Weekend Entertainment Pursuits, Part II

[bryant]

Wanted sucked rocks. Here’s a list of the good:

• Set pieces: the skyscraper assassination, the sunroof bit, the keyboard across the face.
• Angelina Jolie’s performance, which was surprisingly nuanced and subtle, especially at the end.
• The Russian thriller-verging-on-horror aesthetic: the knife fight in the denoument.
• Timur Bekmambetov bringing in his Russian homeboy Konstantin Khabensky to play a supporting role.
• Curving bullets.

And the bad:

• That’s not a plot, Timur.
• That’s not an American accent, Wesley.
• Blurred choppy confusing action sequences. And I like fast cuts.
• Misogyny to beat the band, lovingly preserved from the original comic.
• No wasting Terrence Stamp, please.
• What the hell? The rat bit? That makes no sense.
• Come to think of it, the weird recuperation pools kept changing, too.
• After all that talk about how assassination can be moral because it saves lives, the train? Excuse me?

The scales balance poorly. There were way more blurred choppy confusing action sequences than there were excellent set pieces. If the action had been all good, I might have forgotten about the lack of creamy moral center. However, none of the victory conditions were achieved. Pity.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[gentlyepigrams]

I feel better about my decision to see Indy IV at long last tonight instead of this after reading your comments.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

See, if I had to identify one stink bomb this year Indy 4 would be it. Wanted has a lot of problems but I was still entertained by it at the shoot-uppery level. There's literally about 1 minute 30 seconds of real enjoyment to be gotten from Indy 4, IMO.

[gentlyepigrams]

My expectations aren't high for Indy IV, either.

Fortunately, it's a free ticket.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

I just saw Indy IV the other day, and it did what I wanted it to do: it is a fun popcorn movie and it cashes in on a lot of nostalgia. Would I have wanted it to be another 'Raiders'? Yeah, of course. But since neither 'Temple' or 'Last Crusade' were as good as 'Raiders', I knew going in that I wasn't getting that. ;)

[gentlyepigrams]

Well, the best we could hope for is another Raiders. Lucas is involved, so the worst we can get is "pick your least favorite of the Star Wars prequel trilogy". I've balanced my expectations on that basis, plus the reviews I've heard, which have ranged from "enh" to "ZOMG HERESY!".

I'm bummed we had to miss opening night because my husband was called out of town, but I'm happy I'll get to see it on the big screen.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Lucas, I saw the trailer for the new all CGI 'Clone Wars', and I felt absolutely nothing... I think Lucas has managed to burn my love of Star Wars completely out of my psyche, which is just really, really sad.

[gentlyepigrams]

That is sad.

I enjoyed the Clone Wars cartoons, but a lot of that was loving wossisface the animator, whose name escapes me, the one who did Dexter's Laboratory and didn't he also do Samurai Jack?

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

Genndy Tartakovsky

I keep forgetting that he came up with Dexter's Laboratory and think that it was created by Craig McCracken because the animation is similar to Powerpuff Girls

[bryant]

I liked Indy 4 more. But it was flawed, no question.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

It takes some serious skill to start with a Millar property and then make it *worse*. (And I loved Red Son, just everything else he's done has left me underwhelmed.)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Red Son was super-good, the rest... eh.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Did you know that Grant Morrison gave Millar the idea for the ending to Red Son? It made so much more sense when I learned that, because honestly when I finished the book I was thinking, "Wow, that is some Grant Morrison caliber writing right there."

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Eh, Grant Morrison's OK, but he got on my shitlist with his attitude regarding the Barry Allen Resurrection Tour.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm willing to forgive all if the writing's good. I haven't followed any of the big "event" books he's been involved in (a clusterfuck, from what I understand), but All-Star Superman is shaping up to be the best Superman story ever written. We'll see how he ends it in issue 12.

[bryant]

Millar bought into his own hype right around Red Son. His runs on Flash and Swamp Thing were pretty good, and Flash #134 was just great. (I had to look up the issue number. I'm not that bad.)

I blame either the Ultimates or Authority. Probably Authority. Ellis has a lot to answer for.

Hm. I think the comic was worse than the movie, though. The movie isn't soaking in racism, and there's at least an attempt at underlying morality as opposed to pure "we're better so we rule."

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

I was just re-reading Ellis' Authority. So good. And I stopped before the trade switched over to Millar. Read it once, don't need to read it again.

[bryant]

Are you reading his Freakangels? It's kind of grabbing me -- lots of his sense of wonder without quite so much of the shock for shock's sake that's permeated his Avatar stuff.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Yes, Freakangels is probably my favorite thing of his I've read recently, with the exception of Fell, which is just awesome and hits that sweet spot of humanity+shock that I loved in Transmet.

[stevenkaye.livejournal.com]

OK, it's not just me that the misogyny bugged then.

Maybe Angelina Jolie took all the character development and they couldn't spare any for Terence Stamp?

I didn't read the comic, so can't comment on that.

The gratuitous "I'm walking into the building now" jump cuts were funny. All in all, for me it was a neat SFX vehicle with a plot that made no sense whatsoever. Which was what I expected, after Day Watch.

[bryant]

michele_blue pointed out that Stamp had his very own loom in Europe, which neatly solves the problem of how Fate makes itself heard now that Wesley destroyed the Fraternity. I think this means he's the sensei in the inevitable sequel. Wanted did fifty million last weekend, which is solidly in the top ten for R-rated openers, so we're gonna see another one.

... huh. There's another thematic issue. On the one hand, the message is all about freeing oneself from the chains that bind and doing whatever the hell one wants. Raar, freedom. On the other hand, Sloan's biggest crime was telling Fate to screw off. Oh, incoherence.