2018 movies: The good, the bad, and the meh.
Titles covered: Paddington 2, The Maze Runner Death Cure, Ready Player One, Annihilation, A Wrinkle in Time, Black Panther, Pacific Rim Uprising, and Tomb Raider
The Good:
Paddington 2 (****)
Yes, the Paddington movies really are that good!
Amid the cacaphony of CGI family movies, the Paddington movies have stood out for their gentle sense of humor, imaginative artistry, and positive attitude. The polite but clumsy bear from “Darkest Peru” proves to be both a positive example for kids without being too perfect, and his ensemble of supporting characters are more memorable than the main characters of most movies.
The new story starts off with Paddington simply trying to raise money to buy a gift, but quickly raises the stakes when a crime is committed and the silly bear is the prime suspect. Paddington ends up in prison, and inspires a rogues gallery of criminals with his charm and innocence. The plot goes in some fun directions while staying within contraints that kids can understand. One of the great surprises is Hugh Grant as a pitch-perfect children's villain: competent enough to be a threat without being scary.
(Oddly enough, there are two quick risque-ish moments. Nothing worth getting upset about, but slightly head-scratching.)
Like the first movie, Paddington 2 is delightful, cheerful, and dreadfully funny. In fact, it's better than the first movie, with a more original plot and funnier villain. Highly recommended, whether you have kids or not.
The Maze Runner: The Death Cure (*** and a half)
I'm going to make a bold statement: The Maze Runner is the best YA movie series of the 2010's. The Hunger Games fizzled out, and every other series was either unfinished (Divergent, Ender's Game, Percy Jackson) or kinda sucked. Meanwhile, The Maze Runner managed to produce 3 well-made movies and ended with a bang. That's not to say that these movies are perfect. The original The Maze Runner was great as its own adventure, but didn't connect well to the over-arching trilogy pilot. The Scorch Trials did great world-building... but suffered as a middle chapter with no beginning and no ending. And The Death Cure, while an emotionally charged and intense action movie, is way too long. Still, each of these movies works on a story and character level and produces action scenes that are way better than any of the nonsense that Katniss faced.
The Death Cure hits the ground running with a stunning action scene that seems to have been inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road. From there it moves into a heist plot, as the kids team up with several very dubious allies in order to pull off a rescue within a fortified city run by evil corporation WCKD. Or... are they actually wicked? They are the villains, but at the same time get a few touching scenes that illustrate that WCKD is doing legitimately good things, while their opponents on the other side of the wall just want to burn down the world.
(Incidentally, I found myself somewhat on the side of WCKD. Sure, they're totalitarian jerks, but their actions at least made sense given the desperate state of the world. While the protagonists are much more likeable, they also seemed totally OK with the rest of the world dying as long as they got their comfortable isolated community. It's not quite the f'ed up morality of The Last of Us, but it's along the same lines.)
Maybe my expectations have been lowered by the mediocrity of most 2018 films, but I was pretty thrilled by The Death Cure's high stakes, drama, and moral ambiguity.
Ready Player One (*** and a half)
This is almost the most awesome movie ever.
I say almost because it’s filled to the brim with recognizable pop culture icons and has a very cool premise. Ready Player One almost pulls off the flair of Lego Batman with its crossover references and crazy level of detail. Almost.
The interesting premise of Ready Player One concerns a dystopian future in which everyone lives in poor real-world conditions but can escape to a utopian virtual reality world called OASIS. Halliday, the creator of OASIS, dies and leaves his company with whoever can solve his obscure clues and videogame challenges. The challenges are completely different from those in the “Ready Player One” novel, with the goal of providing more thematic cohesion. The three challenges are also the best parts of the movie, deftly combining movie thrills, different videogame genres (racing, survival horror, and exploration/puzzle), pop cultural references, and a small lesson in each one. The first challenge is particularly awesome, with the Batmobile and Delorean running away from a T-Rex. In scenes like this, I get a sense for how amazing this movie could have been if it were tighter and better written.
Alas, while the good parts of Ready Player One are excellent, the movie is way too long and tends to drag. Also, while the theme of the movie is about true nerd fandom, it ends up coming off kinda phony. The dumbest scene in the movie involves the villain trying to tempt the hero by promising to build highschools patterned after Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Yes, really. The middle-aged villain tries to impress a teenager by referencing an unmemorable detail from a 60 year old movie, and the kid rebels because the villain might not know enough obscure trivia about this old movie. I wasn’t aware that nerds cared so much about 80’s teen movies in the first place, and I grew up then!
OK, maybe that’s a nitpick, but the bigger issue comes with the characterization of Halliday. Frankly, he comes off as a pretty lame and unexciting person, which is a problem when all the other characters are obsessing over him. As portrayed in the film, Halliday would be a low-level programmer for the OASIS, not a successful businessman who inspired a massive nerd cult following. He’s not Steve Jobs… or Steve Wozniack.
(Oh, and his preference for Goldeneye was slappers-only as Oddjob? What poor souls did he sucker into playing with him?! Man, this guy sucks!)
Ready Player One is very fun and clever, but also uneven and silly. And it really needed to be cut down to less than 2 hours, as half the fun would come from re-watching it and looking for the myriad of easter eggs.
The Bad:
Annihilation (**)
Based on the trailer for Annihilation, I expected that it would have an awesome twist or an underwhelming one. Actually, it has neither. There's no real twist. Annihilation is just a weird sci-fi movie that strives to intelligent and thought-provoking.
Let me get my scientist wanking out of the way first. The science in this movie is not good. I didn't buy Natalie Portman as a scientist (or a soldier), and it felt like screenwriter/director Alex Garland had gotten all of his biology references through 10 minutes of Googling.
Anyway... what is the movie about? Basically, an alien meteor creates a widening effect called “The Shimmer” which mutates life within a state park and produces a luminous barrier that blocks communication. Naturally, the scientists in this movie decide to study it and understand it's effects with short trips into the Shimmer by wearing protective suits, staying close to the border, and using ropes to pull people out if needed. After understanding what effect the Shimmer has, they develop means to get further inside and eliminate the source. Just kidding! Everyone in this movie is actually a moron, so they go in with nothing to protect themselves from radiation or biohazards, and plan extensive multi-week expeditions into The Shimmer despite having never had a successful look inside. But none of this matters anyway because the mysterious and elusive alien enemy is easily killed by fire, so they might as well have sent in a kid with a book of matches.
Do I have anything good to say about this movie, which mysteriously got “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes? Well... some of the imagery is cool. I liked the subtleties of the mutated flora, which are colorful and interesting. The Shimmer starts off looking pretty normal, but gets more surreal and dystopian as the movie goes on. The various animal attacks are pretty scary and brutal, most notably a horrific mutated bear that acquires a human voice. The human-plant hybrids also created some pretty fightening and creepy visuals. I guess the en media res framing actually works pretty well, despite spoiling the ending in Scene One.
Annihilation has a few great moments, but overall strikes me as a swing-and-a-miss from an otherwise talented sci-fi writer. It's not fast-paced enough to work as a thriller, and not smart enough to work as serious sci-fi. The science ranges from elementary to incorrect, and the whole affair is sort of an Idiot Ball plot.
A Wrinkle in Time (**)
Well, it’s not horrible…
Here’s the plot of every sci-fi/fantasy kids story: A kid is sad, they get pulled into a fantasy world that vaguely represents their real-world struggles, and there’s usually a villain that only the special kid can defeat. TV Tropes calls this the “Portal Fantasy.” Since this storyline is so over-used, each iteration really needs to excel in the execution, presenting solid world-building and poignant character arcs. And that’s where Wrinkle in Time fails.
First of all, the world-building is incoherent and wishy-washy, featuring a series of arbitrary settings that the protagonists warp to randomly. There’s no sense of a journey, or even danger. It’s just a bunch of scenes strung together, many of which accomplish very little. There’s a dramatic bit that involves Reese Witherspoon transforming into a magical creature and then teaching the kids to fly… only so that they fall right back where they started without having learned anything.
Ms. Witherspoon plays the loopy fairy lady (essentially the Ghost of Christmas Past from Bill Murray’s Scrooged), which works better than the other 2 mentors. Mindy Kaling’s character actually reminded me of character concept I tried once: a guy who speaks entirely in movie quotes. It was a funny idea, but I quickly realized it couldn’t work. The character just ended up sitting silent most of the time, and half of the quotes were too obscure or random to be interesting to the audience. Guess what? That’s exactly what happens in Wrinkle in Time when they tried to do the same thing.
As far as other characters, Chris Pine and the lead girl are fine, but the male love-interest (?) is pretty pointless and the little brother character is mostly annoying. I applaud the young actor for trying his best, but his character came off as the little-kid version of the manic pixie dream girl (“Look at me being random! How quirky!”), except without the appeal.
Wrinkle in Time managed to become a big talking point due to cultural politics and excitement over director Ava Dufreney, with actress Brie Larson saying that my opinion doesn’t count. Fair enough, maybe I’m not the target audience. Not because I’m white or male, but because I’m an adult. I imagine kids would like the movie well enough, but even so, there’s much better material for them. A barely passable kids movie isn’t anything to make a big deal over, one way or another.
The "Meh"
Black Panther (** and a half)
As you may have heard, Black Panther is the first black superhero, because all those other black heroes like Falcon, Cyborg, and War Machine don't count. Or maybe he's the first black superhero to get his own movie, because everyone forgot about Blankman, Meteor Man, Steel, Spawn, and Hancock. Well, maybe he's the first Marvel superhero to get his own movie... as long as you completely forgot about the entire Blade trilogy. Or maybe it's the first black superhero movie with an all-black cast, as long as you ignore the two major white characters.
In other words, Black Panther is not the landmark movie that media journalists advertisers made it out to be.
I liked the character of Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, in which he got a sensible storyline that effectively introduced the character and meshed well with the overall MCU. Though the advertising for Civil War focused on Cap and Iron Man, it turned out that Black Panther was just as important. Thus, the movie Black Panther doesn't introduce the character or develop his relationship to other superheroes (Captain America is conspicuously absent). Instead, I guess the goal was to make a movie more focused on social issues and Afrofuturism themes. Apparently I'm the only one who wasn't particularly impressed with this effort.
But... credit where credit is due. The visuals are interesting, with unique set and costume designs and some really beautiful dream sequences. I wish more thought had gone into the mechanics of the world creation (grumble grumble), but at least it looks pretty, despite some sloppy CGI. Chadwick Boseman continues to do well as T'Challa, presenting an exotic and honorable hero. But the real star of the show is Michael B. Jordon as the frightening antagonist Killmonger. I liked his simple yet compelling costumes, Mr. Jordon's strong character choices, and the way that he talks like an eloquent leader of a street gang.
Here's my main beef with this movie: Wakanda. Seriously, Wakanda is such a ludicrous, inconsistent setting that it makes Asgard look plausible. Hell, at least Asgard was straight-forward about being a goofy fantasy world. Black Panther tries to take itself seriously, with a lot of real-world commentary on colonialism and race relations, all while featuring a silly poorly-thought-out fictional world that can't decide what planet or millenia it's located in. It's one thing to show a futuristic advanced nation engaging in ritual combat, but quite another to have its civil war be fought with neolithic weapons, shouting, and advanced spaceships that could easily bomb all the shouty spear-people to oblivion. Actually most of the action scenes make no sense at all. I know that all these Marvel movies are pretty implausible, but Blank Panther took it several bridges too far for me, especially since it lacks the self-aware humor of Guardians of the Galaxy, Spiderman, Antman, or Thor.
The plot has great ideas, but the script needed significant tightening and reworking. The entire first half of the movie is very contrived, using scenes to convey details to the audience without acomplishing much within the story of the film itself. If Andy Serkis was Killmonger's ticket into Wakanda, why didn't Killmonger just kill him in Scene One and go straight for his target? Killmonger never even used the weapon he stole from the museum, so what's was the point? The long sequence set in Korea exists to get Martin Freeman into the story but otherwise proves to be a dead end for both the hero and the villain.
I didn't dislike Black Panther, but after all the insane hype, I must say that I'm disappointed. The actors and visuals are good, but the setting is unconvincing and the action scenes are stupid. But take that with a grain of salt, since everyone else seems to love this movie.
Pacific Rim Uprising (** and a half)
Wow, there's really not much to say about this one. It's... fine? I liked the girl and her little scrapyard mech. That was cute! And Charlie Day is pretty surprising. Otherwise this is an OK but forgettable sequel to a movie that wasn't that great in the first place.
Tomb Raider (** and a half)
After years of games that ranged from pretty-good to pretty-bad, Tomb Raider surprised everyone (including me) with an astoundingly good reboot in 2013. The new, more brutal Tomb Raider gave a lot more depth to Lara Croft, featured rich and compelling gameplay, and contained some absolutely crazy action. With a new crop of videogames comes a new attempt at a Tomb Raider movie, following the box-office success of the 2001 Angelina Jolie picture. The lead role was recast with Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, immediately prompting comments about her physique. Having seen the movie, I'll say that Angelina Jolie was slightly better, and I would have loved to see Camilla Luddington get a shot at playing her videogame character in live action (Sure Vikander is more famous, but not famous enough to sell tickets if we're being honest). All that said, Vikander commits to the role admirably.
Tomb Raider loosely follows the 2013 reboot video game, with pieces from its sequel thrown in. It's a pretty faithful adaptation, all things considered. However, it misses a key aspect that made the 2013 Tomb Raider so great: Lara's vulnerability. Videogame Lara was not an “Xtreme!” boxer/biker type; she was a graduate student severely out of her depth crying for help. Movie Lara reverts back to the smarmy tough-as-nails archetype who is powerful and independent from square one... and thus gets no character development. Hell, the movie even omits most of her companions, because Movie Lara is too tough and independent for friends or mentors! In other words, the film-makers took the strong plot of the 2013 videogame but lost its dramatic center and poignant character arc.
There is some fun to be had in the second half of the movie, when the film re-creates some of the better action scenes from the videogame and brings in Richard Croft to add a bit of emotional gravitas. The action is filmed pretty well, and presented in a way that is believable enough for this sort of movie. I also liked the Indiana Jones style deathtraps and puzzles, as well as the clever revision on the “Death Queen” myth. However, the villain is kind of lame.
To be fair, the standard for videogame movies is very low, so Tomb Raider marginally succeeds by not being awful. It's fine. It's about on par with Prince of Persia or Mortal Kombat. The construction of the film is competent, the plot is easy enough to follow, and the action in the second half of the movie is pretty good. So despite not being a particularly great film, Tomb Raider is easily one of the best videogame movies, for what it's worth (i.e. not much).