Today's News: New Black Underworld

This is all I have to show for this week, since there wasn't much news to begin with, plus I had to deal with a minor illness.

Fox maakt X-Men spin-off

Technically, Fox already was making an X-Men spin-off with Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool, but most fans wouldn't want to be reminded of the connection between the two names after the dismal way the character was handled in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. By any rate, this new project has far more ties with the X-Men proper to warrant the designation 'spin-off'. Same school, even some of the same characters, but mostly new faces. Younger ones, too, though the "true" X-Men are already undergoing a sort of rejuvenation with the younger cast currently assembled for X-Men: Apocalypse. But hey, that's likely a different time line, so that's where that comparison ends. Interestingly enough, reports indicate the studio opts for a standalone approach to this film, even though it offers much material for expanding the X-lore, which would help in building that cinematic universe Fox previously seemed eager to get going. Maybe they wisely let that thought go. It already seems they abandoned plans for a crossover between the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and now even their X-titles will refrain from intertwining. Maybe Fox had a look at the manner in which rival studio Sony mishandled the Spider-Man franchise despite initially harbouring great plans for an epic fleshing out of the character's world. That failed, and Sony felt the need to work together with that other rival, Marvel itself, to recraft the character into something the fans do appreciate. It's not inconceivable Fox is attempting to keep the same from happening to their X-verse, so for now, they're taking it one step at a time again. It only takes one piece of the puzzle of a cinematic universe failing to fit in to get the house crashing down after all, and with six Marvel movies currently in the works, that's something Fox would want to deter. Besides, in the case of New Mutants, not much effort is needed to let the spectators know this story is taking place in the same realm as the X-films they've already seen. The name Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and the often dropped term 'mutants' are dead giveaways if ever we saw them. You don't need many recurring characters - apart from Xavier himself, perhaps - to understand the connection.

Regisseur voor Black Panther gevonden?

I find the notion of hiring a director based on the colour of his/her skin or her gender to fit the profile of the protagonist of the piece somewhat disturbing. It makes more sense to go for the quality of his/her work first and foremost, other attributes being a bonus rather than an obligation for the job. I thought it had already been disproven that only black people can direct other black people, and only women understand women. This is the 21st Century, shouldn't we have grown past such levels of discrimination? Even though, admittedly, it does benefit getting said minorities in the directing chair, since I won't deny the number of black and female directors for Hollywood blockbusters is still meagre at best. So sure, give Ava DyVernay the directing gig of either Black Panther or Captain Marvel, she's shown ample skills in making movies to deserve it. Considering her previous film, Selma, already dealt with what in a sweeping instance of generalization on my part can be termed "black issues", I would prefer to see her tackle Captain Marvel, just to show she can avoid limiting herself in terms of topics. However, Black Panther is definitely of historical significance to the coloured community - or at least, it ought to be - so as to avoid any potential black backlash, I can't blame Marvel for wanting a black director. At least Black Panther isn't a female character, so having a woman directing a male superhero is worthy of some notice. But I would have preferred it entirely if Marvel had shown some true guts and had stated they wanted DuVernay for something not related to her as a person, like Thor: Ragnarok. A black woman directing a blond, blue eyed male thunder god, now that would be progress.

Beckinsale terug voor Underworld 5

And here's a female's return to the big screen I could have done without. The Underworld movies can be categorized in the same type of film as the likes of Resident Evil, mindless action flicks that have a total B-movie vibe around them but still get surprisingly major releases. And both franchises are running for a lot longer than people usually realize. I wasn't even aware there was a fourth movie. Still, some people apparently keep paying to see them, so the studio keeps making more. All good and well, I understand the way the world works, even though I would have preferred to see that money spent on  more original projects. Kate Beckinsale isn't hard to look at anyway, though that's totally sexist of me. Her acting suffices for the subject matter, but is otherwise simply forgettable, few would disagree. Apparently, she wasn't expected to revisit this particular character again, but the odds turned out in Underworld's favour. Maybe she's hoping this franchise will develop in similar lines as the Fast & Furious franchise, which also seemed to be in decline halfway through, and then against expectations got bigger and better all of a sudden, to become the eagerly antincipated blockbuster series it is today. I doubt fate has that in store for Underworld, but that's what people undoubtedly said about F&F back in the days. Playing an undead character sure doesn't hurt Beckinsale's chances.

Hollywood didn't remember this one wholesale

Total Recall (2012): ***/*****, or 6/10

Total Recall (1990) is still a high point in Paul Verhoeven's oeuvre. At the time the most expensive movie ever made, it featured Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his career, running for his life from government conspirators in a provocative, nightmarish future setting both on Earth and on Mars, all the while messing with the spectator's mind in determining whether his tribulations were for real or just a sign of his brain being screwed up just moments before a lobotomy, in the typical sardonic and satirical Verhoeven style. Of course, nowadays nothing is sacred in Hollywood, and since more than two decades have passed the executive powers that be decided it was time for a fresh adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966). Adaptation, however, is too strong a term: inspiration would be more precise, something underscored by the end credits which state the new movie was only inspired by Dick's original work. In fact, it takes even more poetic license with his story than Verhoeven's version did. Unfortunately, various elements that made the previous film such a joy to watch are wholesomely neglected this time around, while the overall story remained the same. As a result, the new Total Recall is neither more sophisticated nor more fun to watch than its predecessor.

The narrative core of Verhoeven's Total Recall is carried over largely intact into the new movie. Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell, who portrays a bored laborer more convincingly but less enjoyably than the hulking Schwarzengger did) is an everyday underpaid factory worker tired of his dull dead-end job, living in a lousy apartment with his beautiful wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale). Longing for an escape from the boring routine of his life, he visits Rekall, a company that implants fake memories the customer never experienced but that seem totally real as if the subject lived through them himself. In need of a dramatic change of pace, Quaid orders a set of secret agent memories injected in his mind, after which all hell breaks loose when apparently dormant but true experiences of a life as a spy manifest themselves, after which he finds himself on the run from the authorities, including his wife who proved to be an undercover operative, in their attempt to stop Quaid from exposing an elaborate government conspiracy involving corrupt officials out for personal gain at the expense of the lives of thousands of oppressed workers. Trouble is, are we sure all of Quaid's newfound experiences are real, or are they just what he ordered, with the problem being he can't separate truth from fiction as his mind has trouble processing it all?

Warning! Spoilers ahead! With the overall story of the remake identical to the original motion picture, the differences of the new script mostly involve setting and background history. Still set in the not too distant future, the plot now takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth where chemical warfare has ravaged most of the planet, leaving only Western Europe and Australia habitable. Dubbed the United Federation of Britain and the Colony respectively, the former is the seat of power ruling what's left of the globe with an iron fist, while the latter houses the huge work force keeping things running, as well as home to the many dispossessed masses whose sole task in life is day-to-day survival. Travel between the UFB and the Colony is only possible via the Fall, a sort of giant subway system through the planet's core, allowing the laborers – Quaid among them – to journey to their work every day, deporting them back to the ass-end of the planet when the day is over just as easily. Of course there is resistance to this near-enslavement, most notably in the shape of a terrorist group run by the enigmatic Matthias (an all too small part for the great Bill Nighy), out to destroy the Fall and wreaking havoc in the process. Naturally, the terrorists are the ones we should feel sympathy for considering the hard exploitative regime that controls the workforce's life under the rule of the sinister Chancellor Cohaagen (Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston), who is secretly hatching a diabolical scheme to get rid of all the miscreants and malcontents in the slums: his motivations for doing so differ from Total Recall's previous incarnation, where he sought to control alien technology. His venture in the current film involves replacing the human workers with robots, a scheme rather derivative of other science fiction works including the likes of I, Robot (2004): there's a reason Total Recall's mechanical men are so reminiscent to that movie's droids.

Unlike both the short story and Verhoeven's take on that, all the action is Earth bound and Mars is nowhere to be seen, other than being only briefly mentioned – in a post-John Carter Hollywood Mars is not a welcome location – so the script switches locations between the UFB and the Colony. Location wise, this turns out to be a mistake. Whereas the trip to Mars only worked to the predecessor's visual advantage, setting it apart from the action that had gone before and underscoring the eerie, dreamy quality of the piece, the visual look of the UFB and the Colony in this version is totally interchangeable. Both areas are defined by excessive urbanization, as overpopulation has led to ever upward building, with an elaborate maze of mile high towering constructions the result. Though the abundance of CGI thrown at these sets makes it look stunning at first, amazement soon turns to acceptance, and acceptance even faster turns to visual disinterest as the movie spends almost two hours following the protagonist being driven from one skyscraper to the next in a string of dynamic chase scenes that eventually make it hard to tell just where on the planet we are exactly. An all too brief excursion to the terrorists' secret layer in the desolate wastelands outside the habitable zone offers little reprieve from this monotonous setting, which in itself is very obviously inspired by undying science fiction classics like Blade Runner (1982) and Metropolis (1927), but used to much less dramatic effect because of its overexposure.

Equally overused is action. Of course, a big Hollywood blockbuster like Total Recall needs action scenes to draw crowds, but not in numbers this high. From the moment Quaid's unconscious cover is exposed in the Rekall salon, he spends most of the film running for cover as he's hunted by Cohaagen's minions, both robotic and flesh and blood, Lori chief among them. If Quaid's not running, he's fighting his way through scores of bad guys. The plot only allows short intermissions for the audience to catch its breath, at which time a great deal of exposition is delivered in as little time as is deemed necessary to warrant the next thirty minutes of relentless action, until the end credits start rolling. Just as the surroundings where such action takes place, the action scenes themselves are similarly interchangeable. Not even a flying car chase (a little too reminiscent of The Fifth Element (1997)) and a pursuit in a labyrinth of elevators offer enough diversion to keep the action from mentally becoming one big blur when the theater lights go back on. Director Wiseman knows action like few others, as he amply showed with movies like Underworld (2003) and Die Hard 4.0. (2007), but the script just kept him from balancing action and exposition to appropriate levels, while the ever singular looking environments didn't allow him to come up with interesting new ideas to shoot such action other than a bunch of general shoot-them-ups. At least his skill in directing fight scenes makes it easy for Total Recall's to look convincingly brutal, entertaining the viewers for a while before such scenes become too commonplace to really care less about them.

 With the focus a little too much on action, it comes as no surprise that other areas of the film's whole remain underexposed. Chief casualty is the emotional climax provided in Verhoeven's version, which made you guess until the very end just as to what's real and what isn't. The script largely follows the same pattern as the original did, but makes it clear all too soon and all too obvious whether its allegiance lies to fiction or reality, thus disabling the audience's pleasure to debate the exact chain of events since there's no room left for speculation. At times the film appears to turn the table on the audience's expectations, just as eager to switch it back mere moments later so the audience doesn't get to be confused, even though it would undoubtedly expect and like to be confused at least a little considering the picture deals with messing with man's mind. This lack of guts to smarten up the movie where it easily can be done makes it all the harder to accept a short lecture at the Rekall facility about the brain and its inner workings: in light of the lack of plot twists and the loads of dull action scenes to come, the movie at this point pretentiously seems to say 'here's how the brain works, now you can go and shot down yours for a few hours since there's really nothing more to our plot'. Worse even is the absolutely serious tone Total Recall adopts for the next ninety minutes, as it leaves little room for humour to put things in perspective considering the absence of intelligence. Among the car chases, the gun fights and the hand to hand combat there's no place for a laugh or two to remind the audience this isn't all as serious as it appears to be, unlike Paul Verhoeven's tone of witty sarcasm that only enhanced his Total Recall's sense of wonder and adventure. You'll find no Johnny-Cab in this film, though as time goes on you desperately want there to be...

Total Recall (2012) is a perfect example of a Hollywood exercise in futility as far as remakes go. It does not improve on the earlier version, nor does it address elements from the plot of the original short story the 1990 film might have ignored. It regurgitates a well crafted story and spits it out in a slicker and stylistically more modern variation that sadly fails to captivate the audience, taking itself way too seriously while simultaneously explicitly weeding out the plot hints that might have made for a more thought provoking, inconclusive ending. What remains is a generic high voltage chase flick filled with standard fisticuffs and gun fights in a visually impressive but monotonous and uninspired environment, which moderately entertain the viewer for two hours, but ultimately prove to be wholly forgetful. The only thing the producers apparently picked up from Paul Verhoeven's classic is the unforgettable image of a triple breasted prostitute, an all too brief pointless insert that only serves as a nostalgic nod to a superior take on this same story. Clearly it doesn't suffice to take a Verhoeven flick and throw out everything that makes it recognizable as such, since that's what makes it memorable. With remakes of Verhoeven's other excellent Sci-Fi/action films RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997) in production, Hollywood executives best recall the many shortcomings of Total Recall (2012), unless they truly aim to make movies the audience will soon forget, so they can simply remake them again in another twenty years time.

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/totalrecall/

The Aviator

Rating: ****/*****, or 7/10

Martin Scorsese's biopic on billionaire Howard Hughes witnesses the second collaboration between himself and Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally definitively sheds his up until then dominating stigma of a 'pretty boy' superstar in favour of a classification as a true top actor. DiCaprio successfully plays the noted industrialist as a man ruled by his various personal ticks and impulsive weaknesses from the late 1920s up until his last few years living as a hermit in a hotel room. Lavish production design includes a phenomenal look at the Golden Age of Hollywood as Hughes took control of RKO Studios to direct his own movie, and various classic air planes constructed by Hughes as part of his most notable passion, his love of aviation. Scorsese also tells of Hughes' romances with star actresses Katharine Hepburn (a fantastic Cate Blanchett, who rightfully won an Oscar for her contribution) and Ava Gardner (a less convincing Kate Beckinsale). Overall, Scorsese does a good job at explaining this otherwise unfathomable man, though the film does drag on too much in the long run, especially when it comes to the affairs revolving Hughes' 'Spruce Goose' dream plane project.

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale

Directed by Martin Scorsese

USA: Forward Pass, 2004