I’ve been on the fence about Oblivion for a while now. If Tron: Legacy was any evidence, Joseph Kosinski is good at making films look good but not at making them actually compelling, and that’s the sort of feeling I’ve been getting from the existing two trailers.
Then they released this one:
I still don’t know if this is going to be a great movie but this trailer certainly goes a lot further in convincing me it’ll be a good one. What do you guys think?
It’s been less than two hours since I walked out of Jack the Giant Slayer and I can barely remember what happened. That’s not exactly a good thing, is it?
Here’s the basic set up: Nicholas Hoult plays Jack who goes to the market and sells his horse for some beans that grow a giant bean stalk into the sky via which giants attack. Pretty straightforward, really.
The problem is that despite all it’s intentions, the movies just kinda boring. There’s some pretty cool set pieces but even though it kills off some characters –including ones I understood going in were major characters– it just never felt like there was any real peril, and the movie spends so much time going back and forth between the giants being farting, nose picking bumbling fools and menacing, angry, “let’s bite the head off this human” monsters that a tone isn’t ever really effectively set.
Similarly, Jack is chastised by his uncle for being a lazy and easily distracted fool but as soon as the bean stalk grows he immediately proves himself neither lazy, easily distracted or foolish. No development there, just a switch that gets flipped to serve the plot.
The plot itself is pretty thin and it’s not really compelling at all. In fact, it’s almost like they came up with a bunch of ideas for things they wanted to see happen first and then wrote just enough of a story to string those things together and nothing else. It’s frustrating even, since there are just a few changes they could have made which yes, would have made the story a bit more cliche but which would have given Jack a better personal, relatable arc. I get the feeling they might have been avoiding the heroes journey on purpose but the end result is uninteresting.
If you’ve seen [the trailer](https://awesomefriday.ca/2013/02/trailer-jack-the-giant-slayer/) you might go in thinking that it’s going to be an effects extravaganza but it’s not. There are effects everywhere to be sure, but the giants don’t look good enough for me to have suspended disbelief enough for me not to notice that all the CGI is good but nowhere near being great.
In fact at the start of the film the back story is provided by Jacks father reading the legend of the giants which is played out on screen in what’s meant to be stylized animation but instead just looks like terrible video game cut scenes. You can see that they were going for something similar to the [backstory sequence in Hellboy II](http://www.anyclip.com/movies/hellboy-ii-the-golden-army/story-of-the-golden-army/) but they missed the mark utterly.
It’s annoying too that the despite a pretty stellar cast I couldn’t really bring myself to care about many of the characters. Nicholas Hoult is fine as Jack and Eleanor Tomlinson is fine as the princess (yes of course there’s a princess) but Stanley Tucci is basically just being Slimeball Stanley Tucci here. It’s not terrible to watch but it would have been nice to see some experimentation. Bill Nighy is the same as the leader of the Giants. It’s a voice role to be sure, but it’s just Bill Nighy’s angry voice and nothing more. (side note: despite voicing over the trailer, Sir Ian McKellan isn’t in this at all that I could see/hear. Weird.)
The standout for me is Ewan McGregor who basically dials up the swagger to 11 and runs with it. He steals most every scene he’s in, and every time he’s not on screen I found myself wondering when he’d be back.
In my mind I like Bryan Singer. He’s made some amazing movies, two of which I count among my all time favourites, but everything he has done since X-Men 2 has fallen pretty flat. He doesn’t nail down a tone, his pacing is all over the map, and character development is at a minimum.
That’s not to say that there aren’t bright spots. Again, there are a couple of good set pieces, there are a few funny moments and there are some nice character moments, but all in all the film is just mediocre fluff. Not outright bad, just boring.
My question is this: how many more of these “let’s take an old story and go all M. Night Shyamalan ‘what a twist!’ on it’s ass” movies are we going to have to go through? Can we be done now? Please?
Meantime, if you want to see Nicholas Hoult act well then go see if [Warm Bodies](https://awesomefriday.ca/2013/02/review-warm-bodies/) is still playing.
***Rating: 5/10
[rating=5]***
Charlie Brooker is back again folks. Three more extreme but within-the-realm-of-possible stories to get us thinking about ourselves.
I’m going to warn you right now that this will contain spoilers. I am going to do my best to keep them to a minimum however I can’t talk about everything I want to talk about without including a few so I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen this episode yet you’d best bookmark this, go watch, and come back. There will also be some spoilers for series one of Black Mirror. Normally I’d consider a previous series fair game, but spoiling some of this stuff would be like spoiling who Kaiser Soze is, so seriously: go watch and then come back. You’ve been warned.
The last episode of this series concerns a down on his luck, already self loathing failed comedian Jamie and his creation Waldo.
Jamie hasn’t had any success, although it’s implied his friends all have, on his own but he has created a computer animated character called Waldo. Waldo is controlled and voiced by Jamie so that when they spring him on unsuspecting guests on the television program he’s a part of he reacts in real time and generally just takes the piss out of whoever he is talking to, and in particular a new conservative politician played by Tobias Menzies (late of Rome) called Liam Monroe.
There is also Gwendolyn. She’s running for the labour party in the same by election, but she has no qualms about what’s happening. It’s a safe seat for the conservatives and she’s just trying to raise her profile.
Things get a bit crazy when, after he’s had a surge in popularity, Jamies producer starts talking Waldo spin off and having Waldo stand in the by election that Monroe is running in.
They set about having Waldo follow Monroe around and in doing so steadily gains popularity. At the same time Jamie meets Gwendolyn and they hit it off and have a splendid night together but then she blows him off so she can focus on the campaign. Jamie does not take this well.
At the all candidates debate Waldo is doing his schtick when Monroe attacks Jamie directly and he has a moment that, to be honest, I think a lot of people would. He tells of Monroe for being a phoney, claiming to represent the regular folk of his constituency but actually holding himself above them and toeing party lines and when Gwendolyn chimes in she barely gets a word in edgewise before he outs her and just trying to get a bit of face time.
And that’s when things go off the rails for Jamie and for us.
As Waldo gains popularity Jamie slowly goes a bit mad as while he’s controlling Waldo, everyone else is controlling him, particularly his smarmy producer Jack (played by Jason Flemyng) who threatens to take Waldo out of his hands since Jamie created Waldo but doesn’t own the rights.
They both recognize the potential for Waldo to be influential but where Jack revels in it, Jamie is repulsed by the things they are proposing he do. They even are approached by “the agency” to take Waldo worldwide as a mouthpiece to control the masses.
When Jamie finally snaps and start telling people not to vote for him, he’s ousted and Jack takes over and immediately incites a crowd to attack him. When Waldo takes second place in the election, Jack incites the crowd to riot.
This episode isn’t subtle. The black mirror shows us not only how tired people are of the system, but how easily they can be manipulated just by something that’s new and different, not just spouting the same old bullshit. It makes a mockery not so much of the system itself but how the people in it operate.
Further, when Jack takes over and Waldo takes a turn for the darker, how easily all that good will and attention gained by that moment of pure and honest outrage can be used to manipulate people into kind of terrible things.
Monroe has one great line as well when asked about Waldo he says “If that thing is the main opposition then the whole system looks absurd –which it may well be– but it built these roads” That is to say, we may not like them or the system, but it’s what we’ve got to work with.
Basically the black mirror here shows us how, in our apathy, we can be controlled pretty much because we let ourselves be.
THis episode wasn’t as good as the rest because it’s bit, well, obvious. There aren’t as many big ideas as there are in [White Bear][wb] and the ideas aren’t as affecting as those explored in [Be Right Back][brb], Some of the ideas were also explored better in last years episode “15 Million Merits” in which a man is ripped out of complacency in his life in a dystopian future.
It’s still a solid outing, but because of all that I think it might be my least favourite to date even if the ideas it explores might be the most relevant to us today.
[wb]: https://awesomefriday.ca/2013/02/review-black-mirror-series-two-episode-two-white-bear/ “Review: Black Mirror, Series Two, Episode Two, ‘White Bear'”
[brb]: https://awesomefriday.ca/2013/02/review-black-mirror-series-two-episode-one-be-right-back/ “Review: Black Mirror, Series Two, Episode One, ‘Be Right Back'”
Charlie Brooker is back again folks. Three more extreme but within-the-realm-of-possible stories to get us thinking about ourselves.
I’m going to warn you right now that this will contain spoilers. I am going to do my best to keep them to a minimum however I can’t talk about everything I want to talk about without including a few so I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen this episode yet you’d best bookmark this, go watch, and come back. There will also be some spoilers for series one of Black Mirror. Normally I’d consider a previous series fair game, but spoiling some of this stuff would be like spoiling who Kaiser Soze is, so seriously: go watch and then come back. You’ve been warned.
Ready? Good.
Episode two starts out with a woman waking up with no memory of who she is or where she is. As she explores her surroundings it becomes clear that some sort of cataclysm has happened. The world is a mess. People don’t speak, they simply film her with their cameras and cell phones but won’t interact (except to run away when she gets too close).
Soon she meets a couple on the run who explain that a signal went out over everything with a screen that turned most of the people into mindless, filming zombies while a small percentage of the population remain unaffected. And naturally, a small group of the unaffected are now homicidal maniacs because that’s what happens when society collapses.
Soon it turns out that, as with most episodes of this series, nothing is quite what it seems. As it turns out the main character was convicted of helping to kidnap, torture and kill a young girl with her boyfriend. He did most or all of the unspeakable things while she filmed the whole thing. The Boyfriend dies before he can be tried and sentenced and so the world has decided to take their grief, hate, and anger out on her.
The entire set up is just curel and unusual punishment. She reaches a certain point in the story they’ve set her up in and then the curtains draw, she’s shown who she is and what’s happening, and then they wipe her memory and do it all again (at least 20 odd times from the glimpse you get at the calendar).
This episode is nowhere near as seubtle and certainly not as quiet as the [previous episode](https://awesomefriday.ca/2013/02/review-black-mirror-series-two-episode-one-be-right-back/) but it’ll certainly make you think. While I don’t quite think the circus they create to punish the main character is currently something we should expect, it’s also disturbingly plausible if you think about our current addiction to spectacle recorded via cellphone.
And that leads to another question, are we actually experiencing our lives or are we just recording? Are we removed from what we are doing because we’re too busy recording it? That seems to be the main question in the black mirror in this episode and the plot certainly drives it home, because anyone can see that whether she actively participated in the crime (it’s not stated, but implied that she just did the recording) that this is cruel and unusual torture.
It’s a brilliant bit of satire anchored by Lenora Crinchlow’s performance (which is superb). Also, Michael Smiley shows up as one of the more sinister characters which is good, but whenever I see him I wish in the back of my head that he’ll hear a sound and start raving.
All in all this is a great episode and you should definitely have watched it before you read this.
You may have already seen these, they’ve been being released to the web over the last couple of weeks that I’ve been doing other things, but in case you haven’t hit the “read more” link to see all five of the new Iron Man 3 posters.
Some people really like to be freaked out or scared by the movies. I am not one of those people. SO here’s a trailer for a film I might not ever see, not only because it’s in a genre that I’m none too fond of but because HOLY SHIT THIS IS A PERFECTLY EXECUTED CREEPY AS HELL TRAILER.
Seriously, this trailer is like someone asked themselves “hey, what can we do to freak the shit out of Matt?”‘
Kees van Dijkhuizen jr is the guy behind such amazing zupercuts as the “[[the films of]](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDCB50778268B1250) series –in which the tone and style of a director is explored in each video– and the [[cinema]](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL570A2BCEC0545299) series –in which the years worth of movies are cut together in retrospect.
Now his attentions are turned to Bond, and this might be my favourite of his work to date.
Amazing, right? van Dijkhulzen is rather adept at picking his clips to capture the essence of a film/series/etc, and he’s done pretty masterfully here.
Here’s his write up:
> When it comes to cultural icons, James Bond is one of the biggest and most influential. These past 50 years we’ve been able to experience 007s finest adventures on the big screen, including last year with the excellent SKYFALL which shattered box office records. This piece, set to Adele’s ‘Skyfall’, revisits Bond’s adventures, from Dr. No to Skyfall, taking you through the various eras of the Bond legacy. Get those Martinis ready!
> This is in no way a full retrospective of the Bond films, the only way to truly live 007’s adventures is by seeing them yourself. And what better way to do that than with the Bond 50 Collection on Blu-ray! Each film has been restored to its former glory with pristine picture quality. They really outdid themselves with the 4K restoration process and so every frame of footage used in this video is straight from the source, maintaining the best possible quality from edit to upload.
Good news everyone! Check out this tweet from Mark Millar:
Just off the phone with Fox and some excellent news – Matthew Vaughn is producing Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot!
— Mark Millar (@mrmarkmillar) February 22, 2013
Matthew Vaughn is probably currently known as the guy who directed _X-Men: First Class_ and _Kick-Ass_ and _Layer Cake_, but he also produced all of Guy Ritchies early/good stuff (_Snatch_, _Lock Stock_, etc).
Josh Trank proved he can do superheroes with _Chronicle_, and with a solid producer behind him with a history in the genre? There’s no reason not to be pretty damn excited.
Without Further Ado:
I’m quite excited by this. This season promises to get into territory I’ve not read yet (I haven’t read books 4 or 5) but also it’s finally time to maybe see some real dragon action!
It’s amazing how a good trailer can get me excited for something without actually showing me anything substantial. I suppose that’s the point, but still.
In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl built a raft of balsa wood and with 5 other men set out from Peru to Polynesia to prove that Peruvians were the first to settle there.
Kon Tiki was the name of the raft.Kon Tiki won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1951, the book that Heredahl wrote, and now it’s the name of the dramatization of what happened.
This was actually up for Best Foreign Language film this past weekend at the Oscars and from the trailer I can say that it at least _looks_ gorgeous. Will be keeping an eye out for this one.
Cinema Sins put out another in their series of “everything wrong with” video here, this time on one of Simon’s favouritesL Inception.
As someone who liked inception I gotta say that at while some of this is a stretch, some of it is pretty spot on.
Howdy folks. Watch here for all our thoughts on the Oscars tonight! Newest updates at the top, and I’ll update with a winners list as we go.
#### Winners
* Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor
* Paperman for Best Animated Short
* Brave for Best Animated Feature
* Claudio Miranda for Life of Pie for Best Cinematography
* Life of Pi for Best Visual Effects
* Anna Karenina for Best Costume Design
* Les Miserables for Best Makeup
* Curfew for Best Live Action Short
* Inocente for Best Documentary Short
* Searching for Sugarman for Best Documentary Feature.
* Amour for Best Foreign Language Film
* Les Miserables for Best Sound Mixing
* Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall tie for Best Sound Editing.
* Anne Hathaway for Best Supporting Actress
* Argo for Best Film Editing
* Lincoln for Best Production Design
* Life of Pi for Best Original Score
* Skyfall for Best Original Song
* Chris Terrio for Argo for Best Adapted Screenplay
* Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained for Best Original Screenplay
* Ang Lee for Best Director
* Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress
* Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor
* Argo for Best Picture
The Oscars are later tonight and Simon and I will be live blogging them. Just for fun, I’m going to lock myself into a few predictions.
#### Sundry Categories
Without going into too much detail on these ones here are how I’d like to see a few of the categories with less fanfare to play out.
* “Skyfall” to win Best Original Score.
It’s the only memorable one of the nominees.
* “Skyfall” to win Best Original Song.
Best Bond Song in years and just a great song. Outside chance for _Everybody Needs a Best Friend_ from Ted, but doubtful.
* Roger Deakins to win Best Cinematography for “Skyfall”.
[There’s lots of reasons to love Roger Deakins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Deakins#Filmography), but more to the point he’s never won the awards despite some brilliant work _and_ Skyfall is a gorgeous film.
* “Prometheus” for Best Visual Effects.
Prometheus is not a good film, but it’s a gorgeous film and the effects are seamless.
* Animated Movies
I haven’t seen all the nominees for best Animated Feature, so I have no idea who will win. I have hoever seen all the nominees for Best Animated Short and I really hope that ***Paperman*** wins.
And now, on to the big ones.
#### Best Adapted Screenplay
* “Argo” – Chris Terrio
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild” – Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin
* “Life of Pi” – David Magee
* ***”Lincoln” – Tony Kushner***
* “Silver Linings Playbook” – David O. Russell
I want to say Argo, but it will probably be ***Lincoln***. In the battle between American heroism and America’s most beloved president, I think it’ll go to the president.
#### Best Original Screenplay
* “Amour” – Michael Haneke
* ***”Django Unchained” – Quentin Tarantino***
* “Flight” – John Gatins
* “Moonrise Kingdom” – Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
* “Zero Dark Thirty” – Mark Boal
***Quentin Tarantino*** has to win this one. Django is almost entirely overlooked in the nominations, but there’s no denying the screenplay is the best this year. Tarantino’s dialogue is amazing as always. You can question his directorial choices but you can’t question how he writes.
#### Actress in a Supporting Role
* Amy Adams – “The Master”
* Sally Field – “Lincoln”
* ***Anne Hathaway – “Les Miserables”***
* Helen Hunt – “The Sessions”
* Jackie Weaver – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Are you kidding me? ***Anne Hathaway***. Everyone here is great, I wish that Amy Adams will win because she is as amazing as everyone else in The Master, and also because I’d really like to see the Academy slightly embarrassed by having all the actors win while their movie nor director is nominated, but Anne Hathaway plays a hooker with a heart of gold, doing everything for her kid, with a debilitating disease, in an adaptation of a beloved stage musical.
Yeah, it’s Anne Hathaway’s year.
#### Actor in a Supporting Role
* Alan Arkin – “Argo”
* Robert De Niro – “Silver Linings Playbook”
* Philip Seymour Hoffman – “The Master”
* ***Tommy Lee Jones – “Lincoln”***
* Christoph Waltz – “Django Unchained”
No clear winner here. Everyone is amazing and everyone has won before. I don’t see Christoph Waltz winning since he did just a couple years back for a very similar role, I don’t see Robert De Niro winning because unlike Jennifer Lawrence (whose performance is elevated above the movie she is in) he’s good but not great.
Alan Arkin was great but also was how Alan Arkin always is.
So that leaves Tommy Lee Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’d love to see Philip Seymour Hoffman win because he and Joaquin Phoenix are both spectacular in The Master, but ***Tommy Lee Jones*** I think might win for Lincoln because Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t going to win his trophy.
#### Actress in a Leading Role
* Jessica Chastain – “Zero Dark Thirty”
* ***Jennifer Lawrence – “Silver Linings Playbook”***
* Emmanuelle Riva – “Amour”
* Quvenzhané Wallis – “Beasts of Southern Wild”
* Naomi Watts – “The Impossible”
Do we even have to talk about this? I’m pretty sure this is Jennifer Lawrence’s award to lose as of this moment. Silver Linings Playbook may not be a great film however Jennifer Lawrence is great in it. She’s already been robbed once (have you seen _winter’s Bone_? She’s amazing) too so that pretty much locks it down.
So here’s hoping that Jessica Chastain wins next year, because ***Jennifer Lawrence*** is going to win this year.
#### Actor in a Leading Role
* Bradley Cooper – “Silver Linings Playbook”
* Daniel Day-Lewis – “Lincoln”
* ***Hugh Jackman – “Les Miserables”***
* Joaquin Phoenix – “The Master”
* Denzel Washington – “Flight”
As with the Best Supporting Actor category there doesn’t seem to be a clear front runner here. Everyone did great. I was particularly surprised by Bradley Cooper who is getting better and better. However, I think it’s going to go to ***Hugh Jackman*** because say what you will about Les Mis, he acted the shit out of it.
It’s too bad too, because Joaquin Phoenix was amazing in The Master.
#### Best Director
* “Amour” – Michael Haneke
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild” – Benh Zeitlin
* “Life of Pi” – Ang Lee
* ***”Lincoln” – Steven Spielberg***
* “Silver Linings Playbook” – David O. Russell
***Steven Spielberg***. Honestly, of all the directors eligible to be nominated this year he’s the only one on this list that would also be on mine. Paul Thomas Anderson, Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, and Quentin Tarantino are all missing for the record.
#### Best Picture
* ***”Argo”***
* “Django Unchained”
* “Les Miserables”
* “Life of Pi”
* “Amour”
* “Lincoln”
* “Silver Linings Playbook”
* “Zero Dark Thirty”
* “Beasts of the Southern Wild”
Argo has already won almost every major award there is in this category, including the Golden Globe, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and SAG awards. You know why? Because it’s a great film and it deserves to win.
It’s also the safest bet because unlike _Zero Dark Thirty_, which I think is a better movie, it’s a story about one man’s heroism and the Academy eats that up.
Outside chance for _Les Miserables_, but for all the fanfare at its release no one is talking about it anymore.
So, ***Argo*** it is.
Later tonight we’ll be live blogging the show so you can watch in real time to see how I did with my predictions then! In the mean time, do you guy have any predictions or movies you are pulling for to win?
Charlie Brooker is back again folks. Three more extreme but within-the-realm-of-possible stories to get us thinking about ourselves.
I’m going to warn you right now that this will contain spoilers. I am going to do my best to keep them to a minimum however I can’t talk about everything I want to talk about without including a few so I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen this episode yet you’d best bookmark this, go watch, and come back. There will also be some spoilers for series one of Black Mirror. Normally I’d consider a previous series fair game, but spoiling some of this stuff would be like spoiling who Kaiser Soze is, so seriously: go watch and then come back. You’ve been warned.
Good. Let’s begin then.
_Be Right Back_ stars Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson as Martha and Ash, a young couple. He is clearly addicted to his phone and the internet, to the point where he doesn’t hear her offering him ridiculous things and she has to tell him to put his damn phone away and interact with her. We get just enough screen time with Ash to get a sense of who he is and who they are together and then he dies.
Wracked with grief Martha is signed up by a friend for a service that basically is an app that lets you speak to the dead. It scrapes data from your social media profiles, emails, videos, photos, anything you can feed it and comes up with an approximation of the person in question.
What follows is both an exploration of grief and anguish as well as the question of the human experiences. We follow Martha as she is emotionally laid low and then raised up again by speaking to this approximation almost non stop.
When she drops her phone the system offers her “the next step”, an artificial Ash with the personality profile uploaded.
I’d like to point out here that both Atwell and Gleeson are superb. Atwell has to run the gamut of human emotion and does so beautifully. Gleeson plays both the internet addicted boyfriend and the approximation thereof well, in particular the contradicting states the False Ash has to exist in.
At first Martha takes full advantage, and I mean full advantage, but it soon becomes apparent that all is not right. Her grief is both quelled and then returned with even greater power. False-Ash at first being a comfort comes to drive her to the edge of sanity because he’s just not Ash.
And therein lies the reflection in the black mirror. Slowly but surely we’re putting more of ourselves online and more people are interacting with facebook, twitter, and every other form of online communication you can think of, and many friendships are made and broken vie these methods. You come to feel like you know someone based on the things they put out there but through False-Ash we’re reminded that none of that can replace the human experience.
In the climax of the story False-Ash is driving Martha to the edge of her sanity because on the one hand he’s right there with her, but on the other he lacks all the mannerisms, all the little tics, and the emotions that aren’t registered online. When she orders him to jump off a cliff and he willingly goes she rails against his utter willingness and how he isn’t acting like Ash. He then takes that information and mimics Ash not out of some sense of preservation but because that’s what False-Ash thinks she wants.
_Be Right Back_ is far more subtle than any of the previous episodes to date. Not hard when you consider that last series had a man fucking a pig, a man selling out, and a man relentlessly torturing himself with recordings of his life built into his brain. That doesn’t actually make it any less thought provoking though, in fact I’d say just the opposite. It’ll make you think about grief and the lengths you might go to, but also how you interact with your friends and family.
Black Mirror is about holding up ideas and showing us reflections that we haven’t considered, or maybe reflections we don’t want to consider about society and technology, and it’s off to a lovely start for this series.
I’ve written quite a bit about this movie so for those of you who just want to TL;DR version that covers the important bits here it is:
* A Good Day to Die Hard is fucking terrible
* John McClane is even less relatable than he was in Life Free or Die Hard
* Jai Courtney is alright, but if you’re a fan you’ll wish he had a different big break into movies
* Die Hard is still the best Die Hard movie, and always will be (followed by “With a Vengeance”, “Die Harder”, “Live Free” and now “A Good Day”, and in that order)
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead needed to be in this movie more
So here we go.
In 1988 John McClane was a different kind of action hero. He was an everyman, nor an adonis or a martyr or highly trained ninja/soldier/pastry chef, he was just a guy who was thrust into the position of being a hero by shitty circumstances. He got the shit kicked out of him, no one believed him when he initially called for help, and when he finally prevailed he was so beat up it’s amazing he could still walk.
All of this worked because not only was John McClane more relatable than every other action hero (and indeed went on to be the template for so many other action heroes through the 1990s and on to the present) but because Die Hard was also a well constructed film. It’s an action movie yes, but it takes a good half hour before any of the real action starts allowing for a lot of character development and plot set up that’s often missing from the bigger more bombastic action films.
Fast forward to 2012 and the sad fact is that they’ve now basically unmade the character and fit him every so neatly into the mould he originally broke.
John McClane is no longer an everyman, he’s an action god, casually sending a flatbed mercedes cargo truck into an e-brake spin to avoid an oncoming RPG or driving a commandeered SUV through a guard rail on an overpass, landing it on a moving semi truck with a car trailer and literally driving over traffic to get to the road below, all the while spewing off bad one liners which have clearly been added in ADR.
I can’t tell if Jai Courtney is terrible or if it’s just the material he’s given to work with. He plays the son angry at his absentee father bit alright, but it’s kind of unbelievable. Especially when you consider that the reasons John McClane Sr. was absentee were a) his mother kept moving him away and b) John MCClane has literally saved three major cities and the entire country at this point, so it’s not like he was gone because he was a deadbeat dad, but that’s the angle they play it from rather than the “you were there for all those strangers but not for me” angle.
And since we know he was there for those strangers, and his exploits are known to people in that universe, it makes no sense that the bad guys don’t seem to know who he is and don’t kill him immediately when they find out. But of course they couldn’t even if they wanted to because the bad guys are actually incompetent in this movie. Previous bad guys just underestimated John McClane, these guys are actually idiots.
The main henchman even goes off on a cliched and pointless monologue at one point, after having John and John Jr. tied up, and they tie John Sr’s hands _in front of him_ so he can lunge at a bad guy when the moment strikes, and John Jr’s _behind his back_ so he can reach the super secret spy knife/gun –which they previously gratuitiously showed him putting in his shoe– so he can cut his bonds and strike said moment.
Oh, and that bad guy? He’s meant to be malevolent but it’s so poorly executed that quite literally the only thing about him that I remember, let alone dislike, is that he chewed a carrot with his mouth open during his excruitatingly terrible monologue. That made me dislike him, but not for the right reasons.
This is the problem with structure of the movie: there are no surprises. Literally everything that happens is so obviously telegraphed that you always know what’s about to happen.
_Live Free or Die Hard_ was not a great movie but at least it tried to be something. I mean, it tried and _failed_, but at least it tried. _A Good Day to Die Hard_ feels like a movie that was made with a checklist. Big car chase? Check. One liners? Check. Kill a helicopter? Check.
It’s just a shame the checklist didn’t include “make this all fit together in any decent way.” Or maybe it did and they didn’t get to check that item off.
**Rating 2/10
[rating=2]**
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