rating: ***
the story: Tony Stark is Iron Man.
what it's all about: I've never found Iron Man to be a particularly good movie. It opened the same year as The Dark Knight, which to my mind was a great movie. And of course it gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which eventually became the only superhero movie franchise(s) anyone really took seriously. I liked Iron Man 2 a great deal, but the first one? I never felt particularly compelled to watch it again, and in fact it took me ten years (yesterday) to do so again, and my impression of it didn't at all change. This is odd for a number of reasons. One isn't really that it took me so long to rewatch it, but that I really didn't feel like doing so for so long. Instant desire to rewatch was something I had for Dark Knight. I couldn't get enough of Dark Knight. I like superhero movies. I like superheroes in general. Yeah, I'm a DC guy. By this I mean I tend to like DC superheroes and DC storytelling. It's not just the superheroes but the storytelling, too. Marvel doesn't often think of its superheroes in the same way DC does. At the movies, there's really just Logan and the two Amazing Spider-Man movies. Then there's stuff like the cartoonish logic of Bryan Singer's first two X-Men, Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man flicks. Ironically by the third one, which looked the most cartoonish, he finally went somewhere real. So of course fans hated it.
Fans loved Iron Man instantly. Visually it already looked timeless. It still looks timeless. The look of the armor matches up exactly in credibility with what you see in Avengers: Infinity War, ten years later. That's pretty good. It looks totally different than anything superhero movies had done before. That was what made Raimi's Spider-Man pop, what made audiences "believe a man can fly" in 1978. In that sense, of course the MCU took over the popular imagination. It did something no one had seen before, and that always hooks the masses.
But in terms of storytelling...It's awful. Just...awful.
Tony Stark is sold as a tech genius. Great! Fantastic! In 2008, Steve Jobs was a cultural icon! Totally legit! But...Tony Stark isn't sold as a Steve Jobs tech genius. He's sold as...a weapons manufacturer. And that's all he's known for. And...when he says he won't make weapons again...that's it. He's apparently done. Forever. And yet...We see his private lab, and he's got robots working for him. He's got J.A.R.V.I.S., the virtual assistant who would later merge with the android Vision. The rest of the world? Doesn't have those robots. Doesn't have J.A.R.V.I.S. I think Siri wasn't a thing yet, in 2008. Alexa wasn't a thing. And of course, Tony famously keeps Iron Man to himself.
Logistically this is idiotic. In every single sense. It only makes sense if you're trying to explain how Iron Man happens. But in the real world, Iron Man makes no sense. At all. So you have to either accept the insanity of it or you can't. And you see how idiotic the whole plot is.
Even as a weapons manufacturer, taking away everything else, Tony Stark makes no sense as a huge celebrity, appearing on every major magazine cover, as depicted in the film. Weapons manufacturers aren't celebrities. Name one. The only "name" weapons developer I can think of is Oppenheimer, and he was never celebrated like this. When Iron Man 2 shows a vintage video of Tony Stark's dad, it's clearly a pastiche of...Walt Disney. Hilarious, considering the first two Iron Man movies were distributed by...Paramount.
But even the conceit of Tony being captured in the midst of a weapons demonstration...in the field of engagement...That's stupid. I'm really sure that would never happen. And then he gets captured. And he's got shrapnel in his chest, so the bad guys...have the ability to give him tech that needs to be inserted onto/into his chest. That can also be modified to power a suit of armor he makes. Because.
This is the sort of nitpicking fans routinely give movies and/or TV shows they hate. Usually, I try really hard not to do it, because nitpicking usually is even more idiotic than what these fans are attempting to portray as idiotic. It's insipid. It's a poor way to analyze something. In this instance, though, these were problems I noticed immediately. I don't normally instantly have these sorts of problems. I hate how Singer uses Professor X as a macguffin in the first two X-Men movies. Both times the exact same way. It's lazy storytelling, something that needs to happen in order to move the story along because no one bothered to think the story through. In other words, I'm not talking about nitpicking at all (mindlessly being annoyed by story elements while attempting to portray yourself as smarter than the people who developed them), but bad storytelling. I always hate bad storytelling.
And Iron Man is, again, beyond anything else, bad storytelling.
The worst thing? Even as it completely rejuvenates Robert Downey Jr.'s career, making him far more popular and relevant than he's ever been...Iron Man completely wastes and trashes Jeff Bridges in the process. How does that even happen??? And you can sort of tell that it motivated him to seek better material, as suddenly he went into a whole career renaissance (Crazy Heart, True Grit, Hell or High Water) with material that was nothing like his lifeless role in Iron Man, the grizzled iconoclast Tony Stark only wishes he'll become, the culmination of everything Bridges had done before.
And Terrence Howard? Marvel has Terrence Howard, and...nope. Not in Iron Man 2. How does that even happen??? Faran Tahir, who would turn up as a Starfleet captain in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, lamented playing a terrorist in Iron Man. Do you think he ever changed his mind? In Iron Man 3 they change the whole idea of Tahir's role, giving the lead-up to the Mandarin to a sham played by Ben Kingsley. They try and pretend real terrorists were never a part of the story. Yeah!
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper Potts, the Tony Stark assistant who in 2018 would probably be cheering on #MeToo, but instead becomes a slow-burning love interest, who puts up with all of Tony's antics...because. They never even try to develop her character, not in Iron Man, not in any other appearance. Clark Gregg, in his first appearance as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson, is mostly asked to dance around the joke of what S.H.I.E.L.D. actually stands for aside from a very elaborate excuse for an acronym. Leslie Bibb plays a hot chick who's also a reporter for Vanity Fair, which is one of those inexplicable magazines smitten with weapons manufacturer Tony Stark.
Really, it's only Downey Jr. and Bettany who appear fully-formed and presentable for future appearances. Good solid foundation, sure, but...
We learn late in the movie that Bridges' character was in cahoots with Tahir all along, that he set up Tony to die, as he did his father, to kill the golden goose, because...That part is never really made clear. It would make sense if it were because either Stark had figured out what he was doing, but...Yeah. Not in this movie. Not in any movie. He just likes to do away with tech geniuses, I guess. The movie goes out of its way to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that not only is Tony the only person capable of creating the tech he does, but that Bridges' character isn't even in the conversation. In the era of Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Steve Wozniak???
The funny thing about all this is that 2011's Green Lantern actually borrows a lot of Iron Man's story elements, and does them better, and fans insist to this day that it's a badly made movie, full of plot holes. Really??? In the interests of full disclosure, Green Lantern is based on a DC superhero, and so you can call bias if you like, but for me it's still storytelling. Green Lantern has great storytelling. Iron Man doesn't.
So Iron Man 2 follows it with infinitely better storytelling. Fans disagree. But the insanely popular MCU happens anyway. I can't possibly be upset about that. There's still good material that results from it, the Captain America movies notably.
I'd hope that in the years to come, anyone looking to revisit the whole thing recognizes the first one in the sequence for what it is: a ridiculous mess.
Showing posts with label Jeff Bridges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Bridges. Show all posts
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Monday, April 16, 2018
Hell or High Water (2016)
rating: *****
the story: Brothers turn bank robber to pay off their mother's mortgage.
what it's all about: The year it was released I wrote up some thoughts about Hell or High Water here in which I probed its general morality. Admittedly (and in the thoughts themselves I say so), I hadn't seen it yet. Now I have seen it a few times, and so I can revisit and talk about the movie itself.
It's a modern classic. It's a modern classic in much the way No Country for Old Men seemed to be. I'm still mulling over No Country itself; a lot of what I like about that one is the iconic Javier Bardem performance, as close to a single great acting creation as anything outside of Heath Ledger's Joker we've had since Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. Hell or High Water doesn't have anything like that. The closest it gets is Ben Foster's breakthrough as Chris Pine's hell-raising brother. Foster has quietly been growing into a brilliant actor, and nobody seems to have noticed. He's a lot like Pine, actually. Where Pine has occasionally created full-on characters (Smokin' Aces, Stretch), Foster has merely inhabited fascinating roles. Pine is most often in that mode, too, and he found his best to date in this film, so on that score alone Hell or High Water is watching.
It's also well worth watching for Jeff Bridges. Bridges has been around Hollywood for decades, but I think he's gotten far more interesting as he's aged. He's certainly been a standout in recent years even among critics. Crazy Heart earned him a Best Actor Oscar, which he followed with the Coens remake of True Grit. He's fallen off the radar since then, as his present act has become more familiar, but for me he remains fascinating, and in Hell or High Water he is fascinating. He's got the same sort of role Tommy Lee Jones had in No Country, but he plays it very differently. He wouldn't at all be out of place in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Bridges plays an ornery FBI agent days away from retirement. The role itself is a cliché, but screenwriter Taylor Sheridan writes it with a purpose; the constant offensive ribbing he aims at his partner is metaphorical. They're in pursuit of Pine and Foster, whose goal is basically to stick it to the man. They're reacting against a system that seems to have no place for them. Bridges is trying to put things into perspective. He tells his partner at one point that it's his teasing that's going to be missed. His partner reflects about how the banks that are threatening to take away Pine and Foster's childhood home are just the latest in a long series of land seizures. He would know, because he's part Indian.
The most telling scene, maybe, in the whole movie is inside a casino, where the brothers are laundering their stolen money. Foster confronts a different Indian, whom Foster has been insulting (you can see the deliberate parallels here). The Indian has just explained that being a Comanche means everyone's an enemy. Foster's retort, why the Indian should leave him alone, is, "Because I'm a Comanche." He sees everyone as his enemy. That's the key to the whole character. Years ago he defended his mother against an abusive father. He ended up in jail because he later killed him (the trial bought it as a hunting accident, inside a barn). He agrees to go along with his brother's bank robbing scheme mostly because, well, everyone's his enemy already anyway. He's the crazy one; without him Pine couldn't have done any of it.
In framing it as being about the robberies themselves, that's the wrong interpretation. The whole story is a metaphor, about how the system has slowly turned against individuals like Pine, like his mother, anyone who can be exploited by a system, really. We've seen exploitation before, and in hindsight we always condemn it, but it's far harder to do in the present. We see something like the Great Recession, and we mostly think in terms of economic recovery. We don't particularly see or care about the lives being crushed because of it, or why. To its credit, Hollywood hasn't ignored the idea. Jim Carrey's Fun with Dick and Jane was pretty much the same story, and that was ten years earlier, when the CEO corruption scandals that eventually led to the Great Recession were first coming to light. The problem is, these movies don't change anything, and they don't even lead to conversations. This is an era about tough conversations, and yet we keep dodging the toughest ones.
Pine fears that his actions will forever sully his name. This fear is derived from the fact that he has growing boys who become the chief beneficiaries of his thefts. The money for the mortgage is actually so he can reclaim the property and thus lay claim to the oil that's been found beneath it. The same banks he robbed end up welcoming not only the stolen money, but the oil money, because in the end, money is money. Bridges figures all of this out. What he warns Pine is that it's not his reputation that he had to worry about, but his conscience. Foster ends up killing a few people during the course of events, and Bridges says that's Pine's responsibility; the robberies were his idea, and anything that happened during them or because of them are his fault, too. Pine will have to live with that.
Hell or High Water, then, is a cautionary tale. You can burn down paradise in order to do the right thing, but in the end, it's not satisfaction you've earned but a scorched earth, and that's what you're going to have to live with. The ends don't always justify the means. It's a fantasy Western, wish fulfillment in a time when injustice is insidious, systemic, and it doesn't care whether you're white or Indian or any other race. Sheridan has become one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, whether as screenwriter or director; David Mackenzie is another director who's gotten to benefit from collaborating with him. Everything Sheridan creates adds to our understanding of how our world works, and where it needs improving. But he also issues warnings, and we'd be wise to heed them.
the story: Brothers turn bank robber to pay off their mother's mortgage.
what it's all about: The year it was released I wrote up some thoughts about Hell or High Water here in which I probed its general morality. Admittedly (and in the thoughts themselves I say so), I hadn't seen it yet. Now I have seen it a few times, and so I can revisit and talk about the movie itself.
It's a modern classic. It's a modern classic in much the way No Country for Old Men seemed to be. I'm still mulling over No Country itself; a lot of what I like about that one is the iconic Javier Bardem performance, as close to a single great acting creation as anything outside of Heath Ledger's Joker we've had since Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. Hell or High Water doesn't have anything like that. The closest it gets is Ben Foster's breakthrough as Chris Pine's hell-raising brother. Foster has quietly been growing into a brilliant actor, and nobody seems to have noticed. He's a lot like Pine, actually. Where Pine has occasionally created full-on characters (Smokin' Aces, Stretch), Foster has merely inhabited fascinating roles. Pine is most often in that mode, too, and he found his best to date in this film, so on that score alone Hell or High Water is watching.
It's also well worth watching for Jeff Bridges. Bridges has been around Hollywood for decades, but I think he's gotten far more interesting as he's aged. He's certainly been a standout in recent years even among critics. Crazy Heart earned him a Best Actor Oscar, which he followed with the Coens remake of True Grit. He's fallen off the radar since then, as his present act has become more familiar, but for me he remains fascinating, and in Hell or High Water he is fascinating. He's got the same sort of role Tommy Lee Jones had in No Country, but he plays it very differently. He wouldn't at all be out of place in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Bridges plays an ornery FBI agent days away from retirement. The role itself is a cliché, but screenwriter Taylor Sheridan writes it with a purpose; the constant offensive ribbing he aims at his partner is metaphorical. They're in pursuit of Pine and Foster, whose goal is basically to stick it to the man. They're reacting against a system that seems to have no place for them. Bridges is trying to put things into perspective. He tells his partner at one point that it's his teasing that's going to be missed. His partner reflects about how the banks that are threatening to take away Pine and Foster's childhood home are just the latest in a long series of land seizures. He would know, because he's part Indian.
The most telling scene, maybe, in the whole movie is inside a casino, where the brothers are laundering their stolen money. Foster confronts a different Indian, whom Foster has been insulting (you can see the deliberate parallels here). The Indian has just explained that being a Comanche means everyone's an enemy. Foster's retort, why the Indian should leave him alone, is, "Because I'm a Comanche." He sees everyone as his enemy. That's the key to the whole character. Years ago he defended his mother against an abusive father. He ended up in jail because he later killed him (the trial bought it as a hunting accident, inside a barn). He agrees to go along with his brother's bank robbing scheme mostly because, well, everyone's his enemy already anyway. He's the crazy one; without him Pine couldn't have done any of it.
In framing it as being about the robberies themselves, that's the wrong interpretation. The whole story is a metaphor, about how the system has slowly turned against individuals like Pine, like his mother, anyone who can be exploited by a system, really. We've seen exploitation before, and in hindsight we always condemn it, but it's far harder to do in the present. We see something like the Great Recession, and we mostly think in terms of economic recovery. We don't particularly see or care about the lives being crushed because of it, or why. To its credit, Hollywood hasn't ignored the idea. Jim Carrey's Fun with Dick and Jane was pretty much the same story, and that was ten years earlier, when the CEO corruption scandals that eventually led to the Great Recession were first coming to light. The problem is, these movies don't change anything, and they don't even lead to conversations. This is an era about tough conversations, and yet we keep dodging the toughest ones.
Pine fears that his actions will forever sully his name. This fear is derived from the fact that he has growing boys who become the chief beneficiaries of his thefts. The money for the mortgage is actually so he can reclaim the property and thus lay claim to the oil that's been found beneath it. The same banks he robbed end up welcoming not only the stolen money, but the oil money, because in the end, money is money. Bridges figures all of this out. What he warns Pine is that it's not his reputation that he had to worry about, but his conscience. Foster ends up killing a few people during the course of events, and Bridges says that's Pine's responsibility; the robberies were his idea, and anything that happened during them or because of them are his fault, too. Pine will have to live with that.
Hell or High Water, then, is a cautionary tale. You can burn down paradise in order to do the right thing, but in the end, it's not satisfaction you've earned but a scorched earth, and that's what you're going to have to live with. The ends don't always justify the means. It's a fantasy Western, wish fulfillment in a time when injustice is insidious, systemic, and it doesn't care whether you're white or Indian or any other race. Sheridan has become one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, whether as screenwriter or director; David Mackenzie is another director who's gotten to benefit from collaborating with him. Everything Sheridan creates adds to our understanding of how our world works, and where it needs improving. But he also issues warnings, and we'd be wise to heed them.
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