Independence Day: Entertaining Disaster Classic

I want those of you who are old enough to close your eyes and think back to the summer of 1996. The summer Olympics were in full swing, grunge and alternative music were all the rage, extreme sports were gaining popularity, and everyone was sporting a collective hard on for Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Oh and advertisements for Independence Day were everywhere! They were simpler times, some may say better times. I could definitely continue my little jaunt down memory lane, but that’s not why you’re here, is it? You’re most likely here because I won’t stop pestering you to read my blog, but tangentially, you’ probably want to see what I have to say about the next piece in my review line up. Let me just preface with this: This is not the film that was alluded to last week. I mislead you and I’m sorry. I will get to that particular film, however, the timing on this one was pretty important and I figured if a bad Bond film could promise the wrong followup movie and get away with it, then so could I.

I mentioned that the timing on this review was important and it totally is. See, today in a lot of places Independence Day: Resurgence debuts in theaters. This is the first of two sequels to the original 1996 blockbuster that director Roland Emmerich has promised to shove down our throats, or in other orifices if that’s what does it for you. I won’t judge. The fact of the impending release got me wondering just how well the original film holds up against the nostalgia that we’ve all inevitably created around it, and from there I decided to infer as to whether or not we actually needed a sequel to a 20 year old film. Strap into your cockpit and light your cigar as we look at Independence Day.

Right off the bat, the film starts by showing the moon landing site and all of the paraphernalia that was left behind in the wake of that event. I realized at this point that this movie has probably been the driving creative inspiration behind about 90% of Michael Bay’s movies as he’s used that exact setup at least twice that I can remember off the top of my head. The very next frame, REM’s “It’s the End of the World...:” is playing in the background as we’re shown a SETI lab. Talk about some blatant foreshadowing. There’s some mysterious signal over some speakers and then a bunch of scientists are scrambling to process some data, which leads to the conclusion that said signal is coming from the moon. The say 175,000 km and I looked it up. That’s actually right in the neighborhood of the moon so kudos for doing a little homework. Some scenes are shown to get the audience in a confused and curious state of mind and then we jump into some main character development as we see the POTUS getting his every breath analyzed into oblivion via TV, newspaper and his PR person. In keeping with the tried and true disaster movie formula, this really is an ensemble effort. This movie does excel at establishing a few main characters to follow that drive the story and in that regards, I have to give it praise. There are a number of disaster movies that miss that mark.

Our president is played by Bill Pullman. The character is young, idealistic, and critically panned. It’s established that he’s got a strong marital relationship and that he’s a Gulf War veteran. Okay, I can get behind this type of character. And at the very least, it’s not being played by Kevin James. I’m looking at you Pixels. He’s experiencing the same kind of BS drama that anyone who’s been elected to lead a large body of childish politicians might experience. I’ve never been president before, but as far as presidents go, I like the way this one is used for the most part, especially since it’s established that he’s extremely new to the job. They give the character a lot of leeway in that fashion.

Next we get introduced to the second of our main characters, a TV cable guy played by *ah* Jeff *um* *ah* Goldblum. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Jeff Goldblum as an actor. I’d even be willing to say he’s actually got some decent acting range, but here, he’s mostly recycling his Dr. Malcolm character from Jurassic Park. Everyone knew it then and no one will really dispute it now. It does make some sense. That character was wildly popular when that movie came out, and it was only three years removed from the release of Independence Day so it actually makes an odd kind of sense to capitalize on that quirky and eccentric intellectual archetype again. Also, if we’re being absolutely fair, Emmerich knew when enough was enough. He didn’t overuse the character to the point where he got terribly annoying, except when he blatantly reuses the, “Must go faster,” dialog from Jurassic Park. That’s a pretty big SNAFU in my opinion. But it was the 90s and we forgave so much more back then.

After that we get a pretty lengthy introduction to a less major character, who serves more as a major supporting character, maybe. Russell Case, played by Randy Quaid is simultaneously one of the most and least entertaining things about this film. On the one hand, it seems like they just pumped him full of whiskey each day and then let him bumble through his scenes, but on the other hand, because of that, a lot of his scenes are way over played and he gets some absolutely dismal one liners. He’s also portraying a pretty insensitive stereotype of drunken, damaged war veterans, but take it or leave it. He’s in the film Fortunately, he’s not in it more than what he is, but unfortunately, when he is on screen, he’s saying some pretty cringe worthy stuff. I will say that if time had been taken to develop the character more, it might have actually made him more interesting. His family dynamics could have been cool to glimpse, but that wasn’t the goal of the movie.

Next we’re given a recap of the current situation: Unknown object is on intelligent approach to Earth. And in the follow up scene we’re told about a foreign signal that recycling into non-existence. Then we get another ‘character building’ moment with Randy Quaid, and THEN we finally get introduced to our final main character, Steven Hiller who is played by Will Smith. Smith had gotten his big-ihs break in the late 80s with his rap career, which he was able to parlay into The Fresh Prince TV show. He’d also been in a big budget Hollywood film the previous year with Bad Boys. However, Independence Day really solidified his status as a hot ticket item in Hollywood. We’re about 20 minutes in before the character and actor are actually introduced, but I can give a little bit of a pass here because at least we’re not having all of this information awkwardly thrown at us in just a few minutes. It’s established that Hiller is in a nonmarital relationship with Vivica A. Fox and there’s a kid involved, but that’s alright because Hiller is actually a pretty cool dude and I mean that quite sincerely. I’m kind of impressed with how down-to-Earth this character, and indeed, most of the characters in this movie are. Randy Quaid’s abducted by aliens character is the most out there and it really makes him stand out, but when you’re dealing with an alien invasion film, that’s definitely one approach to the storytelling, maybe not the one that I would use, but one nevertheless.

I’ll not bore you further with a blow-by-blow. Let’s break down the formula a little and see just how well it was implemented here. We’ve got the ensemble cast, although it reads kind of like a list of 90s has beens, but they were popular then so that works. Included in the roster are names like Margaret Colin, Robert Loggia, Judd Hirsch James Rebhorn, Adam Baldwin, and Brent Spiner, to name a few. I do want to say a few words about James Rebhorn. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you know the actor. Every time I see him on screen I reflexively yell, “Hey it’s needledick!” The man plays the perfect snivelling, weaselling, conniving butthole every time he’s cast in that sort of role. It’s the type of role he was born to play. Along that line, pretty much all of the cast in this film were cast brilliantly. Even the minor supporting characters are utilized well.

We cover the several romantic subplots point well here. There’s the president and his wife, Hiller and his girlfriend, and Jeff Goldblum’s character even has a rekindling of love subplot so that base get great coverage. We’ve got a vast array of character types being used to cover that whole old-and-young characters criteria. The president has a young daughter, Vivica A. Fox has a young son, and Randy Quaid has three children just for good measure. Our plot is pretty implausible so that’s covered. And the sacrifice of self is covered as well, when at the end, Randy Quaid rams his F-18(?) into the alien ship’s main weapon in order to destroy it. There isn’t a pop song written exclusively for the movie, but as I stated previously, that’s a negotiable thing.

Okay so all the elements are there. Then what more is there to say about this movie? Well, at the time, it was a pretty harmless romp in the disaster genre sandbox and if you just watch it for its action elements, then you’ll get a good film experience out of it. I however, am obligated to look past the slick exterior and into the cold alien eyes of the plot below the plot. It’s not a huge secret that Roland Emmerich has kind of a hard on for environmental issues. This movie was rife with it. Jeff Goldblum’s character was an active environmentalist, but there’s more brewing below the surface it you look at things just right. First, let’s look at a couple of other disaster movies that Roland Emmerich made. He did The Day After Tomorrow in 2004, 2012 in 2009, and oh yeah, who could 1998’s super stinker, Godzilla. They were all overtly pro-environmentalism and they were all pretty terribly executed. Now, I’m not saying that caring about our home is bad, but I am saying that getting super fanatical about it can be, and I really feel like Emmerich drank a bit more Kool Aid than he probably should have with these other films. By comparison, Independence Day seems pretty innocuous. Not so! Next item, let’s take a look at some of the themes. It’s obvious that Emmerich wants us to be eco conscious, but it really doesn’t end there. With the lead up to the reveal that the object approaching Earth is an advanced alien species, Emmerich is pointing out the arrogance and the hubris of our belief as a species that we’re the most advanced thing in the galaxy. Second, if you swap humans in for the aliens, he’s pretty much calling our entire race a parasite, locusts if you will. He’s saying that all we do is strip our environment of all the usable resources and then move on to the next locale in order to repeat the process. I’m not sure that anyone else has looked at this movie in quite this way in the last 20 years, but it’s a pretty harsh review of the human condition. That’s not to say that it’s wrong, or even bad. Sometimes we need a social slap to the face in order to get on a less malevolent course.

So the environmental themes abound on multiple levels. That’s actually a good thing. It shows a great deal of competence on the director’s part. I did also notice that there were a few jabs at Russia thrown in the film that seemed a little out of place until I looked at where Emmerich grew up. He was born in West Germany so he’s naturally going to have a bit of an anti-Russia bend to this point of view. I can actually forgive that since it’s impossible to not be biased in one way or another. Anyway, these are just really random things that I noticed this go round. There was also a blatant ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ joke in there, and I got a few chuckles out of the technology being implemented, but I digress.

If you look at the movie overall, I think it holds up well. The structure and pacing are solid. The premise is totally outlandish, but in the right kind of way. The characters, although not always interesting, are well presented. The special effects! Boy, I’m not usually one to get too excited over special effects, but I have to mention them here because this is one of those movies where the special effects aspect of it actually had a big influence on me. I remember watching a behind-the-scenes show on TV and the type of problem solving that went into creating some of the sequences in this film got me really interested not only in film, but things like models, and computers. It had a huge impact on my life and rightfully so. The effects in this movie are larger than life! For using minimal computer graphics, they present these situations extremely well. Along those lines, I’m not sure the exact harmonic frequency, or decibel level that’s necessary in order to make concrete vibrate, but the explosions do just that in my house so props to the sound guys for making a soundtrack that you can really feel.

I could give more praise to this movie, but I think you get the point. The question now it, does it really need a sequel? It’s a question that’s been on a lot of minds with the ‘lead up’ to Resurgence. First, I’d like to point out that Bill Pullman explicitly says that their whole civilization moves planet to planet stripping said planets of resources. This implies that when they kill all of the aliens at the end of the movie, they kill all of the aliens. As in they commit an act of genocide and wipe out an entire civilization. So unless this is a new race of aliens, there’s not really an opening for further story development in my mind. You may try to argue that perhaps the aliens don’t commit their whole population to just one planet, but the use of the exact phrase “whole civilization” makes that argument pretty flimsy. Second, look at the face that Adam Baldwin makes when he takes Brent Spiner’s pulse. I’ve been a Trekkie for about 30 years and I know the “He’s dead, Jim” look and that is totally that look. Third, go back to 1996. The marketing blitz for the first movie was insane. You couldn’t turn 90 degrees without bumping into something advertising the film. There were commercials all over the TV, promotional sweepstakes, food product tie-ins, a book, a line of toys… It was everywhere. I don’t have cable, but I live pretty much exclusively connected to the Internet and all I’ve actually seen as far as advertising goes for Resurgence is maybe a dozen instances where my friends on Facebook have shared that one trailer. What I’m saying is that there really hasn’t been nearly as much advertising thrown at this movie, and why should there be? It’s a sequel to a twenty year old film that was entirely self-contained in its story. Some of the main characters are back, but the bulk have moved on and distanced themselves from this entry. It just seems really blatant. Fox and Emmerich want to cash in on nostalgia in order to make a buck at our expense and they’re willing to tarnish the reputation of another good film in order to do so. I sincerely hope that the movie isn’t outright terrible, but it’s been developed on extremely shaky ground and I don’t think it’s going to perform very well, at least in the US. It will probably recoup costs in Asia, though, which means we all might as well brace ourselves for the third movie anyway.

In all, the original was a standout movie viewing experience that I think will continue to dazzle people for a long time to come. The sequel can kiss my behind because I have zero hope for it. Tell me what you think once you’ve seen it, or speculate blindly with me! Either way, we’ll have a lot to talk about! Next week, we’ll actually get to that uber depressing disaster movie that was a joint effort by several countries as disaster month rounds the halfway mark!

The Towering Inferno: Disaster Movie Disaster?

Welcome back, reader! Last week I suggested that we would be looking at a summer blockbuster genre that was a tentpole for quite some time. I promise that we’re getting there, but all great journeys do take time and most are filled with minor detours that take us places that we never imagined that we’d get to see. This journey promises to be as meandering and sometimes convoluted as the genre it represents. I refer to the disaster genre, as the title may suggest. The disaster movie genre has been around for a very long time. The genre’s genesis is typically credited to Zero Hour! as that film served as the primary fodder for the much more popular Airplane! which gained a surprising amount of popularity due to its tongue in cheek spoofing. However, the genre does technically go back further than Zero Hour! which came out in 1957, in case you were curious. The genre really was alive and well in some form all through the 50s with a slew of alien invasion films and the early 60s. Then by the late 60s the genre had started to putter out somewhat. However, like Mick Jagger, the disaster genre wasn’t quite ready to call it quits. In 1973, The Poseidon Adventure was released to relatively good reviews from both critics and audiences. This resurgence would last another decade and span countless films before the disaster genre would finally go back to sleep.

Where am I going with this? Well, to be honest, I wasn’t really sure of the answer to that question myself until I got to the end of the last paragraph,but the fact that disaster films are still being made says a lot about our culture and it’s entertainment preferences. Now in order to understand what I mean by disaster film, let me lay down some cornerstones of criteria that constitute your average disaster film formula. First, there’s got to be a reasonably large ensemble case of actors and actresses who are either currently, or recently big names. Second, there’s got to be a lot of plodding through several unnecessary romantic subplots. Third, one of the ‘main characters’ has to make a sacrifice of self in order to save the party. Four, there has to be at least one old person and one young person for some reason. Five, the disaster at hand needs to be pretty implausible and over-the-top. And finally, there’s usually a really cheesy pop song written specifically for the movie, again for some reason. That last one is the most negotiable of the criteria, but as a music guy, I took notice.

Now that we have all the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get this disaster off the ground! The Towering Inferno came out about two years after Poseidon Adventure. The latter had been a surprise success and as happens with Hollywood, whenever something is successful, they try to duplicate that success as many times as possible. What sets Inferno apart from other productions of the time is the fact that the movie represented the first time in film history that two major studios cooperated on one project. 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. had each optioned novels about skyscraper fires at around the same time and in order to better capitalize on the concept, they agreed to co-produce one film instead of releasing two competing films at around the same time. I’ll just let that sink in, and for the slower folks out there, here’s the clincher one more time: Fox cooperated with someone that wasn’t Fox. If only that trend had lasted. From a social context, the World Trade Center Complex had opened only about one year previous to the release of this movie. That’s going to be important a little later.

Looking at the movie itself, it’s pretty unremarkable. It’s got a huge spread of reasonably big names that I expect most of my readers won’t really know, but some of the highlights include Steve, McQueen, Paul Newman, Fred Astaire, Faye Dunaway, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, and *ahem* OJ Simpson. Oh, Mike Lookinland of Brady Bunch fame was in this movie as well. That about covers the huge ensemble cast requirement. As I said, the movie is pretty unremarkable. The main plot, as far as I could ascertain, involves a high rise skyscraper that’s been recently completed. This tower has been built using substandard electrical wiring and that wiring sparks a fire on the 81st floor of the building. Now that may not seem like an over-the-top disaster premise, and indeed it really isn’t. It’s the way that the disaster in question gets handled later on that’s over-the-top so bear with me.

To complicate matters, there’s a grand opening party being held in the top floor banquet hall the evening that the building decides to catch fire. All of the who’s who of the city are in attendance including the building owner, the contractor that oversaw construction and the architect that designed the building, although he’s busy trying to figure out exactly how many corners were cut in construction most of the time so we’ll get back to all that. In order to cover the romantic subplot criteria, there are several. Robert Wagner’s character, who I only recognize from his work on NCIS, has a thing going on with his assistant. For some reason, he has a bedroom suite right off of his office, which is situated right off of a central operations office, I think. There’s a bed! I swear I can’t make this up. To make things worse, I really don’t know exactly what it is that his character even does, or why he’s in the building in the first place. He says a line towards the beginning of the film, then he and his assistant abscond themselves to the office/sex room thing, and then he dies burning up in a blaze. Even his mistress catches fire and falls to her death. Yeah, this movie is potentially not for children.

*Whew!* Still with me, because we have more. The architect, played by Paul Newman, has a  relationship with the Faye Dunaway character. I’m pretty sure she’s just there to be arm candy for Paul Newman, but who knows? They spend very little time on developing that relationship beyond simply telling us that it does, in fact, exist, mostly due to Paul Newman galavanting around the building trying to do stuff. Then there’s Fred Astaire. He plays a down-on-his-luck conman who’s working a gig on a character played by Jennifer Jones. The movie doesn’t actually explain how the two of them came into contact with one another, but by the time the party starts, they’re already an item. That relationship goes through the cliche ‘I don’t care that you’re a liar’ arc as Jennifer Jones explains to Fred Astaire that she already knew he was a conman and that she loves him anyway and that she never wants to be without him again. After all that, she falls over 120 stories out of an elevator and dies. They even show her body ricocheting off the building. It would be tragic if it weren’t so fake in every sense of the word, both the development of the relationship and the ensuing plummet. Finally, there’s the mayor and his wife. They don’t really get much screen time, but for some reason, they have a moment where the wife is worried about their daughter and the husband has to console her. I’m not really sure why I should care, but whatever.

The third bit of criteria is a little harder to nail down in this movie. There end up being several ‘main characters’ that make sacrifices in order to save others. The Jennifer Jones character in particular, beyond being exceptionally clumsy, falls to her death as a result of saving a young girl from doing the same. Several of the larger male characters get swept away by a torrent of water at the end of the film. However, our two top billed actors, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, both survive the film so here’s to being slightly different I suppose. Even OJ Simpson survives, and he was in a supporting role!

There is definitely a cheesy pop song that was written for the film. It’s called “We May Never Love Like This Again”. It’s performed by Maureen McGovern, who also did the pop song for Poseidon Adventure, oddly enough. It’s a mediocre bundle of 70s pop cheesiness. The lyrics are awkward, the melody is mundane, and McGovern’s voice is kind of weird. Since we’re on the music, the score for this film was done by none other than John Williams, a wasted opportunity to be sure as I noticed that there wasn’t really extensive use of music in this movie to begin with..It’s as if the director thought that letting the ambient noises permeate each scene would draw the viewer more into the film. He was partially right and that’s one thing that I can say that’s positive about this film. That aspect, oddly enough, actually helps to suspend one’s disbelief more than if it were overflowing with musical scoring.

Now the over-the-top disaster is about as convoluted as the rest of the film. Could a skyscraper catch fire? Sure, of course it could. However, I have to believe that a lot of what is portrayed in this movie is just total fiction. First, the fire starts on the 81st floor as a result of bad wiring. Okay, I’m on board so far. Next, the fire starts to spread across that floor and a little bit into the floor above it. Still okay right now. Then things get super weird. The gas lines start randomly exploding. Sometimes it’s as a result of direct contact with heat, and other times, it just happens for no reason. Someone with some architectural and engineering experience correct me if I’m wrong here, but wouldn’t shutting down the gas mains be priority number one in a situation like this? I know that won’t solve everything, but surely that would quell things a little bit. They do a pretty good job emphasizing that elevator shafts and stairwells can act like wind tunnels to feed fires and that’s how quite a bit of the fire gets spread. It’s the ending that I have a hard time with. Steve McQueen goes up to the tippy top of the building where there are several water containers, the purpose of which I do not know. He uses C4 to blow these containers open, which in turn floods the building floor by floor until the fires are all miraculously doused. This all happens after the idea is floated and other less effective ideas fail. I get upping the ante, but it needs to be done in a rational manner, which this film does poorly.

From a more technical standpoint, parts of the film do things well. For example, the miniature work and the matte work are all well done. However, it’s the script that really kills this movie. The main plot drags on forever! The film has a total running time of nearly three hours! It doesn’t really feel like much gets accomplished beyond putting out the fire because so many potential subplots are introduced and then dropped that nothing ever evolves within the story. Characters are haphazardly flung at the audience like wet spaghetti noodles in order to see which might actually resonate with audience members. There’s no meaningful character development, which makes it basically impossible as a viewer to connect with the characters. Situations are so out-of-this-world that what could have been an exciting and tense film is reduced to a plodding farce. Unless you’ve got a profound fear of heights, there’s nothing to latch onto to make this movie engaging for most people. Despite all of these issues, the film still managed to make back ten times what it cost to produce. But why? It all goes back to the human fear of the unknown. Our fears keep us all alive and if those fears are tapped into in a way that resonates in just the right way, we can have a pretty exciting experience. Sure the film was a technical disaster, but what it was showing were elements of a world that not a lot of people actually understood and so they were afraid of it. That;s why we still give enough money to disaster films to keep getting more because we’re all afraid of things.

Now,it begs mentioning that Steve McQueen had a self-imposed, one sided rivalry with Paul Newman. Newman and McQueen both started out racing, both of them migrated over to acting,and in most cases, Newman just did it better and that really pissed McQueen off. He insisted that he and Newman get the same number of lines, the same amount of pay, and equal billing on all of the promotional material. An entirely new billing method called diagonal billing was created specifically to assuage McQueen’s ego.Faye Dunaway was chronically late, or absent for her scenes throughout filming, which led to the filming schedule falling behind. The entire project was as much a disaster behind the scenes as it was in every other way. It still deserves a place in history as the first jointly produced major motion picture and I’d still recommend giving it a watch if you find yourself with three hours to spare.

I am going to ask the question in writing that i asked myself as I was starting this project. Why am I even doing this? The short answer is that despite all of its flaws, I still enjoy this movie. It has a special place in my heart for some reason, but the other answer to that question is that we’re getting a sequel to a certain mid-90s mega blockbuster hit this month and I didn’t want to do anything that seemed out of left field. We’re going to take advantage of the lead up to this potential turd and look at a few moments in cinematic history that defined the genre so grab your popcorn and snacks because we’re in for some stinkers!  Next week, we’ll look at a full length film produced by multiple countries and made for television. Don’t miss it!

5 Most Shaken, Not Stirred, Bond Movies!

James Bond has been around more than 50 years, and as yet, shows no signs of quitting, which I think is great. Its past has, however, been somewhat checkered over the years. For all of the entries that are legitimately good, there are at least two others that might make a person cringe upon watching. I tend to be pretty lenient when it comes to Bond films, and enjoy watching most of them fairly often, perhaps even more frequently than I watch Star Trek, but that will be our little secret. I figured since it’s been a little while since I did a list, that I’d go ahead and kick off the summer with one, and list off what I believe to be the sterling entries in the Bond franchise.This was a pretty arduous undertaking as there are, to date, 24 films in the Bond franchise, just counting the official entries. Hence, in order to whittle things down a bit, I came up with some specific criteria that I looked for that made these particular choices stand out above the rest. Those criteria included minimized use of cheese, having a good villain that has a somewhat believable plan and isn’t a Mary Sue, use of a legitimate theme in the film, and attempts at giving Bond more depth as a character. I also made a genuine attempt to cover the majority of the Bond eras as I feel that each portrayal by each different actor lends at least a little something to the richness of the universe. Will your list differ? Most definitely! Will you agree? I hope not! But, to minimize confusion somewhat, I recommend that you take a look at my film identity article so that at least we can be close to the same page when it comes to criteria.With all that in mind, let’s take a look at my top 5 Bond films! In no particular order, by the way....

#5: From Russia With Love:

I feel like this film would be at home on any “Best of Bond” list. I say this because I really feel like this is the film where Bond really hit its stride as a franchise. Not to knock Dr. No, which is a great film in its own right, but the elements that we typically associate with Bond films really started to come together in this entry. There’s a hauntingly beautiful theme song in the form of the eponymous track sung by Matt Monro. In fact, the track lends itself to the rest of the score, which only heightens the experience, and set a definite trend for Bond films incorporating their opening credits song into the score. The pre-credits sequence was really well used in this film on account of its bait-and-switch tactics. Portraying a SPECTRE agent hunting down and killing a Bond lookalike was a nice touch, although once you know, if you go back and look at the makeup used on Connery for the sequence, they did try to subtly make him look like he was wearing a mask the entire time. That’s a nice touch. I also applaud the decision to show Morzeny playing chess at the beginning as he takes a potential loss and turns it into a victory. This sets the tone for him as a brilliant tactician, and they didn’t have to spell it out verbally, but it also establishes the metaphorical chess match that SPECTRE and Bond were about to undertake. This film also uses the “West vs. Soviet” scheme that would later get played out again in so many other films. Was this original even for the time? Maybe not, but it set the stage for a tried and true Bond formula. Interestingly, this film is definitely paced more like a suspense movie than an action film. In a lot of the later Bond films, the tendency toward action became more of a driving force, but in this film, and in the bulk of my subsequent entries, time is taken for the viewer to watch the scheme unfold alongside Bond. Now it wouldn’t be Critical Mass unless I found some fault with the film and in this case, I’m going with the score. There are definitely original cues that were written for the film, but it seems like a lot of cues were reused from Dr. No, perhaps as a cost cutting measure. At any rate, at times, the score seems extremely disproportionate to the action that’s being portrayed. Nonetheless, this is a great entry in the franchise and a fantastic place to start if you’re unfamiliar with Bond.

#4: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service:

I realize that this might be a fairly controversial entry for some. I just want to preface all the rage hate with this: Sean Connery himself said that this was the type of film he wanted to make for the Bond franchise, and it’s the most faithful adaptation of a Bond novel to film ever done to date. Now, what’s so special about this film? It sticks with the tongue and cheek that had begun to take hold in the franchise from previous films, but does it in a George Lazenby way instead of a Sean Connery way. That’s important to note as it would have been really easy for the writers, the staff, and Lazenby to just copy what Connery had done beat for beat. This film started to incorporate elements that would eventually become standard fare in Bond films; things like slow motion, and use of synthesizers in the score. Blofeld’s diabolical plan is more complex in this film, but still believable. Using biological weapons to decimate the world food supply is more plausible today than it was in the 60s. Now let’s really look at the elephant in the room for a moment. This is George Lazenby’s only Bond movie. Some attribute that to poor performance from Lazenby himself. Others claim is was bad box office sales. The real reason can’t be attributed to any one thing, but yes, it did perform slightly less well than previous films, failing to break $100M by a mere $13M. That mostly boils down to bad marketing. The other reason Lazenby never came back was simply because his lifestyle while he was playing Bond became very self-destructive. He was contracted for seven years as Bond and chose not to return. All that said, he killed it as Bond. He brought a sensitivity to the role that Connery just couldn’t match. There was motivation behind his love interest beyond sex. It was money to start with, but the chemistry between the two leads is such that when Bond legitimately starts falling in love, it feels organic. And he kills the final scene! Sitting in his Aston Martin on his wedding day, lamenting the murder of his new bride that just took place, the emotional impact is huge and I’m not sure that Connery could have pulled it off. There are a few flaws, for instance, some of the edits are choppy jump edits that are really noticeable, but in all, it’s a well made film.

#3: License to Kill:

Okay, so if the last entry was fairly controversial, then some folks may want to crucify me after this one. To be fair, I really grappled with this one. I looked at several aggregate websites while compiling this list and there are definitely other, higher rated films in the franchise. But, I really wanted to cover as many Bonds as I could, and my runner up, The Spy Who Loved Me is basically one of those many rehashes of the plot of Russia so I’m sticking to my guns. Go blow up the comments section. If this was such a struggle, then why did I go with it? Well, primarily, and the biggest reason is that it gave us a short lived glimpse of what Bond could be. It took a very realistic (for Bond), and a more gritty approach to the character. It’s an approach that we wouldn’t see again until Daniel Craig took the reigns. Say what you will about Craig’s Bond, but it certainly fits the two previous descriptions. Another strength of the film is that it didn’t completely drop the Roger Moore cheesiness altogether. I know I said that minimal use of cheese was a criteria, and that aspect was dialed way back for this movie, but it’s still there. That has a lot to do with how Timothy Dalton came to play Bond in the first place. Moore was slated to do The Living Daylights, but felt he had gotten too old. The script was done, but no Bond. So Dalton was tapped, again (he had been approached as far back as 1969 to play Bond), and took the role with the script as is. Hence, Daylights is a Roger Moore Bond film with Tim Dalton in the lead. But, License was all Dalton and it shows a great deal of wisdom on his part to leave the levity intact even though he clearly wanted to take a much different approach to the character. Now, the flaws are pretty glaring in this one. For example, some of the performances for the supporting cast can be pretty cheesy at times. Also, this film took the list of standard 80s action movie tropes and just went straight down the list. It was pretty much a pro-war-on-drugs PSA, but from those flaws come a number of strengths. This movie was released during the winding down of the cold war. Russia, for all intents and purposes, was no longer a threat, to say anything about still being an enemy. The decision to explore the war on drugs was socially relevant at the time. That decision also make the main protagonist, Sanchez, a slightly better villain. His huge scheme is simply to flood the world markets with cocaine. Pretty straight forward if you ask me. I also really appreciate that at some point, Bond drops a tube of C4 and no one makes a big deal about it. There’s no panic, and there shouldn’t be. Go research that yourself, but that’s a huge pet peeve of mine.

#2: GoldenEye:

This film came about at a really interesting time for film. Computer graphics were starting to become a more feasible tool for filmmakers, the Soviet Union had actually collapsed, and the Internet was starting catch on as a thing. Appropriately, this film asks the thematic question, “Does the world still need James Bond?” It’s a theme that unfortunately would be rehashed again, badly, in Skyfall, but I get ahead of myself. Beyond the relevance of Bond, this film banks heavily on the themes of betrayal and deceit, and I give it kudos for even using a theme at all beyond vengeance. The film manages to take some potential weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Remember what I said about CGI? Well, the film really makes decent use, for the time, of this tool in order to deliver bigger stunts. For better or worse, this would become a hallmark of Pierce Brosnan Bond movies. It also takes advantage of the burgeoning Internet and uses that as a primary tool for the villain and his cronies to do their thing. You could say it was one of the first uses of legitimate cyber terrorism as a plot device. The tone does manage to remain somewhat dark in this film, most likely because those involved didn’t want to totally upend the feel of the franchise coming off of the previous film. I really appreciated that the main villain, Trevelyan, had believable motives. His axe was perhaps a little dated, but revenge on behalf of one’s parents is usually a passable motive for villainous activities. I also appreciate that in keeping with the primary theme of obsolescence, the movie took a lot of opportunities to point out Bond’s archaic methods and the extent of his inadequacies. It really highlighted the need for Bond to adapt to a drastically changing world of espionage. There were a few flaws that need pointing out, but they are few. The biggest flaw I noticed is that certain performances were just a little too over-the-top, namely Xenia Onatopp. I felt like Famke Janssen took the whole sadist shtick just a little too far and it made her scenes uneven to the tone of the rest of the film. On the flip side of that coin, however, Dame Judi Dench really nailed her role as M. She brought a ferocity and command of respect that was unheard of at the time and I really enjoyed her performance. Say what you will about Brosnan’s subsequent outings in the franchise, this movie really revitalized the property on the whole and is a pivotal reason that we’re still getting Bond movies today.

#1: Casino Royale:

Was there really any question that this movie would end up on this list? As with Russia it’s right at home here. In fact, according to most aggregate sites, it’s the highest rated Bond film of all time, and it really deserves the honor. This film was yet another attempt to reboot the James Bond franchise. After three dismally over-the-top Brosnan films, the world had seen enough, and it was time for James Bond to pursue another track. The decision to take Bond back to his roots was a brilliant one. To say that I love this movie would just be a colossal understatement, but I’ll try not to geek out too much. There were a lot of interesting ideas that made it into this film and really helped to set the tone for new Bond. For example, the use of black and white at the beginning of the film really lends great contrast that helps to establish that the old was being made new again. And during that sequence, the flashback scenes to Bond’s first kill are excessively grainy. It’s a small touch, but it really helps to set those sequences apart from the main sequence and pushes the grit of the situation that much further offering more impact. For that matter, even the opening credits try to convey that the viewer is getting something new and special from this film. They’re simple and they allude to the main premise of the film for those who have read the novel, or at least know the story, not to mention, they tie into the overall story quite nicely. Overall, the story is a fine blend of action, suspense, intrigue, romance, and humor. True, it was kind of light on the humor, but the producers were trying to set Bond up in a more real world sandbox, for better or worse. I can appreciate that there were undertones of a larger machine at work in the background of this film. It has the effect of giving the viewer just enough to satiate their curiosities about the situation at hand, but it teases just enough that we all know that Bond is going to have to come back in another film in order to figure out the bigger conspiracy, and it does so beautifully. Along that line, it’s great to see a villain that’s down-to-earth and who makes mistakes along the way. I also love that there were so many locales used in this film, and they were gorgeous! Every establishing shot used is a breathtaking vista that opens up Bond’s world and helps the viewer feel like they’re right there. The pacing hearkens back to some of these older films. It doesn’t play like an action film so much as it does a spy movie. Once again, the story takes its time in developing organically and taking the viewer on a trip, giving us an experience as it were, as opposed to simply trying to download the information into our brains in the most mindless and flashy way. The whole movie wears this polish and confidence that really comes through in the finished product. That’s in stark contrast to Daniel Craig’s Bond, which is a blunt object at this point. The decision to make Bond a rookie was a really effective one as it allows the audience to watch him grow into the Bond that we’re more familiar with. I think the biggest win for this particular film is that I could totally see a younger Sean Connery in the role. The whole movie felt like a Connery Bond film as we could expect to see it aided by the technology of today. Having put a critical eye to this movie, I can start to understand why Daniel Craig has gotten tired of participating in the franchise. All of his films have definitely been downhill from this one. To be fair though, this movie really did set a high benchmark.

Well, that about does it. Is this list authoritative? Not in the least bit, but in this guy’s opinion, the films on this list set certain benchmarks that helped to shape the overall Bond franchise along the way. They also played a hand in developing Bond as a character. They gave us all a taste of what a Bond movie can be when all of the elements are blended perfectly. I don’t expect to get movies like these every time that a new Bond movie is released, but these leave me rabidly curious whenever a new one is announced as to what they’re going to do next. Because of the entries on this list, I will continue to give my money freely to the James Bond franchise because, to me, these films demonstrate that when Bond is done right, it’s an experience more than it is just a film., Drop by next week where we’ll take a look at a former tentpole genre of the summer blockbuster repertoire!

Old vs. New:Robocop

I won’t lie to you, I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. Almost since I started this blog, actually. I’ve held off because there are already a lot of reviewers out there who do this sort of thing, but no one has done it with these two films, to date. I’m of course talking about Robocop (1987) and Robocop (2014). There’s really an interesting dichotomy between these two movies and even though they share many elements, like characters, settings and basic story foundations, they manage to be two very different films. The 2014 version doesn’t get a lot of love from anyone really, let alone fans. I’m pretty sure they’d all rather sit through Robocop 3 than watch this one and I really can’t understand why. Let’s take a look at these two films and see what they have to offer.

The ‘87 film begins in a very Paul Verhoeven style, with a news broadcast. This is an effective bit of narrative as it’s purpose is to download most of the important information to the viewer quickly so that the audience can then jump right into the rest of the story. So we get a snippet about one of the protagonists, Boddicker, and we instantly get the commentary on capitalist decadence and corporate greed. The whole film serves as a vehicle to rail against the excess of the 80s and it does so very well. Yamaha is making artificial hearts, there’s a company building the most fuel-inefficient cars ever conceived, and a corporation has managed to privatize law enforcement. It all lends itself to a gritty dystopian feel, which we were all over back in the 80s and Verhoeven doesn’t waste any time getting us invested and lost in the world that he’s created. We meet the character who will eventually become Robocop, Alex Murphy, as he’s being transferred from his cushy job at an uptown police precinct to an underfunded hell hole in the slums of Detroit. The atmosphere is further emphasized here as we hear talk of officers being murdered, strikes and just a generally bad situation all around.

The 2014 reboot starts in sort of the same way. There’s a broadcast, but this time, it’s a political show hosted by Samuel L. Jackson. He shows the ED-209 models at work in Tehran, there’s some terrorist activity, and it’s all pretty action packed. Our primary antagonist is introduced here, but you wouldn’t know that unless you’ve watched the film previously. When we’re finally introduced to Murphy, he already works at the one precinct in Detroit and he’s already investigating the drug lord. Right there, there are a few similarities between the two, but this i really where they start to diverge a little. Where in the original the audience really feels Murphy’s death as he’s blown apart by gunfire piece by piece, in the reboot, he’s blown up by a car bomb. Also, in the reboot less time is taken to help the audience connect with the Murphy character in a meaningful way. But, I get ahead of myself.

The rest of each movie both play out in much the same way. Murphy is killed, then revived as Robocop. Once that happens, he sets off trying to solve his own murder, which leads back to one of the head honchos at Omni, there’s a final confrontation and said honcho is ultimately killed. Although both stories maintain certain similarities on paper, the way that each film employs these components is totally different from one another. In the original, great effort is made to make the audience feel as if they’re apart of the universe Verhoeven created. Everything about the narrative is more personal. The death of Murphy is gruesomely intimate, which in turn, makes everything that happens subsequently feel more intimate. When Robocop learns that he’s been betrayed by the very people that created him, we feel that because we witnessed in gory detail the events that led to his creation. His wife leaves after he dies so he’s alone. This reinforces the bond between Robocop and his partner, Lewis. Even the narrative as a whole is much more intimately presented.

Contrast that with the reboot and you get a narrative that tries to be more broad. This may not seem like a bad idea on paper, but the resulting effect is that there’s less for the audience to grab hold of and get invested in. Sure it’s great seeing OCP use their robots to patrol warzones, but when things are portrayed at that level of detachment, it has to be made up for elsewhere. The director even goes so far as to use Murphy’s relationship with his family to emotionally blackmail both Robocop and the audience, as if he knew that there wasn’t enough there to emotionally ground the narrative. What I’m saying is that the reboot is less about the story serving the characters and more about the characters serving the story. This significantly impacts the narrative impact and not in a good way so if I had to give a point to either one on general storytelling, it would definitely go to the original.

Now let’s take a look at themes. The original looks at the decadence, decay, and moral corruption that results from capitalism run amok. It does this by throwing the audience into a near future dystopia and it really drives the dystopia home for the viewer. Everything about the setting is gritty,dirty, and lawless. There are thugs murdering cops, rapists running with reckless abandon, politicians taking hostages, and corporate executives taking out hits on co-workers. The idea that Detroit is two steps from hell is made absolutely clear and reinforced continually. And of course, all this is attributed to the corruption that exists because of the corporate mentality and the fact that that ideology is allowed to continue. Everything about the movie serves this notion, including the fact that we never see the main baddie, Jones, outside of his corporate tower. He spends his whole life completely out of touch with the world around him. By comparison, the reboot attempts to take up a slightly less tangible theme. The theme behind the newer entry is the illusion of free will. It’s a really fascinating concept and I give huge kudos to the film for attempting to tackle such a complex idea. However, it does suffer from making the attempt. See, it’s a very subjective theme in that some just aren’t going to get there and it needs subtlety in order to work, but if it’s too subtle, it will get lost and that’s really what happened. With the reboot, we only spend a handful of scenes exploring the theme. The rest is a lot of politicking and backdoor business dealing, which although it lends itself a little, lacks the intimacy to have any impact. There’s really only one scene that works with the theme in mind and it’s Robocop’s final field test. Gary Oldman explains how the AI system that runs Robocop while he’s in an altercation makes Murphy think that he’s in control even though he’s not.; The theme is carried through the rest of the film as we see scientists playing with the chemical balance of Robocop’s brain in order to keep him under their control, and it’s pertinent in today’s society where our every whims are monitored via GPS and the Internet, and so much of what we do is subconsciously guided by the media. It’s brilliant and if the rest of the film had been up to that standard, the entire thing would have been amazing. But it wasn’t. It quickly devolves into a soulless action film Hence, again, I have to give the point to the original.

Finally, let’s look at the setting a bit more. I know we’ve already done this to a point, but it’s something that makes the original very unique. See, the original was not apologetic in the way that it decided to depict the future. Verhoeven decided that it was a gritty dystopia and then he took that concept and cranked it up to 11. That’s one of the reasons that the film got an R rating. It didn’t pull any punches immersing the viewer in that world and as we previously discussed, it was not a friendly world at all. On the other hand, the world created for the reboot felt a little mundane. Gone was all the familiar corporate identities meddling in markets they shouldn’t (Yamaha making artificial hearts, for example) and in its place is a fairly bland and interchangeable future that, although maybe accurate, isn’t terribly unique. More time could have been taken making the setting more memorable and unique if so much time hadn’t been devoted to trying to show the audience the ‘bigger picture’. The original succeeds because we’re thrust into the story from the get go, everything about the setting is established and then just continually reiterated. The reboot doesn’t take the time to even establish why Robocop would be such an important development for domestic law enforcement. Detroit seems pretty tame and we get the impression that the rest of the US is more or less the same. There’s the struggle between Congress and OCP to implement the Robocop program, but the audience is not given sufficient reason to get invested in that struggle beyond, “It will make OCP billions.” The setting just doesn’t do a satisfactory job providing the depth and reinforcement necessary for the audience to invest in the film. Again, point to the original.

I could probably go on for a couple more paragraphs or so, but I think it’s pretty clear where I stand. The original still manages to be the best, which is typically the case in any franchise. It has enough story, character development and setting to still hold up to today’s standards. That’s not to say, however, that the reboot isn’t good. It’s got some great visual effects, a couple of exciting action sequences, some great actors giving good performances, and even a couple of laughs. It tries to operate via irony, which is somewhat different from film today, but in the end, the original sets the benchmark so high that I think it’s pretty much unattainable, but that doesn’t mean that they should ever stop trying. Catch me next week when we take a look at Bond films that are more shaken than stirred!