Tag: gal gadot

Death On The Nile (2022)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick summary: There’s a death, on the Nile.

This had all the hallmarks of a bad movie:

  • Is a sequel
  • Heavily delayed
  • Released in February
  • Middling reviews

Let’s face it though, the reviews don’t count, as they didn’t like the first one either, and I loved it. If you enjoyed that, you’ll enjoy this too as it’s just more of the same. Ensemble cast playing suspicious characters locked in a location. It’s not quite as good as the first one though. It has a lot more wasted time. The first murder doesn’t happen for a long time, and a lot of that running time is somewhat wasted. Some of the performances aren’t that great either. I love Gal Gadot, but she gives some frankly abysmal line readings in this. The visuals aren’t as impressive either. There are some BEAUTIFUL shots in this, shots which take your breath away because of how stunning they are. But then there are scenes that seem too green-screened and fake. Plus there’s one piece of music that used silence too often to be effective.

It’s also awkward to watch Armie Hammer on screen, especially playing someone so sexual. You see him basically dry-humping someone, and in your head is the rape and cannibal accusations, which makes the whole thing slightly uncomfortable.

The rest of the cast is great though. There are some you wish had more to do, but everybody is given a chance to shine. Okonedo has the air of a diva, which is at odds with most roles she plays. Russell Brand gives the best performance he’s ever given. Emma Mackey is distractingly like Lucy Hale, but better (and with a better agent). The worst part of the ensemble cast is how they’re introduced, as part of a larger party, but they’re the only ones introduced, alongside an explanation of why they hate the soon to be victim. It’s a really unsubtle way of showing their potential motivations, there really should have been a better way of doing that.

I have been negative about this, but those are the only negative parts of a very positive film. It’s enthralling to watch and the closing section where Poirot gets pissed off and shuts down the boat is superb to watch, and his deduction is so much fun to see, it set the clues up well enough that you could have possibly figured it out before, nothing is worse than a “reveal” that comes completely out of left field with no foreshadowing. Also has genuine emotion, the handy thing about the delayed deaths is that by the time some of them happen, we are connected with those characters so we feel their deaths. The film also manages to avoid the cliche first-person POV shot of the killer attacking people while the victim stands there and screams “oh it’s you” vague stuff, never mentioning the names BS that harms lesser films. We don’t even know about the deaths until Poirot does. Characters are only known to be dead when he sees the body.

So in summary, a lot of fun, and definitely see it. You’ll enjoy it.

2021 In Film: Day Two (The Bad)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

Films that are bad, but at least have one part that I would recommend watching it for.

Antlers

When watching a film like this I don’t just look at what it is, I look at what it could have been. And this could have been great. Local folk horror can be absolutely sublime when it’s done right, IF it’s done right. I don’t feel it’s done right here. It feels like it’s taken inspiration from folklore, rather than adhering to it. So something which could be interesting and informative becomes shockingly pedestrian.

+ The use of shadow and scale to create some really good looking shots.

-Feels unfocused, places dominos it has no interest in toppling.

Best Moment: There’s a shot of a kid walking through a tunnel, it’s very pretty.

Worst moment: The ending. Means the story isn’t complete, and not in an entertaining way.

Best Performer: Jeremy T. Thomas. Very young but great potential.

Worst Performer: Cody Davis. I know he’s young, but his performance annoyed the crap out of me and wanted me to turn the film off (which considering I saw it in the cinema would have been rude). Wasn’t even satisfying to watch his character die.

Best Line: “Lucas I’m Hungry”. A true “oh shit” moment.

Original review here

Army Of The Dead

Got released straight to netflix, and to be honest that’s kind of where it belongs. This tried to do something new by adding a heist aspect, but that never really comes off. It’s just not smart enough to pull off what it needs to. It kind of looks good but also doesn’t. Everything looks clear, but also somehow like scale models, nothing looks real for some reason. If you’re 13 years old, you’ll love it. I mean, it has zombie boobs. But if you’ve ever seen a film before, you’re not likely to see something you haven’t seen done before, and done better.

+ A solid idea, and it’s unique if nothing else.

– Never lives up to the potential

Best Moment: The opening credits.

Worst moment: The introduction of a possible time loop. Never followed up with.

Best Performer: Matthias Schweighöfer. Makes his character incredibly likeable.

Worst Performer: Nora Arnezeder, doesn’t really have the presence required for her role.

Best Line: “Everyone has a mum you cunt, but not everyone is an abuser lording power over quarantined women.” A shame the person who performs it doesn’t do a good job of delivering it.

Eternals

This was so close to being in the next section (the Meh). But then I actually remembered watching it, how utterly bored I was. Seen some reviews say “but it’s setting up things”, that’s not good enough. You can’t judge a film as good by what it sets up, you need to take it on its own merits, and this just isn’t good enough. The representation is pretty good, but the script itself is severely lacking. It’s trying too hard to be big, so we ultimately don’t care about the characters, which in a film as heavily character-based as this is a disaster. So much of the films run-time is wasted, most of the flashbacks are a waste of time and completely devoid of tension since we know what happens (very much like IT: Chapter 2 in that regard).

+ Shows off their powers rather than just telling us. Admirable.

-The action scenes are so pedestrian they’re at risk of being run over. There’s no sense of inventiveness or cleverness to them.

Best Moment: Hiroshima.

Worst moment: Conquistadors laying waste to an Aztec city. Should be a highlight, it should feel like it means a lot, but it’s a bit weak and doesn’t have the emotional resonance it should.

Best Line: “I’ve watched humans destroy each other when I could stop it all in a heartbeat. Do you know what that does to someone after centuries?”. THAT! That should be what the movie is about. The fear of how your inaction leads to disaster. That should haunt them, especially after Thanos (who is barely mentioned).

Original review here

How To Deter A Robber

I was worried about this before I sat down to watch it. The trailer both interested me, yet also made me worry that the pacing would ruin it. That did turn out to be the case. The first half of this film is such a slog to get through that you’d be tempted to turn it off. Resist that urge though, the actual robbery itself is a highlight. It’s really funny, incredibly well written, and flies by beautifully. But like I said, it’s REALLY let down by how poor the rest of the movie is.

+ It’s a good indication of the talent Maria Bissell has as a writer and director. She is definitely one to look out for in the future.

– The set-up really needs to be improved. Once the robbery does happen it becomes a much better film, but that doesn’t happen for about 45 minutes, which in an 87 minute-long movie is far too long,

Best Moment: Outside of the actual robbery itself (which is more a long section than a moment), the bit just before is delightful. You have the characters duct-taping knives to Roombas, generally showing what would happen if the kid from Home Alone had the same intentions but was drunk and not good at planning.

Worst moment: When the main characters think their neighbours’ house is being robbed so go inside the house and then do a seance. Really unnatural character-work and only seems to exist to make them suspects.

Best Performer: Abbie Cobb. Something of the Anna Kendrick about her (or Gillian Horvat depending on how much of a pretentious film-watcher you are). Her line delivery is perfect and I adored her performance.

Best Line: “beer with green food dye. Oooo nice”. Okay the line isn’t good, but the delivery is awesome.

Original review here

Mortal Kombat

Here’s an indication of the quality of this film: I can’t remember where I watched it. I might have watched it at home, I might have seen it at cinema, I genuinely don’t know. From a technical standpoint, it’s fine, but the script is so full of nonsense that it’s hard to enjoy. There are some weird choices made though, especially in terms of sound (why does Kano make a lions roar noise?).

+ Sub Zero, that character is chilling (pun not fully intended but I’ll take it). Basically a horror movie villain.

– The fighters are distinguished by a dragon-shaped birthmark, one which you can also get by killing somebody who has it (like conkers). Stupid. Very stupid. Nobody has accidentally been killed and then their killer suddenly notices a weirdly specific birthmark.

Best Moment: The opening. It’s a great fight and very inventive.

Worst moment: It has a fight in a pit, and then doesn’t recreate the pit fatality. Wasted opportunity there.

Best Performer: Josh Lawson. Makes a great Kano.

Worst Performer: Tadanobu Asano. Raiden is supposed to be a god, I don’t know who you should get, but it should be someone with a definite screen presence, which this actor just doesn’t have.

Best Line: I have risen from hell to kill you.

Original review here

Prisoners Of The Ghostland

Definitely the weakest Nicholas Cage film of the year. A film like this, with the talent behind it, has no right to be as utterly dull as this one is. I love that it is new, it is unique, and it is stylish. But there’s so little to draw you in once you get past the superficial. It should be a lot more fun than this. It doesn’t help that Willy’s Wonderland came out the same year, that’s also insane, and features Nicholas Cage. But it’s a lot better, and when you compare the two (which is inevitable), this looks a lot weaker by comparison.

+ Very one of a kind.

– Incredibly flat and one dimensional once you get past the surface.

Best Moment: Nicholas Cage’s balls explode.

Worst moment: When he meets up with Psycho again. Mainly because the editing was a bit weird.

Worst Performer: Bill Moseley. Far too Foghorn Leghorn to be taken seriously. Plus he moves too much which makes his character look nervous.

Original review here

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

These films seem to have somehow become a cultural phenomenon without actually doing anything new, and with deeply oversaturating their market. This film is probably the closest to being in the previous blog, it’s kept out by one AMAZING jump scare. But other than that this is a rather poor movie. It’s without the style of the others, the script is incredibly dull and there’s so little meat on this film it’s basically a decaying corpse of a franchise.

+ Some good directing ideas.

– These films refuse to look at the Warrens with a critical eye, taking everything they’ve ever said as the definitive truth.

Best Moment: There’s one REALLY good scare. (sadly, it’s repeated again so loses the impact somewhat).

Worst moment: The ending. “Yay, this person who DEFINITELY killed someone will be released after only a few short years, not learning that his actions have consequences. He gets to live the rest of his life happily whilst the family of the victim of his brutal attack have to see it unfold unscreen and be told how the murderer was a nice guy really. Yay” Fuck off.

Best Line: Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you are scared but you hang in there.

Original review here

Wonder Woman 1984

Not as bad as Justice League, but definitely more disappointing. The drop in quality between this and the first one is basically vertical. Two scenes, two scenes would have improved this. All it needed was young Bruce Wayne. He’d have been around 12 years old in this timeline, so his parents would be dead, but he wouldn’t be Batman. Now if you went up to a 12 year old Bruce Wayne and gave him one wish, it’s not difficult to imagine he would wish for his parents back. You’d have some emotion there, but then imagine the end, when he was to cancel that wish. He essentially has to kill his parents. Imagine what that would do to a person. Not only would that be absolutely heartbreaking, but it would also explain why he’s so wary of Superman. He’s seen what Gods can do when they interfere with humanity. The very existence of Superman is a constant reminder to Bruce of the worst moment of his life. It would also explain why he doesn’t kill, he’s done it before and it emotionally ruined him. That would have taken 15 minutes at most and would have given this film the depth and nuance it deserved. Instead, we get an opening of young Diane doing the Amazonian Olympics and cheating (in a scene that makes no sense once you look into it and realise they knew exactly how many people would reach each point). This film also ruins her character, reducing her to “a woman who just needs a man”.

+ Great colour scheme to the whole thing.

– If you think about some of the plot issues for more than one second, everything falls apart.

Best Moment: THAT cameo at the end. Would be game-changing if anybody paid attention to the film.

Worst moment: So, Wonder Woman raped a guy, right? She put Trevor in the body of someone without their consent, and put that person in danger. They had sex, which the original person did not consent to.

Best Performer: Gal Gadot, obviously.

Best Line: Welcome to the future. Life is good! But it can be better. And why shouldn’t it be? All you need is to want it. Think about finally having everything you always wanted.

Original review here

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

I really wanted this to be good. I want DC films to be good, and it annoys me that a lot of the ones in the main DCEU have been bad. The first Wonder Woman was great, and I absolutely LOVE the Shazzam one. But it’s hard to continue to support them when they make films like this. It’s better than the original, but that’s not saying much. The reaction to it has been baffling too, with DC fans claiming it’s one of the best films ever made. Someone tweeted that that, Batman Vs. Superman, and Man Of Steel are the best DC films ever made. So, better than Dark Knight, better than the first Christopher Reeves Superman, better than any of the animated films, better than Joker. No, that’s definitely not the case. This isn’t even as good as Green Lantern. A lot happens, well, I think a lot happens, what does happen happens so slowly it feels like nothing does.

+The idea of studios releasing original directors visions of films that failed is very exciting.

-Watching it feels like the whole thing is in slow motion.

Best Moment: Wonder Woman taking out robbers will always be great, and it’s really amped up here.

Worst moment: Okay weird choice but I’m going with a moment that wasn’t in the film. The moment in the original where Superman is being interviewed by some kids on their phone. That was the only time that character felt right. Wholesome, a symbol of hope and optimism. The fact it’s not in here hurts it.

Best Performer: Affleck still kills it as Bruce Wayne.

Worst Performer: Eisenberg, obviously.

Worst Line: “You won’t kill me. I’m your best friend. Besides, who’s gonna give you a reach-around?” Eugh, just no.

Original review here

Red Notice (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: An interpol agent attempts to track down a jewel thief. In reality it’s much much more complicated than that.

Disposable. That is probably the best way to describe this. Don’t get me wrong, at no point while watching this will you be bored, you will be thoroughly entertained throughout, and if a sequel came out you will watch it. But will you NEED to see this film again? Probably not. It’s good at what it does, but you’ve already seen everything it does before, it brings nothing new to the table. Ryan Reynolds does his usual shtick, and gets partnered with a violent stronger person who he initially disagrees with and you wonder if they can trust each other before true friendship wins. Blah blah. I’ve seen it all before. It has the usual twist and turns and they are surprising, but again, they’re not new.

The film can’t even rely on the action scenes to carry it through. They’re too video-gamey. You know how back in the days of Tony Hawk’s games the levels used to be designed in a way to be skateable, so the fences and rails would all be placed in a way that was designed with the video game playability in mind first before realism, that’s how this feels. It’s like the world was designed in such a way for action set pieces, so there’s no sense of realism or weight to the scenes, which robs them of any tension. Although let’s face it, you’re not going to get much tension in a film starring Ryan Reynolds and The Rock anyway as you know that the studio is aiming for a franchise, so they’re going to keep both alive.

It has some good parts. It’s very funny. The story has more twists and turns than a roller coaster, and Gal Gadot is funnier than she’s ever been (outside of her Imagine video obviously).

It’s hard to feel too disappointed, but it’s also hard to feel too pleased. It’s hard to feel anything. It’s popcorn movie. Sometimes that’s all you need, sometimes that’s all you want. It’s going to be a success, but I don’t think it will be anybody’s favourite film.

4 (Wrong) Thoughts I Had About Wonder Woman

On By troubledproductionsIn ListLeave a comment

It Will Look Dull

Why

Most action films lately have a certain colour to them; all various shades of blue and grey, with the occasional flash of orange. Plus it’s only the director’s third film, and their first film of this genre, so there’s a good chance they’re going to stick to the typical conventions of the genre and not take any risks, resulting in something which will just end up looking like every other film out there.

But

This looked amazing. The shots of Themyscira in particular looked like they came straight out of an advert for a travel agent. Even when the film moves to the front line of the war (a place which is usually depicted in lots of different browns) it remains visually interesting. And the action scenes…oh my god. Even Marvel struggle with action scenes. Not including the airport scene, a lot of the fight scenes in Civil War were an incoherent mess. It suffered from the same problem that plagues most film fight scenes lately: directors cutting before every single hit. I HATE when films do this, it never makes it look good as the audience has to refocus their attention constantly so they can’t concentrate properly as they have no idea where to focus. It also makes it very obvious you’re watching a film, you can almost hear the director yelling “okay don’t actually hit each other, we’ll make it look like you are in post”. It’s why I liked Deadpool so much, Ed Skrein was being interviewed about it and he said for the fight scenes the director told him “it’s not your job to miss him, it’s his job to get out of the way”. I don’t know how Patty Jenkins did the fight scenes in this but they are superb. Everything is well choreographed and makes sense, you can see it all clearly (seriously, why is this, such a basic requirement, so hard for people to do nowadays?), and it flows beautifully. The action scenes in this are superb, the sequence in No Mans Land in particular is breathtaking in how it’s shown.

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No, it’s not that.

It Should Be R-Rated

Why

This thought is the one that took the longest to go away, and is actually the last thought that entered my head, entering it whilst I was watching the beach invasion scene (which is superb by the way). As the battle went on I noticed how bloodless a lot of it was. I sat there thinking “hmm, maybe this needs to be harsher, like Logan was”. If you haven’t seen Logan I’ll explain, the action scenes in that were filled with gore, as such you winced when people got hurt, you knew they were in a lot of pain, and it made it feel more real as you could see actions have consequences, you could see the physical damage which even just a single punch could do, the scenes could have been improved if it was allowed to be aimed towards a more adult audience.

But

As soon as I thought about this for a second I realised that was very very wrong. Logan could get away with being R-Rated as (let’s be honest) not much was depending on it. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had already proven the character could survive a film not doing well. Wonder Woman had A LOT riding on it, if it failed (actually, forget failing, it not only had to be a success, it had to be a MASSIVE success), then it wouldn’t just be “super hero films don’t make money anymore”, it wouldn’t be”DC films don’t make money”, it wouldn’t even be “This character doesn’t make money”, it would be “female leads in movies don’t make money”. It would sour people on a Black Widow film, or a Catwoman solo film. So yeah this needed to do well, and for that to happen it needed mass appeal, so an R Rating would have killed it. It also would have meant little girls wouldn’t have been able to see it and be inspired to grow up and kick ass, and I don’t want to live in a world where that couldn’t happen. 

The Romance Will Ruin It

Why

“Oh, so just because it’s a female character they need her focus to be a man? Typical”

But

I dislike tacked-on unnecessary romance as much as the next person, but this wasn’t tacked on, and her character didn’t revolve entirely around him. If anything it was like those action films where Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone etc are fighting an evil Russian/Brit and they can’t manage to defeat them, but then the twirly-moustached villain kills the persons wife, and that motivates them to rise up and defeat them (and possibly adopt a dog along the way). Wonder Woman saves the male lead in this film, he depends on her throughout. As such I kind of liked the romance in this, it helped that it felt genuine and was really well written.

Chris-Pine-and-Gal-Gadot-in-Wonder-Woman

Won’t Be Able To Take It Seriously

Why

Because most super hero films are about someone finding something, or having something happen to them that causes them to become a hero. Different methods but either way it’s usually grounded in realism. This film is about someone who is essentially a God, how would it be possible to do a mature, gritty film about Gods? You may argue “but they managed it with Thor”, and to that I say “Thor was bad and you should feel bad”

But

The best superhero films aren’t just superhero films, they double as another genre. Winter Soldier is a cold war spy movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy is an ensemble space comedy, and this is a war movie. It’s not just a film about Wonder Woman, it’s a film about human nature, about humanity at it’s darkest. It’s a film about beauty, and a film about dark truths. It’s wonderful and mesmerising, a beautiful mix of glory that leads to this being, without a doubt, one of the best films of the year.

Wonder-Woman-Blue-Dress-Sword

So in summary; Wonder Woman, it’s fucking fantastic and if anyone thinks Gal Gadot isn’t right for the part then you can no longer trust their opinion on anything. Strong in spirit and body yet naive when it comes to dealing with humanity, Gadot has been one of the most inspired castings in a superhero movie yet.

5 Amazing Comic Book Movies Still To Come In 2017

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5. Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Okay, not technically based on a comic book, but is the sequel to a film that is. The trailer for this will be released later today, two teasers already been made (one of which is the entire trailer sped up to fit into 10 second, very cool and innovative way of doing it, already led to people slowing it down and discussing it). No idea how they’re going to bring back Colin Firth’s character, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m sure they wouldn’t bring him back for no reason, not as though they’re short of credible actors in this film; they’ve got Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore etc. Not released until September but already really looking forward to it.

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4. Wonder Woman

Saw the trailer, loved it. Gal Gadot was one of the best things about Batman Vs. Superman, so the fact her character has FINALLY got a full length feature is very exciting. Basically seems like an origin story, which I’m okay with as her origin hasn’t permeated popular culture that much so for new people they would need to know that. Of course, it would have been a better idea if they did this film BEFORE Batman Vs. Superman as at the moment I can’t see their being any tension in it all. Not for her character anyway, you know she’s going to survive so you won’t worry if she’s safe, which means that unless the film kills somebody she’s close to it won’t be able to land emotionally enough to be effective. Really hope this does well, mainly because if it doesn’t, internet assholes (and studio executives) will blame the fact it’s a female character for the failure, and be more reluctant to do female-led movies in the future.

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3. Justice League

Mainly curious about this one. Personally (and I’m happy to be proven wrong), I think the DC Extended Universe scheduling has been a complete mess so far. BvS should not have been the second film in the series, you need to build up tension between the characters first in other films so that it feels like it means something, as it was it just felt like “hey, this is happening” “and? Who cares?”. They’ve done that fight so early on in the series that there’s not that much left for them to do, there’s not many “big events” they have to call back on (especially since they’ve also already done The Death Of Superman). Related to this, Justice League should not be released this year. It’s too big a film to come out so soon after Wonder Woman, they’ve already released the trailers for this before Wonder Woman is out. They’re really rushing this through and it could end up harming the product in the long run. Although I am still kind of excited about it, so what do I know?

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2. Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2

Released very soon, really looking forward to it. Had a kind of average marketing campaign, I’d hoped the marketing campaign of Deadpool would lead to more innovative and unique marketing for “quirky” comic book films, but seems like it’s just standard “trailer tease, trailer, second trailer, release” kind of thing. Trailer looks good though, slight risk that they’re intentionally trying to create memes with it, which hasn’t been too annoying in the trailers but if the rest of the film is like that it could be off-putting. Guardians is in a weird place this time, the first one was so good that expectations are high, which is almost the complete opposite of what the situation was last time, where everybody expected this to be the iceberg that sinks the MCU Titanic. Have to wonder whether this will be the film where they explicitly acknowledge the link between it and the rest of the MCU. Also, I really hope it’s not just going to be a rehash of the first one. I want to be amazed during this, but I trust Marvel, so I think I will be.

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1. Spider-Man: Homecoming

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man was one of the (many many) highlights of Captain America: Civil War, so much so that it almost made audiences completely forget that this is the third reboot of the franchise in a short period of time. Confession time: He’s one of the characters I’ve never really liked in films, he’s always supposed to be a teenager but is never played as one. At least, not an actual teenager, he’s played like the leading man in a teen drama where “anxiety” and “shy geek” just means “is friends with the most popular girl in school but hasn’t dated her yet” and the only sign of their geekdom is that people with letters on their jacket (I now know it’s their school letters, but I will never stop having a small part of me think it’s their initials so they don’t forget their names) shove them into lockers. This Spider-Man however is a teenager, he geeks out over superheroes, he messes up, he gets overexcited (which then leads to more mistakes). More importantly: he’s fun. He’s a funny, engaging character whom is inherently likeable, and should do well in his full length debut, which is thankfully, not an origin story.

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Note to directors: EVERYBODY knows this scene, it’s NEVER been needed in a film

 

Where Batman Vs. Superman Failed (And Where It Succeeded)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

It’s been out for a week not and it’s pretty safe to say that it has failed, at least in terms of critical opinion. It’s got a ridiculously low Rotten Tomatoes score, but it’s not just critics, a lot of audience members don’t like it too. A lot of people I know have seen it, and quite a few have liked it, but nobody has loved it. It hasn’t inspired any passion in anybody. There’s been no “this has changed my life” moments. Which is a shame, as the enormity of this film means it should. Ok, yes, it’s gained a lot of money, but so do Adam Sandler films, and he’s basically the film equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins

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The most niche joke I’ve ever done. If I said “Film equivalent of Eddie The Eagle” it would work just as well

So why is? Well, I have a few ideas as to why.

1. Too Much, Too Late

We’ve seen A LOT of super hero films over the last few years. Way way too much, and there’s more to come. There’s only so many times people can stay with this kind of thing. “Comic book film” is now a genre, and there’s a reason for that, there’s a lot of similarity between them all. Sadly these are the comics that get adapted, whilst graphic novels have a lot of different genres contained within them (Maus, for example is an entirely different piece of work to The Dark Knight). But the adaptations always focus on the super hero. Most of the films are: “hero defeats small villain, big villain comes along, beats holy hell out of hero, hero comes back and beats him”. Now I LOVED Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Deadpool is one of my favourite films of this year, but even if you didn’t know anything about them you can still tell they’re comic book adaptations. The only film I can think which would work without the “comic book branding” and will stand up on its own would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier which was a superb cold war style thriller. With that many films all being very similar, the audience is getting bored. This is made worse by the fact that the aforementioned Deadpool came out and seemed to indicate a change of direction for the genre, maybe make them fun, which is needed after years of films which if they were a colour, they’d be a dark blue.

2. Too many “new” things.

Introduction to Wonder Woman, Aflecks being Batman, Jeremy Irons as Alfred, Aquaman, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. That’s at least five things people were focusing on in the trailers and during the film. Every trailer was met with people saying “looks like they’re doing Wonder Woman justice” or “Afleck could be good” or “F*ck Eisenberg”, and the same thoughts were coming to people during the film. The audience for this is just focusing on the aforementioned things, so they’re not paying attention to the film. You can’t expect the audience to pay attention to the film if you’re basically telling them to pay attention to everything else instead.

3. Too Much, just too much.

The major problem with showing Wonder Woman in the trailer is that it cancels out her entire story arc. Her story in this is her coming back to being Wonder Woman and whether she’ll do it or not. This takes her the entire film, but the trouble is that you already know she will as she was a big part of the marketing campaign. This is trouble with a lot of other things as well, almost every single plot point and character was showcased in the trailer. The entire film was playing catch-up to the trailer. Side note, and I might be the only person who has a problem with this: Wonder Woman says she stopped being a hero in 1916. As such since then here’s things she’s completely ignored and done nothing about:

  • Half of the first world war.
  • The second world war
  • The holocaust!
  • The cold war
  • Vietnam
  • Korea
  • Iran conflict.
  • War on terror.
  • The fights for equal rights for women and people of colour in the US.
  • Khmer Rouge.
  • The remake of The Wicker Man.

So yeah, f*ck Wonder Woman! She’s a monster.

4. Zack Snyder

Erm, he can’t really direct can he? I’ll admit, his stuff looks good, a lot of shots look like they come direct from the comic books themselves, but that’s the problem. He can adapt shots, but he can’t compose them himself. The best shots in BvS are the ones he’s taken from the source materials. As soon as he has had to compose a shot himself, it looks awful. He cannot tell a story visually, he has absolutely no idea about shot construction etc. Nothing he has ever done has shown any emotion or anything besides “ok that’s a technically good looking shot”. He should not direct, at least not without a very talented co-director. But he would make a fantastic cinematographer. Basically, he’s like a very talented singer in a covers band.

Things That Worked

1. Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot, she was f*cking incredible. Anybody who comes out of this film and doesn’t want a Wonder Woman solo movie should not be trusted to tie their own shoelaces. Which I suppose is a plus for the film in general, it kicks off the universe quite well. It’s got people to buy into the concept of a Batfleck film. It makes people want a Flash film, it even gets people excited about Aquaman, a character who has sadly become a bit of a laughing stock among people lately.

2. Performances

Whilst the jury is still out on Eisenberg (for the record, I didn’t seem to hate it as much as everyone else did), it’s almost beyond argument that Jeremy Irons worked as Alfred. Too many actors have approached Alfred as a kindly relative, the Alfred in this is kind of a bitter drunk. He would not cry when telling Bruce Wayne a story, he’d instead tell him to stop being a stupid prick and just twat him upside the head.

3. The Opening

Yeah, THAT opening scene where we see Bruce Wayne. The moment where we see the battle from Man Of Steel from the perspective of people on the ground. That, was superb and is one of the best moments of not just this film, but any film from this genre. It showed the human side to superhero films, and how terrifying that must be. Sadly these themes were almost completely ignored. They did this again when it seemed like it was starting to discuss whether superheroes can be trusted, whether them existing actually endangers the world and causes more chaos, and who will hold superman to justice? Or to put it another way: Who Watches The Watchmen? This again is just forgotten. But for the moments where these two plot points unfold, the film truly lives up to the hype.