D&D have done it again! (created a disappointment)
While the Tencent adaptation had some flaws, notably very poor pacing and some downright bizarre acting and editing, I think it was an overall better experience. Netflix cut the runtime significantly, which could have been an improvement, but they did it to the point of skipping several important developments in the story. Yet, they found ways to waste precious minutes on scenes that dragged on longer than they should have, some of which didn't add anything to the story. It's only because I watched the Tencent adaptation that I was able to appreciate some of the ideas in the Netflix adaptation, since I knew what they were covering in spite of the skipped story beats. If I hadn't, I'd either feel like I was just watching a series of spoilers, or be confused about the point of it all.
Many positive reviews are downplaying negative ones for being pedantic and expecting a direct adaptation from the books, but this is feels reductionist and disingenuous. I think it's fine to diverge from the source material, but it should be done thoughtfully. In my opinion, the Netflix adaptation fails on its own merits. Some of the changes seem to be done in the interest of simplification, but this introduces plot holes, some of which must have been done against the recommendation of scientific advisors on staff. For example, I don't think the sophon was capable of unfolding itself (Trisolaris spent an unfathomable amount of time and energy building them), yet in this adaptation the sophon does it on a whim just to create a menacing eye in the sky? Why not just starve the planet of sunlight then and finish the story right there? Originally, the eye was observed during a failed Trisolaran unfolding attempt, alluding to a sentient threat gaining access to our universe from another dimension.
Tencent gave the viewer many episodes to theory-craft why "physics doesn't exist", what the motive could be for targeting scientists, who or what could be behind it, the purpose behind the game and so forth. The characters slowly whittled down the possibilities and eventually unveiled the truth. The show drip fed information to the viewer through the eyes of the characters which often became relevant much later, such as the flying blade. It went into philosophical thought experiments that conveyed the existential dread of the situation, like the turkey scientist and the farmer. It also covered several interesting physics concepts in a way that was easy to process and yet showed respect to the viewer.
Netflix? Nah, it's aliens bro, it's right there in the trailer on YouTube. There's no respect for the viewer, so there's no attempt made to even cover concepts like cosmic background radiation. It did cover a few at least, like FTL communication with entangled sophon pairs, the staircase project, etc. Netflix did also foreshadow some concepts that do come later in the books, sometimes with just novel covers shown on screen, some in dialogue, such as the Fermi Paradox and the Wallfacer project.
I believe the Oxford Five were created to be more relatable to the viewer than Wang Miao, but I think this again shows little respect for the viewer. They achieved this in part in the laziest way possible, such as having many of them just curse in every scene. I don't think it's necessary to relate to every character, and it can certainly be done in ways beyond superficial means like gender and race like what was attempted here. The story is about the science of it all, the universe, and this extends beyond the lifespan of a single person who likes to go drinking at a bar with friends. Most of us aren't top-tier scientists, we're not going to think like Oppenheimer or Feynman, this is fine. I found my immersion broken at several points when I saw the protagonists succumbing to irrational ways of thinking. To be a successful academic at such a high level would likely entail some core beliefs about the world and ways of thinking that wouldn't come off as people reading emotional lines off a script.
Is this D&D adaptation as bad as GoT S8? Definitely not. It's several points better, but the bar is pretty low. There were some redeeming moments, a few funny lines in almost every episode, I particularly liked some parts of the last one.
I do think it can still be worth a watch. However, I highly recommend starting with the Tencent adaptation, or reading the books first. Those are more of a journey, whereas this comes off more as a poorly written fan wiki with spoilers. I think this version can really rob you of the awe inspiring ideas in the source material and Chinese adaptation. My hope is that some people will find this version interesting enough to delve into the source material.
I feel terrible not liking this, but...I didn't really like this. The mystery didn't really gel for me: it had all the hallmarks of a Phryne case (helping someone vulnerable, tangled relationships, danger, great wardrobe) but it didn't feel like a Miss Fisher Murder Mystery. There did seem to be a bit of James Bond. The film opens with a chase rather than a murder, unlike the usual formula, which already put it a little off-kilter. They were clearly aiming for bigger, more exotic, more cinematic, and instead got a bit of a boring mess that for some reason had Phyrne switching between London and the Middle East and oh, have a random fencing scene that lasted probably less time than it took to get her in that outfit. Hugh and Dot, Burt and Cec were mere cameos on par with Aunt Prudence --- and worse, when did Dot get to find out Phryne wasn't dead? The first bit with the faked(?) death.... Phryne is bold and reckless but she isn't cruel, but unfortunately that's just what that plot made her out to be. Or at least, incredibly callous, which is still out of character.
What about her romance with Jack, which left off with a dramatic kiss before Phryne flew off to England, her calling to Jack to come after her? All wasted. Months have passed. She's not in Australia. Jack has had his heart broken. Phryne is, again, strangely cavalier. Most of movie starts them right back at the beginning with Jack being prickly, Phryne being flirty, and what sexual tension managed to carry forward was for me wrecked, again, by the stupid subplot at the start of the movie. Why? Why?! And she got married to some random we never meet to help him out, but again, why? Why even go there, except for some stupid regressive angst? I wanted Power Couple-Phrack. Instead I just felt really sad for Jack, and quite frankly was thinking good riddance to Phryne; if he were my friend, I'd have advised him to forget her.
[5.0/10] I scored this as a five out of ten, but the real answer here is that Plan 9 from Outer Space is unratable. It’s like trying to judge a bowl of tomato soup as a contestant in the Westminster Dog Show. The movie is so far out of form that using the same tools and standards we normally use to rank and rate things is all but meaningless.
The movie’s flaws have been well-documented. The acting is variable at best. The plot is a nonsensical hodgepodge. The writing is stilted and silly. The special effects are laughable. And the efforts to cover-up or compensate for all of these shortcomings are woefully inadequate. But no one signs up for Plan 9 these days expecting Kubrickian perfection. The movie effectively delivers what it promises to modern day viewers.
Here’s the dirty little secret though. Much of Plan 9 is undeniably bad, but much of it is also just downright boring. There’s humor in elliptical conversations that go nowhere and communicate nothing. But by the time Random Alien #3 is repeating the same point he made ten minutes ago in slightly different terms, it can be downright exhausting. There’s a strange art to bad movies. Being questionable in quality but rife with entertainment is a rare and special thing. In plenty of stretches, Plan 9 achieves that somewhat ignominious but still noteworthy standard, but in many others, it’s simply the dull kind of “not very good.”
More to the point, many of the things that mark it as a famous terrible film are hard to grok in the same way sixty years later. I like older movies. Plenty of them are as fascinating or profound as anything deliberately crafted to speak to us today. But they also require a certain allowance from the modern viewer for things like pacing, the style of acting, and the quality of the special effects that may differ substantially from what we’re used to.
Some of Plan 9’s performances or dialogue or chintzy effects are self-evidently crummy in any era. But honestly, a lot of it falls within acceptable tolerances for stories and presentations from so long ago. I’m a big fan of Star Trek, and plenty of the cheesier elements in the 1960s series -- whether in terms of acting or storytelling or visuals -- aren’t that far removed from what Plan 9 does here, and The Original Series remains a classic. Speaking only for myself, I’ve seen enough of the cinema from this era to be able to accept the stylistic differences without complaint, but not enough to be able to expertly discern embarrassing stumbles from conventions of the time.
All that said, wide swaths of Plan 9 are close to incoherent. The wants of any given character at any given time are opaque at best. There’s barely any sort of protagonist or central story to latch onto. There’s little in the way of build or progression. Scenes simply crash into one another, held together by the epoxy of voiceover narration that randomly goes away halfway through the movie. True to the film’s monster movie roots, this cinematic outing plays like it was stitched together from other random spare parts and jolted with just enough juice to be technically ambulatory.
And yet, there are themes here, bluntly delivered and didactic though they may be. Buried within all that flotsam is a legitimate point about man’s trajectory in the nuclear age. The movie is riddled with a certain fear, a common one in science fiction of the time, that our technology was outstripping our maturity as a species. The concept of using sunlight as an explosive sounds silly to the modern ear, but it’s not a far stretch from artists who watched scientists turn unseen atoms into weapons of mass destruction. The alien’s overextended, repetitive speech isn’t necessarily the grandest delivery mechanism for this idea. But it’s striking, to say the least, to see this germ of insight and maybe even profundity in a film that fails at so much else.
The problem is that Plan 9 isn’t really about that, outside of that scene. The best you can say is that it posits man as full of hubris and violence, that we are too impulsive and barbarous to become citizens of the universe. The efforts to cover-up the existence of aliens, the militaristic response to their visits, all suggest a version of humanity unready and even dangerous for the responsibilities falling into our laps as advanced technology propels us to the stars and to self-destructive capabilities.
But good lord, why does that mean the aliens need to revive corpses, or control them with ray guns, or give pontificating speeches about all of this? And why does it mean the same three zombies wander around...very slowly menacing people who should be able to get away at a light jog? And why would their extraterrestrial masters have them disintegrate down to their skeletons via the “decomposition ray” for no apparent reason? And why does one of the aliens repeat her compatriot’s name, Eros, fifty times like it’s going to revive him a la clapping for Tinker Bell? Trying to reconstruct this movie’s plot is like trying to build a bookshelf out of jello.
There is, however, one other element of note, which stumbles into potential thematic resonance, albeit accidentally. Paula, the wife of the pilot who first sees the UFO, is one of the only competent and half-intelligent people in the movie. The cops scratch and point with their revolvers. Others just sort of saunter into danger without thought, or act in baffling ways. But Paula seems to readily assess the situation and offer good advice that no one listens to.
It’s notable because there’s an odd, if era-appropriate streak of misogyny here. Characters talk about women being hysterical, and even the quasi-enlightened alien overlords utter jaw-dropping lines about what a woman’s place is. For someone who would sometimes dress as a woman, Ed Wood certainly doesn’t have the most progressive view of them.
The truth, though, is this sexist streak is a minor part of the film. But the same goes for pretty much everything. The struggles behind the scenes of the film’s production are legendary, and the fractured results bear them out. The grab bag of characters and story fragments and ideas bear little relation to one another. Some of them are funny. Some of them are boring, Some of them are even a touch profound.
But Plan 9 from Outer Space is a patchwork quilt made by amateurs by the side of the road, rather than a movie. It doesn’t make sense to judge it as a movie. Instead, the only proper response is to do what others have done: spelunk through the wreckage to find the humanity within and behind it, to understand the love of cinema and its leading lights that spurred it, and to marvel at why and how it was made at all. Therein lies all the intrigue and the glory of this messy little miracle. The film itself, for all its ridiculousness and infamy, is merely the bait.
[7.3/10] I forget how gross Bob’s Burgers could be in its early days. It’s not like the show totally shed that in its later years. There’s an entire episode about Louise pooping down the line. But between the coughs and pukes at the hospital, to all the blood spurting on people, you remember that the series started with more of an Adult Swim sensibility than it would eventually develop. Not a complaint necessarily -- just an observation.
I enjoyed the plot where Linda ferries Bob to the hospital to get the cut in his “finger crotch” stitched up. Bob fainting at the mildest sight of blood is still a good running bit. (We still say “Wobbly Bobbly” in the Bloom household.) And I got a big kick out of Bob’s understandable reluctance to go with the incompetent first-time doctor, Linda’s blithe encouragement of the young lad, and the poor Belcher patriarch waking up with both his arms shaved and a giant wrap around his whole hand.
The B-story of the kids operating an underground casino (that, as noted by Mr. Fischoeder, is literally underground) is a lot of fun too. Tina has the least to do, but her ineffectual attempts to babysit and really committing to the role of waitress are both low-key comic highlights. Gene gradually recreating a fractured version of Dreamgirls with the “Cutie Patooties” is another good series of laughs. (For whatever reason, we’ve also adopted his “Girls Being Girls” song as an amusing reference and refrain for pop music that is, shall we say, slight.)
Louise is the anchor though. Her stepping into the role of wheeling-and-dealing but also menacing casino boss is a ton of fun. (Her threats to Andy and Ollie are scary but hilarious -- scarilarious?) Her meeting her match when Mr. Fischoeder comes to play leads to more lunacy, and I particularly like the way the two plots come together, with Bob breaking his stitches to beat the seemingly unstoppable Fischoeder at rock-paper-scissors.
All-in-all, this one is definitely grosser and shaggier than the show would become once it honed its voice and style a little bit, but there’s still a lot to like in these earlier, rougher outings.
This episode unfortunately felt like it was the last to be produced and they had run out of money. The script had a lot of the characters stating the obvious or saying aloud what we were seeing on the screen. There just didn't seem to be the creativity seen in earlier episodes.
Monster of the episode - Wax Phantom
Mystery Motivation - throw blame on Grisby for embezzlement scheme
Initial Location - television station
Scary Location - Grisby’s house, wax museum
Side Locations -
Clues found - airline ticket, bag of money
Scooby Snacks consumed - handfuls for both SS
Shag and Scoob disguises - scoob as Bonaparte, Shag as Josephine
Weird Food - bubble-ghost stew
Number of chase scenes - 2 (one musical)
Catchphrases used - Zoinks * 4, Scooby-Dooby-Doo * , Scooby-Doo Where Are You? * 1, Scooby-Doo * 1
Shtick performed - daphne falls out the vent
Notable characters - Johnny Sands, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Grisby, Sheriff
Red Herrings - Grisby
Gang splits up - FD go to wax museum, VSS question Grisby, FDV search wax museum, SS eat wax food
Traps set - trap phantom in his own wax
Notable occurrences - scooter stored in back of mm
What a strange episode! They took the Mystery Machine to Hawaii! And since the trip was thanks to the reporter, does that mean the newspaper paid for shipping a van across the Pacific Ocean? How did they get there? I'm all for letting the logical leaps go, but this is a big one. The villain "clams up".
Monster of the episode - Mano Tiki Tia and witch doctor
Mystery Motivation - scare villagers to poach pearls
Initial Location - Hawaiian beach
Scary Location - Haunted Village
Side Locations - Pineapple Parlor
Clues found - oyster shells and pearls, plastic vines covering plane
Scooby Snacks consumed - 1 eaten by Shaggy
Shag and Scoob disguises - Tarzan, Jane, Cheetah, scooby in bath, shaggy doing soft shoe, scooby in hula skirt, shaggy in party hat juggling plates.
Weird Food -
Number of chase scenes - 4
Catchphrases used - Zoinks * 3 (said by FDV) 5 (said by Shaggy), Scooby-Dooby-Doo * , Scooby-Doo Where Are You? * 1, Scooby-Doo * 1
Shtick performed - scooby steals shaggy’s poi
Notable characters - Mr. Simms, people at luau, Lt. Tomoro, henchman
Red Herrings - old man
Gang splits up - Scooby goes missing during luau, FDV get split from SS by revolving wall, V falls through trap door, SS get separated during chase
Traps set - scare witch doctor with funhouse mirror, runs into palm-frond covered pit
Notable occurrences - mystery machine in Hawaii
After cutting the werewolf's hair while in disguise, all further appearances of the werewolf show him with his hair cut off, in a unique bit of continuity for a cartoon. I assume that Freddy is actually going to share the large tent with Shaggy, and Scooby is in the pup tent by himself.
Monster of the episode - werewolf ghost
Mystery Motivation - scare intruders so they could rustle sheep
Initial Location - camping
Scary Location - old graveyard, old mill
Side Locations -
Clues found - open grave, map, wool, barrels with rubber tubing
Scooby Snacks consumed -
Shag and Scoob disguises - barber and manicurist
Weird Food -
Number of chase scenes - 2 (one musical)
Catchphrases used - Zoinks * , Scooby-Dooby-Doo * , Scooby-Doo Where Are You? * , Scooby-Doo * 2
Shtick performed - scooby eats most of Shaggy’s hot dogs, daphne gets caught on hook
Notable characters - sheep rustler, sheriff
Red Herrings -
Gang splits up - FDV go one way, SS other in old mill, same separation during chase scene, same separation at narrow gauge railway
Traps set - hide in barrel to distract werewolf, catch him with crane and hook
Notable occurrences - Velma is able to tell the tracks are from a two-legged creature instead of four-legged
Another episode where we don't see the culprit until the unmasking, where he does a variation on "meddling kids," but still no use of the word meddling. Most zoinks used so far.
This really would've been a place for the meddling kids line, but not even a blasted kids here. One wonders if the villain got a bit consumed by the role, what with making Shag and Scoob cook for him.
Monster of the episode - Space Kook
Mystery Motivation - scare neighbors away to buy land cheap to sell to Air Force
Initial Location - deserted road near farm house
Scary Location - abandoned airfield
Side Locations - farmhouse
Clues found - glowing footprints, warm generator, fresh grease, glowing fingerprints on yesterday’s newspaper, fresh food, gas fumes in exhaust pipe
Scooby Snacks consumed -
Shag and Scoob disguises - wearing pilot caps
Weird Food - bologna, meatloaf, double-Dutch chocolate sauce sandwich
Number of chase scenes - 5
Catchphrases used - Zoinks * 6, Scooby-Dooby-Doo * , Scooby-Doo Where Are You? * , Scooby-Doo * 1
Shtick performed - scooby steals shaggy’s food twice, space kook steals food from Scoob, Scooby finds food and eats it before Shaggy sees him
Notable characters - farmer, sheriff, Henry Bascomb
Red Herrings -
Gang splits up - fdv split up with ss to search airfield, also split up when running from Space Kook
Traps set -
Notable occurrences - shag and scoob BASE jump from tower
I think this is one of episodes that people really think of when they think classic Scooby-Doo. Monsters, fortune tellers, scary castles, and the villain spouting the "would've gotten away with it" line after being unmasked.
Monster of the episode - Werewolf, vampire, Frankenstein's monster,
Mystery Motivation - scare people away from castle to hunt for jewels
Initial Location - en route to Franken Castle
Scary Location - Franken Castle
Side Locations - Fortune Teller wagon
Clues found - note from 1668, jewelry, tapestry fragment
Scooby Snacks consumed - 1
Shag and Scoob disguises -
Weird Food - Pickled Vampire Wings, Werewolf Snacks, Fried Moonbeams
Number of chase scenes - 4
Catchphrases used - Zoinks * 1, Scooby-Dooby-Doo * 1, Scooby-Doo Where Are You? * 1, Scooby-Doo * 2
Shtick performed - Danger-prone Daphne gets stuck on the castle side when the drawbridge goes up, Velma loses her glasses, Scooby plays sick, Sc steals S's food
Notable characters - Big Bob Oakley, aka The Actor (fortune teller)
Red Herrings -
Gang splits up - Daphne gets stuck in castle, S&Sc get chased into the castle by werewolf, V gets separated from F when she loses her glasses, D&V get separated from S&Sc in the dark
Traps set - Shaggy catches werewolf in chandelier, S&Sc catch vampire in tapestry
Notable occurrences - Shaggy uses ventriloquism, villain says "would've gotten away with it" line, but uses blasted instead of meddling
Watching order
Because there are some issues with watching this, here is the order.
Copying from the site in case it ever goes down, but this info came from here: http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2010/02/battlestar-galactica-viewing-order.html
It's probably more confusing here on trakt, so go to the above linked site for a better layout.
The Miniseries
Night 1
Night 2
Season 1
1.01 33
1.02 Water
1.03 Bastille Day
1.04 Act of Contrition
1.05 You Can't Go Home Again
1.06 Litmus
1.07 Six Degrees of Separation
1.08 Flesh and Bone
1.09 Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down
1.10 The Hand of God
1.11 Colonial Day
1.12 Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I
1.13 Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II
Season 2
2.01 Scattered
2.02 Valley of Darkness
2.03 Fragged
2.04 Resistance
2.05 The Farm
2.06 Home, Part I
2.07 Home, Part II
2.08 Final Cut
2.09 Flight of the Phoenix
2.10 Pegasus (56 minute extended version)
2.11 Resurrection Ship, Part I
2.12 Resurrection Ship, Part II
2.13 Epiphanies
2.14 Black Market
2.15 Scar
2.16 Sacrifice
2.17 The Captain's Hand
Razor (101 minute extended version - not the 81 minute broadcast version)
Important note: This was originally broadcast just before Season 4, but chronologically it fits here, telling more of the Pegasus's story. Some people argue it's better to watch after Season 3, as originally broadcast, but it makes most sense to watch it here.
The reason that the placement of Razor is a hotly contested issue among BSG fans is because of a bit of dialogue at the very end (in the last 10 minutes) which sets the tone for Season 4 (barely even a spoiler). Everything else in this TV movie is not a spoiler.
So why place it here, and not where it was originally broadcast, if there's any sort of issue? Because, chronologically, the story is set here, and by the time you reach the end of Season 3, the story of Pegasus will feel like ancient history. Indeed, that was the complaint echoed around the internet from fans after Razor originally aired -- it had nothing to do with what was going on in the story at that time.
As a result of this, most fans agree it's better to watch Razor here. In doing so, you'll appreciate the story more and it will have greater emotionally resonance. In short: I highly recommend that you follow my advice and watch it here.
There is one small caveat, however: In order to deal with the above dialogue issue, and so not to unintentionally alter the tone of Season 3, I have two, very specific instructions that I recommend that you follow for your absolute optimum enjoyment.
I will try not to spoil anything with these instructions, so pay attention. You need to press MUTE on your TV (and/or turn off any subtitles) in the following two moments. Both of these moments occur in the last 10 minutes of the story, so you can relax and enjoy the first 90 mins before you need to worry.
Press MUTE when:
and shortly afterwards:
That's it! That's all you have to worry about. Two very small moments, and even if you don't unmute it, it's not a huge spoiler, it just unintentionally alters the tone of Season 3 if you don't, so do try your best to follow my instructions.
2.18 Downloaded
2.19 Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I
2.20 Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II
The Resistance
A 10 episode web-based series bridging seasons 2 and 3. (25 mins.)
Season 3
3.01 Occupation
3.02 Precipice
3.03 Exodus, Part I
3.04 Exodus, Part II
3.05 Collaborators
3.06 Torn
3.07 A Measure of Salvation
3.08 Hero
3.09 Unfinished Business (70 minute extended version - Note: Not included on Region 2 DVDs, but is included on ALL Bluray releases.)
3.10 The Passage
3.11 The Eye of Jupiter
3.12 Rapture
3.13 Taking a Break From All Your Worries
3.14 The Woman King
3.15 A Day in the Life
3.16 Dirty Hands
3.17 Maelstrom
3.18 The Son Also Rises
3.19 Crossroads, Part I
3.20 Crossroads, Part II
Razor: Yes, this again. (Well this is where Razor was originally broadcast, after all.) Remember the last 10 minutes where I told you to MUTE two small moments? Well, guess what, now is when you get to go back and hear what was said. Watch the last 10 minutes of Razor here.
Season 4
4.01 He That Believeth In Me
4.02 Six of One
4.03 The Ties That Bind
4.04 Escape Velocity
4.05 The Road Less Traveled
4.06 Faith
4.07 Guess What's Coming to Dinner?
4.08 Sine Qua Non
4.09 The Hub
4.10 Revelations
Season 4 Continued (aka "Season 4.5" or "The Final Season")
4.11 Sometimes a Great Notion
The Face of the Enemy
A 10 episode web-based series (although it plays together like an intense mini-episode). (36 mins.)
4.12 A Disquiet Follows My Soul (53 minute extended version - only on Bluray releases)
4.13 The Oath
4.14 Blood on the Scales
4.15 No Exit
The Plan (DVD/Bluray movie)
A stand-alone movie that shows (approximately) the first two seasons from the Cylons' perspective. (You finally get to see "The Plan", mentioned all those times in the opening sequence!) Although The Plan was originally released after the show had finished, it is generally agreed that it should be watched here, so that everything is all tied up when you do reach the end.
4.16 Deadlock
4.17 Someone to Watch Over Me
4.18 Islanded In a Stream of Stars (62 minute extended version - only on BluRay releases and Region 1 DVDs)
4.19 Daybreak (150 minute extended version - only on BluRay releases and Region 1 DVDs)
The Plan : This is where this DVD/Bluray movie was originally released (after the show had finished). It seems universally agreed that it's preferable to watch this after No Exit, instead of after you've finished the entire series, but there's no harm in waiting until now.
Then Caprica the series: http://trakt.tv/show/caprica
Another F&F movie that’s stupidly entertaining if you can meet it on its wavelength. You don’t need to turn your brain off, but you absolutely need to be able to embrace the madness with this franchise. These are science fiction/anime, they have been for a while now and that tone is once again clearly communicated by the filmmakers. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some small changes compared to previous installments, however. They toned down some of the dramatic undertones and over the top antics from the last ones, which I think was drastically needed. Momoa is a blast to watch, his mannerisms do feel inspired by Ledger’s Joker. In fact, I liked most of the new additions, even someone like Brie Larson is a lot more fun here than anything else I’ve seen her in. However, it’s having a hard time balancing all of its characters and storylines (did we need this convoluted mini sidequest/Infinity War-esque structure?). Sometimes you really feel that any breathing room has been taken out of the edit to make it as tight as possible. It’s not incomprehensible, but I really hope they make something more focussed for the next part. It’s F&F, this should thrive on simplicity. Everything else is the same old recipe. It’s a string of set pieces (loved the bit in Rome) and other entertaining scenes filled with bad acting, boring trap rap, great sound design, soap opera dialogue, lots of production value, fun comedy, plot twists to roll your eyes at and a whole lot of Vin Diesel mumbling about family inbetween. The weaknesses are all very obvious, but it makes up for a lot of them by being shamelessly entertaining.
5/10
[7.4/10] It would be too much to call Hail, Caesar! a deconstruction of Old Hollywood glamour. It would also be too much to call it a tribute to that 1950s studio sparkle either. Instead, it’s a love letter written with a poison pen -- a movie about movies that both admires and recoils from the mercenary work necessary to make these dream factories run, while remaining amusingly ambivalent about the ribbons of reveries they create.
It is also a Coen Bros. movie, so grand plots and convoluted ploys nearly reach their ridiculous fruition, only to fall apart at the last minute. Scads of self-possessed personalities veer between the absurd, the self-important, and the unvarnished sweet. And in uproarious stretches that provoke guffaws and slower situational silliness that wins wry smiles, it is damn funny.
The film tells the story of a star who’s kidnapped by Communists, a simple but earnest hayseed tapped to portray an effete sophisticate, a foul-tempered starlet whose pregnancy threatens to puncture her shining public image, and any number of other fires that the studio’s fixer must put out to keep the trains running on time. That fixer, Eddie Mannix, is the spine of the film, smoothly trudging his way from one crisis to the next, avoiding derailments with his pocket watch, gumption, and effortless understanding of whom to lean on, whom to sweet talk, and whom to slap around to keep it all moving.
But he has a chance to step off the track. Mannix carries an offer from Lockheed Martin in his back pocket, one that would give him more regular hours, an in at a more professional sort of business, and a much easier life than the 27-hours-straight he has to put in to hack it as head of physical production for a Hollywood film studio.
Hail, Caesar! is neither quixotic nor cynical about what entails. It makes no bones about the absurd strictures and control that studios exert over the lives of their employees. Mannix and his confederates cook up phony adoptions, cover indiscretions with political pressure, treat their dunderheaded or demanding stars more like ornery pets than people. It touches on pay for writers, laws evaded as though they’re barely there in the first place, and a workaday mundaneness that belies all the supposed magic.
And yet, the movie also pays homage to the styles and output of that age of the cinema. From a Gene Kelly-esque sailor-filled dance number, to a series of Cowboy songs and stunts, the movie lovingly recreates the tints and tropes of the old days. Monologue-laden historical epics sit next to comedies of manners. Starlets emerge from beneath artificial waves in the same fashion as Russian subs. Hitchcockian pursuits and suspenseful car rides give ways to Capra-esque crane shots and that California glow. For however much the Coen Bros. seem poised to poke fun at, or at least acknowledge, the grim realities of celluloid shimmer, they’re just as apt to deploy it to their own, tribuative ends.
Meanwhile, they mine the insanity of this all for all the comic gold they can find. (Hello, Mr. Pocket!) A group of religious figures debate the depiction of God in the studio’s latest movie, and cosmology in general, in a scene that just drips with the Coens’ dry sense of humor. Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich nearly blow the roof off the place in a scene where the former’s cultured director tries to coach the latter’s dopey cowboy to deliver his line with a layer of performance beyond “aw, shucks.” Empty-headed actors compare the dialectics of socialism and direct action to having to shave Danny Kaye’s back. There’s a constant strain of sly absurdity, the loonies who populate this lot and this town, that the writer/directors channel throughout for both their quiet chuckles and big laughs.
The catch is that, given the expansive cast of characters and deliberately overstuffed set of stories and conflicts and conspiracies for a harried (but never ruffled) Mannix to have to resolve, the movie feels a little too loose and aimless at times. Hail, Caesar!, contrary to the flicks it both spoofs and valorizes, doesn’t have much momentum from scene to scene. Instead, the Coens and their team are content to jump around from character to character, crisis to crisis, and conversation to conversation like a buzzed clapper boy stumbling home. Each (or at least most) of the pieces they put together are fun to watch or interesting to mull, but they rarely amount to more than the sum of their admittedly well-constructed parts.
Still, in its best moments and sequences, the film’s charms and the talents of its creatives are hard to deny. The film low-key satirizes a familiar moment in so many films about making one type of art or another. After Mannix has whacked some sense into his big star, the leading man heads to the set and delivers one of those grand oratories that defined so many of that era’s iconic films. Playing a Roman soldier whose heart is moved, he gazes upon Christ crucified (skeptically noted as a principal, rather than an extra by a P.A.), and delivers his lines with conviction and passion (not ardor). The crew looks on in admiration; the music swells, and in the climax of the speech the orator...forgets his lines.
The director yells cut. The lead grouses about how close he was. His co-star gripes about their uncomfortable Roman costumes. And the train keeps rolling. This isn’t magic or alchemy. It’s a bunch of idiots and working stiffs hacking out pleasantries in celluloid for a paycheck or at the behest of even more mercenary forces beyond their control.
But Hail, Caesar! contrasts that faux, unavailing scene of the good soldier seeking his direction before a man of god with a real one. When Mannix asks his Priest for forgiveness in the confessional, he implicitly asks him whether to take the Lockheed job, with all its ease and destruction, or to stay at this tougher racket and keep corralling these nudniks by only slightly less morally-questionable means. He walks out of that confessional reassured, ready to keep helping make those features a hard-won reality, by any means at his disposal.
That’s the optimistic cynicism of Hail, Caesar!. The movie, and by extension the Coens, don’t seem to harbor any illusions about the pure artistry of the cinematic output. The message of the film is not that all of this tricks and juggling and extra-legal measures are not somehow worth it for the beauty committed to film. But the work itself, the labor it takes, to just be a part of that machine, is its own kind of beautiful.
Movie-making, especially in the studio days, could be a slog and a grind and even a grift, in a way that belied the glitz and glamour that Tinseltown projected to the world. The Coens make no bones about that, but with decades in the business, and their tough-running fixer, they clearly still think that work is worth more than even the biggest frame could hold.
Between this and Cherry, it’s becoming more and more clear that the MCU’s best director is called Kevin Feige.
Netflix clearly spent a lot of money on this, you can feel the price of your subscription going up with every new set piece that’s introduced, but the end results are still unforgivingly bland and generic nonetheless.
It’s their attempt to compete with Bond, Bourne or Mission Impossible, but if anything this feels like a poser imitation of those superior blockbuster franchises. The plot is in fact literally ripping off both Skyfall and The Bourne Identity at the same time, but forgets about any of their depth in regards to story and character.
The Russos are clearly trying to recapture that same tone and spark from their Captain America: The Winter Soldier days, but they end up making something that’s more akin to the quality of Red Notice.
In terms of directing they kinda got outdone by their own second unit director with his Netflix action flick, as I’d argue that Extraction is a marginally better film than this.
The action’s poorly done and cheaply put together, lots of annoying editing choices (heavy overuse of drone shots, quick cuts and can the Russos pick a normal font for once?), corny dialogue, distractingly bad CGI, boring visuals and music (why is everything so low contrast, foggy and muddy?); not a lot to recommend about this one.
The acting’s fine, Evans is having a blast, but I have absolutely no idea why an extremely picky actor like Ryan Gosling chose this script in the first place. It seems like a paycheck movie for someone of his caliber. Just watch The Nice Guys instead of this if you want to see Goose in an action comedy, we don’t need these 200 million dollar direct to streaming action films.
4/10
Putting aside the whole delayed "live" shenanigan.
To my surprise, everyone in this reunion was civilized and mostly had intelligent responses. There was no Shake-level intrusion or Zanab-level blamefest, even though the Lacheys seemed like they were desperately trying to push the ex-contestants in that direction. I actually respect that Irina showed up even though she knew that there was nothing for her here than hate, but for that minor chance to redeem herself in front of the cast members and the audience, she actually came. Unlike Jackie, who, this way, really became the "villain" of this season, as she didn't even have the guts to show up, just to constantly throw shade and blame - online.
The Lacheys were not the best hosts, really. I noticed this in the previous seasons' reunions as well, they just don't ask the right questions and are often, well, cringe. Vanessa gets too subjectively involved and offended, which is not the way as she is supposed to be a moderator, taking a step back for the sake of the show and information. The way she pushed the 'Love is Blind baby' is quite tasteless - first of all, these people, however happy they might seem, only know each other for a year, and second, you can never know why somebody doesn't have kids. Maybe they would love to have them, but cannot. It's not in good taste to ask, especially to force it this way, in front of a wide audience. Vanessa "hinted" at it 3-4 times and that should have been more than enough, but then she directly asked the couples. Not cool.
I am sad that Brett's speech was cut short, but I understand that Tiff & Brett are the least problematic, so they got the shortest screen time.
Even though I really don't like Micah, I applaud the fact that she very clearly paid attention to not use 'like', like, at all, like, in the reunion. She has a lot of growing up to do as she seems like she doesn't understand why people hate on her and why Paul said no. The Lacheys were too hung up on what Paul said at the wedding, that she doesn't seem to be a mother-like type (which I agree with, based on the show). I think Paul explained it as intelligently and kindly as possible. Desperately wanting to have kids "on paper" and being a good mother or a nurturing type are very different things. The reunion spent way too much time on this, to no avail.
I was surprised that Kwame and Chelsea are still together, but they really seem to be in a good place and very communicative and intelligent with both each other and the others. Kudos to them! And that luxury crib that they live in, whaaaat!
Zack and Bliss, aww, bless them. I love that they so clearly show affection towards each other when the camera is not on them per se. I think they were very respectful and showed great emotional intelligence when addressing Irina as well, which must have been hard.
I feel sorry for Marshall, as that man comes off as so genuinely kind and caring. I hope he finds someone on his level. As he said, he was robbed (again) of a true closure as Jackie didn't show up. I understand why she didn't, though, because even if she said that she had matured a lot and her mental health is now much better, that could have been a toxic, Shake-level showdown.
Three episodes in and I'm already seriously annoyed by the characters' irrational choices and unrealistic behavior. Keeping secrets or lying for no good reason, promising one thing and doing another, etc. And they keep doing it over and over. And I'm not even mentioning their almost casual reaction to discovering a magic mirror that serves as a gateway to another realm. After such an experience any real person would start to seriously question their f****ng sanity or at least have a panic fit and leave that house to never come back again. I know I would. But no, these kids are like: "Wow, magic door. I guess that's nothing to be seriously alarmed about." Even after losing their father in a horrific and traumatic event it doesn't seem to bother these kids at all that they just almost lost their mother too inside this magic mirror maze. And these are just a few examples on the top my head. There's much more where that came from.
It's like watching an '80 horror movie where someone in an already dire situation hears a scary noise and decides to go towards it instead of running to safety. And sure, that was okay then. Maybe fun even. But today, these 30-40 old "proven devices" have become just that: old. Really old, both literally and figuratively. But apparently 30-40 years was not enough time for these writers to come up with something different or original.
It's a shame really, because I think the story overall is quite interesting. But it is starting to become almost unbearable to watch when the only reason the characters behave the way they do is because it's the easiest way to move the plot into a certain direction. It's lazy writing like this that makes characters unbelievable and unrelateble.
Theme- 8/10
Rewatchibility- 2.5/10
Acting- 5/10
Kinematography- 7.5/10
Time- 3.5/10
Total - 26.5/5 = 5.3
That whimper into the finish line. Man oh man, who could predict that continuing a show that was already tenuously holding to the life of one character who leaves before the end, would be a bad idea. Charlie, the guy they spent the last quarter of last season gearing up to fill in Eric's position in the group, is killed off, Josh Meyers then is brought in as a replacement character, Randy, who has no flaws which makes him rather bland. Kelso was in the first four episodes before being written off and is replaced with Leo which is fine I guess. Jackie ends up with Fez... REALLY?! Going from Kelso to Hyde, I was fine with that and felt sorta natural. To continue to go through the guys in the group to pair Jackie up with is poor writing and Jackie/Fez felt very Rachel/Joey, forced and unnecessary. The finale is easily the best thing about this season and is a nice enough ending to the series as a whole. This is a bad and skippable season and if you want to just watch the finale after season 7, apart from the spoiler above I don't believe you need any other context from this season.
Top 3 Episodes:
1. That '70s Finale
2. Stone Cold Crazy
3. Long Away
