BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

Hello :-)

Here we are again for the fourth instalment of my attempt at The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars; My ongoing quest to become a Star Wars fan and distract myself from the realisation that with every second I am edging closer towards oblivion.

I'm not going to pretend that I don’t know the prequels have a reputation; of course I do, I'm a human who has spent time on the internet. However, as with the original trilogy, I haven’t seen these films for years, so I don’t properly understand why there’s such disdain for them.

The story centres around tax disputes between the Galactic republic and the Trade federation. Jedi Qui-Gon-Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are sent in to negotiate with both parties but things soon take a turn for the worse and they’re on the run. The Jedi hot tail it to Naboo, save Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) from kidnap then, after they’re attacked trying to leave the planet, end up on Tatooine where they meet young slave Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) who may be the answer to all of their problems.

Let’s not mince our words, any way you slice it Phantom Menace isn’t great. As a standalone film it’s boring and when compared to the original trilogy it fails on almost every level. It is not, however, completely without merit.

The trouble is we get off on the wrong foot and the film never really recovers from there. The iconic scrolling text is babbling on about taxation which no one, especially the children in the audience, gives a shit about. Then, in the first scene of the movie, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan whip their lightsabres out quicker than a flasher with his wang. As exciting as that is (the lightsabres not the wang), you can’t escape the fact that this is the opposite to everything we’ve been taught about being a Jedi up to this point.

One of the biggest issues in Phantom Menace is the absence of a main character. This is talked about far better than I could in the infamous Red Letter Media reviews and by the brilliant Michael Barryte at Belated Media; all logic indicates that our lead should be Obi-Wan because that character is the bridge between trilogies. However I’m kind of glad it isn’t because in Phantom he’s an absolute prick. I have an awful lot of time for Ewan McGregor but his character was written terribly, he’s mean with a complete lack of humour. “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic lifeform?” WHAT?! You’re talking about a child! Stop being a knobhead Obi-Wan!

In fact all of the characters are pitched so weirdly. The acting is uniformly terrible. It’s almost like a weird absurdist art piece because no one reacts to anything in the way and normal person would. Every plot point is met with nothing but solemnity with the exception of the very end where they have a party and Amidala gives Brian Blessed Gungan one of those Plasma Balls you get from gadget shops or Argos.

Qui-Gon has got to be the most un-Jedi Jedi in the history of Jedis. He’s a compulsive gambler and has the oddest way of setting peoples mind at ease. When Anakin asks him about his “laser sword” (fuck off Lucas, you’ve made enough money off their bastard merchandising you can at least take the time to remember they’re called Lightsabres) he says “maybe I killed a Jedi and took it from him” which is such a bizarre statement to make on so many different levels it would take a whole other blog post to adequately explain it.

Please bear in mind, I’m not levelling this criticism at the actors themselves, they have all gone on to prove themselves as exceptional performers in other films more deserving of their talents (except poor Jake Lloyd who, by his own admission, had such an awful time with Phantom Menace that, save for one film in 2005, he hasn’t been lured back to the silver screen since). No, the fault lies at the door of the atrocious script, piss poor directorial choices and the fact that there were many creative professionals in this team who just sat back and watched the proverbial car crash unfold without doing a thing to stop it.

One genuinely positive moment is the podrace. Gleefully lifted from Ben Hur it’s shiny and fun, it looks and sounds great; it feels like it’s accidentally been spliced in from some other movie, one that has a sense of adventure. It’s hard to justify such an extensive use of greenscreen but the Pod race nearly does… nearly.

It’s always fun to explore new worlds and we’re given that opportunity in Phantom Menace. Obviously we’ve seen Tatooine before but Naboo is the first city civilisation we get to seen and, although I’m not a fan of the wall to wall greenscreen, I like the idea. I particularly like the Gungan underwater city. I’m not a fan of the Gungans, especially not Jar Jar, but it’s in keeping with the extreme terrain that inspired the likes of Tatooine and Hoth and it looks good. It struck me as odd that Amidala wasn’t set up to be the ruler of Alderaan though, I mean we all know who her daughter is and it might have made sense to make us care about a planet and it’s inhabitants if you’re going to blow it up in a later episode but I realise this is a tiny niggle in a film with far bigger problems.

Speaking of Naboo, where are all these dying Nabooians (Nabooeans? Nabooese? Nabooish?). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see bodies in the street or anything but there’s just very little evidence that this is a life or death situation. You've managed to get on and off that planet several times so what exactly is this blockade doing? You appear to have plenty of water and land to grow your own food so what is it that that you need to trade so desperately? I don’t want to get all ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ on you but it seems like you could sustain yourselves quite well if you really wanted to.

If there was ever going to be a character to rival Vader in terms of pure aesthetic awesome it’s Darth Maul. The character design of Darth Maul is perfect. The robes, the face, the double ended lightsabre. With Ray Park’s physicality and Peter Serafinowicz’s awesomely creepy vocal performance, he was all set up to be this imposing force across the prequels with his and Sidious’s relationship mirroring that of Vader and Palpatine.

So why oh why did he have to die?!?!

This is, for me, the biggest mistake Lucas makes in Phantom, maybe even across all of the prequels. So much wasted potential, it almost hurts me to think about it. The lovely Ryan Lambie explains it better than I ever could so just read that and pretend I was clever enough to write it, yeah? Cheers.

The fatal flaw in all of this is just how much the film takes for granted. It takes it for granted that you’re so excited to see lightsabres again you won’t care that what the characters are doing directly contradicts what we’ve previously been told, it takes it for granted that we know who Anakin will become and assumes this will automatically make us care about him, it takes it for granted that we love R2D2 and C3PO so much that we’ll ignore that they have no reason to be here,  it takes for granted that our fondness for Obi Wan means we’ll ignore his dickish behaviour, it takes it for granted that we’ll accept toys and computer trickery over actual substance.

It’s hard to separate out feelings of disappointment from legitimate criticism which is why I think some people are so harsh on Phantom Menace, but it really isn’t all bad. Having said that, what it is is a predominantly soulless, lightsabre happy, beige wall of a film. It has it’s redeeming qualities in the shape of the Pod race and (up until the point he’s sliced in twain) Darth Maul but by and large it’s just too dull to care about and from the poor choices that plague the film, it’s evident that the film makers certainly don’t care either.

I am really, really not looking forward to next month…

Final Thoughts 1: “A communications disruption can mean only one thing… invasion”. Or you’ve ran out of data, or you haven’t paid the phone bill, or someone knocked the plug out. I mean on this occasion it does mean invasion but frankly that was a lucky guess.

Final Thoughts 2: Padmé’s decoy is a bit ballsy isn't she? I mean she orders real Padmé to go and clean R2D2, I wouldn’t order my boss to clean a jumped up pedal bin, even if I was pretending to be her…

Final Thoughts 3: I'm just going to sit here and point out the MASSIVE ANAKIN/JESUS PARALLEL that crops up and then is NEVER SPOKEN OF AGAIN (like so many other things… COUGHmidichloriansCOUGH).

Final Thoughts 4: All Hyperdrives are bollocks. They all break all the time, the people in charge of travel in the Star Wars universe need to come up with something more dependable because it’s getting ridiculous.

Surprise Discovery: Is that..? IT IS! It IS Celia Imrie!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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PS: I didn’t want to write about this with the rest of my waffle, but as a result of watching the Red Letter Media review I watched The Beginning: Making Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace. Watching it after the event is a strangely eerie experience. I realise it might be painful for some but I think it’s well worth a watch, if only to see exactly where the train derailed.

Straight Outta Compton Review

Hello :-)

Biopics are an interesting beast. They’ll always have an audience so long as their subject does and, unlike a documentary, they have license to embellish the truth or omit some less than savoury incidents. Most recently I went to see the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton.

Straight Outta Compton is the story of the formation of and subsequent demise of NWA in the late 80’s/early 90’s. With the combined forces of Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dr Dre (Corey Hawkins), Ice Cube (played by Ice Cube’s real life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr) and the management of Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), the collective soon achieve fame and notoriety across the US.

I’m fairly familiar with the goings on of NWA, even so I was surprised by just how much was packed into the 10 year span of the film. So much ground is covered there’s very little time to go into detail about anything meaning Straight Outta Compton feels more like an abridged revision guide rather than a comprehensive study, nonetheless it is highly entertaining.

The film is clearly divisible into three acts, all of which vary in quality. The first chronicles the formation, recording of the titular album and the band going on tour; this is where the film is at its finest. The scene setting of life in late 80’s Compton is really effective and the pervasive subjugation of African American communities is more than a little resonant in light of recent events in the US. An encounter with the LAPD prompting Ice Cube to pen the infamous protest song Fuck tha Police and the unsanctioned performance of the song at a gig in Detroit carry the illicit thrill of defiance coupled with shots of hotel room parties and the band mucking about in the recording studio makes for some wonderful stuff. It’s so difficult to capture the joy of music on screen and make it feel authentic but this first section does just that.

The second act of the film, post-Ice Cube’s departure from NWA, is where things shift down a gear. The focus moves from the music to contract disputes and bitterness at members leaving the band. There are some moments that recapture some of that first act energy, most of which feature Jackson Jr’s Ice Cube; the recording of the blistering diss track No Vaseline and the scene where Cube takes a baseball bat to one of the offices of Priority Records are both pulse raisers but they’re nearly buried in the dull and vague legal back and forth that dominates the middle of the film.

The final section focuses partly on the deterioration of Eazy-E, his tragic diagnosis of AIDs and also on Dr Dre’s increasingly fraught relationship with Suge Knight and Death Row Records. There is an element of Where’s Wally that creeps into this final act when Dr Dre collaborators start popping up like Snoop Dogg and Tupac (Keith Stanfield and Marcc Rose doing great jobs of looking like and, particularly in Stanfield’s case, sounding like, their respective artists) but that fun is brought to a swift end thanks to R. Marcos Taylor’s Suge Knight. He cuts a terrifying shape and his scenes of brutality and intimidation and legitimately hard to watch.

However the bulk of the last act narrative is handed over to the decline of Eazy-E, the scenes of which have been accused of being overly sentimental. I’m not sure when sentimental became a dirty word but I’m not convinced it should be. Jason Mitchell does wonderful work as Eazy-E and there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad when such a well realised character faces such tragedy. There is a palpable sense of regret and loss in these scenes that I think is really well handled.

What’s a little disappointing is how much of a hagiography Straight Outta Compton turns into. The band are never depicted as totally saintly but some of the more pernicious aspects of the group’s history are glossed over or omitted entirely. Even some of the less controversial but more interesting events are left out to make way for more scenes of contract litigation, which is a shame.

It looks brilliantly stylish. I’ve never been a particular fan of F Gary Gray’s work but it's a confidently helmed picture. For the most part Gray balances humour, drama and a good dose of action. It's a credit to him that he's been able to make someone rapping in a recording booth such an engaging thing to watch.

The film’s cast is one of it’s great strengths. Paul Giamatti adds to his repertoire of arsehole music managers with Jerry Heller. He could have played Heller with a striped top, mask and swag bag but his staunch defence of NWA and seemingly genuine appreciation of their music adds real intrigue and WTF-ness to his character’s motives.

DJ Yella, MC Ren and The D.O.C are somewhat side-lined from proceedings but Neil Brown Jr, Aldis Hodge and Marlon Yates Jr all make the most of the screen time they have. The central trio of Hawkins, Mitchell and Jackson are the ones that do the most heavy lifting. The camera loves Corey Hawkins and his performance as Dr Dre has charisma by the bucket load. Aside from looking uncannily like his Father, O’Shea Jackson Jr channels the requisite energy, frustration and creativity of someone who undeniably changed the musical landscape of the late 20th Century.

I am a fan of NWA so I realise that this film was engineered for me to like it but the story is such that Straight Outta Compton could easily be enjoyed by someone who isn’t as well versed in their work. It’s a unashamed celebration of everything NWA stood for and although the film sags in the middle it pulls it back for a genuinely tender finale. Straight Outta Compton may not be a warts and all exposé but it has at it’s heart a love of the music NWA made and for that I loved it.

Goodbye till next time!
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BlogAlongAStarWars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi

Hello :-)

I’m back again for The Incredible Suit’s BlogAlongAStarWars part trois. My own account of the ongoing quest to become a proper Star Wars fan and crush the oncoming tidal wave of adult life by revisiting all the Star Wars movies in the run up to Episode 7, this most recent of posts which is absolutely definitely not late and absolutely didn’t need to have been posted by the end of August…

So here ends my look back at the original trilogy. Again, I haven’t re-watched episodes IV – VI for years but thus far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these much loved films as an adult and letting them batter down my snarky and jaded defences.

In episode VI we discover that the Galactic Empire, under orders from Human Mole-Rat Emperor Palpatine, are building a second Death Star so they can crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all. Meanwhile Luke Skywalker, C3PO and R2D2 set in motion a plan to rescue Han Solo who is still encased in carbonite and hanging on the wall at Jabba the Hutt’s lair.

This film had me from the off. Bad-ass music *tick* iconic scrolling opening *tick* and then a ruddy excellent rescue *tick tick tick*. I love a good heist but (puts on M&S advert voice) this isn’t just a heist, this a bonkers Space Opera heist. The whole sequence is tremendous fun, the call back to “I Love you/I know” was super cute, I love that this is the first time Luke seems like a proper Jedi, it’s just an all-round good time.

Here’s a potentially controversial statement: I don’t understand the appeal of Boba Fett. I know he’s supposed to be this great man of mystery and intrigue but I’m just not seeing it. To me he hasn’t done enough to justify the esteem in which his character is held and when he’s accidentally knocked into the giant sand vagina I gave zero shits.

For a film series that has thus far stayed away from massive exposition dumps it is a little disappointing that when we get back to Dagobah, after Yoda sadly shuffles off this mortal coil, the ghost of Obi Wan has to show up and explain everything. This isn’t the worst offender I’ve ever seen but it did feel as though Lucas wrote himself into a corner and then decided to Force feed the audience (Geddit?!?! FORCE feed… because it’s Star Wars… and the Force… oh fine be like that…) some piffle, albeit piffle delivered by the legendary Alec Guinness, in order to work his way out of it. I’m not saying that this is an omen of things to come but it absolutely is.

Then we move to Endor. I don’t hate the Ewoks as much as most (they gave us Warwick Davis and he is a goddamn legend) but I will concede that they are narratively unnecessary and conspicuously commercially lucrative. We’ve already established that this is a David and Goliath space parable; you don’t need a physical representation in the form of tiny bears fighting massive Stormtroopers.  Also, I know everyone says Ewoks are just children’s toys but let’s not forget they did want to eat Han Solo. Like actually EAT him…

Then everything comes to a head in the final act and it’s glorious. The rebel strike team try and take the Endor base, the X-Wings are sent to take down the Death Star, Luke goes mano a mano with his Daddy and Admiral Ackbar utters the line that spawned a thousand memes. Each of these showdowns matter and the cutting between the three of them is done really nicely, enough to keep us engaged but not manic enough to confuse us.

Each individual finale fight matters but the battle between Vader and Luke is the one with the biggest emotional heft and brilliantly done it is too. We all know that Luke isn’t really going to turn but when he lets rip on Vader he proper goes for it and it has all the drama you’d expect from such an anticipated fight.

Maybe it all wraps itself up rather fluffily and a bit too nicely but by this point I don’t really mind. The redemption of Vader, Luke’s transition to fully fledged Jedi, Leia and Han’s happily ever after, it’s full on fairytale ending stuff which , as a life-long Disney fan, I am not one to shy away from.

So everyone is happy, we’ve got fireworks and dancing Ewoks; but then, looking like the creepiest creeper who ever creeped, Hayden Christensen’s ghostly figure appears like the Ghost of Special Editions Present. Aside from the fact that this makes no sense (I’m not accepting Lucas’s retcon bullshit about how he’s “returned to his inner persona”, how would Luke even know who he is? He’s only ever seen his Father as an old man?! Poor Sebastian Shaw…), it is a painful reminder of what I have in store over the next three months.

George Lucas’s ridiculous changes aside, I get Star Wars now. I understand the affection; the characters are joyous, I agree with the consensus that Episode V is the best one and if Lightsabers were real I would absolutely want one. So let us soldier on dear reader and you can watch as the prequels shit all over my new found love... *sigh*

Final Thoughts: (This is pretty much exactly what I did at the end of Return of the Jedi) 

‘I wonder if there’s any other original trilogy stuff I can look at before I have to start on the prequels…’

*takes to the interwebs*

‘Ooooh ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ that might be worth a look...’

*10 minutes later*

‘What the actual FUCK…’

Surprise Discovery: I completely forgot about the suggestion that Leia has powers too. Fingers crossed that’s something we get to see in Episode VII!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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