Month: March 2025

Hello, Halo!

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Movies, Television, VideogamesLeave a comment

ImageHalo Season One (2022), Season One (nine episodes), 4K UHD

I was so very pleasantly surprised by this. Mind, it took nearly two years for me to finally watch my 4K set, having bought it in a fortuitous Amazon sale in 2023.: I put the delay actually watching it down to the mixed reaction the series received, with fans of the videogames critical of changes and casual audiences being bemused by the lore. Personally I rate the original Halo game as one of the very best videogames ever made; its a game that had a huge impact on me – I was there buying an Xbox and copy of Halo on launch day, excited by the 10/10 that the game had received when reviewed in Edge magazine.

Let me pause a moment: that was back in 2001. So much has changed since then. I used to love Edge magazine in its heyday; it was expensive, but had the quality and editorial authority of something like  Cinefex magazine. A 10/10 review… well, largely unheard of, reserved for only the very best. And Halo lived up to the hype. Other than its graphics (inevitably dated, but no doubt another remake will surface) it holds up as well as ever- I think its the videogame equivalent of a classic movie that just doesn’t get old. But thinking about me buying a new console on Launch Day, reading a magazine every month, that all seems like some other life now. I miss the innocence, the excitement, of those days.  These days Edge magazine is a shockingly poor shadow of itself (I glance at the odd copy if I ever see it on a rack somewhere, but its horrible and cheap-looking now and I haven’t bought it in several years), Cinefex sadly ceased publication years ago and videogames are pretty much tired corporate money-making machines these days. Its like comparing a 1970s/1980s copy of 2000AD and seeing what it is today; everything changes, and seldom for the better.

But back to this Halo series. Now, speaking as that guy in 2001 who loaded up the game on his shiny new console and was having his mind blown and eyes melted by that gigantic Ringworld stretching high overhead as I disembarked from my crashed scape pod onto this alien, artificial world…well, I would never have believed anyone could ever translate that into a convincing film, never mind TV series. Just the hardware alone; the Master Chief’s Mjolnir armour, the Warthog, the Covenant (Elites/Grunts/Jackals), its all there. I have to confess to such a genuine kick gotten out of just sitting back and watching the first episode and seeing elements from that videogame brought so convincingly to life. People can be so blasé about it these days, we are so used to CGI effects and high-end production values but its… well, sometimes its pretty amazing.  We forget how lucky we are, these days, and its too easy to dismiss all the magic that film-makers can do. Speaking as that 2001 version of myself, I can lose my mind watching something like Halo.

Imagine if someone ever has the budget and ability to really bring Judge Dredd to the screen someday- that Dredd film from 2012 (was it really so many years back?) was great but severely hampered by its budget. When I watch something like this Halo series its so tempting to imagine… I mean all bets are off these days, you just need the money and artistic integrity to do it as authentically as possible; I’m not talking about whatever the modern-day Judge Dredd strips are doing now, haven’t read it in years, I’m talking the original John Wagner/Carlos Ezquerra/Brian Bolland/Mick McMahon era when the strip was all punk and sardonically funny. Someone will one day make a new Judge Dredd, whether it be a film or TV show.  It could be great. Well, one hopes. Some things just never happen, though- I’d have thought after the success of Game of Thrones the first thing on the cards from some rival streamer would be some sophisticated, high-end Conan the Barbarian series. What are the execs doing?

But, er, back (again) to this Halo series. I thought it was great, mostly; sure, some things don’t work so well, and there’s a certain character and sub-plot that was so nauseating and boring it almost killed it all for me, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. I don’t mind the Master Chief’s helmet being removed, you can’t make a show with the main character hidden behind a helmet; even Judge Dredd… it might work for videogame like Halo in which the player has agency, or in a comic like Judge Dredd where the character is as much an icon as a person, but in a live-action drama… eventually it has to come off, surely, and show the man beneath and delve into what makes him tick. Okay, I’ll likely  get shot down for such heresy, but that’s what I think. You just have to be faithful to the character, you can’t just cut to Sylvester Stallone being Sylvester Stallone- it has to still be Dredd. Karl Urban could have done it; he could have doffed that helmet in the 2012 movie and it would have been fine.

I keep drifting off to Judge Dredd.. anyway, the Master Chief removes his Spartan helmet in Halo and its fine, Pablo Schreiber is great, and the backstory the show develops for him proves an interesting mystery unravelled over the first-season episodes. Likewise the other Spartans in his team; they all benefit from taking those helmets off and being less archetypes and more, well, human. It enables the drama.  After all, that’s what this is, a drama, not a videogame. It can’t simply be lots of shooting and blowing things up.  Might work for a videogame, but over nine episodes of a TV show (or a two-hour movie, for that matter) that would quickly get boring (someone please just tell Zack Snyder). The first episode of this season actually proves this- there is a substantial action sequence that feels like fan-service as it pretty much visualises, beat for beat, the main gameplay of the game; visually its impressive but there’s no weight to it, no drama. It means nothing. In some ways, its a bad opening gambit but I can understand why they did it; it was an attempt to get the core fanbase on board.

Once the show properly gets going it does so with a narrative that seems to have annoyed some of the fanbase; it teases the games iconic Ringworld with (eventual) glimpses that are incredibly impressive, but that’s all we get. The show-runners were obviously playing the long game here, which is fine if they got the four or five seasons that they possibly planned for, but foolish if they only got one season (or two, as is the case here). I haven’t seen season two of Halo yet so I don’t know if we get there during that season. This is what is so problematic for shows with a long-form, multi-season arc: the journey is worthwhile if we get there, but frustrating if we don’t.

For myself, I largely found it very engaging, featuring the world and characters of Halo but telling a different story to what we know from the game/s. Which is perfectly fine. I think the successive games expanding the lore of the universe became increasingly disinteresting, so slavishly attending to all that would have been a negative in my book.  I really enjoyed the series and look forward to getting hold of season two – albeit with trepidation regards how that ends, alas (damn it, these shows getting cancelled before they complete their multi-season arcs never gets less frustrating).

Three more REH stories

On By ghostof82In Books, Robert E HowardLeave a comment

ImageThe Girl on the Hell Ship, Ship in Mutiny, Desert Blood

Yes, continuing my intention to re-read as much of my REH collection as I can this year, I’ve read three more stories- albeit these were no great demand on one’s time, as each were only about twenty pages long. These are part of the “Wild Bill” Clanton series of yarns that Howard wrote for the pulp Spicy Adventures, stories that were a sexier/seedier alternate to his popular Sailor Steve Costigan tales but certainly in the same vein and setting. Stories that lean less on fisticuffs and adventure, and more into heroines in various stages of undress, often caught in passionate clinches with distinctly red-bloodied males during desperate, life-and-death escapades in exotic climes. The Girl on the Hell Ship and its sequel, Ship in Mutiny,  are stories of the ship The Saucy Wench sailing the South Seas with sailors searching for fortune, tropical islands (with savage natives), and passionate women of dubious repute catching the lecherous eye of brutish rogues. In my minds-eye I picture something akin to the SS Venture and its crew from the 1933 King Kong movie, with heroine Raquel O’Shane similar to that film’s Fay Wray, albeit caught in rather more risqué situations than being captured by a giant ape. Desert Blood, as its title suggests. moves Clanton wholly inland to an Arabian adventure which forgets poor Raquel (obviously ditched at some earlier port) but maintains the skullduggery and exotic women with scantily-clad schemer Zouza and the fiercely passionate Aicha.

Sure, these are certainly lesser Howard, but they are good fun nonetheless, demonstrating Howard’s skills as a master storyteller, and what they lack in complexity they make up for in fast-pasted, rollicking adventure.  As usual with Howard’s stories, they are rather politically incorrect in places, and there’s some questionable racial stereotyping, too, but one has to bear in mind that they are a product of their time: its a sobering thought that over the next decade, Howard’s stories are all closing in on being a century old now. 

But what was Howard doing, writing (tame as they seem today) such tawdry tales for the rather disreputable  Spicy Adventures pulp magazine? 

Its no accident that some of these stories are amongst the last Howard ever wrote. By late 1935, some of Howard’s regular pulps had folded, and with his mother’s health worsening and bills increasing, he had to find new markets for his writing. Around this time, Harry Donenfeld, a disreputable character by all accounts, launched a series of pulp magazines containing ‘spicy’ stories stressing the sex element to titillate readers. Pulp magazines in general were already deemed trashy and sneered at, and this line of pulps –Spicy Westerns, Spicy Detective, Spicy Mystery etc only doubled down on that, but they sold- as they say, sex sells.

I suppose its hard to describe even the best Howard stories as ‘sophisticated’ but certainly these are about as far removed from that as one could imagine. Howard was clearly writing this stuff out of necessity and as quickly as possible (in a letter to Lovecraft Howard noted that the stories were limited to 5,000 words and the sort of yarn that was undemanding to write- “if they reject it, you’ve only wasted a day or so.“). 

While I’d read most of these stories many years ago in the 1983 Ace books paperback She Devil (currently in a box somewhere in my loft), those versions were as printed in the pulp magazines. The versions printed here in the REH Foundation Press’ Spicy Adventures collection are from surviving carbons and drafts which, while still tame by modern standards are stronger than even those ‘spicies’ allowed – its clear that the editor had to tone down some of Howard’s text for publication.  I must confess – maybe shocked is the wrong word, but I have been surprised by some of the content in the unedited versions here. That being said, there’s a curious charm and humour in how, just as passions rise to a crescendo (“the soft white gleam of naked flesh in the mellow light made his head swim”), Howard always ‘cuts’ to a post-coital moment shortly after (“some time later the girl squirmed blissfully in Clinton’s arms”), so as ensure the story was fit for publication even in something as tawdry as a ‘spicy’ magazine, while tactfully reserving intervening details to the reader’s imagination. Its all a tease, and Howard is a cheeky master at it here.

Happy Anniversary, Blog

On By ghostof82In Life!5 Comments

Well its an anniversary day today folks- my blog here at WordPress is 13 years old today. I suppose that means that its now into its ‘terrible teens’ years when it becomes all moody and irrational, at the mercy of wild hormones: “I HATE you, Christopher Nolan!”/”Nobody understands this blog!”/”The Crow remake is better than the original!” etc.  So maybe readers into this 14th year will be able to forgive any wild excessive statements and opinions  and bizarre references to Goth music or whatever.

1,960 posts, including this one. Imagine that.

13 years, though. I don’t know where those 13 years went. I’d actually been blogging for several years before, over at the much-missed Film Journal community, which in hindsight was really pretty special. Blogs were busier and noisier then- I would see several comments on many posts,  blogging had a more social, sense-of-community feel to it. Its not the same now- there’s been a steady decline – maybe its just a WordPress thing but I think most folks have moved on, just as they did from magazines etc. These days I hardly get any comments at all. Its all rather quiet these days.

I think the Internet still felt new back when I started blogging, and social media in its infancy. People used to write, read and comment on blogs much more than they do today. These days its all second-fiddle to YouTube videos where strange people can shout strange things about pretty much anything, and maybe earn ridiculous money performing on reaction videos (pleasure from watching people watch/react to films or tv shows is still the damnedest thing I can never figure out; I’ve often considered shooting a mock-reaction video claiming to have never even heard of Star Wars and watch the 1977 film aghast at having missed Episodes 1 -3 and utterly lost at what is going on).  Never fear: I really can’t see a Ghost of 82 channel ever appearing on YouTube. I’d have to wear a mask or something and disguise my Midlander accent.

YouTubers will no doubt argue otherwise, but I think writing a blog takes more time, thought and effort both to write and also to pay attention to and read, so it works both ways. Its easy to pop a YouTube video on the telly and half-watch in the the background of doing something else. Blogging makes more of a demand for both writer and reader, and often for much less reward. It takes considerable discipline to keep one going; we’ve all got better things to do with our time than write about something we watched or read the other day. Hmm, that almost makes it seem noble, like a vocation, almost.

It can be very rewarding, mind, and  think it can be a hard habit to break, although over the years there have been many fine bloggers who have called it a day, and I do miss them, there were some good guys out there discussing books, videogames, films, television, comics. I sometimes think back on them and wonder where are those bloggers now (probably on YouTube, ha ha). The difficulty finding available time to write always seems to be an issue,  Real World problems, work, personal crises, relationships etc all impinge on our time and something has to give, and many, better bloggers the world over have inevitably decided that their blog has to go.  I’m not there yet.

Gene Hackman: not the last, alas

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Favourite Films, Life!, MoviesLeave a comment

ImageOver the past several days I have, as I’m sure most of you have, too, absorbed the news of Gene Hackman’s passing and the subsequent updates regards what has been learned/surmised of his last weeks/days; it has the feel of something out of a horror movie, and an end that Hackman did not deserve. Life can be so very unkind.

The weekend after the news broke, I rewatched what is probably his most critically acclaimed and most popular film, The French Connection.  In it, Hackman plays a pretty contemptible detective, and I recall that Hackman himself on his first day of filming had sudden misgivings regards the role, suggesting to the films director, William Friedkin, that perhaps it was a bad idea and he should leave the production. Friedkin convinced him otherwise, and the rest is history.

Hackman’s performance in The French Connection is a perfect example of his strengths as an actor; a magnetic presence on camera, and an actor who didn’t particularly seem to care about being sympathetic, or liked by the audience or concerned about looking good onscreen. He didn’t have the fragile ego that so many actors have that needs to be stroked and encouraged. I cannot imagine any other actor of his generation who could have played Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle so convincingly or without the constant feeling of it being a calculated ‘performance’. It just feels real,  something true of many of the parts he played.

Several weeks before, I had watched Hackman in another genuinely great performance, in a film made just a few years later –what a decade of film the 1970s was!– in The Conversation, it having being newly released on 4K disc (I waited for the non-tatbox edition, ‘natch). I love that film, I’ve watched it several times over the years and there is always something hypnotic about it; the mix of image, sound effects, music, and of course, Hackman’s singular performance of a private man who excels at spying on others and eventually caves in to paranoia.

I could go on regards Hackman and his films- his Lex Luthor in the Superman films a particular favourite of mine, but what I wanted to write about here was a thought I had after Hackman’s passing. The sense of surprise, loss and end of an era is substantial, but another, related observation was that, well, Hackman won’t be the last. There are actors from his generation of American film who are also getting old and… well, I don’t want to sound like the Grim Reaper here, but Time takes its inevitable toll on all of us. It just occurred to me though that, well, when the likes of Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly died, they were actors from a different generation than mine, stars of old films I had only a passing connection to (although in most cases, I would later grow more familiar with their work and appreciate it more). The likes of Gene Hackman, though, feel different. These are actors from films I grew up with.

Clint Eastwood is 94. Robert Duvall is 94, William Shatner is 93, Robert Redford is 88, Jack Nicholson is 87, Dustin Hoffman is 87, Al Pacino is 84, Harrison Ford is 82, Robert De Niro is 81… again, not wanting to seem like the Grim Reaper here, but you know…

There is a frequent argument, and one I feel is well warranted, that films were better in ‘the old days’ and its a sad reflection of the passing of time that the ‘old days’ is not necessarily the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s, but most likely now the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s. Its a sobering, frequent shock to me when I read that I film I saw and loved in the cinema is now 50 years old (Jaws) or 40 years old (Witness, Legend...). Films seem rather different now, certainly compared to those days- I doubt that Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America would be made today (it was difficult enough for him to get it made, back then) or Paris, Texas or… well, the list is endless. If it doesn’t feature superhumans in capes and spandex or giant robots/monsters or amazing stunts/explosions or an existing IP to reboot/remake, it seems it doesn’t get made. Okay, that’s a sweeping generalisation, but the industry has largely changed, and the films that Gene Hackman starred and shone so brightly in are largely the kind of films not made anymore.

Consequently, the next generation of actors, the likes of Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks etc, don’t all seem to have the kudos of, say, the earlier generation of actors who are slipping into octogenarian status and beyond. Not necessarily their fault of course, they can only act in the films that get made. But I also get the feeling that, well, maybe films aren’t as culturally important as they used to be. Times are changing and streaming… well, it seems that even ‘event’ movies are getting swallowed up by streamers (The Electric State cost $320 million?) and I constantly feel that films are getting more disposable (switch on the telly, watch it on Netflix, then forget it) thanks to the streamers, and that some films being locked behind streaming paywalls (Star Wars/MCU movies on Disney+) restricts access and, correspondingly, their pop-culture impact. Remember the summer of 1989 and Tim Burton’s Batman?

I just have the feeling that the likes of Gene Hackman’s generation of actors are possibly the last to really have the gravitas and importance that they have. Maybe its just me being older and recalling a time when films were harder to see, when cinema trips were more important, classic and new films broadcast on television over Christmas were an event/highlight that just made the festive Holiday more special (I can vividly remember the Christmas that 2001: A Space Odyssey was first broadcast in the UK). The world is changing so much now, and actors now will never have the weight and importance of the likes of Gene Hackman and his contemporaries.

Space Witches versus the Cosmic Wizard*

On By ghostof82In Television2 Comments

ImageDune: Prophecy Season One (2024), Six Episodes, HD

Well, I finally finished Dune: Prophecy at long last. After its problematic (to say the least) start, the series did improve as it progressed but was always impaired by fundamental issues. Partly it was the show’s slavish adherence to the art direction of Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation. Its dull, brutalist, uninspiring and  cheerlessly realistic in a ‘a brick is a brick’ kind of way; inherently boring. Say what you like about David Lynch’s flawed 1984 film, at least it looked fairly alien, fantastic, strange, far-future. Which is frustrating; sure, Villeneuve’s film looks fine, but here was an opportunity to show an historical story set in the same universe but in a distant, more colourful time, with its own identity.

Which is the show’s other, related problem- for a series set 10,000 years before the events of Villeneuve’s films, it looks identical- the costumes/uniforms, the spaceships, the décor and fashions, etc. It suggests a cultural paralysis, an utter stagnation in human development; a novel take on the future, I suppose. Maybe it should be applauded for making the future utterly pointless, forever boring..

Meanwhile, the plot itself, once it has extricated itself from all the lore and mumbo-jumbo politics is surprisingly (?) mundane; only cementing how much the series feels very ‘Game of Thrones in Space’; lots of figures talking in imposing rooms, scheming, planning, sometimes having Great Sex etc. Some of the casting is as unambitious as the storyline, familiar character actors (one or two from Game of Thrones, even) and even managing to waste Polly Walker in a pointless cameo when she should have been a lead. Its always frustrating to see good actors relegated to small or thankless roles- like Mark Strong, for instance, who plays the ineffectual weakling Emperor Javicco Corrino, a character so insipid that after a few episodes he becomes endlessly irritating, bullied and manipulated by his wife. Why did they do that? Why show so many of the men as weak and easily influenced by strong female characters? It happens with the Harkonnen clan; weak males dominated by strong females.  Is the show telling us something? Its about as subtle as a slap in the face.

There’s a suggestion (probably inevitable, considering the season’s opening sequence) of a Terminator-ish, resurgent thinking-machines threat to humanity buried in a multi-season arc which, to be honest, feels less Dune and more, well Terminator, like some rival franchise attempting some hostile  takeover of a rival… but good grief, several seasons of this terminal drivel is hardly enticing. Most alarming of all, for a season that only comprised six episodes, it took its sweet time actually moving, the pacing of the thing was terrible. It feels like  a two-hour TV movie padded in extremis.

And as one might expect, it concludes with a non-ending teasing several open arcs .Its that olde mystery box bullshit narrative, yet again rearing its ugly head. Its this kind of tomfoolery that makes Star Trek: Strange New World’s episodic writing feel so refreshing in comparison. They expect audiences to return to this show in two years time because of rabid curiosity to see what happens next? Really?

*Actually a title like this makes the show sound more interesting, in a sci-fi pulp kind of way; I mean, I’d pay to watch a series featuring space witches battling some cosmic wizard for supremacy in some kind of garish, exciting, fast-paced far-future series of sexy women with supernatural powers at war against some bearded chauvinist pig who has ambitions of becoming Emperor of the universe. Shoot it like some kind of Barbarella meets Flash Gordon and -boom-THATS entertainment!

Demon City

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, Movies, NetflixLeave a comment

ImageDemon City (2025), Dir. Seiji Tanaka, 106 mins, Netflix

Well, this was just nuts. If I described it as a Japanese version of The Crow that’d pretty much sum it up, albeit its far inferior to Alex Proyas’ classic film. The plot is pretty wild: framed for his family’s murder and left for dead after a staged ‘suicide’ is botched, ex-hitman Shûhei Sakata, after 15 years spent in a vegetative state in a prison hospital, is miraculously granted supernatural strength and stamina in order to avenge his family and wipe out the mob of masked  “demons” who have taken over the city. 

Don’t ask how or why he is suddenly granted his powers, this isn’t really the kind of film that deserves that level of scrutiny. The plot, such as it is, is really just a vehicle for all the action sequences that pepper it throughout, and the viewer just has to go along with it.

I’m sure there are war films with lesser body counts than Demon City. Right from the start its cartoonish martial arts violence and gunplay is off the charts, largely impressive stunt work augmented by a deluge of CGI blood. The problem that the film has is that, as one might expect, the violence and stunt work is steadily ramped up as the film progresses with every set piece until it inevitably passes into something akin to parody. Its rather a shame but its certainly a reminder, returning to my reference to The Crow, just how… well, it seems a bit weird writing this, considering how violent the 1994 film seemed at the time, but that film was really quite restrained and grounded, certainly compared to where action films are now (the John Wick films, The Raid films etc). One could be forgiven for thinking there is some kind of arms race going on regarding the stunts and action work in these films over the years. From what I have seen of The Crow‘s 2024 remake, that too is symptomatic of this and likely all the worse for it (for myself, I have no intention of ever wasting time with that ill-advised and unnecessary remake). 

Demon City gets by thanks only, really, to the charm of its lead, Tôma Ikuta, who engenders a modicum of empathy, but nothing really in the same league as Brandon Lee’s haunted Eric Draven. Ikuta tries, but eventually gets sunk by the increasingly preposterous violence. The supernatural elements are enough of a stretch regards suspension of disbelief; the slaughter of dozens, nay hundreds of mob stooges in ever more climactic paroxysms of uber-violence fast becoming rather a source of mirth more than excitement. 

Bore-derlands

On By ghostof82In Amazon Prime/VOD, Movies3 Comments

ImageBorderlands (2024), Dir. Eli Roth, 101 mins, Amazon Prime

Oh dear. Sometimes I have no sympathy at all for Hollywood; sometimes it is absolutely clear that films are no longer art, but rather product cynically assembled to make money.  ‘Never mind the quality, feel the width’ revised to ‘never mind the quality, goggle at the CGI!’.

Clearly, this half-baked nonsense of a movie was designed as a Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off/wannabe -complete with ‘classic’ rock songs littering its soundtrack-  wrapped up in the clothing of a new videogame film franchise, and it blew up in their faces. How bad was that Warner Bat Girl movie that it got shelved but this wreck didn’t?

The sight of a red-haired Cate Blanchett at 50+ years old running around in overblown action sequences (albeit much of the time its surely stunt doubles/CGI doppelgangers) and trying to speak inane dialogue as if it actually means anything, is pretty bizarre and just further proof that todays generation of thespians will sink to any depth to make a buck and possibly jump onto some franchise gravy train.  When in later stages she gains superpowers and sprouts magical glowing wings…. Jezus wept. I was so impressed/enthralled I very nearly reached for the remote’s stop button but figured that after an hour of this dross I ought to man-up and suffer to the bitter end.

On the one hand, its easy to dismiss dross such as this, but it gets more troubling when one considers that this thing cost over $100 million and is so, well, inept and cynical. By all accounts its a lesson in how NOT to make a movie. IMDb’s page on the film has the following piece of trivia:

“Eli Roth shot the film in the summer of 2021 and purportedly finished it in early 2022. However, the film was deemed incomplete due to varying rumors and reasons, including the studio objecting to the first cut’s extreme R-rated violence, Eli Roth’s refusal to return due to studio interference, and poor screen testing. The film lingered for over two years while in post-production. In January 2023, the studio hired Tim Miller to undertake two weeks of re-shoots. These re-shoots wound up being so extensive that Steve Jablonsky was hired to write a new musical score, as Nathan Barr’s original score no longer fit the film.”

Those corporate jokers in Hollywood just haven’t figured out making movies.  Maybe things will settle down once this MCU thing has run its course and comicbooks/videogames have been flushed out of its system, but I’m beginning to wonder if that will ever happen. We have seen so many bad comicbook-inspired movies at this point which have failed horribly at the box-office, and yet Hollywood just can’t let it go. I’m befuddled at the economics of it all, really- how they manage the financing. I suppose they get enough ‘hits’ to cover the losses. but even then, what’s the point of making money if it gets sunk into covering such losses? At what point do investors say “that’s it I’m outta here, I’m putting my money into that water company over in the UK.”

Well, Borderlands was certainly an experience which most of those involved with will be scratching off their CV. I’m just glad it was one on streaming on something (Prime) that I’ve already paid for, rather than an expensive trip to the cinema… Cinemas need all the help they can get, this kind of dross will turn punters off forever.

 

Gladiator II never surprises, although it tries.

On By ghostof82In 4K UHD, MoviesLeave a comment

ImageGladiator II (2024), Dir. Ridley Scott, 148 mins, 4K UHD

In one of the making-of featurettes that are included in this edition’s bonus disc, Ridley Scott boasts that Gladiator II was filmed in only 52 days, like that’s a good thing. Well, I suppose it is a good thing if you want to rush it out the door because you’re 87 years old and conscious that times running out, mindful that you have several more films you want to shoot. One thing Ridley Scott is supreme at is in his ruthless efficiency- he can make ‘big’ films cheaper and quicker than anyone else- not a bad trick in an Hollywood plagued by ballooning budgets and delays/reshoots. But are Ridley’s films any better for being made so quickly?

It pains me to say this, as I have been for most of my life, ever since I first saw Blade Runner back in 1982, and Alien soon after, a huge admirer of his films and work, even the duds like Legend -which I saw twice at the cinema- and have followed his career with huge interest and enthusiasm (if not a bit of frustration, too, at him avoiding the sci-fi genre for so many years following Blade Runner.  I would always recall an interview he did (perhaps it was in Fantastic Films?) where he attested to wanting to be the ‘John Ford of science fiction films’. After so long, I have my doubts, maybe he never said it, but he had such an eye and his films were so beautiful to look at, he made Alien and Blade Runner and Legend look like nothing anyone else had ever done- I remember Someone to Watch Over Me proving a huge shock at the time and I despaired of him ever returning to genre work. And then he ruined the Space Jockey from Alien, so the old adage be careful what you wish for proved true).  

He used to spend three years between films, and its tempting to deduce that they were better for it. Of course it took so long to make genre films back then simply because in those days everything took longer. Optical effects, editing, everything took longer in the analogue days, and so much was in-camera then that can be cheated with CGI and digital tomfoolery now: for one thing, sets had to be bigger, more complete, less virtual. They shot the opening battle sequence of Gladiator II, in which a coastal city is attacked by a Roman armada of ships sailing across the sea, completely in the desert- the sheer audacity of it boggles me. I’m sure many of Ridley’s efficiencies today have come from the technologies he can take advantage of today. But I ask myself that question, again- are they any better for it?

Well, they certainly look different. Ridley shoots his films with multiple cameras now, which even his cinematographer bemoans as effecting the ‘look’ of the films. Having cameras situated wherever Ridley feels the need necessitates ‘flat’ lighting, which doesn’t do the aesthetics -once the prime draw for Ridley’s films- any favours. Gone is the gorgeous artistry of his early films, in which it seemed any shot could be printed and hung on the wall. Sure, his new films still look pretty, and Ridley still has one of the best eyes in the business, but somethings missing.

Maybe his films are better for that though? I know he used to come under fire with his early films for making empty-headed, pretty films, all style, no substance- a cheap shot as time has proven there is more to Blade Runner than simply how it looks. But certainly critics back then, perhaps intimidated a little, certainly distracted,  by the style of Ridley’s films found it an easy argument to make. Taking some of that overbearing cinematography should in theory make them more… palatable for some? I don’t know. I just think they feel lesser for it. I miss the style.

Gladiator II is not, strictly, a bad film. Its certainly a lesser film, compared to the original, and can’t ever shake the feeling that it is redundant, quite unnecessary. I appreciate Hollywood loves sequels and franchises, and would have made a Titanic 2 if it was ever humanly possible, but sometimes things should be left alone. Gladiator II just makes me so thankful that BR2049 – arguably another sequel largely unneeded or unasked for- turned out so much better. That one would have hurt. As it is, the original Gladiator, while a very good and enjoyable film, has never been in my personal list of what I consider to be Ridley’s top five films, so I have a little detachment from this, as regards the disappointment some fans of it have felt. It can’t really be denied that the original film was fine and worked better as a standalone, than the possible launch of a belated franchise-  I’m sure a Gladiator III isn’t impossible, I think Ridley has even mulled it over already.

There are very good things in Gladiator II– Denzel Washington is great, and my Dad would have gotten a kick out of seeing him in this. I believe some have bemoaned the CGI effects work, but I thought it was very good indeed. The film was entertaining, I had a good time with it. But there was this weird detachment from its narrative; events unfold, but I didn’t really feel involved. I never felt ‘inside’ the movie.  There’s a lack of tension; even the arena battles are lacking. Maybe its the pacing, the editing, of it, but I think the chief problem, as so often with Ridley’s films now, is the script. As if the film was rushed into production with a draft that needed more polish.

My biggest gripe is the structuring of the script, which maintains some half-hearted mystery regards who Paul Mescal is playing. I think its that ‘mystery box’ thing again, and it suffers for it. Had the film’s narrative played out chronologically, and the whole anger/resentment/vengeance theme for Mescal’s character been played out organically, then the audience would have had empathy for him from the start (sympathy for him losing his wife offers very little, as she’s only onscreen for a few minutes) Sure, I we can guess what’s going on, but this whole mystery box thing, so popular now (and an irritating mainstay of television series) – its as if the film-makers think the only way to ensure the  audience stays with something is to engage their curiosity, even when its not warranted. Imagine if the original film started with Maximus in captivity and we only learned his backstory of being a General of a Roman army, and his betrayal, in flashbacks during the film. It wouldn’t have worked. It doesn’t work here. Its a fundamental error from which I don’t think the film fully recovers, damaging the main character’s narrative and hence Denzel stealing the show.

(There’s a deleted scene on the bonus disc in which Lucilla uncovers the badly-charred remains of what she thinks is her son, which should have stayed in the film because it answers certain questions regards her certainty that she lost her son, adds a little depth and pathos to her character, and is so short anyway that it would hardly hurt the running time).

So anyway, that’s Gladiator II. Pretty much what I expected.