If I post a review of a movie or book at all,
usually it is no more than a week or two after having seen or read it. Though a
minority of books and DVDs get a mention, a majority of the movies I see in the
theater do. So, Spider-Man: Homecoming
and The Mummy, both seen in the
theater earlier this year, are bucking the odds by not getting a mention until
now. The reason is that there seemed little to say about them, but here is that
little.
Spider-Man:
Homecoming: The whole point of Spider-Man from his original inception as a
comic book character is that he is a teen: teen hormones, teen angst, teen
rebellion, and all the rest of it. He isn’t supposed to be mature – unlike Iron
Man whose immaturity is an adult choice. The character doesn’t really work as
an adult. Hence, the continual reboots in the comics and the movies.
In this new version, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is
indeed an annoying teenager. That’s fine. Marisa Tomei makes an interesting hipper
Aunt May. Michael Keaton is not a simplistic villain; he justifies his actions
as reasonable in an unjust world. Parker’s fellow high schoolers are
(strangely) less credible high schoolers than Parker himself, but unconvincing
teens are a common flaw in teen-oriented movies. The film skips the origin
story, which the screenwriters assume (correctly) we’ve all seen enough, and
moves right to a tale of Peter Parker as Iron Man’s rebellious protégé.
Thumbs Up – not way up, but up.
The Mummy:
This film disappointed at the US box office, but it did well enough in
international markets to avoid financial failure. If you’ve seen almost any Tom
Cruise movie of the past 20 years you know exactly what to expect: action,
explosions, plane crashes, mayhem, flying glass, and narrow escapes. Black
market antiquities thief Nick (Tom Cruise) accidentally awakens a seriously
irked mummy (Sofia Boutella) who brings Nick somewhat imperfectly under her
spell. Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll – yes, that Dr. Jekyll – intervenes. The
action is non-stop and the cgi work is top notch. For many viewers that seems to
be enough. However, I found it hard to care about any of the characters even
fleetingly. In fact, I’d rather rewatch one of the cheapy mummy pics from the
1930s-50s than this one. That earns it a
Thumbs Down – not way down, but down.
What both films inspired were thoughts on the
volume of remakes, sequels, and reboots flowing from Hollywood studios. The
studios’ reason for this is perfectly obvious. Audiences, including many folks
who complain about all the remakes, sequels, and reboots, pay money to see
them. Not all of them. Many fail, but, as a proportion, not as many as do wholly
original flicks. Unsurprisingly, therefore, The
Mummy is just the first reboot for Universal’s planned Dark Universe. Still
to come are the reboots Bride of
Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, Van Helsing, The Phantom of the
Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The
Creature from the Black Lagoon. Money is enough to explain the studios. The
public, which complains but attends, is harder to figure.
For young viewers unfamiliar with an earlier
version (never mind an original version) beyond an occasional pop culture reference,
this is not an issue. For older viewers, though, I wonder if there is not
something akin to repetition compulsion in it. First described by Sigmund
Freud, repetition compulsion is behind the common tendency, for example, to
date or marry virtual clones of the same woman or man time and again. I’ve done
it. Maybe you have, too. Sig said that we try to recreate the conditions of our
childhood particularly in our romantic lives. If those childhoods are happy
that’s likely to be OK, but we tend to be drawn to people who poke unresolved
childhood wounds, usually involving the relationship with our parents. We hope
to make them right the second (or third or fourth or fifth) time around. The
hopes are usually dashed. Our attachment to an old movie is not in the same
category as our attachment to a human being, of course. (Well, maybe for some
people it is; if so, there is probably a term for them.) Movies do speak to us
emotionally however. Some movies do so for entirely healthy reasons, I’m sure,
but some do because they also speak to our unresolved issues. Maybe here, too,
we hope for comfort and resolution by doing it again.
Queens of
the Stone Age - Do It Again
I saw The Mummy or parts of it on the plane, and thought it was pretty horrible. If they continue the franchise and the second movie does the same, I bet they abandon the project. It's funny, but in that film, I could tell Cruise had aged, which in his previous films not so much.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, I think most of the movies these days are made for high school teens to 30 year olds. Sadly I read where the newer generation won't hardly watch a black and white movie. Either way you gotta do something on date night in smaller towns, and most of them are not going to see something like La La Land or Churchill.
Quite aside from the script flaws of the new "Mummy" (and they are extensive), the light-hearted Brendan Fraser Mummy pics are too recent and preferable. Did anyone really want another and darker Mummy pic? We'll have to see how they do with other Dark Universe characters. Maybe there is a new generation of young people longing for a new "Creature from the Black Lagoon" -- perhaps (like the original) in 3D.
DeleteThe accountancy of filmmaking always has been odd, but now more than ever all the studio profits each year come from a handful of pictures. The others lose money. They count on a few blockbusters to put them in the black. Every now and then they get a surprise though, such as "The Blair Witch Project," which cost only $600,000 but grossed a quarter-billion.
Yeah the studios have pretty much stopped making the middle budget movies. We get either blockbusters or Oscar Bait. It seems more and more that Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Cable are picking up the slack with those types of films and doing quite well. I wonder how long it will take Hollywood to realize they don't have to spend so much money to make a good movie. Just hire some good writers and let the directors do their job - odds are they will get a good film out of the deal.
DeleteEven the notoriously budget-minded Disney gets tempted just to throw money at movies, despite the commercial disappointment of "John Carter." I'm glad someone is taking up the slack.
DeleteSide note: Gore Vidal, who wrote screenplays and teleplays in the 1950s, always dismissed the director as auteur theory though he said the head cameraman was important. He said it is all about the script and that back then "the director was someone's brother-in-law." He may have been a bit biased. (Some directors are also scriot writers of course.)