Bond-arama: No. 0015 The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Too high, right? You think The Man With The Golden Gun should be lower than No. 0015 of 0023? Honestly, that would have been my gut feeling too, until I started to think about the film and how it really compares. And in the end, this is where it belongs. Observe.

Plot Quality: The plot to Golden Gun stands out rather uniquely among the Bond films. The film begins with Bond being pulled off his mission to recover a stolen device that transforms sunlight into highly concentrated energy: the Solex agitator. He’s been removed from the mission because MI-6 has received a golden bullet with Bond’s 007 number on it. This golden bullet means that the mysterious Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the world’s greatest assassin, intends to kill Bond. M suggests that Bond go into hiding. Bond instead decides to track Scaramanga down. This is perhaps one of the strongest ideas to power a Bond film as, for once, the story isn’t about Bond’s duty, it’s about Bond hunting a man to save his own life. This is Bond versus the anti-Bond, mano-a-mano.

As the story unfolds, Bond traces the golden bullet to Macau, where he sees Scaramanga’s mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) collect the bullet. He tries to follow her, but is blocked by the agent sent to assist him, Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland). Bond eventually makes contact with Andres and discovers that she sent the golden bullet to MI-6 because she wants Bond to kill Scaramanga. In exchange, she will give him the Solex MI-6 has been looking for. Bond agrees, but Scaramanga kills her before she can deliver. This begins a chase scene which eventually leads Bond to Scaramanga’s private island where he and Bond hunt each other in an elaborate funhouse Scaramanga has set up to practice his craft. Bond kills Scaramanga, rescues Goodnight, retrieves the Solex, and sails for home.

Honestly, the above is a top James Bond plot. You have a strong villain with extraordinary skill, unlike many of his predecessors who are merely rich. His motive is unique. This is a dark, visceral story of a contest to the death between the world’s two greatest hunters supported by a lean plot that makes sense throughout. You have a strong Bond girl who drives events, exotic settings and even the travelogue feel. These are things the lower-ranking films simply cannot boast, not with their bland or cartoonish villains, their nonsensical or pointless plots, and the indifference with which so many of them were approached. That’s why this film isn’t rated lower.

So why isn’t this film rated higher?

Well, therein lies the problem. For while the structure of this film is fantastic, the execution isn’t. In fact, the film kept undercutting itself. For example, whereas Live and Let Die was a blaxploitation film, this one borrows heavily from martial arts films, yet Moore feels out of place in that environment. This also led to the regrettable decision to have Bond let two young girls do his fighting for him in one scene... something which feels embarrassing; not to mention, the scene is ridiculous as these two small girls kick in the general direction of supposedly trained martial artists only to have them fall down unconscious from blows that would be unlikely even to slow a grown man.

This awful scene then leads directly to one of the worst moments in a James Bond film, as we are reintroduced to Sheriff J.W. Pepper (played by Bufford T. Justice Jar-Jar Binks Clifton James). Pepper is the fat, obnoxious, racist Southern cop from Live and Let Die. Here he’s playing the ugly American on vacation in Thailand as he complains about the “little people” in their “pajamas” and tells us loudly how he does it better in Louisiana. The portrayal is offensive and reeks of anti-Americanism – in fact, this is the third of three films written by Tom Mankiewicz, each of which contains whiffs of anti-Americanism.

The one good thing to come out of this painful scene was an incredible stunt where Bond jumps an AMC Hornet over a broken bridge while doing an aerial twist. The stunt is fantastic... but the filmmakers ruin it by mocking it with a slide-whistle noise.

I think the problem was this. As Lawrence Meyers noted at BH, each Bond film takes on a theme and runs that theme throughout. The theme here was a circus theme. Hence, Scaramanga’s story starts with him shooting an elephant trainer. He uses a mirrored funhouse as a hunting ground. The Solex is hidden in a bag of peanuts. Henchman Nick Nack (Hervé Villachaize) dresses more like a ring master than a servant. They use the Queen Elizabeth as a setting for MI-6, which is built at a diagonal angle. Etc. In effect, they took the absolutely worst possible theme, a comedic circus theme, and they interwove that with the strong, serious plotline discussed above. That’s why this film sits in the middle... its plot deserves to be near the top, but the stupidity from the circus-comedy they interwove with the plot deserves to be near the bottom. Essentially, this is two incompatible films rammed awkwardly together.

Bond Quality: This was Roger Moore’s second Bond film and already there were warning signs. In Live and Let Die, Moore played the role fairly seriously. In this film, the lounge lizard personality he would come to embody began to appear at times. He comes across as less physical and foppish; Moore apparently looks sufficiently strange running that they hired a stunt man to run for him. There are few fights and Bond even lets young girls do his fighting. He seems indifferent or standoffish to the women he encounters too. And he ultimately has a hard time showing that he believes what is happening to his character. This only gets worse from hereon out for him.

The Bond Girl: Maud Adams plays Scaramanga’s mistress. By all rights, she should be the Bond girl here, but she gets killed midway through the film. It is great that her character is the reason for the film, having tried to trick Bond into killing her lover, whom she fears, and being the driver of the stronger portion of the film. That said, like Moore, Adams is a cold fish and does not project emotion or urgency onto the screen. Still, she is adequate and her character is great. The other one is the problem.

The real Bond girl here is Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight. She has been heavily criticized for this film, and deservedly so. She has zero sex appeal or chemistry with Bond. Her character has been described as “an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent.” She is constantly doing things that only happen in sitcoms, like locking herself into the trunk of a car or using her butt to accidentally start a laser. She inhabits the comedic portion of this film and everything about her and the character was the wrong choice.

Villain Quality: Finally, we come to the villain. In a vacuum, Scaramanga is one of the top villains the series has produced. Indeed, even critics who have panned the film have called him one of the best villains in the series. He’s Bond’s equal as an assassin; he has skills, which most of the others don’t. He’s cold blooded and ruthless, yet Christopher Lee also injects joy and likeability into him. He is compelling. He even has the strongest back stories of all the villains. His story begins with him killing a man who killed an elephant he cared for - this is something many people can sympathize with and makes him understandable. But from this, he finds he has a talent for killing and he decides to make use of it. Eventually, he becomes a KGB assassin, but then goes independent and is now considered the best in the world. This is real depth and compares very favorably to the dull misanthropic billionaires Bond usually fights.

He’s also one of the more complete villains. Many of the others seem to have no purpose in life except to plan some scheme and then wait to see if Bond stops them. Scaramanga is different. He’s going about his normal business as an assassin, having been contracted by billionaire industrialist Hai Fat. He has a relationship with Maud Adams. He seems to enjoy life. Bond doesn’t obsess him, which really makes him feel like a “whole character” who has an existence outside the plot.

His weak spots really are the comedic elements that are thrust upon him at times, though he largely inhabits the serious portions of the story. It also seems strange that he kills Hai Fat and takes over his business, as that contradicts his character. I also would have preferred it if he didn’t own a private island, but there seems to be no escaping that in this series at this time... at least it’s not crawling with jumpsuited henchmen! All told, he is a great villain.

What you have here is two films laying on top of each other. The film involving Scaramanga, Bond and Adams is a serious film with a fantastic plot, a solid Bond girl and a great villain, which deserves to be considered a top Bond film. The film involving the other characters is a lousy comedy that mocks the film and deserves to be ranked at the bottom of the Bond films. This combination makes the film much better than it deserves to be, but nowhere near what it should have been. And that is why this film is No. 0015 of 0023.

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Why Only One Type of Racist?

Someone posed an interesting question to me the other day: why are racists always portrayed in films as snarling, one-dimensional neanderthals? You know the types. They're losers who work in manual labor jobs or athletics (e.g. coaches). They're stupid. They spout racist quotes freely to everyone around them. Their families don't respect them. Their kids hate them. Why is that the only type of racist you see on film?

Here's the thing. The world is full of all kinds of people and all kinds of racists. Sure, you have the snarling idiots, but outside of Appalachia or a Black Panther meeting, you just don't find those people anymore. Instead, you find casual racists. These are people, typically liberals, who condemn racists and talk about how not-racist they are and how racist everyone else is. Yet, these people talk condescending about minorities, whom they view as childlike, and they think nothing of whipping out a racist joke at a party because "I'm not racist, I can tell this joke." These people also get racist when things go wrong for them economically: "Why is the government helping them (insert preferred racial epitaph) when we real Americans need help!"

You also have racist professionals. These are people like lawyers (or Harry Reid) who publicly profess disdain for racists, but wouldn't hire a minority on a bet and will whip out all the stereotypes when amongst friends... remember the Duke Brothers from Trading Places? Or how about the liberal artisan, like a fashion designer or movie star, who whips out the n-word when drunk?

Then you have an elite black class who profess all kinds of liberalism, but think nothing of describing interracial marriage and non-black adoption as "racial genocide" and smearing black conservatives in terms that would make the KKK blush. Obama invited some of these to the White House last year. They also falsely scream racism as if it were the phone-a-friend lifeline whenever they start to lose arguments.

If Hollywood really wants to oppose racism, why doesn't it show any of those people? Why only the neanderthals?

Ultimately, I think there are two things going on here. First, the problem with portraying these kinds of racism is that this would implicate most of the liberals I've met... and I'm sure Hollywood liberals are no different. Thus, admitting that people who don't hire blacks, who tell racist jokes, who spout racist stereotypes to their friends and who believe the government should care for "real Americans" first before it cares for minorities even as they profess hatred for racism are actually racists would point the finger at much of the liberal world and probably most of Hollywood. That's no good. Liberals don't do self-reflection.

Secondly, I think there is a fear of being accused of being racist by showing a racist as something other than a monster. Essentially, if you wrote a character who is otherwise charming or funny or likeable, but that character also says or does racist things amongst close friends, then I suspect that the thought-police would come down on you for making a racist out as a nice person. They would accuse you of being a racist yourself, and all kinds of problems would follow. Who wants that?

In some ways, this reminds me of the way portrayals of Nazism have changed in Hollywood. In the 1950s and 1960s, you still saw films with good Nazis. The Great Escape is a classic example. The commander of the camp is a decent man. He doesn't like Hitler or the SS, but he is doing his duty as a German soldier. Today, such characters no longer exist. If you are a German circa-1933-1945, you can be one of three characters: (1) a blood thirty monster, (2) a member of the underground who smuggles Jews to Uncle Gunter's cabin, or (3) a Jew in hiding. I can't think of the last average German from that era Hollywood portrayed as just a normal, decent person. And I think the reason is that all it takes is one member of the hive-mind that is liberalism to decide that you were too nice to an presumed evil group and they will start screaming about you being a Nazi-lover. That's bad press. I think it's the same thing here. Subtlety is lost on the permanently offended and if you make a racist anything other than blatantly evil... why, then you must be saying racists are good people! You're a racist!!!

This is why I think Hollywood only shows racists as monsters even though those racists no longer exist outside the meth industry. I think they genuinely don't want to recognize their own racism and they are afraid that presenting someone who is defined as evil as something less than 100% evil means you are endorsing that evil.

Thoughts?

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Toon-arama: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

by tryanmax
I have very mixed feelings about this film. From the standpoint of a children’s movie, there’s really nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t really stand out from the pack, but there’s a lot to enjoy. I’ve watched this one with my kids many times and I’m not sick of it yet. On the other hand, the film is about video games and was heavily marketed as such. From that perspective, the movie leaves a lot to be desired. It’s from that perspective that I’m going to examine it.

In a nutshell, Wreck-It Ralph is Toy Story with video games, except that the toy/child dynamic is completely reversed. The game characters have no emotional attachment to the players and instead of eagerly awaiting playtime with the children, they refer to what they do as work. And not every one is happy with his job.

Enter Ralph. He’s been the bad guy in a single-screen platform arcade game for 30 years and he’s tired of it. He gets no respect from the other characters in his game, the Bad-Anon support group isn’t helping, and the bartender at Tapper’s is all out of advice. So he decides to strike out into the other video games to reestablish himself as a hero. This, of course, causes all sorts of problems for Ralph and the other characters, and the only way to solve them is for Ralph to be convinced to return to his game.

This is a really great setup for a story with loads of possibilities. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t deliver on any of them. The promise is that Ralph is going to go on his own quest, a central theme of virtually every non-sports video game ever created. The added implication is that this quest will carry Ralph across any number of game genres. This would be a great way to delve broadly, if not deeply, into the realm of video games without alienating non-gamers. As every new location is explained, non-gamers can be brought in to understand the action and, because gamers are accustomed to near-constant exposition, it wouldn’t put them off in the slightest.

This is, in fact, how Ralph handles the location changes. However, it only occurs a small number of times because there are very few locations. And remember how specific I was before about non-sports games? Well, after a brief adventure inside a first person shooter—which is hilariously rewarding for audiences—Ralph quickly ends up inside a racing game and there he spends the rest of the film. The name of the racing game is Sugar Rush, and it is unabashedly cute. Honestly, I love the place, including this infectious bit of J-pop which serves as the game’s theme song. But it’s at this point that the quest angle gets sucked right out of the story.

Up to this point in the film, the audience has been treated to all sorts of characters, gags, situations and puns based on video games in general. Characters die and regenerate. Some move about in a jerky fashion reminiscent of the 8-bit days. Others do things like walk straight against walls without stopping. Most everything works according to video game physics or has a somewhat pixilated aesthetic. And a whole bunch of real game characters make amusing cameos.

All that comes to a stop once inside Sugar Rush. Now everything is based on the features of one (fictitious) game. Sugar Rush is a racing game based on sweets and candy, so now the aesthetic and all the gags involve things like lollipops and donuts. The only thing reminding you of video games anymore is the character Vanillope, a glitch who suffers from pixlexia, that is, she randomly scatters into a mess of pixels from time to time.

Ralph steps into the role of mentor for Vanillope who wants to be a racer. So in his journey to become a hero, Ralph goes from bad guy to sidekick. There’s nothing wrong with that from a narrative standpoint, but it doesn’t really fit with the video game theme. In video games, the protagonist is always the guy doing the doing, so it feels weird to take that role away from an eponymous hero. And in doing so, we’ve moved out of the largely unexplored realm of video games and into the very comfortable realm of underdog sports stories.

In the end, Ralph does save Sugar Rush from a disaster of his own making (the fact is conveniently glossed over, but oh well) so he does earn his hero status. At the same time, it renders most of the events that take place in Sugar Rush, including Vanillope’s race, irrelevant. Vanillope’s story resolves strangely and in a way that most gamers would agree makes her game less interesting. Non-gamers wouldn’t notice, but it is still an odd ending. I won’t dismiss the character development that took place, but the film never promised to be a character study.

I’m not trying to steer anyone away from this movie. Like I said, I’ve enjoyed watching it repeatedly. But if you’re going in as a fan of video games, this movie is only using them as a gimmick. It throws up a bunch of familiar stuff at the start and then quickly dismisses the gamers in the audience altogether.

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The Great (film) Debates vol. 91

We're starting a new season today and we're welcoming Floyd from threedonia! Big round of e-applause! Now for the question. Being a superhero is about perfection. Well, no, not really. And superhero films are faaaar from perfect.

What is your biggest pet peeve about superhero movies?


Panelist: Floyd

I don't know that I have one that really bugs me. From a narrative standpoint some films become too bogged down with multiple villains. Christopher Nolan has handled that well in the Dark Knight films as did Whedon in The Avengers. Other than that I'm just not enough of a fanboy to hate the efforts of most superhero films. In the early days giving them low budgets would drive me crazy even as a kid.

Panelist: T-Rav

It's hardly limited to the superhero genre, but why oh why does there have to be three of everything? It seems to be a rule that the original is okay, the sequel is really good, and the threequel sucks. I realize that Hollywood is out to make more money and not worry about things like this, but is it too much to ask for a little originality, and not fifteen "franchise installment number 3"s per year?!

Panelist: AndrewPrice

Personally, I’m sick of origin stories. They aren’t interesting and that seems to be all we get. We all know who Superman is or where he came from... tell us about his latest adventure, don’t try to teach us what we’ve already seen a million times.

Panelist: Tennessee Jed

Probably, my biggest peeve is there are too many of them? A close second is they keep doing the same guys again, and again (Superman and Batman … give it a rest, Hollywood.) Third peeve is too heavy a reliance on CGI over story, acting, etc. I'd like to see some films about non-super heroes again. Guys like Prince Valiant or Zorro or Sir Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox." Disney was a master at that kind of film.

Panelist: ScottDS

Lately, my biggest pet peeves have been a.) too many movies following the same template, to the point where you can set your watch to them, and b.) city destruction porn, where the heroes tend to do as much damage as the villains.

Comments? Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Why am I reviewing this turd? To deservedly slam Stephen King as a writer and as a director? No. That would be beating a dead horse. To ponder the fate of our greatest thespian, Emilio Estevez? Hardly. I’m reviewing this film for two reasons. First, I want to point out just how idiotic a film can be when no one bothers to think it through. Secondly, I want to point out why this film shouldn’t have been made in 1986, but is now ripe for a remake.

Plot

Written and directed by Stephen King, Maximum Overdrive is the story of what happens when the Earth passes through a comet which brings all the machines in Wilmington, North Carolina to life. The film begins with one machine after another killing the unsuspecting and surprised humans around them. Eventually, with everyone dead or just off screen somewhere, the film settles down on a truck stop where Emilio Estevez works as a parolee who is enslaved to the owner... an old Hollywood trope. Soon, trucks surround the truck stop and demand that the humans fuel them up so they can _____. It’s not explained. To force the humans to work, the trucks enlist a jeep with a machine-gun mount to threaten the humans. Estevez and the others eventually blow up the jeep and escape. As they slip away to an island on a sailboat, we are told that the problem ends when the Russian’s blow up a UFO with illegal space-based nuclear weapons.

Uh... What?

This film sucks in so many ways. Forget King’s utter lack of grace or vision as a director. Also forget the standard liberal insults King lobs... like the oppressive capitalist who treats parolees like slave labor or the Bible salesman named Billy Brett Graham who is also a quasi-rapist and later attacks a child – these are standard King smears. Forget the bad acting and the stilted dialog and the poor effects. Yeah, forget those things. Let’s instead talk about the real problem with this film: King never once thinks anything through.

Look, the premise is hard to swallow in the first place: machines come to life and attack humans. Hmm. How does that work exactly? Machines without brains or emotions suddenly find themselves sentient and they decide they want to kill and enslave the humans for no reason. That’s a tough sell. So when you pick a premise like this, you need to be extra careful to make sure that everything else you do throughout the film is believable. In other words, the harder your premise is to believe, the more careful you need to be to make the action within your scenes feel real or it reminds people of the unbelievability of the premise. Unfortunately, King doesn’t bother.

Indeed, one of the first things you notice is that King doesn’t worry about the laws of physics. For example, he has an electric carving knife attack a waitress even though the knife itself has no ability to move other than to vibrate or hold itself in place. This is like a screwdriver jumping off a table to stab you repeatedly. How does it move without legs or arms? How does it maintain an attack without any mass behind it to allow it to thrush itself through a resisting surface? It can’t, but King doesn’t care. We’re just meant to accept that it can because it’s alive now... as if that explained an obvious violation of the laws of physics. Similar, King violates our disbelief by having the machines do things they are not mechanically able to do. For example, a coke machine starts shooting coke cans out of itself at high speeds despite the lack of any mechanism within it that shoots cans.

These things immediately bring back your other doubts about the overall plot because it makes you realize that King isn’t sure what rules he’s using as a premise for this film. Are these machines come to life or are they supernatural forces which can manipulate the machines in ways the machines could not manipulate themselves? And if they are the latter, why can’t they do more? In fact, the rule King seems to set is that only electrical machines come to life and they can only do things the machines are designed to do. This is why the fuel truck cannot remove its own hoses and plug them into the tanks and why the pumps can’t float over and fuel the trucks. But then a car somehow slams its own hood and the electric knife jumps. And consider the jeep with the machine-gun mount. The gun is not electric in any way, i.e. it is purely mechanical. It’s mounted on a metal poll. To fire it, a human must pull the mechanical trigger. Yet, the jeep can operate it... somehow. So what are the rules? And why can’t the other guns they have work themselves?

This is the problem. Throughout this movie, King repeatedly fails to establish any set of rules by which the machines can operate. And then he keeps violating the few rules he seems to have set down to force his ideas to work. Each time this happens, it either highlights that he has broken his rules, or the lack of rules in the first place, or it calls into question why other things in the film haven’t happened: if X can do Y, then why didn’t the other Xs do Y... and why can’t Z do A, B or C? This would be a problem in any film, but really becomes a problem when the premise is as fantastic as this one: it constantly leaves you saying, “That doesn’t make sense,” which keeps reinforcing your doubts about the premise.

A Reboot, Are You High?

Despite the above, this film is screaming for a reboot. Think about it. This film was made in 1986. At that time, most machines were dumb. Computers were rare and few machines had one... most machines were purely mechanical in nature. Phones still had cords and used analog switches. Cars ran on carburetors and cables (remember “rolling down” your windows)? People weren’t dependent on the power grid for so much of their lives yet. So this film seemed far-fetched. But today, today it would be different. Today, everything is electronic. All those mechanical switches are now electronic and analog has given way to digital. And all the machines around us have brains... some smarter than us. Your phone owns you. You live online. You need the permission of machines to get your news, to talk to your friends, to start your car, to do your job, and even to get through doors. And how powerful are today’s machines? Forget the machine-gun jeep, how about a drone or robotic weapons or cruise missiles?

This is a premise that may have sounded interesting in 1986, but it was too premature. Technology had not yet reached the level that people could credibly believe that they had anything to fear from a revolt by machines. Today, those could be real concerns. If this movie were remade today, it could not only be made much tighter as there are infinitely more (and smarter) machines running our daily lives than there were in 1986, but the impact would be greater because we have become genuinely dependent on our machines... something we all realize and kind of dread. That’s why this film should not have been made in 1986, but should be rebooted today.

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Questionable Bond No. 12

James Bond doesn’t just kill, he kills with style.

Question: "What was Mr. Bond’s coolest kill?"


Scott's Answer: Either Bond throwing the toaster into the bathtub in Goldfinger ("Shocking") or tossing the key into the car in For Your Eyes Only which adds just enough weight to cause it to fall off the mountain on which it had been precariously balanced. Also Bond's first two kills in the opening minutes of Casino Royale. Very well done and a great introduction to a new Bond.

Andrew's Answer: When Bond shoots Professor Dent in Dr. No after calmly watching Dent grab his gun and try to unload on Bond. Without even flinching, Connery says, “That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six.” Then he shoots him. Very cool.

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Oh Oh, Ratings Are Down!

Admittedly, I’m a little worried about our ratings around here. We’re down about 30% in certain key demographics and our advertisers are concerned that we may not be a good investment anymore. So I’ve decided to make a few changes that are guaranteed to turn things around.

(1) We’re going to start having a lot of famous guest writers. I’m thinking washed up actors actor cameos and British singers who will drop by to write about their zany, crime-busting adventures.

(2) Somebody’s long lost father will show up to announce he’s gay... and President of Russia.

(3) We’re going to have more “very special” articles involving wrongfully accused prostate cancer sufferers and kids who accidentally fire guns they found into their parents’ stash of prescription medications. Bring tissues.

(4) The site is going to be having a baby... Commentarama Jr. We might even have twins if the rating don’t pick up before we reach that point. We’ll see how the first one goes.

(5) ScottDS is going to jump a motorcycle over a pool containing a shark with a fricken laserbeam on its head.

All seriousness aside, I’ve been watching a lot of old television and I really have to laugh at so much of what they did. When a show got in trouble, the things above are what they tried to shake things up... it never worked. I guess they still do that to a degree and it still doesn’t work. Interestingly, almost no one tried anything new instead, like coming up with brand new storylines or taking the show in a new direction.

In fact, it’s interesting to me how all these old shows did the same lousy storylines: the amnesia episode, the wrongly accused episode, the tolerance for hippies episode, the gypsy curse, the visiting boy band, the “____” is dying clip-show episode, etc. Look, I get that sometimes storylines are limited and there is very little original left. And I get that the public is most comfortable with the familiar. But I think that the prevalence of shows these days with really unpredictable storylines shows that audiences are much more sophisticated than Hollywood gives them credit for. It’s no wonder these shows died after trying to fake something new by adding new characters or “shocking” moments. Shock doesn’t entertain for much longer than the adrenaline stays in your system. And adding a new character and then repeating the same things you already did before doesn’t make them any newer. There really is no substitute for quality storytelling.

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Welcome to Toon-arama Tuesdays

We’ve decided to dedicate Tuesday’s to Toon-arama! Each Tuesday, we’ll run an article related to the world of cartoons, everything from the classics like the old Disney and Warner Brother cartoons, to their modern brethren the Pixars, to sitcoms like The Simpson’s and tons and tons more.

To me, the classic Disney films are the Holy Grail of cartoons. They were larger than life in so many ways. They were better drawn - whereas Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbara characters walked in perpetual loops, passing over the same five feet over and over, Disney characters had whole worlds to explore. They had depth too. Fred Flintstone did anger. Scooby did scared. The Transformers sold toys. But Disney characters evolved from the start of the story to the end. They learned lessons and became better beings.

Disney did other smart things too. I once read that Disney paid his staff $50 for every original idea they came up with, like shaping the smoke coming from a pipe or having a hippo fly through the air and crash down on a nervous alligator... I love that moment. Disney smartly limited the availability of his films too, to make them something special. They were the first “event films,” and nobody missed those events.

But that doesn’t mean they were my favorites. And that’s the fascinating thing about cartoons. People think of cartoons as “a thing,” in the sense of being all alike – animated, short comedies... for kids. But they really aren’t. Cartoons are as varied as films, if not more so. There are comedies, dramas, action films. There are cartoon versions of literary classics, like The Hobbit. Comic book heroes like Superman and Batman had their animated versions too. The Flintstones is a version of The Honeymooners. Jonny Quest was a spy thriller equal to many James Bond films. Some are musical, like Jabberjaw and Josey and the Pussy Cats or Heavy Metal. Some are adult like Futurama or a lot of anime. In the end, what makes a cartoon a cartoon is that it’s an animated story, that’s it. After that, all bets are off. So join us on Tuesday’s and let’s see where this takes us.

What are some of your favorites?

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Labor Day Holiday Open Thread

We're taking a couple days off for Labor Day. We'll be back Tuesday with our brand new Toon Tuesday. We'll also have someone new joining us on the Sunday Debates. We'll also start our contest with the million dollar prize!* In the meantime, tell us your favorite vacation film.

* Statement is a total lie.

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Liberalism Sucks On Film: Children of Men

“We can learn so much from this film,” said Amanda Tapping on a Sci-Fi Channel promo for Children of Men. Up yours. The only thing we can learn from this film is that liberal films tell the same lies no matter what their supposed premise. Children of Men demonstrates this perfectly. This film is supposed to be the story of what happens when humanity suddenly becomes sterile. But it’s not. This film is a standard liberal rant about racist white Christians who oppose immigration. It just uses the movie plot as a pretext.

What would really happen if humanity suddenly became sterile? Things would probably be pretty nice at first, as a shrinking population would mean less crowding and less competition for jobs. Fewer kids on your lawn. Sure, some people would be sad, but for most, life would continue unchanged. Then the bad effects would hit. A falling population would mean deflation: falling asset values, slowing economy, and fewer jobs. Whole industries would vanish as the young disappear. Soon it becomes hard to find people to do the jobs the young do today, like manual labor... retirement would end. No doubt, there would be a race to automate as much as we could, but as the human population dwindles, those who are left would struggle to fill their basic needs. This would be the point where society would have cohesion problems.

Children of Men doesn’t address any of that however, because that’s not why the film was made. This film was made as a statement against things liberals don’t like, and the science fiction question of sterility is irrelevant to what happens in the film. Indeed, nothing about this film would change even if the premise had been overpopulation, nuclear war, the discovery of immortality or the invention of transporters. This is “the liberal film” hiding behind a veneer of “what if humanity were sterile” and it ignores its veneer just like Elysium ignored the reality of immortality and Total Recall ignored the reality of whatever its plot was supposed to be about. In fact, if you look closely, you’ll find that these are the same movie with each just pretending to have a different premise.

Moreover, everything this film says is twisted propaganda meant to tell you how white Christians are racists and only liberal government can save the world:

● Racist Whites: Throughout the film, there are heavy overtones accusing whites of racism. This should be no surprise as the director has stated he wanted to make a statement about all those rotten Europeans and Americans who don’t want immigrants in their midsts. Let’s debunk, shall we? Whites are the least racist people on the planet. They have opened their countries to tens of millions of immigrants of all races. They let in around three million more each year. They send billions of dollars overseas each year to help improve conditions. They’ve fought wars to save non-whites from oppression. Third Worlder’s don’t do that. Just try sneaking into Mexico from the south and see what happens to you. Think the Asian countries let in other races? They don’t. The Japanese even suggest to parents of half-Japanese kids that they leave the country. What about the Middle East? Do you think they’re tolerant of Jews, Christians, women, the wrong kind of Muslim? Do any of these people help the rest of the world? Hardly.

Yet, this film turns all of that on its head. Here the whites turn to fascism to keep these non-whites out. Why? Because that is what liberals want you to believe whites really want, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The fact that the baby is black and the people trying to kill the mother are white is not an accident either. Said director/writer Alfonso Cuaron: “The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We’re putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that.” Down with whitey. Essentially, this is a racist genocidal-snuff film. Who’s the bad guy here again?

As an aside, one of the real ironies of liberalism, which plays out here again, is that liberal films are typically condescendingly racist. Notice that it takes three of the whitest liberals on the planet to save the helpless black girl with the baby. The list of liberal films that use the racist “Noble Savage” or “White Man’s Burden” trope is a mile long and this one belongs on that list.

● Evil Christians: Speaking of evil, the oppressive government has Christian overtones. Why? Well, because liberals like to think Christians are racist and oppressive. Of course, they pretend that Muslims aren’t oppressive or racist, so they are shown in this film actually protecting the woman and her baby. Let’s debunk, shall we? First of all, you’re an idiot if you think Europeans will turn to a Christian government. Christianity is effectively dead in Europe. And if you think some Baptist who wants to stop you from buying a condom is oppressive, but somehow militant Muslims who kill Jews and Christians, mutilate the genitalia of young girls, blow up schools that teach girls, and go to war with people of every other religion are not oppressive, then you don’t know the meaning of the word and you should STFU. This film wrongly pretends that atheist Europe is actually Christian and then it falsely swaps the traits of Christianity with Islam so it can slander Christians while wrongly idealizing Muslims... because that is what leftists want you to believe.

And again, note that no part of this makes any sense in the context of the movie. Christianity plays no role in the film except as a label. And real-world Christians would protect this woman because they advocate children. They would never try to stop this birth. That’s something militant, atheist environmentalists would do... but again, the film flips that to score political points.

● People Are Not Animals: Finally, the film presents the public as savages. It makes them out as animals who turn to their worst impulses the moment they realize the world will end one day. This is total bull. Human history has shown time and again that people rise to the occasion in times of crisis. They become caring, selfless and noble. They help each other out, share what they have, and band together. The only time they don’t is when liberalism has robbed them of their morality and their motivation and they decide to wait for the government to save their butts. There is no reason to believe in this premise that people would turn violent or turn to fascism as this film assumes. There is no reason to believe that any government would collapse until the whole race became very old. But again, examining the question the movie supposedly posits isn’t the point to this film. The point is to score propaganda points and the basis of the film is irrelevant; the same film would be used for overpopulation or any other crisis.

Moreover, the point being made here is the old liberal trope that people are animals unless their worst behaviors are tamed by liberal, hippie government. Indeed, the only good people in this film are the white, pot smoking, unwashed hippies who run the underground railroad for immigrants. Give me a break. People who don’t bathe don’t bathe for a reason: they lack the motivation to attend to anything except their hedonistic pleasure. Not coincidentally, hippies are total hedonists. Their nobility stops and starts with the phrase, “Man, somebody (else) ought to do something...” This idea that these liberals would actually put forth effort and undertake risk to help people is Liberal Ex-Post Historical Jerk-Off Syndrome, where liberals who don’t lift a finger to fight the petty evil in their midsts today claim proudly that THEY would have stood up to Hitler if they had been there and THEY would have fought to free the slaves. Liars.

Notice too that the director doesn’t even have the courage to tell you what these hippie dipsh*ts would have done differently. Like all other liberal heroes, they just stand “against oppression” and they promise that they would have found a different way to handle whatever problem it was, without ever suggesting what that could be. That’s called a cheap shot.

And that’s what this film is: a cheap shot. This film is a cheap shot taken at liberal boogeymen who don’t exist in the real world. And to take that cheap shot, this film adopts a premise it never bothers addressing. That’s the real crime here. With plummeting birthrates around the world and urbanization, the idea of depopulation is a very real issue that cities and countries are coping with. Add in the fact that certain chemicals apparently are devastating sperm counts, and it’s not inconceivable that the human race might one day become sterile. Watching science handle that or watching society fail little by little would be much more interesting than watching the same liberal claim about white fascists hating brown immigrants in a different package. That would be a film we actually could learn something from.

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Stallone v. Schwarzenegger

It’s funny how perceptions change. In the 1980s, there was this huge competition between Stallone and Schwarzenegger for the title of biggest action star in the world. It was pretty close at the time, but it seemed like Schwarzenegger was just a hair better than Stallone. His films had more buzz, they were more consistently hits, and he just seemed to have an edge in the culture... everyone quoted his dialog and thought of Aaaanold when they thought of action heroes. Stallone, not so much. So presumably, Schwarzenegger would be better remembered than Stallone by future generations too, right? Well, no. Not really.

Schwarzenegger hit it big in 1981 with the amazing Conan the Barbarian. Then in 1984, he struck gold again with The Terminator. This was followed by a string of hits: Predator, The Running Man, Twins, and Total Recall. By the time Kindergarten Cop and Terminator 2 came around, he was a bankable star who could do no wrong, even though he had -- Raw Deal and Red Heat weren’t great. But in 1993, he had his first huge bomb, Last Action Hero. And his career slipped after that.

Stallone, on the other hand, hit it big with Rocky in 1979, though he appeared in some cult films before that (like Death Race 2000). He rocketed to the top a few years later when he did Rocky II & III and the First Blood series (1982). Outside of those two franchises however, his 80’s films were questionable... Rhinestone, Cobra, Over the Top. It wasn't until the 1990s that he started having hits like Demolition Man and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Judge Dredd.

When you compare the two, you see that Stallone had the longer career - Schwarzenegger faded after 10 years, whereas Stallone seemed to improve for about two decades. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger had more big hits and fewer bad films. And unlike Stallone, he didn’t rely on two franchises to support his fame. I think this contributed to Schwarzenegger seeming like the bigger star because you really were going to see an Aaaanold film, not see his characters; whereas Stallone films were seen as “the latest Rocky movie” or “Rambo film.” But you know, this may ultimately be Schwarzenegger’s undoing, at least as far as film history is concerned.

Indeed, I’ve been watching their old movies lately and I’ve come to realize that Stallone movies are just better. His films hold up very well, Schwarzenegger's don't. Most of Schwarzenegger's films feel dated. They feel like "Aaaanold films" from the era of the 1980's action hero. The only exceptions to this really are Conan and two Cameron films, Terminator 2 and True Lies. Stallone’s films, by comparison, all have different feels to them. Sure, they can be dated by wardrobe or whatnot, but they don't feel dated. I think this is because Stallone is the better actor, and whereas Aaaanold films were about Schwarzenegger hamming it up, Stallone actually tried to play the character. Stallone's films also played to timeless themes, whereas Aaaaanold's films were just about this weightlifter who gets wronged and seeks revenge.

And I don't think I'm alone in this judgment. I've noticed that a lot more of Stallone's films still get play on television, whereas Schwarzenegger's films are slowly vanishing. All that seem to be left for Schwarzenegger are his Cameron films, which became franchises, Predator and Conan. For Stallone, you still regularly see the Rocky films, Night Hawks, First Blood, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd and more. I find this interesting because it suggests that films based around the personality or star power of the actor may not have much longevity, even if they were huge when they were hot. This could be bad news for much of the careers of people like Tom Cruise and Al Pacino. Interesting.

Thoughts?

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The Great (film) Debates vol. N/A

We interrupt this week's Great Film Debate to discuss an issue of great urgency. As many of you know by now, they have cast Ben Affleck as Batman in the upcoming movie Superman and Batman Get Funky. This must be a human rights violation of some sort and will probably be struck down in court. Still, let's assume Hollywood actually goes through with this. Tell us who you would cast in the other roles: Superman, Robin the Wonder Boy, the Jokester, Penny Lane, that dude, Al Bundy the Butler, those other people. Come on people, let's get this right! The world is freaking out!

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Film Friday: Men in Black (1997)

Men in Black is an excellent film. It was such an excellent film that it made a fortune, spawned a franchise, and has proved to have very strong staying power. What’s interesting about this film though, is that it is the perfect marriage of a tent-pole film with a cult film. Seriously.

The Plot

Although it appears to have a complex story, Men in Black is really just a superhero origin-story centered around Agent J (Will Smith). Smith is a New York City cop who gets recruited by Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) to work for a shadow organization known as M.I.B. (Men In Black). Located in New York City, M.I.B. polices all the extraterrestrials who live secretly among the human population of the Earth. Their job is to make sure that the aliens behave and that the humans never discover the aliens. They also protect the Earth from various threats.

J’s first case involves tracking down a bug (Vincent D’Onofrio), who has come to Earth to kill an Arquillian prince. The prince lives in Brooklyn and his people are at war with the bugs. As J and K track down the bug, they are given an ultimatum from an Arquillian battle cruiser, which threatens to destroy the planet unless something stolen from the prince (“the galaxy”) is returned within a few hours. Simple.

What Makes This Movie Work

So what makes this film work? Well, in a sense, everything. The actors have a strong screen presence and excellent chemistry. Will Smith was a rising, bankable star at this point, having just come off of Independence Day. His presence in what appears to be a lighthearted summer film all but guaranteed success. Adding to that, Smith gets teamed with the cranky, quasi-redneck Tommy Lee Jones, also a bankable star at the time, which evokes memories of prior successful opposites-attract buddy-cop films like Lethal Weapon. Barry Sonnenfeld had cache as a direct as well, having just directed Get Shorty and the Addams Family films. Sonnenfeld did a great job too: solid pacing, clean visuals, memorable scenes and great effects. The film also had the right feel. It came across as lighthearted, funny, and easy to enjoy.

Those are the perfect tent-pole traits and are guaranteed to put butts into seats.

What kept them there, however, and what has kept people enjoying this film so many years later, is the thing almost all tent-pole films lack: intelligence. In fact, at its core, this is one heck of a smart film. That intelligence, however, was hidden within a ton of ambiguity, just like a cult film.

As I’ve said before, what makes a film into a cult film seems to be that the film is highly intelligent, but lacks the clarity most general audience require. Thus, the film finds an audience because of its intelligence, but it is a limited audience because of its ambiguity. You would think Men in Black would suffer the same fate because of its ambiguity, but it doesn’t. Consider this:

● Unexplained Jokes: This film is crawling with jokes general audience will never get on their own. I saw this film in the theaters and it was fascinating to watch the audience. When Will Smith calls K’s car a “Ford POS,” about ten people laughed. The rest waited for the joke. When Z tells the smug guys who just brutally bombed the test to become members of M.I.B., “You’re everything we’ve come to expect from years of government training,” the same ten people burst out laughing. The rest didn’t see the joke. Oh, they laughed a moment later when Will Smith said, “Yo, yo, with the thing,” but they didn’t see the joke about government training leading to hopelessly rigid thinking.

Throughout this film, there are jokes that don’t pay off until a scene or two down the line. There are jokes that require you to grasp that what the characters say isn’t what they mean. There are jokes that require you to have some understanding of the outside world to get the joke. The general audience I sat with didn’t get those. Those other ten people got each one. Fortunately, there were enough other simple jokes that the general audience didn’t miss them. In effect, both groups laughed, they just laughed at different things.

● Unexplained Background: So who are the M.I.B.? You never really find out. You get a lot of words thrown at you, but in the end there’s little in the way of clarity. In fact, it’s a running joke that Tommy Lee Jones avoids answering those questions. Then they toss out ideas like the nature of “the galaxy,” but they never clearly answer it, unless you are smart enough to connect the ending of the film to that answer -- it turns out the Earth is in a “galaxy” of its own, which is in a bus station locker, which is itself in a marble being played with by some kids.

Throughout this film, we are introduced to characters whose fates we never learn. We run into subplots that go nowhere. We get no answers to basic questions. This is the sort of stuff that excites cult-film fans because it leaves it up to the viewer to debate the answers and fill in the movie... this is the stuff a thousand web pages are made of. But general audiences don’t normally like this. So why did they like it here? The reason is that every time something ambiguous happens, the scene finishes with Will Smith distracting the audience... “Look, shiny!” That way, both audiences get what they want.

● Hidden Depth: The film is crawling with hidden depth too. A good chunk of the jokes involve scientific principles or theories. The film constantly makes hilarious analogies, always without telling you. For example, the film starts with border patrol agents rounding up illegal aliens. That is exactly what M.I.B. are, which makes that scene rich with irony. But no one points this out. The bug is driving around in a truck belonging to an exterminator. The fact that “superior” aliens view coffee and cigarettes as our highest achievement is hilarious too.

Then there’s philosophical depth. Throughout the film, you are constantly being bombarded with ethical, moral and philosophical questions. Is it immoral to change someone’s memories? Does it make it less immoral to give them a happy memory? Would you want to be able to block out memories? What is the nature of the human race? One of the most insightful comments ever in film was this:

J: “People are smart. They can handle it.”
K: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

There was also this: “The only way these people get on with their lives is they don’t know the truth.” That’s very true of humans. Do our prejudices blind us to truth:

“Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

These are not only intensely complex questions, but the film frames them in amazingly clever ways to allow those who “get it” to think about it and to allow those who don’t to just see dialog.

So what does all this mean? Well, on the one hand, I think the intelligence is what has given this film its longevity. Tent-pole audiences are remarkably fickle, but cult-fans tend to be the ones who watch movies over and over. It also tells us that you can make a film that appeals to both audience. This film provides a guidepost on how.

Think about this. Here is a film that actually satisfies both groups, groups who rarely see eye to eye: “It was mindless and stupid” v. “It was confusing and stupid.” The reason it did was that it let each audience see what they wanted. People who are looking for smarter films got deep, philosophical points, jokes that trusted the audience, and rich depth throughout. Then people who are looking for something mindless got The Big Shiny from Will Smith to punctuate each joke or close out each philosophical moment.

I would call this a model for successful filmmaking.

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Fixing The Bond Films (The Bottom 8)

Having completed the first third of the Bond films, let’s take a look back at the ones we’ve reviewed. Specifically, let’s take a look at how each of them could have been fixed, because that is ultimately one of the biggest reasons to examine films: to see how to make better films. In reverse order of crapulence...

Octopussy. This film suffered from the best part of the film, the smuggling of the atomic bomb onto the American airbase, being made a subplot. That should have been the main plot. General Orlov should have been the villain. And Khan, Octopussy and Magda should have been rolled up into one character whose purpose was to smuggle the bomb unwittingly into West Germany, and then turn on Orlov and help Bond when they discover his dastardly plan.

Diamonds Are Forever. Oh boy. This one needs a big fix. Aside from smacking Connery around to get him to act, this one would have been much better if they focused on the diamond smuggling subplot and morphed that into someone using the hoarded diamonds to fund an overthrow of an African country. This would have allowed Bond to explore the world of high finance, which we’ve seen in other films can be very interesting and has some serious potential in terms of cool visuals. It also would have allowed the story to finish in the world of political intrigue, where strong storylines always lie.

The World Is Not Enough. Robert Carlyle is too good to waste as a confused also-villain. Krapistan is a bad location no one cares about. And forget this unworkable subplot about Elektra being the secret villain. A better story would involve the geopolitics of the region. How about Carlyle being hired to make it appear that Western interests want to blow up the pipeline to bankrupt Turkey, so that Turkey turns against the West and embraces radical Islam?

The Living Daylights. They wanted to make Bond darker and smaller. Ok, sticking with that, look at what they did with Daniel Craig... a film noir action film. The defection that starts TLD is a great plot idea and should become the entire focus – tacking on Afghanistan, the arms dealer and the drug dealing subplots were just a bad idea. Give the defector vital information he won’t share until he’s safe in London and have the incompetent bureaucratic agent who is sent to help Bond be a traitor rather than incompetent. This forces Bond to take the defector through Czechoslovakia on his own and in the process he draws out the other double agents who are working with the traitor. Oh, and get a Bond girl who isn’t narcoleptic.

Moonraker. They wanted to exploit Star Wars... fine. So let’s do this. First, shoot Lewis Gilbert dead... twice... and rough up the corpse. Then, instead of stealing the space shuttle, how about blowing it up while it is carrying a British spy satellite. It was blown up to stop the Brits from spying on Drax’s private island, where he’s assembling a Star Wars SDI-type system that can neutralize a country’s nuclear arsenal, which he intends to use as blackmail.

License To Kill. This started as a revenge film and turned into an episode of Miami Vice. It does neither well, and Bond as just another cop looking for drugs doesn’t work. If you’re going to do the drug angle, how about a drug lord who has invented a drug that is 90% addictive with one dose, has a secret formula that only he knows (so everyone will need to buy from him), and who plans to put the drug into the water supply of a major city. This would raise Bond above the other drug smuggling films and would lead to a great final chase as Bond races to stop them dumping the drugs into the water.

A View To A Kill. This Bond failed mainly because of the actors: Moore is more like a British retiree than a super-spy and the Bond girl is a whiny rich girl who isn’t happy with the millions Zorin offers her and she comes across as someone preparing a legal case. But even beyond that, little of the story related to the plot. Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of sinking Silicon Valley under the ocean, but it needs a better villain than a billionaire who wants to be even richer. A better villain would be Russia or “an unknown Asian power” who wants to destabilize the United States... perhaps one that can’t keep up technologically... perhaps a crazed luddite? Maybe you all can help fill in the gaps?

Die Another Day. Yeah. This one can’t be fixed. Bond does not get held captive. He doesn’t visit North Korea. Korean villains can’t turn themselves Caucasian. Korea can’t build the death star. No one goes to Cuba for medical treatment. Invisible car my butt. Just about the only thing that can be saved here is the sword fight. So scrap this one and start from scratch.

What do you think?

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Books By Pundits Don't Change The World

Once again, my poor brain found itself subjected to talk radio last weekend. I’ll spare you the debunking. I will instead focus on an issue that arose which has long troubled me: conservatives don’t understand what interests the public. This is vital to our turnaround.


Click Here To Read Article/ Comments at CommentaramaPolitics

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Questionable Jones No. 15

Could Crystal Skull really be that bad? Yes... yes, it could. Still, it had some good things, right?

Question: "Say three good things about The Crystal Skull."

Scott's Answer: 1. My standard cop out answer again - the music. John Williams on autopilot is still better than most composers on their best day. The new themes he wrote for Agent Spalko and the Skulls aren't nearly as exciting or memorable as his various Nazi marches for the previous films (or the mine car chase!) but you can't help but smile when you hear the Indy theme kick in for the first time.

2. Harrison Ford - yes, he's a senior citizen but he can still kick ass!

3. Spielberg still knows how to orchestrate action. He may have lost something when it comes to picking good scripts but when it comes to blocking action, planning shots, etc., he can still do it.


Andrew's Answer: 1. This feels so wrong, but I’m warming up to Shia Lebouf as Mutt.

2. I like the intro a good deal... until they set off the atomic bomb.

3. I like the 1950s feel of the college sequence with the motorcycle chase and everything. Yes, there are stupid points, but the look and the feel is pretty good.

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The Great (film) Debates vol. 90

Everyone says "to give chase," but what exactly are you giving chase? Anyway...

What is your favorite chase scene?



Panelist: T-Rav

My favorite would be the opening bus chase in Speed, when Keanu Reeves is trying to catch up to the bus in question in a guy’s commandeered car. Who says a chase can’t be heart-pounding and funny?

Panelist: AndrewPrice

Hands down, The Blues Brothers. Which one? Both, the chase through the mall and the final chase to the Cook County Assessor's office. That's how you build an ending to a movie!

Panelist: Tennessee Jed

I have to go with the original and probably still the best. Everything else owes it's existence to this one. Yes folks, Bullitt. Admittedly, The French Connection chase scene was also fantastic, but when that film was released, it was defined by how the chase scene compared to Bullitt. That should tell you all you need to know in and of itself.

Panelist: ScottDS

It's a toss-up between the mall chase in The Blues Brothers, the big chase at the end of The Blues Brothers ("Well, this is definitely Lower Wacker Drive!"), and the chase across the Thames in The World is Not Enough. Say what you want about the film, but the opening chase with Bond and the hot assassin (a.k.a. "Cigar Girl") is extremely well-done and probably set the bar too high for the rest of the movie!

Comments? Thoughts?

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Film Friday: The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors is a 1979 cult classic by Walter Hill about a gang that must traverse New York City from Van Cortlandt Park to Coney Island as hundreds of other gangs hunt them down. Even though that description sounds simple and exploitative, the film is deeply complex and interesting. Believe it or not, it’s also a Greek epic playing out in New York City.

Plot

The plot is straight forward. The story opens with the main characters traveling to Van Cortlandt Park under a flag of truce. They are the leaders of a street gang called the Warriors. They’ve been told to send nine unarmed representatives to the park to hear a proposal from the leader of the most powerful gang in the city (the Riffs). His name is Cyrus and he proposes that all the gangs stop fighting each other and band together. With there being 60,000 of them, and only 20,000 New York City cops, they could take over the city.

As he reaches the high point of his pitch, a shot rings out and Cyrus is killed. He is shot by a gangbanger named Luther (David Patrick Kelly). At this moment, the cops show up to attack the gangs, which sends everything into confusion as all the gangs flee. In the confusion, Luther starts screaming that the Warriors are the ones who shot Cyrus. The Warriors’ leader Cleon is attacked and taken down but the rest escape, though the rest aren’t yet aware of what they’ve been accused.

Word goes out to hunt down the Warriors... alive is preferred, dead is acceptable. As the Warriors make their way back to Connie Island, they are hunted by various gangs, all in ridiculous costumes, as well as the cops. Their new leader, Swan (Michael Beck), picks up a woman (Deborah Van Valkenburgh as Mercy) with whom he argues the entire way. The gang feuds about leadership. They get sidetracked. One dies, one gets caught by the cops, and the rest need to overcome all the obstacles in their way as they try to make it home.

Why The Film Works

This film became a major cult hit, and the main reason for that is the depth. I’ve noted before that what makes a film a cult hit, rather than a popular hit, seems to be that it’s a smart film with lots of depth, but doesn’t spell everything out as clearly as general audiences need. Thus, general audiences will see the film as confused or pointless because they just don’t get what is going on. This film has those traits as well, and likely will seem like a schlock action film to general audiences... akin to how Rollerball is wrongly seen as a film about violent sports.

Indeed, this film traffics heavily in ambiguity. The dialog here is sparse and terse. Little is explained. Questions are answered with actions, not exposition. The characters speak in slang which doesn’t get translated. Character actions aren’t explained through exposition either. The relationship between Swan and Mercy is all handled through looks and levels of tolerance rather than professions of love. For example, the fact he lets her continue with them speaks volumes and, even then, he only tells her near the end of their journey that she can come with them and he talks around why. Characters, like the leader of the Orphans, change their minds in dramatic fashion, but never say what caused it, though you can understand it if you get the context. The only reason you know the Lizzies are lesbians is the absence of males and that they are dancing together. Fox dies, but it’s never clearly said or shown. We have no idea if the Warriors’ original leader Cleon lived or died, or what was Ajax’s ultimate fate after he stars fighting with the cops. The Riffs never even say they know the Warriors didn’t kill Cyrus, they just tell them they’re all right. These are the types of things general audiences typically need explained.

But ambiguity alone does not a good movie make. What makes this film so good is all the depth packed into it. Indeed, what appear to be little more than a movie about one gang being chased by others is so much more. Consider these themes and issues:

1. The film is about leadership. Cyrus is a messianic leader. He is replaced by a man who is almost the polar opposite, almost robotic or satanic. Swan takes over the Warriors when Cleon vanishes. There is immediately a power struggle and we see the troops pick Swan. Why? Was it his toughness or his responsibility or something else? Swan must immediately show that he’s up to the task by becoming a diplomat, when he has never been that before. He must understand when to stand up for pride and when to swallow his pride. And he must motivate his troops. His actions are a study in leadership.

2. Why do they fight? The obvious answer is that they fight because they don’t want to die. But that’s not really true. Cyrus thinks fighting is the natural order of things and it’s “a miracle” when they don’t. Swan fights first to survive, but then fights for pride even when he could avoid a fight. They all seem to cite their territory as the real reason they fight, but when the Warriors reach Connie Island and see it in the morning, Swan asks derisively if this is really why they fought and he thinks of getting away from it.

The characters are complex too. Look at Mercy’s character. She takes great offense at being called a whore, even though she probably is. She talks about how the future promises her nothing and she wants to live now, but at the same time, she’s looking for a better future. Yet, she joins this group knowing they are being hunted and will likely be dead by the end of the evening, and she does so despite Swan showing her nothing but contempt. Cyrus, who seems like such a fantastic leader with the power to unite them all is actually a murdering thief who wants to unite them so they can steal the city blind and terrorize its people. Luther is a true sociopath who just wants to see the world burn. He proves why Cyrus’s plan can never work... it’s doomed by the very nature of the people required to make it work.

There’s an interesting social commentary too. The film is based on a novel and in adapting it, the filmmakers added a bunch of white characters (there are no white characters in the book). Still, despite these token whites, for most middle-class white people in suburbia or Minnesota, this film would have been a shock in 1979. Cyrus is talking about a minority uprising. He is talking about 60,000 mostly black and Puerto Rican gangbangers overwhelming the cops and taking over the city. This plays into the black power movement, which scared the crap out of white America in the 1960s/1970s – the Riffs even borrow from the Black Panther/Viet Cong look and affect military-like precision. This film digs deeper than Hollywood ever delves into this issue.

The film also explains why people join gangs: poverty, lack of education, fear, a desire to feel powerful, and psychopathic/sociopathic personalities. It shows the cops as faceless oppressors (indeed, try to get a good look at one in the face anywhere in the film), which reflects the gang mindset. Again, this is deeper than Hollywood ever gets when it talks about gangs - Hollywood talks only about economics or fear of the cops. And while the film does make the Warriors sympathetic, it also reminds us that they too are rotten. We see this as one tries to rape a woman, as they fight for stupid reasons like refusal to take off their vests as they pass through a street, and as they strike terror into some kids riding home from the prom.

And if all of that isn’t enough to be packed into a film about a gang being chased, there is another level which I find the most fascinating. This film is based on a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, but it’s ultimately an adaptation of the Greek Epic Anabasis by Xenophon.

Xenophon was a soldier who accompanied a large army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger. They intended to take the throne of Persia, but even as they won the battle, Cyrus was killed, making the expedition pointless. Their leaders were then killed, and the remaining troops needed to fight their way home. It even ends at the sea, where The Warriors also ends.

In other words, this simple film about some gangs is actually a Greek epic. What’s more, once you start to think of it in those terms, each of the encounters takes on a new significance. In many ways, Mercy becomes a Helen of Troy figure, the prize Swan wins. The gangs represent challenges like the Cyclops or armies they come across. The Lizzies are Circes. The Furies are Furies or the Harpies. Turnbull is the Minotaur. The subway is the labyrinth. You have very classic-Greek betrayal in them being falsely accused of killing Cyrus. Characters who fail morally fail in the story and end up dead or captured. And in the end, you have the unveiling of the truth and the retribution against the betrayers. Very classic. These things don’t all come from Anabasis, but they give the film a mythical, epic feel.

This is why this film continues to have such a following, because it offers so much. There isn’t a scene in this film which doesn’t give you a lot to think about or multiple ways to see it. And to get this, you need to use your brain because the film feeds you nothing. That makes it all the more interesting because it leaves it up to the audience to solve the riddle.

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