Ant-Man

Anty-Man, Anty-Man,

Does whatever an Anty can.

Looks real small, then looks big,

Catches bad guys then does a jig. 

Look out!

Here comes the Anty-Man. 

Hello dear reader and welcome to what is my twelfth blog of 2015. It marks the end of Marvel films Phase Two and brings to the big screen a film, which at times, looked like it would never make it. Or should that be small screen, given the film in question. 

Ant-Man lost its original director, Edgar Wright, six weeks before principle photography was due to start. This came as a major surprise to most fans of the MCU. Partly because this had been a labour of love for Mr Wright for some considerable time. He’d often gone on record, as far back as 2003, saying he wanted to make this film. He’d co-written a screenplay with Joe Cornish and even shot test footage in 2013, just to see if his particular vision could be brought to the silver screen. However the main reason Mr Wright’s decision to bail caused seismic tremors throughout the superhero world was that Marvel had never really had even the slightest whiff of having a ‘problem film’. From the start of Phase One with Iron Man back in 2008, Marvel had always had the Midas touch when it came to spin and publicity. They could do no wrong. A carefully orchestrated media battle plan that always oozed geek and nerdom in substantial quantities. My superheroes bring all boys (and girls) to the Yard, as Kevin Feige would probably say. 

But then out of the blue came ‘trouble at mill’. Edgar Wright walked away citing creative differences and in walked Peyton Reed, with the rest of the world collectively shouting ‘who?’ in unison. If you’re willing to believe what the internet tells you the disagreement was largely down to screenplay rewrites but there are also reports that Team Edgar and Team Kevin simply did not get on. So not only had the rug been pulled from under everyone’s feet but it was as if the world had been shown a glimpse of the wizard behind the curtain. Fans didn’t like it and even Joss Whedon took to twitter post a simple picture of a cornetto raised aloft in support. 

It became apparent that Marvel were going to have to use a lot of smoke and mirrors and misdirection to pull this off and come up with the goods. Thankfully they could accomplish most of this with the upcoming release of Age of Ultron. ‘Hey everyone, look over here! We have trailers and pictures of shiny things’. Of course also hiring the likes of Michael Douglas, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly also helped allay fears too. The Ant-Man ship wasn’t sinking just yet but there were icebergs on the horizon. Fast forward the better part of ten months and that brings us to Ant-Man's release. And I’m pleased to report that it’s actually rather good…

As with most Marvel films these days, you walk into the cinema with a certain level of expectation. You know what you’re going to get and most of the time they do exactly what they say on the tin. You’re bang for your buck is pretty much guaranteed and the accompanying visual and cerebral download tends to tick a lot of boxes. There will of course be grand action set pieces, a sprinkling of witty one-liners, more costumes and colours than you would expect to find in the performance of the complete works of Shakespeare and more danger and peril than Miss Marple could get her hands on with the help of CSI, Starsky & Hutch and Columbo combined. Highbrow it isn’t but by the same token, you never usually leave your seat felling underwhelmed.  

So Ant-Man starts with our ‘hero to be’ Scott Lang behind bars. Sent to prison by a military court for a crime he didn't commit. This man promptly escapes from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, He survives as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire the Ant-Man. Oh, hang on. I may have got myself a little confused there. Normal service will now resume.

Ant-Man is a film about redemption. A man given a second chance in life and the opportunity to be a better father to his young daughter. A daughter that still worships him despite his missing her grow up, due to his time behind bars. What Ant-Man is also, is funny. It’s probably the funniest film to come along in either Phase One or Phase Two by some considerable distance. Michael Pena, who is basically part of Scott Lang’s back up crew, isn’t given much screen time to strut his comedic talents but he pretty much steals every scene he’s in. 

It’s always going to be impossible to tell how much of Edgar and Joe’s screenplay made it into the final film. Rewrites and polishing, including a writing credit for Paul Rudd himself have permanently blurred the lines between the start and finish post but if you do ever bump into Simon Pegg ask him to show you a copy of the original, because he’s got one apparently. 

There are moments of brilliance in Ant-Man and little touches that may go unnoticed by some. Security guards whistling ‘It’s a small world after all’, a passing reference to Spiderman, who can now come and play in the MCU and will have a cameo in Marvels next film ‘Captain American: Civil War’. There also can’t be many action films that would have even thought about using Thomas the Tank Engine in their grand finale. A lot of Marvel films have been fairly formulaic recently, and have had more than just a passing Déjà vu feel when it comes to their endings. Big aerial battles that always have lots of destruction, mayhem and chaos. And yes Avengers, Thor 2 and Guardians of The Galaxy, I’m aiming that last sentence squarely at your clapper boards. It’s very refreshing to find a small scale battle that not only isn’t set against the back drop of a sprawling metropolis but happens within the confines of a family home.  

The other fairly formulaic problem that keeps repeating itself is the distinct lack of Estrogen on screen. There are only three female characters of note in Ant-Man. A mother and daughter who are given about as much to do as the Popes Menorah cleaner. They have virtually no important dialogue and are given character development which is comparable to a new brick being used on ‘Grand Designs’. Evangeline Lilly is the other female actor in question and without giving too much away or heading into spoiler territory, she will be returning to a Marvel cinema at some point in the not too distant future. There’s a blink and you miss it appearance from Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter at the start of the film but that’s basically it when it comes to women. It’s a real shame and I hope this trend starts to change soon or we could end up with a Marvel Cinematic Universe that has as many women in it as the Star Wars Universe currently does. Bad George Lucas, Boo, Boo...

I finish off by saying this. Ant-Man is a good film, despite its flaws. Paul Rudd looks like he enjoyed making it and it has one of the better Stan Lee cameos around. It also has a villain in it called Yellow Jacket, which in case you were wondering, has nothing to do with Hi-di-Hi or Sue Pollard. At 117 minutes long it’s also the shortest film to date that Marvel have released. As always you should stick around for the credits. There are two stings here, one in the middle and another at the end. Both are interesting and give the start of Phase 3 some fresh fuel. A solid four out of five but the report card should also contain a 'Could and should do better'.    

Twitter Review:

Go see Ant-man, No magnifying glass required! It’s good, It’s funny and it has Phoebe's husband from Friends in it. 

#SmallPackageBigPunch

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478970/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TtFK9C62E&feature=iv&src_vid=1HpZevFifuo&annotation_id=annotation_1112302829

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=134035

Jurassic World

Hello dear reader, it’s time to do that voodoo, that I do, so well. Ego not withstanding it’s been about two months since I last blogged about a film. This was of course the great and glorious Mad Max Fury Road. The reason for this absence purely down to having to move house and packing. There just hasn’t been any time available to go and see what I wanted to. Gems like Tomorrowland have been and gone and even the cgi heavy San Andreas passed through my local multiplex without me being able to offer up an opinion on it. I am however pleased to report that the move has now taken place and boxes are being unpacked. So if you’ll permit me I would like to resume normal service and offer up my opinion on the charming little film I watched at the weekend called Jurassic World.

Now right off the bat I should point out that I don’t seem to share the rest of the world’s enthusiasm for all things dinosaur. Yes their old, yes some of them are majestic and yes some of them you wouldn’t want to run into in a darkened ally on your own but I just don’t get the whole all encompassing ‘ohh-ahh’ thing they seem to have going on with everyone else. They died out, they did not pass go and they definitely did not collect two hundred pounds. And just before anyone starts with the sensible argument about natural selection or the equally rational ‘there really isn’t anything that could have done about a huge asteroid strike in the Gulf of Mexico that contributed to their extinction’ I say this. The levels of intelligence shown by the main ‘big bad’ dinosaur in Jurassic World are off the charts. It can alter its skin to avoid thermal camera detection; it can problem solve to a level that would put Stephen Hawking to shame; its capable of very convincing camouflage and would appear to be able to speak perfectly fluent Velociraptor. So you can’t tell me that there weren’t plans sixty five million years ago to have an orbiting weapons satellite that could have more than easily dealt with any fast approaching lump of rock, as I simply won’t believe you.

Sorry, that was starting to get a little bit ranty there. I shall continue in a more restrained manner that befits this great and glorious review, init. So the film itself is set on the original island that the first Jurassic Park film was on. However this time the park is bigger and better. They’ve spared no expense. There are five star hotels, new rides and an updated information centre with holograms and obligatory gift shops and a dinosaur sea world that contains a Mosasaurus, which for those of you not in the know is a rather large aquatic creature that unquestionably comes under the ‘we’re gonna to need a bigger boat’ category.

This is the forth film in the Jurassic series and although it's a vast improvement on numbers two and three it still has problems that it seems more than happy to keep repeating. My biggest gripe with these films and indeed with most ‘people in peril’ films is that the only way screenwriters seem to be able to move the plot along is to have people actively being stupid and putting themselves in danger at every available opportunity. This happens quite a lot in Jurassic World and is further compounded by the fact that the majority of the park staff seem to have been hired by the ‘I will love him and pet him and call him George’ recruitment agency. Some on the decisions and thought processes that are shown on screen in this film make Jersey Shore look like Shakespeare. Now I do understand that for these films to work they need to be roughly two parts hazard and three parts jeopardy but that doesn’t mean that everyone in them, with a few noticeable exceptions, needs to be two parts Jedward and three parts Chuckle Brother.

The two main characters in the film are Owen and Claire, played by Chris ‘everything he touches turns to gold’ Pratt and Bryce’ my dad used to be on Happy Days’ Dallas Howard, respectively. Claire is very career driven and is in charge of the park from top to bottom. Claire is also very emotionally detached and has a lot of trouble seeing the dinosaurs as anything other than profit margins and numbers on a spread sheet. This emotional detachment also becomes apparent when Claire is asked to look after her nephews when they visit the park for a weekend. Business comes first and Claire has her personal assistant guide them around all the various attractions. A decision that proves to be a solid nine out of ten on the ‘oh bugger’ meter, especially for the assistant. Owen on the other hand is a very heart on his sleeve type of guy. He cares about his job and has invested a lot of time and effort into building a bond with four Velociraptors. These Velociraptors, although still the wrong side of extremely dangerous, follow Owen’s instructions and this relationship with them plays a pivotal part in films plot. The other star of the film, that I mentioned earlier, is completely computer generated. Indominus Rex is a hybrid dinosaur, created in a lab by the parks parent company ‘Ingen’ for no other reason than to make more money and to keep people coming in through the gates. Now I’m all for having a great animal bad guy, or girl for that matter. Jaws, the Xenomorph from the Alien films and even Piranha’s are all great examples of pure animal killing machines but I think Indominus Rex may have just out shone them all. As well as the attributes I mentioned earlier like thermal avoidance, multilingual, camouflage and being smarter than a smart thing on national smart day in smart land, It also has Ninja skills, anger management issues that would put Bruce Banner to shame and a bigger compulsion for human flesh than Hannibal Lector.

Problems start on the park and indeed the entire island when the Indominus Rex escapes from its enclosure. Once it’s out and roaming freely throughout the park business definitely picks up. The parks control room refers to this problem as ‘having an asset out of containment’, which I can’t help thinking sounds like a wardrobe malfunction at a Chippendales show. Euphemism claxons aside, this is pretty much the premise of the film and as with the very first Jurassic Park film in 1993, the story is basically one of dinosaurs escape, humans try and deal with the ensuing carnage. So if you like your peril perilous, your menace menacing and scripts on the dumb side of common sense then Jurassic World is just the film for you. On its plus side it does have a good supporting cast including Vincent D’Ofonrio, BD Wong and Judy Greer but it did leave me feeling ever so slightly underwhelmed. Bryce Dallas Howard is a very good actor and I’m sure her services for taking part in this film were very well rewarded but she doesn’t really get anything important to do and does end up playing the stereotypical damsel in distress at times. Running away from a T-Rex in heels isn’t exactly what you’d call clever or smart and neither is rolling up your sleeves to show you’re ready for action. This is a popcorn, summer blockbuster, franchise movie but there’s absolutely no reason to dumb things down for the audience. Marvel have repeatedly shown that people will come and watch intelligent, well written, tent pole movies and then come back and ask for seconds, time and time again. A fact that seems to be lost on the executives at Universal.

I do wonder what Michael Crichton would have made of this film and how happy he’d have been with it. My guess is he’d have liked what they tried to do but not pleased with how they went about doing it. Given the amount of money this film has made, it is the fastest film to break through the billion dollar barrier by some considerable distance, there will of course be sequels and I’m sure the plot will once again be ‘oh know, something has gone wrong, run for the hills!’ Except there won’t running for the hills. There we be slow walking surrounded by people saying things like ‘what was that noise? Let’s go and investigate’ and fences with lots of signs that say ‘Danger: Keep Out, Risk of Death’ etc etc, that are completely ignored. I’ll finish by saying this. Jurassic World is an okay film that could have been great. It relies far too heavily on clichés that were flogged to death and worn out in the first three films and it needs it needs a common sense reboot. It has a government sub-plot about using dinosaurs as weapons that really doesn’t need to be in there and the director, Colin Trevorrow, hasn’t in my humble opinion, done a particularly good job here. That said he is the current front runner to direct the Star Wars episode IX film, so someone must like what he’s doing…

Twitter Review:  

Dumb people, dumb plot and a dinosaur with a phd. Jurassic World fails on a lot of levels. Could do better. Must do better.

#BeenThereBefore

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=3059