Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Year 15, Day 228 - 8/16/23 - Movie #4,523

BEFORE: I don't think I mentioned before in this space that last December I watched the "Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special", which had a great appearance by Kevin Bacon, playing Kevin Bacon, and that was really the set-up for this film, it showed our heroes settling in on Knowhere space station, taking some time to learn about this Earth holiday called Christmas, and how to celebrate it by finding a present for Peter Quill after Yondu ruined all his teenage holidays.  It's more important because it introduces the telekinetic Soviet space dog, Cosmo, and re-introduces Mantis, but as (whoops, spoiler alert) Ego's daughter and therefore Quill's half-sister.  I wouldn't watch it now, it's the middle of summer but feel free to give it a go when December rolls around again.  

The voice of Bradley Cooper carries over from "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves".

 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (Movie #2,625), "Thor: Love and Thunder" (Movie #4,228)

THE PLOT: Still reeling from the loss of Gamora, Peter Quill rallies his team to defend the universe and save one of their own members - a mission that could mean the end of the Guardians if not successful. 

AFTER: This is a recently-released feature, just started streaming on Disney Plus this month, so I have to issue a SPOILER ALERT.  I can't talk about this one without giving away the plot, so turn back now if you haven't seen this one yet. 

OK, to properly describe how I feel about certain parts of this film - namely, the origin flashbacks for Rocket, I have to talk about a magic routine performed by my favorite performing duo, Penn & Teller, during which they appear to drop a live rabbit into a wood chipper.  Now, I learned many years ago how this pair operates, the big loud guy distracts you with banter while the smart silent guy performs some sleight of hand (and it is "sleight", not "slight", please) so I know in my heart that if they appear to drop a rabbit in a wood chipper, for sure they did NOT just drop a rabbit in a wood chipper. Most likely the rabbit falls into a safe compartment while the machine spits out a fair amount of fake blood.  This also makes logical sense because A) they're magicians, not monsters, B) the cost of keeping one rabbit alive for several months is probably a lot less than buying and training a new rabbit for each night's performance, and C) if they really did what they appeared to do, PETA would be protesting their show each night until they got shut down. But the effect is achieved, it appears that a cute bunny just met his maker, right there on stage - and while it's obviously NOT for real, there still might be some people who would find fault with the appearance of doing something so outrageous as killing a rabbit live for the entertainment or shock value. 

Similarly (I hope) in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", we finally learn the backstory of our favorite space raccoon who claims he's not a raccoon. He came from a litter of lab animals, ones experimented on by the High Evolutionary, he had work done on his brain to make him intelligent, and other devices implanted to keep him controlled and disposable at any time.  There were other animals that could talk and think, too, an otter and a walrus and a little bunny, some had artificial limbs and other "improvements" in the name of science, and Rocket was the smartest of them all somehow, he could posit the answers to scientific problems even when he didn't fully understand the parameters.  The lab animals dreamed of a life on their master's new planet, Counter-Earth, in which they'd see the sky and breathe fresh air and live out their days, only they didn't know, this was never going to be part of their future, they would live and die as lab test subjects.  It's depressing beyond belief, heartbreaking, and I have no idea what this all is doing in a fun Marvel series about space pirates.  Jeezus, I just endured James Cameron's three-hour lecture about Tulkans and how bad whaling is, and now I have to hear from James Gunn about how bad it is to experiment on animals, which I already know?

Look, I know it's not real, those are CGI lab animals, I'm sure no actual real-life creatures were harmed in the making of this film, because Disney (the same company that got flak for killing Bambi's mother) doesn't want to get shut down, either.  But just like with Penn and Teller's rabbit, I'm upset with whoever thought this was a good idea for this story, to treat these (not real) animals so badly for some kind of entertainment or shock value.  I didn't come to this movie for a lecture or to cry over the plight of tortured lab animals, I came here to be entertained, damn it, and I simply did not find this entertaining.  What's my motivation to ever watch this film a second time, knowing this is waiting for me and it's just going to depress me?  Rocket escapes the lab, we eventually learn, and finds his new home with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but his little fluffy animal friends weren't so lucky, you horrible screenwriting bastards.  You know, there are a lot of young children who like to watch the "Guardians" movies - sure, they maybe could learn a valuable lesson about respecting all forms of life from this, but you're also really bringing down the vibe in the room, you know that, right?  Also, is animal testing still a thing, or did we fix this problem years ago, which would mean that it only exists still in the M.C.U.?  For God's sake, why?

I know, I know, the High Evolutionary is a mean S.O.B.  I've read the Avengers comics for years and never really picked up on this, he was always portrayed as some kind of "Dr. Moreau" evil scientist in a weird armored suit, and he made creatures called Ani-Men, or maybe Manimals (?) who were once animals but altered with chemicals or radiation or something to walk upright and talk and think.  Really, when you think about it, tying Rocket's origin to this guy is maybe a stroke of genius, and I'm not really sure if his comic book origin reflects this, or if it's just for the movie.  Anyway, it gives the Guardians some powerful motivation to take this guy down, while they're trying to get the information necessary to save Rocket's life.  The High Evolutionary in the comic books made a planet called Counter-Earth, it was exactly on the other side of the sun from Earth at all times, in the same orbit, so you couldn't see it, and it was super-hard to get to, unless you could take a shortcut through the sun. And on this planet he conducted his sick, twisted genetic experiments to turn animals into men for some reason, until the Avengers or someone else took him down.  

The rest of this film is pure nonsense - like I know we saw the teaser for the creation of Adam Warlock in Vol. 2, but here that character just appears in the first few minutes of the film and attacks Rocket in Knowhere space station, just out of the blue.  If you hadn't seen the last film or read the comics you'd probably think, "Who the hell is THIS guy, where did he come from, and what's his deal?"  I did see the last film, and I was STILL thinking this, because he doesn't resemble the Adam Warlock from the comics, like AT ALL.  And still I don't know what his powers are here, what's his motivation, who he is or why he is because it feels like the film just couldn't be bothered.  Well, to be fair, they did waste a lot of time on those lab animals.  

The Adam Warlock I know from the comics was an artificially-created cosmic being, first known as a messiah figure named "Him" and then in the early 1990's Jim Starlin took the character and really turned him into something, he wore the Soul Stone and was a key figure in the "Infinity Gauntlet" saga where everyone fought Thanos (this story morphed into "Avengers: Infinity War" in the MCU).  Then he led his own team, the Infinity Watch, fighting cosmic villains - on his team were Gamora and Drax the Destroyer, oddly enough, and also Pip the Troll.  The Infinity Watch was maybe kind of an early version of the MCU Guardians - but at the same time, there was a different group of Guardians of the Galaxy, more on that later.  Adam Warlock also frequently battled the Magus of the Church of Universal Truth, who might have been a future incarnation of himself, so let's just say his storyline got a little complicated.  But at least I knew who he was and what he was capable of, unlike this weird version of him in G.O.T.G. 3, that I couldn't get a handle on. 

The rest of the film is the Guardians trying to work together to defeat the High Evolutionary and save Rocket, only these team members can't really seem to work as a team.  They keep getting on each other's nerves and telling each other what to do, then complaining about being told what to do.  Then once the screaming starts, it always continues too long.  Nebula screams, then Mantis screams louder, then Drax gets frustrated, which makes Nebula angry again, and so it keeps on going around.  Peter Quill tries his best to corral them but nobody seems to want to take his orders seriously, so they just do what they want to do, or act randomly, then they're all very surprised when things don't work out right, and then even more surprised when they somehow do.  Can somebody please tell the screenwriters how a TEAM is supposed to work?  Why. Can't. This. Team. Function. Properly?

It's no wonder at the end of this film that some of the team members decide that they need to take some personal time.  If I had to work in an environment that hostile and dysfunctional I'd want to quit, too.  Peter Quill decides to go back to Earth to meet his grandfather, Mantis heads off to discover who she is without people telling her what to do, and Gamora heads back to the Ravagers. (Oh, yeah, Gamora is back, she's not dead, but she's also not the same Gamora who died, this is the earlier version who came forward in time during "Avengers: Endgame", so she doesn't remember her relationship with Quill because it hasn't happened for her yet.). So that's it, the Guardians are disbanded, essentially, only they're not, they'll get together again when the galaxy needs them, or Marvel needs to make a fourth film.  Until then, Rocket will lead a team of, basically, scrubs.  Great, because that's what I want to see.

Let me just remind you about the "other" Guardians of the Galaxy, the ones that were in the comics when I was a teen - this was a comic-book series set far in the future, like 1,000 years, when Earth had colonized the other planets in the solar system.  Their adventures mostly took place in the future, except for the times when they'd travel back in time and help out the Avengers with space stuff.  Vance Astro was the leader, he was actually from the present but got frozen on a space mission and woke up in the future, Buck Rogers-style.  But he had Captain America's old shield and used the name Major Victory.  The other members of the team came from the different planets in our solar system, like Martinex (the crystal guy seen in this film, played by Michael Rosenbaum) from Pluto, Charlie-27 from Jupiter (Ving Rhames played him in one of the movies), Yondu from Centauri-IV (played by Michael Rooker in the MCU) and sometimes Star-Hawk (Stakar Ogord, the character Stallone plays in the GOTG films).  That's right, the OLD Guardians, or maybe the "future" Guardians, kind of appear in the MCU, only they're called Ravagers.  Whether these ravagers someday become Guardians themselves, who can say?  Hell, Kraglin apparently is one of the Guardians now, I'm not sure how or why THAT happened. 

And then there's the ending, which is so darn hokey.  The Guardians save a bunch of children from the High Evolutionary's floating fortress, then Rocket stays behind to also rescue the lab animals, because he was once one himself.  Umm, OK, but now the whole Knowhere space station is going to be overrun with stray lab animals, who probably carry a lot of diseases with them.  It's a happy (?) ending, but just so darn unrealistic - also it reminded me of the ending of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", when he has to save all of the animals from the pet store that is on fire, even the snakes.  Look, I'm sorry but you can't save ALL of the animals ALL of the time.  Some animals are sick, some are always dying and some are just plain unlucky that we use them for their meat.  Google what happens to most of the male baby chickens and then get back to me, OK?  I wish we could save all of the animals, but I can't even save all the stray cats on my block - it doesn't mean you shouldn't TRY, but be prepared to deal with the fact that you may not succeed.

Well, I'm on break for the next few days, driving up to Massachusetts tomorrow - I'll be back here on Monday, when the chain continues, even if the sci-fi/fantasy theme is over for now.

Also starring Chris Pratt (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Pom Klementieff (ditto), Sean Gunn (ditto), Zoe Saldana (last heard in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "The Bubble"), Chukwudi Iwuji (last seen in "News of the World"), Will Poulter (last seen in "Midsommar"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "The Burnt Orange Heresy"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Air"), Michael Rosenbaum (last seen in "Sweet November"), Stephen Blackehart (last seen in "Brightburn"), Terence Rosemore (ditto), Miriam Shor (last seen in "The Midnight Sky"), Daniela Melchior (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Gerardo Davila (ditto), Jennifer Holland (last seen in "Black Adam"), Nico Santos (last seen in "The Clapper"), Kai Zen, Nathan Fillion (last seen in "Adrienne"), Randy Havens (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Dane DiLiegro, Gregg Henry (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Karen Abercrombie, Sarah Alami, Jasmine Munoz, Jared Gore, Molly C. Quinn (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Kyle Mclean, Benjamin Byron Davis (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Tiffany Smith, Jonathan Mercedes (last seen in "Willy's Wonderland"), Jonathan Fritschi, Max Bickelhaup, Brandon Morales, Renae Moneymaker, Sarah Anne, Christopher Fairbank (last seen in "Hercules"), Rhett Miller, Natalia Safran (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Murphy Weed, Michael Koske, Sebastian Soler. 

and the voices of Vin Diesel (last heard in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Maria Bakalova (last seen in "The Bubble"), Linda Cardellini (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Asim Chaudhry (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Mikaela Hoover (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Reinaldo Faberlie, Tara Strong (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Dee Bradley Baker (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Seth Green (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Noa Raskin, James Gunn, 

with cameos from Pete Davidson (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Lloyd Kaufman (last seen in "Gamer"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Love and Monsters"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 zarg nuts

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Year 15, Day 227 - 8/15/23 - Movie #4,522

BEFORE: Halfway through August, and I wish I could say that this too-long summer is winding down, but honestly, we're not even 2/3 of the way through, if you go by the official dates of summer, not the social ones.  It's June 21 to September 21, don't blame me, I didn't put a tilt in the earth's axis or define the seasons according to equinoxes and solstices.  Memorial Day and Labor Day, the "unofficial" start and end to summer, are just society's constructs - so I've still got some summer blockbusters to get to, including tomorrow's Marvel movie, the new Indiana Jones film, the Puss in Boots sequel, and, umm... the Elvis movie?  I think that last one counts as a summer blockbuster, because it was released June 26 last year, but it didn't really pick up some steam until the fall awards season. (Speaking of that, what's this year's award season going to be like, if the actors are still on strike and they can't promote the movies they starred in?  Will that create the most boring nomination period ever, or will it just level the playing field?  And what about the Emmys and Oscars ceremonies? Just asking.)

Chloe Coleman carries over again from "65".  One more film after this, then I'm on break, a road trip up to Massachusetts. But I've BEEN on break, more or less, since mid-June, and oddly what I really want to take a break from is this long break.  Just 9 more days of relative inactivity...

THE PLOT: A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. 

AFTER: Well, the hope was that this would be a fun, action-packed romp through the fictional world of America's most popular RPG, the world of dwarves and orcs, sorcerers and clerics, you know the one, sort of one world over from the Middle Earth that Tolkien created, where anything can happen if your dungeon master can think of it, and hopefully you as a player can come up with some good dice rolls to counter.  But if "Avatar: The Way of Water" felt like a video-game that you just can't play, what's this one going to feel like, an RPG that you just...watch?

The other hope here is that this film doesn't just remind me about my first marriage, how playing D&D in a mixed group together ended up driving a wedge between her and me, because she was attracted to another person in the group, and acting as a fantasy character, well, let's just say it brought up some stuff.  But that did inspire me to think a lot over the years about turning that expeience into a screenplay, where you would see a bunch of twenty-somethings playing a popular fantasy RPG, and then you'd also see (through animation or live-action fantasy sequence) what's going on in the GAME, and then ideally, over time, you might realize that these people's characters are either a representation of how they see themselves or who they want to be, and that's eventually going to spill over into the real world.  Suddenly by playing the game they realize that their boring real lives just aren't enough any more.  Eventually in the fantasy world a line would be crossed, and then the desire to repeat that in the real world, and by then a relationship would fracture, and the group would split up.  At the end you'd see the game characters just standing around, wondering if the humans would ever return to the game and give them some more missions to do.  

But that's my idea, and I've made several attempts to turn it into a better story, only I don't really have the talent, or the contacts to find someone who does, and then I just end up deciding it's better to let sleeping dogs lie and not remind myself of the ill will and life-altering consequences that resulted from being in a D&D group for several years.  I've moved on and decided that it doesn't much matter any more, as we all must with certain things. 

Anyway, I managed to not sink into that despair while watching this movie, that's a good thing, there was enough action and changes of scenery and twists and complications in the mission to keep my brain occupied.  Though I did have to stop watching with about 45 minutes left, because we had a hard rainstorm and when my wife's cat came up from the basement, that was a strong sign that probably the backyard got flooded, the drain by the back door got clogged, and water was coming in.  Yep, that was the deal - when it rains super-hard all the little sticks and leaves in the backyard get swept into the drain, and I have to go outside with a screwdriver and clear the debris so the drain at the low point will work again.  Only then will the water stop coming in, but then we had to mop up the water that did come in, not as much as in previous floodings, because I think I caught the problem early, but still, now the dehumidifier has to run for a few days just to dry the place out - this would only be a problem if I had a room full of books down there, which I do.  But I think if I do some triage, I'll find that only the lowest level of books on the floor will be water-damaged, and I don't want to start moving things around, because then I'll be moving the already-damaged books out of harm's way, and replacing them with others, which will then be in the line of fire. Umm, water. 

Wait, I'm digressing again. Dungeons & Dragons, right.  Ironically there was a flood at one point in the film, but one created by magic, not by rain. Lots of good fight scenes and magic-based action sequences, they spent a fair amount of money making this ($150 million) and it looks like it turned a profit ($208 million box office) but apparently that wasn't enough to break even, once you factor in the advertising and promo budget, so from the studio's POV, this film did NOT break even, therefore a flop.  There was a film released in 2000 that was a minor hit (but also still lost money) and then two TV movies that were, by all accounts, terrible.  (And that's not even taking into account "Mazes & Monsters", the unofficial TV movie where a young Tom Hanks's character got brainwashed by playing an RPG.).  So I'm genuinely happy that this franchise finally scored a minor win, it's been a long time coming, and it's amazing that they still found a studio to invest money in making this film, given the track record - but still, it didn't make three times the cost, so now that probably puts a damper on the plans for a sequel.  

Finally, somebody had the right way to approach a D&D movie - essentially it's a heist film, just one set in the fantasy realm of Faeron (Forgotten Realms).  Every successful D&D team needs a good thief, they're excellent at spotting and disabling traps, in addition to being sneaky fighters and (with enough charisma points) also very charming and likable. Assuming that they're lawful netural at least, not chaotic evil. (Chaotic evil characters just really wouldn't even work on a team, like at that point, you're probably better off re-rolling when creating your character...). It might be rare to see a thief LEADING a team, but maybe a fighter or a cleric would be more likely to recruit a team for a mission, but hey, when a thief puts a team together, bing bang, you've got a heist movie.  (Why they didn't re-title "The Hobbit" as "Gandalf's Fifteen", I honestly have no idea.)

Originally there was a group of five in this story that pulled a heist together, and that was thief Edgin Darvis, barbarian fighter Holga Kilgore, half-elf sorcerer Simon Aumar, Forge Fitzwilliam (the team leader) and necromancer Sofina.  Edgin used to be a member of the Harpers, a group dedicated to good causes, but after his wife died (killed by the disciples of an evil Red Wizard that he helped imprison) he turned his back on the organization and re-invented himself as a bard and thief. (It's unusual for a D&D character to have a story arc, because once you roll for your attributes and figure out who you want to be, that's it, that's the thing you are...). Forge got Edgin to help with this heist by promising him a Tablet of Reawakening as part of his share, which would help him resurrect his dead wife.  

But something went wrong during the heist, and Edgin and Holga were caught and imprisoned, while the other team members got away.  Later on we find out that this was part of the plan all along, and Forge had no intention of protecting his team or rescuing them later, so I guess it turns out he was secretly chaotic evil himself. OK, lesson learned, and we catch up with Edgin and Holga in a giant arctic prison, on the day of their parole hearing, where they relate the events that landed them in Revel's End prison to begin with.  They've actually got a daring escape planned, but it depends on a particular adjudicator showing up for their hearing, and apparently he's stuck in caravan traffic.  Oh, well, they manage to get out anyway, but in a comically ironic way.  

Once out of prison, they look up their old teammates (again, standard for a heist film) but they learn that Forge is now going by the name Lord Neverwinter, has been taking care of Edgin's daughter (and poisoning her mind against her father) and also Sofina the Necromancer is actually a Red Wizard herself.  Also, they betrayed Edgin and Holga on that last heist, and now that their old team members have come calling again, it's time to have them executed.  Not great. But hey, there's some good news, as the new Lord of Neverwinter, Forge is bringing back the High Sun Games, which are a bit like the Olympics if you combined them with the Hunger Games.  

Edgin and Holga (mostly Holga) manage to fight off the executioner and the guards and escape again, in order to track down their old sorcerer pal, Simon Aumar, and try to put the old team back together and add some new members.  And when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so naturally the best plan the thief can come up with is to pull off a heist, and rob the treasury of the High Sun Games, also hoping that somewhere in that treasure stash is also that Tablet of Awakening that can make Edgin's wife alive again.  The team recruits another member, Doric, a druid shapeshifter who can turn herself into any animal, bird or even insect, and while disguised as a literal "fly on the wall", she learns that Forge's vault has magical defenses that their average sorcerer can't disable (harder to break into than a casino vault, in other words) and so they need to find The Helm of Disjunction, which the sorcerer SHOULD be able to use to disable any magical enchantments in the surrounding area.  And tracking down this helmet leads them to a paladin named Xenk Yandar, who leads them into the depths to get the helmet, protected by a dragon, and as a final alignment based twist, in return for the helmet, Edgin has to promise to distribute the proceeds from the heist among the people of Neverwinter, and not just distribute it among the team.  

Whew, that's a lot, it's a very complicated set-up, and that doesn't even get us to the point where the group actually steals something - Simon also has to attune himself with the helmet by making peace with his grandfather's spirit, and also Holga has to make peace with her halfling ex-husband, and Edgin has to somehow try to convince his own daughter that he didn't leave her on purpose, and even that first failed heist was for her benefit.  So basically every team member has to confront their pasts, improve their extraneous relationships with others and settle their accounts before they can pull off the heist.  Most D&D campaigns are NOT places where geeks confront their personal relationship problems, honestly I thought until now that my story was unique, but who knows, maybe this is all par for the course. 

There's also some good bits here in dealing with both the dead AND the undead - in addition to Edgin being motivated by the possibility of resurrecting his wife, the paladin has a backstory about the Red Wizards turning a crowd into an army of the undead that becomes really relevant later on, and then the sorcerer happens to have an amulet that will resurrect a corpse so you can ask it five questions only, and they use this to ask dead soldiers where the Helm of Disjunction is, and it's really the funniest and funnest part of the movie.  

I feel kind of sad that so much of the gameplay just doesn't transfer over to a movie version, things like hit points and saving throws and being forced to buy rations before going on a long journey, but I also understand that these are the things that would turn off the average movie-goer, who wouldn't want to get bogged down in the rules and the details. I guess any time you turn a book or a play into a movie there are some things that just can't carry over, and it's a bit like that. It's still a great effort, though, to give this nerd-centric game some mass appeal. 

Also starring Chris Pine (last seen in "The Contractor"), Michelle Rodriguez (last seen in "Widows"), Regé-Jean Page (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Justice Smith (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Sophia Lillis (last seen in "It Chapter Two"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "The Bubble"), Daisy Head, Bradley Cooper (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Spencer Wilding (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Will Irvine, Nichoas Blane (last seen in "In Secret"), Bryan Larkin, Sarah Amankwah, Colin Carnegie (last seen in "Zoo"), Georgia Landers, Clayton Grover, Barry O'Connor, Dan Poole (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Ian Hanmore, Paul Bazely (last seen in "Cruella"), Kenneth Collard (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Jason Wong (last seen in "The 355"), Hayley-Marie Axe, Richie Wilson, Philip Brodie (last seen in "Unlocked"), Michael Redmond, Daniel Campbell (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Darren Kent, Claude Starling, Paul Lancaster (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat), Sharon Blynn (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Rylan Jackson, Appy Pratt, David Durham, Luke Bennett, Moe Sasegbon, Trevor Kaneswaran, Emer McDaid, Seamus O'Hara (last seen in "The Northman"), Edgar Abram (ditto), Tom Morello, R.F. Daley (last seen in "Game Night"), Richard Croxford (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Rylee Neilly-Large, Kim Chapman, Tom Mason Duffy, Sophia Eleni, 

RATING: 7 out of 10 Intellect Devourers

65

Year 15, Day 226 - 8/14/23 - Movie #4,521

BEFORE: Just my luck, this film came on to my watchlist a couple of months ago, by way of Netflix - but I had already watched all of my Adam Driver movies - "White Noise", "Annette" and "The Last Duel" - back in May. I covered him already this year, and I had no intention of circling back, but then I saw I could get here another way, so Chloe Coleman carries over from "Avatar: The Way of Water", and there you go, two sci-fi movies back-to-back. And it's never too late to squeeze another Adam Driver movie into this Movie Year. 

THE PLOT: An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone.

AFTER: However you feel about this film, and I'll admit it seems a bit schlocky at first, and then when you get into it, late in the game it's very sappy and sentimental, and you can probably guess the ending coming, like a mile away, but trust me, this one could have been SO much worse, and so, therefore by comparing it to how bad it COULD have been, then maybe it's not so bad.  

No way around it again tonight - SPOILER ALERT - turn back now if you haven't seen this one, and from the box office back in March, it doesn't look like many people went to see it.  Maybe it got a lot of eyeballs on Netflix a few months later, I don't know.  I love this 90-day window where movies start streaming just three months after they leave theaters, if we could lock this into place across the board, that would really help me out, studio executives in Hollywood. For the lowbrow films, of course - I understand that films that might get nominated for Oscars, or films whose creators THINK they might get. nominated for Oscars are hesitant to bring things to streaming quickly.  But thankfully this is not one of those films, unless it wants to try for some effects consideration, or maybe a nod for best sound editing or whatever.  

This film plays on a couple of theories about the universe, which may or may not be true - that's why they're still theories, they really can't be proven or disproved given the lack of evidence we have on some things.  The first theory is that we're not alone in the universe - here you have to think about how many stars there are, how many of those have planets circling them that are not too close or not too far away (in the "Goldilocks" zone, like Earth...).  Then knowing that the universe has been here for billions and billions of years, what's the likelihood that intelligent life might have developed somewhere else?  Carl Sagan had a formula for this many years ago, taking all the variables into consideration, I think he determined that mathematically, at least, other civilizations on other planets WERE possible.  They just haven't contacted us yet, maybe they don't like us or maybe they've been looking and they haven't found us, after all the universe is a pretty honkin' big place.  Or maybe they've finally received our 1950's TV broadcasts or that terrible record album we put on Voyager 1 and those made them more determined to leave us alone, it's tough to day.  (I mean, come on, did it HAVE to be a Carpenters album?)

Or, just maybe, somebody made contact on Earth, but they came at the wrong TIME.  Maybe they got a head start on their planet, by a few million years, so they were in their Space Age while we were still trying to lose our prehensile tails and figuring out that lava is hot.  So eventually this movie lets slip that it's taking place 65 million years before mankind, which is strange because then they show us Adam Driver on a beach on another planet, Somaris, with his wife and daughter, and he's clearly wearing a cotton Hanes t-shirt.  Umm, how is that not a human civilization?  He sure looks human, and his daughter is a beautiful bi-racial teen, so that means liberalism existed way back then, and somebody knew about wokeness and mass appeal.  They sure don't look like aliens, they look and act and talk like humans.

Well, a couple of things could be happening here in the subtext, which brings me back to how this could have been a worse storyline.  If they end it with two people stuck on Earth and they become the equivalent of Adam & Eve and they have to populate this new planet they've discovered, yeah, that would be worse.  That's some simple-ass Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" twist ending stuff, it's been done.  While it is true that some evolution deniers have created these scenarios where maybe humans came from other planets, and not evolved up from aquatic creatures and then primates, really that just comes from a place where people don't want to imagine that their ancestors were monkeys.  But don't we have the fossil records to prove it?

Again, thank God the movie doesn't go there - the lead character spends the whole movie trying to get OFF of ancient Earth, and it would be a darn shame to see him fail and get stuck here.  Really, this would be the best time to visit Earth, before man polluted everything and hunted several important animal species to extinction, and used up all the resources to the point where we have to invade Pandora just to get a little unobtanium.  65 millions years before that, nobody even knew where Earth was or how important it could be in the future.  There's just one little problem with visiting Earth back then - OK, it's a big problem, called dinosaurs. 

So this film could have also gone the "Sound of Thunder" route and just had people with future tech fighting dinos and trying desperately to not step on a butterfly or something, because every action back then would have huge implications for the planet's future, and the evolution of birds, mammals and proto-humans.  The film doesn't go this route, either, which was a relief.

However, some things still go very, very wrong.  For starters, there's the fact that all of our hero pilot's passengers were in cryostasis, and most didn't survive the crash, so there goes his five-star delivery rating.  And the ones that maybe did survive for a bit probably got eaten by T. Rexes.   Now he's got to get himself 14 kilometers across some very dangerous terrain with dinosaurs everywhere to find the other half of the ship, to see if the lander vehicle can help him get off the planet.  And the timetable gets accelerated when he learns that he's arrived on Earth at simply the WORST possible time.  You can probably guess what's about to happen, my wife guessed it on one try without even seeing any of the movie. 

There is still the possibility, however, that whatever non-human race is seen in this film DOES populate Earth one day, but they never state this outright, which is fine.  But then it does lead to some questions about the extinction-level events that our planet has suffered - what would have happened if the dinosaurs hadn't died out?  Was Earth supposed to be a planet where dinos were allowed to evolve, and would they someday have grown more intelligent?  If allowed to flourish and eat well and adapt for a few million more years, would the dinosaurs have been able to create tools, form societies and develop language, agriculture, vehicles, etc.?  Or was this just never going to happen, I mean, how could a T. Rex work a field with such tiny little arms?  Would they have taken in little primate working pets, like humans took in dogs?  In that alternate scenario, would I today be a working herding primate on a dinosaur's farm?  

Well, I guess we'll never know, because non-human Adam Driver came to Earth and shot a bunch of dinosaurs in self-defense, and then they all died shortly after that.  This is our history, damn it, why aren't they teaching this stuff in schools?  We're focused on the wrong causes, right now conservatives in the South are banning books from libraries because they believe they promote the gay lifestyle and the liberal agenda, but they should be going after the history books that don't mention other theories about what happened to the dinosaurs.  And if not for the meteor, we wouldn't all be here, so clearly it was God's plan to wipe out the dinos because their society had NO religion and didn't recognize Dinosaur Jesus as their personal savior.  I mean, this is basic, basic stuff and everybody knows this in their heart to be true, right? 

I guess not, because instead we just get this "woke" movie with a heathen non-human fighting dinosaurs with a future laser-gun in the past.  Does this all make sense to you?  Look, I'll take it because it was very thrilling and everything that COULD go wrong did, which means you'll be at the edge of your seat for the whole film, and it's full of those "The dinosaur's right behind me, right?" moments.  And it's not just "Forbidden Planet" meets "Jurassic Park", right?  RIGHT?

Also starring Adam Driver ("last seen in "The Last Duel"), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "Love and Monsters"), Nika King, and the voice of Brian Dare. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 distress calls

Avatar: The Way of Water

Year 15, Day 225 - 8/13/23 - Movie #4,520

BEFORE: Just four films this week, all in the sci-fi or fantasy genre, then I have to take a little break.  Next weekend my parents are leaving their assisted living apartment and moving down to North Carolina to live with my sister, and we said we'd be there to help supervise the packing or keep them company or whatever.  So we have to leave on Thursday, and I won't be back until Sunday, so I'm losing four days, but that's OK, the schedule allows me some free days, as long as I watch 26 films in August, I'll be fine.  And then after I get back, my second job re-opens just four days later, with staff meetings and orientations for the different departments of the college, so I could be very busy in September, I'll have to wait and see.  I applied for several jobs this summer, and only one of them came through with an interview and a job offer, but as it turns out, I may be so busy that I'll have to turn it down.  Of course.

Edie Falco carries over from "The Mother".  I feel like I'm sort of catching up now, this "Avatar" sequel was in theaters last December, and of course by then my schedule was set for the year and I couldn't work it in - it started airing on HBO just a couple of months ago, fortunately before I set my summer schedule.  And "The Mother" started airing on Netflix in May, same deal, I was able to work it in, so there my response time was down to just three months. Not too bad.  And I'm going to get to "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" this week, and that just started on Disney Plus on August 2, just two weeks before the date I planned to view it.  It's almost like I knew when it was going to be streaming...

Oh, yeah, since this is a relatively recent film (released within the last 12 months) standard SPOILER ALERT tonight, I can't possibly point out what doesn't work in this film without giving some major details away.  Don't say I didn't warn you...turn back NOW if you haven't gotten to see this one yet, but based on the box office, it seems like maybe everybody who wanted to see this managed to make it to the movie theaters this past winter.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Avatar" (Movie #807)

THE PLOT: Jake Sully lives with his newfound family on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home. 

AFTER: Maybe it's all the Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that my wife is playing, but this film looked just like a video-game to me.  Maybe it was different if you shelled out the big bucks to go see it on an IMAX screen.  The best thing about video-games, though, is that you can control the actions of the characters, and make them do stuff, but this was more like a completely passive video-game where you have no control at all.  Why do we still have movies when we have such incredible video games these days?  I mean, I guess there's a place for movies still, cars replaced horses but some people still ride horses somewhere, they didn't get completely phased out...

It's a bit funny, this film has almost the same story as yesterday's film, "The Mother" - well, same plot points anyway.  In that film, an ex-military sniper had to fight off the evil people she thought were gone from her life in order to protect her daughter, and she did this by hiding out in Alaska, but then she had to fight the evil people when they tracked her down.  Here an ex-Marine has to fight off the evil people he thought were gone from the moon of Pandora in order to protect his children, and he does this by hiding out with the reef people, but then he has to fight the evil people when they track them down.  See, same story, only this one was way more expensive to make and had more attractive CGI scenery.  

First film was so ridiculous, the way that the Earth people had to go to another planet to mine its resources - OK, that I can believe because we're likely to use up all of the Earth's resources if we keep going on the way we are.  But then the substance they needed to get from Pandora was called "unobtanium", as in "it's unobtainable", meaning you can't get it.  Who the hell calls something that, it's like naming a character in a mystery "Mr. MacGuffin" or having a company named Deus ex Machina fix everything at the end of a story.

This is also much, much longer than it needed to be, clocking in at 3 hours and 12 minutes, but if I'm being honest, it felt like there was maybe half an hour of story here that just got stretched out beyond belief.  It's a simple idea, as I said before - bad people come back, the good people have to fight them off again.  Everything with the Tulkuns and the other water creatures, the mystical trees and the visions and learning to adapt to the ways of the Reef People, that's all filler.  

But Cameron's ecological message is so strong that it feels like he's hitting us all over the head with it.  Humans suck, I get it.  After we use up all the fossil fuels on Earth, and after we pollute the entire atmosphere and all the water, we'll be so desperate that we need to start strip-mining other planets.  But I'm not convinced this would make sense, because it takes a lot of resources to build spaceships, it would take a lot of energy to get those ships to another star system, and also it would take a lot of TIME to get there and back.  So, yeah, umm, major NITPICK POINT, if the Earth is out of resources and there's a ticking clock on saving the planet (in other words, it's too late...) then how the heck do these humans build the spaceships to get to Pandora, and how do they have enough time to get the resources back to Earth to save it?  Something's just not adding up here.  It's a standard N.P. among space travel movies, since we can't travel anything close to the speed of light, it would take decades for a crew to get from Earth to another star system, and decades to get back?  

So this is set, when?  Sixteen years after the first movie?  That's just not enough time for news of what happened in the first film to get back to Earth, or enough time for people to travel back, and then gather up a new army and new spaceships to come back and menace the Na'vi again.  Even if you factor in cryo-sleep for the astronauts/soldiers, that means Jake Sully would be much older, he wouldn't have kids but maybe grandkids by the time the Earth soldiers could make it back to that alien moon.  Unless Earth scientists also invented hyperdrives, but there's no mention of that.  So the one Earth baby who couldn't get on a spaceship and go back is Spider, the son of the first film's villain, Miles Quaritch, so he's 16 now, that makes some sense, but still, no explanation of how the Earth army got back in just 16 years. 

There's some good news, the evil soldiers from the first film died in battle, but the bad news is that human science cloned their brains or something, they put the memories of those dead soldiers into Recombinants, which are Na'vi avatars, just like Jake from the first film, only they think like human soldiers but in bigger, tougher alien bodies - and there's a whole platoon of them.  Their mission is to quell the insurgents among the Na'vi, and also find and kill the avatar of Jake Sully, who betrayed them years ago.  Yeah, this can't end well.  

Jake has a whole big blended family now, two sons and two daughters. One daughter is adopted and seems to be the child of Sigourney Weaver's character from the first film, and she's got a few special ESP powers that the others don't, but nobody can quite figure out who her father was.  Somehow her mother's avatar gave birth, which wasn't supposed to be possible, only it happened, and she and Jake's kids are some kind of half-breeds, as evidenced by the five fingers on their hands, where most of the Na'vi have only four. 

But then all the stuff with the whales - I mean the Tuklun, which are like big Pandora whales that can talk to the Na'vi or understand sign language or something - admittedly this is a bit unclear, because the Tuklun don't have hands, they have flippers, so how can they speak Na'vi sign language?  They make whale sounds, but how do those translate to signs?  And why can the Tuklun talk to the Na'vi but the other sea creatures can't?  Oh, right, they have bigger brains and a gland that somehow secretes a substance that prevents humans from aging - this is the "unobtanium" of the second film, or maybe it's like ambergris or whale oil from the 1800's, it's something humans want, so that's enough excuse to hunt and exterminate an entire species.  Man, we humans suck.  OK, Mr. Cameron, we GET it.  I feel bad for all the whales that died in the 1800's so we could have lamp oil, but there's no bringing them back, plus we all KNOW better now, the campaigns to save the whales worked, Japan was the last holdout, and we no longer kill whales with harpoons, instead we're killing them with all the plastic we're still dumping in the ocean.  I feel guilty enough about the sea turtles inhaling straws, and now Cameron's bringing back the anti-whaling campaigns, only they're in space now. 

And then once the "sky people" finally find the right tribe of Na'vi that is sheltering Jake and his family, this leads to the big climactic battle with Na'vi on flying sea creatures against the Earth soldiers on giant sea vessels and those flying helicopters with the drone-like blades.  Jake's kids keep getting used as hostages again and again, there were a bit too many reversals here, and too many times when Jake's kids disobeyed him by taking actions he forbid them to do.  (Again, there's shades of yesterday's film, the conflicts that arise when a parent wants to train their children to be warriors or have survival skills, but also, they want to keep them safe, and you can't have it both ways.)

The final battle with Col. Quaritch takes place on a sinking ship, one that overturns and traps several key Na'vi inside, and I'm guessing I'm not the only viewer who got major "Titanic" vibes from some of the final sequences.  Well, I guess if Cameron's going to steal from someone, he might as well steal from himself. Right?  Still, for all its faults, story-wise and effects-wise (why did the Tulkun look so damn fake in the close-ups?  Was this a practical floating model, and not CGI?) this film was a major accomplishment, 13 or 14 years in the making, costing about $350 million dollars to make, and that's more than the GDP of some small countries.  And it made over $2.3 Billion, so yeah, somehow that's very profitable, and it was the latest film (after "Top Gun: Maverick") to "save" the movie industry.  So kudos for that, even if it wasn't the greatest story ever told and essentially wasted over three hours of my life. 

Supposedly there are at least three more "Avatar" films in the works, but since this one got delayed time and time again, first by Cameron's availabilty, then by technical issues and then once again by the pandemic, who knows exactly when the next film will come along, it could be three years from now, or ten or twenty years down the line.  But Cameron has said that there are 15 clans among the Na'vi and so far we've only seen two, so whatever happens, there will be new elements to the story as it continues, but also I'm guessing it will be more of the same, over and over.  

One last note about the cast, as listed below - I know a lot of these actors and actresses were filmed in motion-capture, so that their alien characters would be based on their likenesses and movements.  But for my purposes, that doesn't count as a physical appearance in the film, just a vocal appearance.  Not a big difference, perhaps, because I count voice acting credits as well as on-camera ones - I just don't get behind mo-cap as a good enough likeness, for some reason.  So I feel the need to separate out those actors who appeared live on film from those that played aliens, where CGI created their appearances - maybe I'm behind the times, but as long as those actors' voices were used for the dialogue, I suppose it doesn't much matter.  Or does it?  Isn't this what the SAG actors are striking about, the use of A.I. and CGI to replace actors?  Maybe not, because I'm sure these actors were well-compensated either way, but I understand this is a complicated issue that's only going to get more complicated as the CGI tech improves.

Also starring Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Stephen Lang (last seen in "Val"), Joel David Moore (last seen in "Savages"), Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Jack Champion, Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Contraband"), Dileep Rao (last seen in "Inception"), Matt Gerald (last seen in "Freelancers"), Phil Brown, Jocelyn Christian, Joel Tobeck (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Cruz Moir, 

with the voices of Sam Worthington (last seen in "Last Night"), Zoe Saldana (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Kate Winslet (last seen in "Iris"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "Columbiana"), CCH Pounder (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr., Robert Okumu, Jennifer Stafford, Keston John (last seen in "The Trust"), Kevin Dorman, Alicia Vela-Bailey (last seen in "The Purge"), Sean Anthony Moran (last seen in "Avatar"), Andrew Arrabito (last seen in "13 Hours"), Johnny Alexander, Kim Do, Victor Lopez (also last seen in "Contraband"), Maria Walker, Scarlett Fernandez, Chloe Coleman (last seen in "My Spy"), Jeremy Irwin, CJ Jones (last seen in "Baby Driver")

RATING: 6 out of 10 daily eclipses