Lightsabers, lensflares and lies

So then you probably all heard the "news", JJ Abrams is to direct Star Wars VII. Yes, that means he's now in charge of both Star Wars and Star Trek the two biggest SF franchises in the world with the word 'Star' in the titles to confuse the pop culture illiterati!

Now some of you, who liked his Star Trek reboot, will be applauding this decision. Other who clung on with limpet-like tenacity to Lost until the bitter end will be no doubt in actual raptures.

Others however who still grieve for fallen Vulcan and a 'vandalised' continuity will be weeping, while others less invested in Star Trek but not buying the 'JJ is God' line, are merrily making the already tired crack about lens flares on lightsabers and muttering about how one man should not be in charge of two geek sacred cows.

But the more astute among you will have noticed I put the term news in quotation marks. Well done! If you are among this third band, know this - our numbers may be small but we alone shall live to see Star Wars VII without dying of whiplash beforehand from making panicked knee-jerk reactions to every goddamn rumour that's going to be splashed all over the internet between now and then.

And yes folks, that's all this "news" is so far - rumour.

But looking at the internet, that's not the impression you get. It appears to be set in stone, an absolute fact, and wars are already raging between fans on whether this is great and terrible news. Personally, I must confess, this whole thing has filled me with sadness... BECAUSE JUST LAST WEEK WE HAD THE SAME BULLSHIT OVER SOME COMPLETE LIES THAT ZACK SYNDER WAS DIRECTING A STAR WARS MOVIE!

Honestly! Are you all ruddy goldfish???

Now then, you'd think that after the Synder-meltdown we might treat the next time tidbit of Star Wars gossip a little more cautiously but no...

Here's what actually happened - The Wrap, a site I'm not going to link to as they already generated enough hits from this, ran 'an exclusive' story announcing that Abrams IS directing the next Star Wars. And they had this on the lofty authority of 'an insider'. In other words, this is no official announcement from Disney or Abrams or even bloody Yoda, just some anonymous dude, no doubt standing moodily in shadows and living out his old X-Files Deep Throat fantasies.

Pretty sharpish Variety picks up the story. However what exactly have they picked up? They report, and I use the term loosely, that the House of Mouse is closing talks with Abrams to direct. No source given and the rest of the article is biographic fluff filched off IMDB. Again I point out, there is no source mentioned at all for this and note that the "news" has changed from Abrams will direct to being close to signing a deal to direct. Bet-hedging to avoid egg on face? Well, in an "article" whose only new information is referring to Disney as "the House of Mouse" I ruddy think so!

Other movie and geek sites all join the rumour gangbang, citing The Wrap story and claiming that because they are all repeating it this somehow confirms it as true. However none of them have actually confirmed jackshit - several also wheel out some unnamed source, some backing up the original 'will direct' line, but others "confirming" the Variety 'close to signing' variant. Apparently getting the helm of the new Star Wars movie works like Candyman - say it three times and it happens!

Now an unnamed source I just invented, I mean, spoke to, who's close to all these news outlets told me -

"The Wrap noticed all the hits that Synder tosh got the other week and hence decided to run an anonymous rumour as an 'exclusive'. Of course anyone who knows or cares about journalism knows that you can't really have 'an exclusive' from an anonymous source with no evidence whatsoever but what the hell! The rest of us just hopped on the bandwagon as there's a lot of money to be made from those stupid Ewok fuckers... They'll buy into any old bullshit and in the meantime our traffic goes through the roof and we can up the advertising rates!"

See how easy it is folks! With a little imagination and no scruples whatsoever anything could be an unnamed source - that lamp, that sock, that venal desire to get as many hits as possible by any means possible!

Now then, it may well transpire that the rumour is true - although I find it a tad suspicious that there's no official announcement now the news has leaked - but my central point remains valid no matter who ends up directing. And that is that between now and the release of Star Wars VII, there's going to be an awful lot of this kind of thing. All manner of bullshitters and losers are going to be reporting "exclusives" from various Drop Dead Freds who are "close to the production" about the script, the casting, the technical crew, and probably even who's doing the catering. And my advice is, before you take to the internet spouting off on whether each of these revelations is A VERY GOOD THING or A VERY BAD THING, do have a look to see if it's actually true and not just a pile of steam bantha turds cooked up by some coke-addled tosswit.

Believe me folks, a little fact checking and and a lot less frothing will save you a massive amount of stress over the next two years.

Nevermind the Force - may the Facts be with you!

SUPER 8 - The Goonies Have A Close Encounter With ET in Cloverfiled?

There's production value but no spoilers!

Already being proclaimed in many quarters, and indeed on many posters here in the UK, as 'the best blockbuster of the summer', Super 8 comes to us with a considerable weight of expectation in tow. Many are hailing it as a modern great, a Goonies or a Gremlins for our times.  However the chorus of praise has not been universal; a quick trip to IMDB will show you a considerable numbers of reviewers having an Emperor's New Clothes moment. There's a host of few star reviews out there pressing charges of being derivative and careening through the plot holes on the wings of indignation.  

So then is Super 8 a welcome return to the family friendly magic of the legendary '80s blockbusters; a perfect summer storm generated by the meeting of two generations of masters of cinematic fantasy? Or is just Abrams plagiarising all those classic movies that bear Spielberg's name with the old boy's blessing?

Well firstly, to lay my cards on the table, I'm not in the Abrams is God camp - while I greatly enjoy his Star Trek reboot and Fringe, Alias never really grabbed me and Lost, well, lost me somewhere in the morass of flashbacks in Season 2. And I've a bag of similar mixed reactions with Mr Spielberg's oeuvre - obviously Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark are classics, but the last time I attempted to rewatch ET, I ended up thrashing about on the floor with a bad case of saccharine poisoning. Now, to be clear I'm not saying either are necessarily patchy in terms of quality, more that what they produce doesn't always suit my tastes. And so, despite it's pedigree, Super 8 wasn't guaranteed an instant pass from me.

Now,for those of you who don't know, the plot goes something like this. A bunch of kids in one of those archetypal small American towns, are making a zombie movie and while out filming, they witness a spectacular train crash. However if all that weren't exciting enough, there was a mystery cargo aboard which escapes and very soon the little town of Lillian is best by twin plagues of weird goings-on and unhelpful US Air Force troops. I'm sure you can all guess the kind of thing that was lurking in the sealed crate, and equally it's not a huge spoilers to tell you that the kids investigate and of course end up saving the day. A classic scenario or clichéd cobblers? 

Well, let's cut to the chase here, I really enjoyed this movie; it's heaps of fun and boasts many merits - more of which later. However, is the praise/buzz/hype (delete as personal cynicism about blockbusters deems applicable) garnered by Super 8 justified? Well, yes and no - it is a very fine movie in many respects but there are some weaknesses that mean it just misses the classic mark for me. 

It breaks down like this. Firstly, despite numerous comparisons to The Goonies and Explorers, make no mistake this isn't a tale of a band of kids, it's really one boy's story, Joe played by Joel Courtney. Now many of the negative reviews point out that most of the band of young movie makers have paper-thin characters, but in fairness if you accept that this is not a gang of kids tale, this is less of a problem. Firstly, because we are seeing the story unfold through Joe's eyes and secondly because the peers he has the closest ties to to Charles (Riley Griffiths) and Alice (Elle Fanning) are decently fleshed out. 

And while we're challenging the received wisdom, let deal with the accusations of being unoriginal. Now the lazy way to sum up this movie is to slap a label on it marked  'Cloverfield Meets ET' and walk away smugly whistling. Now superficially that all looks very big and clever but on poking it with sharps stick this observation very quickly deflates leaving the air full of the unpleasant whiff of smart arsery. For the crashed train train doesn't contain a cute secret pal from outer space or a giant beast that stomps the town Godzilla style. The only real parallels with Cloverfield are we only see glimpses of the cargo until the final act and Abrams name is prominent on the credits and similarly it only really resembles ET in the fact that we have Spielberg's name and some common scifi tropes. In terms of tone and narrative direction, Super 8 is very different to either of these movies.

Now armchair witticisms masquerading as critical opinion aside, there are more credible accusations that Super 8 is just a patchwork of elements drawn from The Goonies, ET, Explorers, Gremlins, Close Encounters, Poltergeist etc. And yes there is some truth in these claims - films buffs can have a field day identifying cinematic ancestors for many scenes and elements of Super 8. However if you;re going to play this game properly and intelligently, you have to look back further than the 1980s and widen your trope taxonomy further than just movies. And if you do, you'll discover firstly that yes, Abrams is drawing alot we've seen done before in all those well loved '80s flicks. However you'll also find that Spielberg, Zemeckis and Dante weren't exactly dealing with original concepts in the first place - all three directors were drawing upon their own childhood favourites - from TV, comics and books as well as movies. The Goonies are just the 80s generation of a long line of adventuring kids such as the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, the 3 Investigators - which stretches back to the Bastable family of E.Nesbit and the birth of children's literature.

Gremlins is firmly in the tradition of '50s B-movies like The Blob and Invasion of the Saucer Men in which small towns are overrun by monsters but vanquished by teenager power. And as for ET, there are countless stories of small children who make friends with an otherworldly being, be it an alien, monster, faerie or ghost - for example Spielberg's fable is very similar to Raymond Brigg's The Snowman, which also includes magical flying sequences and a tear jerking ending. Indeed originally the short animated feature, now a Christmas TV classic, was going to be shown in cinemas as a supporting feature for ET until someone spotted that the storylines where uncomfortably similar and didn't want audiences thinking that the genius Spielberg had ripped off Brigg's book and just made it's icy hero a talking turd with special  light-up action (TM) who turned out to be Space-Jesus.

The simple fact is that all those directors of 80's classics were just repacking even then very elderly tropes and the fact they they a) did it well and b) gained huge box office success and a place in popular memory still doesn't make them creators of original concepts. And even in terms of directorial craft, they were pulling on age old Hollywood story telling techniques. So then if we are excusing Spielberg and co. from plundering their childhoods for both concepts and craft, then it seems churlish of beating Abrams with that stick.

Yes, it's soaked in nostalgia, but we forget that all those '80s classics were too. Essentially Super 8 is drawing on a collection of age old tropes and classic techniques of screen story telling just as much as Spielberg, Zemeckis, Dante and Lucas were - the different is that his immediate reference points in the past  are far more better remembered by the general audience than the trashy '50s drive-in fodder and episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits his forebears freely pillaged.

So then the afore mentioned weaknesses aren't the fact that much of this movie evokes the same warm glow as the summer blockbusters of my youth. Where Super 8 loses those crucial marks that would put in on par with those movies of yesteryear is that in the last act there are several scenes where the details of the plot get somewhat fuzzy. Now many are calling out this instances of plot holes, but I tend to think it's more of a case of exposition being missing  in action as I could surmise what was going on well enough but a few lines at certain moments would have meant I wasn't nudged out of the movie by these little questions popping up.

Now if there's a longer cut coming on disc, I would at all be surprised to find that the scenes and lines currently on the cutting room floor will turn out to be the bits that fix this issues. On the other hand however, it may well have been a case that Abrams just wasn't keeping an eye on the devil in the details, because the omissions/failing in the narrative are related to the scifi and action mechanics. For in terms of the personal and emotional story - which in fairness is as much of the focus as the fantasy adventure side of things - the movie's last act round up everything very nicely. So then we have an ending that I will freely admit had me going misty eyed but afterwards did leave me with a few minor 'what exactly was going on there' queries.

Another area where Super 8 is weak is the Cargo itself. Now I loved all the hints and glimpses throughout the movie; it was pitch perfect movie monster handling, teasing the audience and not allowing us too much of a grasp on what it is or looks like, so we cannot easily diminish it in an 'ah, it's just a big tortoise' fashion  (note for the hard of thinking: it's isn't a big tortoise - that's just an example).  However, when we do get the big reveals in the last reel, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the design. While the effects and camera work were good, I just felt that the Cargo wasn't quite iconic enough.

Now none of the above are exactly a deal breaker but they does make the difference between Super 8 being merely a very good movie and a classic. However, there's far more positives than negatives here, and its strengths easily put it head and shoulders over most other blockbuster fare. For Super 8 relies on none of the usual standards of populist summer flicks - there's no over paid, over weight, and over the hill big name stars running about with guns, no pretty young pin-ups earning mega-bucks arsing about in front of green screens, and everything doesn't explode in a welter of CGI every ten minutes.

There are big action sequences; for example the train wreck, that comes very early on in the movie, is magnificently spectacular. However after this impressive devastation, the thrills are of a much smaller scale and Abrams wisely leaves all the massive carnage until the climax. And so for the majority of the film, instead we have a proper story, packed with suspense, drama and some good laughs too. But as well as the thrills and a decent pace, Super 8 has bags of emotion to touch the heart - it may be sentimental but it never tips into the cloying saccharine syrup that rots a film's teeth.

And this is pulled off not just with good scripting and direction, but some very fine performances. Not only are the kids likeable rather than bratty, but the acting talent displayed by Courtney and Fanning is highly impressive. In particular, the complex and powerful performance Elle Fanning gives not only eclipses her more famous sister but outshines the acting not only in other blockbusters but in many an arthouse and indie movie too.

The great irony of Super 8, is that while Abrams has been served a good deal of flack for mimicking Spielberg, because it delivers some real emotion power rather than overly sweet contrived confections to attempt to warm the heart, he's actually makes a better job of the material than his elder would. For there's in many of the most emotional scenes there's a rawness and darkness that Spielberg would overly balance with sweetness and light. And yet, it is in the action and scifi departments which are Abram's metier that he slightly fumbles.

However the strengths do considerably outweigh the weaknesses. Despite the *ahem* gremlins in the final act, I gasped, I laughed and, to complete the cliché, yes, I damn near well cried too. It may not be perfect but I had so much fun, I am considering a second visit to see it. And to put things in the broader context, too many blockbusters can only offer fumbled plots riddled with holes they hope to fill with a torrent of equally mishandled effects work set-pieces. So then to receive a movie like Super 8 whose story telling places the human drama rather than mindless CGI and explosions at its heart is something to celebrate.

Also if you do go - and I would recommend you do - be sure to stick around for the credits, when in a lovely touch they show the movie the kids made.

Star Trek Part I - The Spoiler Free Frontier

Television and movies have long had a mutually parasitic relationship with properties being batted from one medium to another on a regular basis. And largely the results are never pretty. In his classic tale Dreams in the Witch-House, which effectively mashes up hyper dimensional physics and 17th century witchcraft, HP Lovecraft has his doomed protagonist theorise that a truly successful mode of travel between dimensions where different laws of time and space apply, the method of transport would have to alter the traveller’s biology to be able to survive outside his native dimension. And all too often when a property moves from television to film or vica versa, the adjustments to the new medium all too often ends up leaving it looking like the transporter accident in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The problem is that that cinema and television have very different dynamics of story telling. If you are moving from film to TV, apart from the constraints of a much smaller budget, the trouble tends to be what works once on the big screen quickly becomes boring week in and week out. Of course there are exceptions, most notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer transformed itself from a rather mediocre movie into a truly fabulous television series. And more recently Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been doing sterling work.

Conversely moving a show into the cinema has its own unique trials – make it very like the TV series and you risk the infamous ‘long episode’ syndrome. However if you embrace the medium and craft a plot of cinematic dimensions, then the change in the type of story you are telling often results with the movie feeling like a different genre to the original. So bearing this in mind, you can see why so often these days, movies derived from TV series are either ‘ironic’ send ups (Charlies Angels, Starsky & Hutch) or complete reboots/reimaginings (Miami Vice, Lost In Space).

Of course of all the series subjected to the dimension shift from cathode tube to silver screen, the big success story is Star Trek – now with 11 cinema outings to its name. However looking at the development of the movies we can clearly see the difficulties. The first outing, often dubbed ‘The Slow Motion Picture’, tips too far over the line into extraneous cinematics with a ponderous plot and some awful costume redesigns. Whereas the final picture, Star Trek Nemesis, feels too much like a Next Gen two-parter cobbled into a movie.

So when the new Star Trek was announced, aside for JJ Abrams being attached, the key detail that caught my eye was that the plot would deal with the early years of the characters’ history. So were we going to be cruising at warp speed into the Prequel Galaxy and praying that Mr Scott could supercharge the dilithium crystals enough to get us safely beyond the Lucas Black Hole? Or would this be more an untold tales deal, with Trek going all Smallville on us?

Both were worrying concepts, fraught with ample scope for an epic misfire. However equally troubling was the prospect of a complete clean slate reboot. Could we ever accept new actors taking on roles so closely associated with Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly et al? And would jettisoning 40-odd years of continuity mean we would be getting an origins movie in which much screen time is wasted explaining things to us that we already know?

Now while the first issue is a matter of getting together a good enough cast together and hoping the fans will embrace them, the continuity aspect is a trickier matter. On one hand, you have the problem of reintroducing characters and concepts – if you present exactly how they were in the original, you’re wasting our time and if you change them people are doing to say ‘This isn’t Trek!”. However the thornier issue is how much continuity is just pandering to obsessive fans?

Now the Star Trek franchise had fallen into something of decline. Personally Voyager never really won my affections – it felt too much like they were just randomly swapping different tropes from earlier series. And while there was the wonderful holographic Doctor (surely modelled on one of the Crane brothers’ descendents), there was bloody Neelix who made you realise that Wesley Crusher perhaps wasn’t that annoying after all. (Indeed Neelix vs. Alien, Predator, Jason & Godzilla is still the spin-off I’d most like to see. Yes, even more than Strap Trek - 7 of 9 vs. Jenna Jameson. But moving swiftly on…)

However it’s Enterprise that really underlines the continuity problem. Now obvious the show was crippled from the get go with that awful MOR ballad of a theme but the real problem with the show was that it was being made purely for Star Trek fans by this stage. But heavy continuity based content doesn’t necessary always play well to the fans – often it can appear that the show is turning into fan fiction of the worst kind - “fanwank”. But worse the weight of continuity was driving away the ordinary TV viewers who can scent an anorak at 50 paces. Basically Trek found itself in a similar position to the later seasons of the original series of Doctor Who – what had once been a popular show with a general audience was squeezing into a much smaller niche as a cult show. And not at the cool end of cult either – the public perception was that these were shows for the obsessive weirdos – D&D players, undercover Morris dancers and the bulk buyers of Clearasil.

Therefore the challenge for Abrams and co was not just to make a film that would be accepted as ‘real’ Trek by fans – a daunting task in itself – but to make something the general public could relate to. And in this context, a clearing out of the continuity cupboard with a fresh reboot makes perfect sense.

So what did he actually deliver? Prepare to beam down onto the first part of review. A second away team will be assembled after to venture into spoiler sectors…

A quick tricorder reading to kick off: cinematics – good, pace – excellent and the atmosphere is breathable. As a film in itself, this is an above average blockbuster – it’s got a solid story, plenty of breath-taking action, and deft characterisation. But also, like last summer’s Iron Man, there’s a good deal of well-used humour and the film’s phasers are set firmly on ‘Fun’. It’s a superior slice of sci-fi action adventure…but is it Trek?

Well I’d say it is Star Trek … but not as we know it. And what I mean by that is that JJ Abrams has produced a version of the franchise that truly feels home on the big screen and yet still feels like Star Trek of old. It admittedly draws on the “boldly going” spirit of the original series rather the Next Generation philosophical splitting of infinitives, but as the movie is bring back the beloved original crew back it’s only appropriate that it should continue with the same ratio of fun and adventure in its DNA.

Although Abrams has admitted to not previously being a Star Trek fan, he’s clearly been doing his homework. Firstly he’s identified that what made original Trek more beloved than a host of other sci-fi series was the well defined characters of the crew and how they interact. And he has placed this at the heart of the film. Now there is a ton of great action sequences but the plot’s real drive comes from the characters’ emotional journeys rather than the FX’s storyboards. An overblown firework of a toy ad this is not!

I have heard some criticisms that the plot is a little simple and, often for die hard Trekkers, far too light on ponderousness. Certainly the actual main mechanics of the story are basic – Romulan captain wreaks havoc. And it is a suitably Star Trek type of tale, but more importantly it’s only really the framework device for telling the real story which is how the Enterprise got together. And their stories do have a typically Trek philosophical bent – it’s a good deal more subtle than the long profound speeches that pepper TV Trek from the Next Gen onward, but it’s still there. Yes, there is humour and spectacle, but the emotional weight of the plotting means that the film never descends to the level of a campy romp.

This movie is that it is actually an origin story. But it’s not told in the usual fashion – you know, with all that tedious building up to the characters becoming who we know they are in the last third of the film. It opens with a stunning opening sequence that hurls you squarely into the Star Trek universe and then barrels along, deftly balancing character development with more action.

And the new cast are more than up to the job. I was very surprised how quickly the initial strangeness of seeing new actors in these very familiar roles wore off. One thing that was oft discussed in the run up to this film, was the question of how the actors would play the parts – would they be parroting the verbal tics of their predecessors? Thankfully they don’t and thus avoid appearing as a parody sketch. Instead we get a solid script that stays faithful to the speech mannerisms and crucially the concept of the original crew. And very intelligently the script set ups situation for the characters to show us who they are the same as they always were. You recognise Kirk’s cockiness in Chris Pine’s dialogue, and Karl Urban is Bones from the instant he starts grousing about space. But most uncanny of all is Zachary Quinto – he is Spock! Minor spoiler – but in the scene towards the film’s close where the Quinto Spock meets Leonard Nimoy’s, you’ll have to remind yourself there’s no CGI double at work.

Abrams, along with screen writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, have took the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach with characters and story stylings and given us the Enterprise crew in a new adventure. Wisely the new additions to the Star Trek universe are mainly cosmetic. Although the look of the sets, ships and costumes are pleasingly faithful to the originals, Abrams has given the movie a distinct visual style. Now it has to be said, that he does like a lens flare a little too much (and has recently admitted that they went a bit too far with them) but overall his understanding that the Star Trek universe is a bright colourful and shiny place is spot on. His choice of lighting, tonal palette and colour schemes featuring a lot of coloured metallics reminded me of countless airbrushed illustrations from old Star Trek annuals and tie-novels. This vision of Star Trek evokes both the cover paintings of the Golden age pulps and the pop art sensibilities of the original series and manages to look both realistically modern and fresh.

So conclude this spoiler-free section – what we have here is an excellent Star Trek film. I do have a couple of minor niggles to air in the next bit but they are more than balanced by the rest of the praise. And I would tentatively suggest that this may be the best cinema version of Trek so far. Certainly it has reinvigorated the franchise and opens the door at last to a new era of Star Trek.

Any red shirts wishing to join the away team to Planet Spoiler, kindly step through the Jefferies tube to the right… While the rest of you who haven’t seen it yet, just print out the image below and get yourself to the local multiplex for a round of Trek Bingo. When you’ve crossed off all the boxes, feel free to jump up and shout “TUQ!”

TO BE CONTINUED...