I can't remember the last time I heard so many positive reviews and impressions from friends about a film before seeing it. In this day and age of extremely-hyped-up blockbusters, you often run into the problem that films can never live up to the marketing build-up. Usually, this will be tempered by an immediate counterpoint from fans and reviewers, and so you're reset to a somewhat neutral position. Not so with Fury Road, though, which seems to get glowing reviews from all sides.
So where do I fall on this?
Well, let's be frank - yes the movie was built up too much. But before you take that to mean the movie is bad, let's back up and remember that a movie can still be good, even great, and still not live up to expectations. And when the expectations are that the movie will fundamentally change your life because of how awesome it is, there's nowhere to go but down. And in this case, that's from A+ to maybe A-. (And in fact, upon reconsideration over the last few days, I actually think it might just get a flat A. I think the minus was really the result of the build-up.)
But A- is better than the vast majority of movies, and I already feel like there are elements of the movie that will reveal themselves upon further reflection. And of course, that sort of letter grade is inherently problematic, because one is tempted to reward certain genres above others (something award shows like the Oscars are notorious for.)
The story of Fury Road revolves around one of the pockets of tyrannical civilization that have arisen out of the collapse of society. In this case, a man called Immortan Joe has control of a large reserve of water and has thus become something of a God-Emperor among his subjects. Out of the teeming masses who come to him for water (which he warns they shouldn't get "addicted to" after giving them a rather pitiful amount) he has people used as equipment to keep his society running, such as women permanently hooked up to milking machines, and his white-painted "War Boys," who are religiously devoted to him and yearn to die in battle so that they can be reborn in Valhalla. And finally, there are his wives - a group of beautiful women he wants to use to have his children.
Max is our surrogate as we enter this world - he's kidnapped and his car is seized, and when they discover he has O-negative blood, he's made into a donor to keep one of the War Boys alive (a lot of people have massive tumors, presumably from nuclear fallout.) The film has two protagonists, though. Max is pretty much just in it to survive, though if he helps some people along the way, he's not opposed. However, the real driving force of the movie is Furiosa - an "Imperator" in Joe's army who decides to smuggle Joe's wives away and bring them to the "Green Place," which is where she grew up.
What I find kind of fascinating about Immortan Joe is that he represents civilization, but it's the absolute worst-case-scenario of patriarchy - one in which absolutely everything flows up to Joe. All the War Boys call him "dad," and he wants to take back his wives, particularly the pregnant Splendid, because he sees the children as his property. In positioning himself as a god, he has reduced everyone in his service to objects.
Many have been raving about Fury Road as a feminist film (the always-hilarious "men's rights activists" see this as a bad thing,) and I certainly think it qualifies, given that it's literally about women's liberation, as well as the fact that the real hero-savior is Furiosa. But even though the War Boys are largely seen as antagonists, we get some insight into their condition as warrior-fanatics through Nux, a War Boy who gets taken along for the ride after his "Blood Bag," (Max) and he survive a massive sandstorm. There is a childlike innocence to Nux, and the gravity of a personality like Joe, and the potential to have a larger meaning, draws him into the madhouse of violence. Their lives are tossed away by Joe, who uses his religion to ensure total loyalty, even to the point of death. Yes, men suffer in a patriarchy as well - there's your "men's rights" issue.
The wider problem is how one builds a good civilization. On one hand, we have the baggage of thousands of years of flawed systems, but through the gradual change of those years - and even revolutions often bring about only incremental changes - we can try to make life better. Chance are that if you're reading this, you probably live in a place where there's clean water to drink and you can generally trust that most strangers you pass on the street aren't going to kill you. That's an improvement. Whatever caused society to collapse in the Mad Max world is left a bit unclear (at least in this movie, though a combination of peak oil, nuclear war, and global warming seem to be possible culprits,) but it suggests that starting from scratch is going to make for a lot of problems. In essence: Anarchy breeds dictators.
At one point in the film, Max says that hope is a bad thing, but it seems that what's really bad is hoping for some perfect paradise far away that already exists. Instead, one needs to take what one has and make it into the world you want to live in. You can't get caught up in the Green Place or Valhalla for that matter, when there's a real world filled with real people who could change for the better with a little respect and cooperation.
However, beyond these philosophical ramblings on theme, the movie is truly exciting, and the action definitely got my heart racing. The production design is fantastic, with its cobbled-together aesthetic that gives the whole world a real sense of history to it, even as that history is being rewritten by those in power. One aspect that I love is that Joe has turned steering wheels into religious artifacts - before they go out for a ride, the War Boys must procure their wheels from a big altar and affix them to their cars.
And while Immortan Joe is a God-Emperor of his own little patch of the world, there's a great sense of new centers of power outside of his domain. We're seeing the start of tribes and city-states, but at least for now, the people running them are mostly crazy over-the-top tyrants. Who's to say you can't wear a wig made out of bullets? You're the boss, Bullet Farmer!
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Daredevil on Netflix
Marvel Studios has been a powerhouse, creating blockbuster movies that are basically guaranteed successes (for now at least,) which I think is due to a combination of having a fun "house style" and also the way that the interconnectedness of the various movies invites one to try to keep up with all of them - even though Thor, Iron Man, or my favorite outside of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, have their own adventures, they're all linked somewhat.
When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. launched, I was hopeful - mainly as a fan of previous Joss Whedon shows - but I ultimately lost interest pretty quickly, as it didn't have the spectacle that the films have, and very little to make up for that deficiency. I'm told it gets better, but I haven't had the stomach to give it another chance just yet.
Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Daredevil on the recommendation of a friend (though given that this is a friend who is an avowed comics nerd/walking comics encyclopedia, I know he has a pretty big positive response bias toward anything superhero-related, which I don't think I do.)
What's interesting is how much smaller-scale Daredevil is. Naturally, as a tv-show (well, a Netflix show) there can't be massive battles against CGI aliens all the time, but also, the tone of the show pulls it much farther down to street-level. Tony Stark is a globe-trotting billionaire with a huge corporation under his control, Captain America is a walking national treasure, and Thor is a freaking god (well, technically a trans-dimensional alien, but close enough,) and so their stories basically go big or go home. Matt Murdock does have a legitimate superpower in the form of his heightened senses, as well as some serious martial arts training, but he operates on the level of a single district in Manhattan.
Seven episodes into the thirteen-episode season, the mythos of Daredevil is only just starting to expand into the more exotic stuff one finds in superhero comics. Matt is just a good guy who wants to see his neighborhood improve, and the fact that this is technically the same universe where Dark Elves are crashing into London and there's a secret Nazi plot to use drone warfare to destroy freedom throughout the world doesn't really bleed into the story that much. One gets the impression that this isn't so much because there's a strict barrier between these stories as much as the fact that, despite all this insanity, there are still cities full of people with criminals and corruption and innocent people getting caught in the crossfire through no fault of their own.
Actually, the larger mythos of the Marvel universe does actually provide one helpful thing for the show's narrative. If you've been to Manhattan basically since the mid-90s, you know that the whole island pretty much went through massive gentrification, including Hell's Kitchen. So while crime is certainly not non-existent there, it's not the seedy urban dystopia of Taxi Driver or the Warriors.
But one of the biggest events of the MCU was the "Battle of New York" - the massive invasion by the Chitauri that was stopped by the Avengers in the first crossover film. While the Avengers themselves picked up and got some shawarma afterward, the fact is that the city is struggling to recover.
And that's how the show's primary antagonist enters the scene. Wilson Fisk, who has yet to be referred to by his supervillain name Kingpin (Matt has yet to be called Daredevil, and doesn't even have the iconic red suit,) actually earnestly thinks that he's helping to rebuild the city. The only problem is that he's doing so in a way that establishes various criminal elite as an integral part of that structure.
For the first several episodes, then, Daredevil feels more like a fairly grounded crime show, that just features a hero who puts on a mask (good thing he doesn't need to use his eyes) and does what he can to upset the villains' plans through the judicious application of fisticuffs. And while Matt's a total badass (and the fight choreography is fantastic, especially the single-take fight scene at the end of episode two,) Kingpin's done so much legwork that it's difficult to see how our hero is going to take him down (for one thing, while not all cops are under Kingpin's employ, it seems like the ones who are outnumber those who aren't by about four to one.)
Notably, however, at episode seven (the halfway point,) we start to get more of Daredevil's backstory, and some of the more exotic elements (namely ninjas.) Actually, this has all reminded me of the fact that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally created as a parody of "dark, edgy" superhero comics, particularly Daredevil during Frank Miller's run. The show actually eschews the typical origin story stuff, at least at first, but we are eventually introduced to Murdock's mentor "Stick," (Splinter's antecedent) and we've started to get hints of a larger ninja organization that I believe is called "The Hand," (and is correspondingly the antecedent for the Foot Clan - sorry, I'm a guy who was born in the mid-80s, so the Ninja Turtles were an obsession of my childhood.)
I'm just over halfway through the season, but I'm still rather captivated at how different this show is in tone than other Marvel adaptations have been. It's much darker, definitely more violent (and even downright gory at times,) and helpfully winds back the stakes so that the fate of the world doesn't have to hang in the balance for us to care about what our hero is doing. Daredevil isn't even trying to protect all of New York, or even all of Manhattan, but by showing the high stakes of saving a kid from a gang of kidnappers, it actually helps put the "world in peril" stories that the other superheroes have to deal with in context.
Anyway, I'll probably have my reactions when I finish the season, but for now, I'd say check it out if you want to see a different side of Marvel Studios.
When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. launched, I was hopeful - mainly as a fan of previous Joss Whedon shows - but I ultimately lost interest pretty quickly, as it didn't have the spectacle that the films have, and very little to make up for that deficiency. I'm told it gets better, but I haven't had the stomach to give it another chance just yet.
Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Daredevil on the recommendation of a friend (though given that this is a friend who is an avowed comics nerd/walking comics encyclopedia, I know he has a pretty big positive response bias toward anything superhero-related, which I don't think I do.)
What's interesting is how much smaller-scale Daredevil is. Naturally, as a tv-show (well, a Netflix show) there can't be massive battles against CGI aliens all the time, but also, the tone of the show pulls it much farther down to street-level. Tony Stark is a globe-trotting billionaire with a huge corporation under his control, Captain America is a walking national treasure, and Thor is a freaking god (well, technically a trans-dimensional alien, but close enough,) and so their stories basically go big or go home. Matt Murdock does have a legitimate superpower in the form of his heightened senses, as well as some serious martial arts training, but he operates on the level of a single district in Manhattan.
Seven episodes into the thirteen-episode season, the mythos of Daredevil is only just starting to expand into the more exotic stuff one finds in superhero comics. Matt is just a good guy who wants to see his neighborhood improve, and the fact that this is technically the same universe where Dark Elves are crashing into London and there's a secret Nazi plot to use drone warfare to destroy freedom throughout the world doesn't really bleed into the story that much. One gets the impression that this isn't so much because there's a strict barrier between these stories as much as the fact that, despite all this insanity, there are still cities full of people with criminals and corruption and innocent people getting caught in the crossfire through no fault of their own.
Actually, the larger mythos of the Marvel universe does actually provide one helpful thing for the show's narrative. If you've been to Manhattan basically since the mid-90s, you know that the whole island pretty much went through massive gentrification, including Hell's Kitchen. So while crime is certainly not non-existent there, it's not the seedy urban dystopia of Taxi Driver or the Warriors.
But one of the biggest events of the MCU was the "Battle of New York" - the massive invasion by the Chitauri that was stopped by the Avengers in the first crossover film. While the Avengers themselves picked up and got some shawarma afterward, the fact is that the city is struggling to recover.
And that's how the show's primary antagonist enters the scene. Wilson Fisk, who has yet to be referred to by his supervillain name Kingpin (Matt has yet to be called Daredevil, and doesn't even have the iconic red suit,) actually earnestly thinks that he's helping to rebuild the city. The only problem is that he's doing so in a way that establishes various criminal elite as an integral part of that structure.
For the first several episodes, then, Daredevil feels more like a fairly grounded crime show, that just features a hero who puts on a mask (good thing he doesn't need to use his eyes) and does what he can to upset the villains' plans through the judicious application of fisticuffs. And while Matt's a total badass (and the fight choreography is fantastic, especially the single-take fight scene at the end of episode two,) Kingpin's done so much legwork that it's difficult to see how our hero is going to take him down (for one thing, while not all cops are under Kingpin's employ, it seems like the ones who are outnumber those who aren't by about four to one.)
Notably, however, at episode seven (the halfway point,) we start to get more of Daredevil's backstory, and some of the more exotic elements (namely ninjas.) Actually, this has all reminded me of the fact that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally created as a parody of "dark, edgy" superhero comics, particularly Daredevil during Frank Miller's run. The show actually eschews the typical origin story stuff, at least at first, but we are eventually introduced to Murdock's mentor "Stick," (Splinter's antecedent) and we've started to get hints of a larger ninja organization that I believe is called "The Hand," (and is correspondingly the antecedent for the Foot Clan - sorry, I'm a guy who was born in the mid-80s, so the Ninja Turtles were an obsession of my childhood.)
I'm just over halfway through the season, but I'm still rather captivated at how different this show is in tone than other Marvel adaptations have been. It's much darker, definitely more violent (and even downright gory at times,) and helpfully winds back the stakes so that the fate of the world doesn't have to hang in the balance for us to care about what our hero is doing. Daredevil isn't even trying to protect all of New York, or even all of Manhattan, but by showing the high stakes of saving a kid from a gang of kidnappers, it actually helps put the "world in peril" stories that the other superheroes have to deal with in context.
Anyway, I'll probably have my reactions when I finish the season, but for now, I'd say check it out if you want to see a different side of Marvel Studios.
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