Memo to Warner Bros: Dont Be Stupid

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I had written what I suppose was a humerous take on Suicide Squad (2016), but in retrospect it is just not a funny matter.

The film is a disaster and deserves to be held up as a world-class example of what not to do. For those of you who do not do this for a living, or who have not studied this craft, we are not talking about vague, aesthetic, mumbo jumbo here. We are talking about basic, straightforward, principles of art. Principles which you can of course violate if you are a genius and know exactly what you are doing. But if you are not a genius, and these people clearly are not, then you had better pay attention.

I am going to go over the details in just a moment, but before I do I want to put the knife in. The WB executives who managed this piece of shit do not deserve their job. Anyone can do better, or said differently, it would be difficult for someone who had been around this stuff for a while to do worse.

What is particularly sad about this train wreck is that there are some very good characterizations here. The Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, the Enchantress are all excellent, IMHO. Its the story(ies) they were made to serve that suck.

Enchantress is such a babe and totally wasted in this movie

Some of the following are technically story structure faults and some of them are pure writing faults.

1. We have three movies here, or at least parts of three movies. One is a movie in flashback form of the Joker and Harley Quinn, their romance and Harley's origin story. It could have been great, but it wasnt completed and besides it should not be told as a flashback. The second movie is the Amanda Waller / Suicide Squad story to defeat Enchantress. And the third is the Enchantress story, what happened to her, and her desire for revenge. The last story is the one that is least realized. The one of the Suicide Squad mission is the most hackneyed. Either story 1 or 3 would have been more interesting.

2. The introduction of the characters for movie 2, Suicide Squad, is hackneyed and unnecessary. The mug sheet, attributes of the character are unnecessary and look forced because they are forced. Making them dance around in fancy type does not help. Maybe this worked in comic book form, I dont know, but it doesnt work here.

3. Here are some examples of bad writing. First, if you are going to send these creeps out with a special forces team, then they are going to have to train together. No special forces team would consent to go on a mission otherwise. But our writers clearly know nothing about special forces. Second, if you are going to turn ordinary humans into blob heads, explain why. How much better to have turned them into something that made sense in the context of the Enchantress. How about ancient Aztec warrior slaves? That would have been interesting, you know pulling people's hearts out of their chest, that sort of thing. Third, if you are going to just blow up the Aztec Brother with a fucking bomb, then why not just saturation bomb the place. The AF has lots of fighter-bombers with 500 lb. bombs that would do a lot better than that stupid charge. Fourth, what exactly was the Enchantress trying to build? What does it do? How? Why? What is the junk in the sky? What purpose does it serve?

The answer is that it serves no purpose.  The writers dont have a clue what they are doing.

4. A personal pet peeve of mine is to have a crash of some vehicle and then have people walk away. No, you do not have a helicopter crash and then roll it over a bunch of times without everyone inside having broken ribs, or crushed vertebrae or worse.

Listen up!  A helicopter crashes and rolls over a bunch of times, then two things are true. First, it explodes. Second nobody walks away. Got that?

This movie is worse than just a bad movie, it is a waste of good talent and a good opportunity. The executives and filmmakers who perpetrated this disaster should be ashamed of themselves.

The Flawed Approach to Man From UNCLE (2015) or Will They Ever Learn?

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About half way through the Warner Bros film “Man from UNCLE”, Illya Kuryakin tries to make the case for a Russian architect having designed and built the Spanish Steps in Rome. It seemed out of place somehow in the movie I was watching, but when the movie was over I realized where this anomaly had come from.

It would seem that the one character trait unique to any of the characters in this film that actually had its origins in the original TV series was this particular running gag. Whenever some invention, or creative work, was part of the story, Illya would always explain how it had actually been composed, or invented, in Russia. This running gag, used once, the names of some of the characters and the title of the movie itself were the only references to the original show to be found in the movie.

You might think that if you were going to bother to do a reboot of a 1960s TV series, that you would want to carefully review and select elements from the original and use them in a reboot, doing a best of, as it were, and make a contemporary entertainment product that properly also captured and moved forward what it was that made the original show notable.

Furthermore, you might choose to do this and do it well not for the sake of creative integrity but for hard core business reasons. The success of your roughly 100M $US investment depends on creating a powerful version of this property, to both get the original viewers, the teenage viewers, and as many of the inbetween that you can. There are models for this sort of thing, where it has been done successfully, and where it has not. And what we learn is that where it has not been done well, the movie has flopped. But when it has been done well, the marketing has been straightforward and the movie has been successful.

The lesson is, do it well or not at all.

The good news is that a certain amount of this can be checked before production begins. You can make use of a time honored but now sadly neglected feature of the traditional cinema which is called “the script”. Yes, you can write a script and have it reviewed by people who know the original, as well as by people who know modern action movies.

Having done this, it is also useful to cast actors who bring the script to life, and for that matter, a director who has a feel for the property. This is your job, I emphasize, your means of making a livelihood, and it is always good to remind the studio executive of their supposed expertise.

So what do we get instead? What we get is a script that ignores UNCLE, has the conceit of being a backstory to the TV show which if that is the plan, they badly fucked it up. It uses none of the anticipation and recognition, setup and payoff, available to them. The actors cast are boring, unlikeable, uninteresting. It is in places beautiful, yes it looks like a yacht advertisement from 1960s Italy, but who the fuck cares? Thats nice and all, and it would be a wonderful touch if they had a script and some actors with passion, but without them it is just a bunch of pretty pictures.

But if every silver lining has a cloud, the reverse is also true, and there is some silver lining here. Because the lead actors are so fucking boring, the women of this piece completely capture the movie. We have exactly two of them, one is a 20 year old who is completely hilarious in a scene where she tries to get Illya drunk, to dance, and to sleep with her. The other is 40 something Italian billionaire and femme fatale who jumps Napoleon Solo and then drugs and tortures him.

Yes, the parody of effete Italian manhood is entertaining, but whats the point?

Almost none of the elements that were notable about UNCLE were in this movie. No NYC tailor shop with a secret door, no THRUSH bad guys, nothing.

Its not enough to say that you are going to reboot a property, you have to actually do it well or you should save your money and make another Die Hard movie or something. As it is, it is all a giant waste of effort, of money and of an opportunity.

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1. You may wonder, as I have wondered, what the word THRUSH stands for. If UNCLE stands for United Network Command Law Enforcement, then surely THRUSH stands for something as well. At a Westercon years ago I came across a “bible” for the original UNCLE. A bible is the guide issued to all the writers of a TV series to give them enough background to write, or propose, a story for the series. In it we learn that THRUSH stands for Technical Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjection of Humanity. Well it sounds a little forced to me, but its ok.

The Anomaly of Enjoying Jupiter Ascendant

George Lucas has famously said that movies are binary: they either work for you or they don't. If they do, then you ignore any little flaw. But if they do not, then every flaw or potential flaw is noticed and used against it. I do not know if Mr. Lucas was original in this observation, I doubt it, but ever since I read that I have noticed that he seems to be correct. All movies have flaws of course, but when you are caught up in a film, one is happy to ignore the problems and issues that in other circumstances would be seen as deadly.

The question then becomes, what leads a member of the audience to lean one way or the other? From acceptance and enjoyment to rejection and boredom or worse? One aspect of this choice may be what is called the “cockroach in the salad” effect. Lets say you are eating out at a fancy restaurant and you have ordered a salad and when it arrives the first thing you see is a disgusting cockroach on top wiggling its antennae at you. You call the waiter over and he removes the offending cockroach and salad but the damage has already been done. It will be hard to get beyond that terrible first impression. On the other hand, let us say you are at a restaurant and see nothing that you particularly want, but you order something and to your amazement, it is really good. From that point on, everything works for you.

So my argument here is that the basis of cultivating a positive impression of a creative work is a mashup of “first impressions” with “low expectations”. If you did not expect much, then getting something really good is likely to push you over the edge to a positive impression. And vice versa. Until you get that push, whether positive or negative, then you are in a state of uncertainty. Is this film any good or not?  

I don't have any other way of explaining the apparent anomaly of enjoying “Jupiter Ascendant” (JA) a film I was born to hate. What could have caused this odd reversal of expectations such that I actually enjoyed watching this film? Can Science explain this or must it always remain a mystery?

Consider the following:

First, we have a dinner sequence in which our plain jane heroine introduces us to her Russian extended family in America. Its actually very funny. You mean the Wachowski brothers actually have a sense of humor? How would we have known?

 Jupiter's sister before and after a special bath.  Ah, refreshing !

Second, we have a classic theme in fantasy fiction, the “person of noble birth who does not realize that she is of royal blood and possibly the heir to the throne”. In this sub-genre, the kids are separated from the adults by the manner in which it is revealed that our average neighborhood girl is actually “her majesty”. In JA this is actually done quite well and unexpectedly. A fight sequence between two alpha males upsets a hive or three of bees which scares the shit out of our female lead, but no need to worry, the bees have been genetically programmed to treat “royals” differently and so our two fighting alpha males break off their sparring to recognize that something quite odd has happened. The babe has been revealed as a member of a royal family of some sort.

Bees show the way

Third, after our plain jane babe has had her butt saved by our hero, she tries to encourage him to ignore her royal birth and kiss her. He refuses, revealing that he is not really a man, but closer to a dog, or a wolf. She comes back with a splendidly stupid response: she has always gotten along well with dogs. Its does not persuade. This is funny.   It occurs to me that in certain ways this incident is itself a flaw in the movie. If our hero was really descended from a dog, then he would have no trouble taking advantage of the situation.  But I digress.

Fourth, the sequence with the candles and certain aspects of the wedding sequence are lush and clearly represent the director's desire to have a big wedding one day.

Fifth, the two brothers of this royal family are monumentally fucked up.   Parents, take note, do not name your child "Titus", it never seems to work out.

What a creepy asshole this guy is.

But most of all, who could not like a movie where the lead babe keeps having to remind people that "I am not your damn mother"?

So what we have here is an overdone, weird movie in the same genre of, for example, the original Dune novel: a space opera with exotic economies, insane royal familes and fight scenes between things bred to be good at fighting.

Overblown, a misfire, there is no doubt that it is a miscalculation on a galactic scale, truly a stupid movie.

Nevertheless, as a 12 year old, emotionally and psychologically, I found it often to be an entertaining movie and was willing to overlook its tragic flaws.   I also have a tendency to hunt and peck at my movies.  I am not bound, like so many are, to watch a film from beginning to end.  I prefer to "sample", sometimes with the sound off, in order to better appreciate its higher values.   When properly used, this technique can improve most movies.

Postscript

It did not hurt that the uber-schmuck, John Gaeta, was somehow deposed from his role as visual effects supervisor on this semi-epic. I shudder to think what manner of ego-swine must have replaced him/it. I am sure that Mr. Gaeta will enjoy a new career in the food service industry or some other profession worthy of his talents.

Attention! Bad Science Fiction Movie Approaches! Morbius, Beware!

I am 12:40 seconds into Prometheus (2012).

I like to give these timeless epic movies a few years to age before I see them.  Usually I wait a decade at least, but in this case I am making an exception and seeing it when it is a mere two or three years old, positively still green and hanging on the tree by my standards.

On a ship deep in space we have a very odd person, who seems to have a broom handle stuck up his ass, exercising with a basketball, while on a bicycle, who then studies Indo-European linguistics and makes reference to Schleicher's Fable (see note below), watches Lawrence of Arabia and tries to imitate Peter O Toole.

Check out the attempt to imitate Peter O'Toole's haircut... here ... 

But then.

Oh !

Destination Threshold !

Red Blinking Lights !

... and here.

Oh my Gosh! Open the windshields, I mean the blast shields, we have arrived! Golly! What a surprise!

What total bullshit. 

You see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are on a spaceship. As we have previously spent minutes of expensive screen time demonstrating, interstellar travel is very boring. You put the biped mammals on ice, you leave the robots around to keep the ship tidy and watch movies wishing they could have kinky man-android sex with Peter O'Toole, and being bored out of their android mind. You know very well when you are going to arrive because you have been watching a clock counting down digitally for years if not decades waiting for this moment. In fact, not only are you not surprised by this, you are probably on the observation deck as the planet creeps ever so slowly into view.

Indo-European historical linguistics aside, this is not a good sign.

But seriously, what this little moment implies is that at a deep and fundamental level the filmmakers are not making a science fiction movie for adults.  Obviously they are just blinking the red lights in order to create tension, which is fine, but there are plenty of ways of doing so without being stupid.  It means that the filmmakers either do not know any better or, more likely, that they do not care.  It could also mean that the story is for children, but I think we can presume in this case that the film is for the above-13 set.

An example of a science fiction movie that does not immediately throw reality out the window was Alien (1979) also directed by Ridley Scott.   This movie also played loose and fast with the technology of androids and also had some stupid plot moments, such as the usual corrupt corporation theme, but I do not recall that it immediately insulted our intelligence as this one does.

What other triumphs of stupid science fiction screen writing await us?

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Notes:

Schleicher's Fable is an attempt by historical linguist August Schleicher to write a short story in Proto Indo European, an early reconstruction of a language common to many languages in the west, including Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, German, English and so forth. It is an entertaining whimsy of early Indo European language studies and no one in their right mind would memorize it unless they had a lot of time on their hand, which our android probably does.

Schleicher's Fable on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleicher%27s_fable

Prometheus (2012) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/

Alien (1979) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/