So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with every second Monday’s article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
With the release of the latest trailer for The Batman, it seemed like a good time to delve into a recurring debate among Batman fans, the argument over whether portrayals of the character are too dark and gritty. It’s a strange argument, given that the only solo Batman movie in the past decade has been The LEGO Batman Movie, so it’s worth unpacking.
It is easy to understand why this is. There have been Marvel Studios movies directed by Oscar-winners before; Joe Johnson won an Academy Award for visual effects on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Taika Waititi recently won a Best Adapted Screenplay award for JoJo Rabbit. However, there is something tangibly different about seeing a big budget blockbuster coming from an artist who won both Best Picture and Best Director at that year’s Academy Awards.
It also makes sense in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There have undoubtedly been Marvel Studios films with strong senses of authorship: Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther. However, those movies all feel quite a long time ago. Although one can perhaps pick up traces of Cate Shortland’s personality in Black Widow or Daniel Destin Cretton’s interests in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, those films feel very familiar and very rote.
Red eyes in the morning…
There is tangible sense of opportunism at play in way that Marvel Studios has positioned Eternals as an auteur-driven project. After all, the studio has a long and complicated history with directors who have distinct visions; Patty Jenkins, Edgar Wright and Ava DuVernay have all suggested that the company’s culture is not particularly welcoming to creatives. In particular, Zhao’s assertion that she oversaw the movie’s action sequences exists in the context of Argentine director Lucrecia Martel, who recalls being told that if she chose to direct Black Widow, she would not be allowed to direct the action scenes.
Again, context is important here. Eternals is really the company’s first director-driven project since Black Panther, which is a big deal given the studio’s history of beginning pre-visualization of scenes and special effects “before the cinematographer or director has signed on to the project.” While movies like Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, Ant Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home are all varying degrees of entertaining, none of them feel like the work of a filmmaker who has something particularly pressing to say about the modern world.
Superfriends.
All this tension plays through Eternals, the fine balancing act between a director with a very distinctive artistic sensibility working with a studio that appears eager to launder its reputation by association, while also being anxious that this auteur doesn’t get to go too far. In some ways, Eternals feels like a limit case for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an example of just how far the studio will allow a creative talent to stretch a rubber band before aggressively snapping it back into the default position.
This is the challenge facing Eternals. It goes further than any Marvel Studios film in recent memory, but that’s still not far enough.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With Dune continuing its dominance at the global box office, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the movie’s size and scale.
It is stating the obvious to describe Dune as “big.” However, the description is accurate. Still, what’s notable about Dune is how Denis Villeneuve uses that sense of scale and spectacle. Dune is so large that it often threatens to burst out of the IMAX frame, to break the confines of the generous format. Villeneuve uses that size to underscore the core theme of the book, the question of how small these individuals can seem when confronted with systems and forces that operate on unimaginable scales.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new column at The Escapist today. With the upcoming release of Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, and the ongoing debate around it, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the narrative around the film.
Publicity around Eternals has made a big deal of the extent to which Zhao is the author of the film. Zhao has made it clear that she directed all the film’s action, and Kevin Feige has talked about how hard she fought to use real locations rather than simply green-screen effects. This is interesting, because these two very basic accomplishments are being treated as a big deal, as a revolutionary amount of freedom being afforded to a creative talent. It’s an interesting snapshot of modern blockbuster filmmaking, where these freedoms are considered exceptional and newsworthy.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Last Night in Soho is a fascinating snapshot of the siren lure of nostalgia, and how it is so often filtered through a presumptive male gaze.
Last Night in Soho follows a young student named Eloise who moves to London for the first time to follow her dream of becoming a fashion designer. After some tensions with her roommate, Eloise moves out of her apartment into a small bedsit, with warnings that past tenants have had some strange experiences in the flat – disappearing in the dead of night, as if fleeing from something that shares the space. Eloise has always been sensitive to otherworldly presences, and it is no surprise when she seems to connect with the memories imprinted in her new bedroom.
Who nose?
Night after night, Eloise is seduced by memories of a young woman named Sandy, who came to London to pursue her own ambitions of becoming a singer. Sandy met a handsome talent agent named Jack, who promises that he can make all of her dreams come true. As Eloise sinks deeper into this nostalgic fantasies of the swinging sixties, she notices that the lines are begin blur – between her waking moments and her sleeping thoughts, between herself and the girl who visits her at night, between dreams and nightmares.
At its core, Last Night in Soho is a meditation on the idea that it is not always so easy to escape the past.
I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Eternals, which will release in theatres next weekend.
I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Army of Thieves, which will release on Netflix this weekend.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday evening. The latest trailer for The Batman has reopened a familair debate within fandom around a sensitive topic: the question of a grim and gritty Batman.
Certain fans react strongly against takes on comic book characters that do not match their own particular tastes. In particular, there’s a tendency to react strongly to interpretations of the Caped Crusader that emphasise the character as grounded and pulpy, to act as if these takes exist at the expense of others. In reality, there is a rich variety of takes on the Dark Knight in popular culture, of various shapes and sizes. There is a Batman for all seasons, and often these arguments feel less about trying to argue for more diverse takes on classic characters and instead about arguing that there is only one right take.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Dune, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the new film.
Dune is an epic science-fiction story. It is a classic of the genre. One of the reasons that it has held up for so any decades is because its themes remain universal. Dune is essentially a story about what it means to be human. In particular, it interrogates that question through a postcolonial lens. The default logic of these sorts of narratives asks the oppressed to assert their dignity and humanity. (Even Denis Villeneuve’s last film, Blade Runner 2049, is about a synthetic human proving his humanity.) In contrast, Dune inverts this by directing challenging the humanity of those who would indulge in colonialism and imperialism.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of The Last Duel, which released theatrically worldwide last weekend.
the m0vie blog 