Super Sunday: Fantastic Four (2004)

Chris Evans. On the left.
He regrets this movie. Or at least I hope
he does.

Super Sundays
Fantastic Four (2004)
Written 6/10/12

Before Marvel Studios was off making billions of dollars with some of the best superhero movies ever fucking made and breaking box-office records like it's nobody's business, they made films which... left a lot to be desired. In 2004, Sony had the rights to their poster-boy Spiderman and were producing campy-as-shit blockbusters in the Marvel name. Marvel Studios wanted to do something which would keep them relevant, on the map, and not outshined by their rivals. So, they thought, let's do a movie about the Fantastic Four! There's a great way of doing a film with tons of awesome superpowers and great characters! This is gonna be great!
     The reason why I'm including Fantastic Four in my Halloween month of Super Sundays is not just because the Four create great costume designs, but because this is simply a horrifficly mediocre superhero film. It tries to defy all logic to create these awesome moments that don't feel as awesome because their characterisations mean that we don't feel anything. When Johnny Storm goes skiing with his nurse over some mountain ranges to a bitchin' rock soundtrack, the immediate thought is not, "omg awesome!" but rather, "why the hell is she doing that?" Also, the vast majority of the characters are either unlikable douchebags or just cripplingly unrealistic.
     Ioan Gruffudd's Richard Reed is a workaholic scientist, being funded by the asshat Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) and helped by old flame Susan Storm (an annoying Jessica Alba), her brother Johnny (a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, in a role that he's still trying to make up for) and his old and unlucky friend Ben (No Ordinary Family's Mike Chiklis). They develop powers after they're caught in a solar storm and become superheroes - Mr. Fantastic with his amazing flexibility, The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch and, to Ben's annoyance, The Thing. These characterisations are what funamentally cause the film to be such a shambles.
    Susan is annoyingly smarmy and her entire character seems like an excuse for Jessica Alba to be "hot", including one scene in which she has to strip down to her panties for little good reason. Yay for Feminism! Ben Grimm's Thing is played almost schizophrenically - I don't know whether it was supposed to be tragic, funny, a decent mix of both... the film can't decide which to use. By far the worst character is Chris Evans' Johnny Storm, whose arrogant mix of Wesley Crusher and Sean Connery brings us some of the film's worst moments. My favourite character is probably Victor Von Doom, though, as despite his very thin characterisation he comes out the most sympathisable. The project and later the team themselves basically ruin his life, and his desire to get rid of them is perfectly justified. Also, his powers are awesome. And would totally be the powers I'd want if I was a superhero.
     Fantastic Four was aiming to become bigger than Spiderman, and that didn't happen. It did create a sequel, The Rise of the Silver Surfer, but that bombed harder than Dresden in 1944. (Too soon?) The Fantastic Four was stripped from Marvel canon and their next venture would be four years later, when Spiderman was done for and they had room to start an entirely new Universe... starting with one Tony Stark. While Fantastic Four certainly wasn't anything to write home about, it was important as the kick up the backside for Marvel to do something interesting that it really needed.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: After two years, I take another look at a series of very, very Unfortunate Events.VFD out of here.

Review: Merlin 5.1 - Arthur's Bane, Part One

The BBC haven't put their images up yet. Can you tell?

4 days ago

4 days ago

The last two series of Merlin have filled me with endless hours of entertainment as I picked them apart, exposing every weak plot point, every stupid recycled plot from a previous episode, and every point where the direction the series was heading in made no honest sense. As in in response, Series Five has opened on an episode that eschewed many of its former formulas and instead provided 45 minutes of brilliant entertainment. It wasn't perfect, and there were still some of the old problems that required fixing, but this is by far an improvement upon the averages of Series Three and Four. By far. Spoilers always follow.
     Morgana's not being very imaginative, so she's pallied up with a druid king named Ruadan (a post-Outcasts Liam Cunningam doing his best) to organise an attack on Camelot. They've taken in a patrol that contains Gwaine and Percival, who are sent to work in the mines looking for something vaguely magical. Ruadan has decided that old habits die hard when it comes to evil schemes and so has installed his daughter Sefa (Sophie Rundle) in the castle as Gwen's maid to go and tell him about their plans. When Merlin and Arthur head off to the west to try and catch Morgana unawares, Sefa goes and tells Daddy, and the patrol gets ambushed, with only Merlin and Arthur managing to escape. Sefa, despite having massive moral qualms with what she's done, gets sentenced to death for Treason by Gwen regardless. After Merlin and Arthur get trapped by poachers, they're saved by a weird looking man that Merlin had previously seen in a prophecy killing the King - a man who turns out to be the little druid boy (and harbinger of doom) Mordred.
     The whole prophecy aspect of the plot had me undergoing flashbacks, but it's something common to both Merlin and to the original Arthurian legend. It speaks to their casting that I knew who the character was the moment I saw him - it's definitely not the same actor as before, more years have passed in-story than in real life. However, I think that the massive drums that played whenever he was onscreen led to a little bit of overkill. The same cannot be said of new characters Nuadan or Sefa, who if anything suffered from too little screentime. Both of them seemed like they had the potential to be very complex characters, with Nuadan's allegiance one of desperation in the pursuit of knowledge and Sefa's actions being constantly under her own moral maelstrom.

You know, the image captions are my favourite part of these
reviews. So here's Merlin, once again randomly extending
his arms for no apparent reason.

     Another thing that's gotten drastically better was the direction. While there was still some silly choreography and slo-mo during the fight scenes, the whole thing felt a lot more epic from the very start. There's just something about the way it was shot and themed that made the aesthetic instantly more pleasing, even though it was clear that some shot arrangements were robbed from the previous year's premiere. Altogether, it made my attitude towards the episode a lot more positive from the outset, so it's really something they should keep doing.
     It was wonderful to see how far it feels Merlin has come compared to the start of the previous series. The Darkest Hour had some fun ideas, but it was still stuck in a similar scenario to previous' series. Series Five is starting off by making sure that pretty much all of the formulas that plagued the previous series are over and done with, and if the writers can manage to produce a string of 13 episodes as well-written and as original as this, then we'll have no problem whatsoever. Long live Merlin Series Five, and all who ride with her!

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.1: Trojan

Howie and Arnie face certain doom... or do they? Digital Spy

"It's a Moose!"

I've been waiting for new Dwarf for a good two or three years. Of course, that can't compare with those actually conscious enough to have seen the last broadcast series, who've been waiting a whole damn decade and a half for some new action. But it's still been a pretty exciting time. When I first made this blog back in the halycon days of 2009, I couldn't have even dreamed that we'd be seeing new Dwarf, and when it was announced I doubted that I'd actually be here to review it. For me, this isn't just the return of one of my favourite TV shows. This is an acheivement, an honour, and something that I find very rewarding.
     Trojans is quite simply a statement of what Red Dwarf X has set out to acheive in this short series, and that is, admirably, to make us laugh in a way which we haven't done since Series VI. It was short, sweet and had within it a series of developments that managed to balance respectful references to the show's past and well-worn characterisations with brand new material reflecting a much more modern style of comedy. At first I was a bit wary, but soon the performances and the script actually won me over to it in a way that I really haven't felt since Rob Grant left the series. Spoilers will always follow.
     Rimmer has just failed his astronavigation exam again, and no technique will help him get over his anger. They find a ship called Trojan, a high-class Star-ship with a drive capable of vast travel across the Universe. Unfortunately the drive is dead in the water, but the ship is still powerful enough to receive a message from a hologram on a crashing ship, which turns out to be from Rimmer's brother, Howard, who is also a Hologram. Recovering from an attack of Resentment that nearly wiped his memory core, Rimmer decides to pretend to be the captain aboard the Trojan. When Howard arrives with his Simulant colleague Sim Crawford, he appears to be respectable and quite shocked at Rimmer's acheivements - until a resentment attack reveals that Howard is very similar to Rimmer after all. Crawford decides to rebel and use the ship to unite the sector's simulants, but Cat is able to download the Rimmers' resentment into her and she is disabled. Howard collapses and wishes his brother farewell.

Kryten and Lister weren't the focus, but they still
got stuff to do.

     This episode dealt with a lot of the problems innate in Red Dwarf's premise and converted it to a more modern setting. Aside from the aesthetic - plasma screens, hand-held devices and other such things - it also managed to perfectly balance all of the character beats. While Rimmer was the main focus, the other three characters got their own smaller personal stories that kept them busy and provided them with motivation in the central plot. Even if you pick out a few spots that weren't quite as well done as they could have been, this was a strongly written script. It dealt out the funnies in a way that both eased us back into even having Dwarf in the first place and managed to squeeze some character work in for good measure.
     No matter what you think, it's good to have Red Dwarf back on the air, especially when it's of this high quality. It feels like a privelage to still be here for Dwarf's return, and Trojan made sure that I wasn't disappointed. For every niggling doubt, every hang-up, every worry, Trojan had an answer and at points, I was laughing like a loon. I've missed ya, Dwarfie, and I'm glad you're back.

Thanks.    

Review: Red Dwarf: Back To Earth (Revisited)

Coronation Street does not, in fact, play part in my
metaphysical theory. It does help it, though.

See here for my previous look at this story.

Red Dwarf - Series Nine - Back To Earth
Written 29/9/12

Metaphysics, eh? I spoke about this in a really boring way a month or so ago, but re-watching Back To Earth in preparation for Red Dwarf X has allowed me to realise that for once, Doug Naylor has written something that is both incredibly clever and incredibly frightening in a million different ways. At a glance, the scenario created by Back To Earth is just played for laughs, and ends up being a throw-back to universally loved episode Back To Reality from back in Series V. But at its heart, what Naylor has created is something rather profound and, within the confines of the story itself, astonishing in its scale.
     So the Dwarfers believe, due to a run in with a female Despair Squid (who thus uses hallucinogenic happiness ink because girls are soft and such and suchlike yawn yawn), that they have entered our reality, in which they are fictional characters in a Red Dwarf TV Show. Their "real" world is of course subtley different to ours in a number of telling ways; London appears as it does in Blade Runner, the Creator is played by Richard O'Callaghan instead of the erstwhile Doug Naylor, and for some reason both Kochanski and Chloe Arnett exist at the same time. The end of the episode sees them kill their Creator, and find out that this was something that he had scripted; the typewriter of their Creator can be used to control the world, but ultimately there is another typewriter somewhere else controlling that. Here lies the key to their brilliance.
    We may say that the Dwarfers don't exist, and so there's no point in arguing about metaphysics. But with the Quantum Multiverse, they do exist, somewhere, and it's a world that does have a Creator. Essentially, we live in a Godless Universe in which our imaginations allow us to inadvertantly control the paths of other, similar universes. In other words, anyone who has ever written fiction, or imagined a hypothetical scenario, is a deity to another Universe. The Dwarfers weren't being controlled by "The Creator," but they are, ironically, controlled by another creator, Doug Naylor, who has set this whole thing up.

It's almost as confusing as that poster...

     This explains so much, and it seems obvious when you think about it. Back To Earth pushes against both the Fourth Wall and against the differences between the Watsonian (the in-story) and the Doylian (the out-of-story). Those subtle differences between our reality and their "reality" reveal not the shoddyness of the script but instead the fact that Naylor is specifying that while this resembles our reality, it is in fact yet another layer of metaphysical existence. The back of the DVD cover being similar but not the same, the existence of Series IX and X in 2009, the head of the Red Dwarf fan club being called Redge Wharf - these aren't just jokes, my friend, they're genius. When the despair squid arrives, it makes Rimmer fear for his life - which is obviously an indication that the squid focused their shared hallucination on Lister, which begs the question, why? Well, we now know the answer. Because Lister is the Main Character.
     Or at least that's how I rationalised it. Metaphysical buggery aside, Back To Earth does feel like a poor imitation of all those things that came before, but I admire it for trying to do something incredibly interesting and for, in the end, inspiring Dave to commission a brand new series of Dwarf which, at the time of publishing, is due to start tomorrow. My best hopes for Red Dwarf X and my thanks to Red Dwarf, Back To Earth.

Thanks.

<< Model Dependant Realism and You ----------Metaphysics---------- Metaphysics and Gene Hunt >>

Review: GHTTB: Ashes To Ashes 3.4

Gene breaks into the Blue Peter Garden.

Ashes To Ashes - Series Three, Episode Four 
Written 28/6/12

Halfway through the final series, and I'm finding it ever more disconnected than before. There's some concentrated effort to focus on the characters, but that doesn't correlate with the overall tone; it's almost as if a character gains traits in one episode and then defaults to character stereotype in the next. That's the big problem with any mix of crime drama with another genre, in that the case-a-week format doesn't allow much character development. This week's episode certainly wasn't at all bad, but it was treading on themes and cliches that the series has driven into the ground, and its plot twists are signposted from a mile away.
     Following a drugs tipoff, the gang accidentally step on the territory of a neighbouring division. Their officer, DI Louise Gardiner, is undercover in the rising criminal organisation of disgraced criminal Terry Stafford and his son Daniel, with whom Gene has a vengeance. When Gardiner appears to have been attacked, they investigate in full force, but soon discover that the head of Gardiner's department has been bribed by the Staffords for years, and that Gardiner faked Daniel's attacks in order to keep the Police away from Terry's criminal activities. Gardiner is caught in stray gunfire and a creepy Keats ushers her into sleep.
     Gardiner was an interesting character for the most part, introducing a female presence into CID that due to the main cast's platonic relationships hasn't ever really shown up. For a while it seemed as if Gardiner would be joining the main crew; well, for a few seconds, anyway - that is, before the realisation that they're not going to introduce a new cast member only four episodes away from the finale and that the character was being obviously sneaky. It's an unfortunate sign that after the incredible creativity of the second series, the Bonanza is losing steam and writer efforts to present us with an epic finale are overshadowing the other episodes of the series.

Keats ushers Gardiner into death.

     There were a few character moments here of there that stood out, but they were sporadic at best. Chris's decision, after hearing Gardiner's claim of rape, to go down to the cells and beat up Daniel Stafford, showed his character's attempts to show heroism, but otherwise are completely at odds with what the character has always stood for - trying to follow the modern ways presented by Sam and be a good copper. That's the key to an overall problem with this series, that despite the sporadic historical references (including one to the vandalisation of the Blue Peter Garden this week), it could still be set in the modern era without changing a lot. The best of these character moments was no doubt Jim's final rites upon Gardiner, which is foreshadowing of the most blatant towards his role in Alex and Sam's world.
      Like most of the episodes in this series so far, there have been a few good elements to what are fundamentally flawed stories. 3.4 didn't fail to captivate; it just didn't do anything particularly interesting until the final few minutes, and that's a worrying trend in a series that beforehand has shown such creativity and skill. Onward towards the finale, I say, and try to ignore the next few weeks of dullness.

Thanks.
 

Highlight: Red Dwarf VIII

Cassandra. Predestination fun amidst horrific caricatures.

I... I don't like Series VIII. It disagrees with me in so many variously horrible ways that it's often hard for me to contemplate without collapsing into floods of metaphorical tears. Notably, the 1999 series took a series that I loved and destroyed it before my eyes. Albeit I was watching the series for the first time in 2009, but it still felt so heart-breaking when instead of great comedy, Series VIII just both literally and metaphorically took a shit on Red Dwarf's memory. I've watched some bad things in my time - seen some awful movies, managed to enjoy some of the worst Doctor Who and found joy in such blind banality as Survivors and Outcasts. Nothing comes close to the pain I felt when I reviewed Pete, all those years ago. Unfortunately we have to keep this positive, and so I will make a nod towards Cassandra, and episode that manages to be funnier than both the Naylor series combined. A stark combination of Future Echoes' predestination and Legion's sense of entrapment, Cassandra is great fun and is the only redeeming thing about this whole damn excercise.

Thanks.
Written 9/6/12

NEXT TIME: Business as usual. Oh, and Red Dwarf X starts on Thursday, Just mentioning.

Highlight: Red Dwarf VII

Ouroboros had some fun ideas. Shame about the rest.

Some people find Series VIII funny. For these, rare and incredibly strange people, Series VII is the one to avoid, for the simple reason that this 1997 reboot tried to go down the dramedy route and failed at the -edy bit quite considerably. The series became more character driven, but those characterisations were inconsistant and irritating, and potentially good ideas were thrown out in favour of stupid drama moments. Also, whiney Kryten, NO. Despite this, I do have a highlight for Series VII, and that's the complex Ouroboros whose attempts to make up for Rimmer's departure are, while considerably lacking, a decent piece of Sci-Fi in their own right. Series VII? There's an obscene phone call, and I believe it's for you.

Thanks.
Written 9/6/12

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Battlefield

The Brigadier and Bessie make their last
appearance.

Doctor Who - Season 26, Story One - Battlefield
Written 25/6/12

Merlin! That great yet troubled series staring Colin Morgan... sorry? Oh, no, this is Season 26 of Doctor Who! Sorry about that. Yes, for the first time (and the last) Doctor Who decided to deal with the concept of Arthurian Legend, another of Britain's myths that the show has entrenched itself into.The writer of last season's excellent Remembrance of the Daleks brings us this pseudo-Arthurian tale, and while it tries to be like that former story, it ends up stuffing itself in the process with too many characters and too many conflicts. (The opposite, I can say, of the TV Show.)
     Having discovered a nuclear bomb at an archeological dig, UNIT are called to the scene, led by Brigadier Winifred Bambera (Angela Bruce, who previously played the Female Lister in Red Dwarf). Thunderstorms abound at a castle near Carbury and the mysterious Lake Vortigern. The Doctor arrives just in time to watch UNIT battle a group of warriors enter from another Dimension, one in which Arthurian Myth is all true and where a version of The Doctor is known as Merlin. Using his influence amongst their culture, he joins old friend Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and a large cast of characters to defeat Mordred and his mother, Morgaine, before they bring their war to our world.
     It's certainly nice to see UNIT again, but they're nowhere near as strong as they were previously, especially with the leadership of Angela Bruce's lacklustre Brigadier, whose incompetance turns her character into humourous slapstick. Indeed, the entire story has an air of the comic, with knights running around the countryside fighting horrendously choreographed battles in an almost Pythonesque way. And after such issues with ye-olde language being thrown about in Silver Nemesis, by far the worst story of the previous season, this continues to be laughable and silly. "Ere" was used no less than three times, for goodness sake. And there are so many characters, many of which have very little reason to be there AND very little to do, to the point where this is still true after four of them are randomly carted out of the story. Luckily the Brig gets some badass lines here or there, especially in the end, where he kills the Destroyer.

Morgaine is a great villain.

     Despite having a very weak link towards actual Arthurian mythology, I thought it was a great adaptation of the concept. The Doctor's character ultimately derives from the Merlin archetype; less, perhaps, than characters like Gandalf and Dumbledore, but he shares a similar role as the mystical mentor. The best part of their role in the story was very much the character of Morgaine, who was a very complex villain in a really good way. To cross continuities, she shares a lot of features with the early version of her counterpart Morgana in Merlin, with a dark villainous streak tempered by a genuine level of respect for those around her. She wants to turn our world upside down in her battle with Arthur, but she still pauses to respect the dead at a WWII memorial and cures a blind woman. The day is only saved when The Doctor tells her that Arthur is long dead, and she mourns for her worthy adversary.
      Battlefield on its own is a great romp, and I certainly wouldn't warn you away from it. But it falls prey to the same things that Silver Nemesis did, albeit in a less dramatic way. It's overstuffed, overlong and instead of the epic Arthurian Yarn we were promised, we got a bit of a runabout. I was expecting Camelot, not Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It wasn't a complete disaster, and it certainly is enjoyable, but not in a memorable way.

Thanks.

October!

October's here, ladies and gentlemen. And you all know what that means.

You don't? Oh. That's weird. Ok, I'll start off by announcing the very temporary return of my old funfair, Super Sundays, which will see me take on a few Halloween related treats. I know I'll be looking at Batman (1989), A Nightmare Before Christmas and the dreaded Fantastic Four, but I might also be looking at a certain film chronicling a series of very unfortunate events. Hmmm... how cryptic?

October also sees the triumphant return of Merlin. The show's fifth and final season is something I've been looking forward to for a while, mainly because I enjoy loving Merlin when it's good and I love hating it when it's bad. Merlin is perhaps the show which I find the most fun to review, if only because it often collapses in such spectacular ways. I can only hope that it sorts itself out for this final year and that Merlin's troublesome facade gets blown early.

As you've hopefully seen from my daily highlights, Thursdays will see the epic return of a Nostalgia Filter favourite, Red Dwarf. The set reports have been good, as have the previews, but I just hope that this series lives up to the hype and returns to the spirit of Dwarf that was lost back in 1997.

Oh, and I've changed the banner to be more spooky. However successful that is, have a happy October and have a happier Halloween!

Thanks.