Venom and Aquaman

When it's okay to be bad

Now, I don’t really do what you’d call reviews, it’s more of what captures the popular imagination and what I’d recommend but movie reviews are often based on the visual language of a film ( the director ), the screenplay ( the writers ) and the performances of the cast ( the actors ). Now, Aquaman succeeds in the visual department and a lot of praise has been garnered towards Director James Wan. Some of the action set pieces in this movie are incredible and how he manages to track them without cuts is quite an achievement.

With Venom on the other hand, I can state that if a movie is measured based on these 3 factors, it is objectively a bad movie but I’ve to be honest I thoroughly enjoyed both of these movies and they’ve both gone on to become box office juggernauts. Now, Venom was sold as this anti-hero movie but it’s more akin to Jim Carrey’s Mask than it is to any Superhero/ Anti hero movie. It’s a comedy actually and I don’t know if this was intentional but it works in a weird way. If it wasn’t a blockbuster already it’d probably have a cult following anyway. No scene captures this better than when the symbiote Venom reveals to Eddie Brock that he’s a loser in his own planet much like Eddie which was a very tender moment.
 
In the case of Aquaman, it’s being touted as a masterpiece but it’s really not despite DCEU’s best efforts. It’s Jason Momoa being Jason Momoa while doing Aquaman things and it works. It’s an extremely cheesy movie at times and has a terrible soundtrack. Whose idea was it to have a Pitbull version of Toto’s Africa ? And the song was not in sync with the mood of the scene at all. It was just thrown in there but that’s Aquaman. An Octopus banging the drum for the final battle in Atlantis is also Aquaman. 

These are two movies that are so ridiculous but they embrace their ridiculous nature and it actually makes for a very fun watch and I’d take that everyday for edgy and very cringey Batman v Superman or last year’s Ant Man and the Wasp which was extremely bland. Let’s hope the sequels are just as fun.

Rewriting Spider-Man with the Spider-verse.

A Super hero dream

A few minutes into this movie, you have Miles plugging his headphones on with ‘Sunflower’ playing and it just sets the tone and this movie in motion. Just a few months prior to the release the much awaited Spider-man game released with great acclaim and it took some risks but not quite like Into the Spider-verse.

There’s been a recent trend with movies like Logan, The Last Jedi and Ralph breaks the internet where they’re self aware of what their franchises have been for the last 50 odd years and they’re trying to pass the baton to a new generation of heroes and heroines. They often do this by killing the characters that set these sagas in motion like the Titular ‘Logan’ and Luke Skywalker. By doing this they’re not just trying to kill the characters but trying to remind the audience that it’s time for new stories and with the Last Jedi many felt it was a little rushed but in Logan’s case, it was received very well. Even other stories like George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is a change from the The Lord of the Rings saga and its many imitators. Martin has gone on record and said that Tolkien’s work was a massive influence on him despite the two stories moving in opposite directions. 

I’d go as far as saying that in this passing of the baton, ‘Into the Spider-verse’ has been the most successful in making this transition from Peter Parker to Miles Morales. We’re so familiar with the 90s Spider man cartoons, the ultimate Spider man comics and the Sam Raimi movies but they all tell the same story with a few variations. Into the Spider Verse excels in so many ways with of course the animation taking most of the credit but it’s the narrative that really stuck out for me. The comedy holds this movie together represented by the other characters from the Spider-verse but unlike a lot of other Marvel movies it does not kill the tension. I mentioned the other day how I didn’t have a stand out movie in 2018. That was the case until I watched Into the Spider-verse. It’s my favorite super hero movie to date. Comic book come alive, I wish I was 9-10 again. 

Bandersnatch and the Future of Interactive film.

Not Black Mirror's finest 

So let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Bantam Books didn’t revolutionise the ‘Choose your own adventure’ genre cause you’ve probably never heard of it till I mentioned it here and maybe a few of you did read Goosebumps’ take on the concept but that’s about it. 

Now, if you meet me and happen to talk about the world of entertainment I’m bound to tell you that I’ve enjoyed video game narratives a lot more than narratives in other mediums recently and that has a lot to do with the fact that it’s an interactive medium. 

So, on Bandersnatch itself. I love the idea but the execution maybe less so cause this is again coming from my video game bias but a million people play the same video game yet if I were to talk to you about Nathan Drake ( the protagonist from the Uncharted series ). He’s the same Nathan Drake but Nathan Drake feels personal to the one who controls him. And I use this particular example cause the Uncharted series is a very linear series as opposed to say The Witcher series where we make choices every 3 minutes that can shift the tide of the narrative completely. 

As Bandersnatch moved on you see yourself drifted further apart from Stefan but I guess that was done intentionally. He was a bit like me when I watched ‘Waking Life’ for the first time. I loved the idea though much like I liked the idea of augmented reality in Pokémon Go , it’s the execution which left a lot to be desired but in time will definitely be a lot better.
 
Anyway, as someone who’s aware that video games are not accessible to everyone cause they’re so expensive I’ll be curious to know what you thought of interactive film. 

Stars Wars : The Last Jedi and why it has polarized fans.

A time for a new hero

So I know it’s a little late but it’s been a year now since this extremely divisive movie came out in cinemas. It was well received by critics but the internet had people throwing death threats and abuse at some of the cast members and director Rian Johnson. 
I think it’s fair to say that Star Wars has the biggest fandom of all fandoms and it’s always going to have a massive section of fans unhappy regardless of what movie or series comes out. Anyway, why so polarizing ? 

Well, we have to start with ‘The Monomyth’ aka ‘The Hero’s Journey’. So Joseph Campbell’s ‘A Hero with a thousand faces’ ( you must read this book ) can be regarded as one of the most influential pieces of writing in the 20th century cause of the effect it has had on nearly every successful artist, writer, filmmaker and pop culture blogger ( 😬 ) today. 

George Lucas was no different and when he was getting ideas across for a galaxy far far away, ‘The Monomyth’ ( swipe left ) was a seminal influence on him and since 1977 Star Wars itself has been held to a mythical standard on everything since (The Legend of Zelda : A link to the past’s first scene is literally the same. Go save the hostage princess) My point is we’re so used to a certain type of story that if anything subverts that expectation our immediate reaction is ‘wait what that’s not supposed to happen’. 


Now, the Marvel movies have popularized ‘Bathos’. Well, for those unfamiliar with this term it’s when every sincere moment with a little tension is cut off with some quip for comic relief. Now, quite early on in the exchange between Hux and Poe you see this use of Bathos which if you’ve followed this saga religiously feels a little out of place. Not saying Star Wars is this brooding story with no place for comic relief cause that’s why we have Chewbacca but it was pretty clear to see this ‘Disneyfication’ of Star Wars. I actually enjoyed this movie when I it was out and I still do but I did notice these changes and figured out that it was inevitable but for a lot of people, this change has rubbed them them wrong way. 
What do you think ?

Thanos and superheroes.

The Mad Titan 

So you’ve probably watched the Endgame trailer by now. It’s broken all sorts of viewing records and no one’s really that shocked. Now, a lot of people are 50/50 ( we know someone else who loves this split) on superhero movies. What I must say is that super heroes dominating popular culture isn’t a surprise. In the 50s and 60s it used to be Westerns and this was followed by Gangster and Crime dramas and we now have super heroes. 

Now, shifting the focus to Thanos : The Mad Titan. The character dominated internet discussions in the summer. Was this his movie, is he the antagonist, maybe he did the right thing, is he the best villain since Heath Ledger’s Joker, is he the Darth Vader for this generation and a lot more. He even found himself in 2018 sensation Fortnite. Now I’ve praised the performance of Josh Brolin in a previous post but what I didn’t mention was that I’m a little bored of the messianic villain.

The Watchmen, The Legend of Korra, Naruto, Raas al Ghul, Dan Brown’s Inferno the list goes on. If you consumed enough content, this would be a little predictable. The turn of the century has seen a shift towards nuanced characters but I believe even this has reached a saturation point. That doesn’t mean we shift to guys dressed as Nazis or everything foreign being a Russian spy. Some of my favorite villains of all time have been animals like the Shark from Jaws, T Rex from Jurassic Park and Alien. No shades of grey just pure dread. And in recent times it has been the nihilistic variants in The Joker and Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. Other great examples include the sadistic Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Bolton . I believe it’s only a matter of time before the messianic villain will die. Creators will have to look to their imagination for a new type of antagonist or revert to an old one. 
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If you liked Infinity War you should check out :
1) Anything by Jonathan Hickman 
2) The Infinity Gauntlet