YA Guy Reviews... KONG: SKULL ISLAND!

If you know anything at all about YA Guy, you know that my favorite movie of all time is King Kong (the 1933 original). I first saw it when I was a child, and like many people who've made and loved fantasy films--Ray Harryhausen, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson--I was blown away by its combination of humanity, grandeur, and wonder. Though it's possible to argue that stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien's effects don't stand up today, it's impossible to deny how revolutionary and influential they were at the time. Kong is very nearly a perfect movie in every respect, and it's simply not possible, in my opinion, to do it better than it was done back in '33.

But they keep trying. And they keep failing.

There was Son of Kong, another O'Brien vehicle that was mysteriously budgeted much lower than the original blockbuster and that suffered from a flabby script, overacting, and a white-furred, comic baby Kong. There was the 1976 fiasco, supposedly featuring a life-size Kong but actually, in all but a single brief scene, sporting makeup artist Rick Baker in an utterly unconvincing gorilla suit. There was Jackson's homage to the original, wisely set during the Depression but very unwisely drawing out the story to twice the original's length, much of that extra footage wasted on interminable, implausible CGI battle sequences. And now, there's Kong: Skull Island, about which the less that's said, the better.

I watched the movie today, and I'm sorry to report that it's idiotic on every level. Kong himself is ridiculously big, presumably so he'll be matched in scale with Godzilla for the upcoming remake of the Japanese film in which the two monsters duked it out. He's also, for all his semi-realistic fur and musculature, utterly weightless, which is a problem the CGI gurus have simply not been able to figure out--everything floats around without the merest appearance of mass, making the creatures look like preposterously realistic cartoons cavorting in live-action settings. Completely lacking in personality, this Kong is nothing but a hundred-foot-tall wrecking machine, doing equivalent amounts of damage on helicopters, giant octopuses, and stupid-looking giant lizard-things with human arms but no legs. The cast is full of actors (Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman) whose careers are clearly bottoming out, if being eaten by stupid-looking giant lizard-things is any indication. And the supposed "message," something about how the Earth doesn't really belong to us and we should treat it better, falls completely flat amidst all the mayhem. This was a movie that should never have been made, and my sole regret is that I wasted nine bucks and two hours of my life on it.

There are still some great fantasy and science fiction movies being made. Arrival, based on the Ted Chiang story, was terrific. So was the stop-motion masterpiece Kubo and the Two Strings. The Star Wars movies of recent years, though no longer revolutionary, remain well-crafted and engaging. The Martian had the benefit of great source material (the Andy Weir book) and a great director (Ridley Scott). So it's not as if I've given up on this kind of film, even when, as is so often the case, substance takes a back seat to spectacle.

But I think it's time to admit that Beauty killed the Beast for good. Ever-more frantic attempts to resuscitate him are doing nothing but heaping ignominy on his once-majestic career.

YA Guy Lists... His Top Ten Superhero Movies!

YA Guy, being YA Guy, loves superheroes.

I read all the comics when I was a kid, drew my own characters (like the one pictured above), dreamed of becoming a comic-book artist like Jack Kirby or John Byrne (some of the biggest names in my day). When the movies started to come out in the eighties, I was first in line. Still am.

But the thing is, I'm becoming very disappointed in the direction superhero films are taking. I saw the latest Avengers installment today, and it was a huge let-down: too chaotic, too noisy, too full of unconvincing computer-generated mayhem and too-obvious philosophical truths (there is evil in all of us, etc.) at the expense of plot or character development. (In this respect it was only marginally worse than the first, which had all the above problems but a somewhat more coherent script.) Maybe I'm getting too old, and maybe I shouldn't complain if movies about caped deities seem immature. But the best superhero movies have always struck me as intense, inventive, and emotionally complex explorations of what it means to be human. They don't need to be sophomoric video games.

So here, for fun, is a list of my 10 favorite superhero movies. Enjoy, and feel free to suggest others!

1. X-Men. By far the best of the bunch, this film about super-powered mutants is a trenchant analysis of prejudice and victimization with a brilliant cast, great special effects, and compelling story. The conflict between Magneto and Professor X is incisively drawn, the relationship between Wolverine and Rogue surprisingly tender. And some of the action sequences--most notably, Magneto's game of Russian Roulette at the train station--are utterly stunning.
2. Spider-Man 2. I'm talking about the original series here, with Tobey Maguire in the lead role. I found this one of the most emotionally gripping of all superhero movies, with the hero struggling to reconcile his responsibilities with his desires. And the performance by Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus was amazing. Not surprisingly, novelist Michael Chabon shared story credits on this film.
3. Batman. The Michael Keaton/Tim Burton original. Without lavish special effects, this film gets to the heart of the Batman mythos in ways the overblown Dark Knight films can't touch. Keaton was a surprising but perfect choice, Jack Nicholson was great as the Joker, and Burton managed to satisfy the demands of the genre while keeping his own eccentricities on a tight rein (something he failed to do in the bizarre sequel).
4. Iron Man. The first and best of the three-part series (all of which are pretty darn good). I had a few problems with the film's politics--which seem to suggest that it's okay to produce weapons of mass destruction as long as they don't fall into the hands of the "bad guys"--but the great performance by Robert Downey Jr. and the gritty realism (for a film in this genre) redeem it.
5. Daredevil. One of the things I've always disliked about the Dark Knight films (and comics) is their tedious repetition of the timeworn cliche that heroes and villains are actually the same deep inside. Yeah, yeah, yawn. But in Daredevil, vigilantism is represented with something like its true psychological complexity. Plus, the movie's villain--an over-the-top Bullseye--is hilarious.
6. X-Men: First Class. Another classy chapter in the X-Men series (in truth, there's not a bad film in the bunch), this one anchored by the astonishing performance of Michael Fassbender as a young, tortured Magneto. The scene in which he confronts escaped Nazis in Argentina is worth the price of admission in itself.
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In general, I don't see the need for all these "re-boots" of existing superhero movies. (I just heard that a new Fantastic 4 is coming out this summer.) And I didn't much care for the first installment of the new Spider-Man franchise, which seemed to add nothing to the old except an unconvincing green monkey-dog supposed to be the Lizard. But the second film in the new series hits all the right notes, with Jamie Foxx expertly cast as the bumbling loner-turned supervillain Electro, and with a surprise death at the end I never expected the filmmakers to have the guts to carry out.
8. Guardians of the Galaxy. All right, this one is fairly chaotic, but at least it's chaotic in the name of fun and not in the super-serious, portentous fashion of so many overblown superhero flicks. The moment the hero entered a secret lair on  a remote planet to the tune of Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love," I was hooked.
9. Spider-Man. The first film in the Tobey Maguire series. The Green Goblin as played by Willem Dafoe was a great villain, and the young actors did a terrific job of capturing teen angst and insecurity. The third film in this series had too many villains and too much stuff going on, but the first two are solid.
10. The Incredibles. I'm cheating a bit here, since this Disney/Pixar film isn't based on a comic book. But I loved how deftly the film turned superhero conventions on their head while still paying homage to the spirit and style of the genre. Kind of an Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for the silver screen.

Yes, I know that's my second Michael Chabon reference in this post--and that's no mistake. Great superhero movies should aspire to the status of art, not just escapism. All of the above do precisely that.

YA Guy Previews... THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES!

There is no greater lover of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien than YA Guy. I first read 'em at age twelve, and I re-read 'em every few years (most recently, with my children). I've taught classes on Tolkien, collected innumerable items of LOTR merchandise (including a balrog action figure that's as big as a lion cub). I loved Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings; heck, I even thought the Ralph Bakshi version wasn't half bad. (Okay, I even liked the Rankin & Bass cartoons!) So it pains me to say what I'm about to say next:

I've decided not to see the final chapter of Jackson's three-part Hobbit series, subtitled "The Battle of the Five Armies."

Why? Well, to begin with, I thought the first two films absolutely sucked. I mean, beyond sucked. They were so bad, I was tempted for the first time in my life to charge the projectionist and stop the picture. If you want to know why I hated them so much, check out my reviews here and here. If you care only about the general idea, it's this: the films were loud, stupid, overblown video games with no apparent relation to Tolkien's story in either style or substance.

But even with all that, I might have taken a chance on the final film; heck, it's only ten bucks and three hours of my life. (By contrast, I devoted much of two months to reading A Game of Thrones, which was pretty darn bad too.) No, the final straw was the film's subtitle. That did it for me.

As you may recall, months prior to its release, this film was billed with the subtitle to Tolkien's book: "There and Back Again." That subtitle gave me some hope for the movie, because it calls attention to what the story of The Hobbit is really about: the adventures of one small individual who ventures out into the big world and, through luck and pluck, manages to return changed but intact. A children's story, in other words, comparable to other great children's stories past and present: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Stuart Little, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Night Gardener (the final title being that of fellow Pittsburgh author Jonathan Auxier's wonderful modern fairy tale). "There and Back Again" captures the essence of The Hobbit, and the use of this subtitle gave me reason to believe Jackson might have come to his senses and decided to return to his source material.

But no. It got changed to "The Battle of the Five Armies." The motivation, no doubt, was that the majority of the previous films' viewers--non-readers of Tolkien--wouldn't catch the literary reference and would be baffled by a title that doesn't promise lots of kick-butt special effects and gory battle sequences. They'd stay away in droves if they thought the film wouldn't contain sufficient computer-generated mayhem.

And sadly, that's probably true.

So in tribute to Tolkien's genius, in honor of the true spirit of children's literature, and in protest of Jackson and Company's perversion of all that's wise and good about The Hobbit, I'm staying home. (And I'm writing this blog post, for what that's worth.) It won't amount to much--the movie will make a zillion dollars, Jackson will get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (this has already happened), and we as a culture will choose lucre over art yet again.

But at least, I won't have to be there to see it. And one underpaid and overworked projectionist in Pittsburgh will get a little bit of a break.

YA Guy Reviews... GODZILLA

Back in the day, monster movies were about monsters.

Oh, YA Guy knows they weren't only about monsters. I wrote a whole book about the other things they were about. Pick up a copy if you're in the mood.

But in classic films such as King Kong (1933) and Godzilla (1954), as well as modern classics like Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982), the driving force of the movie was the encounter with and--usually--defeat of the monster.

That was then, this is now.

These days, the driving force of monster movies is . . . bad family melodrama.

It began in the nineties--which, not coincidentally, was the decade that the "family values" campaign picked up steam in popular and political culture. The rhetoric of that campaign was complex and not very coherent, but it boiled down to the following: traditional (i.e., male-headed) families were in crisis, with an ensuing social breakdown epitomized by the out-of-control breeding of marginal (i.e., black and Hispanic) females; therefore, traditional (i.e., white) men needed to reassert control over their families and their society.

This discourse drives all three Jurassic Park movies, wherein nice-guy white male scientists have to save kids from ferocious, out-of-control female dinosaurs. It drives War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise version), wherein a down-and-out dad becomes Father of the Year by fighting off dark-skinned, pregnant-bellied alien tripods. It drives Godzilla (the Roland Emmerich version), wherein a nice-guy white male scientist regains his girl (and thus presumably starts down the road to establishing a traditional family) by fighting off pregnant monster-lizards. It drives every movie Roland Emmerich ever made, but that's perhaps beside the point.

And now along comes Godzilla (2014), an unholy mess of a movie in which the title creature appears forty-five minutes into the film and occupies roughly five minutes of screen time thereafter, if you add up all the five-second segments of him slugging it out with giant pregnant insectoid thingamajigs. The rest of this painfully bad movie is taken up with the following: the story of a young army weapons expert, abandoned by his cuckoo conspiracy-theory father, who then abandons his own wife and young child when he's called to spring his nut-job dad from jail on the eve of the giant creatures' rampage. He reconciles with his dad (what a good son!), saves a little Japanese boy from the monsters (what a good father!), implausibly survives a thousand-foot fall from a train track so he can destroy all the monster-bug's offspring (what a really good father!), and even more implausibly, reunites with his wife and son, who have somehow avoided being crushed by the city that basically collapsed on them (what a really, really good father!).

Godzilla and the other monsters are entirely incidental to all this. But in Hollywood, where rich white men make most of the movies and most of the decisions, it's apparently really, really, really important to keep reasserting how really, really, really screwed up society would be if white fathers weren't in charge. So they dream up bigger and bigger CGI monsters to threaten society, only so white fathers can save it in more and more preposterous ways.

It's really getting to be a drag. I go to monster movies to see monsters, not to see rich white guys live out their anxious fantasies about social control.

I guess I need to go back to 1954, when Godzilla--and not some anxious rich white guy--was truly the King of Monsters.