Big Hero 6

I would like, before I nosedive into Big Hero 6, to discuss the animated short that preceded it. The minimalist in me loves these things. Short, sweet, to the point, and yet complete, relatable stories that speaks to our emotions.

The fact that I can’t recall a single time I heard a word of dialogue from any of these shorts speaks volumes. Try to write a five-page script with no dialogue that accomplishes what these shorts manage. I remain impressed every time.

The opening of Up deserves no less recognition for all the same reasons.

Okay. Let’s talk about Big Hero 6.

This movie’s unwillingness to speak down to its audience struck me right off the bat. It gave kids credit to handle real, adult topics. Kids deal with these topics. They deserve stories that recognize that.

Hero deals with loss, revenge, forgiveness, sacrifice, and the things we leave behind when we die—heavy stuff for a kid’s movie, which handles the baggage well.

Our hero in this movie suffers the loss of his parents and then his older brother, who leaves behind several inventions. An inflatable robot programmed to perform first aid represents one such invention.

The awkward, slow robot can tell that our main character hurts (from the loss of his family), but it cannot detect his injures.

Meanwhile, someone stole the main character’s own invention: a series of tiny robots, which a person controls via an electronic headband-thingy. The tiny robots, under the influence of the headband, can assume any shape whatsoever.

I won’t spoil too much about this villain and his stolen, tiny robots beyond that his story reflects the protagonist’s own (as often proves the case in a good story).

Our hero gets a group of sidekicks. Each uses their “nerd power” to create inventions that will help them stop the bad guy and his swarm of tiny robots. The protagonist even creates what amounts to an Ironman suit for his inflatable robot.

The sidekicks each demonstrate an individual personality. One female character twice uses her catchphrase “Woman up,” which I hope catches on with young, female viewers.

One scene near the end mirrors the emphasis of sacrifice from Terminator 2. I won’t spoil the details, but keep the phrase, “I cannot self-terminate” in the back of your head.

Disbelief must face complete suspension while it witnesses this movie. Plot holes riddle this thing.

The sidekicks not only build impressive, military grade weaponry in a matter of minutes, but they also gain, for no apparent reason, gymnastic attributes and the ability to move at the speed of sound without a moment of unconsciousness.

On the other hand, who gives a damn? The writers knew which parts needed to make sense. Not the superhero stuff. Not the action scenes (which felt all the more fun for their lunacy). Rather, the emotional subtext, the characters, and their actions, made sense. Perfect.

The quality of the animation shifted here and there, but only from good to better.

A person who enjoys Universal Studio rides will probably love this movie. Chase scenes abound, on a scooter, then a car, then in the air on a giant, airborne robot. The movie often feels like both a ride and a video game.

If a video game of Hero exists (I imagine it does) the translation practically writes itself.

Good movie. Great fun. Pushes all the right emotional buttons with comic-relief-to-the-rescue when needed. Interesting characters. Imaginative. A plot that trusts its younger audience to handle real-life material. I recommend this one.

You can catch my novels, such as Daughters of Darkwana, on Kindle.

I publish my blogs as follows:

Short stories on Mondays and Thursdays at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at entertainment industries via feminist and queer theory, as well as other political filters on Tuesdays at Entertainmentmicroscope.blogspot.com

An inside look at my novel series, its creation, and the e-publishing process on Wednesdays at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips to improve your fiction writing Fridays at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

Movie reviews on Sundays at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Mockingjay: Part One

Let’s begin with the elephant in the room. Did producers need two movies to tell the tale of Mockingjay, or did they needlessly stretch the storyline to make more money?

I haven’t seen Mockingjay: Part Two yet on the flimsy excuse that it won’t hit theaters for another year or so. I cannot, because of that, say with one hundred-percent certainty whether or not the producers needed two movies.

However, based upon what I saw last night, the likely answer seems, “No.”

It didn’t take two movies to tell the tale of the third and final novel in the Hunger Games series. The scriptwriters could’ve skipped a lot of the scenes that they instead elected to put onscreen.

With that out of the way . . . oh. Sorry. Did you want to discuss a second certain elephant in the room? The supposed anti-homosexual message in the Hunger Games, perhaps?

I won't do that today. Two reasons.

1)                   The elaborate cosmetics and costumes of the Capital hardly came into play in this movie, and

2)                   I already covered this argument in one of my other blogs. EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com. Check it out.

Now, I can finally discuss the actual movie.

Acting? Excellent.

Music? Interesting. Fit well.

Wardrobe? Perfect.

Set design? Great, but understand that the characters spend a lot of time in the same couple settings. The effect wears off, but that lends a trapped, tedious taste to those scenes, and that works, given the story's circumstances.

Pacing? <cough cough> See my aforementioned remarks that regard whether or not the producers needed two movies to cover the events of the novel Mockingjay.

No, the writers didn’t properly pace this movie. Yes, the novel slowed down a lot around this point, but movies don’t enjoy that luxury. A story told via motion picture must remain in motion, and those motions must matter.

The fact that we met two characters named Pollux and Castor amused me (see next Wednesday’s post at Darkwana.blogspot.com to find out why), but those names seemed irrelevant in any metaphorical sense.

The action scenes (well, scene) runs smooth and aims to excite. Michael Bay would’ve approved.

The dialogue and plot offer deep, significant looks into war and other human natures. Michael Bay wouldn’t understand (I ought to stop picking on Bay, but after Ninja Turtles, screw it).

I would, in consideration of all things, recommend this movie. I loved the books and past movies thus far, and this one didn't disappoint me aside for the slow pace to deliberately and painfully stretch the story into a two-parter.

You can catch my novels, such as Daughters of Darkwana, on Kindle.

I publish my blogs as follows:

Short stories on Mondays and Thursdays at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at entertainment industries via feminist and queer theory, as well as other political filters on Tuesdays at Entertainmentmicroscope.blogspot.com

An inside look at my novel series, its creation, and the e-publishing process on Wednesdays at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips on improving your fiction writing at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

Movie reviews on Sundays at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Interstellar

If Time existed as a person, the movie Interstellar would exist as its obsessed stalker.

Quantum mechanical theories of time fuel Interstellar. It uses a set a watches as symbols. It eventually involves time travel (so to speak).

Even the spaceship turns as a clock. Heck, everything in this movie is round and moves in a circular motion. I’m surprised the writers didn’t name their main character Hour G. Lass.

First, the good news. The acting’s solid. The soundtrack’s good. If you watch this movie on IMAX, you’ll experience it as a three-hour-ish amusement park ride, the sort with the 3D screens and seats that jerks around and scramble your organs.

Interstellar offers a unique and exciting ride.

I hate to write something as cliché as “It makes you think,” but many of the movie’s discussions return to the forefront of your mind, turn your gears (see what I did there?).

Interstellar presents a mostly excellent series of scenes where Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) watches videos of his kids who age faster than him due to special relativity.

The chemistry between Cooper and his young daughter feels genuine. You love how much they love each other, and when events threaten that relationship, you care deeply.

Now, the bad news. Actually, allow me to precede the bad news with a few spoiler warnings. I’m afraid that I can’t avoid said spoilers if I want to discuss what didn’t work in this movie.

If you just want me to tell you whether or not you should see this movie, then go. See it. Come back here afterwards. We’ll compare notes.

I’ll wait.

Back? Great. Let’s discuss the ordeal you just experienced.

(Did you also want McConaughey to say, “I was driving a spaceship long before I got paid to drive one. I just like the way it feels.”?)

Interstellar’s first act provides a big frustration. A lot of it doesn’t work in the slightest, and there’s no reason why everything that didn’t work in Act One ever needed to raise its ugly head.

Our main character, Cooper, and his daughter (about ten years old) receive two binary codes, written in gravity (seriously), that tell Cooper to:

1) Go to a particular grid coordinate so that he can fly to another part of the universe (more on that later) and

2) Don’t fly to another part of the universe.

It turns out (you read that spoiler warning, right?) that Cooper, from the future, sent both messages at the same time while trapped in a black hole.

I swear to God, I didn’t make that up.

If that makes you scratch your head and ask, “Why did he send the first message if he didn’t want his past-self to get on the spaceship in the first place?” I’m right there with you.

But present day Cooper follows the first message and ignores the second because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise.

The grid coordinates lead him to a secret NASA base that’s a secret for no good reason, and it turns out that Cooper used to work for NASA, and NASA’s about to search for a new planet because Earth will soon die, and they need Cooper to captain the mission because “he’s the only one who can save mankind.”

I wanted to play along, but this setup felt too convoluted, too indigestible.

None of this ridiculous setup seemed necessary. Why couldn’t Cooper just work for NASA and here’s his mission? Why navigate a maze into a building when you could stroll through the front door?

I might suggest that the writers pulled this stunt to stretch the movie’s running time (which would serve as a terrible excuse), but the movie ran close to 46 hours (perhaps a slight bit less than that—hard to say).

The characters constantly say things like, “Our mission is for the good of mankind,” “It serves mankind,” and “Your mission is to rescue mankind.” I won’t spoil the hidden meaning behind that, but the fact that there’s a character named “Mann” should sound alarms in even the thickest skull.

You recall those videos I mentioned, sent from Cooper’s children to his spaceship? One of them gets shown twice when only once would’ve worked better (the second time).

Cooper’s daughter quickly and easily realizes that her father’s inside a black hole and communicates to her through time via gravity. Her eyes just light up and she “gets it” somehow. It’s painful.

Cooper even makes the second hand of her watch tick in Morse code (only time will tell?) to tell his daughter how to save the human race.

I’ll accept far-fetched concepts and plot twists, but movies must first successfully pave the way for those concepts.

I accept that a wet Gizmo results in Gremlins (I’ve gotten an electronic device wet once or twice) because the movie Gremlins starts with those rules.

A Norse god, a rich guy in a flying suit of armor, a steroid abuser, and some friends will save New York from aliens? Avengers laid the groundwork for it. Heck, Marvel spent decades on that groundwork.

A story can get away with any list of rules so long as it establishes and plays by it. When a story invents its rules along the way, an audience can’t swallow them, and the story reeks of BS.

One more thing, and maybe these faults rest with the theater’s sound system and not the film. The soundtrack and sound effects annoyingly rose at several moments that didn’t call for it. Did the director fear that the audience had fallen asleep?

Worst of all, the movie ends about fifteen minutes before it actually ends. The wrap-up continues and continues. It’s a painful wait. You could honestly just walk away early and know you missed nothing important.

Interstellar provides frustration. It offers so many good points, so many good lines, so many fun concepts, good acting, great visuals, clever symbols, and yet . . . the final product seems a disorganized mess.

It’s a great class given by a terrible teacher.

The beginning’s too long, too needlessly complex. The ending’s worse for the same reasons.

The Judge

What would you do if you, as a teenager, entangled yourself in a lot of legal messes, such as a car accident that ruined your older brother’s chances to play professional baseball?

What if your father stood in constant disapproval, and he served as a judge to boot?

You might become a criminal defense attorney and spend your days defending metaphorical versions of yourself to a metaphorical version of your father, as does Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.)

Note the last name. The writers didn’t imagine it without a reason.

Hank possesses marital issues, work issues, and social issues. He hides behind a mask of indifference, ego, and money. He spends his days in pursuit of redemption for others, when what he so sorely requires remains his own redemption.

When we first meet Hank, he urinates on a criminal prosecutor. Seriously.

Hank discovers himself called back to his childhood hometown when his father (Robert Duvall) faces murder charges.

The trial (and the funeral of Hank’s mother) reunites the entire family for a volcanic intervention in which they must confront their pasts.

One such scene occurs during (what else?) a tornado, the embodiment of chaos and destruction.

Many filmmakers confuse “courtroom drama” with “legal thriller.” Differences exist. A legal thriller requires that the writers make the relevant, legal procedures understood in detail.

Courtroom dramas provide drama within a courtroom setting ideal for a movie with a moral premise based around judgment and redemption.

Samuel L. Jackson didn’t stand on trial in Rules of Engagement so much as everyone with a conscience burdened by the deaths of our wars' bystanders.

We didn’t need a longwinded explanation of courtroom procedures; Engagement had as much to do with courtroom procedures as Pearl Harbor had with nautical terminologies.

Many movies with a promise remain between now and 2015, but I feel certain that The Judge and Guardians of the Galaxy (Yes, I put those in the same category) will tie for the best movie of the year. That doesn’t serve as an Oscar prediction, mind you (mainly because those don’t offer ties).

Duvall and Downey prove perfect for these roles. The pace of this film feels smooth, the emotion speaks to the heart with the sort of raw honesty that works so well.

You shouldn’t miss this movie.