I went back to look at my review of the original "Pacific Rim" and it is relatively positive. There is an acknowledgement that the premise is silly and the characters are thin, but otherwise the movie was fun. So consider this as a sequel to that review. My comments here will probably mirror the film in the same way that the original review mirrored the first movie. The depth will be less, the characters less interesting and story will be more incomprehensible. Five years ago I found the energy to make the review a little entertaining, today I don't have the same creativity or motivation.
There have been so many films that have trashed the cities of the Earth in the last ten years, they all start to run together. For a brief moment, it felt as if this film was going to forgo that routine and do something more creative. For ten minutes we get an alternative world, where people are living as scavengers in the ruins of the cities that were destroyed in the last film. Two characters are quickly introduced and there is a homemade "Jaeger" to entice us. When one giant robot fights another, I had hopes that this would be something a bit different. Unfortunately, the two new characters that are introduced are immediately placed in the world that existed in the first film. We get a weak reboot of the training/drafting process and a potential threat from a technological improvement in the weapons is abandoned almost immediately for a development that makes almost no sense. We do get some robot on robot action but it isn't long before that morphs into the same thing with a different cast.
Sydney, Australia and Tokyo, Japan are the two cites that get busted up in this go round. There is a tasteful decision to convince us that thousands of people are not dying with every punch being throw and every monster waving it's tail. The four second visual reference and one line of dialogue are meant to assuage our guilt about watching these cities be torn up. The more comic book aspects of the movie also help diminish the significance of the destruction. It finally is a little hard to worry that CGI building being collapsed means anything. It's a bit like the destruction of Alderlan, we know what it means but it carries only symbolic weight, no real emotional consequence.
There are a few characters carried over from the first film, but to be honest, since I've only seen it the one time, five years ago, I forgot the role they played for the most part. John Boyega is supposed to be the son of Idris Elba's character in the first film. I don't think there was ever a reference to him in that movie, only to the adopted daughter who is his sister. Rinko Kikuchi is that sister and she does not get much to do. The other carry over characters are more important to the story but they make almost as little sense as the previously unknown brother. Scott Eastwood is fine as a rival character, he gets to be the butt of one good joke line, but mostly he is stoic and ready for action. Boyega has to try to match the spirit of the speech from his dad in the first film, and he just sounds like a cheerleader.
"Pacific Rim Uprising" is not interested in any social ramifications of the war against the Kaiju. There are a couple of places where some political and philosophical issues could be made a part of the story, but they are jettisoned immediately. The film does this repeatedly. It asks a question or raises a subject and then does nothing with it. The emotional loss of the movie characters is nil. Even the one character who announces that he will be dying by making a foreshadowing statement early in the story, gets denied the payoff that was set up in that earlier scene. The technology is never explained as it was sometimes in the first movie. Jerry-rigged solutions to complications that come up get done in time regardless of how much time might be needed to make any of it logically work. I can believe I just used a criteria of "logic" to judge this movie, because there is no consistent rationale for what happens, it just does.
The robots fighting each other and then fighting giant monsters is fun for a while, but it does get repetitive. There were no real human elements to offset the repetitive nature of these continuous battle, so the movie feels a little long and redundant. The end result is that this film will help you kill a couple of hours but not help you anticipate another time killer two years from now which is clearly the plan. That giant white gorilla movie coming in a couple of weeks, suddenly looks a lot more entertaining by comparison.
OK, tell me that getting Spielberg's Biggest Blockbuster of the 1970s AND his Biggest Blockbuster of the 1980s isn't going to help me win this draft. Plus I have the sequel to his biggest Blockbuster of the 1990s to go along with it. This should be in the bag, but only if you do your part and vote for my slate in the Draft.
Jaws
There are plenty of posts on this site for this film. Here is a list:
For some reason I was very reluctant to see this film. I'm not a gamer so the franchise doesn't mean much to me. The two versions starring Angelina Jolie are distant menories after one viewing when the came out, and the trailer made the movie look like a single long chase through the jungle and I saw that last Christmas with "Jumanji". So imagine my surprise that this turned out to be pretty good.
Alicia Vikander has been on my radar since I first saw her in a ridiculous film "Seventh Son", from three years ago. Since then she starred in my favorite movie of that year and won an Academy Award. None of that really suggests that she could be an action star, but this film manages to make her pretty believable in that role. One of the things the script manages to do is show that she is frequently lucky rather than invincible. The opening two scenes show her being defeated in a battle in the ring and getting creamed in a bicycle chase. She has her moments but she is also clearly not always going to come out on top. She is also an amateur in this film version. As a nascent treasurer hunter, she is really in pursuit of her father not the contents of a tomb.
I don't mean to suggest that the story is complex or that there are not a lot of chase scenes. In fact, the plot does seem like a series of action sequences strung together. The most noticeable of which are three chase sequences that take up the first half of the film. The bicycle chase at the beginning is very clever and nicely shot and completely superfluous to the plot. A pursuit across a series of boats in the harbor of Hong Kong, does little to advance the story either. The big chase is the action scene that is so prominently featured in the trailers, and it is that jungle chase that I mentioned earlier. It has some of those Spielberg touches, that add just one more complication as you think the end is within reach. Those play out like a bit of a cliche but they still manage to work.
My main reason for wanting to see this is that it features Walton Goggins as the bad guy. We are fans of his work ever since we first came across him in "Justified". I know that he had some success before that but we know him as Boyd Crowder. Here he is Maithias Vogel, the minion of some vast conspiracy that is attempting to control the world. I'm sure that "Trinity" will feature prominently in any successive films but her it is barely a shadow. Vogel is the villain and as a man trapped on an island, searching for what he thinks is a treasure, surrounded by slaves that he dispatches like swatting a fly, he is appropriately mad-eyed. Goggins has a good voice and speaks in an interesting rhythm when given a chance. Unfortunately here, there is rarely an opportunity. The screenwriters just stick a gun in his hand and move on to another sequence.
The National Treasure/Raiders of the Lost Ark/Mummy vibe is pretty strong. When they finally do enter the Tomb, it was sufficiently booby trapped to make the last section pretty effective. We don't really get any sense of how Lara Croft figures out the puzzles that she solves. This was especially true of the combination that unlocked the chamber in the first place. I would think that gamers, used to having to solve these sorts of elements to make their games work, would want to have that as part of the process, but the film makers are in a hurry to get to the next piece of exposition or action.
"Tomb Raider" is a brisk two hours with enough story to make the action work, but only barely. Whether or not we get further adventures that the story clearly is setting up is a mystery that could only be discovered by Lara herself. Stay Tuned.
You can listen to the episode here. Tomorrow I will post my draft choices and share a link to where you can vote for them. We had a very fun time talking all things Spielberg so you should take advantage and spend a couple of hours debating our positions.
In
the world of Science Fiction, most readers of novels, viewers of
television and movies will always remember a strong ending to a story.
The "Twilight Zone" was famous for the twist sucker punch finale of most
of the episodes. In the popular culture, when an image or a quote
becomes a meme understood by all, it is clear that the work has tapped
into something important to the times, politics or people. Charlton
Heston is the star of many a movie meme. Moses standing at the Red Sea
parting the waves, Ben Hur, either chained to the oars of the Roman
Battle cruiser or with rein in hand on a Chariot. His most famous image
however is as a dismayed misanthrope pounding sand on a beach in front
of the ruins of one of the most recognizable symbols in the world at the
end of "Planet of the Apes". Heston has at least one other great
moment of Science Fiction history in his vita, the denouncement at the
end of the movie "Soylent Green". It is another moment parodied and
understood by masses of people, most of whom have never seen the movie. I
don't want his refrain to be the only thing people know about the film
so this week "Soylent Green" is the movie I want everyone to see.
"Soylent
Green" is one of those great 1970s Science Fiction movies that is more
about ideas than about special effects. Before the juggernaut that is
"Star Wars" came along, most Science Fiction lived in the imagination
more than the vision of a story. There were occasional exceptions like
"Forbidden Planet" and "2001", but for each of those visually rich
movies, there were a dozen other films that made do with small budgets,
limited effects and big ideas. Films like "Seconds", "A Boy and His
Dog", "Damnation Alley" or "The Omega Man" drew in audience mostly with
interesting concepts. Sometimes like with "Planet of the Apes" there was
spectacular art direction and set design, but even in that film the
visual factor relies on our willingness to accept the story in order to
then accept the vision. Most of these films are cautionary tales that
try to speak to the worries of the times in which they were made, and
"Soylent Green" was one of the finest examples of playing on those
contemporary fears.
Stanford
Biologist Paul Ehrlich published a book called "The Population Bomb"
that predicted a coming world of Malthusian Nightmares. It spawned a
whole industry of doomsayers and environmental prophets who suggested
that the Earth was over populated and over polluted. The theme of
"Soylent Green" is derived from this stream of fearful environmentalism
of the early 1970s. This dystopian world is not threatened by nuclear
annihilation but starvation and overcrowding. Of course there has also
been a substantial amount of global warming to screw up the planet's
food supplies as well. Most of this is brilliantly summarized by the
title sequence which uses a combination of photos, pacing and music to
show us what has happened and is coming.
It
was simple and to the point. It was also forty years ago, so perhaps it
is a little premature to send us all to a living hell but once the
premise is set up the story follows it quite well. William Simonson, a
director of the Soylent Corporation is murdered and although there are
hundreds of murders a day in the overcrowded world, one detective is
unwilling to accept that it is a random burglary. Simonson lives in a
luxurious apartment that comes equipped with special security, a
bodyguard and living furniture that he can enjoy to his hearts content.
It just seems too convenient that the bodyguard was out shopping for
groceries with the furniture at the moment this important man was killed
in his building. A building where the security system is on the fritz
when the apartment is broken into.
Heston plays the determined cop
who engages in the kind of casual corruption that seems to be as
prevalent in the future as it was in the 1970s with Al Pacino's
"Serpico". Detective Thorn is not a bad guy, but he appears to be a
vulture at the scene of the crime, scooping up whatever luxury item is
likely to go unmissed. Everybody gets a little taste, from his boss to
the grunts that remove the body. Thorn takes some vegetables and meat
which are incredibly rare commodities in the future. Most people have to
survive on manufactured nutrition wafers of different composition,
including the recently introduced "Soylent Green". He also acquires a
couple of rare technical books that he will not be able to make sense
out of but which ought to please his partner Sol Roth, an elderly man
who serves as the equivalent of Wikipedia for the future police force.
Most
of you know an old timer or two who provides a link to the past. They
share stories of the good old days and relate how the world was a better
place in their youth (much like your current narrator). For the most
part we can dismiss those stories as the nostalgia of an older
generation (you know, they walked five miles up hill to school in the
snow and then five miles uphill home at the end of the day). This movie
posits that the memories of the older generation are not rambling
condemnations of change but accurate histories of things that have in
fact been lost. The collective of older "books" is known as the Exchange
and Sol takes the information from the two Oceanographic Reports that
Thorn brought him to the Exchange for evaluation.
The film is a
police procedural about a conspiratorial secret which the powers that be
are determined to keep a secret. Most of this was pretty standard
stuff, but several aspects of the setting make the story so much more
compelling. The way in which the citizens have to live, on rationed
water, limited food supplies, sleeping on staircases shows how the
environment has decayed. The world of the dead man stands in stark
contrast to the rest of the population. A rich man with a sex partner
who comes with the apartment and access to items that are incredibly out
of reach to the rest of the population may seem an unsympathetic
victim. We have seen however that there was a sense of guilt in his
death, we are aware that there is a conspiracy and we watch Thorn as he
picks at each link and follows his instincts to arrive at the truth. In
the process the future world is revealed to us bit by bit. The
term "bromance" has cropped up in the last few years to describe stories
that are about the friendship between two men. Buddy pictures have been
around since the days of silent film, and up through the point this was
released so was Edward G. Robinson. The partnership between Sol and
Thorn is the real relationship in the movie. Heston's character does get
involved with the "furniture" of the dead man, but all of the really
emotional moments of the film involve him and the old man. From some of
the earliest of sound films, Robinson played gangsters, doctors and
bureaucrats.
He was the definitive gangster for the first decade of sound movies as
"Little Cesar". "Soylent Green" gave him the opportunity to go out on a
high note. This was his last film and he played it for all that was on
the page. The scene where Sol prepares the purloined food for a meal for
Heston is a good example. Sol, enjoys it with relish and equally enjoys
watching Thorn, who has never had anything like this enjoy as well.
Robinson waves his plastic utensils as if they were a baton and he was
conducting an orchestra. The crescendo of the piece is the belch Heston
gives at the end of the most satisfying meal of his life. Apparently
this scene was not in the script and was improvised by the two actors
with the prompting of the director. It was a special touch to show their
relationship and the world of the time. At one point Heston's boss
suggests he might need a new "book" but the detective demurs and
continues to have faith in his room mate/partner/father figure.
The
other great sequence featuring Robinson, and one that is sadly ironic,
is Sol's decision to end his own story. When advocates of euthanasia
speak of giving patients back their dignity
and providing comfort at the end, they must surely envision a scene
like the one that takes place at the end of the second act. Older people
desiring to die, troop into a modernistic building, fill out a form and
then have some final comforts attended to. Robinson was dying of cancer
when the movie was made and he was almost completely deaf. We would all
hope that his passing would be as beautiful as was depicted here in the
processing center referred to as "home" by those seeking an end to
their time on Earth. Thorn gets the final proof for the motive of the
executive's murder by following his friend through his passage home. As
you watch what is really a simple sequence
of wonderful pastoral scenes and listen to the comforting and thrilling
classical score, you realize how devastating the loss of the world as
it was would be to those able to remember it.
The themes and
characters have been shared with you a bit, now let's talk about the
production. In today's world, this would be a movie crammed with
futuristic CGI vistas and sets that were created in a computer. The
costumes and equipment would be imagined in fantastic ways to make us
feel as if we were in the future. The science fiction films of the
seventies were often done on modest budgets and almost always had to
make due with creative use of location and existing props. A luxury
apartment of the future comes equipped with the latest video game (here
it is an early version of Pong). Food riots need to be staged on a New
York City back lot, but to make it more futuristic, garbage trucks are
modified to remove people rather than trash. The euthanasia center is
the googie architectural structure of the L.A. Sports arena and it's
futuristic clean style lobby. The focus stays on the ideas rather than
the "wow" factor of the look. Even the two books that Thorn confiscates,
they are not digital readouts on an i-pad style device, they are simply
over-sized volumes given slick covers to convey an advanced type of
publishing, nothing fancy but slightly noticeable.
The
horrible secret of "Soylent Green" has probably been used as a
punchline by thousands of people who never even saw the movie. The fact
that the last line has reached into and grabbed the public consciousness
is evidence of the effectiveness of the idea behind the film. We are on
an environmental brink that may change the relationship of human beings
to one another in catastrophic ways. The immorality of a choice might
be mitigated by the exigencies of the moment. The movie is an action
based detective conspiracy story, but the thought it contains is
provocative and the story highlights that issue rather than pushing it
aside for action. Just five years after he stands in for the sucker
punched audience in front of the Statue of Liberty, Heston finishes
another iconic Science fiction thought with his dire warning and
outstretched hand. Another entertaining science fiction movie is capped
off with a thought that is frightening and thought provoking.
Special Note:
This
is the first of my series on Fogs Movie Reviews [Now, Movies I Want Everyone to See] to cover a film I wrote
about on my original Movie A Day Project from 2010. If you are
interested in a comparison of the posts click here,
I did not refer to this earlier post when writing this so you will see
some differences in voice and view but probably not too many in attitude
or style. Enjoy.
Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast
from Southern California. While embracing all genres of film making, he
is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from
his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring
current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project,
can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.
"Pacific Rim Uprising" is not interested in any social ramifications of the war against the Kaiju. There are a couple of places where some political and philosophical issues could be made a part of the story, but they are jettisoned immediately. The film does this repeatedly. It asks a question or raises a subject and then does nothing with it. The emotional loss of the movie characters is nil. Even the one character who announces that he will be dying by making a foreshadowing statement early in the story, gets denied the payoff that was set up in that earlier scene. The technology is never explained as it was sometimes in the first movie. Jerry-rigged solutions to complications that come up get done in time regardless of how much time might be needed to make any of it logically work. I can believe I just used a criteria of "logic" to judge this movie, because there is no consistent rationale for what happens, it just does.
