Nothing But Star Wars Episode One (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, 1999)

As previously noted, people were pretty resigned to Star Wars remaining a trilogy of parts four through six. Then it was announced, Lucas had decided episodes one through three could finally be made. He stated that the technology had reached a point that he could truly make the stories he desired to tell.

The geek net was still in it’s infancy in a lot of ways, but it was set ablaze with rumors and claims of leaked scripts and insider knowledge.

A lot of those rumors turned out to be false…but in May of 1999 we got the long hoped for return to a galaxy far, far away…

And now, the standard warning of the spoilers…endless spoilers!

Opening in space (of course) we meet two Jedi Knights on an exciting diplomatic mission with a trade…federation…aw crap. Our Jedi are Qui-Gon Jin and a young Obi Wan Kenobi. Kenobi is a padawan, a Jedi-in-Training. As they wait for Trade Federation diplomats to enter, they are instead greeted with poison gas. They fight their way through droids to try and get to the bridge to confront the Trade Federation, but are forced to run. They hitch a ride on troop transports down to the planet of Naboo.

Knowing they must warn the government of Naboo, they try and find a way to the main city population. They run into a local, a giant amphibious creature who speaks with a weird variation of an Jamaican Accent (The Trade Federation is run by a guys with distinctly Asian Accents…this ends up being a recurring issue of accents that seem connected to negative traits) named Jar Jar Binks.

Jar Jar takes the Jedi to an underwater city with more of his race. There they find out Jar Jar was banished for being clumsy. Really. Qui-Gon convinces the Gungan leader Boss Nass (who looks suspiciously like Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard) to give them a ship and Jar Jar. The ship gets them to the capital, where they save Queen Amidala and a small band of her guards .

As they escape the planet the ship is damaged. They land on the planet Tatooine. While there, Qui-Gon, Padme (an attendant to the queen) and Jar Jar happen across a junk dealer and his boy slave, Anakin. Anakin makes an impression on Qui-Gon who he senses is strong in the force. Due to an impending sand storm, Anakin offers them shelter with he and his mother. The boy of about nine gets a crush on Padme while Qui-Gon questions his mother about their lineage. She notes that there was no father, but rather it was a spontaneous pregnancy. You know, like Jesus.

Meanwhile, on the Planet Corsucant, the Senate is debating how best to deal with the Naboo situation. Unknown to everyone, Senator Palpatine is pushing for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Velorum. He is manipulating people to nominate him as replacement. His motives are shrouded in darkness, but we know he is a Sith Lord and he has an agent, his apprentice Darth Maul.

Darth Maul is on the hunt for the missing Princess and Jedi. Qui-Gon makes a bet with the owner of Anakin for the parts needed to fix their ship. He also makes a side bet for Anakin’s freedom. The bet revolves around one of the film’s best sequences. Anakin is a pod racer and if he wins, Qui-Gon can take both the ship parts and Anakin with him.

The Pod race is a pretty thrilling sequence and plays like “space NASCAR”. The primary story purpose of this scene is to establish his piloting skills. This relates back to a New Hope when Ben explains that when he first met Anakin, he was an accomplished pilot. Phantom Menace kind of creates a problem, in that Anakin is a nine year old kid. There is not really any doubt when listening to the dialog in a New Hope Anakin would likely have been very late teens or even early twenties. But Lucas wanted to make a statement on meeting Vader as a boy.

Anakin wins his freedom and joins Qui-Gon and Padme on their ship. As they are leaving, Darth Maul appears and Qui-Gon has a lightsaber duel. Qui-Gon jumps onto the ship and leaves Maul behind. They arrive at Corsucant, where Qui-Gon warns of Maul and presents young Anakin, who he believes could be the fulfillment of a prophecy about the Force, to the Jedi Council. The Council is far more hesitant, believing that Anakin has lived to long without proper Jedi training.

This actually makes no sense when we look to what the series had presented us with. Beings gifted in the use of the Force have access to it regardless, would not trainig, no matter their age be good?

Admittedly, the Jedi Council seems to be a rather ineffective group. They often seem to want to take a hands off approach, showing that, maybe, the legend of the Jedi as magical and wise space knights may be…a bit fictitious.

Qui-Gon states he will take on Anakin’s training himself, in spite of already having a padawan. They take the Princess back to Naboo in a plan to fight back against the Trade Federation. They recruit the Gungan’s for the fight. They need to take out the space station of the Federation, which will render their battle droids useless. It is revealed that Padme is actually Princess Amidala and the girl we thought was the Princess was actually a decoy.

The Naboo pilots take back some ships and head out to destroy the main Trade Federation ship, while Anakin is told to stay put hiding in a ship. The ship conveniently goes to autopilot and takes him straight into battle.

Qui-Gon and Obi Wan are confronted by Darth Maul. During their fight, Maul impales Qui-Gon. Angrily, Kenobi charges in and manages to slice Maul in half. Meanwhile, R2 (who is co-piloting the ship Anakin is in) turns off auto-pilot. Anakin tries to get turned around, and in doing so, manages to blow up the command ship, disabling the droid on the planet surface.

Kenobi promises to train Anakin in accordance with Qui-Gon’s wishes. Then, there is an awards ceremony in a reflection of the end of Episode Four.

Honestly, of all the Star Wars films, I probably find this one the most frustrating. It introduces something call midichlorians. They are the microscopic sentient life forms in all bodies that indicate how perceptive one is to the force. This allowed there to be a scientific test. Qui-Gon explains that Anakin is “off the charts”. But truthfully, the original trilogy stayed firmly in the world of the Force being a form of mysticism. It seems weirder to have a scientific explanation, even as just an indicator. In spite of this film being the first mention, they do apparently date back to about 1977 in stuff Lucas wrote up for the expanded universe material.

Add to that, Lucas still uses mysticism like Prophecy. Ben never mentions any prophecy in the original films, though the extended universe was apparently full of them.

Anakin is made out to be a boy genius. Both C-3PO and R2-D2 are in the film, with R2 being introduced as a service droid on Amidala’s space ship. But 3PO is used to show how mechanically inclined Anakin is by revealing that 3PO was built by Anakin. This is one of those rather silly additions that does not have the intended effect.

Having Anakin blow up the Trade Federation ship purely by dumb luck is not a good choice, either. As noted earlier, Ben certainly suggests to Luke that Anakin was a gifted pilot. It diminishes Anakin to have him stumble into success as a kid. The idea, I suspect, was to sell just how powerfully Force Sensitive he was. It just makes him seem lucky. And this is really a simple solution. Had they cast Anakin as a young man, he parallels Luke. The idea that he is skilled as a pilot does not need as much proof. Anakin never needed to be a child prodigy.

The choice to kill Darth Maul is another stumble. Darth Maul, for one thing, has a terrific design. He is automatically imposing with his red skin and facial tattoos. He has a cool double lightsaber.

It would have been a much better plot device to play him up as the Darth Vader of the series. He is the big bad guy who makes it until the end…as Darth Sidious begins grooming Anakin he subtly plays them against each other. Finally, in the third film, Anakin and Maul are in a pitch battle. Anakin has him against the ropes and then, in a dramatic moment, Sidious startles Maul by commanding Anakin to kill him. In that moment, Maul realizes Anakin is going to replace him.

Another thing the film establishes is the Jedi Gear. In Return of the Jedi, Luke wears that slick black outfit. According to Lucas, this was proper Jedi attire. Ben wore the robes not because that was a Jedi outfit. He was hiding out as a desert hermit. The Phantom Menace, instead, establishes that he was just wearing his Jedi robes.

Frustratingly, with the Phantom Menace, there is not a ton that I find enjoyable. The Pod Racing scene is terrific stuff. It is an exciting roller coaster ride. And the lightsaber duel with Qui-Gon, Obi Wan and Darth Maul is great stuff as well. But the rest of the film feels like it was bogged down in fan service that never actually serves the story.

December 22, 2017 0

Beat Cops (Alien Nation, 1988)

It is the near future of 1991…three years prior, an alien ship appeared above Los Angeles. It was full of an alien race we nicknamed the Newcomers. Genetically bred for adaption, they adapt quickly to life on earth, forming communities, entering our schools and workforce.

In this world, we meet Detective Matt Sykes. It is quickly established he does not like the Newcomers in any way. He refers to them by the slur Slags and expresses only disdain for their presence. Sykes and his partner Bill interfere with a robbery resulting in Bill’s death. Angry and determined to get back at those responsible, Sykes volunteers to work with the first Newcomer Detective Sam Francisco (Sykes resents the “gag” name and renames Sam as George). What follows is both a personal journey for Sykes and a professional journey for the two detectives as they uncover a dark conspiracy to exploit the weaknesses of Newcomers for great profit.

Science Fiction has always been a vehicle for exploring the human condition and our moral failings. Alien Nation tackles bigotry and xenophobia which can be a rather treacherous territory. Mainly, this is because the aliens are stand ins for…well, not white people. It has been pointed out that one of the problems with the X-Men as the metaphor for bigotry school of thought is that…well…shooting lasers from your eyes is a legit dangerous and deadly power… having black skin is not.

Alien Nation avoids this by an extremely careful world building. The Newcomers are, in many ways, no different from humans, both in virtues and vices. They have some physical differences (two hearts, get drunk on sour milk, cannot process cooked meats and so on) and look different (Newcomers are bald with spotting on the back of their heads)…yet seek to have a better life than the one they left behind.

A lot of what makes the film work beyond the well thought out Newcomer earth based culture is the performances by James Caan and Mandy Patinkin. Using the “Mismatched Buddy Cop” formula allows the story to move at a quick pace. This also can make it easier to ignore certain weaknesses in the metaphor. Sykes overcomes his bigotry in a matter of days, though even at the end, apologizes to George for how awful he will be towards him in the years to come (a moment played for laughs). Truthfully, this is a shortcoming of the film medium, everything needs to occur quickly, so a nuanced journey from bigotry to goodness is not generally in the cards.

Alien Nation is ambitious and largely hits its mark with thoughtful performances, a well thought out world, and good special effects. It feels, in some ways, more timely now than it did in 1988.

August 30, 2017 0

Stabbing the Franchise (Elektra, 2005)

No. Just…no. I refuse to review this.

Stop looking at me. I will not review it.

Absolutely no way.

Oh, OK…I finally sat through Catwoman…it seems unfair to avoid Elektra.

The film opens with General Zod telling us that Elektra is important to the forces of good and evil. We then get a sequence with Lucius Malfoy. He is telling a black ops type security team they are protecting him from Elektra. They fail. It is shot really nicely, most everything is awash in darkness, so the red of Elektra’s outfit is striking. And there ends the best thing I can say about the film.

We learn Electra is doing the paid assassins gig and is apparently a bit quirky about her DNA. We see her training with Stick (Terrence Stamp) and I am unsure if this is a flashback. She later meets this girl stealing a bracelet in a house that I guess is Elektra’s new house. his introduces us to Elektra’s motivation and her crisis of conscience as an assassin. The little girl is under siege by magical ninjas called the Hand.

When I say magical, I am not making an amusing joke. they can give you instant diseases, turn into smoke, have living tattoos and so on. When Elektra finds herself in a losing side of a battle with the Hand, Stick and a cavalry of Ninjas (we know they are good, cause their ninja clothes are white…seriously, it is that on the nose. It is an hour in, by the way when I realize Stick is blind.

I cannot think of a whole lot positive to say about Elektra. It is… Mystifyingly incoherent. It never really makes much sense, even after things are explained. Interestingly, it is a spinoff of Marvel’s Daredevil movie…but makes no connection. Her death is referred to in vague terms. The villains lack personalities…they are strictly defined by their powers. It is hard to care about the events of a film when you cannot be given a reason to care beyond being told repeatedly “this is important.”. The film lacks any characters for the viewer to connect to. Oddly, I chose to watch the directors cut…how much less incoherent was the theatrical cut of this film?!

While there are all sorts of references to the comics, they are not used well. And when you see how well the Netflix Daredevil series handles some of these same characters, it makes the film that much more disappointing.

Elektra certainly gives Catwoman a run for the money for a top spot in the Worst Comic Book Movie competition. Catwoman still wins…but it had a tough competitor.

September 20, 2016 0

Bring on the Bad Guys (Superman 2, 1980)

Superman the Movie and Superman II were filmed back to back, but director Richard Lester came in when there was friction between the Salkinds and Donner. He threw out a lot of what Donner filmed and started over. Remember Zod and his Cronies? They are still floating through space in the Phantom Zone. When Superman thwarts a terrorist plot by launching a bomb into space, they are set free and make their way to earth.

Superman 2 is often held up as a standard of great sequels and a great super-hero film. Unfortunately, it is not. The film has Superman (and Zod, Ursa and Non) developing random powers and weapons. Their heat vision suddenly can be used as tractor beams, Superman’s logo can turn is a giant cellophane bag, they can shoot beams from their fingers.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some good points. The Villains are frightening at times. Terrance Stamp is menacing and arrogant, while Douglas plays Ursa with a disinterested flair. She is slightly amused by earthlings, but she could never care, she lacks all compassion.

There is a story in which Lois and Clark must pose as newlyweds. This leads to the reveal of Clark’s secret to Lois, which leads to them running off for romance. Superman and Lois hide away in the Fortress of Solitude, completely unaware of the arrival of the Kryptonian criminals. Superman realizes that to be with Lois, he must give up his power. He consults with his Mother Lara (well, a hologram of her and she shows him a machine that will bath him in the light of a red sun and make him human. You can see where this is going. When Lois and Clark start to make their way home, Clark tries to defend Lois at a cafe. A trucker beats the crap out of him. This moment is actually really well handled, Reeve really sells Clark’s startling realization that he is no longer the strongest man alive. But then Clark learns of Zod.

So, Superman’s human life is a short lived one. Even though the Fortress was damaged and he was told the process was irreversible… Clark gets his powers back off screen. This leads to a dramatic fight in the city. You know, for all the criticism Man of Steel gets for it’s destruction, Superman II has Superman carelessly throwing the criminals through building, the character beating each other into the ground and so on. There is little concern for the city.

One of the other good points is the duplicitous nature of Lex Luthor. Towards the beginning he breaks out of prison and then runs off to the Fortress of Solitude. He starts listening to the information from Lara…considering Lara can hold conversations with Superman, I am not sure why she cannot react to Lex. Luthor helps the Kryptonians attempt to take over the world (they promise to give him Australia). But when things look tough, he is quick to side with Superman (for Survival).

One of the big problems is the film has a Superkiss that robs Lois of her memories of who Superman is…and he also goes back to the cafe to humiliate the trucker. This is not Superman. And his character is tarnished for a joke. Superman II does not hold up, and is actually a weaker film than it’s predecessor. And more recent Super-hero films are vastly superior.

August 9, 2016 0

Young Superman(Superman the Movie, 1978)

Richard Donner’s Superman is often presented as a more upbeat and hopeful film than more recent Superhero efforts. And, in a lot of ways, it is a brighter view overall. Donner opens the film with life on Krypton. His version of Krypton has influenced countless versions of Superman. It became a ruling vision. And I get it…it is a society and world at it’s end. But the severely antiseptic frozen tundra look is actually unpleasant and does not really speak of an advanced society. Jor-El is introduced presiding over the trial of General Zod and his army. Well, him, Ursa and Non. Not really an army. What stands out was that in the middle of this trial, Zod tries to convince Jor-El to join him. And then they are zapped by a giant reflective record sleeve. Then, they never appear in the rest of the film.

Jor-El declare the planet is soon to die and is mocked by his fellow scientists who make him commit to staying on the planet. We all know the story, found by the Kents, young Kal El is raised as a typical Kansas kid. These moments are great. They show the thought the Kents have tried to install in their son. Clark’s struggle to not use his powers for only his gain is evident. Clark wants to be the football star and get dates with cheerleaders. But he also knows it would be a cheat to use his powers to succeed in that fashion. And when Pa Kent dies? Glenn Ford is barely on screen for any meaningful amount of time…and yet it is a real gut punch.

The Fortress of Solitude used to be a giant cave with a giant door. Now it is a spiky crystal building with no doors. Here he learns from holograms of his father. When he enters the world, he is ready to be Superman. One of the things Donner did right is that he fills the film with Superman…an it is Superman saving people over and over again. Sure, he stops crime as well, but saving people is his main gig.

Lois Lane is shown as a tough reporter (who cannot spell) who has little notice of new Reporter Clark Kent, but then swoons when Superman appears on the screen. This is not a negative, for one thing, she still follows her instincts when Superman shows up for an interview, clearly smitten with her. Kidder and Reeve have terrific chemistry in the film and Lois is fun and daring.

We are introduced to Lex Luthor via his bumbling lackey Otis. Ned Beatty is entertaining, though a bit over the top in his mindlessness. Hackman’s Luthor is a change from the comics of the time. He is still brilliant, but instead of super armor, he is simply a criminal mastermind. It is a bit over the top, but Hackman makes it work. The third spoke in the wheel is Valerie Perrine’s Miss Tessmacher. I am unsure exactly what her purpose is. I mean, Perrine is undeniably sexy in the role and appears in a variety of revealing outfits. But she seems distant for a girlfriend, and yet a lot of what she does is lounge around. She does play the role of “distraction”in part of Luthor’s plan. Oh, and that plan…

Luthor is planning to make a land grab…this becomes a running thing for him in the movies. He plans to blow California off the map and sell land. I do not see how this really would be an effective plan. Seriously, the guy who stole two missiles from the army and used them to blow up a sizeable chunk of land is going to be able to own and sell land?

Superman is a pretty fun movie with a really impressive cast. The weakest moment is the weird “Superman spins the earth to Fix Things. This was actually meant for the sequel, which Donner was already filming alongside this film. But the studio wanted him to use it to give this a big bang of an ending.

But all in all, Superman the Movie is a fun film for kids of all ages.

August 8, 2016 1