Intelligence is Central to Finding Dory

Here we go people. After weeks upon weeks of terrible underperforming shit (although I'll contend not exactly horrible movies), we have what could be the first really great non-Captain America weekend. The two films set to face off today are as close to surefire hits as we're going to get any time soon, although who the hell knows how things are playing out this summer. On the one hand we have what looks like an entertaining vehicle for two of the dwindling number of bankable stars, Central Intelligence (2016) with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. On the other side of the theater is the latest from a studio that has never shown a lot of cracks, until recently, which is also a follow-up to one of their most popular properties, Finding Dory (2016). Let's take a look at each:

There's a sincere goofiness here that I'm really appreciating.

Kevin Hart has made the valiant effort to star in every movie coming out every year. He's reached his pinnacle with Ride Along (2014) and Think Like a Man (2012), but has had solid appearances in everything from Ride Along 2 (2016) to Think Like a Man Too (2014). We can throw in Get Hard (2015) and The Wedding Ringer (2015) and his status as the ultimate buddy comedy star of our generation is cemented. Of course, none of these movies is really all that good (his best tend to be films where he's not the central focus), but that matters less than the fact that people generally turn out to see his films. OK, mostly black people, but we haven't had a film that caters to black-specific interests in quite some time.

To be fair, Central Intelligence doesn't really resemble a black movie. Neither did Ride Along. The presence of black actors (or whatever the Rock is) seems to denote a "black film." Central Intelligence could buck this trend and actually be a film starring actors of color that attracts all sorts of people to the theater. What a concept!

Pairing Hart with Dwayne Johnson in an action-comedy is a spectacular move, and the Rock is riding the height of his fame. Remember watching The Rundown (2003), which was a legit good action movie full of insane Chris Walken-not-quite-trying-to-be-comedy-but-comedy, and seeing that really corny Arnold "passing the torch" scene that made it totally as if the Rock was supposed to be the next incarnation of the giant dude who beats everyone up? And then like, nothing great happened with his career, including The Rundown, which everyone has fond memories of but no one saw in theaters? This site posited a good question - when exactly did The Rock become a global megastar?

It certainly wasn't any of his early efforts to cross over. Walking Tall (2004)? DOOM (2005)? Gridiron Gang (2006)? Do you remember these films? I mean, what the fuck? Somehow by 2010 he was recognizable enough to partner with Sam Jackson in The Other Guys (2010) in a joke-ish cameo that riffed on his persona and the kind of character we're used to seeing in action movies as much as gave him a role in the narrative. But how did he build his pedigree? It's probably something like how The Rundown built an audience in the years since its release. It's also notable how popular The Mummy Returns (2001) was and how constant it played on the USA Network for the past fifteen years. That's legit, bro.

Somehow by Fast Five (2011) The Rock was the kind of A-lister that could inject life into a dying franchise. The sight of him going toe-to-toe with a man as equally beefed up and equally racially ambiguous was spine-tingling. It is notable that he still has his faults, though. G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) was far inferior to its predecessor, although it made slightly more money worldwide (while being lackluster domestically). And Hercules (2014), while a fantastically entertaining film, never really caught on. I'll contend this was because its marketing material was fantastically cliche and played out. San Andreas (2015) was certainly a bigger hit both culturally and commercially, but it's not exactly like we're looking like end-all blockbuster here.

So what's our final verdict? Well, Hart and Rock are both pretty solid on their own, but not exactly the Box Office Gods common thought has made them out to be. It's more like since there's literally no one else out there that can open a movie on their own, we tend to give them a lot of positive press. Central Intelligence looks like it has a good hook, some pretty funny character moments, and a solid amount of action and intrigue. It's also wholly original. The key, though, is that people don't want original. They just want good. I think it will be decently successful, although how much do we really think about Ride Along or San Andreas in our daily lives (I actually have friends who talk a lot about San Andreas. That may not be a great comparison). I'm very curious how this shakes out, but my impression is pretty positive.

Although this octodad looks incredible.

On the other side of the aisle is Finding Dory, which slots into an incredible crowded year for children's computer animated films (or even more specifically - talking animal children's computer animated films). In 2016 we've already seen Kung Fu Panda 3 (remember that? That actually came out five months ago), Zootopia, and The Angry Birds Movie, with The Secret Life of Pets and Ice Age: Collision Course on the way. These have ranged from the terrible (KFP3) to the critically-lauded billion-dollar grosser (Zootopia), with everything else somewhere in between. Finding Dory feels a hell of a lot different than The Angry Birds Movie, so kids are probably ready for it, in part because it's got to appeal to a different, less jaded kind of kid. It's also Pixar.

Pixar sequels are really tricky. It's important to remember that sequels aren't really a new thing for the studio. Toy Story 2 (1999) was their third film, a sequel to their first, and in doing so set a damn high standard for the studio's follow-ups. Toy Story 3 (2010) proved that they could do it again, although Cars 2 (2011) and Monsters University (2013) were both arguably so bad as to damage the heretofore unflappable Pixar brand. They certainly bounced back in a big way with last year's Inside Out (2015), although at the same time The Good Dinosaur (2015) didn't feel like a thing at all, and could be considered the studio's first unequivocal flop. So the past few years must feel sort of funny for the studio. I really dug Brave (2012), but no one else did, so with the exception of Inside Out, suddenly we haven't really had a movie from the studio that everyone loves since 2010.

These are weird standards to have, but it's Pixar. You can't make 11 great films in a row (I generally also dislike Cars [2006] and Ratatouille [2007], but other people love them. That's a reason alone why they're so great - they inspire some kind of great fanbase in everything. Except The Good Dinosaur) and then start missing the mark, even a little bit. I could personally not care less about Finding Dory, even though I'm a big Finding Nemo (2003) fan.

So why don't I care? Mostly because Dory was annoying as shit. And because despite the decent reviews so far, something just throws me. Maybe it's because Nemo was so crisp. Its storytelling and character work were so apparent. It's all right there in the title. There's something derivative about applying that to Dory, regardless if the story structure actually ends up being quite contrary. Its title gives me an Evan Almighty (2007) kind of vibe that feels more like a spin-off than a sequel. None of this is bad, because I'll always contend that a film needs to be good on its own merits no matter what its inspiration may be, but I get weird juju. Maybe it's the simple fact that it's had surprisingly little trailer buzz or media placement. I need to stop watching The Lone Ranger (2013) on SyFy.

By any account it ought to be a solid outing. That's what we've come to expect from Pixar. Pre-Good Dinosaur Pixar, that is. With one of their most solid brands fueling this outing as well as a prime June placement that they've come to dominate in recent years (again - non-Good Dinosaur release dates. Will they ever drop a film in November again? They're apparently trying with Coco [2017]. Woof.). And Andrew Stanton has got to feel good getting into his wheelhouse again, with his bread and butter, or just anything non-John Carter (2012) here. Man Disney had a lot of flops at the start of this decade.

So what say ye? Are these sure bets this weekend? Or do you have some misgivings like I do? I think these both ought to do pretty well in just about every metric that I'll typically measure, but for sure nothing's for certain these days. What do you think?

Hello Jupiter Ascending, or Why Do Blockbusters Fail?

I am always impressed by a few directors who get to keep on making movies. Tim Burton tends to churn out more crap than gold these days, but they're at least fairly successful and moderately well-liked by their intended mass audience. M. Night Shyamalan is one who had one to many absolute failures (critically, financially, and culturally) to keep his auteur vision going, but he even seems to be failing enough as a journeyman blockbuster director for people to stop giving him work. Then there's the Wachowskis.

The Wachowski Siblings, Andy and Lana, seem to have this mysterious carte blanche in Hollywood after The Matrix Trilogy. Sure it was a pretty significant movie event with each one of those three big aspects pumping hard (critical/commercial/cultural), but when do we stop believing in a director's ability to give us a good movie again? I actually don't have much of a problem with Speed Racer (2008), although it seems to be universally derided. The plot is incomprehensible, but the production design is amazing and it's also fabulously well-cast. Needless to say, though, I'm in the minority.

They followed that bomb up with Cloud Atlas (2012), which is also fine in its own right. It just cost $102 million to make, which is absurd for a big dense film with multiple timelines and plots. It always felt more like a passionate personal thinking project than anything that anyone would actually enjoy. This combined with Speed Racer and the latter disappointing Matrix sequels, which exchanged indecipherable philosophical quandaries for earned resolutions (then discarded all that while Neo fought Smith like Dragon Ball Z), and you've got a pretty lackluster string of what was once a pretty awesome post-Bound (1996) career going.

He's a space wolf!

That brings us to Jupiter Ascending (2015). I'd like to point out that even though the marketing effort for this thing has been pretty strong, in my head I called it Jupiter Rising so often I had to double-check the title to make sure I was right when titling this post. Jupiter Ascending is just really clunky, and apparently really on-the-nose, given that Mila Kunis' character has the awkward and not-prophetic-at-all name of Jupiter. Whatever. The movie looks kind of cool, even if it also seems really dumb and silly, and I like enough of what a lot of the Wachowskis have done (even if no one else really does) to give it a shot. But we're not here to discuss whether or not I'm going to see this film.

We're here to discuss if everyone else and their neighbor is. They're not. Why?

On the surface this seems like a total win. You've possibly got an Academy Award-winning actor playing the villain (Eddie Redmayne - who is no where near any of the marketing [probably to not hurt his Oscar chances...]), two likable leads who are peaking right now in Kunis and C-Tates, directors who have competently handled complex big screen genre material before (regardless of their inability to communicate mainstream ideas, they can handle the hell out of action sequences), and a plot that beckons towards a classic hero's journey in an original sci-fi opus. This should be the next AVABAR (2009), right? I am compelled by the question of why it's not. Why does this look stupid when AVABAR didn't? And AVABAR was an extremely stupid movie after the fact, but how come it looked so cool going into it (and parlayed that into $700 million)?

Last year I was writing this article about how ridiculous and pathetic March 2014 was, and I got talking about how Noah (2014), despite containing some interesting subject material and a possibly experimentally dark direction for a blockbuster to take, will get no audience at all almost solely on the basis of its inaccessible source material. There was another recent film that I am always fuddled by, that found itself in a similar position, which was Gore Verblinksi's The Lone Ranger (2013). To add to this discussion, I also want to talk about The Rock's Hercules (2014), which was by all means a pretty fun and thrilling film that just bombed to hell. Why?

I think it's interesting how critics tend to groupthink and then pile on films like these early, which tends to set the tone for how a film is talked about. None of these are exceptionally poorly constructed, at least not to the extent that the three-piece slaughterhouse of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) were, and those were all pretty successful films financially. I would solidly argue that Hercules is a better film in every possible way than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came out around the same time. It has a more artfully constructed tone, a better understanding of its own themes, a cognizant plot, more compelling characters, and more charismatic performances by its leads. If critics are picking movies to jump on, how come they jump on The Lone Ranger but not The Amazing Spider-Man 2?

Also you can't have a Hercules movie that debunks the
Hercules myth. No one thinks that Hercules actually existed.
I hope.

Perhaps it's just because the big difference between the films I've listed as successful Summer 2014 films (and thank goodness, most of the actually successful films last year were pretty damn good as well) is that franchise tag. There's something to be expected for dumb loud flashy action films that are intended for the 13-year old boy in all of us that just wants to see shit smashed together. Noah was insistently more darker and thought-provoking, although it was still filled with scenes that made no sense. Perhaps there's a key there, that when a movie takes itself as serious as Noah, it shouldn't have scenes of Ham saving a chick in the city and bringing her back only to have her trampled and killed because of Noah with no repercussion to any character moments later. Sorry, SPOILER, but seriously, if you see it coming and have hope that a likable character will do something that makes sense, you're mistaken. When movies that purport to take themselves as serious art pieces trip up, it's amplified much more than when Transformers makes piss and fart jokes with robots.

Critics aren't that useful, though, right? Something like only 50% of moviegoers go frequently, and presumably some percentage of those people would be the real cinephiles who are hunting down online news and critical opinions. Again, this critical consensus isn't that influential directly, but it helps set the narrative. When enough influential critics get on board against a movie, and this is sometimes years before a film comes out - so it's more the entertainment news reporters, but when enough of them lambaste a film's early, troubled production it becomes difficult for any smaller critic or reporter following up or transmitting the news to form a divergent opinion, lest they be ostracised by the critical community. Infrequent moviegoers, while they may not be researching a film themselves, probably have a friend who is, and they can see that off comment on Facebook that embeds itself as a negative opinion. Therefore this narrative is formed before something even comes out. Battleship (2012) is a solid example of this. Its subject matter was deemed far too stupid and unwatchable before it came out, even though it's no worse than any Transformers movie.

And I should clarify at some point, that I don't think these are necessarily good movies, but I just don't see them as any worse than other blockbusters who gain much more money. Actually I do think some of them are much better. But why are these narratives chosen? If you look at my list of "Competently-made-yet-universally-hated" Blockbusters (Jupiter Rising Ascending, Noah, The Lone Ranger, Hercules, and Battleship), I think the inherent problem in each is the source material. There's just no one out there who gave a shit about the story of Noah's Flood, or The Lone Ranger and Tonto, the "untold true story" of Hercules, or a two-hour advertisement for the U.S. Navy. It's that groan factor. You hear "Hey, they're making a big-budget epic about Noah's Ark!" "Awww maannnn. That sounds dumb." That's my gut reaction, to be honest. And I keep using Transformers, just because it's easiest - but why, when we hear "Hey, they're making a big-budget epic about Robots that are also Trucks!" is our reaction "Oooohh maaann!!"

Maybe it's just intrinsic. Enough people either saw the cartoon show to get a vague idea of the personalities and mythology involved while it was cheesy enough that we could easily picture a live-action treatment being exciting and awesome. This blinds our thought process to the fact that the film itself is still wretched, but that's not even important anymore. It's flashy enough to get a long life on television and home streaming and has just the right level of plot skimming that it's not even important to clue into. It's also generally a lot more cheery and digestible.

That's also a factor in each of these films. Noah, The Lone Ranger, and Hercules in particular had a maudlin air about them, even if the latter two were able to splice in some decent character humour that's virtually lost in a sea of self-seriousness. The same can almost be said for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but most Transformers tend to be decidedly cheery, or at least mask their pain in sex and chrome.

Also Johnny Depp fatigue doomed this movie.

I have actually thought about The Lone Ranger a lot, because on the surface that movie had everything going for it, but you never felt like you bought in. It had an extreme level of commercialisation with every plug and tie-in possible (who out there bought The Lone Ranger LEGOs expecting it to be like Harry Potter or Star Wars?). It was trying so hard to position itself as THE film of Summer 2013 but it just never had a shot.

Again, maybe this was intrinsic. It had early accusations of racism, fairly true accusations of anti-Americanism, bland what's his face...Armie Hammer, variances in tone, and a complex subtext that frankly, refuted all of this, but was tough for an average filmgoer to comprehend. It also simply came out smack in the middle of a very long summer where every single weekend there was a film trying to loudly proclaim it was the end-all finale of ALL EPIC BLOCKBUSTERS EVER. Things became more noise than diversified voices, and all the commercialisation wasn't clever or a fun reminder like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) bobble-heads. It was an irritant.

If we're contrasting with Guardians, it's also because that seemed to be a movie that "got it" while The Lone Ranger appeared like another line in a long, reviled copycat Hollywood system, even though to be honest, structurally The Lone Ranger is far more innovative and its subtext is far more subversive. But that's another good question - what does it take to take charge of a nation's culture for a few weeks?

Hey 2013, what film was your Summer film anyway? Man of Steel? How do you judge what the fan community wants? Was it Pacific Rim? But the critics and even the regular public rejected that one. Was The Lone Ranger not geeky enough? It was certainly no lesser of a film than Man of Steel, in many ways it was far superior. For some reason the appeal of seeing Superman on screen in a serious adult treatment or seeing giant robots clobber giant monsters has a far better initial sound than the idea of seeing The Lone Ranger. Even with the William Tell Overture! It's bullshit. Sorry this got so sidetracked about me liking The Lone Ranger. No one talks about this film anymore, or Noah or Battleship. They're without conversation. They won't appear on T-shirts thirty years from now.

Let's get back to that question - are they not nerdy enough? Is there something intrinsic to these films that fails to inspire a devoted fanbase that will keep it alive through conversation and references for years to come? Maybe it is that seriousness. Then again, our benchmark, Transformers: Age of Extinction isn't influencing any nerds. Quick, name Stanley Tucci's company. Or character. Or any line he says that isn't this. Any reader of this blog understands that I'm constantly concerned about our lack of culturally significant original films.

I wish this movie was as good as "Four Five Seconds."

Which brings me all the way back to Jupiter Ascending. Why did you title your movie so stupidly, Wachowskis. All you needed to hear is "Wachowski" and "Jupiter Ascending" and you could predict this film's fate. It's so sad. By all regards, this film is bonkers insane, and as one of those entertainment journalists (is that what I am? I'm only comfortable with that in really REALLY loose terms), maybe I'm to blame in part for its incoming failure by automatically looping it in with Noah and Battleship as total failures. It just looks so damn stupid. If you break down what I said up there a bit more, Mila and Chan are only successful in comedies, the directors have abused their fans' trust for far too long, and the one good thing about franchise filmmaking is that you already have some understanding of character going in, so when Robert Downey, Jr. smirks, you know why. It's engrossing. Who the hell knows what any of these people in Jupiter Going Up are doing or why we should care. It's all sound and fury signifying nothing.

So maybe I'll be totally wrong. Jupiter Ascending becomes the highest grossing movie of the year and wins seventeen Oscars next year. No. That won't happen.

But will you see it this weekend? If not, stream The Lone Ranger.

The Road to a Blockbuster: Lucy vs. Hercules...or "Herculucy"

Weekends like this is why I cover this ridiculous pop culture landscape each and every week. I love this match up we're faced with this week. Will audiences come out to see an interesting original property by a french director starring Scarlett Johansson in a formative action role or will they see the eighteenth Hercules movie of the year, but perhaps also the most significant? It's this feminine vs. masculine dichotomy of box office interests colliding! Whoopee!!

So let's first talk about Lucy (2014). Luc Besson is the kind of director who I guess I consider myself a fan of, but when I think about it, that's really just because I dug The Fifth Element (1997). Nikita (1990) and Leon the Professional (1994) are probably his other most notable pictures, at least by fans in the states, but he's also been a significant screenwriting influence, making entries with everything from the Transporter series to Liam Neeson's Taken movies. That's all pretty rough, but he also wrote Lockout (2012), a fantastically campy and thrilling escape from space movie starring Guy Pearce. I liked it.

Okay, so based off of The Fifth Element and Lockout I'm pulling for Lucy. That's not a lot to go on. But Besson seems to at least handle sci-fi with that deft hand of camp, absurdity, honesty, and real stake-filled storytelling that I consider really effective and genuine. Lucy looks really interesting to me, but we all (including myself) need to get over the really corny "10% brain use" premise that offers the film its high concept.

See, supposedly Scarlett Johansson ingests this blue shit that allows her to unlock up to 100% of her brain capacity, which apparently leads to her becoming a crazy genetic and psychic-manipulating god that then rampages throughout all the bad dudes in this flick. It's like Limitless (2012) but with less Bradley Cooper and more sci-fi ridiculousness. But the 10% brain thing is such a widely known myth at this point that attempting to ground the film in that kind of science, and then throwing out all natural extending logic to the expansion of said percentage increases, seems to drag down the narrative logic of the film itself. Listen, this is a hurdle I'm facing as well, and as I try to tell myself to just get over that stupidity and enjoy the film for how crazy and fun it looks to be, you should do the same.

But I can't see this doing anything but flopping. We're just in that age! It doesn't really have a throttle on the zeitgeist or any significant wow factor, director, or cast to make it a guaranteed hit. This is all sad to say, but people need a reason to see this, and I just don't think there are a lot of compelling reasons there. I even kind of intend to just slam it on Netflix in a few months. The only way it gains some ground is if word of mouth gets out of that it's actually a good movie, which is perking interest lately with big movies like The Winter Soldier (2014) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014). I can see Lucy finding success similar to The Fifth Element - becoming a basic cable staple / guilty pleasure to be enjoyed for the next twenty years. This caused The Fifth Element to contain a good deal of cultural influence, but that was also partly because it was so damned fun. I'm not sure if Besson has fun in him still, outside of Lockout. I'm very curious how audiences both in the short and long term respond to Lucy; its female protagonist, its French-ness, and its insanely stupid high concept.

And in this corner we have Hercules (2014), which is just about as opposite a blockbuster as Lucy as you're going to get. Hercules bristles with testosterone and oozes masculinity in the face of Lucy's distinctly feminine confidence. This has been a ridiculous year for Sword and Sandal epics, which I guess is still chasing what, Gladiator (2000) and 300 (2007)? These were huge game-changers to be sure, but only really in the sense that a ton more films sprouted as pale imitators chasing their initial success. That's how we got drek like Troy (2004) and Alexander (2004) for every Kingdom of Heaven (2005).

And holy shit, after 300, the floodgates really opened for the crappiest crop of movies of all time. This year alone ought to be enough with The Legend of Hercules (2014, I honestly had to look up the title of that one), Pompeii (2014), and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) all coming out in short order. I also had to look up if Pompeii had actually come out this year, because I honestly forgot whether or not that was this March or last March. This is to say nothing of both lesser fare like Immortals (2011), or more significant but still ultimately derided fare like Clash of the Titans (2010). It's just so unending. The Eagle (2007). Ugh, it's such crap.

Hercules seeks to curb all of this nonsense through one big legitimizing factor: Dwayne The Fucking Rock Johnson. This guy has become an inexplicable yet regular franchise saver. The Rock's career is actually really interesting, because for a while there he seemed like a Ryan Reynolds-type action star - one who was ostensibly pretty popular and recognized but also one who couldn't anchor a big blockbuster to save his life. Yes, The Rundown (2003) remains a spectacular action flick, but it hardly cracked the Box Office, and following that up with Walking Tall (2004), Be Cool (2005), Doom (2005), and Southland Tales (2007) didn't do him any favours. Suddenly, though, the miracle known as Fast Five (2011) happened and just about everyone for some reason attributed its success to the natural pairing of The Rock and Vin Diesel. I mean, c'mon - XXX meets the Scorpion King - it's the dream 2002 match-up of beefcakes.

Now the Rock was the go-to big guy to carry a movie. His 2013 was lovely - Snitch, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Pain & Gain, and Faster Six combined to form an eccentric mix of studio tentpoles (for good and worse), small action flicks, and Michael Bay's best film. The casting of the Rock as Hercules is the second absolute no-brainer of the Summer, after Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. It feels like a role he was born to play and it'll be the major reason to see this movie.

Is there any other reason to see this movie? I haven't heard of James Wood coming in and doing Hades, so probably not. It does promise to be pretty badass, but it also just reeks of Clash of the Titans (2010), although its presumable focus on the Twelve Labours could be pretty awesome. Especially cleaning the Augean Stables. I mean, the Rock, covered in dung, screaming and bellowing with that lion on his head? Cinema can't get better. The film lacks the B-movie feel of many of the horrible Sword and Sandal epics I mentioned earlier, which may also set it apart in a good way. Just the buzz off of The Rock's "12 Labors Diet" alone makes his preparation to get into demi-god shape seem like the most jacked anyone besides Hugh Jackman has ever done for a film. Muscleheads and gymrats ought to flock to theaters.

For some reason I think I just convinced myself I want to see Hercules. I really had no desire to before writing and thinking about it for a second for this piece. What kind of legacy might it have? I suspect it will become the definitive Rock movie, for better or worse. It's by far the biggest budget and highest profile release he's been expected to carry by himself, and like I said before, it's the role he was born to play. There are other problematic aspects, though, such as the controversy with Steve Moore, the creator of the comic it's based on (which is an interesting avenue anyway, because Herc is definitively in the public domain, even if the creators used his work as a jumping off point. Still, not paying the dude while exploiting his name is really really shitty). There is also the troubling issue with critics or prognosticators who are eager to trounce a film's prospects before it's even released or its merits judged. There's always one ultimate Summer whipping boy like The Lone Ranger (2013) or Battleship (2012) and the inherent stupidness, brashness, and unnecessaryness of Hercules seems to make it a prime candidate for that "Box Office Bomb" storyline for the summer.

I'm not about that - I like the potential of both Lucy and Hercules and I'm very curious to watch them duke it out. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will probably win. What are you going to see this weekend? Or six months from now? Or on basic cable three years from now? I want the answer to all three of these questions below!