2013 - A Boring Odyssey

Partial Education Presents

2013 - A Boring Odyssey

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

After Earth

Oblivion

Pacific Rim

Elysium

and Ender's Game

Sci-fi faced a massive problem in 2013. Though it had it's big sequels, most notably Star Trek Into Darkness, there were a number of new properties making their way to the screen, some looking to possibly start a franchise, others not. The problem was that they all looked a little boring and, as a result, a number of them didn't do as well as hoped. The issue came from the trailers not selling the films particularly well, but a bad trailer doesn't always add up to a bad film. In the same way that trailers are capable of making bad films look good, they're also capable of the opposite. So, I decided to embrace the potential inflictions of narcolepsy and sit through the five most notable ones.

I always make a point of checking out M. Night Shyamalan's films, despite the general consensus that he hasn't made a decent one in years and my own opinion that he's only made one worth bothering about (obviously, The Sixth Sense). After Earth was different though, as it was the first of his films that I had no desire whatsoever to watch. It didn't even seem to have the unintentional amusement of The Last Airbender on it's side. Sitting down to watch it, my suspicions were soon confirmed. The thing with it is that there isn't one single area to point the blame at. From the painful acting (particularly the two leads), to the unimaginative look and the script that sounds like it's suffering from a bout of scientific tourettes, it all congeals together to create an experience that's nothing short of arduous. Shyamalan is blatantly a director for hire, seemingly providing name value to the director's chair, but then serving to present us with the Smith Family Chronicles. As father and son Kitai and Cypher, Will and Jaden Smith find themselves crash-landing on the now uninhabitable Earth, leaving Kitai to venture through the hazardous, creature-strewn lands in an attempt to launch a distress beacon. Jaden's performance in particular is terrible, putting on a grating accent and mistaking petulance for determination. That doesn't let his Dad off a career worst performance, but it does provide Will with something to hide behind. As for the creatures, they are wholly uninteresting and nothing else is there to provide the film with a sense of threat. Each one disappears almost as soon as they've appeared, meaning that there's no real sense of true danger from any of them. Also, though the final battle is foreseeable, it's not a particularly appealing one, giving you very little reason to sit around other than to say you survived through to the end. Being bad in a way that's boring, rather than entertaining, this is Shyamalan's worst film and it suffers it's final irony in the end credits. When the main cast and crews' names all appear showered in gold, you can't help but feel like you've just been showered in something else.

ONE out of five

There's an alarming sense that director Joseph Kosinski isn't far away from referring to himself as a 'visionary' (that dreaded point where a director's head finds a way to place itself somewhere uncomfortable). So focussed is he on technical creation that Oblivion forgoes a decent plot, interesting characters and entertaining action scenes in favour of Kosinski spreading out his pallet of white, grey or desolate in a way that he considers beautiful. In a world that has been long abandoned (yes, again), Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough are two of the few humans left on Earth, performing the world's longest maintenance job. All the while, the rest of the human race reside in a giant ship headed for Titan where they will take their new residence. In other words, they've remade WALL-E and forgotten to give it a credit. There's even a part where Cruise gets excited about a plant. He's on autopilot here, playing the same hero he usually plays, but reigning himself in on his usual stunt-loving antics because they've decided more scenes of him reminiscing would be preferable. As the object of Cruise's reminiscing, Olga Kurylenko adds nothing to the film other than standing there waiting to reveal the major twist of her character and then going back to just standing there. Riseborough is decent though, rapidly joining the long list of actors unable to find films that are as good as they are. However, the biggest problem really is Kosinski. His focus on realising his imagination has apparently blinded him to the fact that his imagination is comprised of amalgamated scenes from other superior films. Meandering ponderously through the already sparse story, his rare moments of excitement are squandered (there's a shootout in the dark, meaning you see nothing). When the twist arrives, it falls into two elements, one predictable and one less so, but it's hard to get invested in the repercussions of it because Kosinski has forgotten to present us with characters that we give the remotest damn about. Oblivion isn't After Earth bad, but when the trailers presented the film as being boring, it turns out they were just being honest.

TWO out of five

The idea of humans in robots fighting giant lizard-like creatures is hardly an original one. Let's face it, you may as well call it Mighty Morphin Power Rangers VS Godzilla, but despite marketing campaigns that indicated otherwise, I always knew this would have something up it's sleeve, if only because of the presence of Guillermo Del Toro. Turns out I was wrong. Though Pacific Rim is helped along by some genuinely fun fight scenes and some seriously top notch special effects, it's disappointing to find the same director who gave us the likes of Pan's Labyrinth on such unimaginative form. The script (also written by Del Toro) is utter dross, complete with characters and lines recycled from many films previous. Effectively, monsters have risen from a portal at the bottom of the Pacific ocean and the humans have built giant robots that will face them. The acting is nothing to write home about either. Most are competent, but lack anything that's going to stick in the memory for too long. One exception is Rinko Kikuchi, who is excellent in a female role that involves neither romance nor taking her clothes off. The other exceptions, for the wrong reasons, are Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as a pair of gratingly annoying scientists, providing the comic stress, as averse to relief. I'm also feeling the need to note Idris Elba, who may do well in his role on the whole, but delivers one of the worst attempts at a rousing speech since Keira Knightley's in the third Pirates Of The Caribbean film. In the end, Pacific Rim has it's fun moments, but never achieves anything higher than that and drags horribly between the surprisingly rare action sequences. Del Toro has made worse films (step forward Mimic), but he's never been so commercially soulless as he has here.

TWO out of five

The weight of expectation weighs heavily on many films, be it through the love for a prior film in the series or for the expectation on the filmmaker's. With Elysium, all the expectation lay on it as Neill Blomkamp's Hollywood debut, following the excellence of District 9. So, to get straight to the point, if you watch Elysium expecting something that ranks anywhere near District 9, you will be disappointed. It's not awful, but is merely good. Set in a future where Earth has become more and more polluted, the rich live in Elysium, a utopian society floating above the Earth (yes, again) in which all disease is curable. Meanwhile, the poor are left to live on Earth, in which they toil away to meet the needs of the rich that have left them for dead. It's fairly standard "all rich people are evil" fare, but does come with some exciting moments. Sadly though, a lot of the quirkier aspects from District 9 have been stripped away and Elysium often seems like a reigning in of Blomkamp's style, in favour of meeting the spectacle that would be expected of it's higher budget. Acting is solid to excellent, with Matt Damon making a good hero, although it does at times become more like a Matt Damon performance than it does an actual character. Sharlto Copley is a lot of fun, despite his straying into some serious overacting (quickly becoming the theme of his career). Meanwhile, Jodie Foster is always excellent, but her performance is hindered here by some unforgivably bad dubbing on her dialogue. That voice is coming from somewhere, but it is not her mouth at that time and place. Though the concept works, a predictable plot and cookie-cutter style renders Elysium solidly pedestrian and rarely kicks into that gear that will fill you with the most basic level of excitement.

THREE out of five

As I said, all of these films were ones that I personally felt looked boring and unappealing. Standing way above them all though was Ender's Game, despite recommendations of the story from people who had read the books. The simple fact was that nothing about this film made it look remotely interesting. A child prodigy is picked to lead a space fleet. Great. Why should I care? Turns out Ender's Game is one of the best science fiction films of recent years. A slow start doesn't bode well, but this turns out to be a good thing as the film reveals itself to be a slow burner. The child prodigy in question is Asa Butterfield as Ender, who is taken into training by Harrison Ford's Colonel Hyrum Graff, as they prepare to fight an incoming alien invasion. Satirical bite is established early, as it is revealed that child warriors are being trained through the use of video games and the result has been a growing desensitisation towards death and taking lives. The worrying nature that this is going to be biased sensationalism is completely thrown away, as a true gut punch of a finale vilifies only the humans. It's an absolutely brilliant final twist that will leave any adrenaline you may feel completely sapped from you, but is all the better for it. There are still some flaws though. The nature of the film involves a lot of training sequences that lack some excitement, mainly due to not much going on. You never get a sense of anything happening outside of the main action and, as a result, these sequences feel lazily sparse. If they were saving it for a showstopping finale, this would be fine, but, for entirely justifiable (and spoiler-filled) reasons, this isn't really the case. Also, though Butterfield and Ford are both great, some other characters do feel under-utilised, namely all the female ones. Viola Davis all but disappears by the halfway point and Hailee Steinfeld just doesn't have much to do, a shame when you consider the potential she showed in True Grit. This isn't going to destroy her career, but taking on too many roles like this won't help it. Abigail Breslin also gets sidelined, but her wooden acting in her first scene makes that feel like a good thing. Mostly though, Ender's Game is great and is the beginning to what should have been an excellent franchise. I use the past tense because the shocking marketing meant that not enough people went to see it and this franchise is pretty much dead in the water. Meanwhile, Pacific Rim's getting a sequel. Good times.

FOUR out of five

Next Time (31st July)

The wheat from the chaff