'The Dark Knight Rises' and 'Ted': review round-up

Still waiting on buying a new computer so I never got around to posting that in-depth 'The Dark Knight Rises' critique I wanted to. And seeing as that film has now been out for a few weeks it feels like old news, so I may as well just write a little something about it ahead of an (even more brief) appraisal of Seth MacFarlane's comedy 'Ted'. Be warned, this is a sour grapes, spoilsport edition blog post, in which I actively dislike two films most people have at least enjoyed, if not broadly praised. I wanted to enjoy both of these, for what it's worth.

'The Dark Knight Rises'
Part of the problem facing this one is that I loved 'The Dark Knight' all out of proportion and, in enjoying it as much as I did four summers ago, I also became a fairly big supporter of director Christopher Nolan. However, since then two things have happened: firstly, 'Inception' came along and wore out any goodwill I had accumulated towards the filmmaker - being bloated, pompous, cold and extremely reliant on exposition (all flaws 'TDKR' shares to greater and lesser extents). Secondly, and more recently, 'The Avengers' came out and showed us all that big superhero movies could be unabashed fun - true to their source material without overly pandering to hardcore fans, yet broadly celebratory of their pulpy source material all the same. By contrast Nolan's films still feel embarrassed to have Batman in them.

Now, before people shout "bias", I didn't go in resolved to dislike 'TDKR' because of these factors, but I probably wasn't as pumped for it as I would have been a couple of short years ago. But what really stopped me from getting on with 'TDKR' was the film itself: overlong, self-important, and even sloppily made - with Hans Zimmer's score overpowering much of the dialogue and with a basic lack of storytelling coherency throughout. There are too many new characters. The film chops between too many disparate plot threads and far too frequently. There is zero sense of either time (months pass and we know this only because of dialogue) or space (people go from desserts to cities without the sense of physical distance).

The film is full of strange "joke" moments and throwaway lines that feel like they come from a different movie and are presented in such a cold and robotic way that they feel forced. And though Anne Hathaway nails it as Catwoman, and Michael Caine does some wonderful stuff with some otherwise over-written and melodramatic dialogue, it's a mystery how such a poor performance was drawn from the usually excellent Marion Cotillard. Don't even get me started on Tom Hardy, over-acting with his eyes and delivering his lines in a variable and barely understandable accent. I've been told he's easier to understand if you see the film in IMAX, with 7.1 surround sound - but that's not how most people will see it and, to me, that sounds like a poor excuse for bad mixing/sound design/acting.

The action scenes are technically impressive but lack any feeling of awe. The fistfights lack anything like imaginative choreography, tending to resemble to big men exchanging punches. Joseph Gordon Levitt is really compelling as a rookie detective, but gets relatively little to do (you could say the same for Catwoman, forgotten for most of the film's second half). Batman himself spends far too much time walking in daylight and his secret identity is shared far too liberally. Add to all this the fact that the film's politics are dispiritingly conservative, broadly supportive of the super-rich and cynical about those who would seek to redress the balance (the occupy movement is the obvious target, but not the only one in a film that's broadly suspicious of any and all grass roots social change). There are two tacked on, completely false feeling, romantic sub-plots - one of which is (arguably) relevant to the story but the other one is completely superfluous.

It's just no fun at all. In fact it's incredibly boring and goes on forever. I have to admit, I enjoyed it slightly more on a second viewing, with radically reduced expectations, getting swept up in the internal mythology of a trilogy that contains the ultimate re-boot ('Batman Begins') and one of the best (if not THE BEST) superhero movies ever made ('The Dark Knight'). But it still isn't a good movie. I feel like such a grouchy old man right now, but there it is.

'Ted'
If you thought I sounded like a fun-spoiling misanthrope above, then you're not going to enjoy this. Kicking a comedy - a film which only intends to spread laughter - often feels like a thankless task. And if 'Ted' has given audiences some laughs and distracted them from the outside world for an hour and a half, then all power to it. But for me - not a fan of 'Family Guy' by any yardstick - it was just a one-joke crass-fest and an extremely pointless one at that. That one joke being: "it's funny because a children's toy is swearing and fucking hookers!" A child gets punched in the face. People poo on stuff. Every race, creed and mental illness is casually mined for shock humour - with zero satirical intent or apparent meaning. If that sounds like your idea of a good time, and if I sound like a massive snob by saying this, then clearly you'll have more fun with it than I did.

I laughed twice - though I can't remember at what - and, for what it's worth, I like the initial premise: a classic 80s kids movie wish fulfilment fantasy taken to its horrendous conclusion. Yet otherwise it left me cold. The cast is solid, MacFarlane's direction is assured and the CGI bear works well with his surroundings - but that's about the best I can say for it.

Superhero Trailer Special: 'The Dark Knight Rises' and 'The Amazing Spider-Man'

I haven't been updating here a lot recently, for several reasons. I've become slightly addicted to Marvel comics in the wake of 'The Avengers', for a start. Then there's the fact that Football Manager Handheld is now out on Android, which means I spend most of my time glued to my recently acquired tablet pretending to manage Portsmouth (for some reason). I've also been helping to write the programme for a European festival happening within the next two months, so that's taking all the time that isn't spent doing the other two things.

I saw George Lucas' 'Red Tails' yesterday but that's under embargo for the best part of a month. So, in lieu of anything else to talk about, I'll do what I always do when there's nothing left to say: I'll post trailers!

Below are the latest 'The Dark Knight Rises' and 'The Amazing Spider-Man' trailers followed by a bit of shallow chitchat filler. Yes, I'm obsessed with comic book superheroes at the moment, but then so is "the industry" at large. 'The Avengers' looks set to break that billion dollar mark during its run - it opens in the US today having already achieved a significant chunk of that milestone after a week playing internationally - so this summer look set to be dominated by the costumed hero more than any in memory.

Anyway, here's the third trailer for Christopher Nolan's third Batman movie: 'The Dark Knight Rises':



These Nolan Batman trailers - like anything else - lose impact viewed on a computer screen, as I found when I saw the previous trailer projected in IMAX in front of 'The Avengers'. There is an understated quiet to the way they are marketing this movie to date that benefits from the big screen treatment, pulling you into this world the way only a darkened room and a massive screen can. It's with this in mind that I say I'm not exactly over-enthused by this latest peek at the culmination of Nolan's trilogy, viewed at home and in daylight. But I'm not on the whole discouraged.

'The Dark Knight' is one of the best films of the last ten years and - prior to Marvel's latest - the last film to really excite me with its action scenes, so I'm sure 'Rises' will be (at the very least) good. But Bane as the main villain? That's not exactly inspiring, despite the presence of Tom Hardy, though Anne Hathaway is always good value which should make Catwoman interesting.

As for the trailer itself, it's hard to escape the feeling that they're now throwing all the major set pieces at us: the football field sinking into the ground, the mid-air hijack of (presumably) Wayne's plane, and the destruction of a bridge - though each of these moments looks excellent, let's hope there are some surprises left for the final film. Intriguingly, there is still nothing here overtly showing off Liam Neeson reprising his character from 'Batman Begins', so perhaps there's a whole side to this movie we still know nothing about. I hope so.

Also, the flying vehicle at the end of the trailer (as previously glimpsed in fleeting shots of the previous promo) looks decidedly un-Nolan. These Batman films have been all about stripping the series of fantasy elements (in the comics Batman has some truly weird villains) and going "real" and "gritty" with it. Yet this crazy flying car thing is clearly not of our reality. Taken along with rumours of the Lazarus Pit being used as a plot device, along with the possible resurrection of Neeson's Ra's al Ghul, could this mean Nolan's Batman is heading in a slightly less determinedly realistic direction?

Next up, Marc Webb's 'The Amazing Spider-Man' AKA 'The Pointless Reboot Nobody Asked For':



I'll lay my cards on the table from the off: I didn't like Marc Webb's last film, '(500) Days of Summer', at all. Smug, charmless, contrived, high on its own farts. Rubbish. I also don't see why 'Spider-Man', as established so well on the screen by Sam Raimi, needs a "re-boot" when it's so recent. 'Spider-Man 3' wasn't so bad that we all need to start again and find out who Peter Parker is, and see him get bitten by the spider, and see Uncle Ben get killed all over. That said, I do like Andrew Garfield and think he could do great things with the iconic role.

In this trailer we get a glimpse of Garfield as Spidey from the comic books, as the jokey, wise-ass. Him taunting the car thief about his small knife is funny and is the first real indication that this movie could work. However... everything else we've been shown so far is horrible.

Why is this movie all about Peter Parker trying to learn the truth about his parents? Since when was that a major preoccupation of Spider-Man? And his new suit looks so ugly: garish and over-designed. And, worst of all, the film's villain - the Lizard (Rhys Ifans) - looks appalling both in terms of design (where he looks more like a dinosaur than any previous incarnation of the comic book character) and in terms of the shoddy CGI. It's a far cry from the motion captured excellence of the Hulk in 'The Avengers'. And therein lies the film's biggest problem.

Nolan's Batman trilogy is its own thing, and whilst journalists will inevitably measure its success against that of Marvel's team-up monster hit, tonally and in terms of how it handles the subject matter it's likely to appeal to a different audience (albeit with a sizable overlap). Spider-Man, on the other hand, is a colourful Marvel hero and this film will (by the looks of things) suffer from comparison to either film - especially as it aims to take on an amount of Nolan-esque "gritty". It looks as though 'The Amazing Spider-Man' won't equal the escapist thrills and laughs of 'The Avengers' whilst also failing to convince those who hunger for increased realism and "darkness". In short, it'll please nobody. Then again these sub-zero expectations could see it become a very pleasant surprise.

I'll naturally still go and see it, but that's because I'm increasingly a Marvel comics fanboy. But boy do I wish Marvel owned the cinematic rights to this and several other flagship properties (Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil), as they have really lead the way in terms of making book-accurate super hero movies that are neither excessively camp nor po-faced.