It seems like forever since I’ve posted here in
Spacefreighters Lounge and a lot has been happening. But unless you’re a
regular listener of my screen review podcast My Moviehouse My Rules, you’ve
probably missed my recent takes on some big SF films available for streaming on
your home television screen.
Let’s start with the film causing the most excitement,
WONDER WOMAN 1984, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot and Chris
Pine. (By the way, this review contains spoilers, so if you hate reading the
details of a film’s plot, you may want to skip out now. But I’m about to save
you some money on HBO/HBO Max and two-plus hours of your time so you might want to read on.)
So much was wrong with this movie I hardly know where to
start. How about with the premise? An ancient artifact is unearthed which acts
as a kind of Alladin’s lamp for all who touch it, granting the greatest desires
of their hearts.
A failed businessman (Pedro Pascal—GAME OF THRONES, NARCOS)
steals the artifact from the museum where Diana (Wonder Woman) works and
proceeds to use it to take over the world, but not before both Diana and her
insecure colleague Barbara (Kristin Wiig) have wished upon the “Dreamstone”
without thinking things through.
Diana’s heart’s desire, of course, is to have her greatest
love, Steve (Chris Pine) returned to her. The problem is he must take over the
body of some poor shlub to make that happen. (As my daughter said, “What the
Quantum Leap is going on here???”) Barbara, on the other hand, desires only to
“be like Diana.” Only she doesn’t have the core values that we see instilled in
the young Wonder Woman early in the film on her home island of Themycira. Barbara ends up as the supervillain Cheetah,
an “apex predator” to rival the superheroine she once admired.
In the meantime, the businessman, Maxwell Lord, believes
he’s found a way to outsmart the consequences of using the stone, which always
exacts a price from those who wish upon it. He becomes the stone itself—yeah,
I know—and people wish on him. He becomes ever more powerful until
the story comes to a head when he gains access to a worldwide broadcasting
system which allows him to have everyone in the world wish at once. As you
might imagine, contradictory wishes make for chaos. Wonder Woman must save the
day!
But, oh, no! The stone has demanded the price of Diana’s superpowers
in return for granting her wish. She is gradually growing weaker. (And if you
watch any superhero movies at all, you know this is a theme. Love, attachment
to a mate, is a sure way either to get that mate killed or to lose yourself as
a hero. Something about sex draining your energies. Who thinks up this stuff
anyway? Oh, yeah, right! 40-year-old virgin fanboys.) So, she and Steve must
give up their dream of being together—again. (If you remember, Steve had to die
in the first Wonder Woman movie.) Diana renounces her wish, gets her powers
back, kicks Cheetah’s ass, then finds a way to use the worldwide broadcast
network to get everyone to renounce their wishes and stop the chaos.
It even works on Maxwell Lord. The sight of his son, lost
and alone in a world gone crazy, is somehow enough to bring him around and he
renounces his wish and lives happily ever after. Really? There are no
consequences for him? It was bad enough this character was so derivative—echoes
of WALL STREET’s Gordon Gecko or a recently twice-impeached high official or
any other soulless loser you’d want to name—but that he was so easily redeemed
and left unpunished went against my grain. What are superhero movies for if the
bad guy doesn’t get his just desserts?
And no consequences for Steve and Diana hijacking that
guy’s body for a week? We see the guy on the street later; he seems fine. Just
a Goldilocks and the Three Bears moment—somebody’s been sleeping in my bed (and
wearing my clothes and taking my body for a spin)?
Then there were the mistakes of moviemaking that made this
film hard to watch. Jenkins apparently thought the 80s represented “the height
of Western civilization and society” and wanted to give Wonder Woman a chance
to deal with the villains of that time. Seriously? I lived through the 80s and
I can’t think of anything to recommend that era. The hairstyles and clothes
were awful; with a few exceptions the music sucked; fueled by conservative
politics, individual greed, unemployment, and interest rates were all sky-high.
In this movie we’re forced to relive all of that, including and especially the
spectacle of Chris Pine in horrible 80s clothes.
The first Wonder Woman movie introduced us to a thrilling
heroine with a fight choreography all her own. Diana has little opportunity to
do any of that in this movie. The action scenes are few and far between, giving
Gal Gadot no chance to show us what she can do. Even the big fight scene with
Cheetah is disappointing. Mostly, Diana is reduced to saving kids, and in one
laughable scene she nearly squashes some tykes getting them out of the way of
an armored vehicle they should easily have seen coming miles away down a dusty
road. Couldn’t mom have just yelled, “Hey, you kids, get out of the damn road!”
But I guess you get the picture. I wouldn’t waste your time
on this one unless you just have nothing else to watch. This one’s a No-Go.
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Jones and Clooney in THE MIDNIGHT SKY
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For a better SF home night at the movies try THE MIDNIGHT
SKY. This Netflix Original film is directed by George Clooney and stars the
usually drop-dead gorgeous actor as a haggard, bearded astrophysicist waiting
out the end of the world in an isolated research station in the Arctic. The
scientist is suffering from terminal cancer (much like the world, which is
being swallowed by radiation from some unnamed disaster, likely a nuclear war).
His one last remaining task is to warn off a spaceship returning from a
successful mission to explore a previously unknown moon of Jupiter where life
has miraculously been found. (Okay, that requires a leap, but why not? Let the
CGI guys play.)
Clooney calls the movie a cross between GRAVITY (the
Oscar-winning space film by Alfonso Cuaron in which he himself starred) and THE
REVENANT. (You know, the one where Leonardo de Caprio is almost murdered but
survives by hiding in a dead bear. Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay for both THE
REVENANT and THE MIDNIGHT SKY.). But to me it has more parallels with an
old-school film someone is shown watching part-way through this one: ON THE
BEACH, starring Gregory Peck. In that film, the U.S. and Russia have let loose
the nuclear dogs of war and the last outpost of life is Australia, waiting
while a cloud of deadly radiation makes its way around the globe toward it.
That film’s director was the redoubtable Stanley Kramer, and it provides some
of the most unforgettable science fiction images of the Cold War. I think
Clooney doesn’t do such a bad job with the same emotional feels here—the
isolation, the fear, the despair—both as a director and as an actor.
THE MIDNIGHT SKY has some plot twists that give it extra
interest, including flashbacks utilizing actor Ethan Peck (Gregory’s grandson,
known for playing Spock in CBS All Access’s STAR TREK: DISCOVERY) as a younger
version of Clooney’s character. But it does require some suspension of
disbelief to think we have a hidden treasure trove of lush life on an
as-yet-undiscovered Jovian moon out there just waiting to rescue humanity. Even
if that humanity’s Adam and Eve would be David Oyewolo and Felicity Jones.
(Yes, the supporting cast is great—it also includes Kyle Chandler, Demian
Bechir and newcomer Caoilinn Springer as Iris, a young stowaway on the Arctic research
station. Clooney can command just about anyone he wants when he’s making a
movie.)
The film might be a little slow—all the weight of SOLARIS
without the “scenery” if you take my meaning—but it is atmospheric and
thought-provoking, like the best SF films should be. You’ll like it if you like
Clooney, Peck, any of the rest of the stellar cast or post-apocalyptic SF in
general. Definitely a Go.
Check out the rest of my podcasts (New Screen Reviews with
Old School Attitude) here, or on
my Facebook page for My
Moviehouse My Rules with new posts every Wednesday!
Cheers, Donna
