The Mandalorian And Grogu

Crest Of The Razor

The Mandalorian And Grogu
aka Star Wars: The Mandalorian 
And Grogu
Directed by Jon Favreau
USA 2026
Lucasfilm
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: This will probably have some very minor spoilers in it.

So the new attempt by Disney to pull some box office back from a franchise they’ve already run into the ground, namely the Star Wars franchise, is actually not a terrible movie... but it does have its problems. Titled The Mandalorian And Grogu, the film follows on from the TV show The Mandalorian and continues the exploits of Din Djarin (The Mandalorian, played by Pedro Pascale and a few others when he wears the mask) and Grogu (played mostly by CGI).

And, though the story is a completely stand alone adventure from the regular series... well therein lies the problem. 

Now, regular readers will know I’m not exactly the biggest fan of The Mandalorian but, in terms of that property, this is a pretty well put together movie, at least for the first half of the film (yeah, don’t worry, I’ll get there) and is much more enjoyable than the episodes of the TV show. That being said, although it’s a half good movie... is it a half good Star Wars movie? Well no, it still doesn’t quite feel like it belongs in the Star Wars universe, I would have to say. Although, to be fair, it does try its best... but it also tries to be a lot of things... some of which are really cool but, are equally not necessarily giving off Star Wars vibes. I mean, I don’t think George Lucas would ever had conceived of this as a story in quite this way and... depending on what generation of Star Wars viewer you are... that may well impede your reception to the movie, for sure.

Now the other thing about the film is that, although it ultimately tells one story, it does seem more episodic than I was expecting. Not episodic in the way the original movies were as they tried to emulate the old Flash Gordon serials (reviewed by me here, here and here) but more like the whole thing is a game of two halves... the first half being a James Bond style opening sequence followed by a rescue mission that goes wrong, nicely setting up some new characters and ending after a gladiatorial combat scene. And up to that point... apart from some issues like the old serial title crawl which featured in the original movies being absent, not to mention some large passages of synthesiser music replacing the traditional orchestral leitmotif one expects form a Star Wars film... it’s actually a pretty enjoyable movie. 

However, the second half, starting from where the main lead is taken prisoner as payback for his actions in the first half of the film, well it’s no less action packed but I found it mostly very dull (until Sigourney Weaver brings in the X-Wings at the end). I was looking at my watch in this part of the film because, yeah, it got gruellingly boring for me, I have to admit. 

Overall, though, the first half won me over somewhat and you do need to see this one on a big screen to fully capture the spectacle. Director Martin Scorcese turns up at one point (though you might not recognise him at first) and there’s a nice, if somewhat blatant, lifesize reconstruction of the Star Wars chess game from the original movie. Look at the floor of the arena and a better look at the aliens fighting there and you’ll see what I mean. But, there are also some blatant references (I think one building even says Nexus 7) to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (reviewed here) on one planet, which look good and are also vaguely reminiscent of stuff they’ve borrowed in other films in the franchise, such as Attack Of The Clones (reviewed here) but, nice as these sequences were (and they are pretty good at this stage of the movie), they didn’t quite add up to Star Wars for me. 

However, Ludwig Göransson’s score, which I’m complaining about a little above, is also pretty good and uses the themes he’s developed in the show pretty well (I might try and get a CD from somewhere if they bother to release it in this essential format). And I also thought the effects work, which some people seem to be complaining about, actually worked pretty well in this movie. Especially the one for the character of the son of Jabba The Hutt, which looks a bit clunky but certainly convinces you that a creature like this could do the things it does without crumpling to the floor every five seconds.

And that’s me done with The Mandalorian And Grogu... I hated the second half of the movie but I mostly had a good time with the rest of it and I’m glad I caught it at my local cinema, who seemed to have absolutely no clue as how to frame it on their screens but, yeah, lack of competency of the staff at Cineworld seems to be a thing which really hasn’t gotten better over the decades. Oh well.  

The Mandalorian Season 3

Boba Head Blues

The Mandalorian Season 3
Streaming March - April 2023
8 episodes

Okay, so I’m grudgingly watching the third series of The Mandalorian now because I feel like I should go and see the first new Star Wars movie we’ve had in cinemas for a while, in a couple of weeks. According to a work colleague, I also have to try and watch the woman who sounds like a sneeze series too, before I can fully appreciate the new film. So... yeah, I’ll need to try and catch up to that one too but I’m feeling less than optimistic. And I’m warning you right up front here... this is going to be a fairly short review. 

So, all in all, I thought this third season of the show was somewhat better than the last two, despite the fact that my favourite character hasn’t returned because the overly sensitive people at the nameless channel who are producing this show managed to cancel the actress who was the best thing about the show. But I’m not going in to all that rubbish here.
 
Now, maybe it’s because they’ve lost the 1950s-1970s TV western vibe they nicely had going for it in the previous two series and instead replaced it with an overriding story arc, is why I responded to this one more. Specifically to do with the character played by Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck in the modern reboot of Battlestar Galactica) and that kinda held my interest... it’s a way of keeping a few standalone stories in as side mission quests while constantly referring to the overall arc... a bit similar to the way The X Files finally wrecked themselves, when that overreaching arc needed resolving and outstayed its welcome. 

We have The Mandalorian played, as far as I know, by Pedro Pascal and his Lone Wolf And Cub-style sidekick Grogu, played by a bunch of pixels. I say as far as I know because, as is ‘the way’, Pascal never once shows his face in this series at all and two other actors also play the main character. So... I’m guessing that Pascal only provides the voice here but, I may be wrong.

And it’s entertaining enough, I guess. 

There are a few fair bad things about the show... like the longest and most interesting episode about the sabotaged reintegration of a former imperial clone specialist seeming to have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story other than a quick, plug in reference. Thus rendering it a pointless episode with no real punchline other than some clones, which you really already suspected were out there, being introduced literally as a throwaway moment in the last episode, which was already referred to enough in another episode. So... yeah, the most interesting bit of Star Wars in a while got kinda derailed before it had even got a chance to properly shine. 

Another episode starring Jack Black, musical artist Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd, is kind of like an adrenalised version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial but, rather than stay with that concept, just includes too much action and not enough of the main protagonists tying themselves in knots trying to get past the bureaucratic web. So, yeah. I definitely had some issues... not to mention that Grogu kind of plays a secondary role in these episodes. I wanted to see more of him in action than I was getting in this third series. 

But, for the sake of not being completely negative about the way a certain company has bought and managed to completely neutralise anything that was good about the Star Wars brand... there are a few nice things I’d like to shout out about here. 

So we had the mouse robot from the Death Star using the same sound sample, making yet another appearance here (plus it’s brought some friends). And we also had R5D4 from the original Star Wars movie (later renamed Episode IV - A New Hope for the various 1978 and 1979 re-releases) playing a major role as The Mandalorian’s new droid. I still have my old 1978 action figure of this droid up in my loft and they haven’t changed much about the character (it maybe looks slightly less beat up). 

The other nice thing was Mando (to his friends) working his way through a set of delayed opening shield doors and taking out various troopers as he goes. It was done in a slightly different manner but it was a nice nod to the best of the prequel movies, The Phantom Menace... and it allowed for the same sense of frustrated anticipation in the characters watching from the opposite side of the various shield doors. So that was good stuff. 

And, yeah, sorry but that’s me done for this season. I’m kinda hoping both characters meet their final fates in the new movie (death or whatever), selfishly so I don’t have to sit through another season of this show. The House Of Mouse definitely need to calm their Star Wars output down and desist from watering down the franchise anymore, I feel. Just release a new movie every three to ten years may be a better way of continuing the brand. At least that’s how I’d deal with what they’ve done to it. But, hey, I’m sure they’re making more short term money just milking it dry for now so, yeah, you can tell I’m not that optimistic about the Star Wars franchise these days. This is the way.

The Fantastic Four - First Steps

The Foxy Mr. Fantastic

The Fantastic Four - 
First Steps
Directed by Matt Shakman
UK/USA/Canada/New Zealand 2025
Marvel/Disney
UK cinema release print.

Foreshadowing: The only spoilers in this are hints of what doesn’t happen. I think you can read in safety... or, you know, Reed in safety. 

What is it with the July Blockbuster trailers this year?

I mean, the marketing has been terrible. 

The Jurassic World Rebirth trailer looked as awful as I assumed it would be, the Superman trailer, Krypto aside, looked pretty appalling and the trailer for The Fantastic Four - First Steps, was surprisingly bad. I’d been looking forward to that last one because I knew it was going to be set in the 1960s and, admittedly this meant the film had to have been set in a multiversal alternative version of Earth (since they are not past characters in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe aka MCU, other than in alternate cameos)... but they are right up front about that in this movie, with the characters living in a version of Earth named after original co-creator Jack Kirby’s birthday. 

And in each of the cases of the promotional campaigns mentioned above... the films they represented were some of the best blockbuster movies we’ve had in a while. Jurassic Park Rebirth (reviewed here), while totally not needed, was one of the better franchise entries. Superman was pretty solid (it probably helped that Krypto gets a lot of screen time... reviewed here) and, yeah, despite being totally miscast in terms of the way the characters look in the comics... with Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Susan Richards (The Invisible Girl), Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Benjamin Grimm (The Thing*) and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch)... this film is actually one of the better MCU entries to date. 

The main leads all work well together in terms of their on-screen chemistry and the whole movie looks spectacular in its creation of a kind of retro-fitted, futuristic vision of the 1960s. An aesthetic which I thought would work (until I saw the trailer) but, yeah, in spite of that, it still looks pretty amazing. One might even say... fantastic. 

The film kinda had me from very early on when, after skimping on a proper origin story... much like superhero movies are finally learning to do again, from their 1940s and 1950s on screen counterparts, just cut to the chase... it does a brief potted history of the origins of the team on an Ed Sullivan parody TV show and one of, I’m sure, many comic book homages throughout, it recreates, in live action format, something approximating the cover of the very first issue of the comic, dated November 1961. You know... the titular characters’ famous battle with the Mole Man. Actually, the Mole Man takes on a much more significant role as the film moves forward, rather than just being used as a throwaway for this sequence, it turns out. 

There’s even an homage to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, if my brief glimpse of them working in the offices of Timely Comics (Marvel’s original name in the 1930s) was correctly decoded by my brain. So, yeah, there are lots of homages to the original comics, even if the film strays far from the fine details. 

For instance, I meant to watch the WandaVision follow up TV show Agatha All Along before seeing this (I forgot) because I’d heard Sue Storm is pregnant in this one. So, obviously, Franklin Richards would need a babysitter and, in the comics, that was the witch Agatha Harkness. But, nope, she doesn’t make an appearance here. 

And similarly, you’ll know from the trailers (which include material which didn’t make final cut, by the looks of it) that the big bad of the movie is the mighty Galactus (and he actually looks just like him this time around). So, of course, that means his herald, the Silver Surfer will be making an appearance and... make an appearance he does. Um... no... actually that’s, make an appearance she does. Instead of Norin Rad being this movies Silver Surfer, we have his lover Shalla-Bal, played by Julia Garner, filling that spot. So, yeah, wrong again but, also again, it kinda works here.

What doesn’t work is that damned robot Herbie, who finally makes it to the screen. And why it doesn’t work too well is because, though it speaks English, you can’t really make out what it’s saying. At least, I couldn’t. Could maybe have used some subtitles here guys. 

But it is fast paced, simpler than the usual overcrowded superhero fest (in exactly the way Superman wasn’t... but still managed to make it work) with a lot of oomph and, actually, quite a lot of emotional heart. All set to a Michael Giacchino score which, again, despite being terrible in the trailers, really works for the movie... bet there’s no CD release though, because Marvel seem to have given up on giving their more music literate fans a score on the one useful format they could have put it on. Yeah, not getting into this again right now... their music policy sucks. 

But yeah, other than not being able to enjoy the music for the film away from the movie because it’s not released in an acceptable format at time of writing, The Fantastic Four - First Steps was a surprisingly charming movie and a good time at the cinema, for sure. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this links in to Avengers Doomsday next year (or even, since it’s not picked up here, how it related to the post credits scenes of Thunderbolts, reviewed here). A small hint might be found in the first of the two post credit sequences of this film, methinks.

*Actually, The Thing is based more on his original, early 1960s look here, instead of the more defined, better known version of the character from the 1970s. 

Gladiator II

Maximus Carnage

Gladiator II
aka GladIIator
Directed by Ridley Scott
UK/USA 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Very small spoilers.

I really wasn’t expecting much from Gladiator II (or GLADIIATOR, as the actual film print reads) as I didn’t think too much of the first movie when it hit cinemas. For me, the first Gladiator had some nicely staged battles and a fantastic score by Hans Zimmer. Those were the two standouts for me... other than that, it was an okay movie, not a great one. So I really wasn’t expecting much from this sequel which, honestly... did anyone want a sequel to a movie where the title character, Maximus, died at the end... thus going a good way to negating any attempt at a possible follow on.

Well, I have to say that, although Gladiator II is a completely unnecessary follow up, I actually preferred it a lot more to the first film. I mean, it’s still not a great film but, yeah, it kept me entertained for much longer and, despite running for two and a half hours, it didn’t really drag either (I thought the first one did drag, somewhat, it has to be said).

This one is, in terms of story content, a kind of toned down remake of the first movie where, this time, it’s Lucius, the grown up son of Maximus, played here by Paul Mescal, who is captured after his wife is killed by his mother’s new husband. Said husband, Marcus Acacius, is played by Pedro Pascal but he’s not really a villain and he plays the character sympathetically. Lucius goes about conquering the new games devised by two Caligula-like ruling emperors (who are essentially the main villains, for a bit), with the intention of taking his revenge on Acacius but there’s more to it than that. Denzel Washington plays the guy in charge of the Gladiatorial school, so to speak and he wants to use Lucius to rise up for his own political ends. Washington is amazing in this, as is the returning Connie Nielson as Lucilla.

There are political conspiracies paced with, frankly, somewhat over the top Colosseum games which include... I dunno... some kind of genetically altered killer ape/dog creatures and a flooded arena filled with sharks. Um, I assume there are going to be one or two accusations levelled at director Ridley Scott that he’s jumped the shark with this movie, for sure. That being said, although the action sequences are maybe not quite as consistently engaging as the first film, they still work very well and the quieter scenes where violence suddenly intrudes into the narrative have positively Japanese levels of arterial spray (well, more like arterial floods) and certainly liven up those moments considerably.

But, I don’t really care, as escapist fantasy it’s fast moving and, well it’s Ridley Scott so, whatever you may think of his movies post-1982 (after his three masterworks The Duellists, A L I E N and Blade Runner, reviewed here), you know that the cinematography is going to be nothing less than stunning so, yeah, no surprises there (and he seems to be using the different qualities of image tone between the two films for the flashbacks as the very thing which makes them feel like a window to the past). What did surprise me was the last combat scene in the film as I didn’t expect to see a certain character turning out to be the real villian until about half an hour before the end (I thought he would become an ally)

And as an added bonus, we get a score by one of Zimmer’s stable, the great Harry Gregson-Williams, who of course gave us the incredible score to Wonder Woman. And yes, Gladiator II is on CD and this was the real motivating factor that dragged me into cinemas to see (well, hear) this thing and, on the music front, I was not disappointed. I can’t wait to hear this thing as a stand alone listen, for sure. It does have a fair few nods to Zimmer’s leitmotif on occasion (although not the Holst derivative, from what I could hear) but it does its own thing and has some nice orchestration.

So yeah, I think that’s me done with Gladiator II other than to acknowledge that Derek Jacobi’s returning character feels somewhat wasted, Connie Nielson is the absolute glue which holds the film (and the story, to an extent) together and I didn’t even mind the tongue-in-cheek ‘I Am Spartacus’ moment after the Coliseum sea battle scene. Definitely worth seeing this one at a cinema if you can spare the time.

The Last Of Us

Fungi To Be With

The Last Of Us
Canada/USA 2023
9 episodes Jan - March 2023

A quick, shout out of a review for The Last Of Us, a TV show based on a successful Playstation game of the same title. It’s not one I’ve played as I kinda stopped playing video games around the same time I started writing this blog (too much of a time suck). So I don’t know how faithful it is to the original storyline but I do know this new one includes a fungal infection that is the exact same one, as observed in ants, as was used in the original novel and movie of The Girl With All The Gifts (reviewed here and here). And it takes place in a similarly bleak, post-apocalytpic wasteland where small clumps of humans divided into various factions struggle to survive in the world which all went to hell 20 years prior.

Interestingly, the post apocalyptic work is set contemporary to when we’re watching as an audience so, yeah, the fungal-zombie apocalypse started twenty years prior to this. We see the first night where civilisation collapses in the very first episode and, I’d have to say the series starts off strongly at the very least. We meet main man Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, as he loses his daughter to violence that first night and this starts him off on the path to becoming an embittered smuggler in the post-apocalyptic world. Then, as part of a trade, he agrees to escort a tough, 14 year old girl across the country to find a resistance group hospital (like I said, despite everyone trying to survive, there are warring factions in the dregs of humanity left after the events in the first episode) to use her blood as a cure for mankind. Ellie, played absolutely brilliantly by Bella Ramsey, is immune to the fungal infection. That is to say, she is infected but shows no signs at all of infection... as she isn’t a lethal zombie-like creature trying to infect you within 12 hours of being infected herself. You’ll find out just why she’s immune in the pre-credits sequence of the last episode in season one.

Pascal is also very good with this and he plays a really cold and ruthless character who, suprise surprise, softens to Ellie and bonds with her before the end of season one. Bonding exercises include surviving the infected, surviving the ruthless leader of a rebel faction who is after them (played by the great Melanie Lynskey from Yellowjackets, reviewed here and here), various raider groups, ill health (when Ellie has to stitch up a bad knife wound on the barely conscious Joel and trade for penicillin, barely escaping from the ‘Christian Cannibals’ she makes the trade with) and various other gnarly events.

And, it’s okay I guess. It’s not hugely brilliant and I’m not too sure why it’s caught the popular imagination so much but, although it’s fairly clichéd and very predictable. it’s well made, well acted and is nice to look at. Some of my favourite moments are ‘nature against the wreckage of humanity’ shots... such as a frog jumping on the keys of a piano in a half destroyed hotel or a bunch of giraffes between wrecked tower blocks. So there are some poetic moments and it’s things like this that kept me watching.

Another positive is that there are few episodes which aren’t self contained. I think there were two where things were left on cliff hangers to resolve in the next one but it’s more like a 1970s TV show in terms of just having a central mission with a new adventure each week. Most of the episodes crosscut between a character in the early days of the fungi-zombie pandemic and the present day which, is an okay way to do it but it gets a bit overworked by the end of the show... although there’s a lovely episode which tells Ellie’s back story and shows just what... or rather who... she lost to the virus herself.

And that’s me done on this one. The Last Of Us is a well put together show and has a lot of entertainment value and some good acting from the leads. The mushroom people (as I like to call them) are not particularly credible, it seemed to me, so I did find it hard to get too worried about them, once I’d finally seen one. All in all, it’s a better show than most of the ones that, say, Disney are putting out these days (yeah, I’m talking about their Star Wars and Marvel shows) and I’d certainly watch a second series... which I’m assuming will be based on the sequel game. Not the best of modern TV shows but certainly not the worst either.

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

The Discreet Charm
Of Being Nic Cage

The Unbearable Weight
Of Massive Talent
USA 2022
Directed by Tom Gormican
Lionsgate

Warning: Unbearable amount of massive spoilerage.

You know, despite my initial, allergic reactions to the actor in the 1980s and 1990s (well, apart from his essential performance in Wild At Heart, obviously), I‘ve grown to appreciate and enjoy the work of Nicolas Cage much more over the last 15 years or so and he’s definitely been on fire for the last few years, with outrageously flamboyant roles in stuff like Mandy (reviewed here), Colour Out Of Space (reviewed here) and Willy’s Wonderland (reviewed here) coming out alongside movies like Pig (reviewed here), undoubtedly one of the greatest movies of recent years. Even so, when a movie paraphrases the title of a famous Milan Kundera novel (and subsequent movie adaptation) like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and promotes Nicolas Cage playing a version of himself, even I am going to get warning signs that maybe this might not be such a great idea.

That being said, though, I’d have to say that The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent is something of a minor masterpiece of modern, self referential cinema and I was really surprised that they managed to get to something both as polished and as witty as this into cinemas.

The plot sees Nicolas Cage on the rocks in terms of getting decent new roles and having problems with his daughter (due to his ego mainly) and his ex-wife. Then he gets a call and he goes to Spain to be at the birthday of ‘super fan’ Javi, played by Pedro Pascal... a gig which he takes for the money but, surprisingly, he hits it off with him and the two develop a bond. However, the CIA assume that Javi, who is perceived as the local drug cartel kingpin, has kidnapped the local president’s daughter and so they employ Cage to try and help them rescue her and stop Javi. Things aren’t quite as simple though and various humorous shenanigans follow as the reality of the situation is made clear and it’s finally down to Cage, his ex-wife and Javi to rescue both the president’s daughter and Cage’s own daughter, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, from the real kingpin.

And it’s great.

It’s got a nice sense of pacing and atmosphere in different sections of the movie too, where it goes from a comedic look at the nature of art and the way it affects the players behind and in front of the screen in Holllywoodland, switching to a male bonding comedy before going into full on action comedy mode for the last half hour.

And it’s full of cool moments (such as when Cage is in conversation or even assaulted by himself in a younger guise in his imagination, at various points) to great throwaway lines such as the fact his daughter thought Humphrey Bogart was a porn star. There’s even a crazy LSD sequence where Cage and Pascal do the old comedy warhorse of two people trying to escape and get over a wall when, in reality, they could have just quickly walked around it... and they actually get away with it and pull it off because the two actors have great on-screen chemistry. Which is nice... yeah, these two should do another couple of movies together.

My favourite moment is when Cage asks Javi what his three favourite films are and he comes up with Face Off (not one of my favourites), The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (should be one of everyone’s favourites, surely?) and, the movie which forever changed his life and made him want to be a better person... Paddington 2 (reviewed here). And right there, is why this film is so brilliant, as Cage ridicules him but then is made to watch it and realises that it’s a truly great movie... the big comedy sparks which, although blatantly ridiculous, also hide a pearl of truth within the idea. Because, after all, Paddington 2 is a pretty moving movie (perhaps not quite as cool as the first one but it’s a close call, for sure).

However, comedy acting, intelligent dialogue and sheer entertainment value aside, the film is also amazingly well put together. The director does that thing where he uses sets and various things to reflect a verticality to split the shots into delineated sections but, also combines that with a camera point of view that kind of moves you towards that kind of composition. So you approach something from the side and then suddenly you are in a perfectly beautiful looking, symmetrical shot set up. He even has the vehicle that Cage and Javi are driving at one point as an open top car with big vertical sides leading to where a canopy might go over, so he can even expand that vertical aesthetic into the high speed car chase scenes too... it’s blindingly good stuff, I have to say.

I know Cage turned this movie down a good three or four times before finally being persuaded to accept playing himself in The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent and I can certainly see why he would have been reluctant to send himself up... or rather the perceived and totally false, off screen hyper-personae which he represents to many of his fans (I’m sure)... but I’m really glad Cage finally caved on that decision because I think this one is about as well handled a version of that exploration as there could be and, yeah, it’s overwhelmingly entertaining throughout its full running time, even if you are somewhat ahead of the plot on occasion (don’t expect too many surprises... it’s not that kind of film). I’m definitely glad I saw this and will certainly revisit it at some point.

The Mandalorian Series 2

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian Series 2
2020 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Eight episodes.

Warning: Loads of big spoilers.

Well... I’ve been holding off from writing this review for a week or so* because... Series 2 of The Mandalorian was okay. And that’s all. And that’s pretty much the problem here. When I was a kid and later a teenager, Star Wars was a hallmark for something really special (even the two not so good movies, Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith). If there was a new piece of the franchise coming then it was something to be looked forward to. It was something to set your sights on to get you through the year. And then George Lucas sold it to Disney. For, I’m sure, the best of intentions actually but, well, here we are.

The Disney treadmill got under way with a good start on The Force Awakens but then managed to turn out the somewhat ‘out of synch in terms of continuity’ Rogue One and the disastrous The Last Jedi (which looked really great but completely managed to screw the franchise up completely). When we got to the Star Wars film which did capture a lot of the things which made the originals special without being too ‘in awe’ of the lineage, Solo, the film under performed at the box office... something I personally believe was solely to do with stepped up bad timing and the lack of studio recognition as to how badly people thought previous release was (The Last Jedi). The last movie, The Rise Of Skywalker was pretty good but it spent most of it’s time trying to take away the bad taste of The Last Jedi to the point where it just seemed to jump the shark a little and swerve in a bit of the wrong direction.

And then there’s The Mandalorian. The first season followed it’s old TV western formula and managed to have some really good episodes, tempered with some less than stellar ones. Series Two is, I have to say, more consistent in its tone but, alas, somewhat straddles the line between great and terrible and seems, I dunno, just a little bland and mediocre. It’s a nice thing to watch and that’s no bad thing... but it’s not a great thing to watch, I’m sad to say.

The two main highlights which actually got me bothering to tune into this thing again were the return of two key characters from the main film franchise... Bobba Fett and Luke Skywalker. Alas, although Bobba Fett was played by the actor Temuera Morrison, the person who played Bobba’s father Jango Fett in the aforementioned Attack Of The Clones, he doesn’t make too much of an impact here. Granted, he elevates a couple of the episodes with his presence but ultimately, doesn’t serve much purpose other than to draw the audience interest from the original movies and to have a post credits sequence at the end of the last episode where he sets up a new Bobba Fett TV show.

His sudden reappearance from the dead is never really explained (I think it might have been already explained in some cartoons) and, due to some fast thinking from the writers in terms of the way the story goes in the last episode, he never gets to meet Luke Skywalker so Luke can kick his backside for what he did to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. I’m guessing that would have taken too long out of an episode to write in and so, yeah, they don’t even try to cater for that confrontation.

And as for Luke Skywalker... well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark Hamill but this is the worst return of the jedi I could have imagined. They keep his black hood up when he’s lightsabering to death a new squad of battle droids which, frankly, look like they’ve been cribbed from Hammerstein wearing his old war head from The A.B.C Warriors strip in 2000AD comic. Presumably this is to give the effects team less CGI because, when he does reveal his face, they’ve used that technique which is sometimes successful and sometimes not, of making people look like they did decades ago. Alas, here it just looked as fake as the CGI generated Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia from Rogue One. Also, despite ‘The Child’ being an obvious Force user, Luke just seemed somewhat out of place in the world of The Mandalorian, truth be told. At least that’s how it felt to me.

Pedro Pascal and his semi-regular companions were all on top form again but even special guest appearances such as Rosario Dawson and Katee Sackhoff, two very fine actresses, didn’t really distract from the ‘lack of special’. It was a nice and somewhat entertaining show, for sure but... yeah, it feels like Star Wars has really lost its magic since the Disney deal and I do believe that they are going to disprove the old adage “nothing succeeds like excess” next year with a whole host of Star Wars TV shows and another movie which, I suspect, will dilute the brand down even more. I’m trying to stay positive here because Star Wars has been in my life since I was nine years old, when I first saw the original movie in cinemas at the tail end of 1977 but, yeah, it feels like its almost becoming a chore to watch, in some ways. And now that The Child, aka Grogu, looks like he’s departed the series for good (possibly to be slaughtered by Kylo Wren in a decade or so after the setting of this show), it seems to me that the powers that control the current version of the Star Wars universe may be pushing their luck a bit if they are thinking of continuing this for a third season. I guess we’ll see what happens but, believe me, I am sorry I couldn’t be more positive about this latest show. But it just feels like more counterfeit Star Wars to me.

*At time of writing, last year sometime. Sorry, if I could get more excited about it I’d have got it up sooner.

Wonder Woman 1984 (aka WW84)

 

 

Paw Deal

Wonder Woman 1984 (aka WW84)
UK/USA/Spain 2020
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Warner Brothers

Warning: Yeah, this will have loads of spoilers so,
you know, see the movie first.

Okay, so if you know me at all in real life you’ll know that, for me, Patty Jenkin’s 2017 movie Wonder Woman (reviewed by me here) is not only the best superhero movie ever made but also one of the greatest movies, to date, of the 21st century. There was no way in hell WW84 (aka Wonder Woman 1984, if you go by the posters as opposed to the title on the actual print of the movie) was probably going to come even close to the greatness of the first movie and, yeah, that’s probably the case here but, although it maybe has a few very slight problems, I’d have to say it wins through with what are, for me, the two most important things to get right... one is it’s vastly entertaining and two, it doesn’t let the side down when it comes down to living up to and respecting the original.

What I’m trying to say is, although it doesn’t deliver quite the same experience (I wasn’t weeping throughout the whole movie as I tend to when I re-watch the original one time and time again), it’s a pretty good movie and it certainly has a lot of spectacle to it.

As different as it is to the first film, however, it does try to match some of the elements of the first, attempting to give the fans of the first film more of what they want to see in regards to the specific ingredients which may (or, arguably, may not) have made the first film such a huge draw for the box office.

Perhaps the most blatant of these, at least visually, is a very strong opening action sequence which takes us back to the 12 year old Diana on Themyscira, taking part in a huge sporting contest reminiscent of the games the Amazons used to play on Paradise Island back in the 1940s iteration of the comics (which are, at the moment, the only ones I’ve read... well, just the first couple of year’s worth and a stretch by John Byrne a fair few decades later). This is really a spectacular sequence and Hans Zimmer’s score matches that spectacle note for note. I’ll come back to the scoring of this in a little while.

Another very blatant thing to capture the essence of what made the first film so successful is the return, in 1984, of Steve Trevor, portrayed once again by Chris Pine opposite the sensational Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. People who have seen the first movie will know that Trevor dies at the end of the first film, sacrificing himself at the end of World War I... however, the surprise return of the character fits into the ‘magical’ theme, which sees an ancient artefact of the Gods granting wishes (mostly unconsciously) and thus Diana Prince accidentally wishes Trevor back to life. As does Kristen Wiig’s character Barbara Minerva, who wishes for Wonder Woman’s powers and becomes (although not named in the movie), her alter ego of The Cheetah (or one of them... I’m only familiar with one of the earlier incarnations of Cheetah so I’ve no idea how this character lives up to the comics). So, yeah, you have all that and with it you therefore have the fish-out-of-water scenario from the first film, where Diana was trying to grapple with the world outside her invisible island, reversed here with Steve Trevor trying to catch up with a culture which has moved on almost 70 years. We also get a similar reversal of the costuming scene in the first film, with Trevor this time trying to find something to ‘blend in’ with 1984.

One other nice touch is the way photographs in Diana’s apartment show that the writers have not forgotten the power the photo from the first movie had as an emotional punch on the audience and, although 'that photograph' is not easily in evidence here, there are some moments where the poignancy and emotion of photographs are dwelt upon just a little longer than you may expect in any other film where this fetishism to the static image was not rendered so lovingly in the previous installment.

And everybody is good in this. Pine and Gadot are excellent in their roles, both retaining certain character traits to keep them credible, although I would have liked to see Diana take a punch in a thoughtful manner the way she did in both Wonder Woman and Justice League (reviewed here). Kristen Wiig is also very good in her role, although she totally goes through exactly the same kind of transformation (just a little more gradual) that Seline Kyle went through in Batman Returns (reviewed here). And when it comes to that character, this was one of my slight criticisms of the film... there needed to be a five minute follow up to explore the post-story relationship between Minerva and Prince, I felt. Unless they’re maybe saving her for a sequel.

Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian himself, does an equally fine job as villain Maxwell Lord and I was very impressed with the arc of the character, who starts off so smarmy that you really dislike him from the get go but then (just like Wiig’s villainess), as more of his back story is revealed, you begin to feel a lot more sympathy for and I was very happy that the arc for both of these villainous characters were handled in a way which was much more appropriate to the title character’s realm and not as they might have been disposed of in other films.

The movie perhaps feels a little light in action in places and another minor criticism is that it starts with a bang and maintains the rush right through to about maybe halfway through the film, with a big desert vehicle chase which, after it has finished, kind of leaves the film a little flat in some ways. I think, however, when I watch this one again, I will probably be more on board with the second half of the piece and I’m pretty sure I’ll regret writing that previous sentence before long.

Just as I regret criticising Rupert Gregson-Williams score in the first movie. By the second screening of that one, I was totally on board with his score and, frankly, tend to get more than just a little teary eyed when I have it on the headphones, walking down a street. I’ll say here that, although I love Hans Zimmer’s music as a composer for a lot of movies, I wish that Rupert Gregson-Williams had been asked to return for this one because, although Zimmer did build the basic Wonder Woman motif for Batman Versus Superman - Dawn Of Justice (reviewed by me here), I thought the stuff that Gregson-Williams brought to the table in the first one far exceeded Zimmer’s wonderful contribution. That being said, Zimmer does have vague hints of Gregson-Williams thematic material from time to time and, of course, he does retain his own Wonder Woman theme with an appropriate build up to it in this film. Other times, though, I thought the score seemed wildly inappropriate, with a comic theme which recalled, to me, his Electro theme from The Amazing Spider-Man 2... a score I was not all that fond of, to be honest. Still, there are also some wonderful pieces of music in WW84 and I certainly can’t wait until the CD arrives in the post.

The structure of the film is clever too and The Monkey’s Paw element of ‘magic’ at the heart of the story (something it comes clean about a few times in the film) extends in like spirit to a credible, if you’re on board with this central concept (I expect some people won’t be), rendition of a new twist on the old Invisible Jet that Wonder Woman used to have in the comics and TV series, imbuing it with a new accessibility which could prove interesting in the future, if the film series keeps going.  Alas, the way the story is put together also reveals the end game quite early on and the obvious ‘sacrifice’ on the table here... I mean, I knew it would have to come anyway but there’s a point in the film where audiences are going to figure out, probably before Diana does, that a certain character is going to have to disappear into the ether again for her to be powerful enough to resume her stance as a guardian of the planet. It doesn’t take the sting out of it too much but, yeah, things are pretty obviously pointing to both this and the mechanics of how the ending is going to have to work to give each of the ‘super-villains’ a way out of the mess they’ve, almost inadvertently, created. The ending is nice, though and, certainly retains both the spirit of the first film and, also, the way the character arcs would tend to go in those 1940s comics I’ve read.

And that’s about me done with Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) other than to say, if you’re a long term fan of the character in the medium of the moving image, you’re going to want to stay around in the cinema for the mid-end credits sequence. Again, I could see the reveal there coming before it happened and, to be honest, it was done in perhaps one of the least subtle, cheesiest ways imaginable but, you know, without revealing too much, I really loved it and hope a certain character can return if there is a sequel made to this movie. Other than that, it fits in surprisingly well with the continuity of the other three DC Universe movies in which Gal Gadot has played this role and I would recommend this as a high calibre superhero movie for most people but, with the small caution that there was no way it could ever be better than the first one. Definitely worth most people’s time though. Loved it!

The Mandalorian

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian
2019 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Series One. Eight episodes.

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

Okay, I finally got around to seeing the new Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian and... it’s not too bad. I think it’s weird that the Disney+ channel has only just started in the UK but almost everyone I know seems to have seen it already. I think it’s even stranger now, having seen it, that this is the big ‘blackmail you into signing up for a Disney + subscription’ bargaining chip at present because, frankly, I think people who are signing up just to see The Mandalorian are going to be angry they did so and want their money back. It’s quite good but not enough to warrant any subscription costs, I reckon.

Okay, so, set five years after the fall of the Empire at the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi, The Mandalorian is about a bounty hunter who is a Mandalorian (I’m not going to explain why he’s a Mandalorian when you may think he’s not in the early episodes because there’s a reveal coming in the last episode in terms of what ‘Mandalorian’ actually means)... so yeah, the same kind of armour as Bobba Fett with a certain ritualistic and almost spiritual adherence to the ‘faith’, for want of a better word, of his fellow Mandalorians (who are rarely seen and live ‘underground’ since certain incidents from their past took place).

And yes, it’s the Star Wars version of a weekly Western TV show we were all expecting it to be. I mean, there’s an argument that the ‘space opera’ genre of science fiction that encapsulates the Star Wars Saga is pretty much a Western to all intents and purposes anyway but this show is, it seems to me, deliberately trying to be like those old 50s, 60s and 70s TV Westerns like Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Virginian. And it does feel very seventies and, well, despite the laser blasts and desert canyons, somewhat less epic and more a chamber version of the Star Wars universe we’ve come to know and, for the most part, love.

The plot all springboards from the specific piece of ‘live cargo’ that the titular bounty hunter is asked to retrieve in the first episode and, form then on, the tale becomes one of a fugitive who is trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities and fellow bounty hunters and keep said cargo free from harm. That’s the plot and it’s very much ‘mission of the week’ territory as The Mandalorian picks up a new job or task leading to the ultimate resolution of certain things in a final episode, where he gathers together the various people he’s met individually in former episodes to help him perform a specific mission.

And there’s good and there’s bad, to be honest.

There are some nice Japanese film culture and manga references in some episodes which, in a way, also contributes to the elevation of the Western flavour of the show. For instance, episode four is an absolutely blatant remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai which, of course, was remade as The Magnificent Seven... but let’s not forget that Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by the cinema of John Ford, one of the leading directors of the Western genre in his time. Also, in the shots where a certain fifty year old child (you may have heard about him referred to with a thoroughly inaccurate nick-name on the internet) is riding in a kind of ‘hover pram’ or floating crib, it immediately lends the episodes where he is doing this a kind of Lone Wolf And Cub vibe.

There’s also a heck of a lot of obvious but still fun Star Wars references littered throughout... with absolutely gazillions of previously seen alien species (including Nick Nolte as an Ugnaught) and I even think I caught a glimpse of a Rodean... except this time it was red? There are also some nice references leading back to the Star Wars Summer Special (I still need to get a contraband copy of that to watch at some point) and some great cracks, including an expanded joke about the legendary inaccuracy of a typical stormtrooper’s aim when handling firearms. I think my favourite thing about the show, though, was IG-11. When I was a kid, I was always tantalised by IG-88 in The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here) and it was one of my favourite action figures (even though he literally just stands around in a few shots in that movie). In a few episodes here we finally get to see an IG unit in action and it’s really awesome. Hope they release a figure for that one at some point.

Another awesome thing is a toy which I refused to buy in the 1970s called an Imperial Troop Transporter or some such. My cousin had one but I didn’t want it because it wasn’t in any of the movies and was obviously just a needless accessory that either Palitoy or Kenner had dreamed up to a) part gullible kids from their pocket money and b) ensure those same kids would buy multiple stormtrooper figures to populate it with. Well... showrunner Favreau must have had some fond memories of his childhood toy because they’ve finally put one of these things in a Star Wars show and it looks just like the old toy. So this was nice.

Also, the acting is pretty great. Pedro Pascal does an amazing job considering he is only seen without his helmet for a few seconds in the last episode. And it’s great seeing Carl Weathers and Gina Carano again... not to mention 'surprising', seeing somebody like infamous German director Werner Herzog play a recurring villain. These are all solid, reliable people and you really can’t complain about the cast in this.

However, there are a lot of clunky things as well here... or in light of the recent re-edits to the original movies, maybe I should say MaClunkey things?

For example, the sound design brings back a lot of old favourites (I think the mouse robot is really getting a little overdone now guys) but while it’s nice to hear the carbon freezing sound again in the first episode... it seems completely inappropriate to hear the hyperdrive malfunction sound effect when The Mandalorian can’t start up his ship, the Razor Crest, at some point. Why would that even sound the same?

Another thing that gave me pause to think was a new kind of TIE Fighter which is the standard model that can fold it’s wings up when it comes in for a landing. Seriously? If they had these somehow (after the defeat of the Empire) just five years after Return Of The Jedi then why did they not still have them during The Force Awakens? That makes no sense.

My biggest problem with the show, though, is the musical score. Ludwig Göransson’s music is totally appropriate to the action and has some nice, catchy moments. It’s not sounding anything like a Star Wars score though... it’s a much more modern use of an orchestra and is missing that iconic, 'early German refugees invade Hollywood in the 1930s' sound that John Williams (and a couple of other composers) have used in the movies over the years. It’s something that really lets the side down, as far as I’m concerned and I just wish they’d have gone with a more traditional Star Wars sound here. Because as much as the show tries to assimilate itself in with the much loved saga, the soundtrack is working against it and throwing it all away most of the time. Which is unfortunate... especially since it is very nicely scored and could work on any other generic brand, I think.

And that’s me done on The Mandalorian. This is an okay series but not something, as I said earlier, that anybody is going to be that happy about paying expensive subscriptions for. I’d be quite happy to watch a second series but I’m not so sure I’d bother to rewatch the first, in all honesty. They should have taken my Blu Ray cash when they had the chance. Recommended to die hard Star Wars fans only... or those who don’t have to spend a wadge of cash to get this thing.

The Great Wall

Absent Without
Official Leave in China

The Great Wall
China/USA 2016 Directed by Yimou Zhang
UK cinema release print.

The Great Wall is a Chinese/American co-production directed by the epic director Yimou Zhang, who brought some great looking films such as Hero (which I loved) and House Of Flying Daggers (which I didn’t but which still looked like some pretty impressive eye candy to me anyway) to the cinematic table. As such, I knew I would probably get around to seeing this movie, even though there was some pretty strong backlash at Matt Damon being cast in the lead role. I don’t, in all honesty, understand the backlash on this one as it’s not once implied that the character was, in any way, a foreigner supervising the construction of The Great Wall of China... it’s already well intact before his character and his companion arrive on the scene. Nor is he playing a Chinese character in this so... yeah, it’s strange what some of the bizarre things you see flying around on the internet are these days.

None of that stuff matters to me, though, to be honest. When I go to the cinema I want to see a great work of art and, preferably an entertaining one. Although The Great Wall is less stylistically rendered than I’d hoped, all in all this is a fairly amusing piece although, it has to be said, it’s pretty much bobbins.

The film tells of a couple of mercenaries who are after the secrets of the black powder (aka gun powder) and their expedition leads them smack into contact with an army at a secret base at part of the film's titular construction who not only hold the secrets of the explosive substance but who, more importantly, are defending China from a terror of which the Western world remains ignorant.

Originally treated as criminals for execution by Commander Lin Mae (played wonderfully by Tian Jing), Matt Damon’s character William and his companion Tovar (played by Pedro Pascal) join forces with the Nameless Order who are defending China against a foe that William and Tovar prove their worth against even before stumbling across their new allies at The Great Wall. So they collaborate although Ballard, another seeker of the black powder played by Willem Dafoe, convinces Tovar to help him steal the goods in a move which slightly fractures the clear narrative at one point but without doing too much harm to the film.

And, of course, it turns out that the common foe is a group of alien lizard creatures who landed on Earth centuries before on a yellow meteorite and who try to cleanse the land every sixty years. Personally I would have preferred dragons or something because I wasn’t a great fan of the design of these aliens and their weak spot eyes located in their shoulders. Nor was I impressed that the much talked about ‘Queen’ creature was really not that much different than any of her subordinate creatures and... yeah, that may be one of the reasons why I was suitably unimpressed by any element of perceived danger in the movie, to be honest. Whether these creatures were actually based on anything from Chinese legend is not something I can actually find out but, if they weren’t, then I think the creative forces behind the film could have been allowed to have done a much better job on the design of these creatures, in all honesty.

Now, I like this director’s style because his compositions are usually very tight and he often employs bright, saturated colours to create an almost hypnotic effect on the viewer. Well, he certainly did have his signature in moments during this film to be sure. There’s some impressive colour coding of the various clans of warriors fighting against the alien creatures in the story, with bright blue, red and yellow armour clad warriors all neatly aligned in different sections of the screen. For instance, the bungee jumping warriors of Commander Mae’s forces are all armoured in bright blue and this, to be honest, gives a certain order to the proceedings. There’s also a lovely moment towards the end of the film where Matt Damon and Tian Jing are ascending the inside of a thin, tall tower, the walls of which are regularly punctuated with stained glass windows which allows the director to throw in big, interpenetrating shafts of rainbow colours colliding on the screen at once. This is a great look and one almost wonders why the characters in the movie don’t stop and take stock of the opulence of their surroundings at some point.

That being said, I felt the movie seemed a lot less than ‘a Yimou Zhang movie’ than I’d hoped for and, though their were a lot of scenes with bright colours and somewhat interesting shot compositions, there seems to be a lot less of this stuff at play here than in any of his other works I’ve seen and it almost felt like it was being deliberately dialled down in some places for the US producers. Most of the time the film just felt like a big, pulpy, standard American action movie instead of the graceful, kinetic art that I associate with both the director and his country so... I don’t know, it all seemed a bit less than what it could have been, truth be told. I don’t know if this was because there were so many hordes of dullish CGI lizard creatures for the cast and crew to wrangle but it somehow seemed tired and yawn inducing when, really, what I was expecting from the director and cinematographer was for them to bring the ‘bright and shiny’.

However, the film is entertaining enough in a pulpy fashion and, although Ramin Djawadi’s capable and appropriate score made me think of Pacific Rim (reviewed here) a little too much, it reminded me of recent films like Victor Frankenstein (reviewed here) and The Last Witch Hunter (reviewed here) in that I felt they were the kinds of films the old Hammer Studios might have chosen to be franchises back in the early 1970s cycle of their studio. Added to this you had the principal actors plus a load of, somehow, familiar faces (including one of the director’s regular actors, Andy Lau) and everyone, including Matt Damon (who I would expect this of anyway, given his indisputably good track record), does a fantastic job in this. Willem Dafoe seems a bit wasted and could have done with a larger and better written role but I suspect, like a few of the actors (I’m guessing here) he only took on the role because he wanted to work with this great, almost legendary, director.

Yes, it’s bobbins but it’s hugely entertaining bobbins and, while I was less enthusiastic about it than I imagined I would be, it’s not a wasted trip to the cinema and I would certainly recommend it to lovers of period set fantasy epics. It’s no Ray Harryhausen movie but it’s certainly in the same cinematic ball park and, while I wouldn’t say the screenplay is any better than any of those early monster fests from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, it certainly feels like it could have been written then and has that hokey, slightly toothless feel that a certain generation of cinema-goers might love. Although, like most of these kinds of fantasy films, this one could have been improved with the addition of Caroline Munro, to be sure. The movie even finishes up with an animated end credit sequence which is not a million miles away from some of those beloved, old Spaghetti Western opening title sequences like The Big Gundown (reviewed here). So, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things to watch out for. It’s not for everyone but you won’t know until you give it a try, I guess.