On slut-shaming and female superheroes

Posted on May 8, 2015 by reelentropy

Photo courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios

About a week before Age of Ultron was set to come out, stars Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner got into hot water for calling Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) a mean word. Since its release, in a series of stories that predictably are now completely out of control, writer/director Joss Whedon was chased off Twitter, though he since denied it was the cause, and Renner hopped right back into the hot water by reiterating he offending term on Conan. Also, co-star Mark Ruffalo has criticized Marvel for not producing toys of Romanoff, and all these things have only fanned the fire about there still not being a female-based comic book adaptation.

Two things:

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Age of Ultron brings character drama back to Marvel’s superheroes

Posted on May 1, 2015 by reelentropy

“Ultron thinks we’re what’s wrong with the world. This isn’t just about beating him. It’s about whether or not he’s right.” Photos courtesy Walt Disney Motion Picture Studios.

The movie takes place over the course of just a few days, isn’t it a little melodramatic to call it “Age” of Ultron? 

After saving New York in the first movie and then doing a bunch of other things that they couldn’t help each other out with because of the actors’ contractual obligations, the gang’s back together in The Avengers sequel. In what represents a stunning evolution for Marvel, they begin the film by actually addressing the events of previous movies, namely the collapse of SHIELD in The Winter Soldier. Age of Ultron begins with the group’s last raid on the Hydra compound where Baron Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann) is experimenting on debris from the Battle of New York, including Loki’s scepter, which he requisitioned from SHIELD before Hydra’s rebellion. Their mission successful, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) discover the head of the scepter is the key to cracking an artificial intelligence program they’ve been working on for some time, a “suit of armor around the world.” When this intelligence, Ultron (James Spader — JAMES SPADER!!!) boots up, he promptly kills JARVIS (Paul Bettany), backs himself up on the Internet, co-opts Stark’s robot legion and tries to kill everyone on the face of the Earth.

Age of Ultron brings Joss Whedon back as the writer/director, and makes it painfully obvious what the recent Marvel movies — Guardians of the Galaxy aside — have been missing: character development. Everyone’s questioned where Iron Man was when Maleketh was destroying the universe in Thor: The Dark World and why Banner wasn’t helping in Iron Man 3, but these aren’t just contract-driven omissions — they’re symptomatic of a larger storytelling problem with the series. At this point, many of the characters simply aren’t fleshed out as much as they need to be. Their motivations and fears, things that distinguish them from each other and why they’re doing things the way that they’re doing them are all unclear through a lot of the Phase 2 movies because their actions and interactions are inconsistent across the several-director continuity.

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A less chaotic state: 2003’s Daredevil

Posted on April 29, 2015 by reelentropy

Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox

Way back at the turn of the century when Marvel began its two decades and counting dominion over the box office with X-Men, no one could have imagined the sustained success the film industry would eventually bring them, but it’s looking more and more like someone did have a vague idea of how it would all play out. Marvel used established studios Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox that could afford the risk to test the market with properties like Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four to spawn a series of movies that I like to think as Marvel’s Phase 0.

After Marvel made its own film studio and established dominance with the first Avengers movies, many of the properties have been trickling back into their hands. Marvel had already reacquired the rights to Hulk after the Ang Lee disaster, and it recently won a long battle with Sony over Spider-Man. 20th Century Fox is doing just fine with X-Men and hopes to get Fantastic Four up and running this summer, though traditional X-Men characters Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will figure prominently in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Of those first five properties, Daredevil is the only one nobody was fighting over. The film was coolly received at the time, and despite members of the cast expressing interest in sequels around the darker Born Again and Guardian Devil storylines, the only movie it spawned was 2005’s reviled Elektra. Criticism was so harsh for star Ben Affleck in particular that he said he’d never dress up in a costume again, a vow he has vehemently held to ever since.

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NO NARRATING

Posted on April 24, 2015 by reelentropy

It’s far from the worst thing about the film, but The Age of Adaline isn’t helped by Blake Lively’s pulse-less non-performance. It could have been a lot worse — Katherine Heigl was the first choice, but it also could have been a lot better — Natalie Portman was the second. Photos courtesy Lionsgate.

It’s happening! It’s finally here! Everybody get ready for Age of… Adaline. Oh.

The Age of Adaline is about Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) as she struggles to retain her humanity after a bolt of lightning freezes her at 29 years old in the 1930s. Bowman has been changing her identity and moving to a new place at regular intervals for 60 years and avoided making emotional attachments because people will grow old on her and die, though she’s clearly just fine having a dog. On the eve of one of these shifts, she meets Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman), who dotes on her and forces her into a relationship she says she doesn’t want to get into. Eventually, they go to celebrate Jones’ parents’ 40-year wedding anniversary and discover that his father, William (Harrison Ford), is an old love of Bowman’s.

Despite its primitive nature as a storytelling method, there are several reasons to use narration in a movie. It can provide insight into a character’s state of mind and decision-making process, add background details that are otherwise unexplained or simply be a poetic, stylistic choice like in Sin City. It should not be used, however, to explain everything as it’s happening to the audience like we’re a bunch of fucking idiots.

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Girl Problems from the Machine

Posted on April 24, 2015 by reelentropy

Nathan’s man-cave is high-tech and well-lit, but also pretty kidnappy, with doors that lock automatically when the power goes out and this weird, fascist key-card system he insists on. Photos courtesy A24 Films.

Ex Machina is a beautifully shot, exhilarating film about paranoia and humanity, but it loses some points over its nasty but intriguing gender issues.

The film starts with Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) winning a week with Nathan (the scintillating Oscar Isaac), a hermit software genius who became a billionaire after developing something akin to Google. Soon after they meet, Caleb learns what he’s really won: the chance to be the human part of a Turing test with the artificial intelligence that Nathan has developed, an android named Ava (Alicia Vikander), though it is clear early on that the real test is for Caleb.

The trailer spoils pretty much everything and most people would be able to figure out the plot even without it, but Ex Machina has a way of making viewers not expect what’s going to happen anyway. The film obviously has some complex messages about the way we use technology and how we interact with members of the opposite sex, but they’re all buried underneath an equally complex, visually rich story about two people having a battle of wits over the main character’s heart and mind.

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