Tag: Zoe Saldana

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Film Features Film/TV

Avatar: The Way of Water

Jake Sully in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. ©2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

It took George Miller 18 years to shepherd Mad Max: Fury Road from pre-production to release. He went down blind technological alleys; wrote, produced, and then canceled an anime version; and went through multiple Maxes and Furiosas. But the false starts and revisions paid off — Fury Road was the best film of the 2010s, and arguably the greatest action movie of all time. 

James Cameron’s been cooking his sequel to 2009’s Avatar for 13 years. The Way of Water was originally scheduled to bow in the summer of 2014, but underwater motion capture photography, which had never been attempted before, turned out to be much harder than the director anticipated. Then came the pandemic. 

Miller used his time to refine Fury Road down to its essence, assembling a stripped-down hot rod of a film that goes full throttle for two hours. The years of delay had the opposite effect on Cameron. His original idea for an Avatar trilogy expanded into a pentalogy, and TWOW is a bladder-bursting 192 minutes long — comparable to the running time of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King but with fewer endings. 

We return to Pandora to find that just about the same amount of time has passed there as in real life. Jake (Sam Worthington), the runaway space marine, has married Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and now permanently inhabits his blue Na’vi body. He’s the chief of the tribe, and they’re raising quite a brood: two sons, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and their daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). They’re also raising Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the Na’vi daughter of the avatar of the late Dr. Grace Augustine (also Sigourney). Who Kiri’s father is, or how any of that works, biologically speaking, is left a mystery for future installments. In the midst of all the techno-wizardry, using mo-cap to empower Sigourney Weaver to play her own teenage daughter turns out to be Cameron’s greatest stroke of genius.

Two Sigourney Weavers meet in Avatar: The Way of Water.

The strangest member of the mixed Sully clan is Spider (Jack Champion), the biological son of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), Jake’s former commanding officer who died during Avatar’s final battle. Spider was abandoned on Pandora after the humans withdrew and was adopted by the Sullys. 

But Col. Quaritch’s story isn’t over. The Resource Development Administration (RDA) backed up his consciousness as a way of preventing the loss of institutional knowledge. The powers that be implanted his mind into a Na’vi clone. When the RDA returns to Pandora in force, clone Col. Quaritch is sent on a mission to hunt down the traitor Sully and terminate him with extreme prejudice. 

Had TWOW been released on time in 2014, the last decade at the movies would look very different. It’s quite possible the 3D revolution Avatar inspired wouldn’t have fizzled in the mid-teens. Cameron understands the technology better than anyone. Instead of just throwing things at the screen for cheap shocks, he uses 3D to add depth to scenes. Cameron’s goal is to be immersive. And with TWOW, “immersive” becomes literal. The director’s other obsession besides filmmaking is scuba diving, and one gets the impression that he would be perfectly content to jettison all of this annoying story and just take us on a 3D swim with space whales — and I’d watch it.

The Sully family meets the space whales, who are called “tulkuns,” when they flee for the coast to hide among the Metkayina, or “Reef People.” Na’vi who are aqua-green instead of turquoise, the Reef People are led by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), who, like many female Na’vi in this film, is what I like to call “skinny-pregnant.” 

Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis in Avatar: The Way of Water

Cameron’s ambition for his story is to become the Tolkien of the screenplay format, with Avatar as The Hobbit. Instead of Tolkien’s high European fantasy, Cameron’s idiom is the “hard” science fiction of the 1950s, with a sprinkling of New Wave influence (primarily from Ursula Le Guin, whose A Wizard of Earthsea provides inspiration for The Way of Water’s archipelago setting). Cameron’s gender politics blind spots and gung-ho militarism reflect the limitations of his chosen genre. On the other hand, TWOW is an anti-colonialist work, The Last of the Mohicans as eco-science fiction. Even though he’s a hero to his adoptive world, Sully and his kids are stuck between cultures. The human colonists are mostly craven xenophobes, but even the enlightened Na’vi carry their own prejudices. 

TWOW is big, unwieldy, and sometimes clunky. But it is also truly epic in a way very few films have ever been. After a long wait, James Cameron finally delivers the goods.

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Film Features Film/TV

Missing Link

Lost Horizon was Frank Capra’s dream project. After the runaway success of It Happened One Night, he got Columbia Studios to bankroll the literary adaptation for $1.25 million — the largest film budget to date in 1936. It took Capra about three months to blow through that budget shooting the story of an English diplomat who crashes in the Himalayas and accidentally finds Shangri-La. When he and his crew manage to leave the sheltered valley’s utopia, ruled by a benevolent High Lama philosopher-king, and return to civilization, he finds the “real world” is not all its cracked up to be.

Missing Link, the latest film from the animation studio Laika, takes a lot of inspiration from Lost Horizon. Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh Jackman) bears a physical and attitudinal similarity to Ronald Colman, embodying all of the stuffy hubris of the late-stage British Empire. But even though he has a peerage title, Sir Frost still feels like an outsider. He wants desperately to be a member of the Explorer’s Club, one of those oak-walled institutions where great men, surrounded by taxidermied animal heads, drink brandy from snifters and brag about their deeds amid clouds of cigar smoke. Derided as a “monster hunter,” Sir Frost enters into a bet with the Explorer’s Club leader, the unsubtly named Lord Piggot Dunceby (Matt Lucas); if he can return from a trip to America with proof of the existence of the Sasquatch, he will be admitted to the fold. But when he finds the Bigfoot (Zach Galifianakis), it’s a little anti-climactic. There’s no epic battle in the wilderness, but instead a conversation with a shy, self-depreciating, and unexpectedly articulate beast. Sasquatch, who takes on the name Mister Link, is lonely, and wants Sir Frost’s help to travel to Shangri-La, where he can live among the Yeti.

There’s plenty of heart to be found in Chris Butler’s new stop-motion film, Missing Link.

Laika is an animation studio, but it doesn’t create with 3D computer animation like Pixar or Dreamworks. Created by Nike founder Phil Knight and his son Travis, and based in Oregon, Laika is hands down the best stop motion animation operation on the planet. The opening sequence of Missing Link, where Sir Lionel and his ill-tempered assistant pipe bagpipe music into the depths of Loch Ness to flush out its monstrous inhabitant, is an absolute tour de force of the painstaking, time consuming technique. We’re so inured to weightless CGI wonders that when the camera rushes in from far away and wheels around the tiny boat bobbing in the dark Scottish loch, it’s hard to believe that this is a real camera, really moving across an actual tiny landscape, built on a soundstage. Ray Harryhausen, the stop motion super genius who created the iconic alien spaceships in Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, married stop motion and live action with the skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts, and brought the Medusa to life in Clash of the Titans, never worked out how to move his camera like this.

Using computer-controlled rigs for complex stop motion was pioneered in the 1970s by John Dykstra in Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Laika’s productions use it as one tool in an extensive kit. The highest profile stop motion on TV is on Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken, which mostly uses it to put G.I. Joe action figures in compromising situations. The credits to Missing Link include an entire rapid prototyping and 3D printing department, used to create the character puppets. One of the highlights of a Laika production are behind-the-scenes shots in the credits where they let you in on just a little bit of their magic. In this case, it is the creation of a ride through the Indian rainforest on elephant-back by Mister Link, Sir Frost, and his ex-girlfriend Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana). It’s as mind-blowing to watch the craftsmen work as it is to watch the results.

If only the other elements of Missing Link were as strong as the visuals, we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. The images are the equal of Pixar, but the scripting of Missing Link is no Toy Story. The character arcs — Sir Frost moving from self-involved colonial adventurer to empathetic explorer, Mister Link carving out a place in the world and accepting his own strangeness — are admirable in concept but dry in execution. Chris Butler’s globetrotting screenplay lacks the mythic weight of his last script for Laika, Kubo and the Two Strings. Galifianakis is a comedy heavyweight, but even he can’t salvage dad-joke exchanges like “I’m very literal. / You don’t say? / I do say!”

But for the younger members of the audience, at whom Missing Link is aimed, this is a far, far better story than say, The Angry Birds Movie, which will be getting a sequel this year. If you’re an animation fan, Missing Link‘s visual wonders deserve a viewing on the big screen.

Missing Link

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Avengers: Infinity War

Doctor Who premiered November 22, 1963. It was an immediate hit, and over the years the hokey show about a time-traveling weirdo became a cultural touchstone. By 1983, the production team was at the height of its powers. The lead role was in the hands of the young and charismatic Peter Davidson, and the budgets were bigger than ever. In the post-Star Wars afterglow, the show finally made the jump to America. The BBC decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary with the greatest crossover event in television history: They would bring together all the actors who had ever played the Doctor for one universe-shattering adventure. After months of hype, “The Five Doctors” premiered on November 23, 1983. It was a disaster.

Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), newly minted beardo Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and supersoldier in perpetual distress Bucky Barns (Sebastian Sam) defend Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity Wars.

Getting the giant cast together was a nightmare of bruised egos and diva behavior. The most important actor, Tom Baker, pulled out late in the process, so writer Terrance Dicks had to rewrite around some clips of Baker salvaged from a scrapped episode. The ratings were good, but not significantly better than a normal week’s viewership.

Worst of all, “The Five Doctors” exposed the weaknesses that the show’s fanbase had learned to overlook. There were still great moments to come—in 1984, the series produced “The Caves of Androzani”, now regarded as an all time high—but viewership faltered, and before the decade was out, Doctor Who was cancelled. In the internet comment board fever swamps, this is what’s known as “jumping the shark.”

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) get lost in space.

Picking up where Thor: Ragnarok left off, Avengers: Infinity Wars gets off to a strong start. Spaceships full of refugees from destroyed Asgard are intercepted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), who slaughters them and extracts the Infinity Stone from the Tesseract held by Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) narrowly escapes the destruction and rides the Rainbow Bridge, opened by Heimdal (Idris Elba) to Earth, where he warns Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Tony Stark (Robert Downy, Jr.) of Thanos’ plan to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of immense power that control Mind, Soul, Space, Time, Power, and Reality, and use them to destroy half of all life in the universe.

One thing Infinity War has going for it that other superhero movies have struggled with is a compelling villain. Brolin’s Thanos, until now a barely glimpsed, purple skinned mound of muscle, turns out to be surprisingly complex. He gets some fine scenes with his two adoptive daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gilian, who has emerged as one of the best Marvel actors). Directors Anthony and Joe Russo are at their strongest when they take time to concentrate on pairs of characters, such as the doomed romance between Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), or the science/magic rivalry between Stark and Strange. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor gets paired off with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and teenaged Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), which makes for some pleasantly goofy comedy beats. But everything else seems rushed, thin, and worst of all, calculated for maximum fan service, such as when the Guardians of the Galaxy are introduced singing along to The Spinners’ “Rubberband Man”. Our heroes make a stand in Wakanda, but the snap Ryan Coogler brought to Black Panther is missing. The potentially touching reunion of Banner and Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) is completely botched.

Thanos (James Brolin) seeks radical glove improvement. Also, genocide.

What ultimately sinks Infinity War is the unsolvable problem that sank “The Five Doctors”—the need to fit in references to 19 other Marvel movies. This is a film designed for superfans, and it could please many. But there inevitably comes a moment in long, episodic serials when the audience realizes that the catharsis they seek will never come. The demands of capitalism means there can never be a satisfying ending, and each installment of the story is reduced to a commercial for the next one. One way to read the ending of Infinity War is as a bold departure from formula. Another, more accurate way to read the ending is the plot equivalent of the moment in A Christmas Story when Ralphie uses his new Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to discover that the secret message is “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”. It’s the moment when all of the superheroes team up to collectively jump the biggest, most expensive shark of all time.

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Film Features Film/TV

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 never gets better than its opening sequence. To bring Vol. 1 to a successful conclusion, Groot, the mono-phrased, living tree-man portrayed, as far as it goes, by Vin Diesel, had to sacrifice himself. But, since he’s a tree, he budded and was replanted by his platonic life partner Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) — now known simply as Rocket, because apparently it’s okay to have a talking raccoon heavy weapons specialist in your movie, but using the word “Raccoon” in his name is just a step too far for the Disney marketing department.

Anyway, Groot has now grown enough to walk, and when you’re traveling in Star-Lord’s company, you’re going to get into some weird scrapes. The camera follows Baby Groot through a battle with a rando glitter octopod, introducing the perpetually bickering Guardians of the Galaxy in turn: the giant, blue Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), green-skinned daughter of Thanos Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and the self-appointed Star-Lord, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt). Like most of the rest of the movie, it’s practically all computer animated, but director James Gunn and the Marvel team simulate an Alfonso Cuaron-style, single take tracking shot focusing on what all the laser-fueled mayhem looks like to the sapling Groot.

In addition to being visually thrilling, the shot immediately establishes Baby Groot as the audience surrogate and sets the tone for what we’re about to see: spectacular scenes of stylized, bloodless battle delivered with a wink and nudge.

Science fiction started out in the 1800s as a fairly serious-minded enterprise. Then in the early 1900s, it devolved into lurid stories for pulp magazines. Since then, sci-fi books and movies have either embraced the pulp tradition or pushed against it — is it better to be respectable, or is it better to be fun? It seems weird that Arrival and Barbarella are in the same genre, but they represent its two extremes. Star Wars straddled the line between serious and silly by mapping pulp tropes onto a mythological framework. Perhaps because its source material is the descendant of the pulp magazine, comic books, Guardians of the Galaxy sees no need to feign seriousness. Gunn and company just go for whatever feels good from moment to moment. They’ve got jetpacks, and they’re not afraid to use them.

And I’ll have to say, it’s pretty refreshing. We live in, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, the Dark Times. We need escapism. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is providing exactly what Hollywood has historically done best: cinematic comfort food.

The Character Formerly Known As Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel).

Zoe Saldana as Gamora

Besides, Kurt Russell is in it. He plays Ego, the Living Planet, who is pretty self explanatory. The question of whether or not Ego is Star-Lord’s long-lost father provides the plot-like structure to prop up one eye-popping space action sequence after another from Disney’s golden hoard of digital artists. It’s a tribute to Chris Pratt’s charisma that he can share scene after scene with Russell and not be overwhelmed by the actor’s epic facial hair.

The other bit of silly alchemy that continues to work for the Guardians franchise is marrying 1970s cheese rock with insane space action. Both Star Trek: Beyond and Doctor Strange tried the same trick, only to fall flat. Guardians nails it repeatedly. Sure, he’s got a knack for snappy dialog and endearing character beats, but Gunn’s unerring ear is his secret weapon.

It’s cool to be back in these characters’ colorful, crazy world, but the story seems like a thin, disjointed collection of leftover ideas. The swashbuckling is first rate, but the scale of the violence and the casualness with which it is dispatched by our heroes is occasionally icky. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may not be a masterpiece, but it’s a movie that knows exactly what it’s trying to accomplish. Sometimes, that’s enough.