Wonder Woman

"Do you believe her?"

This question, posed in passing, ought to have been a central theme of the movie. Diana, stepping from the world of myth into the world as we know it, provides an explanation for events that is wildly implausible to the characters she interacts with. And yet...they do have evidence that she's right.

How much evidence is required to believe the unbelievable? How many times does a person have to be right before she can be concluded sane? How does one make critical decisions in the presence of uncertainty? At what point does faith become rational?

Wonder Woman dabbles with these questions, but doesn't really explore them in any depth, and the movie is weaker for it. It prefers to meditate on the nature of mankind, which would have been fine, if the climax of the movie hadn't completely undermined all of its previous ideas.

I suppose I should elaborate on that, so SPOILER ALERT: Diana's hope of ending all war by killing Ares always seemed naive, and even cheap, simply because of the historical setting. World War I is not some sort of myth or legend; it's a horrific event that really happened. To go back and alter history to say it was all the work of one malevolent entity, and that when that entity was defeated, all was well, would have been offensively simplistic. Life is almost never that straightforward, and WWI certainly wasn't. Admittedly, some of the fun of movies is that the solution sometimes is that easy, but the quagmire of trench warfare is not really the appropriate setting for that kind of movie.

I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when the Ares fight was over in only a few minutes and changed nothing of consequence, and the cheapness of any other ending was made explicit as Diana talked with Steve about the fallen nature of mankind.

But then nothing really comes of it. Steve had never entirely been convinced of the whole Ares business anyway, and so he continues with what had always been more or less plan A in his mind, and Diana, before she can really come to any conclusion, is confronted by the real Ares. Surprise! This is why nothing changed when you defeated the Big Bad! He wasn't really the Big Bad at all!

There is some semi-philosophical argument during the fight, and Diana does have to make some choices, but in the end, she defeats Ares. Then the sun rises, and the battlefield is calm, and the next scene is a victory celebration. The war is over. Peace has been established. And the viewer realizes that, although the movie tried to cover it up with some fraught conversations, it did go for the cheap superhero ending after all. END SPOILER

Still, it was a good story and the characters were likable. Both Steve and Diana took a turn being the fish out of water, to reasonably entertaining results.
 (Although one does wonder why clothing is such a foreign concept to the Amazons. In the first place, it can't possibly be comfortable to wear plate armour directly over the skin. Secondly, wouldn't a warrior race want all parts of their bodies not protected by plate armour to be covered by heavy leather or something? And why would a helmet possibly not be part of Diana's outfit? I understand the real answers to these questions--that there is no point in casting a beautiful woman if you don't let people look at her--but from the Amazons' point of view, I'm not sure any of it makes a whole lot of sense. And while I'm on a tangent complaining about these sorts of things, why didn't the Amazons have more advanced technology? You'd think a race that was obsessed with training for war would have eventually gotten around to inventing the pistol. Is it somehow less honourable to kill someone with a bullet from a short-range firearm than with an arrow?)

Anyway, Diana and Steve bounced off each other well, and Diana was a strong woman without veering too much into obnoxious feminist territory. The assembled team was decent, though all of the members could have been a little more developed. These are minor quibbles. The movie is good and well worth watching.

It's only a shame that it could have been great and it wasn't.

Captain America: Civil War

Well, that wasn't hardly any fun at all.

Someone working on the script wanted to tell a serious story. There were a lot of ideas floating around about loss and closure and revenge and justice and law and loyalty, but for it to have really worked, there would have had to be a lot more dialogue and a lot fewer capes. If the Avengers were elite soldiers instead of superheros, it could have been a good, serious story. But they're not. One is in a cape and one is in spandex and one is in a "bird suite" and one goes by the name "Ant Man." To be an effective superhero movie, you have to acknowledge this. It doesn't have to be full-on camp, but, with the notable exception of Batman Begins, my experience is that superhero movies work best when they lean in to the inherent goofiness of the genera a bit.

And I do want to lodge a complaint that the plot, though clearly functioning in service of the stunts and the themes rather than existing for itself, made no freakin' sense. SPOILERS ALERT: I mean, really, they couldn't find Bucky in the time since they, you know, lost track of a brainwashed supersoldier and now, but they can do it as soon as he's falsely accused of bombing the U.N.? Just like that? And they're not going to even try to bring him in alive? Really? There's no way a guy like that could be more useful when he's not dead? And once they have him, they're going to extradite him? Extradite him to where? Why not lock him up in the underwater supermax where they put the others? And why did they let the villain interrogate him? (This one may have been explained, but I guess I missed it.) It seems like you'd put some pretty significant safeguards on who goes in that room, given that Bucky can be controlled by literally anyone who knows the magic words.

Also, the villain's plan makes no sense. Why was he obsessed with that mission report? Clearly he wanted to use it to destroy the Avengers from within, but wouldn't that imply he already know about it? And if he wasn't interested in the supersoldiers, why go to Siberia? Is that where the video was? If so, why not just hack into the computers and get it that way? (Not that that's actually something that could probably be done, but Hollywood thinks hackers are magical.) Once you have it, really all you have to do is email it to Tony Stark. Isn't that going to be easier than bombing the U.N.? (Speaking of which, for someone whose entire motive is anger against collateral damage, he sure doesn't have many compunctions about causing any.) Maybe these things were explained, but they certainly weren't explained very clearly. END SPOILERS.

Despite all that, there still were plenty of things to like about the movie. The fight scenes were pretty enjoyable. In fact, somewhat ironically for a story at least tangentially about the horrors of war and collateral damage, it was only during the fight scenes that the characters ever seemed to enjoy themselves. It was as though, in the heat of battle, the writers forgot they were trying to tell a serious story and accidentally had a little fun with it.

Spider Man was also a pleasant surprise. When I heard that he was going to be in this one, I rolled my eyes. Must we do this again? But yes, we must, because we're going to get it right this time. A gadgeteering teenager without any serious emotional issues playing second fiddle to Tony Stark. I am satisfied. Please no more Spider Man movies.

The various team dynamics seemed reasonable enough, though I'm not sure how well they'd hold up to scrutiny. If you had told me, after the first Avengers movie, that they would eventually split into two groups: One bound by international laws and accountable to the U.N. and the other freewheeling vigilantes who were technically criminals, I would have believed that. And if you had told me that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers would be the leaders of those groups, I would also have believed that. But if you had told me Tony Stark and Steve Rogers would have been the leaders of those groups, respectively, I would have wondered what it was you were smoking. It's not that any particular step along the way seemed out of character or absurd (for a superhero movie), but seriously, how did we end up here?

Paycheck

(Yes, I know. It's been a while. I intend to do better in the future, but we'll see.)

This film raises several interesting philosophical questions, like: Is the future written? To what extent do our memories make us who we are? Is the agility of a motorcycle preferable to the security of an armored car in a high-speed chase? And, how much training would it take for a computer scientist with a stick to beat a team of special agents with machine guns? Let's take them one at a time.

Is the future written? If you believe in free will, it seems at first that the answer must be no. People have the power to change the future. I could sleep in tomorrow. I might not. The choice is up to me, and right now, not even I know how many times I'm going to hit snooze. (Well, I can probably safely say, "too many," but not specifics.) If this option is available to me, and I have real freedom to choose, then you can't say with certainty what I will choose, right?

Except I know how many times I hit snooze this morning. Certainly that knowledge doesn't change the fact that I made that choice. Future me knowing what past me did doesn't rob past me of agency. It's just that I already made the choice, so know I can know what I chose.

Consider then, the following: What if one could step outside of time and view the whole grand play of existence in a single moment? Suddenly it makes no sense to talk about past, present, and future. All three are visible at once. We could consider this state almost like being "infinitely far" in the future, and so knowledge of all choices is available--from the perspective of someone outside of time, those choices have already been made. This person's knowledge of what I consider the future doesn't rob me of my ability to make those choices any more than my knowledge of what I did yesterday prevents me from having chosen then.

Thus far, so reasonable. Things get messy, however, when the person outside of time then tries to interfere. Say now I am the one able to step outside of time. There, I can view the consequences of my actions, and then, if I am unhappy with the outcome, I can step back in to time and make different choices. Presumably, this would lead to a different set of outcomes.

So which do I see when I step outside of time? Here we have a paradox. If I never saw the bad outcome, I would never make the other choice, but if I don't make the wrong choice, the bad outcome is not available for me to view. I can only conclude that the future is written, though it is written by us.

Now, to what extent do our memories make us who we are? I'm going to forebear talking much about this one, because I'm really not sure and I have a story idea in mind exploring this theme more fully. I don't know when I'll ever get around to actually writing it, but I don't want to spoil anything here.

As for motorcycles and armored cars, it seems to me it's a draw. On the one hand, if you're good on a motorcycle, the agility can be critical, especially if the chase is taking place in some crowded area, which it usually is. On the other hand, if you're being shot at, a motorcycle really can't do much to protect you from bullets. Also, in an armored car, the person riding shotgun can perform that function properly, whereas on a motorcycle they can't. If it were me, I'd choose the car, simply because I have no idea how to drive a motorcycle.

And about that fight scene...it was unfortunate. For a movie that had been so clever for so long to descend into ridiculousness at the climax was a bit of a disappointment. The people of Hollywood need to get out and meet some actual engineers. The real problem is that they got so close to doing it well. Engineers can fight (at least in movies) but they would do so by MacGyver-ing their way out, not by punching their way out. Iron Man is the model to have in mind here. The brawn comes from machines, and the real power is in the brain.

What's that? This review is almost over and I haven't told you if the movie was any good or not? It was. It solved the fundamental problem with escape puzzles, which is that the person who sets them can never be the person who solves them. I do recommend it.

The Force Awakens

(This review does contain some spoilers.)

It pains me to say it, my fellow Star Wars fans, but we need to be honest about this: When we look at the movies objectively, they aren't really that good. The original trilogy perhaps was great in its day, but it hasn't aged well. The special effects are all right, but it's a question of how impressive they were. We can't talk about them without a bit of nostalgia creeping in. The dialogue is more cringe-inducing than we like to admit. The characters we love are really a sort of Platonic ideal of the characters that were actually in the movie. And then there were the prequels...

Having conceded all that, I go no farther. Star Wars is loved, and is worth loving, for the world-building. No amount of whining on Luke Skywalker's part can negate the fact that he wields a lightsaber, which remains the coolest weapon ever conceived. No matter how dated the effects get, Tatooine will always be a desert planet with two suns, inhabited by a rich variety of sentient life, only a fraction of whom we ever get to know in the movies. The Jedi and the Force, the Empire and the Rebellion, Dagobah and Cloud City, are all rich and real.

Even the prequels, for better or worse, engage in this world-building. Naboo, Kamino, Mustafar, Dugs, even (I'll go there) Gungans. These things were new. That galaxy far, far away has a lived-in feel that more than compensates for all its flaws. There's a sense that we've never quite seen it all--that the characters were doing interesting things before we met them, and continued doing interesting things after they left the scene. There are more planets to explore, more aliens to meet. It all exists, even if you don't see it. That illusion is the real genius of Star Wars. That's the reason we love it, and the reason it deserves to be loved.

And that brings us to The Force Awakens. I was very nervous to see this movie--afraid that it might somehow break the Star Wars universe. It didn't. The galaxy is no smaller for the existence of Episode VII.

Unfortunately, it isn't much bigger, either. As I watched a droid who spoke in beeps and blips receive an important message from a resistance fighter in trouble, wander through the desert, be found by an unhappy young adult for whom the message was not intended, and that young adult set off in the Millennium Falcon for unexpected adventures, learn about the Force from a short, eccentric, ancient alien, inherit her father's lightsaber, duel a black-armored Sith who answered to an old but powerful master and had a mysterious family connection, and finally help blow up a superweapon, I couldn't avoid thinking that I'd seen this movie before, almost exactly.

But not quite. Stormtroopers (well, a Stormtrooper) are given more depth, with hints of stories behind those uniform white masks. The Dark Side has a few new tricks. In the best scene as far as universe expanding goes, an aging Han Solo is confronted by members of two different gangs he is cheating in some sort of scam that involves him transporting three monstrous animals, but before anything really comes of it, the monsters get out and eat the gangsters, and our heroes escape by the skin of their teeth in the Millennium Falcon. Good, exciting stuff, but nothing really new.

In many ways, The Force Awakens felt more like a loose reboot than a sequel. Perhaps that was the intent, but if this new version is going to work, future installments need to prove that they understand what made the franchise worth rebooting in the first place.

Prince of Persia

This is a good movie. Not an excellent movie, but a fun movie. The characters are fairly likable, even if not everything they do always makes a whole lot of sense. The plot is coherent enough not to induce pain (thought you can't look too hard at it). The dialogue...is what it is, but is frequently enough intentionally funny that it works.

What makes this a good movie rather than a mediocre movie is the stunts. Visually, the way Dastan moves is just cool. There is a large amount of vicarious fantasy fulfillment going on here. Who doesn't want to be so agile they can blatantly ignore the law of gravity?

And that's where I'm going to stop, because Prince of Persia really won't bear much in the way of heavy analysis. It's a movie based on a video game. Don't overthink it--just go with it, and it's a wonderful ride.

The Hunt for Red October

Really, I cannot say enough good things about this movie. The plot is pleasingly intricate, and, better yet, tight. So often when you have so many wheels moving as The Hunt for Red October does, at least one gaping hole is inevitable. I have seen Red October many, many times, and have yet to find one. (Admittedly, my love of the movie may be blinding me to something, but I don't think so--I love the movie because it has no holes, not the other way around. In any event, if you know of one, please don't put it in the comments and ruin this for me...)

The characters are all excellently done. Somehow, it feels like they each get quite a bit of screen time, even though, by my count, there are about ten major ones, and so some must necessarily be only sketches. They are, however, very deft sketches, and the viewer's imagination very easily fills in the details.

What stood out to me particularly this time was the dynamics between Ramius and Borodin. I like Borodin very much. I like him because of his absolute loyalty. My favorite scene (though there are many good ones to choose from) may be the one with Borodin in the engine room after the caterpillar drive goes out. The way Borodin says, "The captain knows what he's doing," after Ramius gives the order to continue on normal propulsion is perfect. That choice of loyalty, in spite of fear, in spite even of creeping doubt, that is why I love Borodin, and part of why I love the movie.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut this review short because I have other things to do tonight, but go watch it. Right now. It's on Netflix. What are you waiting for?

Ant Man

A good movie with bad science. Look, I try not to be a stickler for science in movies. If the Avengers had to actually follow the laws of physics, the world would be a worse place. But you have to be internally consistent. If a man shrinks down to the size of an ant but you specifically say that he maintains his original mass and becomes super-dense, he cannot ride a flying ant in the next scene. Ants are strong, but they cannot carry something the weight of a human being.

Here's a thought: Why not give his suit wings? If it can be done (and it was on the Hornet's suit) why not include that feature generally?

Also, why did the suit not have any weapons? It was originally used for battle. They show that footage. So why wouldn't you give it weapons?

Otherwise, this was a pretty fun flick, which some absolutely hilarious moments. They way messages were passed through Luis was particularly brilliant--I hope this is not the last we see of that guy.

I also very much enjoyed the heist aspects of the film. I will admit that there is a part of my brain more or less exclusively devoted to planning the perfect heist. (I tell myself that this is true for most mad scientists.) Therefore, to see that a film (are we allowed to still call them that?) could simultaneously be a heist movie and a superhero movie was quite satisfying.

I recommend this movie, but I also recommend that Marvel slow down and start being a little more thoughtful.