes who are under the working title of the “Justice Gang”  They include the Green Lantern Guy Gardener (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and the tech savvy Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi).  Another Daily Planet reporter, Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) has an insider source feeding him information on Lex Luthor’s duplicitous deeds.  Superman, over the course of these crucial days, must learn what is the most important part of being a super hero, which is to put the safety of others above his own self.  But he also must deal with the fact that someone like Lex Luthor will use his inate kindness against him, by forcing Superman to make unfair compromises that only end up serving Lex’s goals.  Can Superman still be the hero while being forced into the position where he has to make the toughest of choices in order to serve the greater good?

There’s a lot of pressure on James Gunn’s part to get this re-boot of Superman right.  Superman is a true icon, and the mishandling of the character over the last couple decades has in turn also doomed the larger plans for the cinematic universes that were to be built on his shoulders.  But, James Gunn has had a stellar track record at both Marvel and DC, and no one doubts that he can deliver a movie that both is revolutionary in it’s style while at the same time being faithful to the comics.  I’m happy to say that he does not disappoint with his version of Superman.  While it may not be my favorite film of his, I certainly do think he delivers a movie that does an honorable job of bringing Superman to life, while also still being entertaining in that very Gunn-esque way.  The movie has a fair share of laughs and bombastic action sequences, but at the same time it does what it needs to do to deliver us a compelling Superman story-line.  I would even say that this is the best we’ve seen of the “man of steel” since the Christopher Reeve days.  What Gunn really excels at here is a general sense of fun, which is what we also got from Richard Donner in his film.  But he isn’t just merely trying to ape what Donner did with his Superman, which was the fatal flaw of Bryan Singer’s version.  This is the same James Gunn sense of fun that we saw him use in both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad.  It’s pleasing to see it apply so well to Superman and his narrative.  There’s not a cynical bone in this movie’s body.  When it wants to be profound, it earns it and when it wants to make a statement, it comes from a sincere place.  And for the most part, the humor lands.  The one flaw I would give this movie is that James Gunn seems to be wrapping his arms around a bit too much, to the point where I feel like some elements kind of lose impact as they get lost in the shuffle.  Some characters, especially Lois Lane, feel like their development was truncated a bit in order to fit more plot elements in.  For the most part, James Gunn manages to bring it all together in the end, but it’s a movie that does indeed throw a lot at you, and a few things do get forgotten in the process.  One thing that does help is that the movie hits the ground running right from the start, so that way we are not bogged down with too much exposition.  No origin story here, since it’s Superman and we should all know his beginnings by now.

And speaking of Superman, he is undoubtedly the movie’s greatest triumph.  A lot of the movie’s shortcomings are easily overlooked due to the fact that they managed to get the character right.  David Corenswet definitely fits the look of the character, with a wide build and tall frame.  But what he also does a great job with is making Superman relatable.  This movie gives a lot more time towards breaking down who Superman is as a person than perhaps any other version of the character we’ve seen.  The movie is far less about how Superman is going to save the day and more about what the day to day work of being a super hero does to him mentally.  This is a portrayal of the character that actually shows him to be vulnerable, showing that he is indeed more human than we think.  He’s put through a far more personal journey here, where the conflict revolves around whether he has a right to be the protector of this world despite not being from it originally.  James Gunn has stated in interviews that he views Superman’s story as an allegory for the immigrant experience.  For many immigrants, they have to work much harder in order to convince others that they should have a place in their new home.  Despite having grown up in Smallville America, Superman is still set apart due to his metahuman powers, and that sadly makes him a pariah to those who don’t like anyone different than them, including and especially Lex Luthor.  David Corenswet portrays this more vulnerable and relatable version of the character, being equal parts charming as well as physically imposing.  And he’s a perfect fit for what James Gunn wanted to explore with this character.  Christopher Reeve will still remain the gold standard of the character, much in the same way Sean Connery was for James Bond, but David’s portrayal perhaps comes the closest to reaching that high water mark.  Not that Henry Cavill and Brandon Routh were lightweights.  Those two were unfortunately the right guys at the wrong times, with movies failing to give them the opportunities to get the character right.

But it’s not just David Corenswet that delivers a great performance in this movie, as he is complimented by an excellent ensemble.  The biggest standout is Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.  Luthor is a character that has long been neglected on the big screen.  You have to go all the way back to the Donner original with the late great Gene Hackman’s brilliant performance to find a worthy Luthor on the big screen.  Hoult’s portrayal here may be the best one we’ve seen yet.  He perfectly captures the pettiness of Luthor and makes him an absolute, irredeemable asshole in the movie.  It’s refreshing to see an unapologetic villain in one of these kinds of movies again, after there have been so many attempts at making sympathetic villains who unfortunately are never that interesting.  Hoult really does a great job of getting that smarmy bravado of an entitled brat that most mega billionaires usually end up being.  And kudos for actually shaving his head bald for this role too, because he does indeed look like the comic book character come to life.  There are a lot of other great performances here as well.  The “Justice Gang” are all fun personalities that add some flavor to the film.  Nathan Fillion (a James Gunn regular) gives a hilarious portrayal as a cocky, self-aggrandizing Green Lantern and Isabela Merced is also quite amusing in her Hawkgirl portrayal.  However, the standout is Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific.  The character is a fairly recent creation from DC and is not widely known to fans outside of the comic book world, but spotlighting obscure characters has been a specialty of James Gunn and he makes Mr. Terrific one of the film’s breakout characters.  Just like what he did with the Guardians characters, I’m sure Mr. Terrific will soon become a fan favorite for many people thanks to Mr. Gunn.  I also want to spotlight the brief appearances of Ma and Pa Kent (played by Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince respectively).  They are so adorably folksy in this film and really help to underline the heart of the movie, which is showing the simple beginnings that helped to shape Superman into who he is.

One of the biggest improvements Gunn has made to this adaptation of Superman is with the visuals.  One of the biggest complaints about the Snyderverse films was their washed out color palettes.  Instead of the vibrant colors that you would see on the comic book page, Zach Snyder just muted everything in metallic grays and blacks, which just did not fit with the character of Superman at all.  Superman as a character represents a beacon of hope, and beacons should shine brightly.  Thankfully, James Gunn has brought back rich and vibrant colors.  This is especially evident in the bright reds and deep blues of Superman’s outfit.  Also most of the movie takes place in broad daylight; another improvement over the perpetual twilight of Zach Snyder’s vision.  Like all of James Gunn’s other comic book adaptations, he wants to take what’s on the comic page and bring it to life.  And it’s the fearlessness of balancing the silly with the serious that has come to define his work.  I love that he embraces the weirder side of comic books, and he surprisingly manages to find appropriate places to make it work in Superman’s story.  One of the best visual gags in the movie is a tender scene between Clark and Lois taking place while the Justice Gang battles a monster outside in the background.  The juxtaposition is what James Gunn manages to perfectly handle in his films, and there are plenty of moments in the movie where there are extra details in the background that help to make the scenes a whole lot funnier.  Thankfully, Gunn isn’t too indulgent; he doesn’t resort to tons of Easter eggs that foreshadow future films in the franchise.  All of the surprises work in service towards the world-building and story being told.  But, there are some clever nods to Richard Donner’s Superman thrown in here and there, and the movie also incorporates some of John Williams iconic theme into it’s musical score.  There also seems to be some little jabs at the Snyderverse as well, especially in a scene where Superman goes out of his way to avoid creating city wide destruction.  Overall, it demonstrates the high quality attention to detail that James Gunn has developed as a filmmaker working in this medium of comic book films.

It’s an unenviable task that James Gunn has put himself in having to set this new era of DC comic book movies on the right footing.  He was to win over a lot of fans, many of whom are growing fatigued over the abundance of comic book media we have had over the last decade.  The unfortunate thing is that his re-boot is coming on the heels of the demise of the very divisive Snyderverse.  The die-hard Zach Snyder fans are already getting their knives out to tear this new movie apart.  And if this movie doesn’t perform well, it could halt James Gunn’s long term plans for DC as a result.  Thankfully, the forecasts are indicating that Superman is poised to have a strong opening weekend.  How it performs beyond that is anyone’s guess, but hopefully it does well enough to instill confidence at Warner Brothers to get the ball rolling on all the future plans for Gunn’s DC Universe.  I for one feel like this is a good place to start, as the movie is just a fun, adventurous ride that is worthy of the Superman name.  You need a strong foundation to build a multi-film franchise, much like what Iron Man (2008) did for Marvel, and what was missing from the Snyderverse from the get go.  It’s not perfect, but what it gets right it gets very right.  David Corenswet makes for a great “man of steel” and I can’t wait to see him play this character again, including in future films that will inevitably reintroduce us to the Justice League.  It gets me excited because if they can get Superman right, then the rest of DC’s greatest heroes will also get much improved adaptations as well.  One thing you can really tell from this movie is James Gunn’s love for this cinematic universe.  He’s not some cynical director for hire.  He loves these characters and he wants us to love them all too.  Sure, DC still has a lot of catching up to do to be where Marvel is, but with Gunn in charge things are lookin bright, especially if we see more results like this.  And that in turn will help Marvel too, because nothing works better to improve the quality of your product than having a strong competitor be your motivator.  James Gunn’s Superman is one of this summer’s most satisfying blockbuster experiences and a fun time at the movies that thankfully makes us believe that a man can fly again, and hopefully for a good long time after.

Rating: 8.5/10

It’s becoming more and more difficult for an original idea to break through in the increasingly competitive world of animation.  Once a rarity, sequels have become the driving force of animation studios, with more and more of the top brands relying on established franchises in order to keep the lights on.  But at the same time, none of these franchises would exist had one original film managed to connect with audiences.  So, there has to exist a balance between studios investing in their future by coming up with the next big idea for a movie, while at the same time still continuing to milk their franchises for what their worth.  Sadly, the balance is becoming more heavily favored in the sequel department, and that’s partly because those are the films that generate the strongest results at the box office.  But the flooding of the marketplace with established franchises has made it difficult for something original to stand out, and the number of them that do is becoming far smaller each year.  This is even true with what is regarded as the best animation studio of them all; Pixar Animation.  All of their highest grossing films are sequels, including Inside Out 2 (2024), Incredibles 2 (2018), Finding Dory (2016) and Toy Story 4 (2019), and there more on the horizon, including another Toy Story.  But, they are a studio that still tries to put out something original into theaters, not just in order to plan for the future, but to also allow themselves a chance to be experimental as well.  They have a lot more leeway than other animation studios in this regard, mainly due to the strength of their brand name which is a selling point in itself.  But, circumstances in recent years have made even this selling point difficult for them.  After Toy Story 4 hit theaters and generated a handsome total at the box office, Pixar had an upcoming slate that was going to be primarily originals; a bode of confidence in their ability to deliver on the strength of their brand alone.  But, unfortunately the Coivd-19 pandemic ruined their plans.  Onward (2020) only got two weeks into it’s run before movie theaters everywhere closed and Pixar would not have anything seen on the big screen for another 2 years.

In that meantime, three films of theirs were dropped onto streaming; Soul (2020), Luca (2021), Turning Red (2022).  And when it finally came time to return to the big screen, Pixar unfortunately were re-entering the race with a bum horse called Lightyear (2022).  Essentially, all of the brand value that they had in the previous decade was undercut by their parent company’s decision to have them drive up their streaming service’s membership instead.  And this was despite the positive critical response that these movies received; Soul even went on to win a couple of Oscars.  These movies were finding an audience thankfully, but their absence from the movie theaters was affecting the brand’s selling power as well.  People were just not being drawn to theaters anymore because they had to see the new Pixar movie.  This was evident by the weak opening weekend numbers of Pixar’s next film, Elemental (2023).  The movie thankfully managed to stay afloat thanks to strong word of mouth, but even still it was far from Pixar’s peak performance.  But then came a sequel to the studio’s rescue; Inside Out 2.  People figured that the sequel to the award winning 2015 original would do much better at the box office, but I’m sure few imagined just how well it would do.  The movie became Pixar’s biggest moneymaker ever both at the domestic and worldwide box office.  It’s unfortunate that it had to be a franchise film that turned around Pixar’s fortunes, but at the same time Inside Out 2 was still made with the high quality animation and storytelling that has become a bedrock of the studio.  With a big win in their column now, Pixar is hoping that it will have strong downhill effects for their follow-ups.  Originally, their newest film, Elio (2025) was supposed to precede Inside Out 2, but considering that it’s production was delayed a bit by the strikes in 2023, it was decided to push the film a full year and let Inside Out 2 carry the slack for the year.  It may have worked to Elio’s benefit because now they can ride the crest of the wave of it’s predecessor’s huge win.  The only question is, is Elio another positive step in the right direction for Pixar, or is it another flop waiting to happen that can’t carry the weight of Pixar’s valuable brand.

Elio is another in a long line of coming-of-age stories that have been central to Pixar’s body of work.  A young little boy named Elio (Yonas Kibreab) has recently lost his parents in an accident and now has to live under the care of his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), an Air Force major responsible for running a program that tracks space debris.  While spending time with her on the base, Elio wanders into an exhibit that details the history of the Voyager 1 spacecraft and how it has explored deep into outer space, sending a message from Earth to distant worlds within the cosmos.  Blown away by all this, he wishes to explore the cosmos himself.  A couple years later, he has devised a plan to get himself abducted by aliens.  His obsession has left him isolated from his community, and estranged from his stressed out aunt.  Things come to a head when Elio ends up using the satellites on the base to send out a message to outer space in the hopes that someone will hear him.  This incident leads Olga to put Elio in a youth camp where he’ll be trained to be more disciplined.  But, while trying to stay out of the wrath of bullies at the camp, Elio ends up finding out that his message was received.  An alien spacecraft arrives and beams him light years away to another world.  He soon finds himself at a space station that operates like a intergalactic United Nations, and they are seeking new worlds to join their ranks, including Earth.  With the help of a super computer named Ooooo (Shirley Henderson), he’s given a universal translator that helps him communicate with all of the Alien ambassadors present there, including Ambassador Questa (Jameela Jamil), Ambassador Tegmen (Matthias Schweighofer) and Ambassador Helix (Brandon Moon).  There’s only one problem, they are all under the impression that Elio is the leader of Earth.  Complicating things even more, a war lord Emperor named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) is also threatening the council of the Communiverse if they don’t honor his membership.  In order to fit in and continue his charade, Elio volunteers to speak with Lord Grigon on his dreadnought ship, but he soon learns he’s out of his league and becomes imprisoned.  On the ship, Elio meets Grigon’s young son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who may be his ticket out of trouble.  Is Elio able to fit in with this weird and often dangerous alien world, or will he learn that he needs to make things right on Earth first.

Elio is the first directorial effort of Pixar veteran after Adrian Molina after his co-directing work with Lee Unkrich on Coco (2017).  It’s easy to see that coming-of-age stories are something that he’s drawn to as a storyteller as there are quite a few parallels between the two movies.  Both involve an adolescent boy with big dreams getting a chance to visit a fantastical world where he’s able to live out his fantasy; but along the way they realize that their dreams also clash with reality and it makes them confront something about themselves that challenges their viewpoints.  All of this isn’t to say that Elio is directly copying Coco beat for beat; it just shows that Molina seems to work comfortably with this kind of narrative.  And indeed he does make Elio’s story a wonderful and engaging one.  Elio will indeed be a crowd pleasing movie for many people.  It’s funny, colorful, and even has a good heart that hits some powerful emotional beats.  I’d say the one thing that works against the film is that it isn’t terribly original either.  It does cook with all of the Pixar movie ingredients that we all like and uses them well, but it all comes together in a meal that feels perhaps a tad bit familiar.  Elio isn’t quite as groundbreaking in it’s concept, as demonstrated with it’s similarities to Coco, and visually it is borrowing a lot of inspiration from a lot of things that we’ve already seen done in other Pixar Animation movies.  Is it just me, or does some of the designs of the Communiverse station feel like they were pulled out of the world of Inside Out.  With all that said, everything is still done well in the movie.  It may be formulaic, but the movie doesn’t suffer too much from that.  I for one was still finding myself entertained throughout.  But you can definitely tell when the movie was falling back on already tread ground when it was struggling to find it’s way.  Oddly enough, it’s the Earthbound stuff that was where the movie was finding it’s most inspired moments.  I especially loved the way they dealt with what Aunt Olga was going through while Elio was off on his adventure.

The movie’s greatest asset overall is the character of Elio.  He’s certainly not the first young protagonist in a Pixar movie, and he’s actually part of a recent trend of the studio focusing on adolescent stories.  Elio comes to us after the likes of Miguel from Coco, Luca from Luca and Meilin from Turning Red, but he’s still able to stand out amidst all of them.  The thing that makes the character of Elio so enjoyable to watch in the film is that the filmmakers aren’t afraid to make him a bit of a problem child.  There are a lot of similarities between him and Lilo from Lilo & Stitch (2002), and that’s not a bad comparison at all.  Elio is essentially a nice kid, but he also has a bad temper and is a bit of a habitual liar as well.  The movie also makes a strong point that this obsession he has had with exploring the universe has made him withdrawn and alone, which is an interesting character flaw to give to a young character like him.  Elio’s journey is much more than getting the chance to explore the universe; it’s also about coming to understand that having a myopic obsession becomes a roadblock to your maturity as a person.  The movie thankfully never shames Elio for being a bit of a weirdo.  But it does confront Elio with the fact that he does need to grow up in order to be a better person.  When he is taken to the Communiverse, he realizes very quickly that his dreams have done little to prepare him for real world situations.  It does the coming-of-age trope very well in this regard, and the many layers of Elio’s character help to make the story resonate.  I have a feeling that many kids are going to find the character relatable, and the message that Pixar is sending with the movie is one that is worthwhile for young viewers.  It’s okay to dream and be a free spirit, but also have a sense of your responsibilities to those you love and the world you live in.  All the while, Pixar does a great job giving Elio a winning personality that makes him feel both animated but also real at the same time.  I especially like the fact that he not only has come up with his own language (which is a very kid thing to do) but he also figured out the correct grammar in that language as well.  His voice, provided by a talented young actor named Yonas Kibreab, also brings a lot of warmth and humor to the role.  You know when Pixar is working well with it’s storytelling when they can make yet another child protagonist in their long line of movies still feel wholly unique and different.

The remainder of the cast are more of a mixed bag.  The one drawback of having such a strong main character in the movie is that his development kind of takes away from all of the other secondary characters in the story.  Elio’s Aunt Olga perhaps suffers the most in available screen-time, because for the sake of building up the middle act of the movie, her character needs to be sidelined.  That being said, she does come across as a fully rounded character herself.  It’s helpful that she’s voice by newly minted Oscar winner Zoe Saldana, whose adding yet another prime role in her body of work for Disney, following appearances in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar franchises.  Her vocal performance hits the right marks with showing Olga’s frustrations with all of Elio’s bad behavior as well as her desire to do right in raising him up in the absence of his parents.  The alien characters also are a mixed bag, as many of them don’t really stand out given the short amount of run time we spend with them.  One of the stand outs is Brad Garrett as Lord Grigon.  Garrett is a veteran of many different Pixar films, including playing Bloat in Finding Nemo (2003) and Gusteau in Ratatouille (2007), and he brings his comically bassy voice to yet another memorable character in one of their films.  I like the fact that his vocal performance is able to find range between menacing and comical without making the shifts feel out of character.  It’s a character that could’ve easily turned one note, and thankfully Brad Garrett is a veteran of the medium to where he can make the character a lot more multi-faceted.  Newcomer Remy Edgerly is also a standout with his hilariously upbeat performance as Grigon’s young son Glordon.  The contrast between Glordon’s more monstrous appearance (kind of like a mini version of the sand worms from Dune) and his hyperactive childish personality is especially fun to watch, and the movie gets a lot of humorous mileage out of the character.  Edgerly also has strong chemistry with Elio’s voice actor Yonas, and the interaction between the two is a definite highlight of the movie.  And in the Pixar tradition, the strength of the cast is not in the names on the marquee but rather by how well the actor fit their role.  Zoe Saldana is perhaps the biggest name in this cast, and she’s not even the main character.  Everyone is perfectly suited for their roles in the film, and it makes for another great Pixar cast of characters.

The film also has a strong visual sense too, even though a lot of it does feel derivative.  Pixar has never faltered when it comes to their visuals, even on some of their lesser films, and Elio continues their winning streak in this department.  I especially like the contrast that the movie delivers with the Earthbound moment and the celestial ones.  The Earth scenes feel natural with a muted color palette.  Then once the aliens come to “abduct” Elio, the palette begins to pop.  It’s a lot like the shift found in The Wizard of Oz (1939), though no sepia was used this time.  While the visual motif of the Communiverse feels perhaps a bit too close to the organic looking fantasy-scape of Inside Out, it still had a lot of beauty to it as well.  It’s also cool to see the work put into making all of the aliens unique in their designs. There aren’t a lot of repeating alien types in those scenes, which tells you that Pixar allowed their artists to go wild with their imaginations, and most of it does make it on the screen.  The movie definitely gives the story a very adventurous feel, surprising us at every corner with all the stuff we are about to see.  And while there is a lot of familiarity to a lot of the sci-fi tropes in this movie, many of them are fun send-ups of those cliches as well.  What they do with cloning in this movie is especially imaginative, and it leads to some of the best laughs in the movie.  In many ways, I feel like this movie pays homage to a lot of kid-centric sci-fi movies of the 80’s and 90’s, like Flight of the Navigator (1986) and Explorers (1985) and helps to modernize those kinds of imaginative adventures for young audiences living today.  At the same time, it does have the same heart-string pulling moments that have become a hallmark of Pixar.  While the movie didn’t leave me misty eyed like the ending of Coco, the film does hit some emotional moments that I’m sure will warm the hearts of audiences both young and old.  Also, I especially dug the music in this movie, provided by Rob Simonsen.  It’s got a techno futuristic beat to it, but also it also hits those emotional moments very well, reminding me a lot of the Oscar winning work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the Soul soundtrack.  Overall, another extremely well crafted film from Pixar Animation.

It’s too early to tell just yet how Elio will be received.  It will not be anywhere near the record-breaking box office of Inside Out 2, and early indicators suggest it may actually struggle out of the gate.  The hope is that Inside Out 2’s success may have rebuilt the brand prestige to Pixar, but that will only be determined by Elio’s ability to stand on it’s own as a follow-up.  There’s no doubt that Pixar still has the creative drive to deliver a worthwhile original film, but it’s going to be hard to convince audiences of that in this current animation market.  Even now, the box office is dominated by not one but two live action remakes of classic animated movies; Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.  One positive that may work in Elio’s favor is that Pixar films are known to leg out well past their opening weekend.  This was true with Elemental, which overcame a weak opening weekend to turn into a modest success at the box office.  And all of those films that opened on streaming instead of in theaters have since gone on to become some of Pixar’s most popular recent films.  Hopefully audiences will discover Elio over the course of the summer and if they don’t come in droves on opening weekend, hopefully word of mouth will keep it around for a long while.  As far as Pixar movies go, I think it stands very well in contrast with some of their best work.  I wouldn’t say it’s one of their all time greats (which is becoming an increasingly high bar to clear), but it’s definitely in the upper half of their filmography.  The only thing that holds it back from a more perfect score is that a lot of it is formulaic and falls back on the familiar too many times.  But, everything is still done extremely well, so there isn’t too much to complain about.  It’s got one of their best main characters ever and has a story that still has a lot of charm, humor and warmth to it.  And it should be said that we need to root for more movies like it, especially in an animation industry that is increasingly reliant on franchise appeal.  There needs to be more fresh ideas in the animation market, and these new ideas need to be nurtured through audience interest.  That’s how we can get a vibrant and bustling animation market back to not feeling like it’s not a cash grab anymore.  Definitely see Elio if you can in a theater and keep looking up at those stars.

Rating: 8.5/10

It’s very difficult for any franchise to maintain stamina to last more than a decade, let alone several.  Even rarer is a franchise that has managed to get even better as it goes along, and rarest of all, do so with it’s main attraction still capable of delivering in every outing.  One such franchise that has continued to age like wine over the course of nearly 30 years is the Mission: Impossible series.  Based on the TV series that ran from 1966-73 made it’s jump to the big screen in 1996, though less so as a direct translation and more as a starring vehicle for an A-list star, in this case Tom Cruise.  What helped to set Mission: Impossible the movie apart was the way that Mr. Cruise threw so much of himself into the action scenes in the movie.  The series would come to be defined as a whole by it’s groundbreaking use of stunts, many of which involving Cruise himself.  And with each new film, it became a game of upping the ante with what they could do.  Each new Mission: Impossible had at least one standout stunt sequence that for a lot of people would be like nothing they’ve ever seen before.  And for an adrenaline junky like Tom Cruise, each of these movies allowed him more opportunities to do what no other actor or stunt man for that matter had ever attempted on screen before.  This includes scaling the outside of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol (2011); hanging onto the side of a real airplane as it takes off in Rogue Nation (2015); or piloting a helicopter solo through a narrow canyon in Fallout (2018).  Because of all of these iconic action scenes, this has become the identity of the franchise, leaving the original series as a distant memory; save for the memorable theme song that still is a big part of the franchise.  But one has to wonder, after 30 years of raising the bar with each film can Tom Cruise and company still deliver on that same level?  Or is the series inevitably going to hit it’s breaking point, especially with Cruise now reaching his sixties.

There seems to be a feeling that Tom Cruise is starting to prepare to say goodbye to what has been his signature franchise.  And to bring the series to a close, he’s delivering not one but two films.  The plan was to make a grand two part finale, with each film released a year apart.  The problem is that a lot didn’t go according to plan during the making of the film, which also extended into the release as well.  The pandemic shut down filming on the first part of the series for several months.  Cruise tried his best to get production up and running again, including adopting strict Covid guidance measures on his film set.  But even while the production was on hold, he was still making sure his crew was being taken care of, which included paying them all through the delays.  While this was a noble gesture on his part, it also ballooned the budget significantly.  The first part also had to sit on the shelf until 2023, so that it wouldn’t conflict with Tom Cruise’s other big blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  But once it did make it to theaters, it unfortunately suffered a case of awful timing.  It’s late July release just so happened to fall mere days after the Barbenheimer phenomenon, and it got completely drowned out by the dual blockbusters of Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023).  Not only that, but it also released just as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were starting, meaning that the actors could not go out to help promote the film as well.  As a result, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One (2023) became a very expensive underperformer at the box office and a significant money loser for parent studio Paramount.  Considering that there still was one more movie left to go for this franchise, the studio was at a crossroads about how to do after this disappointment.  It was decided to put some more distance between Part One and Two, with the latter being pushed back another year.  Also, the studio also decided to drop the Part Two moniker on the title.  The second movie would now be called Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and would get a prime Memorial Day release, which is also when Top Gun: Maverick hit theaters.  Despite all of the changes and production turmoil, there is still a lot of excitement surrounding what may be the final film in this franchise.  The only question is, does this Mission end with a bang or does it self-destruct.

The film opens a few years after the events of Dead Reckoning.  A rogue AI program named “The Entity” has been infiltrating vast stretches of the world wide web, with many government agencies worried that they are next.  But, there is hope that someone may one day gain access to the source code of The Entity and contain it’s power for good.  The source code however was last traced to a Russian submarine named the Sebastopol, which sank over a decade ago.  The only key known to unlock the source code’s location was retrieved by IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team.  Their goal is to find the location of the submarine and use a poison pill algorithm on a hard drive to neutralize The Entity before it reaches the world’s nuclear arsenals.  But, Hunt’s team faces a major hurdle when a past foe, Gabriel (Esai Morales) manages to steal the poison pill drive from them.  Now Hunt and his fellow agents must track down Gabriel while also searching for the Sebastopol’s whereabouts, and to complicate matters even more, the governments of the United States and Russia are also pursuing their own ends to stop The Entity, with a nuclear option on the table.  Ethan is granted a 72 hour window by President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) to find the submarine and neutralize the Entity.  But it calls for his accomplices, tech wizards Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), master pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), and former ally of Gabriel named Paris (Pom Klementieff) to be at the right place at the right time, putting all of their lives on the line.  Meanwhile, they are also facing interference from other government agents like Secretary Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Captain Briggs (Shea Whigham) who are more skeptical of Ethan’s tactics.  With time running short and facing mounting pressure from all sides, including the wrath of an all seeing AI presence, will Ethan Hunt manage to save the world from the brink of destruction once again?  Or is it one mission too much to handle for even him?

When you go into a Mission: Impossible movie, you more or less know what you are getting yourself into.  This is a franchise that has prided itself on pushing the envelope to the extreme.  But after 30 years, does this franchise still have the ability to deliver something that we haven’t seen done on film anymore?  I was starting to doubt this myself after watching the last film.  While I still though Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning was a really good movie overall, I was a tad bit underwhelmed as well.  There was a lot of hype surrounding the signature stunt of the film, which involved Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off of a cliff, with a camera following tightly behind him to get that money shot looking straight down into the abyss below.  It’s a cool stunt, but I felt that it was a bit over-hyped because seen in context with the rest of the film, it just doesn’t come off as particularly harrowing.  The more impressive scene came later, with an extended train crash segment, but by that point, I felt that the movie was fairly lacking in overall tension.  Which made me worry about how they were going to follow this up in Part Two.  Has the franchise truly run out of steam?  Well, I am happy to report that it in fact has not.  The Final Reckoning is a major step up from Part One of this franchise finale.  While Dead Reckoning felt unengaging, I can definitely say that Final Reckoning put me on the edge of my seat multiple times throughout the lengthy run time of the movie.  It’s still not perfect, and it does fall a bit short of the franchise at it’s best, but it’s still among my favorite films in this long franchise.  the movie’s most glaring problem is that it takes it’s time in the first act to get things going, with some rather clunky exposition to get us up to speed.  But once it hits the halfway mark when Ethan sets off on his mission, the movie grabs a hold of us and takes us for a ride.  The last hour and a half of this nearly three hour movie is Mission: Impossible at it’s very best, and of course, one of the big reasons for that are the signature action sequences.

This movie has two of what I think are not just among the best action sequences in this franchise, but perhaps among the best ever done in all of cinema.  One is an extended sequence where Ethan Hunt reaches the Sebastopol submarine that lies deep on the ocean floor.  The way they filmed this sequence is just extraordinary.  It uses just the right amount of CGI effects mixed in with some impressive in camera work on a real flooded set.  There’s something that they do with the water level in this sequence that is really impressive when you see it in the movie.  It’s not a difficult technique to do, but when executed as well as it is in this movie, it becomes a really great visual that immerses you into the scene perfectly.  I also have to commend the sound design from this scene as well.  If you watch this movie in a theater with a high quality sound system, you are going to inundated with all of the metallic roaring of the submarine wreckage as it grinds down on the ocean floor and all of it’s weaponry starts banging around in it’s hull.  And it’s a sequence that Tom Cruise largely has to carry on his own, mostly without dialogue.  This was a definitely highlight of the movie for me, but it’s not the only one that stands out in the film.  The one that you see plastered all over the advertising of the movie, involving the duo biplanes is also a worthy action sequence living up to the high bar of this franchise.  I for one would love to learn just how much of this sequence involved Tom Cruise really hanging off of the wing of one of these planes in mid-air.  There are a couple shots that are undeniably the real deal, of course with the necessary safety harnesses either hidden or digitally erased.  Even still, the fact that Tom Cruise would endure high speed winds, excessive g-forces, and any other dangerous possibilities involved with flying a plane just to get those in camera shots is beyond belief.  I cannot think of any other actor who pushes his own body to the limit like he does, all for the sake of making this stuff look as real as possible.

Though the series has run for a total of 8 films, the last half has only had one directorial vision behind it.  Cruise has found a trusted creative partner with Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie.  McQuarrie has been the one whose guided the franchise through it’s latter stage, which has been driving the franchise more towards spectacle than style.  It’s not a bad thing for this franchise to lose some directorial panache along the way.  While the franchise did attract some big name filmmakers like Brian DePalma and John Woo initially, their directorial styles didn’t quite standout as well as they should.  If anything, the directors in this franchise have had less input on the visuals overall, with Tom Cruise as the star and producer being the chief creative force overall.  Eventually, he decided he would rather have a director that more or less comfortable conforming to his vision rather than their own.  And McQuarrie is a competent enough filmmaker that he actually fits well as the steward of this franchise.  For this film, I actually feel like he proved to be a bit more than just competent.  There are some striking visuals in this movie, including a truly breathtaking one where Ethan Hunt comes into contact with the polar ice cap, and it shows a great deal of confidence McQuarrie has now behind the camera.  It was shots like that that I felt were missing from the last film, which was a fairly basic looking film for this franchise, though not as bad as my least favorite film in the series, Mission: Impossible III (2006).  McQuarrie’s only misstep with this movie is a bit of the writing.  The film, like I mentioned before, does have a difficult time getting started, and it does feel like McQuarrie was perhaps a little overwhelmed by the task he had to perform, which was to not just follow-up the story from the last film, but to wrap everything up from the franchise as a whole.  There’s a fair amount of the movie throwing quick edit montages at you just to refresh your memory of all the key moments from all the previous seven films in the series so that you don’t get lost in the plot.  It’s clunky, but thankfully it doesn’t last far into the film.  Like I said before, once the movie enters it’s second half, that’s where the film gets really good.

The movie also thankfully still devotes enough time to it’s cast as well.  Sure Tom Cruise is the main draw, but there’s a generous amount of time devoted to getting us to like all of the other team members there to help him.  I especially like that Ving Rhames still makes an appearance here.  Apart from Cruise, he’s the only other actor to appear in all 8 movies.  And you can tell that Cruise was more than happy to have him back every single time.  It’s a 30 year friendship that very much translates into the film.  Simon Pegg is also a lot of fun to watch here, bringing a nice bit of levity to the film through his great comedic instincts.  Hayley Atwell, who joined the cast in the last film, also gets more to do, and she brings a nice bit of innocent curiosity to the film, especially when she’s confronted with the sometimes absurd plans that Ethan’s team asks her to participate in.  I also enjoy seeing the who’s who of character actors that Tom Cruise brings in to play all of the government brass that either are on his side or think he’s completely crazy.  There’s also a surprise addition to the cast that harkens back all the way to the franchise’s origins that I thought was fun to see appear here.  The one part of the cast that unfortunately came across as the weak spot in this movie was Esai Morales and the villain Gabriel.  The actor is fine, but the character is just too dull and uninteresting to work as a formidable villain.  Even the movie seems to forget about him, as he disappears for I’d say a good hour of the film’s run time.  To be honest, The Entity works much better as a villainous presence in the film.  It has this “eye of Sauron” like mystique to it, and you can definitely feel it’s influence over everything in the plot, even if it’s not physically shown on screen.  A lot of the tension in the movie comes from the fact that they only have the tiniest of windows available to them to contain this thing, which makes it a foe worth fearing, especially when it has the power to destroy the world.  But, of course the main attraction remains Cruise himself, and he does not disappoint.  I still love the fact that he’s not afraid to show Ethan Hunt’s more vulnerable side.  Hunt doesn’t always do everything smoothly, and he often comes away bruised and bloodied.  The franchise could’ve easily turned Ethan Hunt into an invincible super hero, and instead the movie thankfully shows that he’s a man who gets the job done, even if mistakes and injuries happen along the way.  It also gives the character a much needed humorous side when things don’t always go to plan, which Cruise plays perfectly with his hilarious dumbfounded look in certain scenes.

So, is this truly the end of the road for the franchise?  I don’t think that Mission: Impossible the brand will ever be laid to rest, because it’s just too valuable to Paramount, especially with it’s future merger partner Skydance being the production outfit behind the franchise.  But, Tom Cruise as it’s poster boy star may be nearing it’s end.  Cruise has pushed his body for a long time and has proven to be remarkably in peak physical form even into his sixties.  But, Father Time catches up to us all, and it’s going to get to a point soon where Tom Cruise will be too old to do these kind of death-defying stunts anymore.  Even still, there’s enough left open even at the end of this movie to signal more adventures down the road.  It’s just too early to tell if Tom Cruise is truly done with Ethan Hunt right now.  If he is, then he should feel pretty proud of himself because he closes out his time in this franchise with a banger.  I would say that this is probably my third favorite film in the series, behind only Ghost Protocol and Fallout.  The former was the most well-paced and visually inventive of the series, while the latter had the best stunts and the best villain of the series, with Henry Cavill’s memorable baddie.  For The Final Reckoning, I would say that it falls just shy of the others because of it’s clunky opening, but it features two of the best action sequences of the series as a whole.  That submarine sequence alone is a true work of cinematic art.  At 170 minutes in length, it is definitely the longest film in the series, but you won’t be bored by any of it.  It does exactly what the best action film should do, which is to grab a hold of you and put you on the edge of your seat.  One thing that I would like to see Cruise do though after making a film like this is perhaps return to more dramatic work.  I know he feels at home in action movies, but he’s also a three time Oscar-nominated actor as well, and I would like to see him return to that too.  Maybe that might be in the cards for him, as Final Reckoning feels like a bit of a parting gift to a franchise.  We’ll see if that is the case or not, but if this is the end for Cruise’s time as Ethan Hunt, than it’s a finale worth feeling proud about.  Overall, this is undoubtedly a mission very much worth choosing to accept.

Rating: 8.5/10