BEFORE: I was thinking today about our cats, who have to be locked away during the day while we're having our new bathroom built. They're well taken care of, one gets shut in our bedroom while our new resident just stays in the basement, and she's more comfortable there anyway, it's been her safe place since November. They both have water, litter boxes and comfortable places to sleep, but just as we got the two of them integrated, we were forced to separate them again. But what do they think about all the construction noise? You certainly can't explain to a cat that it's just construction workers tearing apart the old bathroom and building a new one, instead they probably think it's some monster making noise - and for the upstairs cat, it's in the room next door, so she's been hiding under the bed for eight hours each day. (I can't say as I blame her, after watching the news these days I wish I could hide under the bed for eight hours myself.)
And then over the weekend, on the two days where there wasn't construction noise going on, there were knuckleheads in our neighborhood setting off fireworks, closer and louder and more often than on prior July 4ths, so if you put yourself in the mind of a cat (or dog) for just a moment you may conclude that the world outside definitely SOUNDS like a dangerous place, therefore it probably is one. And they're not wrong, it's just a shame that our beloved family pets have to endure this - sure, it's only one or two days out of the year (or 30 days if it's 2020) but can't we find some way to put an end to all of this? When I was a kid I was afraid of fireworks, too, so my heart goes out to them. I wish we lived in a world where "illegal" fireworks were also unavailable to most people in regions where they are, in fact, illegal.
Djimon Hounsou carries over again from "Blood Diamond".
THE PLOT: When the queen of evil witches escapes the pit she was imprisoned in decades ago by professional monster hunter Spook and kills his apprentice, he recruits young Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son, to help him.
AFTER: From "Blood Diamond" to blood moon - the type of lunar eclipse where the moon appears to be tinted red figures prominently in this film, it's the time when the witches are the most powerful. Just on a whim, I looked up when the most recent blood moon was scheduled to appear in real life - and it turns out it was two nights ago! How about that, another freaky coincidence - I couldn't have planned it much better. For that matter, I couldn't have planned it at all, because I had no idea that this was a prominent plot element. The July 4 Blood moon (Western hemisphere only, sorry, Europe) also coincided with the "Buck Moon" or "Thunder Moon" of July, named for the frequent thunderstorms of summer - so it's a great time to name your new band "Blood Thunder Moon" if you're so inclined.
If I'd known that witches featured prominently in this film, I might also have been inclined to watch it during October, but that's OK - I don't think it linked to any of my horror movies, and it's OK if a few horror/fantasy films slip into the other months. Anyway this is more like one of those "Lord of the Rings" rip-offs, and after watching this and "Onward", I'm convinced that we're now living in this "post-Tolkien" (some might also say "post-Harry Potter") world of movies that unfortunately just aren't as good as Tolkien's stuff, and will never quite live up to the challenge. It's like trying to make a new science-fiction movie after "Star Wars" - why bother? I remember that wave of films in the early 1980's like "Battlestar Galactica" and "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", whenever I saw an ad for them it was just so blatant that they were trying to cash in and ride the coattails of the most successful movie franchise ever. I never got around to seeing the "Battlestar Galactica" films, and then "Buck Rogers" worked better as a TV series, where images of Erin Gray in a skin-tight spacesuit fueled my adolescent fantasies in a way that even Lynda Carter as "Wonder Woman" couldn't.
Sorry, I got a bit off-topic there, it happens. Where were we - ah, yes, "Lord of the Rings" knock-offs. We've had "Percy Jackson" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" and other worlds filled with magical creatures, monsters and fantastic beasts, but do any of them measure up to the status of the Hobbit/LOTR franchise? The latest I think is "Artemis Fowl", which they've been threatening to make and release for at least the last 10 years, and it immediately became one of the least successful films on Disney Plus. They released "The Golden Compass" in 2007 and that failed spectacularly, so they tried again to make that story into the series "His Dark Materials" on HBO, and I think that failed, too. I don't know anybody who watched that, do you? Admittedly, there's been a LOT of new TV in the past year, and more streaming services means more series in addition to all the ones on cable, so mathematically speaking, even if you just stuck to Geek TV, you'd have to be three people to watch everything that's out there.
(It's probably obvious that I'm omitting "Game of Thrones" - but I've never watched it. There, I said it. I didn't get in on it at the beginning, so I missed my chance. I probably could/should have spent a portion of this pandemic lockdown catching up on that show, but I chose to binge "Arrested Development" instead. To be fair, I didn't know how long the lockdown was going to last - I was betting on two weeks, maybe a month, and I lost that bet. Now I'm blaming all the yahoos in Texas and Florida who just HAD to go to water parks and the beach for why I'm not as caught up on my fantasy TV as I could be. They should have at least told me they were going to disobey social distancing rules, then I would have known how much free time I was going to have.)
But I ask you, how am I supposed to take "Seventh Son" seriously when it represents, essentially, a "Big Lebowski" reunion set in a magical world? Sorry, but if you cast Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore as the lead hero and lead villain in a film, that's where my mind is going to go. Then I started imagining Steve Buscemi as the young recruit who was the first apprentice to the Dude/Spook, and the large, strong Tusk character being played by John Goodman, saying that he won't fight witches on Shabbos. Maybe that's as far as my analogy will go, but it's more than enough, the damage has been done. (The first apprentice gets caught up in the fire used to fight the witch, and Donnie in "The Big Lebowski died and got cremated. Once you see the connection, it's hard to un-see it.)
I'm not saying that Master Gregory (aka The Spook) has a lot in common with Jeffrey Lebowski, but inevitably there's going to be SOME crossover - both men like their alcohol, for starters. There's just as much Gandalf in him, honestly, and Jeff Bridges is kind of getting on in years (he was 65 when this film came out in 2014). Doing an entire film without putting your dentures in, however, is a conscious choice that I don't think I can support - it makes him very difficult to understand. I mean, due to my hearing problems I keep the subtitles option turned on all the time these days on my TVs, so they're almost always there if I need them, but it would be nice to not need them.
Anyway, the Spook gets himself a new apprentice, someone who is the seventh son in a large family and whose father was also the seventh son in his family (I'm not sure what the odds are on this, but remember, people back in the magical times tended to have more children, because they had all kinds of spells and potions and amulets, but no birth control) and this is somehow a very magical thing, though this wasn't explained very well, and I'd like to see the paperwork on this. I recognized the actor who played Tom Ward as the actor who played Jigsaw on the Marvel/Netflix show "The Punisher", but going back through his filmography, he also was in two of the "Chronicles of Narnia" films as Prince Caspian. I may have to go back and re-watch those during my November break this year, they're so foggy to me now, because of all the other films I've watched since. But the Narnia film series sort of proves my point about the diminishing returns lately in the fantasy genre - Walden Media only made it through three of the seven books, but they were very successful at the time. Why not finish the series? (Ah, it appears that the rights expired in 2011, plus the third film "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" didn't bring in as much money as the previous films.). So now another company has to either pick up the pieces of that franchise, or wait another ten years and then start over. What a mess - but, to be fair, the entire franchise is a bit of a mess once you get past the first book - nobody's really sure what order to read the books in now, and the popular characters from Book 1 disappear after Book 3 and don't come back until Book 7. And Book 6 is the origin story? How confusing for kids...
I'm getting off track again, but that's really because there's just so LITTLE to talk about regarding "The Seventh Son". The Spook and Tom Ward battle the bad witches, but at the same time, Tom finds himself falling for a young girl who's also a witch, but a good one? Umm, you can't have it both ways, or can you? It turns out the Spook once had a thing going with the lead witch, Mother Malkin. We can only assume it ended badly - but is that what this is really about, an old man dealing with his jealous ex-lover? We come to find out that once it was over and he married someone younger (and probably prettier) Mother Malkin killed his wife, which then led him to imprison her inside a mountain for a few decades. So file this relationship under "It's complicated" I guess.
Turns out there are good witches and bad witches? Umm, OK I guess because this has been a running theme in certain areas of pop culture. "Bewitched", "Sabrina", any others? But then how are we supposed to tell the good ones from the bad ones? Isn't it easier to burn them all and let God sort it out? If a witch is pretty and willing to get it on, does that make her a good witch? That seems rather arbitrary. What if we only think she looks pretty because of an illusion spell? How do you know she's not going to turn into a dragon while you're making out with her, then she bites your head off? It's a difficult proposition, that's all I'm saying. Tom Ward ends up taking over the Spook's job as the Dude rides off into the sunset, but his final advice is "Oh, by the way, forget everything I taught you, make up your own rules and live your life." Umm, thanks, I guess? I'll bet the first thing Tom does is track down that hot young witch again, and he ends up making the same mistakes that the Spook did. Because, you know, she's a hot young witch.
But I ask you, at the end of "The Hobbit", would Gandalf ride off and say to Bilbo Baggins, "Forget everything I told you! Do whatever you want with the ring! Make your own rules, live your own life, because really, Sauron's not that bad!" Hmm, I think not.
Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Ben Barnes (last seen in "The Big Wedding"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Alicia Vikander (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Antje Traue (last seen in "Criminal"), Olivia Williams (last seen in "Hanna"), John DeSantis, Kit Harington (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Gerard Plunkett (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Jason Scott Lee, Kandyse McClure, Luc Roderique (last seen in "Godzilla").
RATING: 4 out of 10 fermented liquids
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