Justice League [2017] Genre: Superhero Director: Zack Snyder Actors: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot Justice League is the third in a series of attempts by Zack Snyder to make a superhero film that can live up to the greatest Marvel films or Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, following on from Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. So far, he hasn't been too successful. Man of Steel came in with some impressive visuals and a few decent performances but I found myself strongly disliking it, finding it particularly uninteresting as it really didn't seem to even try to make Superman that likeable of a character if you were unfamiliar with the character as I was. Then came Batman v Superman, a film that was particularly critically panned by most and in some regards, I can see why. The screenplay was poorly written with some really odd plot choices and some acting performances were dire (particularly Eisenberg impersonating an amateur actor doing a particularly poor Joker impression), although I found myself quite liking it, particularly the first act which I thought rather interestingly explored the impact of Man of Steel and really made me feel like this action was taking place in a real world with real people. Ben Affleck really impressed me as both Bruce Wayne and Batman and some supporting characters such as Amy Adams' Lois Lane and Jeremy Irons' Alfred slightly impressed but overall, not really Dark Knight quality. Other directors haven't done too much better, with Suicide Squad being an atrociously edited, performed, directed, written and shot film, and while Wonder Woman was a massive step-up compared to the others and far more entertaining, it still didn't really rock the boat in terms of the plot too much. So, this is the climate that Justice League enters into, combined with reshoots from Joss Whedon, responsible for Marvel's Avengers films and some interesting behind-the-scenes production stories. Not good even to begin with. But, perhaps it was possible: maybe with Whedon's slightly lighter tone combining with Snyder's darker elements, the DC Extended Universe could really get going with a film that was entertaining and well-made. The film follows on some time after the death of Superman with the world reeling from his death, with increased crime and a distinct lack of hope. To make matters worse, his death triggered the activation of 'Mother Boxes', which has brought Steppenwolf and his army of 'parademons' to Earth. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Affleck) and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gadot) must form a team of heroes to save the planet from catastrophe. Sounds groundbreaking, right? Like all of these superhero films when these heroes are brought together in one team, it was extremely important to have a likeable cast. Marvel have established their own Avengers team with likeable characters with clear personalities, so DC should have been able to do the same with the Justice League. Did they? Kinda. The already established members are relatively similar in this film with Ben Affleck's Batman continuing to be really interesting and well acted and Gadot's Wonder Woman being extremely entertaining to watch and plays a large part in some of the film's greatest action scenes. The chemistry between these two works quite well throughout the film and I was extremely glad for that. The new arrivals are a little bit more interesting. Firstly, there is Arthur Curry or Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa. His personality was, at least, very clear and I quite enjoyed some of the interactions between him and Bruce, with their quips about the other being dressed like a bat or being able to talk to fish, respectively. Momoa played these comedic moments relatively well, although I didn't really find him all that likeable – I understand that perhaps he wasn't meant to be at certain points, but even towards the end he wasn't that interesting to me – and I hope that changes for the upcoming Aquaman film, but for him, the film does a good job of setting up his personality, backstory and Momoa gives a good showing for his first real debut in the DCEU. Next there is Victor Stone or Cyborg, played by Ray Fisher. We learn a little about his backstory in the previous films and to be honest, very little is expanded on in this film, apart from a few weak interactions between him and his Father. I found him to be the weakest of the three new arrivals for a number of reasons. Firstly, his backstory really wasn't expanded enough for me to be interested in him or how he would develop. His personality wasn't very well set up – I couldn't describe it if you asked me – and he just came across as a bit bland. The other primary issue I had with him was Fisher's performance. It wasn't awful, but it was just a bit boring. He really didn't put any emotion into his delivery and that really made me struggle with supporting him as a hero throughout the film. Last, but certainly not least, is Barry Allen or The Flash, played by Ezra Miller. In contrast, he's almost the exact opposite of Cyborg. His backstory is well established, giving him some form of motivation, with his Father in prison and this does allow for us to feel support for his character. This is also greatly helped by Ezra Miller's brilliant performance. I was initially sceptical of how Miller would be in comparison to other performances of The Flash, but I was extremely pleased with how he delivered his comedic personality and it really made him a likeable character with a clear personality and an exciting on-screen presence. Supporting characters were weaker however. I disliked Amy Adams for the first time in the DCEU and her on-screen time felt a bit pointless and a waste of time, especially the early interactions between her and Superman's mother. I've really liked her in these films in the past but was a bit disappointed here. However, what is much worse was the villain. I like Ciaran Hinds. I really do. I loved his performance in Game of Thrones and think he has a lot to offer. Poor Ciaran. I don't know whose fault the villain was here, but there is so much wrong. The backstory has so little establishment that I felt very little threat from him – he didn't come across as someone I should be particularly afraid of as a villain and the actions in film didn't really add more to that. The visual effects were even worse now. Everyone's already made the comparison to a video game villain in a cutscene, but it's worth hammering home just how bad he looked. This is the joint-second most expensive film ever made – was it really that hard to make a villain actually look like a real entity? This is a real fault of the film, and while the visual effects look actually quite good at points (Flash's speed force moments particularly good), this was just embarrassing and nearly invalidated most of the supposedly intense action sequences. The action sequences in this film were also important to get right, and, at least for the most part, they were relatively enjoyable. Particular highlights was the initial fight with Steppenwolf (despite him being so useless) and elements of the final fight. Thankfully, they were well edited, especially in comparison to the awful Suicide Squad, it was a nice breath of fresh air for the DCEU's editing. They were all very well choreographed as you would expect and it did have that sense of spectacle to it. The interactions in these sequences were very good also at certain points with the characters really coming across to the viewer quite well. However, the scenes in between really weren't that interesting to me. This is one of the points that Batman v Superman did better for me than this film. The scenes between each action moment were just so uninteresting and I found it difficult to care about the events as the writing wasn't particularly good. I just wanted it to move on, and a lot of it just felt like wastes of time. In these scenes, some of the worst elements poked through, in particular the tone. There's been a lot of discussion about the tone of the film and whether it was good or not. Personally, I find myself lying on the disliking of this weird mashup of dark and comedic with Snyder and Whedon's style respectively. I didn't feel like it felt the film or the franchise so far. I actually loved the tone of Batman v Superman and felt it had potential going forward but this film really took that away, removing any sense of seriousness to it. I think it's a real shame and I do think it harmed the film rather than helped. Who wrote what scene has been released, and it's easy to notice the strong conflict in the tone at points, which often harmed the film. Few smaller elements to discuss: I really hated the score. It felt uninspired, not just in comparison to Hans Zimmer's score in previous films, but it just felt bland, boring and dull and didn't get me excited or interested. I also wish some of the even smaller parts had some more scenes. I understand J.K. Simmons' Commissioner Gordon will have more of a role in Matt Reeves' Batman film but I really enjoyed him in this and wish he would have had some more screen-time in some way. I also noticed that Willem Dafoe and Kirsey Clemons as Nuidis Vulko and Iris West respectively were cut from the film which is a shame as it would have added even further backstory to Aquaman and Flash, however, I can see us getting these scenes in an extended cut. Overall, I found Justice League to be underwhelming. The tone's inconsistenly, the weak plot and the villain (some have already compared the villain's evil plan to that of Zod's in Man of Steel) as well as the poor visual effects in points. This film certainly isn't as bad as Man of Steel or Suicide Squad but then watching paint dry be more visually pleasing and entertaining than Suicide Squad. It doesn't, in my opinion, reach what Batman v Superman did in terms of tone, while slightly beating it in terms of acting performances. It is certainly much weaker than Wonder Woman and light years away from Marvel's releases this year in terms of quality and in a different universe to any of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Rating: 4/10
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Memento [2000] Genre: Neo-Noir/Psychological Thriller Director: Christopher Nolan Actors: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano Focus: Narrative [This blog post contains mild spoilers for Memento] The order in which a story is told can change a spectator's perception dramatically. Begin with the protagonist attacking a seemingly innocent character to the viewer and the viewer will see them as someone who is cruel, heartless and psychopathic and the viewer will have less support for the character as a whole. Begin, however, with showing the victim of the attack murdering and torturing people, then the viewer will respect and support the protagonist far more than in the former example. The order in which a story is shown to the spectator can drastically change their view on the world being set up by the director. In Memento, Christopher Nolan takes this idea and exploits it to the extreme, creating a sense of confusion for the viewer that they can share with the character. While many have praised in particular its 'motifs of memory, perception, grief and self-deception', what has all received a huge amount of praise is the narrative structure and how it exploits the formulaic structure that viewers are used to to make an exceptionally thrilling story. Memento shows the story of Leonard (Pearce), a man who suffers from 'anterograde amnesia', which means he is unable to form new memories, and suffers short-term memory loss every five minutes. He is searching for the man who attacked him and killed his wife, and uses photographs and tattoos to remember information he has learnt. What is particularly interesting about the narrative structure of Memento is that it presents itself as two different sets of scenes. To distinguish the differences to the spectator, one is black-and-white and takes place in chronological order and one is in colour and is shown to the viewer in reverse order. While this is extremely confusing for the spectator, this is intentional and by the end of the film, the spectator has a complete narrative and knows exactly what has been happening. However, what is so brilliant about this narrative structure and style is that it really puts the viewer into the mind of Leonard. When Nolan introduces a new event that happened, the viewer tries to piece it together in their head: when did this happen? Why is this character treating him that way? What happened before this to cause these events? This is good in terms of spectator interaction as these are exactly the questions Leonard would be asking, wondering what had happened to get him to this situation. There is one fantastically written series of scenes where we see a scene where Natalie (Moss), a bartender who Leonard talks to to try and find information, is behaving particularly nice to Leonard and is giving him lots of information that he needs. However, a few minutes later, the viewer realises what is actually going on. Natalie has verbally abused Leonard heavily and points out that whatever she does, he will still continue his trust whatever she says and they will remain friends or even lovers. She could even tell him lies and he would not remember. The spectator then sees Leonard scrambling to find something to write with to remind him of this fact, reciting to himself: 'concentrate' and 'keep it in mind' to help him to remember. The spectator shares this distress of his, knowing the future mistreatment and abuse that Natalie will use of this in the future events of the film. This is so powerful, increasing the emotional connection between Leonard and the viewer as both feel this effect of not knowing where they are and what has happened. The structure places the viewer with Leonard on his journey and this makes for a brilliantly uncomfortable viewing experience. Leonard as an unreliable narrator also really helps to make the viewer more and more confused about the events. They, too, end up trying to uncover the truth about the attack on Leonard's wife, and this can really make for a really enjoyable, although unnerving watch. This experimentation with narrative structure, while typical of the psychological thriller or noir genre, is exceptionally used here to affect the spectator's view of the film and the characters. This film is also particularly interesting for comparing it to narrative theories as it can be heavily debated upon how conventional it is. Of course, in terms of structure it is extremely different, changing the order around to change the emotional reaction from the spectator. However, it does follow some of Propp's character functions, with a clear hero (albeit with mixed morality) in the character of Leonard and the idea of the helper is present in the character of Teddy (Pantoliano). However, the event functions are very different, especially considering the nature of the story being told. Todorov's ideas, however, are non-existent in Memento. The plot does not follow the structure of Todorov at all and the lack of a clear equilibrium and new equilibrium do not exist, considering the story has an almost cyclical narrative, and so this idea doesn't really fit. This is a flaw in Todorov's theory when looking at many ideas of narrative structure. When it comes to ideas of cyclical narratives or narratives being told out of order, it can be difficult to apply his ideas. However, you could interpret that the new equilibrium could be the same as the original equilibrium, which shows the lack of change in the characters throughout the story and how these same events will likely happen again. One of the most successful theories that can be applied to this film in the end though would be the idea of Barthes' enigma codes. The whole film leaves lots of little puzzles for the audience, making one great larger puzzles as the spectator really has to try to piece together the order of the scenes, and really try to understand what may have motivated these series of events. The use of Barthes' ideas is extremely effective when placed alongside Memento and shows the reason for Nolan's choices in his screenplay, placing the spectator in a position alongside Leonard where they too must piece together the answer, and must work out where they are not only in terms of the plot, but also in time too. Aside from narrative, Memento is an extremely enjoyable watch. The reverse narrative really creates a sense of confusion and helplessness for the spectator, as they too are unable to remember the previous events in the film. This really helps Nolan to build up the rising tension for the viewer, as they come closer and closer to the end surprise. One of the biggest triumphs of the film though was the star – Guy Pearce provides an absolutely stunning role which really brings across to the viewer the absolute helplessness of this role as he struggles to remember what is going on and what has happened in his past. Carrie-Anne Moss also really provides a chilling edge to some of the scenes, really showing herself as a cruel and cold character in some fantastic scenes. Nolan's direction is, as usual, very well-done, adding some real tension and suspense to many of the climactic scenes of the film. My only Overall, Memento's absolutely exceptional narrative structure and style combined with some really compelling performances and Nolan's brilliant direction and script makes Memento a truly brilliant film. Rating: 10/10 |
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