The Marvels

If Anyone Can...
Kamala Khan!

The Marvels
Directed by Nia DaCosta
USA Marvel/Disney 2023
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some slight spoilerage.

Well now, when The Marvels was announced I was up for it because I quite like Brie Larson and her performance in Captain Marvel (reviewed here) and her appearances in a few other Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. However, since then I’d seen a number of the Disney controlled Marvel TV shows... you know, those ones of varying quality which they seem to be using to help dilute the impact of their purchased Marvel brand in much the same way as they are draining all the life from their purchased Star Wars franchise. 

However, Ms. Marvel (reviewed here) was one of their few really great shows (along with their absolutely fantastic She-Hulk Attorney At Law show... reviewed here). One of the reasons for that success, apart from the quirky tone of the show, was the introduction of ‘never been in anything before’ actress Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel and, well, she proved herself a powerhouse of an actress in that show and she does the same here, reprising her Kamala Khan role in both the actress’ and character’s feature film debut.

But wait... there’s more. See, this film is a combined sequel to, not only Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel but, also, the TV show WandaVision (reviewed here). In that show, the grown up version of Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel was introduced in the form of actress Teyonah Parris, whose character gained superpowers from her experiences trying to unravel the intricacies of WandaVision... so she returns as a third ‘Marvel’ in the movie, teamed up with the other two and under the leadership of... well, of course... Nick Fury, as played once more by Samuel L. Jackson. I mentioned in yesterday’s review of the somewhat unremarkable Secret Invasion (reviewed here) that I was struggling my way through that one so I could be more prepared for the continuity of this movie but, as it happens, you don’t need to have seen Secret Invasion to fully understand this movie (although I would suggest you do catch up with Ms. Marvel before watching this one, if you haven’t already seen that show).

So, anyway, this film seems to have divided critics and audiences alike.... which gave me some hope, actually, because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed over the last few years it's that, if there’s a good movie with something to say and produced in an individual and interesting way, then modern first-run audiences aren’t going to respond kindly to that, they want exactly the same old same old, time and time again. The Marvels has a lot of familiar elements for sure but, it’s also got its own quirkiness and, thankfully, midst all that, it totally allows Vellani to inhabit her full-on Kamala Khan game, a character who recaps the audience with one of those wild, animated notebook sequences which were part and parcel of the TV show.

There’s a lot packed into this movie from Khan’s integration into bigger events within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the drama between Carol Danvers’ (aka Captain Marvel) seeming abandonment of Monica at a young age. Plus there’s all the usual Marvel action you would expect from the studio... including a certain kind of self sacrifice in one of the crucial scenes at the end (which is given a mid-credits sequel set up with some other Marvel characters you may recognise). And there’s even a wonderful section of the movie where all the inhabitants of a planet communicate through song so, yeah, there’s a ‘musical element to the movie also... which I loved. Plus, cats.

That’s right. Cats. Lots of cats.

So remember the cosmic space cat from Captain Marvel who ingested people with tentacles that came from out of its mouth and who was kind of responsible for Nick Fury’s eye injury in this current version of the character? Well, he’s back and so are... well, I don’t want to spoil it so much. Let me just say that there’s one chaotic cat-centric scene in the movie which is needle dropped with Barbara Streisand singing Memory from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and just leave it at that. It’s rare for me to find myself actually laughing out loud in a cinema (even and especially during a full blown comedy) but there were a few moments in this movie when I did so, yeah, I would say The Marvels is one of the better of the MCU movies for sure. I hope this one hits Blu Ray soon because I want to grab it as soon as possible. Had a good time with this one.

Ms. Marvel

Candid Kamala

Ms. Marvel
USA June - July 2022
Six episodes

Okay, so Ms. Marvel is yet another of these Disney Marvel TV shows, which I am really finding a bit hit and miss but, really not as miss as the Star Wars shows they are really screwing up with. And, I’m happy to report, that Ms. Marvel, both the show and the character, are a delightful addition to the current crop of Marvel TV shows... definitely one of the better ones they’ve produced so far, for sure.

Now, this is not the Ms. Marvel I know... or knew. I remember when Ms. Marvel was announced as a new comic book when I was a kid... it was around the same time, or maybe just before, they announced the Spider-Woman comic and it seemed like a big thing for Marvel to be trying to create more female super-hero characters, back in the late 1970s. The fact that it was considered by many to be a specific attempt to reach a female target audience (hey... anyone remember Dazzler?) really says much about the times we were living in those days. And there were already plenty of female superheroes and villains around by then anyway, put out by most of the main comic book companies but, still, it seemed like a very definite audience grab at the time. However, Ms. Marvel in those days was the version of her known as Carol Danvers, who many people will know got promoted to being yet another incarnation of Captain Marvel, a little ahead of when her movie came out (reviewed by me here). So this show isn’t based on that Ms. Marvel.

This one is actually based on the fourth character to inherit the mantle of Ms. Marvel in the comics, namely Kamala Khan, played here by Iman Vellani (I’ll get back to this actress in a minute). This makes her, as the Marvel comics, the first Muslim superhero. And, although the general storyline is a little weak in places... which I kinda expect with ‘origin’ stories anyway (that’s why I always wish film and TV franchises wouldn’t start off with such a thing)... it’s actually got a lot going for it.

For a start, it’s very colourful throughout... the art department do some great stuff here. Also, it’s got a very fresh feeling, almost 1960s temperament to it in terms of using visual expressionism and experimentation to elabourate on some of the action... such as texts from one character to another appearing as writing, written in various scripts on various objects on a set... or drawings or graffiti in the background coming to life in animated form to help illustrate the points being put forward by somebody, to add weight to their words. It’s a nice approach and it helps the story, such as it is, zip along at a mostly hasty pace, which keeps thing fresh and, hooray, never as boring as certain other of the Marvel shows at certain points.

And the big and completely unexpected trump card, at least as far as I was concerned, is Marvel’s secret weapon here... the actress playing the main lead, aka Iman Vellani. I say surprising because this is her first ever role and, frankly, there’s no messing here, she knocks it out of the park right from the word go with her truly bubbly personality and extremely expressive eyes. For a 20 year old actress in her first part, let alone such a big part, she really does do wonders and I’m now looking forward to her teaming up with Carol Danver’s Captain Marvel in next year’s feature film The Marvels, for sure (with that in mind, make sure you stick around for the mid end credits scene at the end of the last episode here, if you want to see Brie Larson back in action). This actress needs more roles offered to her fast, in my opinion.

I do have a couple of things which disappointed a little so, I guess I might as well mention them. Okay, so yay for her being the first Muslim superhero represented on screen and all that but the whole religion of the character seems to be highlighted at every opportunity. I don’t see that many Christian or Catholic (for example) movies or shows doing that unless they are deliberately meant to be highlighting that element of the story. I’ve got nothing against it but it does seem rather rammed down everyone’s throats here a little, I thought.

Secondly, she has a support group, all of whom know who she is and they’re ready to help her. I’ve noticed that a lot of superhero shows over the past ten years or so have gone down this route and, honestly, why can’t we go back to having a lone superhero just doing her/his own thing rather than all the ‘guy in the chair’ characters that seem to be everywhere nowadays. Even Superman somehow has Lois Lane in on the act and helping out lately... what the heck? It just seems a little bit of an overdone cliché at this point, to be honest but, hey, them’s the breaks I guess.

All in all though, I thought Ms. Marvel was one of the more fun and refreshing shows put out by ‘Disney branded Marvel’ and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing the absolutely ‘marvel-lous’ Iman Vellani strutting her stuff on the big screen MCU sometime soon. I’m not quite sure why this particular show has got lower ratings and a negative reputation compared to the others but... don’t believe it! This show is well worth a watch. More like this please.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings

The Bride
Of Xu Wenwu

Shang-Chi And The
Legend Of The Ten Rings
USA/Australia 2021
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
Marvel Studios

Warning: This has all the spoilers
so don’t read if you don’t want to know.

Okay... be patient and let me get this out of my system because this is nothing new for the way Marvel have been treating their rich source of characters in their film franchises. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is, allegedly, based on the old Marvel Shang-Chi, Master Of Kung Fu comic books. Now, it was never a title I read back in the 1970s but I do at least remember the one, very important thing about the character and it is this... Shang-Chi’s father in the comics was none other than Sax Rohmer’s embodiment of the ‘yellow peril’, Dr. Fu Manchu. This is something Marvel retconned, for some reason, at some point in the 21st Century incarnation of the comics but, come on... Marvel movies are owned by Disney now. Surely they could have afforded to pay the copyright to retain the infamous master villain for their new movie (who, incidentally, also doesn’t share the name of his father from the rebooted version of the comics either... go figure). Honestly, I am sick to death of Marvel not treating their characters with the respect they deserve. Not having Fu Manchu in this movie is as much of a crime against filmanity as when they excluded Doc Savage and the Amazing Five from the movie ‘adaptation’ of The Rocketeer. I mean, what is going on here? What a travesty! And just to rub it in, they’ve got one of the most respected Asian actors of our time, Tony Leung, in the role of the father and have named the character... wait for it... Xu Wenwu. Presumably because it rhymes with Fu Manchu. I mean... come on!

And you know what... I am so tempted to just end my review right there before I even get started with the conclusion that, once again, Marvel have screwed their own characters and not done right by them, not to mention completely disrespecting the audience who pay money to go and see movies based on comic book characters they love... only to see them in homogenised and commercialised forms because they presumably think this will bring them more money in. Personally, I think money is a terrible thing to measure success by and use to grant access to the continued production of an art form but... that’s why they call it the movie business I guess.

However, since the film isn’t absolutely terrible, I’ll now give a brief review because, although it’s not the slice of comic book genius I’d been misled into thinking it would be (honestly, it’s not the worst but I would say it’s maybe somewhere within the bottom three or four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies), it does have some entertaining sequences midst other, more draggy and dull scenes, to be sure.

Okay, so the plot is really simple. Simu Liu plays Shang-Chi and Awkwafina plays his best friend Katy. When his 1000 year old conqueror father and master of the Ten Rings comes to retrieve the amulets belonging to Shang-Chi and his sister, to free someone who he thinks is his dead wife from a dark portal guarded in a hidden village... Shang-Chi, Katy and his sister team up with his auntie, played by acting legend Michelle Yeoh, to try to stop his father from unleashing an evil, soul sucking force into the world. And... I wish I could say the story was more complex than that or had more twists and turns (especially since the movie runs for over two hours)... but it doesn’t.

It does have a lot of nice action set pieces though... not as fast or furious as I would have expected from a film which is presumably trying to match some of the classic Asian Kung-Fu based movies but... although this stuff was like a dialled back version of it, well it wasn’t too shabby in places. The most interesting fight scenes took place on a bus and then on scaffolding outside a big tower block and they were pretty good. However, that being said, they both take place in the first half of the movie and so, yeah, as much as they do try and pack a lot of action in, the climax of the movie does feel like a bit of a damp squib, it has to be said.

But there is some nice humour and also various references to some of the previous MCU films and also a few characters turning up from earlier parts of the franchise. This is where it gets properly spoilery people... you were warned. So we have Benedict Wong returning as Doctor Strange’s sidekick Wong, in a few scenes and it was nice seeing him again. We also have Ben Kingsley returning as Trevor Slattery, the Liverpudlian actor who was hired to be the face of The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 and the spin off short from that, All Hail The King. He gets some good moments where he mostly manages to win back some dignity, although the conversation about Planet Of The Apes, which shows how stupid he is, has to be one of the highlights of the film. Plus there’s a Black Widow (not the famous one) and The Abomination (played by Tim Roth... reprising the role from The Incredible Hulk and tying this into his re-emergence in next year’s She-Hulk TV show). There are also a couple of important characters in one of the end credits scenes.

So, okay, there are two end credits scenes in this one... one mid-credits and another end credits. Now, I really didn’t understand what the heck the final post-credit scene was trying to say but the mid-credits scene, set soon after Shang-Chi and Katy go to Wong’s Greenwich Village headquarters, has a couple of big characters. One is Brie Larson reprising her role as Captain Marvel and the other is Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner... which really had me baffled because... he is playing Bruce Banner, not the new hybrid version of the Hulk that he became in Avengers End Game. Now, we know this scene is post-End Game because, a) he is already friendly with Captain Marvel and b) he still has his arm in a sling from performing his Infinity Gauntlet snap in that movie. However, since we have not been given any insight that he can change back from the smarter Professor Hulk version of his character... and since we know from the trailers from the She-Hulk TV show that he very much is still the new version of his character... I have to ask what the heck is going on here? This makes no sense... and once again Marvel has lost my interest in the continuity stakes. I hope this gets addressed at some point but... what are the odds, right?

And that’s really all I have to say in this overly long review of an overly long movie. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is not terrible but it’s not great either. All the actors hold up really well, a lot of the sets and lighting are colourful, there are dragons and cute creatures but, ultimately, in between the bursts of humour and action, it does get a bit dull and ploddy and could maybe have benefited from being around 45 minutes to an hour lighter, I thought. I guess I have to look forward to The Eternals next but... so far, in terms of reportage from my friends, I haven’t heard anything good about it.

Captain Marvel

A Brie Variation

Captain Marvel
2019 USA
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
UK cinema release print.

I’ll only rant about this for a brief paragraph... Captain Marvel was always my favourite superhero but he wasn’t a Marvel comics character. When DC comics sued Fawcett due to similarities to their Superman character, the comic stopped publication and DC eventually published the character in the 1970s, under the title SHAZAM! You can read my review of the original theatrical serial based on this character here. He’s been a staple of the DC Universe ever since. However, the reason they had to call their comic SHAZAM!, although he was still called Captain Marvel on the interior pages, is because Marvel comics successfully got the rights to use the name for their own character in the 1960s.

Their Captain Marvel was a completely different character and it was a huge thing when, in the 1980s, the character died of cancer. However, by then another character called Ms Marvel, with her alter ego Carol Danvers, had been unleashed in the Marvel universe and, it’s my understanding, since I’ve never read any of the Marvel branded comics featuring this character, that she was later renamed Captain Marvel and that a different Ms. Marvel is currently also in existence at the moment. I believe it’s the Captain Marvel version of the female equivalent character (brought out originally in her Ms Marvel form at the same time as Spider-Woman, in a bid to attract more female readers to Marvel, if memory serves) that this film is based on... although I believe she also uses some of her male counterpart’s various costumes through the years during the course of this movie.

Now I will always go and see whichever Marvel movie is out and I will always go to these things thinking that, at the very least, it won’t be as dull as Black Panther (reviewed here) or Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (reviewed here)... but there were two more reasons why I was particularly looking forward to this one. Firstly, it ties in with the post-credits scene of Avengers Infinity War (reviewed here) and tells the back story of that sequence before going full tilt into the upcoming Avengers End Game movie in one of the two post-credits scenes on this one. The other reason was that the title role in this one is played by Brie Larson, who I’ve not seen in much but, I have to say, I really enjoyed her performance in Kong- Skull Island (reviewed here) opposite Samuel L. Jackson, who returns here as a digitally de-aged, pre-’Avengers Initiative’ Nick Fury. Also joining him is a de-aged Clark Gregg as S.H.I.E.L.D regular Agent Coulson, Annette Benign, Ben Mendelsohn and Jude Law.

And... it’s not a terrible movie by any means... although there seems to be some bizarre, online backlash at the moment for reasons I can’t quite discern (and which I’m sure won’t matter once the box office results are in). It’s also not one of the best of the Marvel movies but I did quite enjoy it and I suspect it’s one of those slow burn Marvel flicks like Avengers - Age Of Ultron that get much better on the second viewing. It has nice performances by the central actors and some okay special effects work.

It’s also very confusing.

Not in terms of the deliberately non-linear flashback stuff which is actually quite nice and somewhat brave of Marvel in terms of the normal flow of their superhero films... but actually in explaining what the character is about, what she can do and why she can do it given how, without giving too much away, we see a typical 1960s Marvel comics style ‘transforming accident’ by way of an origins incident. So, yeah, I totally didn’t understand the character, although I did very much enjoy her breezy personality and Larson’s portrayal of her. However, for me, despite having a 'Mar Vell' character in the film (who isn’t Carol Danvers), the real weak point of the movie is... why the heck is this character actually called Captain Marvel? She’s not once referred to as it in the film (nor is anyone) and there’s no reason why she would be, truth be told. We just have the title card at the end of the film, before the big mid-credits scene which I can only assume is directly lifted from Avengers End Game. It makes no sense to me and I’m hoping this is just a cool tactic by Marvel so they can give a reason and character reveal in that next movie (like coming up with a hastily thought out name after meeting Captain America, for example). Fingers crossed they’ve got this all sorted.

Okay, so it was big on action and, although I did find some of the heavily laden special effects scenes a little dull, it was refreshing to have a fully formed hero from the opening of the movie (a few of these kinds of films are beginning to get back into this pre-1950s ‘get them on quick without a long, movie length origin sequence’ aesthetic and I think that’s a good thing) and the way in which the storyline did develop was not as formulaic as many of the superhero movies have been of late... which was refreshing. Also, since the movie is obviously set in 1995, as you’ll see from this film’s Stan Lee cameo which I also won’t spoil, there are some nice pre-millennial jokes and pop culture references here (although some of them seemed to be more like something that would have fit a movie set in the 1970s than the 1990s, to be honest). There’s also a very nice, new Marvel logo animation at the start of the film which I also, really don’t want to spoil for you.

And, there’s a great feline character too which, while not quite looking like a cat all the time because CGI is still not quite good enough to render these things as accurately as we might hope, has some nice moments in the film and sets up a second post credits scene that, while it’s totally predictable, helps tie up another slightly loose thread in the long chain of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and does it in a way which is quite humorous, even if you do see it coming.

So yeah, not much else to say about this one. Pinar Toprak’s score is pretty good with some nice electronica components coming in at key points in the action narrative but, once again, the score is not released on CD so, big shout out to Hollywood Records for only making a rubbish, compressed electronic download file commercially available so that nobody can actually appreciate the music as it should be heard. Honestly people, this throwaway attitude towards the score these days is something which has to stop. This is like constantly insulting the composers on these films.

But, anyway, asides from the shoddy and disrespectful attitude to the music in this film by the record label, Captain Marvel is really not a bad night out at the cinema and certainly not worthy of the bizarre backlash it’s getting on the internet (which I think will disappear soon anyway). A nice debut for Brie Larson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, I have to say, a nice moment for her in the mid-post-credit scene where, I can tell you now, the audience in my cinema let out a big cheer at the last moment of this sequence. Seriously looking forward to Avengers End Game now.

Free Fire

Shooting Stars

Free Fire
UK 2016
Directed by Ben Wheatley
UK cinema release print.

I usually find the films of Ben Wheatley... who along with co-writer Amy Jump has, perhaps unwittingly, become one of the most shining auteurs representing British cinema these days... well... usually a bit hit or miss. I’ve only seen four of his six cinematic features (and not a great deal of his TV work... only his Doctor Who episodes) and of those four, I loved the first two I saw... Kill List (reviewed here) and Sightseers (reviewed here)... but really didn’t rate High Rise (reviewed here) when I saw it at the London Film Festival back in 2015. So I approached his new film, Free Fire, with a certain amount of caution. Not least because the trailer didn’t really appeal to me all that much.

It does, however, have a lot of big name stars shooting at each other in this film... such as Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Noah Taylor and Michael Smiley... which is to be expected with this directors growing status in international cinema. People are going to want to work with him.

 It would be true to say that on the level of the acting talent in this film, nobody does a bad job here. They all make believable characters and a certain sense of heightened, dramatic ‘realism’ is manufactured to serve the threads of black humour running through the piece. It’s a film that will pull you into an immersive experience in a very short time. That being said, although it’s a heck of a lot more entertaining than High Rise (for me at least), it was nowhere near the dizzying heights of the other two movies I mentioned in the opening paragraph. That being said, it’s an interesting experiment of a film in its premise and execution and, if it was for nothing other than that, then it’s to be applauded for going full on into the very limiting territory which the writers and director have chosen to explore here.

The film tells the story of an arms deal that goes sour and, apart from maybe the first ten minutes of the movie, it’s all set in an abandoned/disused factory/warehouse kind of environment. Now, the thing I didn’t realise until finding out the day after I saw it is that it’s set in Boston in 1978. The film is all shot in Wheatley’s home town of Brighton, UK,  which is not all that much of a surprise actually, since the only external locations are a moving vehicle at night and a place just outside of the warehouse. No, what surprised the heck out of me after having already seen this is the fact that this movie is actually set in the 1970s.

Nothing about the style of dress or haircuts or anything else in this movie screamed 1970s at me and, I suspect, that this failure or inability on my part to register that it’s set in a historical time period, albeit one I grew up in, is endemic to me rather than anyone else. A fair few times in my life I have been called Mr. 70s by people who have never met each other at different periods of my life and so, I can only assume I have a blind spot when it comes to recent time periods I’ve lived through. That being said, it makes a little more sense now as to why people in the movie risk life and limb to get to the only phone in the place rather than whip out a mobile... which I never even thought of while I was watching. The phone design should have perhaps given it away but, in my minds eye, all people’s telephones still look like that so I didn’t make the association. I think dial phones should make a big comeback, to be honest. Of course, if any of the characters did have a mobile phone on them then the ‘experiment’ could not have worked in the same controlled environment that this movie has in the same way... so it’s obvious why Mr. Wheatley chose this period for this film. After all, can you imagine how something like the original Die Hard (reviewed here) might have played out if John McLane had a mobile phone on him?

The film is about, as I said, a gun deal that goes sour between the two parties buying and selling the guns and, right from the outset when the various people meet, Mr. Wheatley raises the tension by having them not get on very well at all. Far from it, in fact. Everything feels dangerous and the audience is left waiting for the one trigger that blows the gasket of the less than smooth running engine of this particular arms deal and causes everything to go wrong. It turns out that the back breaking camel’s straw is an incident that occurs off screen and which affected two of the characters from the night before this event takes place but, once these two characters, one from either of the side of the deal, both recognise each other... that’s when everything goes, as people say these days, pear shaped.

But it’s to the credit of Mr. Wheatley, Ms Jump and the cast of the film that the audience is already placed in a position where everything seems like a powder keg waiting to go off anyway. The characters do not like being around each other and they act, for the most part, like people who don’t expect an arms deal could go sour. So rather than go in polite, they spend a lot of their time trading insults with the ‘opposition’ and generally getting on each other’s nerves... not a great start to an equitable trade solution, to be sure.

The film, once the inevitable happens, becomes a movie comprising of all the cast members insulting and shooting at each other and just trying to find a way to survive the evening and get out of the environment they all find themselves trapped in. Nobody escapes a bullet and the characters are continually shot up and find themselves getting more damaged as the evening wears on. Everybody just wants to shoot everyone else and get themselves to a hospital... not to mention the presence of two snipers in the warehouse, who are an unexpected element to the majority of the characters (don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler... you’ll find that one out very early on in the proceedings).

All in all the film is noisy and has some nice moments in terms of dialogue but, for me and probably only for me, the film seemed less able to grab me than it may most people, I suspect. Anyone who knows me knows that I dislike gangland based or criminal POV films and, like most other films featuring these types of characters, I didn’t find one redeeming feature in pretty much anyone here. So that kinda takes the punch out of it for me because, once the shooting starts, I didn’t really mind who got shot and who made it out of the film alive. Horror films about bratty teenagers tend to throw up the same problem for me so... yeah, for the most part, if I don’t feel like I could spend an hour of pub time with a character then I’m probably not going to care what happens to that person.

It is, however, a fascinating film to watch on a technical level and Wheatley manages to get some nice shot set ups with various planes of space slicing up the screen in some places. There’s also a nice ‘John Denver’ moment too but, you know, I don’t want to get into pseudo-spoiler territory here. It must have been a nightmare to film in some ways... but probably a lot easier in others. I’ve absolutely no idea if this is the case but it struck me very early on that... with the amount of damage that both the characters and, perhaps more importantly, the set/environment they are inhabiting is taking... this thing must have been, surely, shot in sequence (apart from maybe the first ten minutes of the movie). Otherwise it would have been a complete nightmare with rebuilds to already damaged sections of the set and, believe me, the warehouse takes a lot of damage as the film progresses. I wouldn’t be surprised, too, if all of the actors would have all been on the set more or less simultaneously for about 90% of the time... so it must have made for a pretty interesting shoot. I’m guessing, of course, but I really can’t see how it could have been done any other way.

Ultimately, Free Fire is not really my cup of tea but I don’t think that’s going to be the case for most audience members and I think this will go on to become a well loved movie. I think history will treat this kindly and I think, although I would probably never watch this again myself, that I would recommend this film to a fair amount of people as I genuinely think most of them would enjoy it far more than I did. So there you go... catch it while it’s at the cinema because it’s all about guns and noise and shouting and you need the nice speakers for that.  And, yes... I am now back on track in terms of waiting to see what this director does next. He’s a bit hard to predict and that can only be a good thing.

Kong - Skull Island

Kong-A-Thon, Live In Bone, Sea Skull

Kong - Skull Island
USA 2017 Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
UK cinema release print.

See, this is why I love watching the odd movie every now and again. You never know when something’s going to surprise you and be an absolutely brilliant helping of cinematic art and entertainment.

I had really low expectations for this film.

The thing is, and if you read my last review you’ll already know this, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the original 1933 King Kong movie (and you can find that review just here). Most of the other movies to either feature King Kong as a character in a different storyline (such as this one) or trying to remake the original have, for the most part, been a little entertaining but mostly dull. I think my favourite of the bunch of movies to utilise the character over the intervening years since the wonderful 1933 version has been the second of the Toho Kong movies from 1967, King Kong Escapes. And, frankly, how could you not like a movie where a giant ape has to fight a giant mechanical simulacrum of itself... that’s always going to be a winning formula.

So I was pretty surprised when this new movie, Kong - Skull Island, turned out to be, pretty much, the best of the US Kong movies since the original. I went to a 3D IMAX showing of the movie at my local Cineworld and ended up having one of the best movie experiences I’ve had in a while.

The film is actually not a remake of the original as such and, if you were following the poster campaign and the not so great trailers then you’ll know the marketing people were very much trying to channel the look and feel of Apocalypse Now (the brilliant Vietnam war epic which takes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as its source material and then embellishes it with... almost everything else in the movie). I can see the temptation of selling the movie in this way... this film is set in 1973 when the Vietnam war ended and there are a lot of military helicopters and loud late 1960s/early 1970s rock songs blaring out as diegetic music on the soundtrack. That’s about where the similarities end here though... John C. Reilly is not channeling Dennis Hopper’s character from Coppola’s classic movie and Kong himself is certainly no Kurtz.

This movie does its own thing and, it does it very well, it has to be said.

It looks great, for a start. It’s also big and loud and has a very fast pace to it. This is not a film about bringing Kong back from Skull Island, either. You won’t see any rampages through the concrete jungle of New york in this movie. As the title implies, the majority of this film takes place on Kong’s home turf and the motivations that drive the characters are a little different too. There’s also a great cast which should have tipped me off, from just the quality of the actors involved here, that this movie was worth a look. You have John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson and the aforementioned John C. Reilly, to name just a few. And the way certain people are introduced into the story and allowed to develop a little before being thrown together, albeit quite quickly, is a wonderful example of character depth through brevity captured on film. Also, that whole backlash against Brie Larson’s character when the first images were released on the internet last year is totally unfounded. She may be fleshed in quick but she’s a very strong character, without being an in your face, kick-ass femme fatale and I really appreciated her inclusion as a photojournalist on this one.

If you want to look for parallels to the original King Kong, you could say the character played by John Goodman is a very distant cypher of the Robert Armstrong character and this is further enhanced by the costume design for him... but he’s not that close a comparison and neither are Hiddleston and Larson close comparisons to Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray either, for that matter. That being said, Larson’s Mason Weaver character does have a special relationship with Kong in this movie but it’s handled slightly differently while still, at some moments, being totally poignant... so I was really pleased with how this turned out.

Kong himself, actually, is great work and he reminds me much more of the 1933 Kong, despite being about six time taller and the audience will probably find an emotional connection with him (or at least this audience member did). He’s not just surrounded by a fantastic human cast either... there are some nasty species of wildlife on this island and some of them make the mythical lost spider pit sequence from the original King Kong sound tame in comparison. I was amazed this only got a 12A rating over here... I would have thought a 15 rating may have been more appropriate. There’s one sequence where a character played by Toby Kebbel (who also motion captures Kong for this movie too) sits down on a log and... ah, no way I’m spoiling this one for you but I honestly didn’t see that one coming.

A minor criticism would be in some of the scripting. It would be true to say that this film belongs to the ‘Person A says there’s absolutely no way he’s doing [insert appropriate stupid thing]... cut to a shot of Person A then doing the aforementioned stupid thing’ school of film-making and I did face palm at that cringeworthy point in the movie. While other parts of the screenplay seem quite cliché-free and tight. Almost like there’s a clear division noticeable between the multiple writers of this thing. However, like I said, a minor criticism.

I’d heard bad reports about Henry Jackman’s score to the film but, heck, I certainly don’t know why. Not only is it a good match for the monster mayhem in the movie but it’s also pretty exciting stuff. Granted it’s no Max Steiner Kong score... or even Akira Ifikube or John Barry... but it’s pretty cool and I’m suitably angry that I can’t listen to it away from the movie as, so far, there’s only a download version available. Let’s all hope that Watertower Music comes to their senses soon and release a proper CD into the wild. I really want to get this one.

From it’s opening logo audio homage to the original movie which, it turns out, dovetails nicely into an opening sequence set in 1944 (which almost plays out like a mini version of John Boorman’s Hell In The Pacific) through to a truly exciting post-credits sequence (which is supposed to set the movie up as a prequel to a big movie which came out a few years ago but which, given the characters involved in this 'must see' end sequence, really feels more like it would only work as a reboot when we get to the timeline of the next movie), Kong - Skull Island constantly demonstrates that it’s a truly entertaining blockbuster movie. I really can’t recommend this film enough to anyone who loves monster movies and Kong in particular. Don’t miss seeing this spectacle at the cinema or you might just regret it. And like I implied just now, stay past the end credits if you want to see a big hint at where the next film in the franchise is going. I can’t wait.