Green Lantern (Campbell 2011)

The thing about origin stories is that they are only as compelling as their protagonist(s). Take X-Men - First Class (Vaughn 2011) from a few weeks ago: the film is filled with compelling characters, with flaws and passions that drive them in a time of social and political change. It is great stuff, and embraces its comic book mythology without letting it dominate the characters of the story.

Unfortunately for the Green Lantern comics, its protagonist is Hal Jordan, one of the blandest superheroes around. Devoid of depth and personality, Hal Jordan’s story is one of how a cocky hotshot pilot goes from being something of an insecure ass to having absolutely no personality at all. The comics supporting cast includes a love interest whose personality consists of being angry at almost all times, and a friend who was little more than a racisit stereotype in the earliest comics. Hal also happens to belong to a large intergalactic organization that polices the cosmos, filled with interesting characters that can thankfully be read in a title that does not feature Hal Jordon.

Sadly, film audiences are stuck with Jordan and his uninteresting supporting cast for the running length of Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern (2011), a film in which the worst elements of the source material get to come out to play, which include, but are not limited to: endless speeches about will power; endless speeches about fear; Hal sitting around feeling sorry for himself; people standing around telling us that Hal can be/is a great Green Lantern; Hal failing to actually do anything to convince us he is all that impressive; interesting characters pushed to the margins so time can be wasted on Hal and his uninteresting love life; characters standing around talking about how great the Green Lantern Corps are; the Green Lantern Corps failing to be impressive; and so on.

Ok, as you have likely guessed, I am not all that taken with either the comic book version of Hal Jordan, nor the film adapted from the comics. While I in no way hate the Green Lantern concept and universe, I have always felt that mythology of the Green Lantern universe was interesting in spite of its lead character. The idea of an intergalactic police force with rings that can create whatever the user wills is a fantastic concept, and when Hal Jordan disappears into the background, as he has in the past, the comics have been all the better for it. However, for some reason that continues to escape me to this day, the hardcore fans of Green Lantern are taken with Jordan, and since 2003 there has been an all out attempt restore Jordan as not only the main protagonist of the title, but also to hard sell readers on how great of a character he is.

The Green Lantern film is, in some ways, the culmination of those efforts. A $200 million plus dollar effort to launch the Green Lantern as a film franchise, and quite possibly launch the whole of the DC universe on film, the film is tasked with both introducing Hal Jordan and introducing the larger mythology of the Green Lantern Corps to a broad audience. In theory, these two tasks should have complimented one another perfectly, with Hal’s journey into becoming a full blown member of Corps providing plenty of opportunity to show off the Corps and explore the larger mythology. For some baffling reason however, the filmmakers behind Green Lantern did not see this as the case, as the Corps and overall mythology is put to the side to allow plenty of time to focus on Hal and his uninteresting adventures on Earth.

The film starts off well enough, as we witness the release of the film's supposed villain, Parallax, a entity that feeds on fear. Parallax quickly attacks and mortally wounds Abin Sur, the Green Lantern whose sector happens to include Earth, the planet he escapes to. Upon crashing to Earth, Sur has his ring seek out a new recruit to replace him, and it selects Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a test pilot whose cocky ego has jeopardized the employment of hundreds of employees at Ferris Aircrafts. Handed the ring and the power battery to charge it with, Hal is quickly taken to Oa, home of the Lantern Corps and the Guardians, the ancient race of aliens who created the Corps, in order to receive training in how to operate the ring..

Till this point in the film, almost everything works. The opening scenes are energetic and set a sense of the scale we can assume the rest of the film will involve, and while Jordan as a character is still little more than a cookie cutter hero, Reynolds does manage to bring a bit of charm to the role. However, once on Oa, the film goes south quick: the film barrels through these scenes, as if the filmmakers were not interested in the Corps at all, or embarrassed by them. More likely, the visual effects required to pull of Oa and the other Corps members was far too expensive to include for extended periods of time, even with a $200 million dollar budget. Given how quick these scenes flyby, Hal’s “training” comes across as being little more than an afternoon workshop, one followed by Hal giving up and returning to Earth after a one scene encounter/smack down with Sinestro (Mark Strong). This quick lapse into self defeat on Jordan’s part does nothing to endear him to the audience, and one wishes that when Hal bolts, the rest of the film would be spent following Sinestro actually trying to deal with the crisis at hand. Sadly, this does not happen.

The film pretty much falls apart from this point on, as a pointless secondary plot involving a scientist (Peter Sarsgaard) becoming infected by Parallax is introduced in order that Hal has a traditional Earth based villain to face, and endless time is spent with Hal and his angst about whether to quit the Corps or not. Reynolds tries his best to make these scenes work, but his charm only goes so far in covering up how uninteresting Jordan and his situation is. This problem is only made worse through the inclusion of rather predictable scenes that drag the pace of the down, including the typical “superhero public debut” moment, and a clumsy scene where Hal admits to a personal flaw the audience figured out sixty minutes earlier in the film.

Even though we are stuck with Jordan for the rest of the film, the failure to establish the Corps as a group of impressive heroes earlier in the film has major ramifications in the second and third acts, particularly with regards to Parallax. In every scene with the Corps, all we ever is them doing is standing about listening to Sinestro give speeches, or receiving a beat down from Parallax. Since we never see the Corps as an effective peace keeping force, Parallax easily defeating various Green Lanterns has no impact as far as establishing him as a credible threat. (SPOILER) In turn, Hal’s inevitable defeat of Parallax has no impact because the Corps earlier in the film are built up as straw men to make Hal look good. It all comes across as lazy and false, and does nothing to sell a larger audience on the Corps as being an interesting group of characters worth following. (END SPOILERS).

So far, I have primarily slammed the film in terms of overall narrative, but that is because the failures in these areas make some other aspects of the film harder to evaluate. For example, many critics have slammed Blake Lively’s performance as Carol Ferris, but I am not sure that such criticism is deserved when the actress is given nothing to work with on page. Likewise, the visual effects work is fantastic, but its impact is limited given how hollow the rest of the film is. Campbell's work as director here seems unsure and unfocused; more often than not, he seems to be mimicking prior superhero films rather than bringing his own sense of style to the film.

At the end of the day, Green Lantern is a mediocre film, but one that is faithful to its source material. It simply fails to make the the core mythology of the comics interesting, and has likely killed any possible film franchise for the character. Should a second film ever go into production, hopefully Warner Brothers will learn from their mistakes and perform a soft reboot of the films, with one of the other Green Lanterns at center stage in a tale that ditches the typical tropes of the superhero films.

But I am not holding my breath.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (Berkley, Montgomery, and Oliva 2011)

Here are some potential alternate titles for Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, the latest in the series of DC DTV films:

“Green Lantern: Gee, Ain’t the Corps Great?”
“Green Lantern: Where Token Violence and Cursing Counts as Mature Storytelling”
“Green Lantern: Speeches! Glorious, Glorious Speeches!”

And so on, and so forth.

Yes, I have watched Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, and once again, I find myself playing the bad guy to the DC DTV films, a role I do no cherish, and one that I am frankly getting sick and tired of playing. At this point, I think it is a perquisite that all viewers of these films go in with incredibly low expectations, because that is about the only way to get through the mediocrity that has been primarily produced thus far.

Like the earlier Batman: Gotham Knight, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is an anthology film consisting of five tales, told by Hal Jordan (Nathan Fillion) to new recruit Arisia (Elisabeth Moss) in a wrap around story that involves the Green Lantern Corps facing a catastrophic threat, etc, etc. The stories include the tale of the first ever Green Lantern, one involving drill instructor Kilowog’s (Henry Rollins) own boot camp experience, Laira’s (Kelly Hu) first, and most personal, mission, the classic story of why Mogo does not socialize, and a tale about Hal Jordan’s predecessor, Abin Sur (Arnold Vosloo). Along the way, Arisia learns what it means to be a Green Lantern, hints about how to defeat the “catastrophic” threat to the universe are dropped, and numerous nods to comic lore are are made.

To be honest, this review is coming across as much angrier than the film really deserves, seeing as how it is not a terrible film. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is a competent piece of filmmaking, well animated, directed, and acted, with a typically bland score that has come to mark these DTV efforts nearly every time out. But being a competent piece of work does not make the film any less mediocre, or make the viewing experience any less dull. At least if the film were terrible, it might have been memorable, which is more than can be said of the end result here.

As you might have guessed from my mock alternate titles, the film suffers from several major problems. First, the film is little more than characters standing around telling tales about how awesome the organization they are part of is, while didactically shoving down the audiences’ collective throat what it "means" to be a Green Lantern. And I do mean shoved, because the filmmakers, worried that you might have missed the moral/point of the story, make sure that somebody at some point gets to make a speech that will make everything all clear. Missed that willpower is the key to being a Green Lantern? Do not worry, Hal’s there to spell it out for you. Confused as to the reason Kilowog and his instructor Deegan are both hard asses? Deegan will make is all crystal clear, using his dying breath, no less. As someone who firmly believes in trusting the audience to piece things together for themselves, this storytelling tactic drives me up the wall, and is rather insulting given how simple these stories are.

In fact, the simplicity of the stories and the writing once again brings into question just who the hell these films are made for. Given the nature of the tales presented, it would appear that Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is aimed at a younger set of viewers, which would be fine. However, as I have noted time and again, the DC DTV films were sold on being aimed at an older fan base, featuring stories that were more mature than what could be done within the restrictions of films ostensibly aimed at a youth audience. Unfortunately, “mature” has proven time and again to be little more than a code word for gratuitous violence and cursing in the films, rather than in reference to mature storytelling, and this problem once again appears in Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, most notably with the inclusion of a rather grisly opening death scene.

While these problems plague the film overall, the two stories that have the most potential to be interesting suffer from additional problems. First, there is the adaptation of the Alan Moore penned story “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize,” a brilliant tale from the comics that is butchered in the translation to animation, thanks to a few, but key, creative choices. (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) The original story is set up like a joke, involving a rather dim alien warrior in search of a fight with the famed Green Lantern Mogo. Landing on an alien world, the warrior spends years searching the seemingly empty world for sign of the Lantern, only to start mapping out the planet in hopes of finding some sort of clue he has missed. Once he completes his maps however, he discovers that the clearings of the planet form the Green Lantern crest, a discovery which makes him realize that Mogo is a living planet, one which he promptly flees.

While the structure of the story remains the same in the film, the filmmakers let the audience in way to early on the joke, spoiling the entire gag. Worse, in an attempt to liven the story up and make it a little more “cinematic” with grandiose explosions and visuals, the filmmakers take away from the story, whose joys were based on its simplicity and willingness to embrace the potential absurdity of just how varied the Corps membership can be. It is as if the filmmakers were afraid that the viewers would turn the film off if one of the stories happened to be a quieter piece of work, and it is a shame, as it ruins the entire mood of the original comic. (END SPOILERS).

On the plus side, at least “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” is an actual story, which is more than can be said for the final segment focusing on Abin Sur, which is little more than a cliché discussion on the topic of prophecy and fate that ultimately goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the final film. The whole piece rests on the viewers knowing just who Abin Sur and Sinestro are, rather than actually establishing what their relationship is, and as such, it holds no dramatic weight at all. This is all the more frustrating as the segment flirts with story ideas featured in another Alan Moore story, “Tygers” a bleak, nihilistic, and full-bodied tale about fear that, had it been adapted, would have made for a segment that actually embraces the supposed “mission statement” of the DC DTV films discussed earlier.

“Tygers,” (along with “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize”) are republished in Green Lantern: In Brightest Day, a trade paperback collecting Green Lantern stories from over four decades, and I highly recommend the book, particularly over a purchase or rental of Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. While hardly the worst of the DC DTV films, it is easily the most bland, which in a series of films that also includes Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, is saying something. With any luck, Green Lantern fans will get a much more satisfying film this Friday with the release of Martin Campbell’s live action film. Or maybe that film will be a spectacular failure.

Either way, it is bound to be more interesting than Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

All Star Superman (Liu 2011)

Given the tragic death of All Star Superman (Liu 2011) screenwriter Dwayne McDuffie on Tuesday, February 22 2011, the same day that All Star Superman was released, I considered not reviewing the film like I have the other DC Animated films. In circumstances such as death, the criticism of a person’s work, either positive or negative, can take on a different tone and be misconstrued. Out of respect for Mr. McDuffie, I figured it would be best to avoid such problems.

However, while watching the film last night, a story about facing life and death with strength and dignity, I changed my mind. While flawed, All Star Superman is the final work from the acclaimed writer of comics and animation, and as such deserves to be seen and discussed as much as his other work, not ignored out of a misplaced attempt of respect.

All Star Superman is based on a twelve issue comic series of the same name by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, which focuses upon the final days of Superman (James Denton) as he discovers he is dying from solar poisoning, resulting from a rescue mission near the sun caused by Lex Luthor (Anthony LaPaglia). With his time running out, Superman sets about getting his affairs in order, from finally addressing his relationship with Lois Lane (Christina Hendricks), making sure the world is protected one final time, and trying to save the soul of Lex Luthor.

While many people have referred to the original comic version of the story as a deconstruction of Superman and his mythos, such a description is not fitting. Morrison and Quitely’s comic tale is not interested in breaking down the Man of Steel and exploring the contradictions and instable meanings of the character. Rather, the comic was a love letter to Superman, a tale that explores why Superman endures and is as relevant as ever in popular culture, even when it seems like his time is done. The story takes everything about Superman, from the iconic to the downright goofy, and gives it a sense of power and weight that most comic creators could only ever dream of achieving. Most important however is how Morrison and Quitley bring out of the complexities of the character by embracing his deceptive simplicity and seemingly all powerful nature, rather than trying to mitigate it as many writers since John Byrne have done to varying degrees of success. At times, Morrison’s messianic take on Kal-El is a bit much, but that is about the only criticism that can be held against the comic.

The challenge in adapting the comic into a film is that the source material is epic in scope, episodic in structure, and dense in detail and ideas, carrying the reader from moments of sheer awe, such as the opening rescue of a ship flying into the sun, to touchingly human moments, such as Superman’s visit to Smallville. To do it justice in a single film is likely impossible, or at the very least would require the running length of one of the Lord of the Rings extended cuts. As such, adapting the material into a 76 minute long direct to video film did not inspire much confidence, even with Bruce Timm and Dwayne McDuffie in charge. While their respective work on the acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, the Animated Series Batman Beyond, Static Shock and Justice League television series have defined what the DC Universe is for me, the direct to video films have been a flawed bunch at best. While Batman: Under the Red Hood was fantastic, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse were simple dreadful.

Given this, you can imagine my surprise at how well All Star Superman works in the format. Now, the finished film is far from what an adaptation of the source material could be, given the proper running time and budget, and part of me wishes that Zack Snyder would make the shock announcement that his up coming Superman film is an adaptation of this material. Still, All Star Superman is better than the film has any right to be given the limitations the filmmakers faced, as it keeps the heart of the story and Quitley’s gorgeous artwork mostly intact.

The approach taken to adapting the material though is one which I have frequently noted as being one of my least favourite, the cut and past abridged tactic where key scenes and ideas are directly lifted in order to “maintain” as much of the story as possible, while much of the connecting material is dropped. The end result of such adaptations more often than not is a finished film which feels like it is missing huge chunks of story, while never allowing the material that remains to breath. This is certainly the case in All Star Superman, best illustrated in an inappropriately comic moment at the grave site of Jonathan Kent, where Martha Kent kneels down for what appears to be a respectful prayer, only to get right back up and carry on a conversation without missing a beat less than a second later. That said, the strength of McDuffie’s script is that it does manage to identify and keep the most important material from the comics in the film, never losing sight of what the story is about. Only once does the film seem to stray off course by keeping the “paranoid Lois” chapter, a story that worked wonderfully in the comic but seems out of place in this condensed version of the narrative. Simply skipping ahead to Superman giving Lois her birthday gift would have allowed the film to flesh out one or two other scenes to the film’s benefit.

The flaws in the film however are partly smoothed over by the excellent casting in the film, starting with James Denton’s Superman. While I have heard criticism of Denton’s work as being too calm and saintly, I believe that for this interpretation of the character it is entirely fitting. This is a story in which we see Superman at his best and most noble, and Denton manages to project this through his work. Hendricks’ Lois is easily the best animated Lois Lane since Dana Delany, bringing a greater sense of warmth to the character than is usually seen in other interpretations.

The scene stealer however is Anthony LaPaglia as Luthor. Morrison boiled Luthor down to his essence in this story, a man driven by his own ego and an inferiority complex that he tries to deny. LaPaglia captures the nature of the character perfectly, particularly towards the end of the film when he is required to deliver an emotion laden speech built entirely out of complex science terminology. With any luck, if Luthor appears in future DC animated films, LaPaglia will be allowed to reprise the role.

(One thing to do while watching: listen carefully for a surprise appearance by Michael Gough in a rather small and peculiar part.)

On the animation front, the work here is stellar as usual from this crew. Quitely’s artwork has been simplified down in order to better translate to animation, but little the awe and emotion captured in his work has been lost. Indeed, the animation crew seems to have gone above and beyond their usual efforts with this film, and while it never quite hits the level of a theatrical feature film, it comes close.

Unfortunately, for all of these positive points about the film, I think the word “close” is the defining term for the finished film. All Star Superman is a film always on the verge of hitting its true greatness, but never quite makes it all the way. It is a film which perfectly illustrates the constraints in which these films are produced, the constraints which hold back these filmmakers from making films that fully achieve their ambitions. Warner Brothers needs to give these people the resources they need to make a truely epic piece of superhero animation, because what they have here in All Star Superman is a good film, when it could have been great.

Still, if the DC Animated films are to continue as a series of DTV releases, perhaps it is time to find a Superman story that is brilliant, but manageable in the format of 76 minutes. A story that many fans would love to see.

A story like "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"…

Steel (Johnson 1997)

I did not plan this. I really did not. After reviewing the 1997 comic book failure Spawn (ok, after using the film as an excuse to talk about Roger Ebert and his critical practice), I had not planned to review another of the three bad comic book film from the same year.

Yet, here I am reviewing Steel (Johnson 1997), perhaps the most forgotten about film ever based on a superhero comic. Based on the DC comic book character created by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove in the aftermath of Superman’s “death” in the early 1990s, Steel was a last ditch attempt to try and launch basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal’s acting “career.” The end result was dumped into theatres in August of 1997, and I was one of the few people to actually pay to see the film in a theatre (it was a birthday gift to my younger brother who was a fan of the character, before you ask). It was out of theatres about a week later and on video not too long after that, where it was promptly forgotten. Deservedly so.

Except, there is a historical value to Steel, though we need to look back a decade or two previous to the film, and to the medium of television. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, a surprising number of comic book superheroes made their way onto television either in TV movies or full fledged television series. These programs, however, were often generic action series and/or crime shows that treated the concept of the superhero as little more than gimmick to liven up an otherwise tried format. The villains were common criminals rather than super villains, the actual moments of super heroics were limited in scale, usually being saved for the final act, and, like most American television of the time, the plotting was episodic and repetitive. Most of these attempts were terrible, such as the live action Spider-Man series and the horrendous Captain America TV movie starring Reb Brown. Often, the very best of these shows were not based on actual comics, such as the cheesy-but-charming Greatest American Hero.

The best known and arguably best of these programs was The Incredible Hulk series starring Billy Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. Taking the basic concept of the comic, that of a scientist who in an accident gains the ability to turn into a raging green beast when he becomes angry, the series combined it with the framework of the successful television series The Fugitive, with David Banner (Bixby) on the run, looking for a cure and helping the people he meets along the way, often assisted and/or hindered by his monstrous alter ego (Ferrigno). The series was goofy and formula driven, but Bixby made (and still makes) for a compelling lead, and the core concept was strong enough for the series to be engaging on a weekly basis.

The man behind bringing The Incredible Hulk to television, along with The Bionic Woman, was Kenneth Johnson, who also wrote and directed the original V mini-series in 1983, and directed the 1988 film Short Circuit 2. Johnson is also the writer and director of Steel, and to the production he brings pretty much the exact same approach to the film as he did to The Incredible Hulk. As such, Steel’s creative and financial failings are take on a symbolic dimension, providing late close to an era of comic book superheroes on film and television, an era in which filmmakers actively tried and suppress what superheroes are in an attempt to make them more “palatable” to mainstream audiences.

The story of Steel is that of John Henry Irons (O’Neal), a military weapons designer who resigns after his latest weapon cripples his friend and colleague Susan Sparks (Annabeth Gish, The X-Files) in a demonstration mishandled by weapon co-designer Burke (Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club). Returning home, Irons is shocked to find his weapons are now in the hands of gang members, thanks to Burke. When the military decides not to intervene, Irons decides to take matters into his own hands. Reuniting with Sparks and teaming with a wise old junkyard owner (Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame), Irons builds himself a suit of armour and takes to the streets as Steel.

From start to finish, Steel is little more than a late 1980s/early 1990s TV movie that somehow found its way into cinemas, written and shot in the most perfunctory manner possible by Johnson. It is a film peopled by caricatures and stereotypes instead of characters, in a tale that is not engaging either emotionally or intellectually. It is a passionless project where almost everyone involved are working only to collect their cheques, and the lack of care shows in every single frame.

Were the film merely bad on that level, it would simply be forgettable. What makes Steel particularly awfully is just how much contempt for the intelligence of the audience is visible on screen, particularly towards its supposed target audience: children. Steel is a “family” film of the worst kind, preaching a clichéd message of believing in ones self and the value of hard work in the most condescending manner possible. Characters frequently stand about and make speeches that spell out the morals of the film, enough so that by the time Roundtree makes a comment at the end of the film about what one can do when they “really put their mind to it,” I was ready to put on Crank 2 in order to see something entirely amoral. Worse, the film frequently draws in the most superficial manner possible on then popular youth culture, just so it can condemn it in an idiotic fashion. For example, Burke’s post military weapons development is financed by a videogame CEO, if you can believe it, while a child character finds himself in danger because he takes what he believes to be a legitimate job at the same company.

(Note to filmmakers who are determined to make message films for children: it is unlikely kids will buy into your message when you are constantly telling them how bad their culture is. Please keep in mind.)

However, as much contempt as the film might have towards its youthful target audience, it is nothing compared to the contempt the film shows towards the superhero genre. While Johnson’s previous effort The Incredible Hulk may not have held much interest in grand scale science fiction and fantasy, it took the concept of the Hulk seriously, never asking the audience to laugh at the premise. As bad as the Spider-Man television series was, even it never actively sought to have the audience laugh at the very idea of Spider-Man. And while The Greatest American Hero might have been a piece of light comedy action television, its humour was born out of a love of superheroes. The series knew superheroes could be ridiculous, but damn it, they were still a ton of fun.

No such love or respect exists in Steel. At the best of times, the film is merely uninterested in the superhero concept, never bothering to make John Henry Irons in his superhero outings impressive or dignified. In fact, Irons spends most of his time being beaten badly or getting by on sheer luck over the course of the film. Even his “support” team proves to be more effective at fighting crime than Irons ever is during the course of the film. The only effort put in to make Irons seem imposing is in the way Johnson and director of photography Mark Irwin try to emphasize how tall their star is.

Which brings us to Shaquille O’Neal. To be fair to O’Neal, he is clearly trying with all his heart to give a good performance, but the man simply is not an actor. Irons is supposedly a great weapons designer, soldier, and a decent man. Of these, O’Neal is only able to pull of the decency of Irons, never managing to project the intelligence or disciplined mind that we could reasonably expect of a solider or someone who is scientifically inclined. Worse, Irons is motivated by an anger at his work being misappropriated, but O’Neal’s attempts at acting angered and outraged are limited to him barely raising his voice.

The unimpressive nature of the title character is highlighted all the more by his equally unimpressive opponent in the form of Judd Nelson’s Burke. A standard issue villain who merely wants power, casting Nelson as Burke is the biggest piece of miscasting in the film, even more so than O’Neal. While Nelson is a solid actor, there is nothing particularly threatening about him, and certainly nothing to indicate a criminal mastermind. His performance turns Burke into little more than a weasel-like midlevel thug, which makes Irons look all the more pathetic when Burke seemingly defeats him at every turn.

Given how poor a hero Irons is thanks to Johnson’s failings, the moments of unfunny humour in the film fail to be gentle ribbings on the character, and function more as an all out assault on the concept of superheroes. Were the film an intelligent deconstruction and/or comedy of superheroes, I might have been willing to go along with this total attack on superhero fiction. Instead, Johnson seems to be trying to shame fans of the genre and laugh at them, repeatedly yelling at them through Steel “Really? This is what you are a fan of?” Johnson only succeeds in revealing his misconceptions and misunderstanding of the genre, as well as its fans.

The thing about this is that in tearing down superheroes and heroics, Johnson is pretty much undermining his own supposed message at the heart of Steel. It is a film ostensibly about what can be done with determination and hard work, but the truth of the matter is that the film is about a man who dreams big and fails, made by a man who dreams small and fails. As such, Steel is an oddly cynical work for a family film, peddling messages that its own filmmaker does not even seem to believe in, in a genre that he admits to not even liking. As bad as Spawn is, it at least seems to be made by people who enjoy working in the genre, and were trying their best to make their film work even as it failed.

Of course, having now established that Steel is worse than Spawn, it would only be logical to see where the third terrible comic book film of 1997 ranks with these two. So come back soon as I tackle the notorious, and perhaps most hated film in all of comic book fandom, Batman and Robin (Schumacher 1997).

Spawn (Dippé 1997)

(NOTE: I will admit right now that this is less a review of the film Spawn and more or a discussion of Roger Ebert and his critical practice. Please keep in mind while reading)

Normally, I would not bother to ask my readers to read another critic’s review before reading my own (seeing as how most critics are better than myself). However, when the critic I am guiding you to is A) Roger Ebert, and B) he has written this review of Mark A.Z. Dippé’s 1997 film Spawn, I feel compelled to ask you all to read the work before launching into my own.

Now, allow me to be clear: I love Roger Ebert. He and Gene Siskel were among the first critics I ever bothered following, and I continue to do so in the case of Ebert. I respect his work without always agreeing with it, and even when I do disagree, he usually offers something to think about. Despite this respect however, there are two Roger Eberts that one might end up reading with any given review. The first, and most common, is the intelligent, well learned film scholar who can discuss and dissect a film with the best of them.

The other Ebert is the one who wrote the embarrassingly bad Spawn review I just asked you to read.

The review is not embarrassing because Roger Ebert liked the film: as bad as the film is, I have no beef with anyone enjoying it. Heck, I think the film so bad as to be brilliantly awful entertainment, what with Martin Sheen going off the deep end of “ham” with his performance, the bizarre turn from John Leguizamo, and Nicol Williamson ending his film career in the worst possible manner. No, what is embarrassing is the pains Ebert goes to try and justify his three and a half star review of the film, and his attempts to try and sound as if he has a working knowledge of the comic book medium. The review rings hollow, and highlights one of Ebert's downfalls in his critical practice.

Just take the first paragraph of Ebert’s review, that “Spawn is best seen as an experimental art film…[w]hat we have here are creators in several different areas doing their best to push the envelope. The subject is simply an excuse for their art--just as it always is with serious artists.” Putting aside the absurd notion that “serious artists” have little use for their subjects beyond using them as a pretext, Ebert basically asks the reader/potential viewer of Spawn to simply turn off their brain and admire the “pretty pictures.” And while I normally do not agree with such requests, I can at least respect the idea of someone admitting to doing so. They are at least being honest.

However, being Roger Ebert, respectable film critic 95% of the time, a request to "shut off your brain" would be, to say the least, odd. Or rather, odd to the audience he feels he is writing to. Hence, we get his dressed up version of the "turn off your brain" request, with reference to considering the film as an art film and to focus on the daring do of the special effects artists, who have apparently crafted a visual world that is, and I quote, "unforgettable."

Ok, fine, let us follow Ebert down this path for a moment and ignore everything except the visual effects, which includs computer animation, makeup, etc. Are they as boundary pushing as he claims? Is this world the filmmakers have created on the level of Metropolis and Blade Runner as he states? There is a simple answer to this:

No.

This is not a “no” in the context of the fourteen years of effects work that have come since the film came out. This is a “no” that comes out of an awareness of what was capable at the time. This is a “no” that comes from a deep love of real special effects development, witnessed not only in Metropolis and Blade Runner as Ebert mentions, but from the following films that predate Spawn: Le Voyage Dans la Lune (1902); King Kong (1933); Citizen Kane (1941); The Wolfman (1941); The Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms (1953); 2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968); Star Wars (1977); Superman: The Movie (1978); An American Werewolf in London (1981); Tron (1982); The Thing (1982); The Dark Crystal (1982); The Terminator (1984); Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988); The Abyss (1989); Terminator 2 - Judgement Day (1991); and Jurassic Park (1992). This is a “no” on behalf of Georges Méliès, Linwood G. Dunn, Ray Harryhausen, Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, Stan Winston, Tom Savini, Rob Bottin, Greg Nicotero, Robert Kurtzman, Jim Henson, and Rick Barker, among others, who I would not blame for feeling insulted by the suggestion that Spawn’s effects work are anywhere near their achievements, or builds upon them.

Not only is Spawn not a boundary pushing film in terms of special effects, the quality of its special effects are a massive step back from what was achievable at the time. While the design of the Spawn makeup in the film is fine (not great: fine), the minute the film decides to use digitally created effects, which is often, the whole film goes to hell (no pun intended). Take a look at the following captures from the film.

Now, remember in his review of the film, Ebert compared these images of hell to the work of Hieronymous Bosch, who painted in the late 1400s. Below is an example of Bosch’s work.

Does anything in the images from Spawn seem remotely worthy of Bosch’s work? The visions of hell in Spawn look about the quality of a Full Motion Video Game (FMVs) cut scene from the same era, which were often made with vastly less money and resources than available to the filmmakers of Spawn. Granted, the playback of such FMVs were in low resolution, but that was because of the computer limitations of the time.

Allow that to sink in for a moment folks: the special effects "wonders" that Ebert seems to love are on part with those in low resolution video game footage of the 1995-1999 era.

Of course, maybe Ebert was referring to the morphing effects in the film. The thing is, even if these were what Ebert was impressed by, Spawn A) did not pioneer the effect, as it appeared at least two years previous in the slightly-better-than-Spawn film Mortal Kombat (1995) (and yes, I am well aware that I am saying a Paul W.S. Anderson film is better than Spawn), and B) Mortal Kombat did these morphing effects far better, as did the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie. And even the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

But I digress. The key point here is that in no way, shape or form can Spawn be considered for the value of its special effects as Ebert points towards, let alone be mentioned in the same breath as films that legitimately pushed forth the development of special effects. This bizarre-at-best attempt at giving a sense of “legitimacy” to his enjoyment of the film is the kind of deranged statement that would have killed the authority of any lesser critic. In the case of Ebert, this failed attempt at trying to give Spawn a historical and cinematic significance comes across as little more than an expression of class anxiety and vanity: he enjoyed a film he views as being trash, and therefore must justify it both to himself and his envisioned readership. This class bias becomes all the more apparent in the manner Ebert appraises the film's narrative, and what it tells us about how he envisions the comic book medium and its readers/creators.

Certainly, there is not much of value in the storyline of Spawn, and the film suffers from the same problem the comics of the character suffer from (at least the ones I read from early in the run): good ideas with no idea what to do with them. The film merely suffers from the added problem of following the same, lame ABC plotting used by every writer who has misread Joseph Campbell's work as a rule book for writing, and the film never bothers to delve into the psychology of its protagonist Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) the "spawn" of the title. Characters make idiotic decisions because the plot tells them to, and tries to get by on the assumed ignorance of the (1997) audience on several topics. For example, you would think that a top CIA agent might realize that destroying a computer monitor will do nothing to stop information from being sent over the Internet. Not in the universe of Spawn.

Given this shoddy writing, one would be able to forgive Ebert for being dismissive of the film's narrative. Indeed, his criticism that the story is rather a sentimental piece of work is completely correct. The problem though is that Ebert assumes that not only is the quality of storytelling in Spawn is the same quality of storytelling in comics, but that this quality is what comic book readers crave and writers strive for. What else can be taken away from such statements as " in comic books, and movies spawned by comic books...[w]hat matters is style, tone, and creative energy"?

The entire manner in which Ebert treats comic book creators, readers and the medium in general is filled with contempt, and his review Spawn is this contempt written loud, and in near complete ignorance of the medium, its history, and its capabilities. Which again, would be fine if he would admit as much. Instead, we get to witness Roger Ebert's laughable at best attempts at trying to sound as if he is some authority on the comic book medium ("origination story"? Please stop trying to class up our terminology) to his assumed audience: the "literate" types who do not read comic books. For Ebert, the comic book reader and writer is some alien life form, caught up in their own little world in which “real” art and “real” writers do not come into, and hence will not read his reviews. Again, I ask how is one to take a condescending statement such as "I am sure there will be some who get involved at the plot level..."? We know who you are talking about Roger. Or rather, who you think you are talking about

Yes, the comic book reader and writer are strange illiterate aliens to Mr. Ebert. Never mind the existence of Alan Moore, who’s philosophical ponderings were what interested Ebert so much in Watchmen (2009). Or J. Michael Straczynski, a long time writer of comics and animated television who also writes films such as Changeling (2008). Or Neil Gaiman, one of the greatest living fantasy writers working today across pretty much all media, whose defining work might just be his epic Sandman series. No, these aliens known as comic book fans and writers care not for narrative, but merely “style, tone, and creative energy.”

Bullshit.

When you get right down to it, Ebert's review of Spawn is little more than the worst of Ebert's critical practices rolled into one review: written in ignorance, utilizing assumption and stereotypes over facts, and trying too hard to either justify his enjoyment of the film to either his assumed readership, or to himself. Probably both. It is a review that tries too hard, and had Ebert simply admitted to liking the film rather than reaching for flimsy reasons to justify that love, no one would have really cared.

There is no shame Mr. Ebert in admitting you loved a trashy movie, be it ironically or seriously.

There is no shame in your loving Spawn.

RED (Schwentke 2010)

While RED (Schwentke 2010) may not be a revenge film in terms of its narrative and genre, the film none-the-less offers a revenge fantasy for baby boom audience members faced with marginalization as Generation X and beyond come into power economically and politically. RED’s plot, about a group of retired CIA agents banding together to fight back against their old employer who is looking to execute them, takes every available opportunity to allow its protagonists to beat down their successors, demonstrate sexual vitality and simply prove that they are not too old live like the young. As a card carrying member of Generation Y/Next/Echo Boom/whatever-you-want-to-call-us, my reaction to RED is quite simple:

It is a hell of a fun little film.

Now, that does not mean that RED is a great film, or some sort of classic in the action genre. It is not. Nor is it necessarily better than its comic source material, a three issue mini-series by the legendary Warren Ellis. I have yet to read the series, so I cannot comment. What RED is however is a slick little piece of popcorn entertainment that would have been nice to have had available during this past summer, in order to relieve audiences of all the garbage that the studios tried to pass off as fun films (with the obvious exceptions of the great Inception and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World). RED is a film without any preconceptions of greatness: it knows is strengths and limitations with regards to the material, and the filmmakers do their best to liven up the stock characters and situations with sharper than expected writing, directing and acting.

While director Robert Schwentke’s work thus far has been rather undistinguished, with credits on films such as Flightplan (2005) and The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009), he brings a steady hand to RED, working from a script by Jon and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout). Schwentke seems to know that the best approach to the material is to simply allow the cast to carry the film and get out of their way. There are no auteur or wannabe-auteur attempts made in the film: Schwentke’s direction primarily consists of keeping the film energetic and moving a good clip, and it works. More importantly, Schwentke keeps the film relatively grounded, allowing for moments of comic action absurdity that are fantastic without turning the film into an outright fantasy of superhuman beings.

Carrying most of the film’s weight however is the cast, which provide uniformly excellent work. Lead star Bruce Willis, who earlier this year was underserved by the sub par script and direction of the buddy comedy Cop Out, gets to really flex his comedic muscles here as Frank Moses. Willis plays the role in a surprisingly vulnerable manner, downplaying the supposed “badass” coolness of Frank and instead plays up the character’s awkwardness with average life and relationships. This of course is helped in no small way by Mary-Louise Parker as Sarah, Frank’s possible romantic flame who comes to rather enjoy the dangerous situation she finds herself in. While Parker’s character is unfortunately saddled with the damsel in distress role at a certain point in the film, Parker makes the most of every scene she is in, brining a sense of spunk and joy to a character that could easily have been phoned in.

The film’s supporting cast is equally worthy of mention. Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich are given somewhat thin characters to work with, with Freeman particularly stuck playing a variation on the wise-old-man role. Both are clearly having fun onscreen however, and it is infectious. Malkovich in particular eats up every odd quirk he is given to play as Marvin, the paranoid and childlike ex-CIA agent who spent years being the subject of LSD experiments. The sight of a sad Marvin holding a stuffed pig by the tail is one of RED’s highlights, and Malkovich is given plenty of similar scene stealing moments throughout. Karl Urban as the young but not naïve agent tracking Moses is stuck playing straight man to pretty much everyone else in the film, but he once again proves that he has the charisma to be great leading man if he can ever score the right role to take him to the A-list.

However, RED’s best weapon is the duo of Helen Mirren and Brian Cox, as romantically involved agents from opposite sides of the long over Cold War. The pair’s subplot romance is almost a delightful romantic comedy onto itself, particularly in the final act of the film as the band of heroes put their final plan in motion. By this point, Cox’s character of Ivan Simanov seems vastly less interested in the grandiose nature of Frank’s plan than he is in pursuing Mirren’s Victoria with as much smooth charm as possible. Mirren meanwhile appears to relish the opportunity she has to play the most badass member of Moses’ crew, finding ways to blend flirtatious and motherly types of behaviour with the stone cold professionalism. Combined with the fact that Mirren and Cox have great chemistry, I simply would have loved for the whole film to be nothing more than a charting of their peculiar romance over the decades. A spin off film perhaps?

By the time RED comes to a close, there will likely be members of the audience saying that the filmmakers could easily have made a more substantive film dealing with the issues of an aging population and its rivalry with its offspring, and they would not be wrong. Others will likely be complaining that the film moves far away from leaner and meaner premise of Warren Ellis’ original comic. Again, I have not read the comics, though its reviews online point to it being a massively different work, and a fascinating one. Again, such complaints would not be wrong. However, both criticisms would seem to miss the fun to be had with RED, particularly given the lack of action films focused on older characters in modern filmmaking. Besides which, the film simply succeeds at what it sets out to do.

Fans of Ellis’ original comics can take one little bit of solace when it comes to the film: at least RED is not as disappointing as The Losers. Or as bad as Jonah Hex. Those are fans who really have something to complain about.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (Vietti 2010)

That's right, now you can suffer listening to me!

Click To Play

Batman (serial; Hillyer 1943)

(My review of Inception will be up by Friday of this week)

In my review of Batman and Robin, the 1949 serial from Sam Katzman, I noted that one of the key reasons the serial works despite the clear and abundant flaws is due to the innocence of the whole effort. It set out to tell a Batman and Robin adventure, and low budget (and narrative logic) be damned, it did it with enthusiasm.

I cannot, however, give the same good will towards the first ever live action Batman film, the 1943 serial Batman, produced by Columbia pictures and directed by Lambert Hillyer. While the film comes out of the same low budget roots as the latter film, Batman is not a simple adventure serial, but rather a piece of war time propaganda designed to drum up anti-Japanese sentiment. The film is thus full of racist caricatures and slurs, with an extremely jingoistic attitude permeating every frame of the film. While the context out of which the film was produced may make these elements understandable, it doesn’t make them any less uncomfortable in the context of a boy’s adventure serial. And even if one is able to watch with the understanding of why the film is what it is, it doesn’t change the fact that the serial isn’t really all that good.
In Batman, Batman and Robin (Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft) are secret crime fighters who work for the United States government. In Gotham City, a Japanese spy and master criminal, Prince Tito Daka (J. Carrol Naish) operates, taking control of the criminal underworld and seeks to sabotage the United States war effort. It is up to Batman and Robin to stop Daka, but can they do so when Daka possesses a league of zombies at his command (old style zombies, not the Romero flesh eaters) and a deadly radiation gun?
As an adaptation of the Batman character, the 1943 serial is an abysmal failure. Since his first appearance in 1939, Batman has always been an aggressively individualistic character, working for the law by working outside it, and on his own terms. While the comics of the 1950s and the 1960s television adaptation tried to mitigate this element of the character, it has never been able to be fully purged, and it is one of the most appealing elements of the character. He is totally uncompromising in his fight against crime, but it is a personal war, not one beholden to any specific country or ideology. In transforming Batman into a government agent, that individualism is lost, as his quest is subsumed into the larger war effort.
The film however cannot even get the concept of a ideologically driven Batman right. Lewis’ Batman is less of a crime fighter and more of an overgrown man-child looking for excitement. There is no sense of commitment or drive to his Batman: he instead opens up his assignments from Washington like a kid opening a Christmas gift, and more often than not seems to have no interest in the people he is supposedly trying to help. In fact, Lewis’ Batman is a mean spirited individual, viciously pulling pranks on his Alfred and treating his supposed romantic interest Linda (Shirley Patterson) with outright contempt and negligence. If this were a persona to throw people off from figuring out that he is Batman it would have been one thing, but here, this is simply who Batman is. At least Croft’s Robin is likeable enough to balance out Wilson’s failings as our “hero.”
These problems with our hero go beyond Wilson’s performance however, as the filmmakers set about making Batman the saddest superhero committed to film. Batman is repeatedly beaten by the criminals he is after, and more often than not, it is either Robin and/or Alfred who are bailing him out of trouble. The final chapter of the serial actually involves Batman being sidelined until Robin rescues him and subdues the villain. While I am all for a fallible hero, in making Batman this inept, there is no sense as to why anyone should be interested in following his adventures.
Then, there is the racism. Now, while it is certainly true that the film is a product of its time, this in no way forgives the vitriol in which the film engages with such attitudes. The whole film seems to seethe in an open desire to attack the Japanese at any given moment, and there is rarely a moment in the film that goes by without some form of anti-Japanese sentiment raising its head. Some of it is so absurd that it could almost be laughed off, such as a scene in which an American criminal gives a bafflingly patriotic speech, but then the film heads down much more serious territory, including an unsettling moment when Batman himself starts using racial slurs against Daka. Perhaps no moment sets the venomous tone of the film more than an early scene in which the narrator points out the “wisdom” of the interment camps which Japanese Americans were placed into during the war. The moment lays bare the film’s intent, and it is hard to try and see the film as anything more than a historical artifact of war time propaganda afterwards.
There are aspects of the serial however that are worthy of mention. While he plays the role for laughs, William Austin’s Alfred is actually one of the few parts of the film that works, even though he is victimized by those he serves. Placed in various disguises and situations he shouldn’t be in, Alfred does manage to get a few real laughs throughout the film. And the opening theme sets the mood perfectly, and as it plays over the Columbia logo, it feels reminiscent of the Danny Elfman Spider-man theme. Unfortunately, nothing in the serial lives up to the expectations set up by the music.
When it comes down to it, Batman is of little note: As an artifact of World War II era filmmaking, it is only one among many example;. serious film serial fans will likely find it forgettable and a poor representation for the format. As for diehard Batman fans, the film is a must watch, but only from the perspective of the character's evolution into a cultural icon.

Batman and Robin (Serial: Bennet 1949)

Given my love of serialized fiction, classic cinema, and B movies, it is odd that I have never watched a film serial from start to finish before now. I have seen selected episodes from some serials, including the classic Flash Gordon from 1936, and I am familiar with the overall structure and production style of these efforts, but I have never gone out of my way to watch one. Luckily, I can wipe that off my list of cinema fan failings, having now watched the 1949 Columbia Pictures serial Batman and Robin, from producer Sam Katzman and director Spencer Bennet.
From what I have been able to find online, starting with a Sam Katzman serial might not be considered ideal for diving into the history of serials. Katzman’s productions appear to have a reputation for being cheap, quickly produced works, a far cry from the earlier noted Flash Gordon serials which were expensive productions, by serial standards. And indeed, the cheapness does show on screen in Batman and Robin, from the poorly designed Batman cowl, to the low budget animation which appears from time to time, and the fact that the Batmobile is a simple 1949 Mercury. Worse, the writing is often lacking, leaving the film full of plot holes and lapses in logic, problems which are exacerbated by shoddy production values and direction.

Yet, I despite these clear and abundant flaws, Batman and Robin remains an oddly fascinating and entertaining experience, particularly when considered within the context of Batman’s later cinematic adventures. Batman and Robin manages to be remarkably faithful to its comic book source material, and despite the lapses in logic, the presence of an odd super villian, and beyond questionable science, the serial actually manages to take itself seriously enough to be a legitimate and noteworthy adaptation of the character. At the very least, it is better than the other Batman and Robin (Schumacher 1997).

In Batman and Robin, the dynamic duo (Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan) are caught in a battle with a mysterious foe known as “the Wizard,” who has stolen a remote control device that is capable of controlling automobiles, trains and planes. As Batman and Robin attempt to solve the mystery of who the Wizard is and retrieve the device, they must also contend with photojournalist Vicki Vale (Jane Adams), Bruce Wayne’s romantic partner, as she comes closer to figuring out just who Batman and Robin really are.
Given the format and era in which the serial was produced, it should be no surprise that Batman and Robin is bereft of the characterization and the psychological depth of both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan’s live action Batman films: the point is to get on with the adventure, not spend time studying Batman’s psychology. Having said that, Batman and Robin does ask that the viewer invest in the adventure taking place, rather than playing the concept and adventure for deliberate laughs, unlike other adaptations. Batman and Robin here are heroic and hardworking figures in this film, planning stakeouts, searching for clues, and engaging in fisticuffs with low level thugs. Moreover, they are far from the demigod Batman and Robin written by Grant Morrison, with this Batman and Robin being more than capable of making mistakes and being injured. The logic of the adventure/mystery itself might not always make sense, but the effort to ground the film in some semblance of reality is appreciated.

As the title characters, Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan make for a solid, if unremarkable, set of leading men. Lowery struggles somewhat as Batman, working hard to overcome the costume which doesn’t make his Batman the most formidable looking of heroes. However, Lowery is more comfortable in the Bruce Wayne persona, which actually is one of the film’s more memorable achievements. Like the comics, the public Bruce Wayne is used to deflect people from connecting Wayne to Batman. However, unlike the pompous playboy or recent films and comics, Wayne here is played as a boring, lazy and borderline narcoleptic individual, which oddly enough does make sense. After fighting a long battle against crime each day, why wouldn’t Bruce be tired, and use that to his advantage? Duncan is given less to work with, but his youthful enthusiasm makes him a memorable balance to Lowery’s calm, collected Batman.
More surprising than either of the title characters though is the portrayal of Vicki Vale. While technically Bruce Wayne’s love interest, Vale spends more time as a take charge journalist who doesn’t simply wait around for Batman to rescue her (even though she is rescued at a few points). Yes, this type of characterization was developed long before by the likes of actress Katherine Hepburn, but to see it featured so prominently in a boy’s adventure serial is still quite shocking. Some of the writing remains questionable surrounding the character, such as why she is interested in Bruce Wayne when all Bruce does is act like a self centered, boring jerk, but Jane Adams brings enough life to the character that even the most questionable of scenes are usually sold by her energy and spunk.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am ignoring the serial’s various flaws however. For starters, the central threat of the remote control device makes little sense: how is it that devices that are, by all accounts, not operated by remote able to be remote controlled? Or why doesn’t Batman, Robin or Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot) actually investigate radio personality Brown if they wonder where he is getting his information from? Problems such as these of course have a simple answer in that the plot requires the padding to stretch the story out, but it is hardly an excuse. Other problems have less clear answers, such as why Bruce Wayne, as a rich playboy, would live in the suburbs rather than, say, a mansion that would give him more cover for his activities. The answer might have been that a mansion set and/or location would have been too much for the film’s budget, except that the filmmakers clearly had a mansion set to use for another character’s home in the film.

Such flaws however tend to add to the film’s overall charm and give it a layer of unintended but amusing comedy, which would sink the production if it were not so innocent. And really, that is what allows Batman and Robin to hold up: it aims to do nothing more than to entertain with its limited resources. While it may not be the best adaptation of the character ever committed to film, Batman and Robin does have the distinction of being an entertaining adaptation that is worth checking out for fans of B cinema and the Batman character. Plus, the film is filled with enough fistfights, car chases and explosions to live up to the serial’s promise of exciting adventure.

Given my enjoyment of this film serial, I will soon be delving into more of the Classic Hollywood era film serials which gave birth to the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg era blockbusters. But before I get into those, there is a matter of reviewing two genuine science fiction film classics from the past two years…

The Losers (White 2010)

The sad thing about The Losers is that for its entire running time, you can tell the filmmakers were trying hard to make this film work. This isn’t a half assed effort of a film; from the directing of Sylvain White to the acting, everyone brought an A level effort to the film, and you have to admire that. The problem is none of that effort ultimately makes The Losers a decent film going experience.

A partial update on the premise of the 1980s television cheese fest The A-Team, The Losers is an adaptation of a mature readers’ comic book series of the same name, following a group of special operations soldiers who are left for dead and framed for the murder of a group of children in Bolivia by their handler Max (Jason Patric). Understandably angry, the group takes up the offer from a mysterious woman named Aisha (Zoe Saldana) to bankroll their return to America in exchange for killing Max. This is only the start of their troubles however as group tensions and the mysterious identity of Aisha threaten to unravel the whole scheme.

The material is standard action fare, but workable for a fun, if vapid, film. So why does The Losers ultimately not work? While the film suffers from several flaws, they are all the result of the film’s attempt to achieve the rarified status of “cool.” While there are many things in both life and film which hope to become cool, the common denominator for most things which do become cool is that don’t actively seek to gain that status, but rather have the status of “cool” pronounced upon them by the culture in a natural way. Actively seeking the status of “cool” more often than not achieves the opposite result, and it is this problem that dodges nearly every moment of The Losers.

The type of “cool” which the filmmakers behind The Losers wish to achieve is clear from the outset, as they try and blend 1980s style “men on a mission” action films with the pop culture soaked wit and syntax of the post-Pulp Fiction era of American filmmaking. The characters which populate this world are media saturated individuals who wear this knowledge on their sleeves and take little of what happens around them in an overly serious fashion, not being quite as ironically detached as some of Quentin Tarantino’s characters while never being as ethically obsessive as Jason Bourne.

What the filmmakers miss however is that the films they are trying to emulate, even at their most frothy, tend to have a better sense of grounding which never exists in this film. While the popular culture may be the way in which many people structure and express their views of the world in both real life and in film, the important thing is that such expressions are still about something tangible. Randal of Clerks and Clerks 2 fame may spend most of his time discussing pop culture, but his choices of topics and the way in which he chooses to talk them tell us much about his concerns, thoughts and ideals. Even the absurd macho posturing of the military unit in Predator tells us something about those characters, as simple as it may be.

The same cannot be said about the characters of The Losers, where nearly every character mouths off in and endless series of light banter which exists solely to be light hearted banter. Consider the characters of Jensen (Chris Evans) and Pooch (Columbus Short): I can honestly tell you next to nothing about these characters because there is nothing to say. One has a wife and another a niece, but those details amount to little. I cannot even tell you which one for sure is the obligatory smartass of the group, because their dialogue is frequently interchangeable. This is not the fault of the actors at all, as they make due with what they have. The problem is that they have nothing of substance to work with, transforming the film into more of a sketch comedy than an action comedy.

The villains fair no better than the heroes in the film, if not worse because they are nearly cartoons with no menace to them. Oh yes, Jason Patric is amusing to watch as Max, but at no moment is he ever a credible threat. He is a bad guy because, well, the film needed a villain, and therefore he must do villainous things. We are constantly reminded about how dangerous he and his organization of criminals are, but we are never actually shown anything to make us believe that. The Losers make frequent note as to how tough and frightening Max’s right hand man Wade (Holt McCallany) is, but the film never gives you one moment to believe that concept. Instead, we are treated to some admittedly funny scenes of misunderstandings, banter and frustrations between the super villain duo, but they would have worked better in an outright parody of the genre than in this film.

All of this is all the more annoying because there are nice moments and elements in the finished production. Chris Evans manages to come out of the film totally unscathed, thanks to a natural charisma and comic timing that rises well above the material, and the idea of environmentally friendly terrorism is an amusing idea, even though it goes nowhere in the film. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the excellent the use of Journey on the soundtrack in the film’s best moment.

That is just the point though: the film is nothing but moments. I honestly cannot recommend The Losers as anything more than a time killer if you actually have some time to kill. It is an entirely disposable film, likely to be forgotten about as soon as it is over, a point that no film wanting to be cool can ever survive.