The Avengers (1998 movie version)

 

 

In Word Or Steed 

The Avengers
Directed by Jeramiah S. Chechik
USA 1998
Warner Brothers
German Blu Ray edition

Well now, since The Avengers movie is well known for being a total disaster both critically and at the box office, I thought I’d revisit it now, after watching all its predecessors, because I remember I half enjoyed it and I think people at the time were being a little unfair, critically, to a movie that the director complained was taken away from him and chopped up into little pieces.

Apparently Warner Brothers sliced out 50 minutes from the cut the director delivered and watching it now, knowing that, it makes perfect sense why the damn thing jumps about all over the place, failing to make any of those story jumps clear in any capacity and basically leaving an audience collectively raising their eyebrows.

So we have what is supposed to be the first meeting between John Steed, played here by a young Ralph Fiennes and Emma Peel, played here by a young Uma Thurman… so this is presumably supposed to be taking place between the third and fourth seasons of the original TV show of The Avengers (reviewed here) but, it doesn’t really make it clear.

Supporting them, in a cast so full of beloved British actors too numerous to mention here (in spite of the movie being a foreign affair, so to speak, put out by those strange American individuals), we have Sean Connery as the big bad guy, looking to bring the world to its knees due to his weather control devices, Jim Broadbent as the wheelchair bound Mother and, in a nice voice cameo, the original John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, as an invisible agent at the Ministry.

So… it has some nice set pieces and , in terms of shot design, decor and costumes, well... it looks really great. The problem with this one really is, it would seem to me (though, nobody has seen the original cut other than the people involved at Warners), all to do with the fact that it must have had a load of important scenes, some quite noticeable in their absence (not to mention important story points), chopped out of it wholesale to leave quite a mess of a movie, it’s sad to say. So as an overall experience, it’s sadly lacking even for those audience members who weren’t a fan of the original show and, certainly not the action movie franchise launcher the executives in charge had hoped it to be. But, yeah, they did it to themselves I guess.

A couple of things of note, as far as I’m concerned...

In the opening scene, where Steed goes through a live assault course facing off against unlikely enemies (inspired by an episode of The New Avengers, reviewed here), Joel McNeely’s rearrangement of the more famous Laurie Johnson theme to the show is used (in not a very punchy or useful arrangement I would say). However, the version used here has the season seven counterpoint melody in it which, if you’ve read my review of that series, you will know is supposed to be a leitmotif melody associated with Linda Thorsen’s Series Seven character Tara King. Why the hell this has been included when this film is dealing with the character of Emma Peel is totally beyond me, it has to be said.

Secondly, the chess game played between Steed and Mrs. Peel is a replica of the same game referenced in Blade Runner (reviewed here), so, something for followers of that film to take note of, at least.

My one final thought on this sad but, still watchable, mess of a movie is that the two lead actors are certainly not to blame. Both Fiennes and Thurman seem to be doing their best to make their line deliveries, their body language and mannerisms similar to those employed by Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg respectively… and they’re doing it pretty well. The one problem here is that neither of them look like their predecessors to any extent. Fiennes is way too thin and Thurman’s hair and costuming is far from what it should be so, they were fighting a losing battle on that front from the start, I feel.

And that’s me done with the 1998 attempted reboot of The Avengers. Not a successful film but at the same time, if that original director’s cut were ever to surface in the future, I’d be desperate to take a look. Until then, I can only lament the film and hope that some day the original material is released. 

Body Work - Rivers Of London

Car Wars

Body Work (Rivers Of London)
By Ben Aaronovitch, Cartmel, Sullivan and Guerrero
Titan Comics
ISBN 9781782761877

Okay... strap in because this now gets really complicated. 

So first things first... I’m withholding my reviews of the next two Rivers Of London novels for now because, in the second of those, which is called The Hanging Tree, it became evident that Ben Aaronovitch was not only referencing past books but also some of the Rivers Of London comics he’d written, specifically this one, Body Work. This one takes place just before Foxglove Summer (the review of which I’ll hold until, probably next week or the week after). However, there are also at least three comic series and at least one or two books which were written later but which also slot in before The Hanging Tree. So it’s kind of getting very complex and, while my intention is to at least try and slot in the trade paperback reprint volumes of the comics in the appropriate places (so Foxglove Summer after this but then I have to read another three more of these collections before I publish The Hanging Tree review), I will leave the novellas and short story collections until the order they were released, rather than attempt to slot those in too. 

But, yeah, I think one of the comic collections also takes place before any of the books so... I need to research a little further. It’s already getting confusing to me though... this is like trying to decipher reading orders for the Marvel comics published in the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond)... which is also rubbing off now on the interpenetration of the various cinema and TV versions of those comics.

Anyway, let’s not fret for now. I can get through comics fairly quickly and the Body Work trade paperback (one of many of the novels and comic collections in this series I have managed to get signed copies of because Forbidden Planet in London always seems to have an abundance of signed stock of these things, due to regular visits by the writer) includes not just the five issues that make up that story but also a number of short stories (many of them single pages) which I am assuming were inserted into the original materials at the end of each issue. So also included are a Beverly Brook story called Off Their Trolley, a Molly story called Red Mist, a Toby story called Night Of The Living Dog, Sleep No More (which features a few of the protagonists), another Toby The Dog story called Pursuit... and a Nightingale piece called Urgent Summons (also featuring Peter and Molly).

But what is the comic like? Well, I’m delighted to report that, unlike many writers who attempt a comic book rendition of the characters and themes they’ve been writing successfully in novels, this one at least works fairly well. You immediately get the same feel of the characters and situations as you do when reading the novels and there is much in the things which are left unsaid too, which are like little Easter eggs if you know the main books. For instance, Peter’s off hand comment to the reader about not daring to look in Molly’s packet. People who haven’t read the books may struggle with that reference but regular readers will know he’s worrying about what exotic and possibly inedible dish Molly, housekeeper of The Folly, has given him as a packed lunch.

This one is a nice story about a few possessed cars which he and officer Guleed are trying to find out about, since their have been some deaths which are definitely Falcon related*. Guleed definitely featured in The Hanging Tree as a major character and the cars here are referenced in that tome as a throwaway joke too.

And it’s not really dumbed down for the comic books, at least in story terms (although no ‘sex and consequence’ takes place in this story). That being said, I have a couple of criticisms about the look of a couple of the characters. I mean, Peter and Guleed are almost perfect, just how I imagined them. Nightingale, however, is not... he’s just a little older in looks to my mind and could have done with just a little more ageing here, I reckon. Also, although Beverly Brook looks just like I imagined in face and body type... she’s wearing some kind of latex-ish, one piece, skin tight affair when she’s swimming in her river. I’m sure in the books she tends to be naked (unless my more sexier brain functions intervened in my reading assumptions) so... not sure what happened here. Something lost in translation? 

However, other than this and, not so many pop culture references as you get in the main books, this did feel like a nice companion piece to the prose stories and not in any way an unnatural add on to the series. So I will definitely be reading more of these (which is just as well since I bought a load of them over a year ago). So, yeah, Rivers Of London - Body Work is a pretty nice volume with some mostly appropriate art and it’s a fast moving addition to the books. Definitely one to check out if you are into the main novels.

*The discreet code name for criminal cases which turn out to involve actual magic, which the majority of the Metropolitan police force dislike considering.

Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years: 1927

Odd Pairings

Laurel and Hardy  - 
The Silent Years: 1927
Various directors for Hal Roach
USA 1927
Eureka Masters Of Cinema

We’ve always liked Laurel and Hardy in my house. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, the dynamic duo were on television regularly… until around the mid-1980s when legal wrangling from various studios and estates kept them off people’s TV sets for decades… but their shorts... their talkies... were on TV quite often before that and we used to watch them a lot. My dad even had a Super 8 projector in the loft with a few reels of Super 8 cut downs from their silent movies, which he used to say were possibly even funnier than their talkies. 

So it was a welcome surprise when Eureka Masters Of Cinema released some of those early silents, the surviving movies from 1927, on Blu Ray disc towards the end of 2024 as a double disc set called Laurel and Hardy  - The Silent Years: 1927. A perfect Christmas present for my dad and, over a number of weeks, we watched one a week in front of our family Friday night movie. The films included here are Lucky Dog, Duck Soup, Slipping Wives, Love ‘Em And Weep, Why Girls Love Sailors, With Love and Hisses, Sailors Beware, Do Detectives Think, Flying Elephants, Sugar Daddies, The Second Hundred Years, Call Of The Cuckoo, Putting Pants On Philip and The Battle Of The Century (which I think is one of the films that got remade by them as a talkie too). 

Now, I will have to say from the top, something that Eureka perhaps should have mentioned on their packaging and marketing… although it’s quite obvious why they didn’t. And that is that, for the most part, while it’s true that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy both feature in every short movie on these discs… they are rarely paired together and sometimes don’t really even meet much in the course of these stories (which, of course, all amount to extended, epic sketches, running around 20 minutes each). So, it’s not quite, until the very last two films maybe (with small exceptions), the boys reach their full on ‘Laurel and Hardy’ alter egos, for sure. 

However, there is a lot of interest and entertainment to be had looking at the way these two actors evolved their characters and their on screen relationship together as the shorts went on. For instance, a lot of Stan Laurel’s trademarks such as the crying at the camera and the funny, legs akimbo jump he sometimes does are firmly there right from the get go, whatever character he’s playing. Similarly, Oliver Hardy’s facial expressions are very much the personae he inhabits more famously down the line, in most of these. And both of them, right from the get go, are constantly looking into the camera at the audience at appropriate moments and breaking the fourth wall… something else they used to do a lot in their double act. And there are a few times when they’re paired up and are brilliant together (Stan Laurel was obviously contributing to the content of these by this point) and you wonder why they are back in a different capacity in the next movie. 

So in Duck Soup, for example… which was a lost film for years and helps underline the importance of restorations and releases like this… the regular routine is almost there. And, again, in Do Detectives Think?, the two are partnered up in exactly the kind so of situations they would find themselves in as a phenomenon in their own right. And asides from their circumstances, The Second Hundred Years seems not far from what they would become either. Now, most people say it wasn’t until Putting Pants on Phillip as to where everything came together but, that seems a little less like the pairing than those I just mentioned… although I think we can all agree that The Battle Of The Century, with its extended custard pie fight, is where everything comes together nicely for them. So it’s a little of a shame that its the last film to come within the boundaries of the title of this particular collection… although Eureka have already just released an equally limited edition set of their silent shorts from 1928 (yeah, I’m saving that one for a Father’s Day* present… it’s currently hidden in a stack of blu rays). 

The set is sometimes funny, occasionally hilarious but almost always interesting. The restorations are all great and hard won with the only casualty, dammit, being a bridging sequence in The Battle Of The Century between the two main acts, which has been recreated by a few stills which promise more than they can deliver here, alas. And a shout out to fans of Abbott and Costello on that particular film. Look to Ollie’s left in the crowd of spectators at the boxing match and you will quite clearly see a young Lou Costello amongst the onlookers. We knew he was supposed to be in there and we thought we’d have a hard time spotting him but he’s using the same mannerisms for rowdy whistling he would use in his movies two decades later so, yeah, he’s easy to spot and it’s nice to see one half of one of the great double acts rubbing shoulders briefly with the greatest comedy double act of all time. 

And that’s me done, I think on this one. If you are a fan of comedy cinema then Laurel and Hardy - The Silent Years: 1927 is an absolutely essential purchase for your library. I’m really pleased to have had the opportunity to see these and I am looking forward to the next set immensely. 

 * RIP Brian Michael Cox 

Resident Evil (2026)

Permanent Residents

Resident Evil (2026)
Directed by Zach Cregger
Germany/United States/Czech Republic/Canada
Australia/New Zealand/France 2026
Columbia Pictures

So yet another new version of Resident Evil hits our screens, an adaptation (of sorts) of the successful series of video games which have been going since the 1990s. So this is, what, the 8th Resident Evil movie (counting only the live actions films and not the animated features... I need to see those, perhaps) and it’s also the second reboot, so to speak, since the last movie in the franchise, also a reboot, failed to gain any traction. 

So this one is the next film from the writer/director Zach Cregger, who had the huge horror hit Weapons last year (reviewed here). He’s apparently adapted another of his stand alone scripts into a Resident Evil movie, after getting the green light to be part of the franchise and, yeah, it kinda shows, in some ways, that it’s a rewrite of something else... but not to the detriment of the franchise, for sure. I’ve not had much experience of the video games but I know the movies and... well, none of the main characters seem to be in this. Not a problem though. 

I will say up front that I almost didn’t bother with this one because... surprise, surprise... the trailer put me off. Again. Does anybody in Hollywood know how to cut a trailer anymore. All I’ve seen for the last year are bad trailers which made me question whether I wanted to trek out for the movies or not. Better marketing people are definitely needed here.

Anyhow, I saw it and I’ll tell you now, I was rather pleasantly surprised. Even though I kind of hated the main character. He’s played by Austin Abrams who plays him quite similarly (as written, I would guess) to the horrible, drop-out character he played in Weapons so, yeah, I’m bringing baggage with me but, I at least overcame that hurdle. The actor does what he does well and, even though the character is not somebody I would want to hang out with, he does make things believable for the audience. 

Okay, so the film itself is not the action movie that the previous films were. It’s actually got a few elements in it which make it much closer to the experience of an audience member playing a video game and, I couldn’t quite work out if I liked this approach or not. But, it’s certainly effective so, what we have is a character who has absolutely no idea what is happening in Racoon City and its surrounding areas and, yup, we stay just with this character through the entire movie. Like you would if you were playing a game. It even switches to first person view in a couple of shots but... don’t remember that happening in the game I played (or tried to play, I was useless at the copy of Resident Evil 2 which was bundled with my old Playstation), to be honest. 

So he, and the audience, has no idea of what’s going on and... bullets are almost as much of a problem here as they were, quite deliberately, in the original game. I remember never having enough bullets when playing and you’d be forced to sneak around zombies (or actually organisms much more complex in this movie) and be constantly looking for more ammunition. Same thing here... the central character is always checking his shells and bullets and worrying about how he’s going to solve his next problem.

And the creatures in this are impressive. They are all mutations of some kind and make for some very surreal and grotesque encounters throughout the movie... bringing many a surprise and unexpected dilemma to challenge the protagonist as he goes to try and deliver his medical supplies (that’s the basic plot of the movie, by the way... a medical courier is trying to deliver something to the hospital in Racoon City but, by the time he gets there, things have already gone pear shaped).

Now, the director is not above resorting to many a horror movie cliché in this... so you get scenes of flickering lights meant to reveal and conceal, to keep the audience on edge. I even heard the old reliable ‘put a blatant heartbeat tempo’ on the score to ramp things up. So, yeah, it’s an exercise in jump scares too and... I can’t blame him for trying. Those don’t always work but the sheer inventiveness and gory creativity between each creature encountered more than makes up for this and sometimes work better as a jump scare in themselves. 

And I’m not sure I want to say much more abut Resident Evil (2026)... it’s not a film you are expecting if you only know the other seven movies but, it’s pretty effective and does feel much more like you’re being thrust into a ‘survival horror’ environment than those earlier movies too. It’s doing something right and I had a pretty good time with this one, I would say. I’ll definitely be picking this one up on Blu Ray when it comes out.