So with Man of Steel hitting the cinemas this month I felt it was only right to do a Cinema Cocoa Saga Review of all five previous Superman films!
Which is quite an undertaking for me. I am not the biggest Superman fan… I find him as a character to be extremely limited in terms of creative story writing and he is hard for your general audience to relate to. The stories are often about Superman, but they are angled more towards how secondary characters interact with him.

Plot-wise, the films suffer from only one gimmick in which to threaten Superman’s life and give the audience a sense of danger… Kryptonite. So the story structure for many of the films is nearly identical, only occasionally did they break away from the pattern.

Having said all that, Superman in the past has been used as a symbol, and his purpose on Earth is to imbue us, the wrecked and easily wayward Humanity, with goodness. It is a remarkably simple theme that can be made gaudy and tacky if done incorrectly, but whether or not the films maintain it or simply descend into madness is another matter…

Superman: The Movie (1978)

When I was growing up, I didn’t have much respect or appreciation for Superman as a character and looking back at the 1978 classic by Richard Donner, I can see why. But simultaneously, I found a lot more to like about it.

The film opens with Superman’s parents on their doomed planet Krypton, his father Jor-El (played by Marlon Brando) predicts their destruction and sends his infant son to Earth so he may survive. The story follows Clark Kent (aka Superman, aka Kal-El) played and immortalised by Christopher Reeve, as he lives among humans in the city of Metropolis. Vowed by his father to never interfere with human destiny by using his powers, yet raised by kind, supportive human parents, he is conflicted when a criminal mastermind Lex Luthor unleashes a torrent of natural disasters upon the American west coast.

The film feels long; it takes its time with setting up and realising locations and Superman’s development (we don’t see the real Superman until fifty minutes in!) but considering this was one of the first major film adaptations of a comic book and was considered extremely risky at the time, this attention to detail with his origin is thoughtful and welcome.
It is an optimistic film, asides from a very occasional act of cruelty from Luthor (and a vicious moment at the end) this film is triumphant and roaring with positive energy. Superman is an energised character, full of life, insatiable enthusiasm and patriotism: “I stand for Truth, Justice and the American Way” he says proudly. You cannot help but feel a certain sense of joy from Reeve’s performance here, especially in today’s film environment of grim, tormented and realistic heroes.

It isn’t a very complex film though, so far as to say the characters themselves are not. Superman is by design a very honest, heroic standard. His love interest Lois Lane (while sometimes seen as a strong woman) is just a damsel in need of rescuing, or simply to provide romance, and while Gene Hackman is hamming it up as “super villain” Lex Luthor… the film plays it incredibly campy. Asides from the one or two acts of heartlessness, Lex isn’t very threatening, especially with his two comedy sidekicks chewing the scenery!

But, despite how simple and two-dimensional the characters are, I felt all the right emotions towards them, especially between Lois and Superman (the chemistry here is great!) and it really marks this film more as a romantic adventure film rather than an action movie. It has its flaws, but in looking back at it, this film is a great success and many new comic book adaptations could learn a thing or two.

Superman II (1980)

Okay, I’m already surprising myself… I think I prefer Superman: The Movie over Superman 2, though it is a close thing!

In this classic “bigger is better” sequel to the original film, Superman has everything to do: Lex Luthor breaks free from prison and locates Superman’s fortress of solitude; upon stopping terrorists Superman inadvertently releases three Kryptonian prisoners, who find their way to Earth and have all the same godly powers he has. Plus, as their relationship grows, Lois Lane begins to suspect Clark Kent isn’t all he appears to be…

I know Superman 2 better than the first film, and with good reason. The three villains General Zod, Ursa and Non steal the show so completely with over the top, cold and robotic line delivery and in destroying everything in their path. Zod would become one of the 1980s classic comic film villains.

With them come some pretty spectacular action sequences. With matching powers, we see these godly beings punching and throwing themselves through buildings, tossing buses at each other and repelling bullets and rocket blasts (some with an unnerving lack of CG realism!)

So as an action movie and an all out war between Kryptonians it is a great film, but compared to the first film… new director Richard Lester hasn’t taken the same inspirations as Richard Donner, scrapping the long, thought-provoking and sweeping scenes for more comic-book inspired action pieces and quick editing solutions.
But it maintains tethered to the original, Lois and Superman still have their chemistry and the relationship develops as it must, with difficulty and compassion. Luthor is still present but takes a back seat to General Zod’s controlling presence (he even sports the shaved head, though temporarily).

The goofiness is still present too.  This film probably has some of the most hilarious extras seen in film, and a lot of them aren’t because of the deliberate jokes. A lot of people living in Metropolis are… well… a little stupid. Oh, and product placement, quite a bit of marketing going on.

But there are some issues. The President of the United States of America taking full responsibility for the entire world and all of its inhabitants over the television (to surrender no less!) is an example. But the film suffers some awkward production problems, mostly due to both this film and the first being shot simultaneously but given to two directors. One such problem being that much of Lex Luthor’s scenes were scrapped; the scenes that remain are in fact from previous shoots during the first film’s production! (This might explain his hair inexplicably reappearing…)
Due to this controversial power struggle between directors, changes were made to the first film that influenced the sequel; Zod and his fellow prisoners were originally released by the missile Superman throws into space in the first film… only it was edited so the first film was a stand-alone experience… Here Superman defeats terrorists in France and throw an elevator with a bomb inside it into space, which subsequently frees General Zod. This scene, among others, was chiefly directed by Lester.

As you can clearly see, these films had production issues, and while not distinctly apparent, some of these problems make Superman 2 feel a little clunky in both story and editing. Whether or not you see these as real problems or not, it is still a good film to watch, and a worthy return of Christopher Reeve as the definitive Superman!

Additional Marshmallows: Because this review isn’t long enough, there is a special Richard Donner director’s cut edition of the film now available on DVD. I only watched the Lester version, but the “Donner Cut” includes the lost scenes that he directed earlier, unseen footage of the late Christopher Reeve and the return of Marlon Brando’s role as Jor-El.

Superman III (1983)

It felt like this film physically hurt me.

So, Superman must stop a conniving businessman from… uhm… toppling the world’s supply of coffee beans, by using a weather control satellite, and then turn his attention to the world’s oil. At the same time, the villain’s technical expert… a bumbling moron played by controversial comedian Richard Pryor… wants to create a computer that can do anything he wants.

I… ow… Ow. I don’t know where to begin with this! This was an uncomfortable, unbearable and confusing pile of nonsense, reminiscent only of such travesties as Batman and Robin.
Well, from the start we see the budget has declined seriously since the first two films, and director Richard Lester apparently loved his random goofy jokes so much he decided to have the opening credits follow a Mouse Trap style chain of bizarre mishaps befall Metropolis citizens, from a car filling with water to… to… burning toy penguins and a blind man accidentally driving a road marker painter? I… huuuuuuh?

If you survived this surreal experience, you will be pounded further by how you are not in fact watching Superman 3, but instead The Richard Pryor Show. Yes, Richard Pryor is the focus of most of the movie (dare I say he is on screen more than both Superman and Clark Kent combined!) and no he isn’t funny! At all!

I must move on, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Lois Lane isn’t around, she is assigned to a case elsewhere, so we get a new love interest Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole) who springs out of the ground and the chemistry goes nowhere.

I’ve just described the first HOUR of the film. Nothing happens but Pryor glibly mumbling his unfunny lines, Clark Kent mumbles as usual, Superman saves people who really don’t deserve saving by how fundamentally brain dead they clearly are, and our villains…

Our villains are replacements for Lex Luthor, only we have Perry White, the least threatening villain I have ever witnessed, his demented sister, and a blonde woman who is also such a bumbling airhead that she’s the only one who knows exactly what Kryptonite is… wait, what?

Because of this avalanche of senseless garbage, the one scene that sticks out like a nail through your finger is a dark and twisted moment where a poisoned Superman fights himself in a scrap yard. After seeing nothing but bad comic timing for over ninety minutes, seeing Superman GETTING THROWN INTO A POOL OF ACID, or perhaps Clark Kent getting CRUSHED IN A CAR CRUSHER… you might be a little disturbed, and not in a healthy way! Instead, you will be wondering: “Who took over writing this film, Freddie Kruger??”

This… film… this film is something else. Richard Lester must have been on something to think this was good. I can only claw a microscopic amount of respect from its challenging idea of an “evil Superman”, and stepping away from formulaic writing between Lois and Clark.
But it takes a full HOUR, an HOUR to do anything! It gives you nothing to go on, nothing to suggest Richard Pryor is going to scribble on chocolate wrapping paper the designs for a supercomputer that will eventually meld with a woman and create an entity to fight Superman. A computer that targets Superman with missiles, displaying the combat as an 8-bit video game with Atari sound effects! Literally, Atari sound effects!

I… I’m seriously confused and a little scared right now. This film is insane, and it doesn’t stop. It keeps going with some manic, demented energy, as if a ten year old is writing the script in the space of a single breath!

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

Lex Luthor breaks from prison once more and vows to destroy Superman once and for all, and uses the disarmament of the world’s nuclear arsenal to create Nuclear Man, a foe as powerful as the man of steel.

IMDB and the great majority of people will say that The Quest For Peace is the very worst Superman film… yet I have to stun most people and say that for me, at the heart of the matter, this film is better than Superman 3.

Firstly yes, there are a lot of problems, but they are mostly due to big financial problems during production that cut the film’s budget by half. The special effects are both recycled and of frankly laughable quality; Superman and Nuclear Man tween across the sky like cardboard cut-outs, scenes with Lois and Superman flying (ala Superman 2) are embarrassing to watch. The film looks older than the previous films!

The story is paper thin too; Lex wants revenge, and Nuclear Man and Superman fight. Lois and Superman don’t so much have a relationship as much as the film’s attempts to recapture the magic of the first two films, while other subplots are present but hardly relevant (evidence of the film’s run time also being cut by nearly an hour, making it the shortest Superman movie made) such as the Daily Planet getting bought by a “corrupt media tycoon” (read: genuine media network, hey-oh!) and said Tycoon’s daughter having the hots for Clark Kent… only then to RANDOMLY have Nuclear Man having a thing for her. What?

So yeah, we aren’t winning any awards here, and seeing a woman being kidnapped and taken into SPACE and being able to BREATH is possibly the silliest thing I’ve ever seen… this film feels like a genuinely missed opportunity. Its only actual flaws are when it blatantly rips off Superman 2 with Superman giving Lois a flight around America, and then memory-wipe kissing her again.

It is a Superman film, it is about Superman and there is some progression in his character and how he struggles to help (or perhaps hinder) Humanity’s development. We even see Superman defeated and weak, without rehashing Superman 2, which may have only been a tiny setback, but for such a short movie it was unique.

Terrible special effects due to budget restraints, a limited runtime and a phoned-in plot makes The Quest for Peace a prime target for criticism, but…
AT LEAST IT ISN’T THE RICHARD PRYOR SHOW!
For God sake…

Superman Returns (2006)

With all its noble intentions, Superman Returns is fundamentally flawed; nineteen years is a long time to try and sweep under the carpet…

Superman Returns, as the name states, sees Superman return to Metropolis after leaving Earth in search for remains of his destroyed home Krypton. Finding nothing however, he returns to find Metropolis much as it was before; Lois Lane still gets into ridiculous situations, the populous are still bumbling, and Lex Luthor is hatching another devastating plan. This time, the criminal mastermind plans to forge his very own continent from Kryptonian crystals.

You cannot help but feel a little sad when you watch Returns, it’s like watching a tribute band who simply cannot grasp the enormous task they’ve given themselves. At the turn of the millennium, director Bryan Singer had the comic-book geekdom under his sway: he had brought X-Men to the big screen, and proved himself worthy with a firestorm sequel with X2. But as quickly as he gained fame he lost it all by dropping the franchise hat-trick to pursue his dream of directing a Superman film… It angered X-Men fans, who rail against the disaster that was X-Men 3: Last Stand to this day, while Superman Returns positively bombed as well. Singer would retreat from comic books for seven years…

Despite a colossal nineteen years passing, this production was adamant to replicate the original Christopher Reeve movies of the eighties. They cast Brandon Routh, a close resemblance to Reeve, resurrect the original score, opening title sequences, and even tie in with the plot of Superman 2. But try as they might those nineteen years only hardened fans dedication to Reeve’s performance, and like Superman himself they flew too close to the sun… and got badly burnt.

The film itself is remarkably dis-interesting. It is like watching someone going through a checklist of Superman scenes, and it straddles a horrid line of playing things safe; just to be faithful to the original films… But in doing so the flaws, the differences, are more apparent. Characters are disconnected and shallow; Lois has a new boyfriend Richard, and the best I can tell you about him is that… his name is Richard? Oh, and she has a young son now.
…
Yeah, because adding that is surely a bonus to your credibility.

The fun of the originals does not come across, Superman is seen rescuing people from CG disasters but it never feels as electric as the original; he merely solves a problem and then moves on (the guy with a massive, crane-mounted chain gun on top of a building shooting police cars?? What was his story exactly??)

Superman gets beaten up a lot in this film… but so little is revised or established because the film assumes we are recalling the first two films from 1980! Fortunately I just watched them, but I can tell you now that the story and characters here are perplexingly disjointed and quite inhuman by comparison.

You might say it is unfair to compare this to the classics, but it is unavoidable, especially as this is meant to be a sequel to Superman 2!

The only good thing here is Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. He has nothing better to do than chew scenery and I think he knows it well, but he looks and sounds the part! Sometimes the production value shines through, the Kryptonian sets and crystals look fantastic, and they even got Marlon Brando’s footage from Superman: The Movie in there too. The CG is showing age already though…

Really this film is rather sad, a hopeless attempt at capturing something long since passed, something everyone sees as legendary.
Looking back at it, it really feels unnecessary; they were never going to succeed in what they were trying to do here…

So yeah… the Superman films are hurting badly, unlike DC’s Batman character who has only had one (perhaps two) truly disappointing outings.

I am alarmed at quite how painful this experience actually was… Superman III was truly something to behold, an artistry of madness, and I suggest you watch it just to understand how I feel. There are few films that make it difficult to write reviews for… usually they are either plain bad, and that’s an end of it, or they are average-to-good, Superman III has such a variety of wrong it is hard to describe without dissecting it!

The Quest For Peace is regarded as the very worst, and it isn’t hard to see why. It is certainly the easiest to punch huge holes in it, but I put most of its shortcomings down to terrible budget cuts and limited production time. It is the last Superman film to feature the iconic late Christopher Reeve… and that is something both saddening and worth cherishing.


I will see Man of Steel soon, don’t worry, the review is coming! I can only hope it can improve this poor state of affairs and finally elevate DC comic superheroes… From what I hear already though, I have some doubts…

We’ve fallen a long way from simply boosting cars…

CIA agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) returns and asks aid of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew in taking down a ex-military mercenary who plans to steal a microchip capable of ruining an entire country.

Following on from the previous installment Fast Five, director Justin Lin hasn’t let up his intention to give this series some sort of conviction. Most of the characters return (the film even begins with a montage of all the previous films) yet for all of its efforts to make a malleable universe, we are still dealing with the most uninteresting, good-looking people.
For example, Tyrese Gibson just eats stuff and laughs, while my favourite character Han still just talks about “going to Tokyo”, it is actually getting insulting now; these films only exist as prequels to the third film so they can include him yet his only characteristic is “I want to go to Tokyo”.

Even Michelle Rodriguez returns (due to fan outcry) yet the writers couldn’t think of any better excuse to bring her back than the tired “selective amnesia” fall back; she doesn’t remember the love of her life, but she can still drive and tune a car. Don’t even talk to me about the villain… I have no idea what his motivations really were, and he was never threatening when up against Diesel and Johnson…

The film does do some things right compared to the deplorable Fast Five. Some things. The chase sequences here are better, specifically the chase through London and a race between Dom and Letty. But for every good race there’s a over-the-top, nonsensical scenario. The crew face off against a tank. Yes, a tank. Why? Because the villain needs the microchip that is (for no good reason) stored inside the tank, inside an armoured transport.
Or the final encounter that involves a carrier plane… and the longest runway in the world!

The film isn’t terrible, but it certainly isn’t good either. I have no idea why it is praised as highly as it is, but it can only be for the action sequences, fight sequences alone, which are at times impressively far-fetched. The dialogue is terrible too; all of Dwayne Johnson’s lines are metaphorical nonsense: “To catch a wolf, you need wolves. Let’s go hunting!”

The series is a nonsense now.

Oh David Cronenberg, how I don’t understand you.

I enjoyed Cronenberg’s 1999 film eXistenZ, and even his body horror films such as The Fly are memorable, but in recent years his films have done nothing but completely alienate me. Cosmopolis is absolutely no different.

Robert Pattinson (yes, I’ve now watched a film with him in it!) is a young, super wealthy individual who by choice lives locked away from public view, seen here from the perspective of inside his technologically brimming limousine. This is by necessity too though; riots are raging on the streets, the lower class are rebelling against the super rich, and Pattinson’s Eric Parker must be permanently shielded as he… goes to get his hair cut?
There are people waving dead rats, disjointed conversations with random people associated with Parker who drop into his limo, random violence, random sex and inhuman dialogue. Yep, its Cronenberg back on his current trend!

Now I get the subtext of the film, or subtexts; since the film’s many neo-noir, stilted dialogues address a multitude of social, economical and financial struggles that are running rampant outside of Pattinson’s limo (and symbolically, addressing our own future and our sheltering from it). The film addresses all of these things as it proceeds slowly, getting Pattinson to talk to these different people who literally come and go with little or no context until after the fact. This makes the film incredibly hard to watch for many viewers, without doubt.

I usually like films that limit their scope to a singular perspective like this, leaving the world outside to the imagination and we see a clear representation of its effects on a few individuals… but here the dialogue is just so cumbersome and disjointed! One minute we are talking about hair cuts, then its rats, then its some philosophical unraveling of power struggles… followed by prostates.
I… I am sure there’s more to be understood with subsequent viewings, but from what I can gather from just one is that I don’t need to; it is fairly clear what the messages are, and they are valid and important ones… but I can’t stand them being presented in such a bizarre, blunderbuss fashion. There’s so many varied subtexts with every single encounter that the film lacks cohesion. Yet maybe even that stylistic choice is in itself a metaphor!

I can’t recommend it to people, unless they are big Cronenberg fans already. If you are a Robert Pattinson fan for… reasons unspeakable… you should avoid it, but if you do watch it, prepare your brain for some scatter-gun storytelling without much payoff.

How much do you want to bet that a film titled “Epic” turns out to not live up to expectations?

Following a young girl’s attempt to restore her relationship with her father after her mother passes away, but her father is a disorientated recluse in the forest, convinced he has found a miniaturised civilisation at war. Before you can say Fern Gully, Mary-Katherine, or M.K, is shrunk down and must join forces with the Leafmen, a militaristic legion in constant struggle with Mandrake, a creature that commands the very essence of death and decay.

The film is very, very easy to watch; it doesn’t play up any possibility that M.K’s father might be crazy as we see the leafmen in full action in the first five-ten minutes. There isn’t even that much weight to her mother passing away.

A lot of the characters therefore are pretty one-dimensional. We have a fish-out-of-water heroine, a plucky young hero, a hardened mentor, and a villain who wants to kill things. Because he is eeeeeevil. They don’t have personalities so much as plot devices making them do things, doubly so for secondary characters who virtually do nothing but act like plot devices; as such the only character I had any feeling for was Ronin, the veteran leafman, but that’s because he was the cooler stereotype.

The visuals are… okay. They are creative at times, but as the film progresses there isn’t much to see: dandelion plant people, hummingbirds, leafmen, more hummingbirds. It isn’t a very long film but it certainly felt long.

So yeah, it didn’t give me very much to chew on. The villain is half-baked and could have been a lot more threatening with a more “death is a necessity for life” angle rather than just wanting the world to rot (I didn’t even notice he was voiced by Christoph Waltz!) the comedy falls flat almost all of the time (except for one part that involves static electricity, that was funny!) and because everyone is purely driven by plot convenience you will already see where the story is going and predict all of it.
For very young kids it should entertain for a while, but everyone else will probably get a little bored.  

Epic is what you get if you mix Fern Gully, Spiderwick Chronicles and The Borrowers all in one, and proves to be something of a generic time waster.

Welcome to a new feature of Cinema Cocoa, where I make a little post about old and new trailers.
That’s right, the double-edged sword of marketing where these days the studios whet our appetite yet almost always spoil the entire film at the same time. Remember the days when teaser trailers were exactly that? Remember when you went to see a movie without knowing the final scene?
These are the sorts of things I’ll talk about in these special servings of Cinema Cocoa.

What inspired me to this? Why, the recent trailer for the new Riddick film.

If you don’t know what Riddick is about, allow me to briefly recap. In the year 2000, Pitch Black was a cult science fiction film where our hero was not a dashing patriot but a sinister, brutal murderer. It catapulted Vin Diesel’s career, but the success of the film was a mix of good tension building, subtly, and excellent gritty visuals.

Of course, Hollywood wanted to capitalise, and while I won’t go into the animated feature or the video games based on the character of Riddick, but in 2004 we saw The Chronicles of Riddick release in cinemas. Designed, even in its title, to be the first part of three.

Yeah… That didn’t happen.

Chronicles expanded upon the first film’s shadowy, only mentioned universe, but for many of us it went completely overboard with an overuse of CGI, elaborate set and costume design, a massive amount of exposition, they even had Dame Dudi Dench in there. Suffice to say, the tone of the original film was totally forgotten about, and Riddick’s subtle characteristics were lost.

It was quite a feat in missing the point.

Now we have Riddick, which has opted for the simplest titling method, which from the trailer is suggesting we forget everything that happened in Chronicles of Riddick. In fact, it looks almost like a remake of Pitch Black. 

Huh…
Now, I don’t mean to be cynical…. but I am…. but is it possible the studios are frantically back-pedaling from the financial flop of the second film while at the same time unimaginatively ripping off the cult favourite that perhaps less people have seen?

If you have seen Pitch Black you will see a lot of similarities. So many its almost comical. Are the studios turning the Riddick franchise into a sort of sci-fi Rambo? (the first Rambo, that is)
Don’t get me wrong, I love Pitch Black and a sequel to it is good… but surely the damage is done after the very deliberate and bloated second film?? Can we really ignore everything that happened and just settle for an effective remake?

For starters, why not have this film set on a different planet, or at least a different theme of planet? Like a jungle world, or an ice world… or… anything that isn’t a carbon copy of Pitch Black? (yes, yes, I’m sure there’s a contrived reason why they are on the planet they are on…)

We will have to wait until September this year to see if I am completely overreacting. Between now and then, I will get reviews of Pitch Black and Chronicles out. I highly recommend watching Pitch Black though if you haven’t already! 

The sequel to the forgettable Marvel comic adaptation provides more juvenile absence of thought, albeit some funky set pieces.

Following on from the 2007 original Nicolas Cage plays Johnny Blaze, an ex-stunt bike rider who is cursed with the spirit of a demon many know as The Rider. Now he is wanting rid of the curse, and while protecting a young boy from a prophesied fate, he could get his wish.

I know little about Ghost Rider (and remember little about the first film) but in watching this I genuinely find the character quite interesting… An irregular Marvel character as he acts more like an anti-hero. After his transformation he will hunt down anyone who has done wrong, and kill anyone in between. The film tries to account for this clashing duality…. badly.

The film’s tone is all over the place; going for comedy, then zany-but-is-this-actually-supposed-to-be-unsettling-comedy all the way to surprisingly dark visuals, with people getting shot, torn in half, even rotted into ash. 
The story is quite glib too. We have a prophecy child who can save or destroy the world and the forces of darkness are out to claim him. Oddly, the forces of darkness are limited to human mercenary lackeys, unlike the first film and its horde of demons. We have got the plague-ridden antagonist Ray Carrigan, but asides a pretty funny Twinkle joke, he isn’t anything more than a standard boogeyman. Johnny Blaze is a bit ambiguous too; his only motivation here is to have the curse lifted, and anyone could tell you that this means two things can happen, a: he doesn’t get his wish, or b: he has it removed, only to get it back in time for the finale.

So is there anything good in the film? Well, asides the CGI effects taking a tumble from time to time (sometimes looking like storyboard or pre-rendered effects…) the visuals are pretty sweet. Ghost Rider’s ability to turn any vehicle he drives into a flaming hell-engine is always fun (especially when its a giant earth-mover!) and the flaming skull can look impressive. Also, no mandatory romance! But I guess that’s difficult even for Hollywood to pull off when your hero’s face bursts into flames.

It is a shame because the character probably deserves a lot more than this… but it takes brave creative minds, minds that dare to make it less marketable but as dark as it should be, to allow it to have its own identity.
  
I can’t say its worth watching, unless you want to know all the Marvel adaptations at the moment, and the possible future potential. But I’m almost hoping for a remake in this case…

Star Trek: Into Darkness does many things I love in its effort to extend a seemingly undying franchise!

After Starfleet has had enough of Captain Kirk’s reckless and complacent actions they have him demoted and his ship taken away. But no sooner does a mysterious terrorist called John Harrison emerge from the shadows with the desire to destroy all of Starfleet. Only Kirk and his crew can stop him.

The reborn Star Trek series did one thing right, and fortunately it is continuing to reap the benefits of that decision. The 2009 remake made it clear that these new series of events are a new, divergent timeline and as a result the writers can do almost anything! Into Darkness plays a lot of cards that the Star Trek fans will get instantly, and better still they cannot technically cry foul of any references or changes.
 
It might sound like I am saying this is a remake. Not at all. Part of this new series strength lies in its ability to be completely different, yet have some historically significant events. Awesome for those of us who know our Trek, because we are left in suspense; wondering if what we think we know will happen or not…
I cannot spoil anything for you all (a testimony to film these days: I’ve had several reviews recently where I have had to cut short of the juicy details!) but I can talk about how the continuity of the first film is still here. The music is bombastic and victorious, the ships are great to look at, the characters are still as loveable as before, reminding us why we like them so much. They each get their time to shine, Simon Pegg’s Scotty is great as ever. 

However I still don’t buy into the Uhura/Spock romance… it has been four years and I still think its stupid, and this film does little to validate its existence. Some of the dialogue is a little repetitive, boiling down to the old “Kirk/Spock logic-vs-emotion” chestnut frequently. The editing is insane at times, we are flung around with characters moving place to place rapidly (if you aren’t awake you will slip up) and it does suffer from action sequences that are too fast (I saw this in 2D, I dread to think how this movement registers in the darker 3D.) I also found the addition of Alice Eve’s character Carol Marcus a little… pointless? (trailer fodder?)

But that’s all my negatives right there. Benedict Cumberbatch does not disappoint and steals every scene he is in without saying anything (and when he does speak, there’s a ton of gravity in it!) he makes the rest of the cast look incredibly vulnerable. This film takes on board what I always believe is true: set up your heroes first (ie Star Trek 2009) then hit them hard with a relentless villain.

The film is fast paced; you won’t feel the two hours pass by. And yes, there are still plenty of JJ Abrams lens flares. There are some little things that bother me, and it might be better on a second viewing, but it is still Star Trek, and that means it is a fun, exciting and entertaining science fiction adventure!

Additional Marshmallows: If you have already looked this up on IMDB these days, then a major element of the film has already been spoiled for you… I was lucky enough to not have this happen, and I strongly advise you do not look at the page until after you’ve seen the film!

First time I get to say this: “Here’s one I made earlier!”

My Saga review of all eleven Star Trek films!

And there you have it, all eleven Trek films! It has genuinely been a enlightening experience, and any Trekkies out there should try it (if you haven’t already!) and find all the subtle references throughout.

As for the rest of you, I hope you found at least some of it interesting ;)

So I finally rectify my criminal shortcoming in not seeing Paranorman in the cinema! I have to say, I wish I hadn’t made myself wait so long.

From the creators of Coraline comes another intense, entertaining family film set in a small town that labours under a history of witchcraft and prosecution of witches. Norman is a quiet child who has the strange power of speaking to ghosts, and while people around him call him names and put him down, his power is about to be the one thing that can save the whole town from black magic.

That’s the short description anyway, Paranorman is a lot more than the advertised supernatural comedy/adventure. There’s plenty of social context in the movie in relation to the prejudices of old still resounding today, as well as a heartfelt and family driven theme. 
Much like with Coraline, I respect this film for its gutsy and challenging look towards children’s films; it is fun and has great humour but it never condescends and never dumbs down its audience for sake of cheap laughs. Some parents might find it dark… but this is the sort of thing I was brought up with, and I can safely say I would love this as a kid.

Asthetically too the film is gorgeous. I am a big fan of stop-frame animation, but there is a fine line where it is perfect for me; the point where you can still see the seams, but not jerky (Corpse Bride is an example of the style becoming too perfect) Here it is characterful.
The music too is great and really adds to the haunting and quirky atmosphere that is loaded into every frame of the film.

A lot of people say the characters are stereotypical and one-dimensional: the weedy, nerdy kid; the vain blonde sister; the dumb jock; the socially awkward fat kid… But it is so obviously deliberate I didn’t have a problem with it, their dialogue is wonderful throughout, and these characters make me think of old 80s and 90s cartoons.

Overall, Paranorman is one of those films that actually lived up to the hype I had been hearing, and I would recommend it for everyone (yes, even the very young!) to see it around Halloween time.

Additional Marshmallows: It is obvious to me now how Paranorman completely trounced Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie when they both released last year! They both have some similarities, but this is how you do it.

I wanted to write a little special note of thanks to my increasing number of Tumblr followers :)

I can’t say I *like* the format of writing Tumblr posts, but you guys keep me going, and I appreciate your support for my reviews!

Thanks!