The Second Fantastic Beasts Movie Multiplies the First's Problems

I’ve been trying to best summarize my experience watching Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and I think the best I’ve got so far is “I didn’t hate it, but it has a lot of flaws, and I struggle to imagine anyone caring much about it at all absent a strong love of Harry Potter”. A mostly spoiler-free review:

There’s a lot going on here, almost like it’s condensing 600 to 700 pages like some of the later Harry Potter movies…but there’s no source material here that the movie is adapting from. It’s just stuffed full of characters and plot threads and details like the books, but doesn’t have time to really focus in on any of them. And yet, feels almost like a filler episode in a TV show, throwing out a few sort of interesting bits that make you go “Oh. Okay, I guess,” but otherwise treading water while you wait for the real “exciting stuff” to come around.

I almost wrote about this spin-off series two years ago after the first movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but I didn’t find myself impassioned enough to write a full article. The problems with the first one largely came down to the fact that there were two different main narrative threads going on, they didn’t really overlap or compliment each other very much (until the very end, where they were loosely tied together), and both were worse off for it. The sequel, instead of using that movie’s worth of set up to try and establish a sort of main story going forward, instead decides to explode it into even more character arcs to follow, making it even more claustrophobic and underdeveloped.

A Few Criticisms of Avengers: Infinity War

I’m just going to cut straight to the point: I don’t think necessarily think Avengers: Infinity War is a bad movie. I enjoyed myself watching it in some capacity, which is ultimately what Marvel Studios was going for. But it was a certain type of movie, the kind where, as I’m watching it, I start thinking of all the ways it could have been better. So with that, I figured I’d give the few most significant changes I think would have improved the third Avengers film. As a warning, if you haven’t seen Infinity War yet and you’re concerned about spoiling the movie for yourself, maybe hold off, because I’m going to cover some major plot points.

Meet the Robinsons Is Two Clicks Off of Being a Disney Classic

I love Disney movies (that may have been obvious already, not sure), and I love time travel movies (may not be as obvious), so I figured it was long overdo for me to revisit what remains to this day the only film in the Disney Animated Canon to tackle time travel, 2007's Meet the Robinsons.

The movie has kind of been forgotten, which maybe isn't too surprising; it did come out at a rather low point in Disney's history, after all, on the heels of a string of failures in the first few years of the millennium.* But, it came right before the turnaround that lead to the re-invigoration of the studio, where we find it today once again something of a juggernaut, and appropriately enough, contains a lot of very strong points in what's otherwise a solid but occasionally uneven movie.

*I don't feel like getting too into the nitty-gritty of each movie, but I feel like it's pretty safe to say the only unqualified success for the studio in the early 2000s was Lilo and Stitch. And while there were some good movies in that stretch that underperformed, I don't think I'll run into too much resistance in saying that the three films immediately preceding Meet the Robinsons, namely Chicken Little, Home on the Range, and Brother Bear, are all among Disney's weakest feature films.

Music Monday: Getaway Car Playlist (Inspired by Baby Driver)

Edgar Wright might be my favorite director of all-time. Naturally, I was super excited when I found out that he had another movie coming out this summer, but even more exciting was finding out that it was going to be a musical about car chases.* Sure enough, Baby Driver lived up to all my expectations when I saw it earlier this summer.

*A lot of the initial weirdness one assumes when hearing this conversation dissipates once you remember that The Blues Brothers exists. Apparently, this is a much more natural combination than it first seems.
I wanted to write something about the movie, but I never quite got a better idea than just a page of me just cycling through all of the synonyms for “really cool” that I know. So I finally decided that maybe the best thing to do would be respond to it.


Most of the film’s soundtrack caught me off guard, in a way. For those who haven’t seen it, the main character, “Baby”, is a getaway car driver who is obsessed with music, and needs to sync up his drives with carefully-selected songs. It’s a neat conceit, and I loved it. But thinking back to the movie afterwards (as well as looking over the soundtrack), I sort of had an epiphany: my idea of songs I would use in his place was totally different.

I mean, I had never really thought too hard about what made something a good “getaway car song” before Baby Driver, but my first clue was how little of the soundtrack was something I personally would have picked. Not that any of it is bad; it’s mostly just a matter of taste and frame of reference, if anything. But outside of maybe “Radar Love”, my hypothetical list would have little overlap.

So I put more thought into it: what would my “Getaway Car” Playlist look like? After thinking it over for a while, this is the result. It’s not one of my normal playlists, in that there isn’t really a flow or an “order” to this, and I didn’t spend hours honing the song-to-song transitions; by nature, it’s supposed to be a little stop and start, something you can listen to on shuffle (because, you know, a car chase probably shouldn’t last long).

I’m pretty happy with the end result. Despite not being one of my original “themes” or ideas, I think I put my own distinct spin on the subject. A full text list can be found below as well.


Run with the Bulls-Smallpools
Sins of My Youth-Neon Trees
Stolen Time-Gemini Club
Started a War-Gemini Club
Sex-The 1975
Let’s Make a Lot of Money-Junior Prom
Dance, Dance-Fall Out Boy
Kill V. Maim-Grimes
Next to You-The Police
I Will Follow-U2
Got to Get You Into My Life-Earth, Wind, & Fire
You Dropped a Bomb on Me-The Gap Band
Mirrored Sea-Passion Pit
Something’s Bout to Change-Strange Talk
You Will Leave a Mark-A Silent Film
Atlas-COIN
I Love You to Death-Five Knives
North American Scum-LCD Soundsystem
Leave the Lights On-Mainland
Hello-Oasis
I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor-Arctic Monkeys
Turn It On-Franz Ferdinand
Hang Me Up to Dry-Cold War Kids
All of This-The Naked and Famous
Let It Go-Dragonette
Help Me Run Away-St. Lucia
Paddling Out-Miike Snow
Drive It Like You Stole It-Sing Street
Witchcraft-Pendulum
Bounce-Calvin Harris ft. Kelis
My Type-Saint Motel
Try to Lose-Penguin Prison
Making the Most of the Night-Carly Rae Jepsen
Mr. Brightside-The Killers

Colossal, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Empathy

(spoilers marked as they appear)
I’ve been experiencing a whole lot of great art lately, and I’d love to comment on a lot of it, so I might be doing a few short articles like this just to get my thoughts and recommendations and what I liked about them down. Thankfully, two recent movies that I’ve seen and loved are pretty thematically linked, so it made some sense to do them in tandem.


Part I
Let’s start with the more recent, wider release: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I’ve seen some mixed reaction to this one, but I liked it a lot. I mean, I did really like the first one, but from what I can tell, that hasn’t been a one-to-one indicator of what people think of the new one. In any case, I’d go as far to say it’s the best movie since the first Guardians, and in the upper tier of Marvel movies.* I mentioned that I saw Doctor Strange, as a bit of a bounce back from a few weaker films, but this one finishes the rebound.

*If I actually had to put the Marvel movies into tiers, I think I’d put the Guardians movies, The Avengers, and Iron Man 3 in the top one.

It’s definitely feels like everything on the first one turned up to 11, including being sillier, more visually stunning, and more touching all in one. I can also see the point of some people about some of the jokes being weirdly placed, cutting into dramatic moments, but I actually appreciated that in some way. Maybe it won’t sit as well on re-watches, but I loved those rapid juxtapositions, and felt like they added to the humor and made some jokes better than they should have been.

And it’s more heartfelt than the original; basically each member of the team (now expanded to eight guardians, with Mantis, Yondu, and Nebula joining the original five) get emotional arcs to them, which makes the long run time worth it. It’s technically just as “grand” in scale as the first one, but the focus on the characters gives it, in spite the universe-level stakes, an intimate feel that I don’t think any of the other Marvel movies have been able to actually pull off (although the Avengers movies have tried, and come close). This work pays off, and the characters give the movie and meaningful emotional connection, both with the audience and with each other, which really helps to serve the movies’ focus on family and familial connections. In fact, I think this was only the second superhero movie I teared up at (after Logan; 2017 has been pretty great for superhero movies so far).

And even the villain gets a decent amount of focus, and as a result we get the second-best villain of the Marvel universe after Loki (I realize this isn’t saying a lot, but it’s still something). Sure, the tonal shifts make for a jerkier feel than the first one, and the soundtrack is weaker, and some of the novelty is loss, but writer/director James Gunn has turned in a funny and moving script with some very pretty and colorful visuals, and overall there’s a lot to dig into thematically as well (in true comic book fashion, in blatant, larger-than-life metaphors, and with some fighting involved, but that’s part of the fun). Overall, I wouldn’t hesitate now to call Vol. 2 the equal to the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

I...Actually Liked the New Power Rangers Movie?

Apparently, I’m just going to be writing defenses of every at least vaguely-genre-ish, fairly-big budget action movie that sees semi-polarizing reviews from now on.* Last weekend, I saw the new Power Rangers movie, and I…actually liked it? That was probably the last thing I expected, and yet, it still somehow happened.

*Behind-the-scenes factoid: I came this close to writing one for X-Men: Apocalypse last year.

I mean, I watched the series back when I was little (a decade and a half or more ago at this point), but it’s not something I followed very closely as I got older (I could tell you it was still running, but that was about it), and I am under no illusions today about its quality. If not for rainy weather, a cheap ticket, and some sense of morbid curiosity, I might not have seen it at all. But I did, and it’s become probably my most surprising film of the young year.

My apprehension sprung mostly from early trailers selling the movie as some sort of dark, grim, serious take on the material, which seems like the worst idea possible. After all, at its core, Power Rangers is about a bunch of twenty-somethings pretending to be teenagers fighting ridiculous monsters in colorful costumes, then fighting the same monsters only larger, this time in colorful giant robots. That is the last thing that sounds like it needs a “serious, gritty” adaptation. But those trailers did the actual movie a disservice, as they did not fully capture the movie’s actual tone, which is the key to why it works.

See, the movie itself is “serious” in a way, just not in the way that I’ve been using; rather, it takes its characters seriously. Instead of giving everything a somber tone, it instead takes the characters totally earnestly, which is why they not only work, but are also one of the strong-points of the film.

I’ve seen some people say that the movie feels “embarrassed” to be a Power Rangers movie, and I totally disagree. This is, after all, a movie that not only fully indulges in multi-color battle suit martial arts battles and giant robot/monster clashes*, but even recreates shots from the original theme song and intro, complete with an arrangement of the awesome-but-totally-over-the-top theme song playing.

*Not only does it have giant robots fighting a giant monster, it also has it in clear daylight; as much as I loved Pacific Rim, the constant rain/nighttime aesthetic made it a bit of a headache to follow the action at times. None of the fight scenes here quite top those, but there’s something to be said for not straining your eyes too.

No, this isn’t “embarrassed” to be anything. Instead, it knows that the things that make Power Rangers, Power Rangers probably won’t translate to a two-hour movie, and something must be added. Dean Israelite and company decide the way to build up the story is to dig into the characters a bit.

If we’re being honest, the sort of characters used in the show are usually not interesting enough to support a two-hour movie. That’s not to say the movie’s Power Rangers are the most well-developed, compelling, three-dimensional characters, but they are definitely better than the original show, given that I had my mind blown while looking back and realizing that Rangers were sometimes swapped out for new casts mid-season. I have no memories of this; the characters just weren't distinct enough for me to feel especially strongly about the changes.

Instead, the young actors here turn in memorable and instantly-likable performances, to the point where I would be okay with more time being spent on just them hanging out together. They have a real chemistry. And the character arcs given to the Rangers are a little angsty and melodramatic…but they’re also playing teenagers, so it feels more understandable, and the actors do a pretty good job at getting you invested. And moreover, their reactions don’t feel too disproportionate, given the struggles they each face. I’d say that overall, the five Rangers feel like a good representation of today’s youth, in representation (even building off the tradition of the original), problems, attitude, and so on. The overall effect is that the movie feels something like “The CW’s Kung Fu X-Men, with a $100-million+ budget and a Giant Robot Fight Finale”, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

That’s not to say the movie is perfect. If you aren’t a fan of the over-the-top ridiculous that the series entails, this will do nothing to sell you on that. If you can’t stand teenage melodrama stories, same thing applies. On the less-dependent-on-personal-taste end, the third quarter of the movie moves away from the melodramatic and into the straight serious, which…doesn’t work as well, and it comes close to falling apart before recovering, and then we follow it up with the big action sequence, so it mostly washes the bad taste out of your mouth. Still, I sort of wish that third quarter had been cut down to give the first half more room to breathe. It feels rushed at times.

In the “not actually a problem, but I’ve seen people complain about it anyway” department, the heroes technically don’t go full “Power Rangers” until the last half-hour, but I’m okay with that, as it gives the conclusion an epic feel. My general stance is that if your superhero story isn’t interesting when the hero(es) isn’t in costume and fighting villains, it’s not a good story. And the melodramatic real lives here feel very at home in the world of comics and superheroes as a whole.

And one final (spoiler-free) note on the finale, while we’re on the subject: I can’t express how relieved I am that this movie tells a complete story. Sure, from what I’ve read, Saban is planning on making at least five more movies, which…may be a little much, but okay, sure, whatever, that’s just the day and age that we’re living in now, but the important thing is it doesn't bleed into this movie. There are small sequel hooks, but they’re the good kind, the sort that feels natural, and more like a shout-out or reference to the backstory that could easily be ignored if the creators decide to go a different direction rather than crucial scaffolding being set up to support an entirely different movie. Even Marvel, whose movies I generally enjoy, suffer from this at times. Instead, Power Rangers knows to tell a single complete story rather than leave all of its plot threads dangling for “To Be Continued”s.

So, overall, I’m definitely pleasantly surprised here. It’s by no means perfect, but if every major studio blockbuster were of this quality, we’d be much better off overall. The characters are interesting enough that I would be super interested in spending more time with them, which is always a good sign, and it delivers on all the awesome silliness you would want from a Power Rangers movie. If/When Power Rangers 2 comes out, I’m totally on board. The series seems to be in good hands.

My Favorite Movies of 2016

For the first time in 2016, I kept a list of every movie that I watched.* It was mostly out of curiosity, after having one too many experiences saying “oh right, I totally forgot I saw that movie” (I do not have the best memory). The end result was that I reached January with a record of just about every movie I saw for the year and some vague notion that it would be worth writing about in some capacity. And the natural extension of that idea was to release some sort of year-end list.

*I would eventually expand it to other mediums as well, so maybe I’ll have another article or two up my sleeve.
However, it feels weird to call it a “best of” list, since there were so many movies from this past year that I didn’t get around to seeing. Meanwhile, a good chunk of the movies I saw this year were just me catching up on things from the past few years that I hadn’t seen. Not to mention that I don’t think that I’m enough of a film scholar to be able to definitely, objectively say one film is “better” than another. So, this list will more so be the films that I liked the most from 2016/the tail-end of 2015 (with a few other movies I saw for the first time this year thrown in), and with at least a couple thoughts on each one. If nothing else, some of these were the germs for full articles that I just couldn’t build off of; maybe finally writing them down will lead to more on them in the future?

xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Overwatch, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Dealing with a Large Cast (plus a review!)

I recently watched xXx: Return of Xander Cage, and found it extremely satisfying. It’s the best kind of dumb action movie, the kind that knows what it is and pushes itself to be the dumbest and action-iest it can be.

Trying to paint a picture of it is incredible. It’s a James Bond movie where James Bond assembles his own Mission Impossible team, and when they go out for drinks, they eschew the martinis for Red Bull and Everclear. It’s a Fast and the Furious movie that wants to be Super Smash Bros. when it grows up. It’s a movie where a dirtbike get used as a weapon in hand-to-hand combat, and that’s still only the second craziest thing done with a dirtbike (the number one being, of course, when the later dirtbike chase reaches the ocean and both participants convert their vehicles into jetskis to continue unimpeded, because what else were they going to do?). It’s the Avengers, if normal, sort-of-everyday abilities like “great at soccer” or “fantastic DJ and people person” or “real good at crashing cars” were considered superpowers.

As someone who had no prior allegiance to the franchise (indeed, I hadn’t even seen xXx 1 or 2, and I don’t feel particularly compelled to go back and change that at the moment), I am super excited by this movie’s existence and eagerly await any sequels that may come.

But the characters are one of the aspects that I specifically wanted to focus on. xXx 3 has a large hero team at it’s center, and they’re an interesting and diverse bunch, representing a variety of nations and abilities. I wasn’t kidding when I drew the Smash Bros comparison earlier; it very much reminded me of the type of lineup of interesting characters a multiplayer game would draw up. In fact, there was even a specific video game I had in mind.

I started playing Overwatch over the holiday season (a team first-person shooter with 23 (and counting…) playable characters to choose from, for those not in the know), and the rosters of each had some hilarious overlaps. Sure, they’re an action movie and an FPS, so you have the range of weapons used in each, from normal pistols to grenade launchers to sniper rifles. And then there are the goofier overlaps, like both teams including an incredibly-out-of-place DJ, or both teams having female hackers who use similar weapons.

And all of those overlaps made me realize: I really liked both sets of characters. xXx: Return of Xander Cage basically has its own two hour run time to establish the entire cast (since the first two movies are barely leaned on at all for support), including the 9(-plus?) person xXx team. Overwatch includes no story mode in-game, and excluding the outside comics and lore that are available but unnecessary, all characterization is done through in-game dialog. That’s not a lot of room to work with, so how did they get such wide and interesting casts? Obviously, none of them is super-detailed, but they’re all compelling enough to draw you in, and that’s the important thing when making these types of teams for a work of fiction.

So, I wanted to pull that apart; how does one economically make these large main casts work on such limited time constraints? In addition to xXx 3 and Overwatch, I also looked at Sentinels of the Multiverse, so a quick word on that. Sentinels is one of my favorite board games, a card game where players take control of various original heroes (36 in total) to fight different also-original villains. Like Overwatch, these new heroes (and even the villains, in this case) are given surprising depth for existing only in a handful of decks of cards.

So, how does this happen? How do these works manage to juggle so many different people and make them compelling? I’ve got a couple of ideas:

Comparing and Contrasting Doctor Strange and Ant-Man

This may or may not be a controversial stance among superhero movie aficionados right now, I can’t really tell either way, but I’m gonna go ahead anyway: Doctor Strange is the best Marvel movie since Avengers: Age of Ultron, possibly even Guardians of the Galaxy.

Comparing big team-up movies like Civil War with ones focused on a solo hero like Doctor Strange or Ant-Man, so in examining what I think Doctor Strange does well, I’ll mostly stick to comparing other movies of its type. I also realize that I wasn’t as crazy about Civil War as some others, but that’s a whole other can of worms; maybe I’ll touch on it another day. For now, I want to focus on what I think Doctor Strange does well (and, relatedly, what I think Ant-Man could have done better).

There are a whole bunch of smaller reasons that I can get out of the way. I loved the visuals of Doctor Strange; the shots of alien other dimensions were captivating, but even the scenes on earth were interesting in a way that I can’t say Ant-Man matched. And I thought the cast in Strange was all-around better; Paul Rudd was fine as Scott Lang, his normal charming self, but it felt like a lower-tier level of charming considering the actor that didn’t quite capture my interest (it probably didn’t help that the last Paul Rudd performance I saw before Ant-Man was They Came Together, in which he’s the most goofy and likeable that I’ve seen him, so maybe it was just raised expectations). Benedict Cumberbatch disappeared into his role in a way that made me forget I was watching someone who wasn’t actually Stephen Strange (in spite of my initial reaction of “I will never get over hearing him speak without an English accent”). And I would rate the rest of the cast’s performances higher overall as well.

The writing probably did most of the work, though, for a variety of reasons. Doctor Strange kept it’s “unusual-ness” throughout, in a way that ­Ant-Man didn’t. The latter billed itself as something of a “superhero-heist movie”, and it…kind of was, I guess? Really, the “heist” bits were contained to one section in the second act (maybe two, if we’re counting Scott stealing the suit, but I’m not sure I would totally count that, given it was a small burglary and structured more like a standard action movie/problem solving piece), with the training for said heist coming in the form of a standard “superhero training” sequence. And upon reaching the goal of the heist…the rug was pulled out from under us and we got a standard act three superhero battle.

Doctor Strange didn’t commit at all to being much other than a superhero movie with magic, but it kept that focus on the mystic and unusual for the entire time, and the final set piece did much more to stand out. “Rewinding” the destruction in Hong Kong was clever and fun to watch, and completely skipping the final battle to deal with outwitting the villain to draw them into a bargain was unexpected and perfectly in character.

But there’s more to it. Doctor Strange was much more focused, almost to its detriment. It cut down on a lot of extraneous characters that cluttered the edge of Ant-Man to draw focus on Stephen, Mordo, and the Ancient One to a much tighter degree than the former did with it’s main trio. Not to say it’s perfect; I felt Strange could have done more with Wong, Kaecilius, and Christine Palmer*, but then, I don’t think it did much worse than ­Ant-Man did with its closest comparisons (Luis, Cross, and take your pick for the third). But that main trio is definitely stronger, and the part that I think makes the biggest difference between the two.

* And given how short the film felt, this is especially irritating; I could have done with another fifteen minutes of fleshing them out. Or even world-building, given how much there is to explain about the world of magic. None of that is technically super-critical, but it would have been nice. Although I suppose it’s preferable to be left wanting more over the opposite.
Stephen Strange is just a much more interesting character than Scott Lang. Maybe that’s why I felt Paul Rudd’s performance was less interesting, that he didn’t have as much to work with, but I’d definitely stand by saying the part was underwritten. There’s just no arc to Scott in the movie; he starts the movie a burglar with a big heart trying to do the right thing and stay out of prison for his daughter, and he ends it basically in the same place, except now he has superpowers, a girlfriend, a mentor, and a job. He’s even still a burglar! We see him break into as many places as a superhero as he did before becoming one.* And even when he went to prison, it was for hacking a company that was defrauding customers; he was basically already a superhero, he just needed the suit.

*And if you want to extend his arc to Civil War, he actually goes backwards; he’s totally willing to throw away the “stay out of prison for his daughter” part over…a guy he stole something from asking a favor.

This is a problem pretty specific to the movies; Nick Spencer’s recent take on Ant-Man has been one of my favorite runs in all of comics this year.* And as a serialized story, it can’t give Scott a character arc as easily as a one-shot, two hour movie. But Spencer does have Scott struggling with his flaws: he’s a mostly smart guy who’s a little to quick to run away from his issues instead of facing them, and a nice guy who cares about others but doesn’t always have the empathy to see things the way they do and sometimes unintentionally hurts them as a result. But he recognizes all of that and he’s working to improve.

*Maybe I’ll release a year-end best-of article? Who knows.
It’s tragic and compelling and keeps you rooting for a relatable guy trying his best who sometimes screws up in a complex world like ours (plus the added complexity of dealing with supervillains and all that). It’s just that the movie capture none of that. If anything, Hope and Hank and their relation are the emotional core of the movie, showing actual growth and reconnecting after years of shutting each other off for their own reasons, but they are the secondary plot while focus remains on Scott, since he’s the superhero.

Compare that with Doctor Strange; The Ancient One and Mordo are interesting characters as well in their own way, but writers Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson, and C. Robert Cargill remembered to give Stephen something to do as well. He’s egotistical at the start, a doctor who has done incredible things, and when he loses that ability, realizes how he hadn’t been doing as much good as he liked to think, and had even been hurting others along the way.*

*I’ve seen some argue that it’s the same as Tony Stark’s growth in Iron Man, but I’d disagree. Tony is still an egomaniac in every movie, as that wasn’t the flaw he had to overcome in his first movie; it was his total self-centered indifference to everyone and everything else in the world, and his attempt to atone for the harm he had caused via weapons and such. Strange, in comparison, became a doctor to help people; part of his ego was pride in how much he had helped, and his growth is in realizing how small he is in the grand scheme of things, and how many more people he could have been helping. He has to totally set aside his ego, where Tony can work around his (and even use it to motivate himself). It’s an interesting take, especially from a director in Derrickson who is very public about his faith.
Once he’s learned to set aside that pride, it takes on a normal “superhero training” feel until after the second act, when Stephen has to reconcile this superhero-ing with his training as a doctor to avoid harm. It’s part of what makes the final “non-fight scene” so interesting; it’s him avoiding violence and reconciling those two sides of him, as well as a final confirmation of his initial growth, as he is willing to sacrifice himself totally, condemned to an eternity of repeating his death, in order to spare his entire dimension. He has totally set aside his ego. Compared to all of that, Scott Lang’s lack of any notable growth is especially frustrating.

All of the amazing visuals (definitely the best since Guardians) are fantastic and all, but it’s definitely Marvel’s tightest movie story-wise in a while (also the best since Guardians). I’m not sure that I’d quite put it in the company’s upper-tier, but it’s probably in the next level below that.

Arrival is a Fantastic Movie, and a Wonderful Adaptation of Story of Your Life

Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve might be my favorite movie of the year. It’s definitely in the discussion, and probably the frontrunner at this point (which is no small feat, given that it’s up against movies like Sing Street and Swiss Army Man*). And on the one hand, that shouldn’t seem like too much of a surprise. The novella that it’s based on, Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing.

*I meant to write about each of these earlier in the year and never got around to it. Maybe I’ll circle back around if I have time.

But it’s not always that simple. When the adaptation was first announced, I was incredibly skeptical that such a project would work. After all, when you look at the story, it has approximately zero or even negative overlap with what you would traditionally associate with a blockbuster movie.

I mean, it’s a hard science fiction story that’s mainly about how linguists would handle a first contact situation, with long passages of exposition informing the reader about the mechanics of the process and an inverse amount of action. Meanwhile, it’s structurally non-linear with a major emotional twist that hinges on the medium being prose; the second that it would be displayed visually, it would give itself away. If any of that screams “$50 million blockbuster” to you, you’re lying to yourself.

And yet, they pulled it off. It may be the best adaptation of an already-incredible source material since…shoot, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World maybe? And much like Scott Pilgrim, it’s perfect in part because it realizes the key to making a great movie from a great book (/short story/series of graphic novels, in these cases) is not to make it a 1:1 adaptation of the source material, but instead to understand the different constraints of the different mediums and make changes to preserve the feel of the original in a way that works better for the screen.

What I’d like to do here is just dig in a little deeper to those changes, and pull apart what they are and why they were made. And I’m going to try and do it in a way that doesn’t spoil either Arrival or Story of Your Life because, seriously, they’re fantastic and everyone should check them out. However, if you have only seen the former or read the latter, that should be fine. The film is a faithful adaptation, know that the basic story beats are the same, and you already know where the other is headed*. Hopefully, I will be a good enough writer to explain the situation, whether you experience one, both, or neither.

*I mention this because I was concerned that the short story would be made unrecognizable to work as a movie script, but this was thankfully not the case.

First, to fit in with the demands for of modern blockbusters, Arrival needed the addition of some form of “excitement”. The original short story was much more exploratory in nature, with the conflict being driven more from a question of whether the aliens could be communicated with. Thankfully, screenwriter Eric Heisserer resisted the temptation to make that addition “action scenes”, like I feared might be the case based on advertisements. Instead, he expands the role of the military to add tension with the main characters over a difference in approach over how to deal with the aliens, a good way to underscore the themes of the piece without feeling out of place.

But the most masterful translation might be the successful preservation of the original story’s twist. As mentioned, in Story of Your Life, Chiang is able to conceal a major surprise by virtue of not having to visually portray something. It can shock you with the “what” of the story (what is going on, essentially). Villenueve and Heisserer thankfully decided they needed to find some way to translate this emotional gut-punch. But how does one do that?

Similar to the first problem, by extrapolating from the text. The book explained the “how” of the problem (how the language works, how language and perception overlap) so that it could shock you with the “what” (what it ultimately means. With that option out of the question, they instead lay all their cards on the table from the start. With that “what” out of the way, they manage the same emotion gut-punch that Ted Chiang pulled off instead using the “how” of the story; namely, how all the events fit together. They mimic the story’s non-linear style to obscure all of the implications of the events, while also developing their own connections to deepen the meaning of the reveal. And these new connective ideas, while not necessary in the original (one of them even explicitly changes a fundamental aspect of the original in fact, while the other is totally absent), do add a lot to the story, especially with regards to its theme of interconnectedness.

I’m simultaneously worried that I both didn’t explain myself well enough and gave away too much and any further explanation would certainly give everything away, so that’s probably a good sign to stop for the time being. They key take away from this should be that everyone should check out Arrival, as well as Story of Your Life even if they weren’t both fantastic on their own, comparing the two is highly instructive.

The Strategy for Adapting a Live-Action Pokémon Movie

Rumors have been swirling around Nintendo wanting to adapt their franchises to movies, and one of the first franchises attached to this news was none other than Pokémon. I’m not sure what to think of this news yet; it’s exciting to see something that were such a large part of both my formative years and my life as a whole getting a big adaptation, but there’s so much room for things to grow horribly wrong. And unlike, say, comic book movies, which have sort of always just been a part of my life since I was young, this will mark totally new ground.

So, since the news broke, I’ve been thinking: what could a Pokémon movie look like? How can you adapt something like that to a movie? And almost as importantly, what exactly is it that made me like Pokémon? Because that last question especially will be important in adapting the work into a new medium for a larger audience.

With that in mind, I’d like to propose my hypothetical list of dos and don’ts for adapting Pokémon to the silver screen.

The Disappointing Case of Tomorrowland

If I were to boil down Tomorrowland to a single phrase, it would be “Meet the Robinsons’ dumb younger cousin”. I’ve long found Meet the Robinsons to be a solid movie, and an underrated entry in the Disney canon, but it took Tomorrowland for me to appreciate how the former does the concept of “optimism-powered, look how awesome the future is!” right. Spoilers ahead, although I’ll specifically mark big ones.

I think the biggest problem is that Tomorrowland is very self-assured that what it’s saying is intelligent without being able to back it up, instead offering up references to smarter things or pining for better times or attacking strawmen or just straight up not doing anything to cover up its problems. For instance, there’s a character named Hugo Gernsback (played by the extremely underutilized Keegan-Michael Key*). Like many things in Tomorrowland, I at first smiled when I discovered that the owner of the science fiction memorabilia store was named “Hugo”; it’s a cute little throwaway gag. Then it goes deeper and reveals that his last name is Gernsback, immediately becoming straight-up cheesy (and as if daring the audience to pick up on its reference-“are you one of the smart ones who will catch this?”). And then, it reveals that it really doesn’t have anything for Hugo to do, and he becomes a plot device before exiting the movie for good, no real impact on the story so to speak of.

 *Also underutilized is his partner Ursula, played by Kathryn Hahn. Based on the rest of the movie, I'm assuming they just didn't have the space to drop that her character's last name was "Le Guin".

The Contrasting Cases of Guardians of the Galaxy and John Carter

Over the course of Christmas Day, I was watching movies with my family. And by some chance, we decided to cover a double feature of two recent science fiction blockbusters, namely Guardian of the Galaxy and John Carter. I had seen both before (in fact, I wrote my thoughts about Guardians here), but watching them back-to-back gave me a reason to compare and contrast the two.

Obviously, the two films enjoyed vastly different levels of success. While Guardians just became the highest grossing film of the year, John Carter barely made back its budget, likely ending any chance at a franchise. What exactly caused such a

Well, there probably isn’t one simple answer. Or rather, there is: Guardians is just a better victory overall. But that’s not too helpful unless we break it down into the minutiae. And while there are several reasons that Guardians is better, I’d like to focus specifically on one specific storytelling aspect.

How I Would Adapt Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One)

One of the greatest shows on television is coming to an end this week, and for the second time. And yes, even though Legend of Korra is a cartoon, I will firmly defend its and prequel series Avatar: The Last Airbender’s collective spot as the greatest show on television (I realize I haven’t not seen every show on television, but bear with this hyperbole for a moment).

For that reason, I wanted to write something about the show. I couldn’t think of anything for the current episodes, though. Which is when I turned my thoughts towards the future of the franchise, including possible adaptations.

I realize that the M. Night Shyamalan film exists, and is a large failure. I haven’t seen it myself, but I have reason to avoid it, though. However, I don’t think the failure was on the part of the source material based on its quality, and I am of the opinion that anything could work as a movie if you do it correctly.

So yes, I think a Last Airbender movie could work; however, you would have to do it pragmatically. Something like the Scott Pilgrim movie (the gold standard for adaptations, in my mind; the movie stands out just as much as the source graphic novel) could work, where the changes are all necessary to fit the medium, but make sense in the context of the story just as well. It lost a lot of the detail of the comic, but still made for a fantastic movie by just simplifying a lot of the plot in sensible ways.

With that in mind, what would be essential in a pragmatic adaptation of The Last Airbender? What if we wanted to reduce Book One to a single movie (that was longer than 100 minutes), or possibly even a two-part film? Well, in season one at least, we have these episodes:

Some Belated Thoughts on Big Hero 6 and Interstellar

It took me a while to see these two movies, and even longer to write down my thoughts on them, but I may as well do it. I’ll mark spoilers when I get to them.

It seems weird to think of these two movies as related; they’re about as different as you can get. They were released on the same day, and that’s about it (unless you want to count the fact that I saw them close together as another relation, in case you think my viewing pattern makes them more similar in some way). But I feel like these movies are so different that they almost represent polar opposites in some way.

Comic Book Taxonomy: A Look at the Idea of Tiers of Superheroes

Are there tiers of superheroes? It’s a pretty common theory, and it’s hard to dispute. People regularly refer to the big names as A-listers, while Guardians of the Galaxy was constantly referred to as a bunch of C- or D-listers when describing how risky the project was (which is partly what inspired me to examine this more closely).

Where you tend to get the real discussion, though, is when you try and categorize the non-obvious ones. No one will argue that Batman is a big name, or that Star Lord isn’t. But what about characters like Iron Man and Thor, pre-movies? Is there a way to be a little more hard-and-fast with the rankings?

Well, I decided to try it either way. What follows is my attempt to define a superhero notoriety. I’ll start by looking at it from circa-2000, to make it interesting. The recent boom in comic book movies has made the landscape very different, but once I have my framework laid out, it becomes very easy to re-apply it 2014.

My rankings are very heavily based on presence in media. That may seem a little weird on the surface, to be basing how famous a comic book character is without any reference to the comics themselves. But it makes a lot of sense if you think about it; comics, while popular, are hardly a good way to get a sense of how much a character permeates the public consciousness, given how little of the public consciousness in turn comes from comics.

Thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy: An Oddity of a Comic Book Movie

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last weekend (I’ve been a little busy since then), and it might be my favorite movie of the year. There’s still a lot of time left, and I’d need more reflection on the matter to be certain, possibly even another viewing, but I think that gives an idea of how much I liked it.

I had a lot of different thoughts about the movie, and my original article was just going to be those different points just sort of conglomerated under one umbrella post. However, looking over them, I think I noticed a common thread of sorts on the things I wanted to comment on: a lot of Guardians runs counter to the other superhero movies of today, Marvel or otherwise.

One of the first things is just how straightforward everything is. Mind you, there’s a lot going on, a lot of characters, and so on, but everything is pretty much exactly as you would think. There are no hidden motivations, betrayals, badly concealed secrets for the purpose of drama, or anything of the sort. It’s actually a little refreshing, especially in a time when superhero movies and other blockbusters (and heck, even Disney movies) regularly come with surprise twists in their narratives. Think Iron Man 3’s secret mastermind, or Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s political backstabbing, or in less well-executed cases, Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Oscorp that secretly controls everything it isn’t trying to backstab (to keep it to just comic book movies).

Adaptations, Comic Book Movies, and Quality, as Seen in Iron Man 3 Versus X-Men 3

We just passed the one-year mark on the release of Iron Man 3, and it’s still generating strong opinions on the internet. IGN just ran this (spoiler-laden) interview with one of the film’s stars, Guy Pearce, about the major change to the Iron Man mythos the film made.

If you’ve seen the film, I probably don’t have to tell you this, but just on the off-chance that I do: in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Mandarin, classic Iron Man foe for decades, doesn’t exist. Well, technically, he does; he’s just, a fictional character drawn up by Pearce’s Aldrich Killian to use as a front for his terrorist schemes.

I actually loved this plot twist. It genuinely surprised me, something that I can’t say about many adaptations where I know the plot (to some extent) going in. What I haven’t loved is the reaction that the twist has inspired. By which I mean: it’s almost impossible to have a serious conversation about how good of a comic book movie Iron Man 3 is, and for reasons that I think are ridiculous. The two big ones that I see are: 1) Tony didn’t spend enough time in the Iron Man suit, and 2) the film “ruined” the Mandarin.

I just can’t take these complaints seriously, because they just didn’t affect the quality of the movie in any tangible way for me. However, to some, it apparently “ruined the movie”, and I just can’t comprehend this.

The Edge of Tomorrow, Deus Ex Machinas, and Death (Spoilers)

I’m still not totally positive what all I’m going to cover, subject-wise, with Out of Left Field, but I’ve been seeing movies lately, so it looks like we’re getting another movie post.

I saw Edge of Tomorrow this past weekend, and it reminded me a lot of Pacific Rim from last year. And I mean that in the best way, as I really liked Pacific Rim; both are rather dark yet exhilarating war films about alien foes with specials powers (time travel versus being absolutely ginormous) wishing to conquer earth, and the humans who match that power to fight them off. Or, you could go with the Groundhog Day if Punxsutawney was the site of first contact with hostile aliens. Either works.

But one thing I want to focus on was the ending. Despite the rather dark tone of the film, the ending seems especially “Hollywood”-esque. For those who haven’t seen it and don’t mind spoilers:

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Is...Amazingly Confusing (Spoilers)

I finally broke down and saw Amazing Spider-Man 2. I had been avoiding it due to negative press and low expectations, but in the end, my huge love of Spider-Man as a character won out. I have to say that I was almost pleasantly surprised.

And then it broke down exactly how and when I expected it to. The best way to summarize my thoughts on the matter are this: it feels like almost one and a half Spider-Man movies crammed into a single one, with several failed attempts to make it into a single cohesive story.

Let me start with the good things, but let me throw out that I am a huge Spider-Man fan, so maybe I’m overselling the good things in a failed attempt to like the movie more. First, the main cast is great. I love Andrew Garfield as both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. I feel like he gets some flack for his Peter, but I actually very much enjoy it. Garfield and Emma Stone make for a compelling couple; I actually felt like they were a couple (which, I know they are in real life, but it translates well to film, which isn’t always a given). Stone’s Gwen Stacy is a refreshing take on the character; she feels defined, like she’s more than just “the love interest”, and I much prefer her over the original trilogy’s Kristen Dunst. New members Dane DeHaan and Jamie Foxx make solid additions. DeHaan’s Harry Osborn connects well with Peter, and please note that I am only referencing his performance as Harry and not certain alter-egos. Meanwhile, Foxx brings something new to the super villain role, and his Max Dillon is uncomfortable to watch in a good way, oozing uncomfortableness.

Marc Webb (I love that someone named Marc Webb directs Spider-Man films) is also solid. I’ve never seen his (500) Days of Summer, but seeing his romantic Peter-Gwen scenes very much makes me want to; the man seems to have a way with Romantic Comedies. Let me put it this way: Marvel Studios has said that their goal with the Avengers is for each superhero to explore fully different genres to keep the genre from becoming stale (you know, Iron Man 3 was a buddy cop movie, Captain America 2 is a political espionage/thriller, etc.). I wish they had the rights to Spider-Man so that they could have Webb direct a Spider-Man movie that is one part superhero movie and one part romantic comedy (preferably starring Garfield and Stone, but really, I would just be interested in seeing what he turns out with a little more freedom). Most of the other stuff is good too, particularly the soundtrack; it definitely added to the film.

Also, this actually feels like a Spider-Man movie. The action is so fluid, Spider-Man quips while swinging through the city, and everything is wonderful. And let me even add that I am much less critical of the choice of subplots than most. I always love seeing other artists’ take on established characters; if Webb et al choose to explore Peter’s parents, more power to them if they do it well. I can’t say it doesn’t makes sense on some level, and as long as it seems justified on some level, why not? If they want to make it so that his dad worked on the Super Spider formula? Again, sure, fine. I am first and foremost concerned with a good story, and I think you can make those ideas part of a good Spider-Man story. The characters and ideas are still recognizable, and as long as that’s okay, I grant a lot of leeway in the narrative.

Good, all the positives are out of the way, so I can now precede into rant.