This column introduces you to the most popular movies that are coming out in theaters this weekend.
What movie will you see?
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2. A new blade runner uncovers a secret that leads him to an old blade runner that has been missing for 30 years. Starring in this Sci-Fi thriller are Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, and more. Denis Villeneuve is running the show here as director. Villeneuve has directed Arrival, Sicario, Enemy, and Prisoners. Don’t walk. Run to the theater to see this. Hear Garrett’s review from this weeks Binge Cast at 2:40:13.
The Mountain Between Us
2 strangers board a small aircraft that eventually crashes in the snow covered mountains. These 2 strangers must come together and survive. Starring in this drama are Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Beau Bridges, Dermot Mulroney, and more. Hany Abu-Assad is the director, while Chris Weitz penned the screenplay based off the novel. Weitz has written scripts for Antz, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, About a Boy, Rogue One, and more. Go check out The Mountain Between Us this weekend.
My Little Pony: The Movie
Calling all Bronies. Calling all Bronies. It’s a My Little Pony movie. Said and done. Lending their voices for this animated feature are Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black), Emily Blunt, Kristin Chenoweth, Taye Diggs, and more. The director of MLP is Jayson Thiessen, who has directed many shorts and episodes of MLP. Go call your Bronies and ride into the theater this weekend.
Welcome to the second of Binge Movie Aftertaste’s four part look at the Indiana Jones franchise. As one part of our crew so observantly puts it, at the rate we are going, we should finish up Crystal Skull by 2019. But this week, we are here to talk about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And do we have an interesting podcast for your ear holes. Listen as Law and I get once again baffled by the out of planet living Nate Peterson. At one point, he says that he is indeed going with the ride and ‘meeting us in the middle.’ But is he? You make up your own mind.
We hit it all here, as we talk about subjects such as how the film affected how ratings are done today, how it contains perhaps the worst character Spielberg ever put to film, and how two of us like Short Round while the other hates him with a passion. I’ll give you one guess as to who that is.
So what are you waiting for? Download the episode and get ready to yell at your phone. Loud.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) (?/10, ?/10, ?/10)
After months of jump starting this series of podcasts only to have it pushed back, the Binge Movie Aftertaste Indiana Jones Retrospective is finally here. Listen as me, Law, and Nate dissect the first beloved film of the franchise Raiders of the Lost Ark. What is it that makes it so great? Why is Ford’s gruffness part of his charm here? And why oh why does one of us not agree with the other two?
Listen to find out. And don’t forget – we are going to look at the other three as well, so keep checking this space every Friday, as these podcasts will get even more interesting and rant filled as they go on.
Starring: Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, and Mark Hamill.
Let me go on record and say I realize this will probably be the least read review I have ever written, which is saying a lot. Rest assured, I am going full on spoiler free with this review, as you will not see one plot point given. Except for this one. Despite my highest of hopes that it would happen, there is absolutely, positively NO appearance of Jar Jar Binks. Damn.
So what am I going to say in this review? I am going to give my thoughts on what is undoubtedly the most anticipated film of our generation. In 2012, Disney put all their eggs in this basket, paying over $4 billion for Lucasfilm, while simultaneously hoping to resurrect the Star Wars cash cow that enjoyed the highest of financial success in each of the four previous decades. I want to reiterate that the pressure on everyone to make The Force Awakens as good as can be, especially given peoples’ at times unwarranted hatred toward the prequels, is incoherently high. Press releases that promised no midichlorians, as well as a more practical approach to the film’s effects, seemed to calm people down, and all hopes were risen even higher that this would be THE definitive Star Wars film.
Have no fear, Star Wars fans. Director and co-writer JJ Abrams has brought a sensibility and aura to his Star Wars entry that will undoubtedly please those coming in looking for more of an original trilogy feel than the last. Sometimes too much so, as even story beats from that trilogy are rehashed. On top of that, some nice nods and sly winks are given, and Abrams takes extra care to give audiences a memorable ride through both nostalgia and modern keenness of each and every cinematic mind.
But what Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan -returning to the series for the first time since 1983’s Return of the Jedi– knew they needed in order to make The Force Awakens successful, was an emotional anchor. And latching onto the bottom of this impassioned and wavy ocean, is the relationship between Rey (Ridley) and Finn (Boyega), which in all honesty is very well outlined. The decision to make the ‘space opera’ portion of Star Wars lore not lose any steam and move up there with Return of the Jedi‘s -and I would argue Revenge of the Sith‘s- emotional core was a great one.
But this would have not been pulled off had it not been for the performances of both Ridley and Boyega. Ridley in particular has such good emotional beats that it rivals Fisher at her best in Empire. Abrams puts her through the ringer here, as there are times her character has to turn sympathies around on a dime, as a hard hitting action scene was literally right around the corner from her emotional drawback feelings of the previous frame. But her character of Rey is a huge highlight and will no doubt be one of the film’s most talked about aspects. Boyega has his moments, but some of his beats unfortunately fell surprisingly flat with me, and he seemed to be the one actor here who is playing his wide-eyed fanboy tendency as opposed to his supposedly layered character. Speaking of falling flat, don’t even get me started on Driver.
As for the overall film itself, I couldn’t help but feel more than slightly disappointed in Abrams’ inability to tone down his directing style and focus on one storyline at a time. His style is so bombastic and so fast paced that the propulsive nature of The Force Awakens more often than not works against it rather than for it. Star Wars is at its best when it lingers and allows us & its characters to take in what was just seen and heard. The few twists that are in the story (nothing I will divulge here) are done without having characters who feel them. It’s almost as if Abrams wants to move on and give away all his tricks at a more rapid fire clip than do what needs to be done with new characters, which is develop them.
I am not even going to talk about how each of the returning characters are used, because experiencing them in The Force Awakens is part of its fun. However out of all the returns to this franchise, it is Kasdan’s which is most satisfying. The film’s dialogue flows more freely than it has since the original trilogy, and the sharpness of its wit is both surprising and welcome. Plus, instead of getting to know characters while revolving the story around senate hearings, Abrams makes it all about the entertainment factor. Is that a bad thing? The cinematic Star Wars universe, despite its multiple book and videogame built worlds, has never been much more layered than what was on its initial surface. So the world Abrams and company is creating works, even given its very own complete absence of layers.
Make no mistake about it. The Force Awakens, almost fittingly, makes me feel young again. So much so I am going to use the oldest critical description in the book to describe what I think of it. I feel there are times it will make you laugh. There are even times it will make you cry non-manipulated tears. Will it make you think? No, not really. As it shouldn’t. The Force Awakens is a fun movie. It is an entertaining movie. But on grounds of it not leaving any lingering effect on my emotions afterward, it was an indifferent film going experience. Far from unpleasant, The Force Awakens will please those who hold those ‘evil’ prequels in such low regard. But even with a fun source of comedy named BB8, Abrams comes within an eyelash of making The Force Awakens much more than a mildly memorable film, as opposed to one that qualifies as a Star Wars experience.
It is almost time folks. The clock is ticking and we are just a little under two months away from experiencing a brand new Star Wars film. Live. In theaters. It is a period of reflection and looking ahead. December 18th will be a time for celebration and havoc all rolled into one. But until then, I have a few things planned that will lead up to what is guaranteed to be a glorious day. Including talking at length about the series in podcasts and the start of what you are reading right now. That’s right. I am going to be revisiting all six Star Wars films and commenting as I see fit. Sometimes defending, but all the time critiquing. Because it is no secret that I am a big fan of this franchise. But even I can see where things went wrong, and I will not be afraid to point them out. I am a critic first.
I would also like to say that even though I can probably quote each film from beginning to end, I WILL be rewatching each of them again for the ‘What I Think Now’ portion of the column. This won’t be a white washed, half assed reflection on what I remember. It will be the sheer definition of ‘Revisit.’
Background: Like many places during this column retrospective, here is where I have to include the statement ‘where to start.’ The making of this movie is so out in the open that I feel giving any information about it would be making people read the same thing for at least the second time. But the gist of it is Francis Ford Coppola, after producing a big screen adaptation of his friend and protege’s student film THX 1138, challenged the maker of that film to do something out of the norm.
That filmmaker’s name was George Lucas. And I think it is safe to say that Coppola’s challenge was met. But people fail to realize it wasn’t without its consequences. Lucas, taking the challenge on at the rightful age of 27, was fighting actors who did not understand his dialogue, and effects makers who were struggling to meet demands with anything worthy of being put onscreen. The stress took such a toll on the filmmaker that he damn near had a heart attack. After getting his actors through their motions and barely making the rapidly approaching deadline, Lucas saw his film take to seething box office proportions. The rest, as they say, is history.
As for me. Star Wars is the only film out of the entire franchise that I did not have the honor of seeing in a theater. Mostly due to the fact that, well, I wasn’t even born yet. The film came out five months before that global event happened. But I DO recall my mother telling me the science fiction show my father watched every week would promote the film months ahead of time, saying it was going to change the way films were made. I have no idea what show this was. But it seemed to be the only thing that backed the film in public. When you have actors scoffing at dialogue and a British film crew who all thought they were making a bomb, it says a lot.
Cut to……..
What I Thought Then: I honestly think that out of all the words I am going to be typing in these six columns, this section is the toughest for me to write. Reason being I have to put ALL the EU, books, records, action figures, etc etc out of my head and get in the frame of mind of that little boy who had not heard of Star Wars before he sat in front of the big TV in the living room and watched it.
Ok, here goes. Here is what I remember from that joyous first viewing. At three years old, I am seeing a HUGE ship from the bottom up chase a much smaller ship across the screen. And right from that instance, I was hooked line & sinker. Lucas could have adhered to studio demands and begun the film on Tatooine, as we get to know Luke for ten minutes before moving the action into space. But by putting his audience right in the heart of action from the very beginning, Lucas played his cards just right and brought the audience into his world seamlessly. Between the big ships, Darth Vader’s brilliant introduction through heaps of white smoke, and the noises stormtroopers’ feet made on the Death Star floor, I was knee deep and wanted to go deeper into this world. I remember being obsessed with getting on the Millennium Falcon. I remember reenacting Han Solo yelling for Chewie to ‘get us out of here.’ And I remember just scowering for pictures, or ANY information on the film. Keep in mind this was before any of the sequels. In other words, this was back when it was just called Star Wars. And as you can see from the title of this article, I have stayed to that title, no matter how many roman numerals or subtitles Lucas has put on the film since. Even in my daily life, the film has remained Star Wars, and always will.
It is safe to say that I am not unlike many other kids from my generation. This was a time to look forward to what was coming next, as we knew Darth Vader had gotten away and was planning his next attack. But even in that instance, what made the film connect so much to me was that it had a beginning, middle, and end. If the film hadn’t become the hit it did, I would have been satisfied with seeing our heroes rewarded with medals, and having it end with Luke being the one who destroyed the Empire.
I think in the end, THAT was the film’s hook. We saw a kid named Luke defy everyone’s expectations and become a savior. Of course, at this point we did not know that Vader was indeed our hero’s father, and as an audience we would eventually have layers of story put on top of an already tasty sundae. But in this instance, a little kid engulfed in the ‘used’ world George Lucas created, that wasn’t what I wanted. I think Star Wars is so looked at as what it became, that things about what made it great to begin with get lost. And what made the film great was how a little boy could get past the ‘boring’ Tatooine scenes, and get sucked into the story just like someone looking for something more than a movie which took place in space. It is the sheer definition of a populist story, and whether Lucas liked it or not, he was going to have to live with it for thirty-five plus years. Sometimes, heart attacks are worth it.
What I Think Now: I could spend this entire section debunking all of the positivity of what I just said. I could say how bad Mark Hamill’s acting is. I could say how the ‘Special Edition’ is anything but. However, I will not go that route. In watching Star Wars this time, I can honestly say that even looking past all the video games, books & records, reenacting of the film’s pivotal scenes on camera (no, those tapes do not exist anymore, so don’t ask), I can tell you that the film is still a sheer joy to watch.
What is weird is in doing research, I have found that Akira Kurosawa was a huge inspiration on Lucas. Now I see it in even the most minute details of Star Wars, such as there being seven heroes, which is just like Seven Samurai. The performance of Sir Alec Guinness also stood out to me this time. He is the catalyst who gets the story rolling, and even though he would spend the majority of his late life deterring any and all things Star Wars related (he was known to sign autographs on the condition the person he signed it for never watched Star Wars again), his presence amongst this young group of actors is needed and appreciated. It is also of note that Han Solo is the one holdout hero who has remained just as cool now as he was then. His back and forth with Ms ‘they don’t wear bras in space’ Leia is a thing of beauty. “You think a princess, and a guy like me?” Hilarious stuff that would not have been pulled off with any less of an actor, which we will definitely see in future sequels. Here, Harrison Ford’s grumpiness is part of his charm, and it works in either endearing yourself to him or pushing you away.
It should also be noted that no matter how many times I see it, the instance of Han coming back to save Luke NEVER fails to get a rise out of me. The arc of his character could have been done, and he could have left with the money he had so richly earned. But the REAL reward was what this scene means for his REAL arc. I ALWAYS find myself cheering with rigor when he destroys the ship near Vader. For all the heat Lucas gets as a director, this heroic moment was brilliantly set up and pulled off. My feelings on where his character goes from here will be saved for another day.
Now, I look at the very first Star Wars film as a series of journeys toward heroism. In the face of adversity, whether it is Han’s narcissism or Luke’s self doubts, they faced it all and came out smelling like roses. That is, until three years later, when Lucas and Irvin Kershner put them in strangled struggling depths of darkness.
In Conclusion: Some people look at Star Wars as a new beginning, and not in a good way. The outline of how to make a blockbuster film was pretty much composed by Star Wars, and I know for a fact that turns many people off. Star Wars started so many things in film and technology based industries, that I do not think it is a stretch to call it the most important film in history. In fact, I will say it, and stand by it. However, many people look past the first film’s legacy and only see what it became. I have to be honest. I was scared of that exact jaded thinking happening when I sat down to watch Star Wars for this column. But what I saw unfold before me was a movie made by a young filmmaker who had a vision, and did everything in his power to see it fulfilled. Right before closing credits rolled, and The Throne Room theme blasted my speakers, I had a slight tear in my eye, and in that instance I knew the power of Star Wars to entertain will NEVER get old. In that instance, I was still that little boy looking to get on the Millennium Falcon. And damnit, it WILL happen!
Well, that does it. As The Force Awakens Day (December 18th) inches closer and closer, I am at wit’s end. I have sat on the sidelines and waited for Law and Moreno to finally give the go ahead to us doing the Star Wars Episodes I – VI commentaries, which I know are coming eventually. But I have so much to say about the merits of the much derided Star Wars prequels that I thought I would give a little preview in this column. I feel that Star Wars is this generation’s Woodstock. It is such a massive cultural phenomenon that it’s impossible to examine out of context. There are so many layers through which it gets viewed that you can’t peel all of them away at once. That in itself is what makes the outrage connected to the prequels so fascinating to me. More on that later. First, let me explore what the original trilogy means to me.
I find myself wondering even in this age of instant internet knowledge whether there are still people who do not know that there was a time when Episode IV: A New Hope was simply known as—Star Wars. Despite what the series would eventually become, I have always held the first film in the highest of regards. Reason being that I have always thought what made the first Star Wars movie so good was that it didn’t have to live up to the hype of being a ‘Star Wars‘ movie like the subsequent films did. The charm that comes with what would eventually become known as Episode IV drips off of every frame of film as it plays, and the much maligned -most famously by Harrison Ford himself- stilted dialogue does nothing to get in the way of what a fun piece of filmmaking it is. Also, despite its relative low end $10 million budget, all influences of George Lucas’s childhood are right there on the screen for us to see. From Flash Gordon to Shakespeare, Star Wars is a pure distillation of its influences, meaning that Lucas borrowed well from his childhood, and hired better hands to carry them out.
The Empire Strikes Back, it can be argued, is the one movie in the franchise that does not, in one way or another, cater to kids. Its storyline is very dark, as there is no hope for all our heroes, and we as an audience have no choice but to sit and watch them suffer. Luke loses his hand, and finds out not only that his mentor lied to him about who Vader is, but the man who did it is his father. Han is captured by Vader when he is betrayed by temporary turncoat Lando Calrissian, and there is an aura of hopelessness that permeates the screen. Still, Empire is a film that gets better and better with subsequent viewings, and everything director Irvin Kershner did behind the scenes matched the polish job writer Lawrence Kasdan did at his word processor. Which is to say, sheer perfection.
Return of the Jedi is where most people start pointing out kinks in Lucas’s armor. Whereas I look at it as a triumphant conclusion -or at least I thought conclusion at the time- to the series I grew up loving. The first 45 minutes is thought to be a slog by many. Me, I find it to be a testament to how important a character Han Solo was. Star Wars purists know that Ford wanted to be the martyr of the series. Which to me translates to getting the hell out of the white and black uniform because he didn’t want to don it anymore. Yet, Jedi pushes his importance by pushing his friends’ efforts to save him. Of course, it moved on to Endor, and here is where people see it as going downhill. While George Lucas might have propelled the Vietnam metaphor with his Ewoks a little far, even as a child I saw what he was doing. These furballs were put in a position to defend themselves against enemies with higher technology using their inferior weaponry. Plus, revolving the entire final act around Vader’s redemption, and John Williams’s EPIC final pieces of score make that film work for me.
Then—-we have the prequels. First, let me say this. I have a theory, which is that people actually hate these three films because they don’t follow the typical hero’s journey, and most of the “heroes” in them are deeply compromised. The original films were about good overcoming evil. The prequels were about supposedly good guys eventually becoming corrupted and then revealed to be not much better than the villains. When Anakin says “from my point of view, the Jedi are evil” in Episode III, he is not wrong. The fact he has gone from a prepubescent wide eyed child eager to learn into an angry and defiant young man corrupted by a dictator giving him a much better scenario is moons away from what people were used to. But does this make them bad? As portrayed in all three films, the Jedi are thugs enforcing the rules of the corrupt Republic. People picked up on this and didn’t like it. I think people generally wanted the fall of the Republic to have happened entirely due to evil people doing evil things, but Palpatine’s genius Lucas showed was in how he gets the “good guys” to do a lot of his work for him.
The main flaw with Episodes I – III is the fact that they are prequels which don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I will also say from midichlorians to an over abundance of one character named Binks, there are some insanely bad choices made in the prequels, and they don’t hold up as well as the original series. However, I would completely defend Episode I as being thematically consistent with the rest of the series. While many elements within it are sub-par or bland, there is really nothing out of place with respect to the type of story it is trying to tell. For those who are not so interested in expecting stone cold tension or snappy dialogue, it works as a story of a force becoming what could either be the best pilot in the galaxy or its oppressor.
Episode II felt like it had an actual story to tell, it’s just really bad at romance. This is why I can really get behind revising the romantic moments of Episode II. If Lucas had continued on the storyline concerning the threats on Padme’s life, the tension would have strengthened and helped Anakin’s overall storyline. We could have seen them falling in love while evading would be assassins and spies traveling across the stars. Instead, we have Padme wearing a costume more ridiculous than anything Leia wore in the previous trilogy and are stuck watching Anakin ride CG’d animals. Still, you take out all romance aspects, and Episode II has a ton about it to enjoy.
I understand that Padme and Anakin are really bad at romance. However, here is the wall I run into with people who complain about it. The romance between them isn’t strong if seen as a classic hero/love interest romance, which is the way everyone viewed it. This is a bizarre relationship that evolved out of an acquaintance when the guy was a kid and the girl was almost an adult (and holding a position with adult responsibility). Padme is consistently portrayed by Natalie Portman as fatally naive, and Anakin is an emotional firecracker as played by Hayden Christensan. We are not supposed to be charmed by them or their relationship. Being anywhere from uneasy to horrified about it is more like it, and viewed a certain way, it’s vitally important to the story. The problem is Lucas didn’t count on people not liking the relationship for the wrong reasons. This is when another director would have helped, because the battles and detective story I enjoyed so much in Episode II are thrown off by, again, seeing Anakin ride CG’d monsters.
Episode III is widely considered to be the best of the three. However despite its intense final forty minutes, its worst flaw, besides the dialogue, is the seeming intentional forgetting about the Clone Wars (the years between II and III), in which Anakin becomes, as Obi-Wan outlined in Episode IV, ‘the best star pilot in the galaxy, a cunning warrior, and a good friend.’ Yet the guy spends YEARS battling enormous droids and rescuing Republic allies, and when he comes home, Mace Windu (Samuel L Jackson) just remembers how the kid had some offbeat moments in the second movie. “I don’t trust him” is his warning to Obi-Wan. Gee, thanks Captain Obvious.
My fundamental storylined conclusion about all three prequels is that Anakin starts off as a nice guy who means well and makes mistakes, subsequently learning from them. He intuitively stumbles into the fall-and-redemption arc that George Lucas was going for the entire saga. This fall from grace won’t work as well if you watch Episodes I-III and just can’t just shut down that suspension of disbelief long enough to take the poor dialogue, impractical backgrounds, and uneven acting on constant display. Seriously seasoned actors and actresses don’t act in these films as much as just speak words on camera. So I must ask. Is this any different than the original trilogy?
The rage that greets a meer mention of these films on the internet is nothing short of baffling to me. In regards to Jar Jar in particular, there’s a fascinating irony in that a lot of Star Wars fans feel so passionate and intense about Star Wars because it represented such a huge part of their childhood/pop-culture world. Yet they get angry when Lucas makes prequels that rather specifically target kids like they were when they first fell in love with Star Wars. Sort of an odd phenomenon if you ask me.
All of that being said, I feel there are far more good in the prequels than bad. They’re visually inventive, with Lucas filling each frame with the same kind of science fiction weirdness and wonderfully fantastic touches that I generally associate with the franchise, Not to mention the downright sneaky uprising Sith plot that winds up bringing everything down and causes birth to the Galactic Empire has a much smarter build and payoff than its reputation leads you to believe. So much like Return, I take the good with the bad, and it is this payoff -which in my mind is an interesting bit of parallelism with Luke’s arc- that makes me able to stick through the storylines associated with the Ewoks and Gungans.
This is all I am going to disclose as my prequel defense for now, as I have much more to say. All of that will be saved for the upcoming commentaries for the Star Wars series, which I will say right now are an absolute dream for me to do. So sit back, and get even more excited, as December 18th will be upon us before we know it.
Another crazy week on the Binge Cast as Moreno, Ammon, and Law do their best to keep it together through some amazing voicemails, long time listener – first time caller Eddie, and the Hottie Fantasy League Lottery.
TV Round-Up is packed with talk of the season finale of Banshee, The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, Justified, The Following, The Last Man On Earth, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and House of Cards.
What Did You Watch is all Ammon with his review of BIG HERO SIX and revisits of BLADE RUNNER and COWBOYS AND ALIENS. Which leads to two questions – What “classic” film, loved by generations of fans, do you not like? And, When was the last time Harrison Ford was REALLY good in anything? Answers are inside. Post your thoughts below or on the BingeMedia Facebook page. Or keep them to yourself, you greedy whore.
Then it’s on to The Hottie Draft Lottery where dreams are broken and opportunity is discovered. That was awful.
Stay tuned this week for our final Banshee commentary of the year and a brand new Game Cast.
I’ve watched INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM a lot over the years and it’s recently found it’s way into my weekly rotation thanks to my kids. Some things have remained cool. Others things have developed an alarming amount of suck. Willie has always sucked, so there’s no change there. Short Round’s annoyance, however, has worn me down. Watching as a kid I wanted nothing more than to be Indy’s sidekick and to punch that little Prince cunt in the face over and over. As an adult, I think Short Round should have stayed in the village and found a coloring book to keep him busy.
Let’s watch the clip before I make any judgement though…
The funny thing about that edit is that they take out all the ridiculously stupid shit Short Round does. They’re trapped because of Short Round. The spikes and ceiling collapse is because of Short Round. Look, I can blame everything that goes wrong in this film on the little asshole but I’m not going to. Let’s focus on the good shit for a while.
Indy is awesome here. If only because he’s as pissed off as we’ve ever seen him and he has no problem letting these two idiots know it. “Shut up, Willie.” is the most genuine line of dialogue in the entire film. As a viewer I probably said it a dozen times throughout. I can hardly blame her character for being creeped out considering her surroundings but, for the love of fuck, shut your mouth and pull the lever. “WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” is also fantastic. Here we have a truly screwed Indiana Jones, left helpless and relying on the aid of some dimwit in a nightgown to save his ass. It’s one of the only times we ever find Indy in a position like this and he’s not happy about it. Even Short Round tells Willie to shut up. Classic.
The bugs aren’t half as creeptastic as I once remembered. I used to squirm in my seat while watching this scene, now I kind of giggle at the wooden plainness of them. However, there’s one bug that still makes me cringe just as hard as the first time I saw it. That would be this one:
What the fuck? It’s not only the fact that it’s huge and has a badrillion legs, the thing is burrowing itself in her hair, all around her neck and shit. How does Willie not pass out and die right here? Where does this thing end up? We never see or hear about it again. Is it in her ear? Does it live in her mop of feathered freshness until the end of time. What the fuck?
Anyway, Willie saves the day and then goes into the room and starts it all over again as she proves she’s as useless as Short Fuck. It’s still a frustrating scene, however, some of the frustration comes from different places now. Mainly Willie’s mouth and Short’s inability to stand still.
I believe I heard John Cleese refer to comedy as being brittle. He spoke about how with comedy, the tone has to be exactly right because if it fails at any point, you can lose your audience and, in turn, lose the joke. A lot of filmmakers struggle with comedy. Even the veterans, like the once god-like Mike Myers stumble and fall when attempting new things, like The Love Guru. Anchorman 2, for all intents and purposes, should have been an easy slam-dunk. You have the entire original cast returning, plenty of juicy celebrity cameos and the blessing of fans everywhere. So why is it, then, that Anchorman 2 so horribly mucks things up?
I am a devoted fan of the original film. I remember seeing it in the theater with my two brothers and my dad, and at at the time, loving it. That love never really went away and I to this day find myself quoting the film, sometimes unknowingly. I always liked the idea of an Anchorman sequel, but never really wanted one too badly, as I felt the original film was very much lightning in a bottle and couldn’t be replicated. With news of the new film and the rumors that the likes of the notoriously picky Harrison Ford signing on in a key role, I got excited. It turned out to be all for naught, unfortunately, as A2 falls prey to the recycled joke disease that has plagued so many films throughout movie history. There were a few bright spots in the film, such as the scene where Will Ferrell has dinner with his boss’ family and tries to “assimilate” with them, and I’ll admit a few scenes made me laugh, but I was overwhelmingly insulted by the trend used in the film where they just took all the jokes from the first movie, put them in this movie and tweaked them all slightly.
Look familiar?
I find it sad that the amount of talent on-screen here did not translate to quality comedy. There is always the argument that the naysayers will give you about “overthinking a stupid movie” or “reading too much into it”, but to that I suggest those people squarely A) Go fuck themselves and B) Take a look at Monty Python. Monty Python was, arguably, the greatest comedy group of all time. They were all Ivy League college students and grads who decided to set their sights on breaking down comedy and discovering what makes people laugh. Their success was a direct result of understanding what about stupidity is funny and using that to their advantage. Ferrell and his collaborator Adam McKay have that ability, as evidenced in their previous work together. Somehow here, however, they didn’t use that knowledge and instead copied and pasted from the first film. Maybe it was studio pressure, maybe it was a lack of genuine creative interest, but if anyone wants to honestly tell me that Anchorman 2 deserves to be spoken of in the same breadth as Anchorman, they need their head examined.
I used Mike Myers as an example earlier of how comedians sometimes mistake what the audience wants with what will actually work in a film, and to see that look no further than Austin Powers vs. Austin Powers 2 and 3. 3 and, to a lesser degree, 2, both have compromised elements that work against the finished product, such as shoehorning in Seth Green’s transformation into Doctor Evil. The problem is, when you take from earlier films in a series, no matter how funny/interesting the idea was the first time, but the second time you see it it feels wrong. Case in point, SPOILERS, the fight scene at the end of A2. I’m sorry, but I didn’t find one piece of that scene funny. Not only did most of those celebrity cameos do nothing for me, but the inclusion of ass-clown Kanye West was like a bitch-slap in the face of comedy. While in real life that guy is a walking punchline, the fact that a group of talented individuals I personally like and appreciate gave him a paycheck to star alongside them is betrayal on par with when William Wallace nearly slits Robert The Bruce’s throat in Braveheart.
Devastating
This is but one example, but it is the freshest in my mind because it so thoroughly fails to deliver the goods, despite the effort. At the end of the day, what did I expect out of Anchorman 2? Not much. I certainly didn’t expected to be blindsided by laziness, sloppy writing and piss-poor casting choices, but sometimes that’s the way it goes. Fuck this movie, go rent the first one instead.