Robot CGI Paul Walker seduces Vin Diesel one last time.

The Stupidous Furious.

The FURIOUS franchise is TWILIGHT for men.
— YouTube comment.

Vin Diesel underacts his way through a car-slut thug-fest that loses focus in its last act because – Paul Walker.

What do you think of when someone asks you NOT to think of Paul Walker? Answer: Paul Walker. This is the case in FURIOUS 7, where it is well-known that Walker died during this production in a car accident, and the filmmakers had to complete the movie using a combination of CGI and Walker’s brother as a stand-in. So every time we see Paul Walker onscreen, we find ourselves checking his sightlines to see whether he was actually in the scene or digitally inserted; we find ourselves wondering, Is he real, his brother, or CGI? We realize we are thinking about how to work around his presence in certain shots with cutaways or props or… In essence, we are constantly thinking about Paul Walker – for all the wrong reasons.

And the whole theme of the movie has been skewed to resolve with a “family first” ethos. The plot of Team Furious taking down a villain becomes secondary to Vin Diesel lazily spouting familial platitudes in the final scene.

Diesel is once again Dom Toretto, racing whore turned espionage driver; Paul Walker is Brian O’Conner, established as Dom’s bottom bitch way back in the first FAST AND FURIOUS film in 2001. After all their adventures in nude gear-shifting, Walker’s role here is reduced to pretty-face-middle-background, and their interaction consists of one audacious stunt (both of them in a racecar driving across air between three Dubai skyscrapers), because – I’m guessing they rewrote Walker’s probable deeper involvement due to – yeah, that.

Rock vs Transporter in a battle to the striated deltoid.

Diesel vs Statham in a battle to– oh, I see Diesel is using the same approach he used on Paul Walker.

Dwayne Johnson returns as Detective Hobbs. On his way back to his desk to write a letter of complaint to the police department for continuing to issue him t-shirts two sizes too small, he finds Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) at his computer. Deckard is brother to Owen Shaw from the last film (Luke Evans), whom the Furious boyz put in a coma, and for whom Deckard seeks REVENGE. It’s an action fanboy’s wet dream, as this movie has Statham go pec-to-pec with both The Rock and Riddick…

Action Movie Fight ensues, i.e. a fight where two guys beat each other horrifically, including smashing through glass, wood panels, desks, and falling from a 5-storey building, yet only sustain a cut above one eye.

Luckily, The Rock falls onto something soft – a police car – and spends most of the movie in a body cast, yet still able to show off his gargantuan biceps and pecs because of the bimbo demo. It would seem it’s a magic body cast, because when he needs to go help Dom, he just flexes and it falls away cleanly from his bronzed bulk to reveal man-thigh, man-washboard and man-junk.

And people wonder why no one takes these movies seriously.

The rest of the cast reprise their roles as Dom’s Furious Bitches: Tyrese Gibson as The Mouth, Ludacris as The Hacker, Jordana Brewster as Brian’s wife Mia, and Michelle Rodriguez as Letty, Dom’s female love interest (as opposed to Brian, his male love interest), thought dead, now alive, still whining about being dead. But alive enough to kick Ronda Rousey’s ass in a taut-buttocked cameo. Poor Djimon Hounsou also cameos, a spectacular actor once again misused in a role written for a badger.

Kurt Russell appears like Old Snake Plissken, empowering Dom’s gang to recover a surveillance device called God’s Eye, which can see everything in the world. Which would technically make it impossible to get the drop on the person who owns it, right? But get the drop they do – because parachuting cars.

And people wonder why no one takes these movies seriously.

When the flying cars take over the highways, pray Doc Emmett Brown can take us back to a future where Biff is not in charge.

Martial arts expert Tony Jaa cameos and kicks Paul Walker’s ass (which is sad because, you know, he’s dead now; and also sad to think that anyone would believe Paul Walker could hold his own against Tony Jaa). Then Brian runs up the vertical side of a bus falling off a cliff and lands on Letty’s car who just happened to be there.

And people wonder why no one takes these movies seriously.

God’s Eye is somehow related to snagging Deckard Shaw, a villain well-versed in the Bond Method of talking instead of shooting. He continues to appear everywhere our heroes are, with no reason or logic. And continues to not shoot directly at them because that would end the stupidity too fast too furious. It doesn’t have to make sense as long as babes in bikinis are showering in public at race events.

Back to the “family” dynamic, as Mia is pregnant again and doesn’t want to tell husband Brian, because it will tie him down even more, and she knows he misses the action life, i.e. his criminal activity with Dom… Is anybody hearing the poop they’re shoveling? So I guess she’ll just have to wait ‘til she’s really really fat and then tell him? Maybe then he will have reconciled himself to not committing crimes any more and settle down, with all his million dollar heists as his nest egg. Good family planning.

A cameo from that southern drawling dipshit Lucas Black, to tie this movie to TOKYO DRIFT and Han’s death (Sung Kang), which leads to a funeral scene for Han and Gisele (Gal Gadot). Which leads to Tyrese Gibson saying to Paul Walker, “Promise me, Brian, no more funerals.” Has irony ever been this perverse?

Too Elegant Too Furious

Then it’s Statham versus Diesel in a battle to the overdeveloped trapezius. Meanwhile, Hobbs busts out of hospital with all his armor (which they must have nicely kept by his bedside), and is involved in a climactic helicopter shootout so irretrievably idiotic, the Los Angeles Police Department promised to issue him with the correct size t-shirts if he would just stop making such feeble-minded movies.

The closing scene is as tacky as the stunt scenes were imbecilic. As Diesel narrates family platitudes, Paul Walker (whom we’ve forgotten died during this production because of the massive diversion of the brain-swelling stuntage) is shown driving alongside Diesel on a highway to nowhere. Diesel just left him frolicking on the beach with his wife and kid, and now he’s here alone in his musclecar, smiling over at Diesel. Is he going for smokes? And Diesel was just with Letty and his crew on the beach. Why is he now driving alone, smiling at Paul Walker? Are they going for a quick wank? This admittedly tear-jerking tribute coda is probably responsible for audiences granting FURIOUS 7 more credence than it deserves, but someone dying during production doesn’t make the movie or the actor something extraordinary.

Most people have accepted the fact that FURIOUS movies tread nowhere near reality, yet the illogical plot and story of FURIOUS 7 scales new heights of silliness and fucktardery. And the stunts are the stupidest you will ever see in any action movie – not “so extreme they’re fun,” but rather, so overblown, bombastic and idiotic, it’s a wonder anyone with half a functioning brain would regard this movie “the best of the series,” which is the reputation it seems to hold.

Which shows how many people have less than half a functioning brain.

END

To these guys, the maps ARE the script.

The Faster the Stupider.

Even if the car-porn franchise FAST AND FURIOUS is not your cup of transmission oil, you’ve gotta admit, the movies are some of the best exponents of their gearhead genre.

FAST & FURIOUS 6 reunites Dom Toretto’s gang of gearheads against a Euro mercenary intent on stealing some military McGuffin that would make it easier for despots to blow up the world. No one’s here for the plot details, because the slim story is decorated with startling production values, heady locales, lusty chicks in bikinis exposing ass, muscled men in tourniquet tees exposing bicep, macho engine-belching action sequences, audacious stunts, and enough gear-shifting to blow a transmission six ways to NASCAR.

Retired and lazing in a Spanish villa with toyt blond Elsa Pataky, Dom (Vin Diesel) is coaxed back into the fray of musclecar mayhem by Officer Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson, once again in a role wearing a tourniquet tee two sizes too small). Hobbs baits Dom with his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), whom he thought was dead. On the trail of the mercenary Shaw (Luke Evans, who is so Euro Villain his three-day-growth owns a villa in Italy), Dobbs reveals Letty as alive and driving, as Shaw’s gearstick-man. So Dom leaves the blond in bed and joins forces with the over-roided detective.

Dom’s team is assembled – because it’s a FURIOUS movie and star power and box office – who’re we kidding? Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Han (Sung Kang), his statuesque gal Gisele (Gal Gadot), computer whiz Tej (Ludacris), and last and best three-day-growth, Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker, who is still reminding us every 7 lines of dialogue that he “used to be a cop, you know”).

The movie opened with a desperate car chase between Dom and Brian, two brahs in speed glaring dangerously intent, roaring across Spanish mountains, wildly screeching treacherous bends and, of course, gear-shifting for no reason, and we find out it was a mad dash to the hospital to witness the birth of Brian’s child to luscious Mia (Jordana Brewster). Dom calls after Brian, “When you go through that door, this life is over…”

Until we need you for the plot.

No one questions the validity of a plan so jaw-droppingly stupid. Like NASA employing oil drillers in ARMAGEDDON, instead of teaching astronauts how to drill, here the cops use illegal racing drivers to capture thieves who can drive fast, instead of teaching cops how to drive…

You’ll believe a man can fly… from a tank to a sports car, while the tank barrels over traffic on a freeway, with nobody dying or getting injured.

The cat and mousing begins, as Dom’s drivers track down Shaw’s mercs, and we realize, It ain’t about racing any more. It’s about the villain cars that can flip police cruisers like pancakes; it’s about ramming a tank down a busy highway; it’s about humans careening over precipices in non-physics space; it’s about explosions and tumbling spinning car crashes that no one should be able to walk away from, which everyone walks away from; it’s amnesia driving and double-crosses and racing through the streets of London; it’s lightning-fast subway Krav Maga featuring Judo athlete Joe Taslim; it’s jeeps attacking a military superfortress about to liftoff, and reducing it to a burning bush… But mostly, it’s about brahs. The “family unit” is alluded to ad nauseum, almost as much as Paul Walker brings up the fact he used to be a cop, you know. 

Salubrious Gal Gadot has her toughguy moments, presaging her upcoming WONDER years; some scenes alongside real life Muay Thai champion and probable shemale Gina Carano. Michelle Rodriguez, a veteran warrior in all her films,  now looks like she’s battling the miles, when placed alongside the flaming sensuality of Gadot, Pataky and Brewster…

A post-credits scene links the series with THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT (F&F3), and introduces the villain for FAST & FURIOUS 7.

The absolute stupidest scene in FURIOUS 6: During a car chase, a mercenary with a specialized gun shoots little magnetic computer chips onto the hoods of Dom’s pursuing brahs. Each chip warms up, another bad guy says The Chip is ready, and then via computer he makes the wheels of the pursuing cars lock up and crash! What a cool scene, exclaim the teenie demo! Firstly, bad guy makes three direct hits onto three car hoods – after shooting blindly at them with a real gun and hitting nothing but pavement (to comply with Movie Protocol of All Bad Guys Can’t Aim). Next, why are they simply locking the wheels? For all the computer tech expense to just lock the wheels, why not spend that money on a rocket launcher, aim it like you did just then, and simply blow up every car immediately? A lot more damage for a lot less money and no expenses on IT guys. Dumbasses! I’m talking to the characters and the filmmakers.

This is what FURIOUS 6 has to do to retain the interests of pimply boys weaned on Grand Theft Auto – ejaculate the action to such hyper levels that we forget the filmmakers (writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin) are trying valiantly to insert touching character connections. When he talks to his long-lost lover, Vin Diesel almost shows an emotion on his leathery, underacting baldness; and when they take his wife hostage, Paul Walker almost cracks a “worried” expression. In the end, they are both saved by the fact that he used to be a cop, you know…

END

The wrath of Tolkien, the majesty of Jackson, the fickleness of Fandom.

Wizard Peter Jackson concludes the movie trilogy that stole his baby fat. THE HOBBIT comes to a spectacular end – greed, fury, purity of heart and interspecies love – to the wonderment of appreciative moviegoers and the chagrin of sniveling purists.

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES is not for everyone. It’s not for people who enjoy well-made movies with sweeping cinematography, unbounded excitement, hero angles, evocative soundtrack and seamless CGI. (If you don’t want to see this kind of excellence – don’t go!) It’s also not for Hobbit fans who love touting their bona fides by citing every mismatched character name or location. (There are many divergences from the source material. You know this. Don’t go, only to complain about divergences from the source material.) It’s not for people who pretend a literary-to-filmic sophistication that would have us believe they could do a better job envisioning this monument than a master filmmaker (maybe you would have put that thing here and this thing there, but YOU deal with deadlines, unions, budgets, studio assfaces and people who pretend literary-to-filmic sophistication). And finally, it’s not for YOU. Go gripe somewhere else.

If, on the other hand, you love movies, as I do, and appreciate an all-encompassing cinematic experience created with a surfeit of sincerity, with its cast and crew driving for excellence in art, entertainment, and capitalistic gain, then by all means, I’ll meet you at the corner of wealth and damnation and we’ll enter Peter Jackson’s final HOBBIT chapter together, holding hands with dandelions braided through our hair…

Somewhere between that second and third paragraph lies THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES…

Movie opens two seconds after THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (2013): Dragon coming. Lake-town aflame. Tauriel hot.

Until Bard the bowman (Luke Evans, power mullet) twangs into Smaug’s heart the Dragon-Armor-Piercing arrow from the Plot Convenience Warehouse.

With Smaug dead, his stolen mountain of gold under Erebor is for the taking. Which Dwarf leader Thorin (Richard Armitage) immediately claims for himself, barricading this ancient Dwarf stronghold from the outside world. His contingent of waddling Dwarfs reluctantly humor his delusions of grandeur, whilst at his behest, searching in vain for one solitary jewel amongst the hoard, called the Arkenstone. However, Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has it in his Pocket Which Things Never Fall Out Of, and uses it as a bargaining chip to get more screentime. Thorin swoons over his gold, forsaking those less fortunate and condemning to death anyone with the bad taste to not be rich like him (aka Dragon Sickness, aka Mitt Romney Sickness). But… uh… guys, you’re sitting on a literal mountain of gold… with no dragon to guard it anymore…

Any wonder everyone wants a piece of that bitch?

Poffolas the Bowcuke

the five…

1) Bard the dragonslayer, who comes a-knockin on Erebor’s fortress, seeking his promised recompense on behalf of Lake-town, for giving the Dwarfs haven. Also needing those riches to rebuild, not that it’s anyone’s fault the Dragon fried their homes (cough–totally Dwarfs’ fault–)

2) Supermodel Elf king Thranduil (Lee Pace, whose character name is Elvish for “Men will be strangely attracted to me”) wants his share to buy hair products for his army of blondes.

3) Dain (Billy Connolly) a Glaswegian Dwarf who leads an army of drunks that just want a pint and some bangers. Dain’s specialty is shouting and headbutting, which is no acting stretch for Billy Connolly, as I’m sure this was a regular occurrence backstage after many of his standup shows.

4) Azog the Annoying, who leads the Orc army of Special Effects and wants to kill everyone just because.

5) Bolg, Azog’s ambiguously gay Burt Ward, who brings his psycho circus of goblins from Gundabad (which is the sound a Russian makes when he sneezes), and wants to kill everyone else. Just because also.

AS ONE MIGHT GUESS… the focus in this movie is completely off the title character and the One Ring he secretly carries in his pocket, that will cause so much agita a short time hence… Aside from a couple of plot points, Hobbit Bilbo Baggins is forgotten for the most part. But I’m not complaining, just observing a fact. This is a differently toned movie from its predecessors. Fer cryin out loud, it’s called THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES – and guess what happens? Five. Armies. Battle. No false advertising, no bait and switch. And the most amazing part: it never gets confusing. The director tracks all the action with a jeweler’s eye. Liam Neeson battles five guys in any TAKEN movie and our eyeballs spin at the try-hard directing. Here, five armies are pitted against each other and we never lose focus. Peter Jackson helms this sprawling battle atlas with an iron fist (with good ole Andy Serkis (Kong, Gollum, Caesar) as 2nd Unit Director!). And he is well aware that the gung-ho is only exciting because we care about all the characters stressing for oxygen within its framework; in, around and through this mighty fracas, each character’s emotional arc is given weight and played out artfully.

The badass Legolas returns!

Though Legolas (Orlando Bloom) does not appear in the book The Hobbit, we have seen him portrayed in these HOBBIT movies unlike the Legolas we grew to man-love in THE LORD OF THE RINGS movies; here, he is merely the clinical archer, with a cold affection for Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and a penchant for weird contact lenses. But that square-jawed swinger that brought down the elephant in RETURN OF THE KING (2003) is back! When he is not cockblocking Kili (Aidan Turner), he is swaggering through action sequences that make us braid dandelions through our hair. He is at the top of a tower overlooking a chasm that he needs to breach. No problem, as he characteristically squares that jaw and leaps onto a giant troll, shish-kebabs the troll through the top of its head and “guides” its stumbling death throes to head-butt the tower, which falls across the chasm and bridges it! What a badass!

As the Dragon attacks, proud Tauriel leads the refugees of Lake-town through watery channels aflame with dragonfire and— who am I kidding? All I’m thinking about is unbraiding her hair…

Anyone with a smidgeon of evolutionary knowledge will wonder at the Disneyfied “love affair” between Tauriel (an Elf) and Kili (a Dwarf). Firstly, these are not biological “humans” – their differences are not analogous to, say, Chinese and Russians; Elves and Dwarfs seem separated at a higher taxonomic level, more along the lines of Rick Santorum’s man on dog analogy. And if so, they cannot interbreed. If their chromosomes are incompatible, they would not even be attracted to one another. (Their attraction should thus be classified as “deviant.” Ask Rick Santorum. But he probably loves these movies, which shows what an ignorant hypocrite he is.)

If they are on the same species line, then sociological aspects would come into play: the female is larger and a fiercer warrior than the male, so she doesn’t require him for protection; she is self-sufficient, so doesn’t require him as provider; she is prettier (only just!), so no leaning on him for visual status, and even if she looked to him for social status (he is ascendant to the Dwarf throne; she a lowly silvan elf), she couldn’t possibly benefit from his throne as he would be kicked to the Mirkwood curb if he took a she-elf for a queen. How could this possibly be a two-way street? It would seem natural that HE would lust after HER greenery, but why on Middle Earth would she crave his stubby knob?

And even if we accept their unnatural, irrational attraction, why would Tauriel weep so inconsolably over Kili’s death, when they had never taken it to the next level – never taken it to any level other than sensuous whispering? Yet even through this weeping scene, which bleeds naiveté, we perceive the grand storytelling arc that was achieved. Thranduil had earlier mocked Tauriel’s “love” for the Dwarf, almost messing up his hair in his anger. Now, as she laments, “If this is love, I don’t want it! Why does it hurt so much?” his reply shows his heartfelt realization, “Because the love was real.” A recant of his earlier stance, and a testament to his understanding hair.

The badass from all the other Middle Earth films, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has no such scene-stealing here, and suffers the same fate as the underused Hobbit. Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) shines as a powerhouse, repulsing Sauron from a rocky knoll, along with Hugo Weaving (hero angles) and Christopher Lee (Famous Last Words).

2 hours, 20 minutes long, yet before we know it, FIVE ARMIES is rolling through its three endings. One very emotional, one very connected to LORD OF THE RINGS, and one very Thranduil.

I still remember a time when the likes of Peter Jackson’s series of films (which have miles more credibility than the HARRY POTTERs or TWILIGHTs, and are far removed from the STAR WARS prequel debacles) would have stunned audiences into lauding him as a Kubrick; instead, the democratization of the interwebs has given the snivelers, the ungreased wheels, the platform to spew their faux-sophistication in unbridled ignorance. With unconscionable spelling. I don’t remember a time in history when such a great film was lambasted with such vitriol for no good reason. I would say to the snivelers what Emma Stone tells Michael Keaton in BIRDMAN: You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t.

My final recommendation for the majestic epic THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES: Don’t see it. You’ll just complain.

END

Attack of the Action Sequences.

Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the troupe of Dwarves from Erebor continue their quest through Middle Earth to reclaim the Dwarves’ homeland from the Dragon Smaug.

Along the way they are attacked by Orcs, cocooned by giant spiders, imprisoned by Elves, barreled through rapids, smuggled by a boatman, sculpt a statue of gold, and ascend through a toilet, which is ironic when they pee their pants dodging a Dragon.

Martin Freeman is still Bilbo Baggins, Richard Armitage is still Thorin BadMotorScooter, Gandalf is still badass, and everyone else is still everyone else. We are thrown into the adventure headfirst after a short flashback prelude between Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Thorin at The Prancing Pony (a familiar tavern from THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING … or at least, it will be a familiar tavern… uh, in the future). No time for foreplay as this movie – like that other middle movie, THE TWO TOWERS – is a continuance, and expects us to know our wood elves from our cave trolls. Consequently, there is barely time for characterization, as the action sequences pile on top of us like wood elves and cave trolls.

Director Peter Jackson continues his epic fairy tale with THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, the second part of a trilogy of films crafted around J.R.R. Tolkien’s small book, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. Once again, it’s a monumental imagining of a fantasy world that has, up to now, only been envisioned dimly in cartoons. Jackson unveils his glorious, authentic realization of a mythic world – and it makes me wonder how many hugs some people missed as children when they refuse to accept this wondrous filmic escapism for what it is, and nag nag nag that it’s  “not like the book” and nitpick esoteric minutiae.As John Wayne once said, “No one should go to the movies unless they believe in heroes.” And special effects.

And since when have books been so sacred to you people, who would rather toggle a first-person shooter than sit in the sunlight, open a thing with pages and drink in its wonder? Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro (yes, that guy) have departed from Tolkien’s words considerably, but unlike some hubristic cave trolls who deign to rewrite Stephen King or Philip K. Dick, Jackson has transmorphed Tolkien’s 1930’s sensibility for a 21st century audience. His “dramatic license” keeps the tale kinetic, entertaining and – sexy.

As Liv Tyler balanced out the swimming testosterone in the LOTR series, here the sausage-fest is mitigated by the sunsparkle of Evangeline Lilly as Elf Tauriel, the most beautiful woman on Earth in this epoch (either that, or I’m looking at Orlando Bloom). Battle dynamism, magnificent bow-and-dagger choreography, sweeping arcs of dying Orcs, sex-on-the-hoof killing machine, tresses like fountains of chocolate cascading waterfall over leaf-green shoulders, opaline eyes, aquiline nose, cheekbones like battle daggers – and look! She has Steven Tyler’s lips!

Tolkien was a master tale-teller, but a product of his time, paying little pc attention to the raging homoerotic overtones of his man-quests, so Tauriel is pure invention from one of the master tale-tellers of our time.

And with Tauriel comes – Legolas! We are home again, as Orlando Bloom reprises his role as Elfin archer and Aragorn’s love interest from the LOTR movies. At one point, Legolas asks a Dwarf about an amulet that he carries, “And who is that?” The Dwarf answers, “My son, Gimli” (who, of course, would become grudging battle compatriot of Legolas in the RINGS trilogy, and the third side in the love-triangle between Aragorn and Legolas).

Dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner), voted Middle Earth People Magazine’s Sexiest Dwarf Alive, channels David Cassidy so much that Tauriel’s ears get pointier for him – but she’s Legolas’s lass! Not to worry, parents, as this love triangle is barely consummated with a few glances and spoken words between the three, rather than Legolas busting in on Tauriel and Kili doing it cave troll style. Later, Kili, though injured, shows he still got game, when Tauriel fights through Orcs to be at his side and cure him, saying to her in a delirious whisper, “You can’t be her – she walks a thousand miles away in starlight…” (Chicks – they’ll believe aything!) As his fingers cautiously intertwine with hers, “Do you think she could have loved me?” By now her little Elf-knickers have greened many times over, as she looks down at him – at us –  offering a tentative smile… it’s such a “moment” that it woke up my cave troll.

Gandalf is SUCH a badass!

After warding off Orc attacks from the Villain From The Previous Movie (Azog, a CGI bovver boy with magnificent trapezius), Gandalf tells Thorin to summon a meeting between the Seven Dwarf Kingdoms – waitaminute, are they having a laugh? You mean Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs own some kingdoms? No, dummy, seven Dwarf kingdoms! Oh, you mean seven teeny tiny kingdoms?… No, normal-sized kingdoms populated with Dwarfs! Uh, then how do the Dwarfs reach the doorknobs?…

”Let’s see what’s behind the door marked Dragon Ballz.”

Gandalf leaves the Dwarfs and Bilbo at the edge of Mirkwood Forest, to go do some other wizarding things, like washing his burlap robe before it starts standing up by itself without magic, entreating them, “Do not leave the path or you will never find it again.” After leaving the path and finding it again, they are captured by the Elves. Oh, my love thrums for those tresses like fountains cascading waterfall over leaf-green shoulders, opaline eyes, aquiline nose, cheekbones like battle daggers – wait, that’s Legolas’s father, Thranduil (Lee Pace).

Meanwhile, Gandalf is storming a haunted castle on his lonesome, with minimal help from that wizard with the jizz in his hair, Radagast (Sylvester McCoy). The evil entity Sauron appears to him, looking like the Dio devil from Holy Diver, and Gandalf engages in magic battle like the Lord of Badass that he is.

Escape from the blond beauties, the Dwarfs smuggle themselves into Laketown, via a handsome ferryman named Bard (Luke Evans, Zeus in IMMORTALS), where they meet the crusty Stephen Fry in an eccentric performance as the despot king.

Like TWO TOWERS, DESOLATION splits our heroes into three factions: the Dwarfs and Bilbo at Lonely Mountain, Dwarfs and Elves at Laketown (where it is implied that only Bard has the means to destroy the impending Dragon), and Gandalf’s wizarding solo tour.

At this point, some of the critique against DESOLATION OF SMAUG gains weight: LORD OF THE RINGS was an epic tale because nothing less than the future of Middle Earth was at stake; THE HOBBIT is being made into an epic tale, even though all that’s at stake is one Lonely Mountain. And right about the third act, we start to feel the breadth of the tale not matching the stakes. For example, why are the Orcs still obsessively pursuing the Dwarfs? Why is Legolas obsessively pursuing the Orcs? Why is Gandalf badassing about by himself? And why isn’t Kili going cave troll on Tauriel?

And if the Dwarfs fail in their quest, well, it’s just a few Dwarfs failing to take back their literal mountain of gold coins and jewelry. Huh, not so much empathetic support now for these Wall Street pricks, I’ll wager. Thorin even does a Mitt Romney and starts treating Bilbo like the 47%, as if Bilbo owes it to the Dwarfs to sneak into the gold chamber and grab their Arkenstone (for a reason yet to be established by logic or physics).

Another irksome aspect is all the action sequences where each Dwarf is as adept as a superspy. During the barrel ride, Orcs come blazing at them from all sides, yet all these faceless glorified extras display a killing proficiency that rivals Tom Cruise in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II – even Bombur the fatty-fatty-boomsticks! (Okay, maybe they’re well trained, but when they’re all running from danger in a group, they all run at the same speed, even the fatty-fatty-boomsticks! Is Middle Earth gravity different from Earth’s? When they all fall from a great height, not only are none of them hurt, but you would think that Bombur’s obesity would affect him more adversely than the rest, but no, he gets up just as quickly as the others and keeps running!) These action scenes – though excellently choreographed, especially the inspiring killing skills of the Elves – have to be this outlandish because they are couched in this supposed “epic” – but we’ve just discerned the overarching tale itself as not really that epic, so in the end the action scenes are another dissonant chord in the movie’s tone.

But this is why THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG shines like a cerulean Arkenstone amongst a sea of blood gold:

The One Ring [insert Howard Shore’s eerily hypnotic Ring theme that calms us, yet scares us, that seduces yet repulses, that sings high in our temples, yet my precious… my preciousssssss….].

The effect of the Ring features heavily in this episode; the fingerband of gold with the power to turn its wearer invisible that Bilbo found in the Goblin cave (and that he keeps secret from everyone) is starting to affect his psyche. The more he uses it, the more adverse its effect on him, never more artfully rendered than in one startling moment, when he pulls the Ring off his finger, becomes visible again, and has to clap his hand over his mouth in terror to stop himself from screaming. That one second is what this movie was made for; Martin Freeman’s acting chops could rise no higher, wrenching a look of brain-damaging horror and confusion across his face as his panicked eyes regard the “wrongness” of The Ring.

Smaug the Dragon – that’s what you’ve been waiting for, right? After that sensational giant dragon at the end of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, Smaug better be ultra-cosmo! We know one thing about him – he’s got a gold fetish, covering himself completely in it like Scrooge McDuck. Visually, Smaug is untouchable – WETA Digital have outdone themselves – but psychologically, well, he doesn’t scare me. Because he speaks English. Like Benedict Cumberbatch. This is not Jackson’s fault, as Smaug was given dialogue by Tolkien, but when will fantasy writers realize that when animals can speak, it makes them LESS scary. Because they can be reasoned with. That’s why the dragon in HOW TO TRAIN was actually scarier. It was a dumb animal. We are much more terrified of those things that cannot communicate in any human way, that are so animalistic their small brains simply conjure survival instincts, with no room for rational thought or communication – you know, Republicans.

The end frames are a transposition of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s reaction to unleashing the power of the atomic bomb, as the Dragon Smaug is “unleashed” by the Dwarfs and Bilbo, flying toward Laketown to fulfill the prophecy of a Lake of Fire, intoning, “I am death!” (“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” Bhagavad Gita). And Bilbo looks upon the retreating Dragon, bereft, and echoes Oppenheimer’s next thought: “What have we done?” Crash to black.

Escape into DESOLATION. Your cave troll will thank you.

END

None More Shirtless.

Visual gluttony!

No matter what you may think about IMMORTALS as a grandiose movie, a confused mythological tale, or an action fantasy diversion — goddam, it looks good!

Call the filmstock developers! Someone spilled sepia tone and iron filings all over our print! And tell those guys to put some shirts on!

IMMORTALS follows ancient Greek mythological hero Theseus (shirtless Henry Cavill), on a legendary journey created by the screenwriters (Charley and Vlas Parlapanides), whom we presume haven’t read a Greek myth in their lives. The only vignette marginally resembling a Greek myth is the slaying of the Minotaur (the Minotaur not even a half-man half-bull, but an executioner with a kind of “crown-of-thorns” helmet shaped like a bull’s head). All the rest is off-the-cuff “mythology” about power-mad King Hyperion (even more shirtless Mickey Rourke) seeking an “Epirus Bow” that will help him rule the world. (Well, what else would one do with an Epirus Bow?)

And Theseus is there to lead Greece against him – with no shirts on.

As I watched IMMORTALS, I kept feeling like I should know this “Theseus” fella, but none of his situations or adventures were jogging my memory. He has a few scenes with John Hurt, who knows some of the old gods personally. Then that scene with the Minotaur, and my jaw dropped: It’s that Theseus?! Wasn’t he the half-son of Poseidon (here represented by a fey Teen Model) and a princess (here a peasant woman)? And isn’t Hyperion one of the 12 Titans, not a mortal king?…

If you’re here for the mythology, you’ve come to the wrong shirtless film. All I can say is, I enjoyed the movie as the extreme visual spectacle that it is, all mythological knowledge thrown out the window with the men’s shirts. (How long does it take to get your obliques that cut anyway?)

Stephen Dorff (shirtless to the max) gives Superman a run with his own obliques cut like bicycle seats on his hips. He’s scrapper Darius (–or something–who cares about the Greek names, right? They’re not actual characters from the Theseus myth anyway!). Frieda Pinto (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) is a virgin oracle garbed from eyebrow to ankle in concealing oracle-wear – until Theseus saves her with the supercool glittering arrows from the magic Epirus Bow. Then it’s plunging neckline and thigh-high slit skirt. Oh, and sex (–now calm down, young lads; though she’s got a smokin’ bod, it’s useless. She’s a virgin! Ironically, God only knows how long it’s gonna take to convince her to GO GREEK!).

The portrayal of Zeus is telling of our times. Remember when the elder gods were always old men like Lawrence Olivier, or even Liam Neeson? Here, the father of the gods is dashing Luke Evans (none more shirtless), upgraded from playing Apollo in 2010’s CLASH OF THE TITANS. And all his divine chillun – Ares, Heracles, Poseidon and Athena – are Teen Models. Shirtless of course. Except for the goddess – the only person we really want to see shirtless. Isabel Lucas (as Athena) teases us as a naked stone woman, then drapes an annoying toga over herself as she assumes her immaculate human goddess form. She’s so perfect that I love her so much I hate her.

The movie loses me when Zeus vows to kill any of his god-children that help the mortals – and then when Ares and Athena help the mortals, Zeus kills only Ares! Can’t kill the Hot Chick, oh no! That would mean half our audience of young boys masturbating would leave.

In the final battle against Hyperion, Theseus (whose British accent gets more Australian as the film wears on) rallies the retreating Greek army to turn and fight, by giving Inspirational Movie Speech No. 24, aka the “Blessed Are The Cheesemakers Speech” – in other words, how does anyone past the fifth row hear him? “We must stand and fight!”… “Did he say ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers’?” “Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”

Director Tarsem Singh has studied Zack Snyder’s 300 like a man possessed, copycatting that scintillating balletic violence; I especially like the representation of gods killing faster than the eye can see, as they ravage at normal speed through a forest of assailants that are being mutilated in slow motion.

When everyone is dying at the hands of the Titans (which are nameless stone-textured soldiers that scuttle around like bestial insects), Zeus decides to turn to magic – a literal deus ex machina. The eternal question: why didn’t he use magic in the first place and save us all that time looking for our shirts?

END

Hash of the Titans.

Liam Neeson and Sam Worthington try to out-act special effects. Fail. 16-year-old boys rejoice. Mankind tries to live without deities. Fail. Churches rejoice.

CLASH OF THE TITANS is written to be enjoyed exclusively by 16-year-old boys. Hell, I loved the 1981 original film starring Harry Hamlin and Burgess Meredith. When I was 16. The 2010 remake obviously has better special effects and much better-realized and refined supernatural creatures (as homage to the original film, the electronic owl makes a cameo), but the acting and the story have not graduated past the level of acceptance required by 16-year-old boys.

Perseus (Aussie Worthington, who just can’t seem to shake that accent as his ancestors Mel Gibson, Guy Pearce and Daniel Craig did), a demi-god in ancient Greece, must battle against the gods themselves when the city of Argos is forced to sacrifice its princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the gargantuan monster, the Kraken.

Like any story that involves religion, everything happens for irrational reasons and without motivation and without any point. Perseus’s very birth is laden with irrational backstory, as mortal King Acrisius (Jason Flemyng) feuds with Olympian god Zeus (Neeson), raiding Olympus every weekend, causing Zeus to rape Acrisius’s wife.

Poffeus

Let’s backtrack for a moment: How exactly do you feud with a god? And how does one raid Olympus? Isn’t it on another dimensional plane? And even if Olympus is just a physical abode resting on the lowest clouds, how do the ancient Greek soldiery (possessing no flying machines) actually “attack” Olympus?…Onward…

To rape Acrisuis’s wife, Zeus makes himself look like Acrisius to gain her bed – but being an omniscient god, why stoop to such banal subversion to overcome a woman? Just offer to fly her to Paris for lunch – she’ll be yours before dessert. Acrisius’s wife births Perseus, who is half-god, half-Australian. Acrisius, in a fit of rage, uh, waits nine months until baby Perseus is born, to entomb both baby and mother in a coffin and hurl it into the sea “to destroy Zeus’s seed.” Guess his “fit of rage” didn’t take into account it might have been easier to just stab the mother while she was pregnant…

Long story short: Perseus lives, becomes a fisherman, in a world which has started to defy the gods who created them. Soldiers destroy a giant Zeus statue and broham Hades, ruler of the underworld, immediately appears as a giant black pissed-off winged entity (with smaller bat-winged demons reminiscent of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) and wipes the floor with the soldiers. So what kind of cretin would continue insulting gods? (When the Greek scribes wrote this tale, did they not see the paradox of their plot point? In a world where gods continually give physical evidence of their power, just how stupid does mankind have to be to defy them? These people of ancient Greece were written with the sensibilities of people who lived in a world without gods, i.e. ours.)

As testament to this spreading impertinence, Queen Cassiopeia of Argos boasts that her daughter Andromeda is more beautiful than the goddess Aphrodite, at which point Hades (Ralph Fiennes, doing his best Gary Oldman), appears again and calls for Andromeda’s sacrifice – or he will release the Kraken (which we presume is a Very Bad Thing because he pronounces the name so terribly feyly). I was sure he said “OR” he would release the Kraken – but later, he releases the Kraken anyway to pick up the sacrifice. Hey, we made the sacrifice, why not send something not so dangerously fey to pick it up? You killing two birds with one stone here?

After Hades lays down his curse, Perseus unwittingly gets roped into the quest to stop the Kraken, which involves visiting Stygian witches, taming a Pegasus flying horse, lopping off the head of the gorgon Medusa and using it to turn the Kraken to stone. While Hans Zimmer‘s music makes it epic on toast. All in a day’s work for a demi-god. But Perseus spends half his skirt-wearing, sword-wielding time bitching about wanting to be a man not a god.

Perseus maintains to Zeus, “We live, we fight and we die for each other – not for you,” which again, is spoken like a man living in a world WITHOUT gods, or in a world with imaginary gods, i.e. ours. If the gods showed themselves and performed magical, physics-bending havoc when you defied them, I’m betting you would learn quicksmart how to live, fight and die for them.

Blaming director Louis Leterrier and writers Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi for these discrepancies would be like blaming Peter Jackson for the illogical happenings in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Greek mythology is already written – if the movie writers stuck to every detail and inserted every ulterior motivation of the complex characters, we would need a trilogy of movies. As a movie version of CLASH OF THE TITANS had already been written in 1981 by Beverly Cross, these remake writers simply took that script – and dumbed it down even further.

As illustrated by the box office, no one cares. In modern parlance, “going Greek” doesn’t involve mythological classicism.

These are fairy tales that turned into legends that turned into religion that turned into mythology. (Christianity is still at the religion stage.) So it’s irrational from the outset. CLASH OF THE TITANS is one deus ex machina piled on another. Uh, literally.

Mads Mikkelson, Danish megastar and Bond Villain, is Draco, leader of the quest (he was never this hefty in CASINO ROYALE, but in CLASH, can’t stop looking like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson); Gemma Arterton is Io (also a Bond character in QUANTUM OF SOLACE; here, a Google substitute whenever anyone needs info on ancient Greek mythology – and as she’s dodging giant scorpions we almost see her undies!).

The visualization of the creatures – from Flemyng’s Calibos makeup to the ferryman Charon, to Medusa, the Pegasus and the Kraken – is monstrously good, although I will say that Medusa should have been topless. She’s a snake-like monster who lives amongst ruins and turns people to stone with her stare; can you really see her adjusting her ornate bra for maximum push-up effect? I’m just sayin.’

But I do object to the giant scorpions – boring! All CGI arthropods, arachnids or insects make my eyes glaze over. One deus ex later, with the aid of rock creatures, everyone’s riding these useless effects.

The story makes an infantile decision to paint Hades as a “villain,” as if synonymous with the christian devil, but Hades was not a simple polar opposite to Zeus; Zeus ruled Olympus, Poseidon ruled the oceans and Hades ruled the underworld, which was called either Tartarus, Elysium or Erebus, and was a region ALL human souls passed through, not just “bad” ones. And Olympus was NOT the equivalent of christian heaven, it was the exclusive abode of the gods – NO human was allowed there.

Would that any human cast his unworthy gaze on Liam Neeson’s fake pirate’s beard and absolutely fabulous outfit; gadding about in a shimmering silvery ballroom gown made of chromium wings that is even gayer than his costume as Qui-Gon Jin.

The Stygian Witches prophesize that if Perseus goes after Medusa, he will die. Again, prophesy proven wrong. But no one seems to notice. Of what use then was the prophecy? And those rock monster guys who tamed the scorpions abandon Perseus, even though the prophecy said that he would die, not them! And they can’t be affected by Medusa anyway – cos they’re already rock! But who are we to speak of such logic – screenwriters?…

As a final insult to us, and the grandest misnomer of all: the twelve Titans of Ancient Greece were Cronus, Oceanus, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Hyperion, Themis, Thea, Iapetus, Phoebe, Rhea, Coeus and Crius. Any names you recognize from the movie? Of course not. When I was 16, I believed one of the Titans was the Kraken, the other Medusa, still another, Perseus. And though Zeus or Hades are erroneously regarded as Titans by some texts, they are merely offspring of Titans, Cronus and Rhea. So… a movie called CLASH OF THE TITANS which features not one actual Titan.

The moviemakers are just bending us over and going Greek on us.

END