By Jason Apuzzo. Last week was extremely busy for me on non-Libertas fronts, and as a secondary matter I also happened to bust up one of my shoulders (no worries; it’s on the mend), making it a little difficult to write – so LFM was quiet for most of last week.
I wanted readers to know, however, that I was not completely AWOL while Earth was being invaded.
I’m referring here, of course to the alien invasions depicted in Green Lantern, Super 8 and the premiere of TNT’s Falling Skies – all of which I made sure to see. And although it would take a prohibitive amount of time and effort at this point to write full reviews of each project, I wanted to at least provide some brief reactions:
• The Steven Spielberg/Robert Rodat alien invasion series Falling Skies had a very big cable debut on TNT Sunday night, pulling in an estimated 5.9 million viewers. To put that figure in perspective, there’s not a single show on Fox News that comes even close to that sort of audience size.
The question is whether Falling Skies will keep that large audience – because although I generally liked what I saw of Falling Skies, and would’ve loved it if I was still back in high school (with the show’s Aliens-meets-Red Dawn vibe) … in 2011 I wasn’t deeply impressed with it. Indeed, I would say the show seemed inferior in many respects to ABC’s similarly-themed V series that just got cancelled after its second season.
Until the second half of Sunday’s Falling Skies premiere, I was generally finding the show dreary, humorless, and lacking in either pizazz, strong characters or imagination. Everything about the show was seeming like a re-hash of other, stronger projects – like Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds, or Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Noah Wyle was seeming wimpy, and I wasn’t enjoying Will Patton’s turn as the megalomaniacal Desert Storm vet.
Things picked up in the second half of the show, however, with the introduction of some colorful characters – specifically Colin Cunningham playing the post-apocalyptic renegade-outlaw-dude-with-stringy-hair John Pope, and Sarah Carter playing the bad-ass killer blonde Margaret. Finally the show started to click, gain an edge, and I was interested. Suddenly I was finding Noah Wyle engaging and sympathetic. Suddenly I noticed that Will Patton’s character, although unsympathetic and a caricature, was consistently being proven right in how he dealt with the alien menace. I was also liking the fact that the great Dale Dye was in the show. And suddenly I was digging the murky, close-quarters combat with the aliens, and the show’s implicit, Battle: Los Angeles-style endorsement of martial virtues.
I also think Spielberg & Co. are shrewd to not tip their hand early as to the aliens’ intentions. V occasionally seemed convoluted and over-plotted, while Falling Skies seems much simpler – though perhaps not as fun. In any case, I will continue to follow the series and see how it develops …
• What does one say about the epic mess of Green Lantern? Words seem inadequate.
Somewhere in the dark recesses of Hollywood’s id, the people responsible for this titanic piece of garbage – which reportedly cost $300 million to produce and market – know that this is precisely the sort of film that’s destroying the cinema, destroying our minds, the kind of film that’s drawing on an emptied bank account (i.e., the comic book genre) – a toxic asset, one might say – and that’s kicking all the tough decisions Hollywood needs to make down the road. And what are those tough decisions?
Specifically, those tough decisions involve Hollywood figuring out how to once again reach audiences that do not consist exclusively of: illiterate, hypoglycemic males between the ages of 18-34, who need their egos propped-up with narratives espousing their inner heroism. So to the executives who green-lit Green Lantern I say: enough. Stop pandering to these man-children. Tell them to grow up, get a job, move out of Mom’s basement, whatever. It’s deeply embarrassing that this is what American movies have been reduced to, that Hollywood’s limited resources are tapped endlessly for what amounts to ego therapy for dorks.
Green Lantern is an excruciatingly awful film, with almost no redeeming qualities. Ryan Reynolds? He’s Ben Affleck, before Affleck realized that Daredevil killed his career. Blake Lively? Whatever. Maybe she’ll be Elisabeth Shue someday. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Tim Robbins appears in Green Lantern as a corrupt senator. Need I say more? Avoid this film as if your life depends on it, because it does.
• Super 8 ripped my heart out. It really did. As someone who spent his formative years running around with my friends making Super 8 movies, this movie was catnip to me; I simply couldn’t wait to see J.J. Abrams bring that era and the fun, Scotch-tape-and-rubber-band ethos of Super 8 filmmaking back to life. Super 8 depicts a life I actually lived, right down to the details (Eumig cameras, Testor’s model paint, fruitless quests for 10-year old acting talent, etc.). How much did I live this film? At one point back in the day I made a Super 8 movie with a kid who’d actually been in Gremlins. Top that!
Super 8 hooked me early with its framing story of the kids, their campy zombie movie project, and the sweet romance between the insular boy and the cute, extroverted girl … and then just as the film’s big train crash occurred, the film itself veered wildly off-track into a nasty anti-military subplot involving the Air Force and our abuse of a captured alien (!), depicting the alien almost like some sort of Guantanamo detainee. Uugh. The film also took time to lampoon the Soviet threat, treating it as a phenomenon of middle American ‘paranoia’ … and while all this was going on, Abrams & Co. seemed to forget the basic plot device of what the kids’ Super 8 camera had accidentally caught on celluloid! The film’s main plot ‘hook’ completely disappeared, only to re-appear late after it had already become superfluous with the town under assault from the alien.
Here is the basic problem I had with the film: Super 8’s small town warmth and sentimentality, which I wanted to succumb to, simply comes at too high a high price: you’ve got to not only buy into the Air Force behaving like the Wehrmacht, but almost every character in the film over the age of 12 comes across like a villain. This is not what Spielberg would’ve done in his heyday, and I think Abrams has misinterpreted the Spielberg formula here. Underneath its surface sweetness, Super 8 actually has a rather nasty edge to it (e.g., the weird joking around about the mother’s horrific death) that did not appear in Spielberg’s early work, or in movies like The Goonies on which Super 8 is clearly based. In my opinion the film represents a step back from Abrams’ similarly-themed Cloverfield, and also from his excellent work on Star Trek. It’s too bad, because the potential here was enormous …
… but now on to the rest of the summer invasions! As regular readers know, we have Transformers: Dark of the Moon arriving on June 29th, Cowboys & Aliens on July 29th, and if that’s not enough Attack the Block also arrives on July 29th. And don’t forget that Battle: Los Angeles just hit DVD/Blu-ray. You can read my review of that film here.
So stay on high alert! The alien invaders just keep on coming …
Posted on June 21st, 2011 at 1:21pm.
You were too kind to Super 8, in my opinion. I grew up with Jaws, Close Encounters and E.T.(just a little too syrupy for me). Although Abrams had the look of the seventies right, this rolled up newspaper of dog dung on the porch of a movie really grated on me. It was filled with his too cute shots at our military and Middle America.(All things that his mentor has never done in his movies) Then the Oprahesque psycho-babble lesson that if We just took the time to understand “why they hate us so much” crap was the match to the rolled up newspaper.
What can I say? The film was certainly a disappointment. What it should’ve been was Jaws set in Ohio, with an alien instead of a shark, and definitely with no politics involved.
Mr. Apuzzo, i also recently saw Green Lantern. In my opinion, it had fun action, cool special effects, interesting themes, decent acting, and quick pacing. However, i felt that this film looked to be heavily edited; thus reducing the character development, and creating a rushed feeling. More fleshing out of the characters (the childhood experiences of Hal along with his family, the connection between the Jordan and the Ferris families, the shared history between Hal, Carol, and Hector, even a moment or two showing a young Hector with his father) and incidents ( a Lord of the rings style live action prologue that highlights Abin Sur’s initial defeat of Parallax and a more in depth action sequence involving Hal father) would have given the film both a more epic and intimate feel.For me, it is a fun, light, quick film, that while not a Batman and Robin, Catwoman, or Elektra; doesn’t reach the in depth/epic scale of Superman: The Movie, Batman Begins orThe Dark Knight due to its rushed feeling/ possible heavy editing. These films have balanced the story, action, characterization, effects, and intensity to masterfully reel in the audience.
** By the way, you took time a while back to answer a question for me about the Mitch Rapp adaptation, Consent to Kill. I appreciated you taking the time to do that. Thank you.
Omar, you’re much more forgiving than I am! I’ve no doubt that the things you mention are relevant, it’s just that the filmmakers seem much more cynical than you are about what the audience’s expectations are.
I’m right there with you on Super 8. I was overly excited for it since it was heralded as a nostalgic look back at that time period. With nostalgia like that, who needs hostile revisionism? When the Soviet joke was thrown out, I literally laughed. Not at the supposedly brainless woman, but at the movie’s infantile attempt to make all who worried about the Soviet threat into brainless idiots. I stopped caring about any of the kids because I realized in the world they lived in, they were all going to grow up and become douchebags.
I was hoping I was wrong and I had an idea midway through that it was going to end with the alien actually being the bad guy and the doctor being wrong. I was really hoping that once the alien finally got free that he would go into outer space and reestablish contact with his race so that they could begin to plan their assault, the assault you see in Cloverfield. Instead, I got exactly what I worried I would, a story about a boy who met an alien that almost ate his girlfriend but really just needed a hug. Sigh.
You’ve pretty much nailed it. It’s been a long time since a film’s politics ripped me so strongly out of a film that I was otherwise enjoying. What a disappointment!
Man, all that happened in “Super 8”? Damn … the anti-military stuff I can handle as a typical sci-fi trope, but the Soviet threat being lampooned is unforgivable. That is so stupid, it’s almost criminal … it leads my right-wing mind to think statists just don’t want anyone knowing the real threat posed by the Soviets back in the day because their ideas resemble it so much.
Okay … Green Lantern. He was EASILY my favorite superhero as a kid. I think the mythos is the most unique in all of comic book lore, and besides all of that, it’s a superhero space opera! That in itself is amazingly cool.
So, as a HUGE Green Lantern fan, I thought the film was a good start, but was overall a missed opportunity. I’d have liked to see more foreshadowing of Hal and Sinestro’s relationship, and more on Oa — basically it’s structure should’ve resembled “Thor” or even Donner’s “Superman: The Movie”.
I’m not crazy about Ryan Reynolds (although I think he made a better Hal than I thought he would have), the film had a little too much intercutting (could’ve let it breathe a little), needed to take itself a little more seriously, and been a little more creative with the powers.
Oh … and I’m seeing it again tonight!
Also … “Falling Skies” was incredible! I love the setup, love Noah Wyle’s character, and I love the way citizens were treated in the story. So far, I like FAR more than I like “Battle: Los Angeles”.
Vince, I’m surprised you like Falling Skies more than Battle: LA, but in any case I’m certainly going to stick with the series because it’s got promise. The premise is great, I just hope they keep it from getting too political, and otherwise find creative ways to breathe life into old ideas …
Excellent call on Super 8, they got the late 70’s vibe perfect but the main story line was hackneyed, trite, predicatble, and so disappointing. And for you, I’m really happy to see that a young Super 8 movie geek can grow up to marry the hot chick.
Thanks! 😉 Man, I was too shy at the time to even bother with chicks in my Super 8 films! I totally know how those kids felt …
I also have hope for Falling Skies. Right away, the kids recounted that the aliens were bad guys, they did not want to talk though their problems. A real enemy! I don’t think the enemy will be “us” again (led by Daniel Benzali).
Right, Pat! I also noticed that when we apparently greeting the aliens with touchy-feely friendliness … we got roasted, by way of thanks! So yes, there are good lessons to be learned here …
I agree to the word with your take on “Falling Skies,” and I also second your hope that they keep it from getting too political. I even said basically the same thing to my brother about the great move of nabbing Dale Dye, who, indeed, rules. For now, I’m withholding judgment, with cautious optimism.
For a minute I didn’t like where they were going with the John Pope stuff – I was thinking, “They should make this guy team up somehow with the Second Massachusetts, then this show would be interesting” – and alas, it seems they had the same idea (thank God). I find Wyle slightly annoying, and I also thought the lacrosse-playing was too precious (I understand it’s New England, but come on… don’t strain my credulity at a college professor being a badass soldier anymore than necessary, thanks).
The core dialectic should be the Machiavellian cunning of Pope playing off of the more duty-bound moral intelligence of Wyle (sort of like the priest and Hobbes in V). I really like the way they set up our expectations for Pope to be a brutish yokel, and then suddenly had him matching wits and brains with Wyle’s character. We need people in the show who do more than say, “Lets fight the war this way!,” “No, this way!,” “No, this way!” I want a character to transcend the war, a mad Aguirre or a brooding Willard. Someone gloriously, tragically human, as opposed to a mass of strategists and tacticians and people conversing about civil-military tensions. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, but for half the show that was essentially all there was. For lack of a better word, perhaps I can just say I want someone COOL in the show. Pope seems to be that.
Other than that – I have no intention of seeing Green Lantern (it makes me nauseous just thinking about it), and I may or may watch Super 8 on video. Suppose it will depend on my mood.
Excellent take SeeSaw … especially the comment about having ” a mad Aguirre or a brooding Willard” fighting the alien menace. In fact, if you’re a screenwriter you should get to work on that idea right away! This genre needs that sort of thing, badly. There’s much more room for substance in this genre than people acknowledge. Just ask Stanley Kubrick …
Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t like Super 8. I liked it despite the anti-military stuff, though I didn’t like that part, and the one Soviet joke was stupid, but the kids’ story overcame all that for me. And while the understanding for the alien was not set up well-enough, I was not hostile to the concept. The way the ending focused on forgiveness and letting go of grief and anger I felt was a pretty beautiful idea and effort, though it was a little clumsily done. I know we like to bash liberal diplomacy-solves-everything tropes, but forgiveness between two people is a pretty universally-acknowledged virtue we should all be able to get behind. Oh, and not everyone over 12 came off as a villain–only the soldiers; every other adult came off as flawed and most as dim, but they weren’t evil.
On Green Lantern I don’t hate it as much as you did, but it was very, very flawed, and I was pretty disappointed. The space opera stuff had such potential, but the script was awful and I hated, hated, hated Hector Hammond. I kinda still hope they do a sequel just cuz there’s still so much potential to the material, but they would have to get a completely different director/screenwriter/editor/crew before I would have any hope for it. I kinda liked Reynolds, though.
I’ve recorded Falling Skies and will be watching it soon.
Stephen, I so wanted to like Super 8 – you have no idea! As I mentioned above, the film depicted my own childhood with uncanny accuracy … but Acts 2-3 were too heavily freighted with Oedipal neuroses and Boomer-style politics for me to take enough pleasure in it. I think it should also be mentioned that the film felt perilously derivative of E.T. and Close Encounters, in particular.
What bothered me more, though, was a certain harshness of tone in the film. The joking about the mother’s (implied) horrific death troubled me, only 3 minutes into the picture. Spielberg would not have done this in his heyday. He would have set a softer, gentler tone. He also would not have depicted our own military as being so bloodthirsty.