fenrisfil, Author at Screen Wolf

James Gunn DCU – Analysis

Posted on February 6, 2023February 7, 2023 by fenrisfil

So James Gunn has finally dropped the plans for the DC movies going forwards and it was a bit of a mixed bag and frankly overall somewhat disappointing. Not that I’m going to join the Snyder fans or Henry Cavill fanclub in calling it DOA before a single trailer or even casting decision. But my enthusiasm has certainly lowered. But let’s have a look at what was announced. There were three main categories (Technically two but I’m adding a third reading between the lines).

The Elseworld movies that won’t relate at all to the DCU and likely Gunn won’t have any involvement in; The legacy movies inherited from the previous regime that need to play out and lay the groundwork for the full reboot and finally the new movies that start to paint a picture of the direction Gunn wants to go. Obviously I’m going to focus more on those but we’ll cover it all so let’s get started!

Elseworlds

The first thing to note is that there basically seems to have been some kind of deal to continue to support The Batman (Which also has a couple of TV show side projects in the work), The Joker (Which was DC’s biggest film since Dark Knight) and Teen Titans Go (Which I gather is also very successful). The deal means they are labelled as “Elseworlds” a title used in the comics to designate an entirely self contained universe where anything goes. These are likely decisions not directly involving Gunn and basically the directors/show runner has free reign with them.

It’s interesting to note Gunn didn’t mention any other Elseworlds stuff or future plans. However there is a rumour the dreaded JJ Abrams Superman project may still be in the works as an Elsewords story. Can’t say I’m pleased to hear that since it sounds dreadful but it’s possible they are committed to make it through old contracts. That Gunn didn’t mention it means he likely wants to wash his hands of it if it is happening.

Sadly, I get the impression the Elseworlds tag is basically there just to support contractual obligations and milk relatively successful IP’s for a bit longer. There doesn’t seem to be any real creative drive behind it and it’s a shame because I’d love to see something like Gotham by Gaslight or Batman Vs Dracula. Maybe they’ll get creative with it later. It actually could have been a useful tool for supporting the main DCU if used properly.

The Gunn Show

The second thing are the legacy films/shows. These can be split into two separate categories, the ones that Gunn listed as part of his “Gods and Monsters” chapter and the ones that aren’t. Likely the key difference between the sets are that those that are included are shows Gun is behind and those that aren’t are ones he had nothing to do with. But just how much the legacy Gunn projects will actually be worked into the Gunnverse remains to be seen.

It’s worth noting there was no mention of the Peacemaker crew here except as being a part of the Waller series so it may their second season will effectively be merged into that show. Creature Commandos is being written by Gunn and likely will be a testing ground that can be ignored in the DCU if none of the characters get over. Basically it’s a Groot/Grogu generating machine. See what is marketable, then move it to live action.

Remnants Of The Past.

The more immediate legacy shows though come with them big question marks too. How much will they relate to the new DCU? Will the actors still be employed after the theatrical run? The Flash is marked as the point that changes the whole DCU which means that the Gunnverse is effectively a spin off of the Snyderverse. Not sure how smart that is. But the main question is will they carry over the PR nightmare and frankly terribly cast Ezra Miller into the DCU?

It’s worth noting Gunn has made no mention of The Flash, Aquaman or Shazam outside of their originally scheduled movies. But it’s also interesting to note that Aquaman 2 is released after The Flash, so will it be set before those events or does that mean Momoa is still Aquaman going forward? That wouldn’t seem to fit with the actors own hints about perhaps switching to playing Lobo in the DCU.

That just leaves Blue Beetle which is new and far enough off to scrub any reference to the DCEU, meaning the character could well have a place in Gunns’ DCU. But if it doesn’t perform they can just forget about the character without too much worry. So on to the important stuff and what should suggest a direction for the DCU moving forward and raise potential issues. Let’s look at this first chapter of the DCU or as Gunn calls it: “Gods and Monsters”.

Superman: Legacy (2025)

The first real movie of the “DCU”/Gunnverse. All we know about this is that it features a younger Superman meeting the people at The Daily Planet for the first time. Presumably day 1 in Metropolis. It’s likely you won’t see his Smallville upbringing and possibly if you see him departing Krypton it’ll be relatively brief. Gunn clearly didn’t want Henry Cavill in the roll and it’s not clear how much of that is a desire to sweep out the Snyderverse (We’ll know when we find out if Shazam, Flash and Aquaman are remaining the same).

If he just didn’t picture Cavill in the role it makes me wonder what kind of actor he did picture for it. It’s worth noting he literally said this was a 7-10 year plan, so the age factor does come into it and how long they can expect actors to commit. Still, Cavill seems so well suited for the role it does raise alarm bells that he wasn’t even considered to continue.

Supposedly (according to a press release) the film will be about Kal/Clark balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. There is potential there for character growth, I just hope it goes in a way of establishing Superman as he really should be and not just deconstructing and subverting his story for the sake of it. If it involves his Kryptonian heritage it suggests that Lex Luthor probably isn’t going to be his main focus.

It also seems unlikely they’ll bring in Zod or Doomsday since they’ll want to differentiate it from Zack Snyders’s Superman films. It’s also probably too close to Aquaman 2 to be Momoa as Lobo and I don’t think they’d want to start with Lobo anyway. Maybe we’ll see Braniac. Honestly we won’t likely know until they start filming.

Lanterns (2025)

The first legit live action show of the DCU is one that has been in the works for a while but seems to have changed form enough to become a key part of Gunn’s plans. It is supposed to lead into a key story piece perhaps setting up the first big team up. The series was originally supposed to air in 2023, but went through a lot of re-writes before Gunn even came on board. It’s an obvious show to do though and it’s not linked to the old DCEU so made sense for Gunn to convert it.

While it’s great news they are using both the most popular Lanterns (Interestingly, neither is the original) it seems a strange choice to do such obviously CGI intensive characters in a TV show. The suggestion seems to be it is going to be a bit of a buddy cop mystery, but with Lantern powers. The two are somewhat strange bedfellows, but on a TV show budget you can’t throw CGI out there every five minutes so I guess focusing on detective work helps, but will it satisfy fans? I think a lot of that will be down to if they can find the balance with the CGI and don’t end up with a show that looks as bad as She-Hulk did.

The Authority (Movie – probably 2025)

Based on the Wildstorm characters, which originated outside of DC but are now part of that family, though a fairly isolated part. It’s interesting that the second official movie out of Gunn’s DCU is based on characters that originated elsewhere. It’s also odd that they’ve basically decided to introduce what is effectively a subverted version of the Justice League (Even including a blatant Superman character (Apollo) and a blatant Batman character (Midnighter)… except these guys are gay and dating each other) before introducing the actual Justice league. Hopefully they’ll try and make them a bit more different to the characters they are blatant subversions of, otherwise it’ll damage the credibility of the originals.

There’s also the issue that they are basically all Black Adam and so when they engage with the actual Justice League it’s basically going to be that same story again. Again, a strange choice. However, they are obscure enough that Gunn probably feels he can do whatever he wants with them and figures he can turn them into another GOTG or Suicide Squad. Honestly though I’m not interested in this. I’m bored with subverted superheroes, popular culture has been swamped with them for a decade. We need to get back to the roots to remind us what is even being subverted. If I was more cynical I’d say they only picked this one because of the gay superheroes.

Paradise Lost (TV Show 2025/26)

Described as Game of Thrones but set in Themyscira. Game of Thrones isn’t easy to pull off, indeed not even Game of Thrones always managed it. Indeed it failed spectacularly in the end. So unless they have very talented show runners and actually get George R.R. Martin to write it (Which he’d probably do; anything to avoid actually finishing the next GOT book), it is likely the only thing it will have in common is the boring bits. I mean imagine all the conspiracies in gardens without anyone pulling off the shock factor. It’d basically be like all the scenes from The Witcher season 2 without Geralt in. Boring. Really boring. So I don’t hold much hope.

There is potential to set up some big events here, but the trouble is (As I think Marvel are discovering), most people will watch the movies, but very few will watch all the shows and all the movies. So if you don’t want to put people off the movies, you can’t make it a prerequisite to enjoy those movies to have watched the shows. So the truth is there is only so much they really can set up. If I was more cynical I’d say they just wanted a show with a majority female cast so they could say “Look, female characters!”.

The Brave and the Bold (Movie probably 2026)

Based on Grant Morrison’s work featuring Damian Wayne. Damian is Bruce Wayne’s biological son with Talia Al Ghul. He was raised to be an assassin, so he’s a little broken psychologically. In the comics, Bruce “Died” and Dick Grayson took over as Batman for a period and Damian became Robin. When Batman returned from the “Dead” he continued as Robin and after Flashpoint reset the universe and Bruce became Batman again, he continued to be his sidekick.

Now the question is, how does that possibly work for a first Batman movie for this new universe? You need a Batman old enough to have a kid and chances are he won’t be a ten year old like he was in the comics when he becomes Robin. So we’re probably looking at a Batman no younger than 35. Likely already well established. Meanwhile Gunn is apparently aiming for a younger Superman’s first day at the Daily Planet. This younger Superman, older Batman dynamic is suspiciously similar to Zach Snyder’s set up. It seems like a missed opportunity to pair two younger actors together. I can only hope that they won’t place this Batman too close to the end of his career.

One of the most frustrating things about Batman in the old DCEU was that they were constantly hinting at stories that were in the past and that sounded far more interesting than what they were actually putting on screen and largely made Batman seem like a has been. That’s not the way you should treat your top IP and make no mistake, these days Batman is way more important than Superman. DC’s tactic right now seems to be to hammer it with three separate franchises, “The Batman” with a younger Batman, but no larger DCU, “The Joker” with no real Batman but in a variation of his world and this older DCU version. I’m not sure this is a smart play.

Honestly as far as “The Batman” goes, they should really have either scrapped the film series or merged it into the new DCU. Having it run alongside it makes no sense. This isn’t exactly a really out there “Elseworlds” Batman, it’s just another darker, grittier Batman. While I didn’t like the movie, the casting was fine and nothing was broken. But if Gunn really wants his Batman he should have scrapped the future plans for that one. Instead it looks like they are trying to contrast them by making the character older again and this is disappointing. Still, we’ll see, maybe the movie will be good. At least they are actually introducing their Batman in a stand alone.

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (Movie probably 2026)

Based on Tom King’s work. That’s not good. That’s never good. The guy has written some of the most hated DC comics in recent years and it’s not bad writing but what he actually does with the characters that puts people off. This Supergirl will be a bitter twisted mess. It does contrast her with Superman of course, but not sure how likeable people will find the character. I also feel like introducing Supergirl so fast is a mistake, but it’s notable that Gunn talked about the “Bat Family” when talking about his Brave and the Bold movie. So if that movie sets up the Dark Knights family, this sets up Superman’s. Of course we also have multiple Lanterns right out the gate too.

I’m not sure diluting the water is that sensible, when you have such a variety of superheroes to draw from, putting all these “Family” characters into the shared universe right away seems the wrong way to go. In the case of Batman and the Lanterns it perhaps is just to pad numbers for epic fight scenes down the road, but Supergirl is being introduced in her own movie, she could have just as easily been Wonder Woman, Black Canary or Zatanna. Unique characters that don’t need life trauma to make them different from Superman. I get that Supergirl would eventually need to join the DCU, but this seems rushed.

Booster Gold (TV Show probably 2026)

Booster Gold is a very obscure character only DC comic fans will know, but he is popular amongst those. Gunn describes it as basically being the story of a loser from the future that goes back in time to the modern day so he can use future technology to be a Superhero and be popular. The character is an obvious one for Gunn really since it’s basically all his male leads. But that’s a problem too, how is this character going to feel unique if someone like Peacemaker is still in this shared universe and with his own TV show?

My feeling on this one is it will probably be funny, but it’s also yet another subverted Superhero character. When everything is a subversion, nothing is a subversion and Gunn needs to be careful not to make the majority of his DCU a subversion of superhero tropes. This seems to be the way it is going so far and that is not what is going to turn DC into a true rival to the MCU. I’ve said it many times before, but we are so far into subversion and deconstruction that these originally interesting writing tactics have just become clichés and what the public really needs, especially in a time when people are so divided is actual, traditional superheroes that are aspirational and universal.

Swamp Thing (Movie 2026/27)

Said to be “Tonally different to the DCU” but a key part of events (So not Elseworlds, despite the fact some media outlets are claiming it is). This I am looking forward to. It was a real shame the Swamp Thing series got axed right out the door (due to a messed up tax break situation I believe). Swamp Thing is a great character and I hope they focus this on the Alan Moore run and use it (though not in the first film) to introduce John Constantine to the DCU.

The thing is though, so far the trend has been for Gunn to follow Marvels current direction of adapting far more recent material instead of the more popular classics. So we will have to see if we get Moore’s version of the character or something else. Either way though, if they really double down on the horror tone this could be a great movie. On the other hand, I hope Gunn doesn’t direct this or if he does he doesn’t make it a comedy horror like his previous horror films (Remember Gunn started out at Troma). This needs to be a more serious affair.

But then this is a constant worry with Gunn. All his work so far has had a similar tone to it and that’s not what you want for every DC project. There are a lot of modern directors out there that simply can’t stop themselves from making every film about themselves (e.g. Taika Waititi who has made some good films, but every film has his stamp all over it, often to the point where it is more about him than the franchise he’s working in), if Gunn is going to make his DCU a success he needs to be a little bit more invisible and just provide what the film needs instead of showcasing James Gunn tropes and style all the time. If he can do that, he can do well.

Red Flags.

Ultimately while this is a fairly disappointing reveal with a large amount of red flags and one that will likely stir extreme anger from Snyder fans and the more obsessive Henry Cavill supporters, all that really matters is that they nail Batman and Superman. Those two have to be the main pillars of any shared DC universe and that universe can only ever be as strong as those characters. It really can’t be overstated, if they want to rival Marvel they need to weaponize their top assets. While neither of their movies scream “Masterpiece” just from the pitch they don’t sound terrible either. I don’t see any reason for them not to be able to pull them off and if they do they don’t need everything else to land. So with that in mind they announced the films and that is what matters.

The next tier of DC heroes (The B-List if you will) is Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern. Wonder Woman is the third most popular hero in DC and the most popular female superhero there is full stop, but the only mention of Wonder Woman at all is through the Game of Thrones knock off show in her homeland. It seems Gal Gadot isn’t continuing in the role, so there must be plans to introduce a new actress as some point, but probably not in that TV show (As Gunn would have mentioned that and it’d be silly to relegate your third most popular hero to a TV show anyway). It’s odd too that they are introducing Supergirl before Wonder Woman, again pushing duplicate “family” characters instead of embracing variety.

The Flash Situation.

The fourth most important character in DC is The Flash and this is a big, big issue for Gunn. Ezra Miller is both a terrible Flash and someone that constantly attracts terrible publicity to the point that many people will simply boycott his movies just because he is in them. This is guy that is mentally unstable and is regularly in trouble with the law (For everything from grooming, kidnapping, breaking and entering, theft, assault and running a cult… I should add most of that is accusations, but he was found guilty of the B&E and at least one of the assaults was captured on camera). If Superman and Batman can be pillars, Ezra Miller has the potential to be a fault line under which those pillars are built.

Currently Warner is publicly suggesting they support the actor but they really need The Flash movie to be a success as it sets up the new DCU. It was be logical to dump the actor after the film, but you still need a Flash. They need to find a way to justify the character changing the timeline in such a way it actually radically changes his own appearance. Either that or just switch actors like Marvel did with Hulk and War Machine and not even mention it. Whatever they pick, they need to get Miller as far away from their plans going forward as possible.

Underappreciated Heroes.

As for Green Lantern, this is a character that has never been given the respect he deserves on screen. The Fifth most popular DC hero and yet all he’s had is a bad movie and now a TV show that has to have multiple Lanterns in. This seems a waste, but hopefully the pair can move over to the big screen at a later date. At least they will be in place and with two there they have two chances to get it right.

After the top five, DC should really embrace it’s variety. There is a very big C tier including the likes of John Constantine, Hawkman, Zatanna, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Cyborg (Safe to say that will have a change of actors), Aquaman (We still don’t know if Momoa is continuing in the role, though he’s hinted he isn’t) and Shazam (Likewise and Black Adam being canned possibly bodes badly). It would be a mistake to ignore this tier just so Gunn can try and find the next Guardians of the Galaxy. Many of these characters have never had movies either.

Missing An Open Goal.

There are two Superman related characters that would actually be perfectly well suited to James Gunn’s style and neither of them got a mention. Those are Bizarro and Lobo. Films with those two could be incredibly fun and Gunn would have been perfect to write and direct them. So I can’t help but feel a little disappointed he hasn’t opted yet for either, but I still suspect after the Aquaman film comes out they will announce Momoa is departing that role but will be Lobo instead. I hope that is the case anyway.

So that’s my thoughts on the announcements. Ultimately there were a lot of strange choices and disappointing omissions but there is potential here so I’m not rage quitting just yet. I will give them at least until their Superman film has a trailer and that will be a long time off. At the same time though I don’t feel at all enthusiastic about the various remnants of the previous regime we have to get through before we get a sniff of the direction of this new DCU. If other people feel like I do on this, that’s at least three movies likely to flop in a row, maybe four if no one gets on board with Blue Beetle.

Then we have the new Superman movie sandwiched between two Elseworld Batman movies (Joker II and The Batman II). That’s a good run of films, but if DC has four flops before that, will it be able to recover? Also will it confuse the audience to place the launch of the new DCU between two movies not even set in the DCU? Honestly, Warner still largely seem like they don’t know what they are doing. Time will tell however.

The Menu (2022)

Posted on January 26, 2023January 27, 2023 by fenrisfil

Tonight’s movie is technically this is classed as a horror comedy, but it’s really a nihilistic dark comedy with an emphasis on the nihilism. Directed by Mark Mylod (Whose only previous feature was 2011’s Romcom “What’s Your Number?”) and is written by first time feature writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy. The movie stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy with notable support from Nicholas Hoult and John Leguizamo. This movie has had a pretty positive reception but audiences are torn between people saying it’s the best movie of last year (It’s not) and those were more sort of “Meh” about it. So where did it land for me? Let’s have a look.

Starters

The setting for the film is a trip to a special exclusive restaurant based on a remote private island. Naturally such a remote location never bodes well in a movie for those foolish enough to go there and this is no exception and naturally as the extravagant multi-course meal goes on it becomes increasingly clear there is another agenda to this meal. It is hard to get further into the story and to a lot of my criticisms without hitting spoilers, so I am going to save that until the end. For now all you need to know is that the guests have all been invited specifically, with the exception of Anya Taylor-Joy’s character “Margot”, who is a last minute replacement.

Since Margot was never intended to be there not only does this provide an element of the plot (As the spanner in the works) but also provides an outsiders view into the events and the crazy world the rest of the characters seem to inhabit. Anya Taylor-Joy provides as solid a performance as I’ve come to expect from her, but it is Ralph Fiennes as the broken, vengeful “Chef Slowik” that steals the show here. Hoult gives a pretty solid performance as the obsessive fanboy “Tyler” but doesn’t have much asked of him and Leguizamo is just sort of there and I can’t help but feel wasted.

Main Course

The movie certainly has it’s charms both in concept and in the performance of Fiennes, but it is also very slow, plodding and predictable. The most notable aspect is an overwhelming sense of inevitability and going through the motions. Slowik is motivated by the fact that he feels the focus on pretentious highbrow cooking has robbed him of all the enjoyment he used to have for his art and he blames his high class clientele for leading him to this point, so he he plans a pretentious and ironic recipe for revenge on those he feels are most to blame.

The revenge plays out through a series of twisted courses with his victims ranging from rich investors, to restaurant critics, to an obsessive fanboy (Hoult), to an actor that just happened to be in a movie he didn’t like when he needed cheering up (Leguizamo). None of the courses though, outside the final one are actually directly about inflicting violence on the customers, because as I said, this isn’t actually a horror. Most of these events play out completely without surprise and in at least one instance the obviousness of the event is frustrating to watch, though I can’t help but wonder if that is somewhat of the point since the Nihilism and Fatalism seem to be strong themes here.

– – – SPOILER TERRITORY – – –

Obviously a key part of the plot revolves around Margot. As soon as she arrives on the island it causes a disturbance in Chef Slowik’s plans and eventually he confronts her so he can determine if she belongs with the dinners or the staff. The decision though isn’t about if she will live or die as Slowik’s plan includes all their deaths regardless of which side of the counter the are on. So to save herself she needs to find some way of convince him she shouldn’t be on either side. This is eventually done when she is randomly given the freedom to travel about the island and decides to have a look at his private residence. There she notices early photos of the Chef working as a short order cook, flipping burgers and apparently very happy doing it.

It’s worth noting that at this point she is still trying to save everyone so doesn’t just take the opportunity to escape, instead calls for help from a coast guard who all too predictably turns out to be working for Slowik (That was a real low point for the movie for me). However, after that plays out she makes one final gamble complaining about the quality of the food and demanding a cheeseburger, which Slowik provides and then allows her to take the rest of it she couldn’t finish “To go”, basically letting her escape. Partially because this probably reminded him of a time he was happy but also because of her compelling rant which showed she really understood. The rant is interesting here, because it is a rant that could equally well be applied to the film itself.

– – Deserts (Still Spoilers) – –

The cheeseburger rant is about how the focus on being clever with the cooking and appealing to an elite few that are more interested in being pandered to then actually enjoying the food has drained all the joy out of the experience for both the clientele and the cooks. This can be seen in the film itself with how easily everyone but Margot become resigned to their fate. When the final moment comes they all seem largely dispassionate about the whole thing, like it is almost ceremonial. On one hand this shows the movie is dedicated to it’s own themes, but on the other hand I couldn’t help but wonder if they had considered the same argument could be put towards movies too and that the main issue with this movie is it is totally lacking in the “Cheeseburger factor” itself.

That’s the thing, because the movie is designed to seem clever, but it plods through the story joylessly throughout. Despite being labelled as a horror comedy there are no real moments that indulge for horror fans or really that are likely to make anyone laugh, except perhaps that kind of fake laugh people make when they want to show approval of something clever but that they don’t actually find funny. There also aren’t really any individual scenes that actually stand out. It only really works as a package deal, all together, much like the menu chef Slowik has prepared in the film itself.

Conclusion and Coffee

The key here is the film is the movie version of just those kind of “work of art” menus. It’s not an emotional experience, instead It is one that needs you to stand back and appreciate the whole thing as one piece. It’s hard to get past the fact the moral of the story is apparently that art like that is not really a good thing without a bit of joy thrown in too. So the question is, do the film makers really believe in their own conclusion or do they only consider that an issue for cooking only and not entertainment? As a result this movie leaves me somewhat torn. What I do know is that I am not likely to come back to it.

The movie did keep me interested and was definitely well made, but that’s about it. Had I seen it last year it may have made my top ten, but it wouldn’t have been near the top 5. Conceptually interesting and helped significantly by a great performance from Ralph Fiennes, but at the same time it is a melancholy experience with no real fun to it whose end is more like a toilet flush after a satisfactory bowel movement than a crescendo in an emotional orchestral score. A joyless, yet strangely compelling cerebral offering distinctly lacking “Cheeseburger” this movie is a 6/10.

2023 – Overview Of Upcoming Releases

Posted on January 2, 2023January 4, 2023 by fenrisfil

While 2022 may have been a poor year for the box office and feature an abundance of bad movies, you can see from my top ten it wasn’t totally devoid of quality. The truth is though only the top five was something special and the rest was just above average movies that wouldn’t bother a top ten list prior to around 2016. So does the outlook seem any better for 2023? Let’s have a look, genre by genre.

AI Generated, so don’t bother trying to figure out what the movies are.

Horror

There are a LOT of franchise movies coming in 2023 in the horror market and I can’t say I’m excited for any of them. These include Scream, Evil Dead (reboot), The Nun, The Exorcist (reboot), Saw, Salem’s Lot (reboot), The Meg, Insidious and The Strangers (A reboot of a movie not even 20 years old, that I slammed in my first October Horrathon in 2021). None of these have me excited and none of them will get me in the theatre but I will no doubt watch them all once they are on streaming. A more interesting one though, which could also be a total disaster is the possibility of a “Gremlins 3” movie around Christmas time. There is no trailer and few details so hard to say if it’ll even make that date.

There’s a couple of very loose sounding adaptations in the works too. One for Michael Gilio’s “Dark Harvest” and one for Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman“. However, both have synopsis’ that sound radically different from the story in the book. The Boogeyman especially sounds like a totally different film with the title slapped on top, something that always used to happen with King’s books and I guess what was old is now new. Dark Harvest meanwhile has switched the focus from the monster as the hero to two kids (A boy and a girl) that want to share the prize.

It’s worth noting both of these were male focused stories (Only boys can take part in the competition in Dark Harvest in the book and The boogeyman’s story is focused on two men in a room), so it sounds like have been re-written for modern Hollywood to make them more female focused. We’ll see if “Dark Harvest” still has anything to offer (the shift away from the monster as lead is the real issue here), but I don’t hold a lot of hope for “The Boogeyman” given how little it has in common with the original story.

Another horror with a creative marketing campaign. This time sending AI’s to stalk people on social media. Creepy!

Four of the higher profile original movies “M3gan” and “Knock at the Cabin” , “The Pope’s Exorcist” and “There’s Something Wrong With The Children” seem at least on the surface to feature heavily familiar tropes and not especially original stories. That said though they all have potential and perhaps even enough to get me to see them in the cinema, especially M3gan and Knock at the Cabin.

Speaking of familiar tropes 2023 also features two new Dracula movies each with their own specific take on the tale. One with Nick Cage focusing on (and named after) “Renfield“, Dracula’s insane minion and the other “Last Voyage of the Demeter” based on his voyage to England from Transylvania. While I probably wouldn’t bother with yet another Dracula film, Nick Cage has been on fire lately and both these films have interesting angles on the story. I will at least be keen to see a trailer.

Alexander Skarsgård may not be box office gold, but he certainly picks interesting movies!

Perhaps the most original looking horror movie in 2023 though appears to be the Brandon Cronenberg directed Alexander Skarsgård movie “Infinity Pool“. The movie sounds like a lot of crazy weirdness and who doesn’t love crazy weirdness? The trailer certainly looks interesting and it seems the apple may not have fallen too far from the Cronenberg tree (Yes, he is David’s son) because if I didn’t know better I’d think this was one of his father’s films. Oh, almost forgot, out very soon is the fun looking horror comedy “Cocaine Bear” likely to get Elizabeth Banks back in peoples good books.

Action

Like most recent years the action scene has been dominated by franchise movies and 2023 looks to be no different. Some are the usual cynical cash ins but there are a few that are worth keeping an eye on. Top of that list would be “Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One“, this is the big finale to the entire franchise and while it will probably get a reboot (Let’s remember this started as a TV series before Cruise rebooted it to the big screen) that will be the end of Cruises run with the iconic franchise. At some point he will just be too old to do his own stunts and it seems he wants to bow out of the franchise while he still can. No idea if the story will be good, but expect something spectacular in the stunt department.

Another sequel that will have a lot of people excited is John Wick: Chapter 4. While the writing quality has dropped since the first movie the sequels continued to deliver spectacular fight scenes and solid pulp style entertainment. With things heading towards an end game for the franchise Chapter 4 promises a step forward with the world building and story, while continuing the trend of high octane action. Not wanting to be left out of the sequel game though is Netflix who are planning to release “Extraction 2” at some point in the year. I haven’t watched the first one, so can’t say if that is worth being excited over.

Ewar Woowar would be proud, even if someone stole all the D’s from his name.

A couple of unexpected action film returns that may also prove to be solid entertainment are “The Expendables 4” and “The Equalizer 3“. But with Denzel now 68 and Sly 76 these certainly represent a challenge in believability. I am fairly confident in the Equalizer after the first two movies, but the Expendables 3 was a bit of a clanger so the fourth movie could go either way and for an action star 76 is a lot harder to sell. Obviously Sly will bring in some new blood, but that was part of where the third movie fell apart so fingers crossed he can find the right balance this time.

At the “Why did they bother” end of the returning franchise scale is the tenth main Fast and Furious movie. I’ve still never watched a single one, but I don’t really feel I’ve been missing out. At some point I’ll remedy that but for now I just have no interest in “Fast X“. While I may be indifferent to that franchise, one that I am very actively dreading is “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” where an 80 year old Harrison Ford is forced to don the hat and whip one more time just so Disney can milk a few extra dollars out of the franchise and probably try and pass the torch on, like anyone one else can possibly fill that role. Something they already tried and failed to do years ago with the poorly received fourth film.

What year ending in a number is complete without Guy Ritchie making a movie with Jason Statham?

So that’s the franchise films, but what about the rest? There are a few interesting ones here, so let’s start off with Guy Ritchie’s two entries into 2023. First up is “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre“, which teams Ritchie back up with his regular star Jason Statham and from the looks of it may be the start of a new Statham action franchise. Does he really need another one? Probably not, but lets face it they are always, especially when Ritchie is involved so let’s just roll with it.

The second Ritchie movie, “The Covenant” is a bit more out there with the setting switched to Afghanistan and featuring the bravery of an Afghan interpreter attempting to carry an injured army sergeant (Played by Jake Gyllenhaal) across hostile terrain. Ritchie doesn’t always do well outside his comfort zone so that one could go either way.

The real mystery is who wrote the book and why did Apple pay so much for it before it was even released?

Of the rest of the action slate three in particular stand out for me. The first is the Apple Original “Argylle” featuring Henry Cavill as a superspy. There is however very little to go on with this one, the teaser just shows him dancing with his co-star and while it is based on a book, the film was greenlit before the book was released, the author doesn’t appear to actually exist (Suggesting it’s a pen name for someone more famous) and I can find no reviews or useful information about the plot of it.

The best information I have suggests a sort of “Last Kiss Goodnight” kind of story where Cavill stars off unaware that he is actually a superspy and has to be woken up to it by another field agent (possibly Catherine O’Hara or Bryce Dallas Howard’s characters in the film). The movie is planned as a trilogy so if Cavill doesn’t get the Bond gig, he may have a spy franchise anyway.

A movie about Gran Turismo doesn’t sound that interesting but add in Neil Blomkamp and you have my attention.

The next movie of note for me is Neil Blomkamp’s return, with the movie “Gran Turismo“. Named after the video game and about a champion player that became a real life race driver. This is on the lighter end of the action genre and a long way from what you expect from Blomkamp, so it’s a definite wildcard but it’s certainly going to be interesting. Last on my list to watch is the Nick Cage western The Old Way. The plot seems about as classic a Western tale of revenge and redemption. Not particularly original but Cage has been on form in recent years and I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

Along with these the movie will also see a new action moviess from some of the usual names in the genre including Dwayne Johnson with “Red One“, Gerard Butler with “Plane” and Tom Hardy with “Havoc“. The later two have interesting enough plot synopsis but couldn’t guess on quality from them and The Rock’s entry has no plot information released yet.

Superhero

Well…it can’t possibly be worse than 2022’s Superhero slate turned out right? Not that I would have predicted a Batman movie that fell apart in the final act or a Thor movie that draws comparisons with “Batman and Robin”. “Black Adam” turned out the most enjoyable of Superhero film of last year, but was still a flawed beast so can we do better this year? I’m going to break down this one in the order of what I think most likely to be the better movies.

Potentially the last good MCU movie, so enjoy it while you can!

Top of the pile is almost certainly going to be Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3. While some weren’t keen on the second movie, most enjoyed it and everyone seems to universally like the first. This is the teams final outing and will no doubt be an emotional journey as well as a fun one. It’s almost certain at least one of the team will be dying here, so bring your hankies. This is also the only Superhero movie of the year likely to break the billion dollar mark.

That’s it for the sure things. The next few on my list are more in the “Could go either way” territory. Starting with the most obscure character out this year “Blue Beetle“. The protagonist for this movie is Xolo Maridueña, a name that doesn’t likely ring a bell but if you are a fan of Cobra Kai (And really, you should be) you’ll recognise him as Miguel from that show. He did such a good job in Cobra Kai I am certainly rooting for him bring this relatively unknown DC character into the limelight. Sadly though however it turns out chances area this is a one off as it is technically a part of the old DCEU universe and not James Gunn’s new DCU.

Zachery Levi has my respect, so I really want this to be good, but I fear the worst.

Coming in off a rather poor looking trailer is “Shazam! Fury of the Gods“. This is a tricky one because the trailer for the first film didn’t totally sell it either and yet it turned out to be surprisingly good. It helps that Zachery Levi is very good as the character, but can he surprise people twice in a row? Again though, he is part of the old DCEU so expect this to be his final appearance.

Following on from that is the long delayed “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom“. This is likely an editing mess due to all the scrapped plans and Amber Heard controversy. Michael Keaton shot scenes for the film, but isn’t in it. Ben Affleck may or may not be in it. Basically it’s a mess, but the previous movie did well so who knows. What is certain is Momoa is done in the role after this, but will be back in the new DCU likely in the role he was born to play – Lobo and that is a movie I am really looking forward to!

Ant Man and The Wasp and Old Wasp and Young Wasp and Kang the miniature and Bill Murray for some reason.

Next in the “Either way” category is “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania“. This movie looks like a mess that exists to drive forward the larger story of MCU phase 5. As fun as Paul Rudd was in the role, his part has was diluted in the last movie and looks to be diluted even further here. On top of that the entire movie seems to be CGI, which means it will be expensive and largely look like a video game. Odds are this won’t be that good, but there is a strong cast so perhaps if the movie is character driven there willb e something to enjoy in it.

Let’s be honest, people will watch this movie for Keaton’s return as Batman. No one cares about Ezra Miller as The Flash.

Speaking of movies that look like a mess, the potential disaster that now looks to be the final entry in the old DCEU is “The Flash“. Much like the rest of the DCEU, it brings an idea to the table long after Marvel has already exhausted it, in this instance it is the multiverse. An idea that has potential for sure but after Spider-Man did it and Doctor Strange sort of did it and after the CW did it in their DC TV shows it has far less value as a gimmick. People will be excited to see the Michael Keaton cameo and perhaps that will make the whole exercise worthwhile but it’s hard to get over the sad fact that Ezra Miller is both an abysmal Flash and not a very nice person.

Over to Sony next to see if they can bring out something even more meme-able than 2022’s Morbius. Honestly this is entirely possible for their “Kraven the Hunter” movie seeing as it appears they have gone the route of making Kraven the Hunter an environmental activist motivated by protecting endangered species. All very noble but doesn’t really fit a character known as “The Hunter” famous for hunting dangerous animals (and people) for sport. Indeed it’s sort of bizarre. Kraven may actually be the best Spider-Man villain never seen in a movie, so I’m not going to totally rule it out as potentially good, but the odds are against it. Especially with how they botched Morbius.

Now for the almost certain dumpster fires. I’m not even going to dwell on these but fighting it out for worst superhero movies of the year are likely going to be franchise killer Seth Rogen’s attempt with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and the movie no one asked for “The Marvels”.

Is it just me or does the top left movie look like Lucasfilm made a film about the life of Owen Lars?

Science Fiction

Not the biggest year for Science fiction in 2023, but there what it lacks in quantity it may make up for in quality. We have potentially four franchise movies and a couple of original movies of note. The biggest movie of the year though, maybe in general and not just in science fiction is the second part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune series. Simply called “Dune: Part Two”. This is the conclusion of the story of the first book (and the story depicted in David Lynch’s version in the 80’s). This has a whole lot more going on than the first half of the story and could be a truly awe inspiring movie. Probably something you want to see in IMAX.

Well, it’ll probably be better than the later Bay movies anyway.

2023 also sees a new Transformers film in “Rise of the Beasts“, which seems to be vaguely a sequel to Bumblebee and a prequel to the Michael Bay movies but not really committed to either. Like Bumblebee it looks like they have made an effort to make the characters look more like the toys but I haven’t seen much evidence of quality outside of that.

Joining Transformers in making a return is Ghostbusters, But with a December release date tentatively scheduled for the Afterlife sequel, few details and no teaser it remains to be seen if it will make it out before 2024. Hopefully we’ll get some details in the new year. The final franchise movie returning in the genre is The Hunger Games with it’s prequel movie no one asked for “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes“. The movie follows the rise of the main series antagonist. Maybe it will be a surprise, but I doubt it’ll be a hit.

Why they didn’t just do a Turok movie I don’t know.

The two original movies that have caught my attention for 2023 are the Spacemen Vs Dinosaur movie “65” with Adam Driver. The idea is obviously a bit of a novelty but the trailer looked good and Adam Driver is a decent actor so definitely worth checking out. Another film due out early in 2023 is Universal Pictures “Distant“, which seems to be a space disaster movie (along the lines of “Oxygen” or “The Martian”). I’ve not seen a trailer and there doesn’t seem to be one which is odd for a movie due out in January, which does not bode terribly well.

Is it just me or do these all look like book covers?

Fantasy

Very little to talk about in the fantasy area and only one that involves traditional sword and sorcery fantasy. That would be the second attempt at a “Dungeons and Dragons” move. The first attempt back in 2000 was a total disaster, but the trailer for this at least looks entertaining. The table-top game is probably more popular now than it was in 2000 (Largely thanks to Stranger Things) so I imagine it’ll do reasonably well in the cinema. Hopefully it’ll be worth the price of admission!

Timothee Chalamet to take on Sand Worms and Oompa-Loompa in 2023

A movie that may turn out to be a surprise family hit is “Wonka“. On the surface a Chocolate Factory prequel may not sound like much but with Paul King, director of both Paddington movies behind it, it could turn into a surprise hit.

In the are of not remotely interesting to me is Disney’s live action version of The Little Mermaid. I’ve never seen the original animation and so was never going to be interested in this, but let’s face it most of these remakes have been bad and I don’t expect this to be any different.

9/10 of these movies have anthropomorphic animals in.

Animated

Animation had a few successes in 2022 but also the two biggest box office bombs. This year looks a bit more promising with at least two guaranteed hits and a few interesting originals. The two obvious hits are the sequel to Sony’s well received Spider-Verse movie “Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse” and the heavily anticipated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie“. These are likely to be the Sonic 2 and Minions 2 of this year, but that doesn’t mean either will be good. I have mixed feelings on both, but I’d say I was overall cautiously optimistic. I’m not a Nintendo fan especially, the only console of theirs I ever owned was the N64, but I know there are a LOT of fans out there looking forward to this.

A surprise franchise return for 2023 is “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget“. While the original was a good fun film, it came out in 2000 and so it’s hard to say how well a sequel nearly a quarter of a century later will do, especially with an entirely new set of voice actors (Which is quite baffling). Another surprise this year is “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim“, this anime style story is from Warner Brothers and is being directed by anime legend Kenji Kamiyama. It is heavily influenced by the movie series. This will likely be pretty good so keep an eye out for it in April.

While a lot of Disney’s output this year is on the cringe side, they may surprise people with an animated feature this year as they have chose with “Wish” to return to hand drawn animation, something they’ve not done since Princess and the Frog in 2009. The movie may well still be bad, but it will at least look good. Disney’s Pixar meanwhile are sticking to their familiar style with their new movie “Elemental” which sounds like a fairly generic kids story about getting on with people different to you. “Trolls 3” is due out next year too, I’ve never watched any of the others so am totally indifferent to that.

Comedy

I’m not particularly looking forward to any comedy movie in 2023, however that’s fairly normal for the genre. It’s not so much the situation as it is the execution that makes a great comedy and the best ones are often the least expected. So who knows which of these may turn out to be a classic. However, by far the highest profile comedy due out in 2023 has to be the “Barbie” movie. Not a movie that would normally appeal to me, but the teaser trailer was actually pretty damn funny and Margot Robbie is actually pretty good at comedy. It’s worth noting the teaser showed almost none of the actual movie, so it could go either way still.

That’s not Margot Robbie’s only comedy this year either as she’s joining an all star cast including Tom Hanks, Ed Norton and Scarlet Johansen for Wes Anderson’s new movie “Asteroid City“. Like most of Anderson’s movie it will no doubt be highly divisive, massively praised by some and be greeted with confusion by others. Personally I find him quite hit and miss, but I will no doubt check it out. More likely to just be trash however is Disney’s new theme park adaptation “Haunted Mansion“, however it’s worth remembering that was where Pirates of the Caribbean started too and it does have an all star cast. We’ll see I guess.

I’ve not watched any of the Magic Mike movies, so I have no feelings on his “Last Dance” at all. But if you are in to those films, there is a new one (And presumably last one by that title). There’s also a remake of the 1990’s comedy “House Party” because of course there’s a random remake here too. This year also brings a trio of romantic comedies “Maybe I do“, “Your Place or Mine” and “You People” all of which I’ll skip (Not into RomComs, sorry) and a trio of sports related comedies “Champions”, “80’s For Brady” and Taiko Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins“, all of which actually look quite funny. Last but not least Tom Hanks returns to comedy for “A Man Called Otto” which will probably be out by the time you read this.

Drama

Last but not least are the more serious movies of the year, some of which may even find themselves up for an Oscar nomination (Not that the Oscars mean anything anymore). Even this category isn’t free from remakes though with Spielberg’s “The Colour Purple” randomly getting the treatment. I think that is the first Spielberg movie to be remade but it was only ever a matter of time. We also have a tired old franchise that refuses to die in the third movie from Rocky spin off Creed. We also see Kenneth Branagh stubbornly return with another Poirot movie, this time “A Haunting in Venice”.

Want to see nuclear tests recreated with practical effects? Nolan is your man.

A very old franchise sees a return this year as hard boiled detective Philip Marlowe is actually going to be hitting a new case with the movie “Marlowe“. This isn’t based on a Raymond Chandler book though, but a newer one written by John Banville. I’ve read all the Chandler books and until I heard about this movie I didn’t know anyone else had picked up the mantle, so I’m not sure what to expect. The movie stars Liam Neeson as the titular detective.

The most notable drama coming in 2023 would have to be Christopher Nolan’s new movie, the biopic “Oppenheimer“. The movie features the recreation of an atomic bomb blast done with PRACTICAL EFFECTS. Please let that sink in for a moment before moving on. Nolan didn’t actually set of a nuke but I think he did create the largest explosion ever done explicitly for the purpose of making a movie.

Just how much does Willem Dafoe have to do to win a damn Oscar?

Another one to look for this year is the Willem Dafoe movie “Inside” about an art thief that accidentally gets locked inside a penthouse apartment with nothing for company but priceless works of art. I think that is destined to be a good one and you never know maybe even get Dafoe a long overdue Oscar. Other dramas this year includes the Zach Braff directed “A Good Person” staring Florence Pugh support from Morgan Freeman; Hippy Awakening movie “Jesus Revolution“; The biopic for record producer Neil Bogart “Spinning Gold“; and missing person thriller “Missing“. Also (and I almost missed this, showing it’s poor publicity) Scorsese’s new movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” with DiCaprio staring, which joins Apples slate of original movies for 2023.

Release Dates

Remember these films are only the higher profile ones. Some of my favourites from last year were indie movies that wouldn’t have had any hype this time last year. Often the best things come out of nowhere and I look forward to being pleasantly surprised. This also doesn’t include any foreign language movies and most years my top ten includes at least one non-English movie. In 2022 it was an obscure Finnish body horror. So this is far from the full picture. However, given the size of this article I hope you’ll forgive me not digging in any deeper!

I’m going to finish with a quick month by month of the upcoming movies (Note, some of the films don’t have set release dates yet so aren’t included). I’ve put the movies I’m looking forward to in bold, but tell me what you are looking forward to in the comments.

January	A Man Called Otto, M3gan, The Old Way, Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, Plane, You People, Maybe I do, House Party, Infinity Pool
February	Ant-Man 3, Cocaine Bear, Knock At The Cabin, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Your Place or Mine, Missing, Jesus Revolution, Puss In Boots 2 (UK Release Date), Distant, Marlowe
March	Scream 6, Shazam 2, John Wick 4, Creed 3, Dungeons and Dragons, 65, 80 For Brady, Inside, Spinning Gold, A Good Person, Champions
April	Super Mario Bros, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Evil Dead Rise, The Pope’s Exorcist, Renfield, The Covenant, Next Goal Wins
May	GOTG3, Little Mermaid, Fast X,
June	Spider-Verse 2, Indiana Jones 5, Transformers: Rise of Beasts, Flash, Elemental
July	Mission Impossible 7, The Marvels, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Insidious 5, Asteroid City,
August	TMNT Mutant Mayhem, The Meg 2, Gran Turismo, Blue Beetle Haunted Mansion, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter
September	Expendables 4, Equalizer 3, The Nun 2, A Haunting In Venice
October	Kraven the Hunter, The Exorcist (reboot), Saw sequel, Trolls 3
November	Dune part II, Hunger Games Prequel, Wish
December	Gremlins 3 (Maybe), Ghostbusters 4 (or Afterlife Part II) (Maybe), Wonka, Aquaman 2, The Colour Purple (Remake).

2022 Year in Review – Box Office Breakdown

Posted on December 29, 2022January 2, 2023 by fenrisfil

This has been another year of huge box office bombs, but another year where the success stories show that it’s not just as simple as “Post Covid” resistance to returning to the theatres. Overall ticket sales are way down and while the past two years were lower due to lockdowns this year really doesn’t have that excuse. It’s been a year where even horror has seen numbers decline, animation has been all over the place with two big hits and two utter disasters and dramas have on the whole simply failed to find an audience with viewers likely waiting to see them on streaming. It’s also been a poor year comparatively for superhero movies with only one really living up to expectations.

This isn’t every film that was released in cinemas this year, far from it but it is all the ones I decided to keep track of. I’m not gong to cover movies that went straight to streaming here at all. The the numbers I’ve listed are my estimations on profit, not the total box office. This is a harder number to lock down and there will no doubt be some debate. My model takes into account the studio gets a higher cut of the opening week and less later and takes into account the minimum cost of P&A instead of still applying the 50% of production cost rule on lower budget films.

Anyway, I’ve split this up into sections based on how successful the movie was. From the biggest disasters to the greatest successes. Let’s dig in.

The Bombs

These are the movies that will cost the studio big time (Losing $50m or more) and will derail a number of careers. They may lead to a number of studios rethinking their strategies, though whether they learn the right lessons or not is another question entirely.

So let’s start with “Death on the Nile“, the second in the Poirot series directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also staring as the Belgian master detective. This is a classic case of over estimating the demand for such a movie and spending too much ($90m) on the budget. This is a movie that has been done better for cheaper several times before now. No surprise it ended at a loss. I expect this will end Branagh’s series or perhaps lead to a direct to streaming approach in the future.

For Warner Brothers, the bomb I think everyone could have predicted was “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore“. Subject to a boycott from people that are angry with J.K. Rowling for saying only women can get pregnant and a far larger one from Johnny Depp’s army of fans that refused to watch the film after Warner dropped him from the role of Grindelwald, only for him to win his court case and come out looking like the abused and not the abuser. As much as people may like to argue morality on both these topics the truth is Depp is VERY popular and that was the biggest issue here. However, it doesn’t help the previous film wasn’t that well received. This lost the studio around $62m, however the IP is far from dead, so much so they are already looking into ways to reboot the main, more popular series.

The next biggest bomb of the year is sadly also my pick for best movie of the year. “The Northman“. Over time I hope it will join such classics as “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” in being bombs on release but becoming timeless classics and long term earners after. At this stage it is hard to say what the impact on Eggers career will be but losing around $85m can do a lot of damage to a career. It’s worth noting this was easily his most expensive film and if he goes back to making things a bit cheaper I have no doubt he can win studios around again. Mostly his movies have more of a highbrow audience anyway and he won’t have lost any of that. What he has failed to do though is really connect with the larger popcorn crowd. It’s a shame and a sign that we won’t be seeing the likes of Northman again any time soon, but at least we got it once!

The next clanger is another one literally everyone saw coming. “The 355“. After failures of movies like Terminator Dark Fate, Charlies Angels and Birds of Prey it should have been pretty clear that action movies that are not just female lead but lack strong male characters (A male character there just to be the comedy relief isn’t a strong male character), absolutely do not resonate with fans of action movies. It’s odd when you consider this would never happen the other way around (As male lead action films go out of there way to provide multiple strong female characters these days). This is a recipe to lose money. Charlies Angels and Harley Quinn didn’t even have big budgets and still bombed so the 355’s $75m budget was pretty much box office suicide.

The movie ended up losing about $100m, more money than it cost to actually make the film, meaning had they taken the “Batgirl” route, turned it into a tax write off and buried it in the desert with all those copies of E.T. The Video Game, it would have turned out far better for the studio! This is a good one to point to when someone says they don’t understand the logic in writing off Batgirl. Of course we don’t know if Batgirl would have performed this badly and female lead action movies can do well providing they don’t neglect the male characters along the way, but it does explain why it can be better to write movies off sometimes.

Joining the 355 in losing about $100m and being better off for the studio as a tax write off is the all star period murder mystery “Amsterdam“. Costing $80m to produce Fox/Disney (It was probably greenlit under Fox) must have been hoping the cast would be enough to get bums in seats but apparently not. It’s worth noting none of these stars have been immune to underperforming movies in the past, not even the very talented former Batman, Christian Bale.

Margot Robbie especially has been plagued with a string of bombs and if her upcoming Barbie movie doesn’t draw, she could find herself relegated to TV movies and horror films. Fortunately for her, that movie will probably do well, but then Fox no doubt thought the same about Amsterdam. Maybe murder mysteries are just not in vogue these days, but losing more than your production budget is a sign of there being more wrong than failing to find the popcorn crowd.

So what was the biggest disasters of the year? Well that’s a double whammy and both are animated Disney movies. It’s interesting to note the studio that made it’s name on it’s animation now appears to be being destroyed by it. The two films in question are the ill advised Toy Story spin off “Lightyear” and the more recent movie “Strange World“, crashing Disney’s bank balance by $162m and $161m respectively . Between them they cost the studio over $300m, effectively wiping out everything they gained from their most successful movie of the year, “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness”.

I think we need to jump right in and address the elephant in the room here. Both these animated kids features are incredibly woke. It is pretty clear that many parents don’t really want to take their children to see something they see as woke propaganda and it’s worth remembering that perception is everything. It would be one thing to have those elements in the story but when the marketing heavily focuses on it and executives at Disney are outright admitting their agendas it can’t really be denied or covered up. Even Lightyear, jumping on the back of the hugely successful Toy Story franchise failed to really utilise that link since they recast Buzz Lightyear and went out of their way to tell us it wasn’t directly related.

The Flops

The Flops are the movies that lost money, but were within a debatable range where heads probably won’t roll over it and the studio will likely shrug and move on. These movies likely won’t get sequels though and it certainly suggest mistakes were made. Narrowly making it into this category is “The Woman King“, losing a mere $13m. Likely enough that half the internet will call it a huge success and the other half a huge disaster. The truth is it’s more sort of “Meh”. As a historical film a sequel was probably never on the cards anyway.

A film that unsurprisingly failed to resonate with it’s franchise fan base is “Clerks 3“. Since Kevin Smith went from criticising Hollywood and being the voice of the fans to a full 180 and started criticising the fans and being the voice of Hollywood it’s not a shock that most of his audience for his own projects had totally dried up. At this stage he needs to either totally reform his public perception or reinvent himself creatively and find a new audience. He certainly didn’t do himself any favours with his lies and bait and switch approach to the Masters of the Universe series and with a second season of that due next year his movie career could well be over after that. Clerks 3 lost around $19m and that is on a low budget so those loses will have quite a sting to them.

In the category of “Why?” is the remake of Stephen King’s “Firestarter” that simply failed to heat up audiences with a loss of around $20m. That’s low enough it’ll probably make up the difference later and it probably won’t stop them doing more Stephen King remakes. However, I doubt we’ll see a sequel to this one. Honestly the first movie wasn’t that great anyway but one thing it does have in common with this is that the Soundtrack was better than the film. The original was of course provided by Tangerine Dream, while the remake was done by John Carpenter. Perhaps as a nod to the fact that Carpenter was originally going to direct the first film and if he had perhaps we really would have had a classic.

The biggest Horror film failure this year though, at least financially goes to the movie “Men” losing somewhere between $20m and $50m. It’s hard to be precise as there is no official listing for budget with a good $10m variation in estimates and it’s impossible to know the precise P&A value. Not a huge surprise, given the movie comes across as confusing and potentially woke. I’m not sure it is the latter but I think confusing is more than fair.

Landing as both the least successful superhero movie of the year and arguably it’s best is The Rock’s “Black Adam“, losing around $32m (Though it’s still in a few theatres so may squeeze that down a little). Dwayne Johnson can take some solace of the fact that his movie was well liked by those that did bother to go see it, but clearly a spin off from Shazam isn’t quite the career vehicle Dwayne may have thought it was. The final scene of the movie teases a stand off with Henry Cavill’s Superman and sadly that will be the final appearance of either in those roles. Both have gracefully taken their final bows via Instagram posts with very respectful comments to their fan bases and without burning bridges with the studios.

Michael Bay will no doubt be very disappointed his pretty decent action movie “Ambulance” flopped to the tune of losing around $34m. While it wasn’t going to bother my top ten list this year, it was a fun popcorn flick and pretty decent for a Michael Bay movie. However, I think the film’s name failed to sell the action and the truth is Bay isn’t the draw he used to be. I dare say we haven’t seen the last of Bay though. His next movie sees a return to robot movies, but this time not transforming ones.

The Also Ran’s

Some movies only just scrapped into the black and while it won’t make or break any career, it leaves some potential to become cult classics or at least earn a substantial amount on streaming and Blu-ray sales. First up is “Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent“. In theory it lost about $40m in theatres, however this was a movie simultaneously released directly to streaming (A rarity for this year), so it can’t really be judged like most releases. The movie has been well received so I think it will likely make up for that shortfall.

“Morbius” narrowly made it into the black with a profit likely around $1m. Possibly the ill advised re-release may have turned that slight gain into a loss but I’d say overall the movie will be very much in the “Meh” category. Which really defines the movie too. Not bad, not good, not a success, not a failure, it’s the most just there Superhero movie ever made. Apparently “Morbin’ Time” means an abundance of mediocrity. Not much ahead of that is the DC Animated movie “League of Super Pets“. The movie actually looks quite fun but the DC brand was at an all time low so it was only able to generate around $2m in profit.

Not quite over the line into the black but losing so little it is within the margin of error are the movies “Don’t Worry Darling” falling short by about $4m and “Downton Abbey: A New Era” throwing away around $7m. The latter could possibly be written off by having a more mature audience that are likely still wary of covid, but it also may just be that the Downton effect is starting to wear off as we get further away from the peak of the series. Another movie losing by a small margin in “The Menu“, which has garnered positive reactions from both critics and the audience but looks set to fall short by maybe as much as $9m

Below Expectations

These are movies that are comfortably in the black but represent a far lower level of success than would be expected for the genre, franchise or stars involved. Sometimes these movies can actually earn over $100m in profit and still be a disappointment to the studio. It’s all about the context.

“Nope” did reasonably in theatres earning around $25m in profit, but was notably weaker than past Jordan Peele outings. It seems the honeymoon period may be over for the controversial comedian turned director or else he’s just suffering for the mixed reaction to his previous film “Us”. Speaking of Horror, “Halloween Ends” made a solid $36m in profit. However this represents a substantial drop off from the second film in this trilogy and a huge drop from the first (Which did insane numbers), I think Blumhouse may feel a little short changed. The movie was badly received too, so I don’t think they’ll be rushing out to replace Michael Myers with a new killer any time soon. Expect a 5-10 year hiatus and a reboot.

“Thor: Love and Thunder“. Despite earning a $142m in profit, made less than half the profit that Doctor Strange 2 managed and performed far below what Disney must be expecting from it’s MCU movies. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” managed to outperform that with around $175m in profit (and did especially well in the US), but still far short of where the bar had been set this year. It seems that right now Marvel’s movies are reliant on their proximity to a Spider-Man movie to get anything close to the audiences they garnered in phase 2 and 3. Phase 4 is absolutely a failure by comparison and if they don’t start turning it around the MCU is in real trouble.

“The Batman“, earned a profit of about $234m. On the surface you’d think the studio would be happy with that substantial gain, but this is one of the true A-List superheroes and right now the number two most popular superhero in the world (After Spider-Man). He should be easily doing double that and Warner/DC knows this well. Things are being shaken up over DC these days with James Gunn taking full control of the DC movies and no doubt will be wondering if this version of Batman is worth a continuation or if it is best to leave it as a one off.

Also disappointing financially was Sandra Bullock’s “The Lost City“. Actually a good, fun adventure comedy that showed Sandra still has it, Channing Tatum can actually be good in comedy and Brad Pitt is cameo gold. The movie was comfortably in the black but only making $18.5m in profit for a film with a $74m budget is probably uncomfortably close for the studio. However, the film has been positively received and I have no doubt will do well on streaming. It wouldn’t surprise me if some time next year they announced a sequel. After enjoying this, I’d certainly check out a sequel if there was one.

Meeting Expectations

On occasion a movie achieves exactly what the studio expected, no more, no less. These movies will be treated as a win by the studio, likely will lead to sequels but probably won’t impact other movies at the studio by contrast. The “Scream” reboot for example drew in about $40m in profit. That may actually be a little below what they were hoping for but given they instantly green lit a sequel it’s safe to say the studio were content with that profit margin.

The sequel (and sixth Scream movie) lands next year, but given the reaction from fans was very mixed for this I suspect the sequel will end up disappointing financially by comparison. We will see. At the other end of the scale though is “Violent Night“, only making around $10m at most but likely wasn’t expected to do much more than that. The positive reaction however may lead to a more financially beneficial sequel. I’m not sure it needs one however, the movie was a classic but how many Christmas movies (Aside from Die Hard) had worthwhile sequels?

The action films “Uncharted” and “Bullet Train” managed to find enough of an audience to make substantial games ($85m and $35m respectively). Uncharted of course is based on a video game while Bullet Train was original. Perhaps this shows you just how much the video game market can impact sales these days. Bullet Train was undoubtable the better film, but while it didn’t make as much as uncharted in the theatre I have no doubt it will make more money in the long run through Blu Ray sales and streaming. It definitely has more rewatchability. Still the studio will be happy with what it made up front. Uncharted is almost certain to get a sequel, but I don’t think one was ever on the table for Bullet Train.

“Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness” was both Marvel’s first movie of the year and it’s most successful. The film managed about $350m in profit, but it definitely wasn’t due to the quality. The lure of cameos, the knock on effect of following the hugely successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and the possibilities of the multiverse, all likely helped. Ultimately the movie only achieved an average box office for an MCU movie with a major star and a key story arc. It’s not great for phase three but after the lacklustre output of most MCU movies last year this was probably as good as they could expect.

The Dreamworks animated comedy “The Bad Guys” probably hit just about where the studio expected netting a healthy a profit of around $40m. Animation has been frankly all over the place this year, but it is good to see a fun original story giving a solid performance. It probably has a sequel on the table but they may want to see how the streaming numbers go first.

“Jurassic World Dominion” meanwhile landed itself a huge profit of about $350m, for the third of a trilogy for a major franchise and with the return of characters from the original film this is probably about what they were hoping for. It may even be under their expectations.

Last on this list is “Elvis“. With Tom Hanks as the movie’s true lead Colonel Tom Parker, this extravagant biopic cost $85m to make and as such was expected to turn at least $50m in profit. The end result was around $70m so job done. I’ve not seen this yet, but most that aren’t too hung up on historical accuracy seem to have enjoyed it.

Success Stories

Every year there are a handful of movies that far exceed all reasonable expectations of the studio. These movies not only get hurriedly tagged for sequels (Where appropriate), but also tend to lead to studios revaluating their priorities going forward. These films may be low budget dramas or indie movies hitting far above average for those genres, horror films landing like superhero movies or big budget action movies hitting the coveted $1b mark or beyond. The actual numbers vary wildly but within their own play pen of budget/genre people will be taking notes.

Over the last few years Horror has become an easy genre to make money with and even though several of the films didn’t live up to expectations (Both in quality or receipts) almost all of them made bank. One movie though made a real killing beyond expectations and that is “Smile“. Beaming wide at a huge profit of around $110m and possibly propelled by the ingenious marketing campaign of having the movies stars standing around staring blankly at sporting events with creepy smiles on their faces. The movie also had a great trailer and solid word of mouth.

On were also a couple of lower budget non-horrors that bucked the trend this year. First up the movie “Dog“. Obviously movies about dogs always draw in a bit more than similar ones just about people. We love our doggies, I get it. But I still think the studio were probably surprised a drama with a $15m budget pulled in a solid $20m in profit. Some possibly would label this as even more successful (If they didn’t take into account the minimum cost of P&A), but either way it’s still a big win. I haven’t seen the movie but I hear it is a good one.

The other movie bucking the trend for low budget, non horror success was “Everything Everywhere All At Once“, if you’ve seen my top ten you know I highly rate this film and it was my number 3 movie for most of the year (Only dropping down to 5 this December). The movie managed to draw in a respectable $27m in profit which for a movie that cost only $25m in production is a definite win. It’s also been a rare movie that wins over both the woke and the anti-woke since it gives both parties things they want. Given the message of the movie is about bringing people together and getting over our differences it is almost poetic it has that universal appeal.

There’s been a couple of big success stories on the animation side this year too (Causing further embarrass those huge bombs mentioned earlier), both however are sequels to established franchises. First you had “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” hitting about $140m in profit and then you had “Minions: The Rise of Gru” hitting a staggering $310m in pure profit despite (I hear) not even being that good. Minions it seems is a licence to print money. Sonic meanwhile has built up a good reputation between it’s two movies of both quality and success and showed that sometimes you can make everyone happy.

Easily the big winner of the year though is “Top Gun: Maverick” bringing in a staggering $750m of profit with a global box office exceeding the $1b mark. This has been a clear lesson to the movie industry that respecting the IP, respecting the fans and respecting physical stunts/effects can be a recipe for huge earnings. Whether the industry will actually learn that lesson or not remains to be seen. It is a stubborn beast and it may just end up making more movies about planes instead. Given Paramount has had a lot of financial issues and failings over the previous years I’m sure they at least will take note.

End of Part 2

That’s it for the year in review. I hope the recap of this years winners and losers was interesting. One final note, I haven’t covered “Avatar: The Way of the Water” here, partially because it’s still in full swing at theatres and partially because while my figures would suggest it’s $1b+ box office already has it in profit, Cameron himself is suggesting it needs to make closer to $2b to break even! So I don’t know where to place that one. Anyway, that is it for 2022, I will be posting a look at the movies to coming up in 2023 in the next few days to see if there is anything worth getting excited over. In the meantime, Happy New year!

The 2022 Year In Review – The Top Ten.

Posted on December 27, 2022December 27, 2022 by fenrisfil

The year is almost at an end so it’s time for my 2022 wrap up and that means a box office breakdown, a look at where the industry has been going in the last year and of course, my top ten movies of the year. Several of these I don’t have full reviews of so it also gives me an opportunity to cover some great films I just didn’t have time to review.

Before I dig in, I just want to point out since I spend more time watching and reviewing older movies I haven’t seen every film released this year that may qualify for best or worst. Notably in regards to best, I haven’t seen “Smile” yet and may even save that for next years October Horror Challenge, nor have I seen likely Oscar winner “The Whale” or the recent remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, all sound like they could be on this list.

Anyway, lets get started:

Best Movies Of The Year (That I’ve Seen).

First of all the honourable mentions. The Foo Fighters horror movie “Studio 666” was surprisingly fun and entertaining. There was definitely a bit of a John Carpenter influence going on and with John having a cameo I have to wonder if perhaps he gave a few tips. The band as well showed they are perfectly capable of acting at the level of a horror film. That may not be the most demanding genre for actors but yet many in these films still fail. If you like comedy horror it’s definitely one to check out.

“Black Phone” also narrowly missed the cut. The style serial killer movie with a supernatural twist and two children as the protagonists could easily be mistaken for a Stephen King story but it was a Scott Derrickson original and given this was the project he moved on to after abandoning Doctor Strange 2, he’s come out of it dodging a bullet and smelling like roses. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next. Hint to Warner/DC he would be an excellent pick to direct a Hellblazer/John Constantine movie or a Swamp Thing movie for that matter. Hire him!

The last honourable mention is Marvel’s “Werewolf by Night“. It’s ironic it’s the pair of throw away specials from Marvel that ended up their only worthwhile output this year (The other being the solidly good “Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special”), but sometimes you need a studio to take their interfering eye off of the creative process to get things done right (Which is basically how “The Joker” (2019) happened too). I actually rated Werewolf by Night slightly higher than three on this list, but since it’s under an hour it’s debatable if it counts as a movie, hence it’s just an honourable mention.

10. Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Surprising me once again with it’s quality is the little blue Sega mascot. This time following on from the original with the obvious steps of introducing Knuckles and Tails. I had my doubts Sonic could work, especially after the initially terrible CGI but the studio proved they care what fans think by fixing that error and producing a movie that was both fun and full of the kind of fan service that fits into and enhances the story instead of getting in it’s way (Like most fan service these days). Jim Carey was also a surprise absolutely nailing his role as the villainous Doctor Robotnik.

Going in to the sequel I had my doubts again that adding in characters like Knuckles and Tails would be a step too far, but again I was wrong. Idris Elba did a fantastic job as Knuckles and Tails who I expected to be incredibly annoying was actually quite endearing. This was a fun family movie that also massages that nostalgia muscle in a very pleasant way. The third film it seems moves the story past my time with Sonic (Strictly Megadrive days for me), so remains to be seen if it still holds any appeal for me, but it’s a thumbs up for the first two for sure. This was a 6.5/10. If you are new to my blog, a six or above is good (Fives are average and 4 or below are bad). I like to have more room at the top.

9. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Nick Cage popped up on my best lists last year twice, once for “Pig” and again from the cult classic “Willy’s Wonderland”. Nick is an actor I’ve really learned to appreciate in recent years and I’m not surprised a comedy action film where Nick plays a parody of himself managed to creep into the top ten. Cage and his co-star Pedro Pascal were obviously both having a blast with this movie and the fact that Nick has no problem lampooning himself just raised what would have still been a fun action movie onto a new level. I don’t have a whole lot more to say about this one, it’s just fun. 6.5/10

8. Hatching (a.k.a. Pahanhautoja)

Another surprise entry for this year and the only horror to make the list. To be fair, I haven’t seen “Smile”, “X”, “Pearl” or “Terrifier 2”, all of which will probably end up on next years Horrorthon (Not that I don’t watch horror outside of October but it’s always good to save a few up). Not sure any of those would challenge the top ten but I won’t know until I see them.

Hatching was from this years October Challenge and was slipped in as both a new release and a foreign language movie (Finnish in this case) and it really surprised me by having a whole lot more depth than I was expecting. That said, the best body horrors tends to be built around some kind of metaphor so what this showed was director Hanna Bergholm and writer Ilja Rautsi clearly understand the genre. Check out my full review HERE. This was a high 6.5/10

7. Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe

A Beavis and Butt-Head movie made the top ten list for the year? The fact that this movie wasn’t as good as their previous outing back in their prime and still made number seven on this list probably says a lot about the declining quality of the movie industry. However, that’s not to say the film doesn’t deserve some accolades. Reviving an edgy animated comedy franchise from the 1990’s when edgy animated comedy was all the rage in 2022 when political correctness has made a lot of that kind of comedy “Problematic” may seem like a bad idea, but in truth it was exactly what 2022 needed. The scene where Beavis and Butt-Head learn about White Privilege (and go on a rampage thinking it will be consequence free) is simply gold.

But it’s not just that, Mike Judge has managed to bring back his characters in a way that both updates them to the modern day while also keeping them true to how they were in the classic series (And in the “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America” movie). He even managed to squeeze in some mild character development (Not that these are characters that should ever evolve that much). The movie largely seems to have existed to allow the series to continue in the modern day with the pair still teenagers. So even though the story existed to get them from A to B via space antics and time travel, Judge managed to work that into a tale that was both entertaining and somewhat paralleled their earlier movie. 7/10

6. Bullet Train

David Leitch’s Bullet Train is a movie I expected to be quite fun, but was still surprised at how well it turned out. It’s presented in a Guy Ritchie style which is a bit of a cheap way to make something seem cool and if the movie doesn’t deliver would lose it further points for cliché, but fortunately this story actually fit that style perfectly. It’s not quite a Guy Ritchie style story though, in that regard it’s probably more Tarintino. The combination makes for a somewhat comic book style (Meaning you could argue this years best comic book movie wasn’t a comic book movie) and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find this was based off a graphic novel or something, but no the work is original screenplay by Zak Olkewicz.

It certainly helps having Brad Pitt in the lead role. One of the few true movie stars the industry has left and his presence does raise the movies quality a bar or two. But despite that his character isn’t actually the most interesting, probably because this is the kind of film that is built around having a colourful zany group of misfit characters thrown together to fight and interact. Aaron Taylor-Johnson as “Tangerine” largely steals the show, but who doesn’t also love a Hiroyuki Sanada appearance? Throw in a Sandra Bullock cameo and you have a fun action classic that will probably stand the test of time. 7/10

5. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Over recent years Michelle Yeoh has been lumbered with doing a lot of garbage and while it’s good to see her continued popularity it has felt like a waste of her talents. Of course Michelle is mostly famous for her martial arts, but she is actually quite capable as an actress in general and as she ages to a point where the fighting becomes less believable it is good for her to establish her acting credentials in quality work. This is perhaps the perfect vehicle for her. Of course she still does some fighting, but that’s not the main focus of the story

Everything Everywhere is a movie full of surprises. You think it is going to go in one direction and it goes in another. You start to feel it’s turned into an action movie and it morphs into an outright comedy and then into something a lot more emotional eventually focusing in on a story about relationships, about family and about love. It is a movie that ends up with excitement and emotion and leaving you laughing your ass off. It also firmly embarrassed Marvel by easily being the best multiverse based movie of the year and doing it on a shoe string budget. This is definitely cult classic. 7.5/10

4. Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

This has been a year full of surprises and perhaps none more so than this movie. Landing completely out of the blue for me, with very little fanfare is this absolute masterpiece of stop motion animation and story telling from the great Guillermo Del Toro. Arriving in the same year as the critically panned and poorly received Disney live action Pinocchio, this is a completely fresh take on Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of the living puppet. Shifting the time period to World War 2 to set it in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy gives the movie some “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) vibes. Clearly dealing with the horrors of war and oppressive dictatorships is something Del Toro is passionate about and it actually works well for this story.

Pinocchio himself has a look much closer to the Gris Grimly’s illustrations of the book than the more human like version in Disney’s classic animation and that not only makes it feel more realistic (As much as a movie about a living puppet can be) it helps to contrast Pinocchio from the stop motion “Humans” in the story who are all of course actually puppets too. Del Toro actually reduced the magical elements to the story, removing other talking animals and marionettes (Though both are sort of covered by by Spazzatura, the mistreated Monkey that is able to talk through the marionettes he operates), but this actually adds to the wonder of the story as it makes the fantastically elements that remain seem all that more special.

This movie is a visual treat and an emotional journey and really shows that even while Disney try and squeeze every drop of life out of their own version of the story, there are still takes on the classic tale that are both beautiful and worthwhile. Absolutely a 7.5/10.

3. Top Gun: Maverick

Perhaps the most important release of the year Tom Cruise proved three things with Maverick. First of all he proved he can still be a huge box office draw in an action movie. Secondly he showed that it is possible to revisit a movie from the 80’s, bring it in to the modern day and do it in a way that is both massively popular and resonates with the original in such a way that no one feels it is disrespected. Last but not least, in fact probably most significantly it showed that physical special effects and genuine stunts are far more impressive to a modern audience than even the most extravagant and expensive CGI. Perhaps it’s time for studios to re-evaluate

As a bonus Tom Cruise coming out before the film (pre-recorded that is and not in all releases) to personally thank the fans for turning up shows a level of audience respect that has been so absent from most major productions people reacted to it like an abused animal finally getting some affection. We live in very strange times when many productions are promoted with toxic campaigns of greeting any and all criticism with insults and accusation, even to the point where at least two of the years major productions (Scream and She-Hulk) actually had attacks on their own audience built into the plot itself. So coming out with such a positive message has won Cruise a number of fans for life.

The film itself is a continuation of Mavericks character development from the first film, using the death of “Goose” as the jumping off point to tie it all together. While doing that story it also introduces a number of new younger pilots and allows them their own character development. Then it provides an action sequence somewhat reminiscent of the Star Wars trench run but provides just enough mission to allow everyone’s story arc to have meaning. Nothing is overdone here except for arguably Maverick’s romance angle, but personally I had no issue with that and Jennifer Connelly had great chemistry with Cruise. Anyway check out my full review HERE. This was a very strong 7.5/10.

2. Violent Night

Jumping in at the very last minute ahead of Maverick is the years most surprising film of all “Violent Night”. I don’t think anyone expected this movie to be as good as it was. Director Tommy Wirkola is mostly known for low budget horror films such as the “Dead Snow” movies (The one with the zombie Nazi’s) and mid budget action films like “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013). While he’s clearly playing with home field advantage here, it’s not like any of his films have been anything beyond moderately good. But I think with this he’s finally made the film he will ultimately be known for. It probably helps that the script for the film was penned by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, the team also behind the Sonic movies (So managed to write two of the years best movies).

The story is effectively Die Hard but instead of John McClane you have Santa Claus. But not just any Santa, this one used to be a Viking and when he takes it upon himself to save a young girl that is on his good list and her family from violent thieves he begins to remember his old ways and use them finally for good. David Harbour is fantastic in this role and I am now of the opinion he was born to play Santa. John Leguizamo also does a fantastic job of playing the movies main villain “Scrooge” (All the villains have Christmas related code names). The pacing is superb and almost every scene stands out with the highlights probably being when Santa fully unleashes his Viking fury and the scene almost immediately after where Trudy (The young girl in question) performs a far more violent take on Home Alone.

The great thing about this movie is it lands as a comedy, it lands as violent action and it lands just as well as the other two as a Christmas movie and I think that is the bit that really surprised me. Pair this up with the first “Bad Santa” movie and the classic Bill Murray comedy “Scrooged” and you have the ultimate evening of Christmas comedies. But if you aren’t into that, you can pair it up with Die Hard and Lethal Weapon instead. This is going to be a long time Christmas favourite and earns itself a coveted 8/10 from me.

1. The Northman

And here we are, my number one movie of the year and if not a surprising one for anyone that knows me. I love the Viking Age and I love Norse Mythology. Most of the shows and movies that get put out with those themes are frankly garbage. The TV series “The Last Kingdom” is the sole exception for TV shows (The “Vikings” shows having pitifully bad historical accuracy both in costumes and events). As far as movies goes there have been a few decent ones (The last one of note being “Valhalla Rising” from 2009). When I heard Robert Eggers was making a Viking story based on an Icelandic Saga and staring Alexander Skarsgård I was cautiously optimistic.

Eggers is somewhat obsessed with historical accuracy and has a unique approach to the supernatural where he invokes the perspective of the believers to leave the audience unsure if what they are actually seeing is real or not. Both these were going to be well suited to this story. The Saga in question is the Legend of Amleth, the story that was also the inspiration for Hamlet. Eggers with the assistance of Icelandic poet and musician Sjón constructed a story that truly evokes the spirit of those Sagas. It is tragic, grim and beautiful and portrays those times with equal amounts of horror and awe. The characters are bold, brave, brutal and fatalistic and ultimately the story feels like it is exactly the kind of movie the writers of those ancient Sagas would write themselves.

But it’s not just the storytelling that makes this my movie of the year. The sets are pure perfection down to the finest detail, the soundtrack is primal and inspiring and the performances on screen are almost all absolutely top notch. Along with Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman puts in a career best performance, Claes Bang nails the role of Amleth’s nemesis and step-father, Anya Taylor-Joy continues to prove why her career seems to have rocket boots and Willem DaFoe continues to be the scene stealer he has been his entire career (But with a bit more recognition for it these days). This movie has earned an 8.5/10 from me, a score I’ve not given since “Joker” in 2019. For my full review click HERE.

Worst Movies of the Year (That I’ve Seen)

This is very superhero heavy this year. I’m going to throw “The Batman” out there as a dishonourable mention. There was a lot of good in that movie but an equal amount of bad. Ultimately the film was a disappointment, but could have been worse. I didn’t feel anything was broken, though I doubt they’ll return to that word with Gunn now in charge at DC.

There’s also a number of apparently terrible movies I totally avoided seeing this year, that includes “Amsterdam“, “The 355“, “They/Them” and Walt Disney’s live action “Pinocchio” (It must be really embarrassing to have that come out the same year as Del Toro’s masterpiece). I suspect all of those would have found their way onto the list had I seen them. Generally I don’t go out of my way to watch bad movies, at least not unless they are obvious B-Movies and I figure they may be fun regardless of if they are objectively good or bad (For example something like “Christmas, Bloody Christmas“, which narrowly missed being on this list despite effectively being a bad Terminator rip off).

I suspect had I seen all the theatrically released movies this year only my top five would have still been on the list, but perhaps higher up.

10 – Crimes of the Future

A disappointing entry in David Cronenberg’s more hit than miss career. It is a film that tries to be highbrow with dense layers of subtext but fails to actually do anything entertaining with it. It comes off as a pretentious mess. Cronenberg’s films are always somewhat dense, but most manage to be fun too and this did not. It’s worth noting he had been messing around this idea for a while, so perhaps he gave up trying to find the right angle and just made it with what he had. Who knows. I don’t have much else to say here, but I have done a full review, which you can find HERE. I gave this a 4.5/10.

9. – Prey

A heavily clichéd movie full of modern tropes (Such as having a guy warning the hero of impending danger only to instantly die to that danger), that spends too much time trying to pointlessly reference the original movie while failing to maintain consistency with it. The movie peaks long before the end with the climax requiring the great hunter alien to be a complete and total idiot.

The movie is not without highlights, such as the first appearance of the Predator (fighting the Grizzly) and it is significantly better than the previous entry (A movie that would have easily made the bottom 3 worst even this year), but it is a long way from a true recovery for the franchise. Unlike that previous entry though this didn’t damage the franchise as a whole and can be casually ignored moving forward without issue. It is however, still a bad movie. 4.5/10

8. Morbius

Morbius is a movie that fails mostly because of what isn’t in it rather than what is. There are some flaws and dumb elements it’s true, but then there was in the Venom films too and they were still enjoyable. Morbius however lacks the positives that were in those films that make you want to overlook those flaws and has some glaring omissions in plot points that weren’t very well developed, relationships that weren’t properly explored and characters that were either scaled right down or cut completely from the main movie.

The movie feels like a skeleton of a much better movie, that had all the meat stripped away from the bone in the edit for some reason. My guess is it involves the last minute new deal Sony struck with Marvel. It’s very likely Vulture was going to feature more heavily in the story (Instead of a post credit cameo) and Agent Stroud would also be more heavily involved and actually be seen using his cyborg arm (This btw, is likely how he got to the roof of the building so fast, but they literally cut his superpowers from the film). Anyway, full review is HERE. This is another 4.5/5

7. Troll

This was especially disappointing for me as I was actually quite looking forward to it, but it turned into one of the most generic monster movies I’ve ever seen. Another film full of cliché’s, in this case the incredibly tired “Scientist of an obscure field that is brought in as a specialist consultant, everyone immediately doubts and ridicules and then turns out to be right”. It’s full of horrendous plot holes and contrivances the whole way through.

They even threw in a moment directly out of “The Suicide Squad” where the abused and undervalued subordinate punches out the bloodthirsty boss person at a key moment to allow the heroes to do that thing the military doesn’t want them to do. That trope likely goes back a lot further, but The Suicide Squad actually did it well, where as Troll just sort of does it because it can. The Troll does look reasonably good but that was the only positive I got from this. This is a 4/10

6. Scream (2022)

This overhyped disappointment hit the screens with the kind of arrogance that usually hails a self indulgent pretentious pile of garbage. Even before it aired it lost points for going with the name “Scream” like it was on par or somehow better than the original. But then it actually made references to doing just that so they can mock fans they knew would make that legitimate complaint. Bad start but then they killed off a key character just for the sake of it and chose the one male character in the mix because in 2022 it’s not enough for a franchise to be female lead it now also can’t have any men around at all because then it wouldn’t be empowering.

The truth is the franchise went off the rails years ago when it stopped being meta commentary on the horror genre and instead became directly self referential, through it’s fake “Stab” movie franchise which represents the Scream franchise. The original movie was about all of horror, but all the movies since have basically been just about the original Scream. worst of all though they basically made the villain “Toxic Fandom”. In other words, their own audience. This is a movie that spends an equal amount of time kissing it’s own ass and simultaneously calling it’s fanbase jerks. That is never going to get a good score from me and honestly I feel a 4/10 is generous. I dread to see what the idiots behind this do with the Escape From New York reboot.

5. The Munsters (2022)

The one movie on this list that wasn’t a disappointment, because I expected it to be rubbish going in. But as someone that watched a lot of Munsters reruns as a kid, I really wanted to give it a chance. I respect that Rob Zombie was trying to recreate the feel of the original film and I have heard he wanted to do it in black and white, but was declined by the studio. he also had a budget that could barely pay for a shoestring.

But even then the fact is the end result is bad and the main reason for that is because of creative choices. Specifically because Zombie chose to make the story a prequel effectively about Herman and Lilly hooking up and moving to the USA. That could potentially have worked with a strong story behind it, but Rob didn’t provide one. Not a strong story. Not even a story. The characters just sort of mill around with very little happening until random events cause them to move. Shame, but not a surprise. Full Review is HERE. I gave it 4/10 originally, I feel that may have been generous.

4. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

The front runner of this years set of entries into the abysmal MCU Phase Snore is the disaster that is Black Panther 2. Holding itself up over the other two MCU entries on this list entirely on the strength of it’s Chadwick Boseman tributes. Moving as they were it couldn’t disguise the fact that without Chadwick as Black Panther I really don’t see any characters worth rooting for in this franchise now. Shuri is not believable and the film goes out of it’s way to push gender and racial politics instead of storytelling and having fun. The fact that they changed Namors origin because they didn’t see the value in an entirely fantasy race shows how little the makers of MCU films these days value imagination.

Then you have one of the worst characters ever introduced into the comics (A character that has the mentality of a classic comic villain but is for some reason considered a hero) randomly pushed into the centre of the story in a way that never really made an sense. The movie is so full of plot holes you have to shut your brain completely off to enjoy it making it exactly what Martin Scorsese accused Marvel movies of being – A fairground ride. But for me this was so goofy a movie it’s not even a very good ride. It’s like a ride that breaks down half way through and you get stuck on the tracks for 30 minutes sweating in the hot sun. 3.5/10

3. Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness

This is perhaps the most flawed Marvel movie ever released. The reason it’s not lower on the list however is as a spectacle it does have some good moments and three scenes in particular actually had the distinct mark of Sam Raimi about them. Specifically Zombie Strange, Wanda attacking people from reflections and the music fight. The trouble is as soon as you insert even those scenes into the whole you see what a horrendously flawed mess and total character assassination of pretty much everyone involved it truly is.

Doctor Strange doesn’t even have a real character arc. Instead the plot is basically that everyone thinks he’s an a**hole and he isn’t. That’s not much more of a character arc than Batman’s “I am vengeance… maybe I’m not just Vengeance” (The Batman didn’t make the worst or best list as the flaws and positives neutralised each other). It should go without saying that the character arc of your main character should be the most important thing in a movie named after that character.

Instead this was primarily Wanda’s movie, secondarily America Chavez’ and Stephen is just sort of there. Add to that the horrible cameo of great characters that are all basically made to look like chumps in their very first MCU big screen appearance and you have a film that I absolutely hate, despite three scenes I legit enjoyed. This is a 3.5/10, one point for each good scene and half a point for the rest of the movie.

2. Thor: Love and Thunder

When discussing Thor: Rangnarok with my friends they were surprised I was uneasy about the film. As I explained to them, while I did absolutely enjoy the film I was very concerned with the direction the franchise was going and that if it goes much further in that direction we’d be reaching “Batman and Robin” levels of goofiness. The movie was followed on with Infinity War which had Thor be a definite badass, but then that was followed by Fat Thor in End Game and I became concerned again. Now it’s pretty clear I was proven right. A lot of people are now referring to this movie as the “Batman and Robin” of the franchise and rightly so.

The trouble is not only did they turn Thor into a complete joke, the joke wasn’t even funny. How many times do we have to do the screaming goats joke? How many times are we expected to laugh at gratuitous sexualisation of male characters while we are also being accused of being sexist for wanting to see attractive women? Why does Marvel want to see all it’s male heroes humiliated these days? It’s no wonder Hemsworth has been hinting he is done with the franchise. There was nothing positive at all to this movie, it’s just trash. 3/10

1. Halloween Ends

I think we can basically guarantee now that any time someone comes to the Halloween franchise and wants to wipe most (sometimes all) the previous movies from canon with the arogent view their vision is clearly going to be superior than what came before, that they will in fact end their run with a new worst film of the entire franchise history. This is the third time in a row this has happened now. First the Loomis/Jamie Lloyd arc was wiped out so that we can see Laurie Strode murdered in an insane asylum and have Busta Rhymes be the man to take down The Shape. Then Rob Zombie comes up with his “Darker/Grittier” reboot and ends with one of the most nonsensical barely watchable Halloween movies ever made.

But now we get a new champion of Garbage. We get a third movie in a disjointed trilogy (That really has no excuse to be so disjointed given it’s all the same writer/director and done over a short period). A movie that introduces a new character out of the blue that the trilogy suddenly revolves around. A Halloween movie that character assassinates the Bogeyman himself and reduces him to a cameo. We have a strode family where the granddaughter seems attracted to psychopaths despite her mother being killed by one and a Laurie that casually moves on from that murder after spending four decades obsessing over the same killer after a 5 minute home invasion and the murder of some friends. Indeed she seems to be acting a bit like a psychopath herself… yet this trilogy retconned her being Michaels sister.

This is a 3/10 and that is probably generous. You can find my full rant filled review HERE.

End of Part One

It’s AI generated, don’t read anything into it.

It’s worth noting that all but two of the bottom ten this year were franchise movies while six of my top ten were original and of the movies that were franchise films, Pinocchio is debatable as it’s just a retelling of the source material and has no links to any other Pinocchio story. Maverick meanwhile only became a franchise with this, it’s second movie and Beavis and Butt-head is a 90’s franchise that has been totally dormant since it’s brief one off revival season in 2011.

The important thing is, while they may not be original they are definitely fresh. Sonic 2 is the only movie in that list that could be argued to be a cynical cash in and it’s at number ten. Meanwhile the two original movies in the ten worst are 7th and 10th placed. There is a clear divide and it to me it shows that these big franchise movies are becoming lazier and lazier cash in’s relying more and more on their bloated CGI budget and spending less and less time finding stories that actually resonate with the viewers.

In Part two I will look at this years box office and we’ll see how well the box office receipts compare to the quality on offer. These things rarely match up and Hollywood only learn if they don’t make money. So we can see if there is really hope for movies moving forward. See you there.

The Terminator: Dead or Misunderstood? – Part One

Posted on December 22, 2022February 9, 2023 by fenrisfil

There has been a lot said about the Terminator franchise in recent years. Recently, even James Cameron has piped back up on the subject, suggesting maybe he wants to give it another try. It’s been declared dead several times and some people have claimed it was never really a franchise to begin with and just a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I disagree with both of those positions. I have been a huge fan of the franchise since I saw the original film and I think it’s time to talk about the franchise and look at what went wrong and how it can be fixed.

The Perfect Storm.

As I said, I disagree with people that say it isn’t a franchise. What it definitely is not though is the MCU. It’s not a franchise you can just spam out a movie with a $200m+ budget and expect it to automatically make a profit. The problem as I see it, is that people tend to just focus on the success of Terminator 2 and mark that down as the base level reaction to a franchise entry.

That whole approach is trying to replicate the perfect storm, recapture a specific moment in time and is reducing what is a franchise to something hyper focused on one entry in it. Modern reboots tend to focus on referencing scenes instead of being true to the heart of the franchise and the T2 worship is a version of that problem.

The Cameron Effect.

The thing you have to remember about Terminator 2 is that this was a movie that benefited from the James Cameron effect, or rather ground breaking James Cameron effects! Much like with “Titanic” and “Avatar”. When you are pushing the envelope on visual effects you are going to bring in a much larger audience and Terminator 2 was doing just that with it’s liquid metal T1000.

It would be mad to assume any film about the Titanic will automatically break the $2billion mark, because it’s not the story of the “unsinkable” ship that earned it that box office it was those ground breaking effects. Even with Avatar 2, most people were expecting it to disappoint because it’s just a movie about environmentalist Smurf people… and yet, it’s on it’s way to hitting $2billion again and you can bet that isn’t for the story.

The Unstoppable Force.

Terminator 2 also benefited from the success of the first Terminator film. A movie that as an 18 certificate from a virtually unknown director (Piranha 2 hardly having cemented his name in history) took a while to build popularity to the classic it is now. By the time they announced T2 support for the original was at it’s peak and Cameron was being seen as a Director to pay attention to.

But if Cameron’s star had risen that’s true a thousand times more for Arnold. He had done the Conan movies and was known as a body builder, but wasn’t really a movie star. But by 1991 he was the biggest star on the planet. This of course is part of the reason why some people think of Terminator as just a vehicle for Arnold, but that really wasn’t the case. Last but not least the hottest band of 1991 was Gun’s and Roses and they cross promoted with the movie with their music video for “You could be mine”. There was almost no way the movie could fail.

Earning Potential

All this made for the perfect storm for Terminator 2. But it stands alone in it’s earning potential. Check out the inflation adjusted graph above. You can see each movie earns less than the last, but even that first new entry “Rise of the Machines” is a considerable drop off from T2. The third and fourth movie both actually made money despite having huge production budgets for their day (Inflation adjusted high the highest of the franchise), but they were still considered disappointments.

It’s worth noting Rise of the Machines came out 12 years after T2, giving the franchise a lot of time to cool down. Then you had six years before salvation and another six before Genisys. That’s a very spread out franchise. All four of the movies that followed T2 tried for the big budget, big box office approach and all but “Terminator Salvation” basically tried to replicate Terminator 2 both in story and style. That was never going to work.

The Arnold Factor.

The truth is if you want to look at the franchise potential of The Terminator you need to instead look at the first film and you need to move away from the second and from Arnold. There was actually a moderately successful TV series spin of the show (“The Sarah Connor Chronicles”), that came out around the same time as Salvation. The show gained a second season but was cancelled before the third largely due to backroom dealings over the rights of the franchise and the plans to move forward with a new movie trilogy starting with “Genisys”. It’s a shame because the series was the best thing from the franchise since T2.

On that note, Salvation was the franchise entry post T2 and the show and movie have something important in common, they both attempted to move the franchise away from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Salvation CGI’d his face briefly onto a T800 unit, he wasn’t involved in the movie and he didn’t even have a cameo in “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”. Both these proved the franchise is viable without Arnold and IMHO only able to survive if it actively moves away from the actors involvement. The TV series actually showcased three new Terminators all played very well (At least after the not so good pilot episode).

New Models, New Stories.

Garret Dillahunt played the hunting Terminator “Cromartie”(post pilot) and did a fantastic job of it. This is a T-888, which has a bit more psychological skills than the usual T-800’s (For manipulation and intimidation) but is still a stone cold killer. Later in the story the Terminator’s personality is erased and replaced with an AI that John and Sarah had initially presumed to be the future Skynet, but turned out to be more of a rival AI and one that could perhaps learn the value of humanity.

Throw into the mix the gorgeous Summer Glau as “Cameron” a “female” terminator reprogrammed to protect John, who he seems to have very conflicted emotions for (In other words, he really wants to have sex with her) and in season 2 a rogue T1000 with it’s own agenda and you have a very interesting story without Arnold involved. It’s a shame it was axed when the rights changed hands and it left us on a cliffhanger where John travels into the future and in doing so find a world where he is unknown.

End of Part One

This is turning out longer than I expected, so I’m going to break here and follow up with a part two later. In that entry I will look a bit more at where they went wrong and focus in on the greatness that was the original movie.

Avengers Noir

Posted on December 3, 2022December 3, 2022 by fenrisfil

So while “Noirvember” may be over (Meaning November, the month I traditionally watch and review Film Noir I haven’t seen yet), throughout the month I’ve been feeding amusing prompts to Stable Diffusion (An AI art generator) and it seems appropriate to cap off the month by sharing these. This is basically The Avengers and related Marvel Superheroes re-imagined as if the films were being made around 1950 and done for some unknown reason as a hybrid style with Film Noir. Yes it makes no sense whatsoever, especially as most of these heroes weren’t created until the 1960’s or later, but I thought it was fun. So let’s have a look at the cast.

Humphrey Bogart as Iron Man

This is an obvious choice for me. The truth is Bogart is at 5’8”, actually a bit short for Tony Stark, but it doesn’t really matter since the kind of powerful, confident performances Humphrey put out there pretty much makes people just assume he was tall. Certainly I couldn’t pick anyone else for the role as the genius businessman and inventor turned Superhero alcoholic. Bogart of course is most famous for playing “Sam Spade” in the “Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “Rick Blaine” in “Casablanca” (1942), but appeared in many Noirs likely to be seen on top 10 and top 20 lists including “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Dark Passage” (1947) and “In a Lonely place” (1950). The man is a legend and one of the most famous actors of all time.

Glenn Ford as Captain America

Glenn Ford’s most famous Film Noir roles are “Gilda” (1946) and “The Big Heat” (1953). In both he played edgy determined characters that never gave up or backed down. Seems perfect for Captain America. Ford of course actually does have Superhero pedigree, having played Jonathan Kent in “Superman” (1978) and in that film became the man that gave Superman his moral foundation. Still not convinced? Well he also signed up for military service on three separate occasions, refused promotions offered (he thought) for his fame and not service and was frustrated at being kept out of combat.

Sterling Hayden as Thor

At an impressive 6’5” Sterling Hayden has the perfect frame to play the mighty Thor. His looks are just about right too. Hayden’s has strong Noir pedigree including: “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) “Crime Wave” (1953), “The Come On” (1956) and most famously Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956). Of those I have to admit to only having seen the first and the last, but I’ll get to the others soon enough! Sterling was also in the running for my Captain America, but I figured it wouldn’t make sense to cast someone as Cap in 1950 that had been a member of the Communist party (Albeit briefly).

Rita Hayworth as Black Widow

Naturally hair colour isn’t that obvious when it comes to black and white, but there are still a few actresses from the genre famous for their red hair and I wanted one of them for Black Widow. Lucille Ball dabbled in Film Noir with 1946’s “The Dark Corner” (1946), but as great as she is there really is only one actress that for the role, Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth. You can see the AI decided to give her red hair in one of the picture regardless of being in black and white and it looks great. Along with “Gilda” (1946) she was also in the Orson Welles’ classic “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and “Affair in Trinidad” (1952). If you don’t like the choice, put the blame on mame.

Edward G. Robinson as The Incredible Hulk

I wanted Edward G to factor in somewhere along the line and I thought it’d a fun choice for the Hulk so here we are. Although more famous for his gangster movies of the 1930’s (Especially “Little Caesar” (1931)), Robinson appeared in quite a few Film Noirs, including one of my personal favourites “Scarlett Street” (1945). He also appeared opposite Orson Welles in “The Stranger” (1956) and had a supporting role in one of the most famous Noirs of all time (Indeed number one on many lists), “Double Indemnity” (1944). Robinson often plays intelligent vulnerable men with a dark burden and aggressive angry men out to prove themselves. Works pretty well in the role for me

Dana Andrews as Hawkeye

Dana’s most famous Noir is “Laura” (1944), but he appeared in several including “Fallen Angel” (1945) and “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950). On top of that he was the protagonist in the Horror classic “Night of the Demon” (1957) and played Lt. Ted Stryker in the movie “Zero Hour!” (1957), a mostly forgotten movie outside the fact it was remade into a comedy in 1980, that comedy would be called “Airplane!”. Yes, he was the original Stryker. Andrews definitely deserves a spot on the team. Hawkeye is as good as any.

James Cagney as Nick Fury

Art AI’s can’t do eyepatches to save their uh… programming. But anyway when casting Nick Fury (The original Nick Fury, not the “Ultimate” version, who was basically always Sam Jackson even before the movies), I wanted a veteran that would be a bit older than the rest of the cast and play the elder statesman. Cagney is perfect. Not only is he one of the greatest on screen badasses in movie history he managed to find his way into a couple of Film Noirs late in his career. The fantastic “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” (1950) and the absolute classic “White Heat” (1949). It’s a shame the AI couldn’t do the picture any better, but you try getting one to draw an eye patch on someone!

Harry Belafonte as Falcon

The truth is there isn’t a huge amount of choice for black Film Noir stars, but there are a couple of really good ones . The first is Harry Belafonte, primarily a musician but also a pretty good actor. He starred in and produced the Film Noir classic “Odds Against Tomorrow” (1959) and the often overlooked post apocalyptic drama “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” (1959). Outside of his music and acting careers Belafonte was an important member of the civil rights movement, making him the perfect person for Falcon. I have no idea why the AI drew a rocket ship on that last picture, but I still like the picture.

Lauren Bacall as The Scarlet Witch

I decided not to go with a natural red head for Scarlet Witch as I really wanted to get a role for Lauren Bacall and I figured she’d look good dressed as Wanda. The AI generated pictures seem to agree so I feel it was a good move. Lauren of course is most famous for her work with Humphrey Bogart (So I should probably have cast her as Pepper Potts, but I needed a Wanda), including the classics “To Have and to Have Not” (1944), “The Big Sleep” (1946) and “Dark Passage” (1947).

Orson Welles as THANOS

Could it be anybody else? Orson Welles is perhaps the ultimate movie villain actor. This is why when casting the voice of “Unicron” in “Transformers the Movie” (1986) there was only ever one choice. But his villains in Film Noir include “Professor Charles Rankin” in “The Stranger” (1946), the legendary “Harry Lime” in “The Third Man” (1949) and “Captain Hank Quinlan” in “Touch of Evil” (1958). Three of the most memorable villains in the genre. So Naturally only he could be Thanos and it helps that he sort of has the right look for the character too. These pictures sort of show degrees of morph between Thanos and Welles but they all look cool.

Sidney Poitier as Black Panther

This is another obvious one. cis a legend whose most famous film is the neo-noir “In the Heat of the Night” from 1967. However, he was actually in a couple of proper Film Noirs (i.e. ones between 1940-1959) too, ” No Way Out” (1950) and “Edge of the City” (1957). While not the first black actor in Hollywood to lead a mainstream movie (That would be Sam Lucas way back in 1914) he was arguably the first to become a true movie star. For decades he was the symbol of what could be achieved by a talented and determined black actor and he inspired generations of actors that followed in his footsteps. Oh and he wasn’t just dealing with racial prejudice, in an era ruled by musicals he couldn’t sing due to being tone deaf.

Barbara Stanwyck as The Wasp

You can’t do Film Noir casting without having Barbara Stanwyck involved somewhere. I haven’t actually cast Ant Man (Maybe if I do a part two some time), but back in the 80’s when I was regularly reading Marvel comics I preferred The Wasp anyway. Barbara is most famous for being the most famous of all femme fatale in “Double Indemnity” (1944), but she has appeared in a large number of Film Noirs including: “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946), “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” (1947), “Sorry, Wrong Number” (1948), “The File on Thelma Jordon” (1949), “Clash by Night” (1952) and “Witness to Murder” (1954). If there is a Queen of Noir it is Barbara Stanwyck. I think part of what made her so great was her ability to play broken and flawed women and if you know the comics, you know that does somewhat resemble The Wasp.

Robert Mitchum as Doctor Strange

Another actor that I simply had to include is Robert Mitchum, but it helped that he actually looks perfect for the part of Doctor Strange. At 6’1” he is no Asgardian but tall enough to look imposing and Mitchum’s intense features and world weary eyes really make me thinks of the Sorcerer Supreme (Which will always be Doctor Strange as far as I’m concerned). Mitchum’s biggest Noir roles are “Out of the Past” (1947) and “Night of the Hunter” (1955), but he appeared in a huge number including: “Crossfire” (1947), The Big Steal (1949), Where Danger Lives (1950), The Racket (1951), Macao (1952) and Angel Face (1952). He also took on the mantle of Phillip Marlowe in the 1970’s with “Farwell My Lovely” (1975) and “The Big Sleep” (1978).

Peter Lorre as Loki

Peter Lorre is another legendary Film Noir actor and I couldn’t help but feel he would actually be perfect as Loki (At least if you ignore that he is 5’3”). If anyone was born to play a trickster god it is probably Lorre. The AI seemed to agree because it did a great job with him. Peter’s first villainous role of note was in a sort of Proto-Noir, the Fritz Lang masterpiece “M” (1931), but he went on to appear in what many consider the first official Noir “Stranger on the Third Floor” (1940) and followed that up with the “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “Casablanca” (1942) along with a several more Noirs over the next decade. On top of this, he is in one of my favourite comedies of all time “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944).

Sydney Greenstreet as Odin

After I cast Peter Lorre as Loki really it was no decision at all to cast Sydney Greenstreet as Odin. Though I have to admit he also looks a bit like Prince Vultan from Flash Gordon here, but I’m happy with it. Sydney of course appeared alongside Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. After the success of those movies the studio naturally tried to pair as many of them together again as possible and so Sydney went on to do “The Mask of Dimitrious” (1944) and “Three Strangers” (1946) with Lorre and “Conflict” (1945) with Bogart.

Robert Ryan as Red Skull.

Another Film Noir regular, though he played a mixture of protagonist and antagonist I thought he would make a good Red Skull. I’m not sure if these pictures are still recognisable as Ryan but they do look pretty cool. Ryan’s noirs include: Crossfire (1947), “The Set Up” (1949), Clash By Night (1952), and “Odds Against Tomorrow” (1959). His characters were often brash, bitter and aggressive. Not the perfect fit for Red Skull but it’ll do.

Richard Conte as The Kingpin

I really wanted to throw another villain into the mix and one that made a lot of sense to me is Richard Conte as The Kingpin. Conte has played several evil mob bosses over the years perhaps more famously in “The Godfather” (1972) as Don Corleone’s rival, Barzini. But he also played crime bosses in the Film Noir’s “Cry of the City” and “The Big Combo” (1955). All of which make him the perfect pick for this role. His other Noir’s include “Somewhere in the Night” (1946) and “The Sleeping City” (1950), “The Blue Gardenia” (1953), “The Big Tip off” (1955).

John Garfield as Spider-Man

Last but not least, I had to add a Spider-Man. Even though he is my favourite superhero, he wasn’t my focus for this little exercise in AI creativity. However I felt that John Garfield would be a good pick (especially given he shares a surname with an actual Spider-Man actor). Garfield was an actor famous for playing brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. Not that Spidey is really a brooder, but can be pretty rebellious and is definitely working-class. His roles in Film Noir include “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946), “Body and Soul” (1947), “Force of Evil” (1948) and “Jigsaw” (1949).

Marvel Noir movie poster, apparently for a new hero called “Marnorr”.

That’s All Folks

I hope this was an amusing bit of randomness for you. I figure whether you enjoy Film Noir, AI Art or Marvel Superheroes there is something here to amuse you. I didn’t originally intend to make this a post, but after generating so many imagines I thought it would be nice to share

Raw Deal (1948)

Posted on November 28, 2022November 28, 2022 by fenrisfil

For today’s Film Noir review I’m going for 1948’s “Raw Deal”. A movie that is about as Film Noir as the genre gets. It’s not a greatest hits though like “The Big Combo”, this is more about the story and the characters. But we’ll get into that. The movie is public domain now so can be found at the Internet Archive and various other websites. It’s also on Amazon.

The movie is directed by Anthony Mann, who directed T-Men a year previous in 1947. Mann has directed several Noirs, but the only other one i’ve seen is T-Men (and I liked it). The movie is written by Leopold Atlas and John C. Higgins (Higgins having also worked on T-Men) and stars Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt. O’Keefe was a Film Noir regular and the lead in T-Men. Claire Trevor was also a regular to the genre having appeared in the likes of “Murder My Sweet” (1944) and “Key Largo” (1948). The film also features a key role for Perry Mason/Ironside star Raymond Burr in one of his earliest appearances.

I Want To Breath.

The movie starts with Joe Sullivan (O’Keefe) in prison having taken the fall for some unspecified crime. He is visited first by his good intentioned legal caseworker Anne (Hunt) and then by his girlfriend Pat (Trevor), who quietly informs him of the plans to bust him out, supposedly assisted by his partner in crime Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) who had promised him $5000 as his share for taking the fall for the crime. Rick however doesn’t expect him to escape and is hedging his bets on him getting gunned down.

Joe does escape however and decides to hide out with Pat at Anne’s apartment before heading out of town and to his meet up with Coyle and to his eventual escape from America via boat. Unfortunately for him though Coyle has no play of paying up and instead plans to send his henchmen to kill him. Through all this Anne, initially kidnapped by the pair starts to fall for Joe. Pat notices this and reacts bitterly, though when Annes life is threatened by the gangsters she must decide if she loves Joe enough to tell him about the situation or have it forever on her conscience and never know if he truly loves her.

This Is What He Wanted.

This is a traditional film noir with tragic characters and an air of fatalism. Joe was a good person once, but allowed himself to be broken down by life and found himself in a life of crime. But even as a criminal he he was willing to take the fall for others, true there was meant to be money in it for him but that is upstanding for a criminal. However, he yearns for freedom and this likely reflects the attitude that lead him to a life of crime in the first place. Feeling trapped where he was and not able to get ahead. But the loyalty he showed Coyle was repaid with treachery and violence. Such is the fate of criminals in the 1940’s. On a side note, Raymond Burr is a real scene stealer in this movie, it’s a shame his appearances are all so brief.

Claire Trevor’s Pat is a tragic character too and this is presented to us mostly through her voice overs, which are admittedly a little strange mostly due to the use of a Theremin whenever she does it. I am probably too used to the instrument being used in horror and science fiction so it makes her narrative sound a little otherworldly. However her words are one of a woman that is desperately in love but seems to know deep down, even from the start that it will never really work out. When faced with her final choice of going away with Joe and living a lie or admitting the truth and probably sending him to his death she opts for the later. Not an easy decision, but her final voice over suggests she felt it was always going to end this way.

RAW DEAL, Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, 1948

I Never Asked For Anything Safe.

Anne is a bit of a strange character. From the start she sees the good in Joe and it is why she was so keen to work on his case. Throughout the film she moralises about the situation and admonishes Joe for taking the short cut of crime instead of being brave enough to go straight. But despite her complaints she comes to Joe’s rescue when the assassins pull their trap and she then confesses to Joe that she loves him.

Having been kidnapped by him earlier it’s not the best part of the story, suggesting a bit of Stockholm syndrome and perhaps a bit of a silly crush she had before she even got to know him. But she is there because Joe needed someone good to believe in him. Pat by contrast was an enabler for his life of crime and was never going to stand in his way. Indeed, she couldn’t even do it to save his life.

Life Begins With 50G’s

The plot itself moves rapidly and doesn’t waste much time filling in the blanks, like you never find what exactly it is that Joe did, instead we move frantically from location to location with the group nearly being caught at each one to keep the tension up. One key moment involves another man fleeing the police and coming to the same hideout that Joe is at. Joe takes pity on him but ultimately he gets gunned down in front of the house. This doesn’t drive on the story so much as it does the characters and of course teases Joe being captured to keep tension high.

That tension basically drives the entire movie. On one side you have the police trying to capture Joe and on the other the criminal gang that helped break him out, planning to kill him to avoid paying him his cut. The audience knows right away that he will be betrayed so we spend the whole movie waiting for Joe to meet his end at the hands of one group or another and that is about as Film Noir as you can get. Eventually Joe finds an amount of redemption before meeting his end which is about as happy an ending as he was ever going to get (Partially because of the genre, but also of course the Hays code).

Conclusion

The movie has suffered visually and socially due to deterioration of film. It’s worth noting the movie is public domain and while that means it’s easy to find a copy to watch it also means no one has really invested much time over preservation or restoration. Sadly this is quite common with Film Noir, especially for ones from the 1940’s. Still, it’s not as degraded as “The Red House” was and it’s not too difficult to see things in the darker scenes. That’s good because the film features a lot of classic Noir light and shadows, pretty typical lighting and cinematography for the genre, though with the odd flurry of creativity. Some parts work, some not so much.

Overall this is an above average Noir. Quality wise it’s not in the conversation for “best”, but it may be for quintessential. Thematically, there aren’t many movies that nail the genre so perfectly. It’s not a greatest hits like “The Big Combo”, it’s more of a template. If it wasn’t for the degraded film quality this would be a great genre primer. As it is, it’s probably not a good choice for a first noir but it’s definitely worth checking out. This just about hits 6.5/10. Had the audio/video quality not deteriorated this would be a 7, but as always I have to rate for what it is now, not what it may have been back in the day.

The Enforcer (1951)

Posted on November 24, 2022November 29, 2022 by fenrisfil

Today’s review is the 1951 Humphrey Bogart movie “The Enforcer” also know as “Murder Inc.” in the UK and based off the real life Murder Inc that committed around 400 murders between 1929 and 1940. A Bogart movie I haven’t seen before is a rarity in itself, but a Film Noir with Bogart in I haven’t seen is pretty much unheard of. Yet here we are. So let’s dig in!

The movie was directed by Bretaigne Windust and Raoul Walsh, not as one unit though, the movie was Windust’s but after he fell ill Walsh was brought in to finish the movie. Walsh refused to take credit, but still a good portion of the film was his work. It was written by Martin Rackin. The supporting cast includes Ted de Corsia and Everett Sloane (Both appeared in “Lady From Shanghai”) and Noir regular Roy Roberts (“He Walked By Night”, “Force of Evil”). It was Bogarts last movie for Warner.

Death of a Witness.

The story begins with a close escort and guard of Joseph Rico (de Corsia) a star witness on a trial that is due to start the following morning. The witness is scared though and after an assassination attempt, tries to escape from the precinct only to fall to his death. As the only witness to the case, District Attorney Martin Ferguson (Bogart) is left with no choice but to spend the night going over all the case notes to try and see if he can find something he has missed that may lead to a second witness or some other piece of evidence.

What follows is a series of flashbacks following the police investigation and the story of the gangsters as they come into contact with the police and Ferguson. It follows them unravelling an organisation created to sell murder, taking out “Contracts” on “Hits”. Eventually leading them to the ringlead Albert Mendoza (Sloane) and the original assassination, the only he carried out himself. There was something they missed though, something that can change the entire case when they figure it out, if they figure it out before the villains….

Cops and Killers.

This is very much a film whose strength is in the plot and not characters. While Bogart’s performance is top notch I’d be hard pressed to tell you much about his characters personality outside of “determined to get his man”. While he is the lead, he actually has very little screen time since the majority of the story is told via flashbacks where his character is not present. As a result it’s sort of a selection of short stories where a selection of criminals basically get centre stage.

Fortunately they aren’t just two dimensional hoods, but none of them especially stands out. The best of the bunch is Ted de Corsia’s “Rico”, who due to the way much of the narrative works in reverse chronological order, goes from terrified coward, to cold blooded mob boss and then street level thug. The films real antagonist though, Sloane’s “Mendoza” is unseen for the vast majority of the movie.

Right From That First Crazy Day

The plot though is interesting and unique in how it unravels the mystery. The majority of the story is told in flashbacks, bookended by fairly action heavy sequences involving the two key witnesses. We start out at one point in time, near the end of the story, but after they lose their witness and start going through the police files we see a police investigation from the start through to the current time. However, that investigation unravels the story of criminal events (Though witness statements) from the end, back towards the start. The final reveal being how the whole thing started off and what ultimately the investigation is all about. Effectively there are two timelines, the police and the criminals, one going forwards and the other going back.

Of course flashbacks are heavily utilised in the Film Nori genre with many of the most famous Film Noir’s being almost entirely flashbacks (Occasionally narrated by a dead guy), so it’s not unusual, but effectively having flashbacks within flashbacks is a little different. One of the nice touches is because they go out of their way to not show you Mendoza during the opening, so between that and the slow unravelling the audience is very much in the same position as the cops and the clue to bringing down Mendoza is there for all to see but small enough that most won’t. It’s well played out.

Everything But Himself.

Visually the film has it’s moments, such as Rico’s foolish attempt to climb a ledge of a building. But mostly the high pace and relatively short length of the movie gives little time to really indulge in that aspect of noir. Really it’s not surprising some critics don’t even consider this movie a Noir, but I would argue that as the film is built largely around flashbacks of people revealing the story of their own undoing it is very much a noir, even with the police framework. The police, even Bogart’s D.A. Ferguson are barely characters in this, they are just a narrative device to tell the story of the criminals self destruction. So it works for me.

Conclusion

Overall the film is solid and has a great plot, but lacks interesting characters and provides little in the audio/visual department that I found memorable. Bogart does a good job but has nothing to work with, making this one of his least interesting performances and not quite enough to raise the movie to the upper tier of Noir. I do like that plot though, it’s interesting both narratively and for the subject matter (Loosely based on the real life Murder Inc.). So with that in mind I’m giving this a narrow 6.5/10.

The Big Combo (1955)

Posted on November 21, 2022November 26, 2022 by fenrisfil

Today I’m reviewing a movie that I should really have watched years ago, “The Big Combo” from 1955. If you’ve ever found yourself googling “Film Noir” (especially images), you have definitely come across some of the films visuals. Indeed quite often if you see a heading that says “Film Noir” in some kind of article or book on the genre the cover picture is probably from this film. So that should give you a clue as to why the film is famous: It is perhaps the movie most heavily packed with classic Film Noir imagery and tropes. But since it came quite late in the era it’s not like it can claim to have invented any of that imagery. It just really indulged in it. It’s sort of a greatest hits.

The Men Behind The Movie

The movie is directed by Joseph H. Lewis, a director renowned for making the most of a minimal budget (We’ll get back to that) and the writing credit went to Philip Yordan, who possibly didn’t actually write it since he often had his work ghost-written by blacklisted writers at the time (Ben Maddow in particular). John Alton provided the cinematography and since this is a very visual film he deserves recognition for his part.

Cornel Wilde (“High Sierra”) stars, along with his wife Jean Wallace (“Jigsaw”) and Richard Conte (“The Godfather”), who stepped in at the last minute in the villain role to replace Jack Palance (Who quit because they wouldn’t give a role to his wife). Notable support includes Brian Donlevy (“The Glass Key”), Robert Middleton (“The Desperate Hours”) and Lee Van Cleef (“The Good, The Bad & The Ugly”).

The Set Up

The story follows Police Lt. Leonard Diamond (Wilde) on his personal crusade to bring down the sadistic gangster Mr. Brown (Conte). Diamond is also somewhat obsessed with Brown’s girlfriend Susan (Wallace). He claims he thinks she is the key to bringing him down but Police Capt. Peterson (Middleton) thinks he is secretly in love with her. After Susan attempts suicide she inadvertently gives Diamond a lead in the form of the name “Alicia”, which leads Diamond to pursue Browns biggest secret: What happened to his missing wife and to the crime boss he took over from?

So the first thing to note about this movie is that it was clearly made on a very tight budget, but as is often the case this just brings out the creativity in the truly talent director and this is Joe Lewis’ specialty. Indeed the movie was originally meant to be a higher budget job but after funding dried up they sought out Lewis to make it work. The vast majority of scenes are done in a single take, with a single lighting source.

The Aesthetics

On occasion though it is all too obvious they are on a sound stage, but those moments don’t last long enough to take you out of the movie. The best example of the film at it’s best and worst is in the opening scene where a brilliant chase through a series of creatively lit hallways and alleys is capped off by a static shot that is clearly on a sound stage. On the whole the film looks great.

There is a very strong focus on lighting and I have no doubt that when I talked about Film Noir influences on Blade Runner in my deep dive this was one of the movies that had a direct influence. It is a masterclass. The composition of each shoot is excellent too, with a great use of objects in the foreground such as brewing coffee in one scene and a lamp (which was also the light source of course) in another. He even throws old wagon into the background of a shot in the airport, perhaps as an in joke on the directors use of Wagon wheels in his 40’s Westerns, whenever he thought the shots looked too boring.

The Characters

As far as the characters go Conte’s Mr. Brown is the clear stand out. He gets the best lines of the movie and is the more interesting of his yin and yang pair with Cornel Wilde’s Lt. Diamond. Brown is evil for sure, ambitious and cold hearted, but he’s also charming and knows how to please a woman. Diamond however, despite being the virtuous hero, severely lacks in charm and is often somewhat callous towards the women in the movie. While it is suggested he is in love with Brown’s girl, Susan he is clearly more motivated with nail brown than protecting her. Wilde shared producer credits on the movie so had a degree of creative control and yet it is Conte’s performance that stands out. Some people just make great villains and he would play memorable ones several times in his career.

Amongst the rest of the characters, the most interesting is the fallen criminal Joe McClure, humiliated by Mr. Brown and forced to work for him, pretty much has his own story arc (Which naturally ends badly) and while Brian Donlevy plays the role well I suspect the reason for elevating the character was so they could make use of his deafness and use of a hearing aid. When we are introduced to him, we see Joe talk loudly into it to humiliate him, but later when they kidnap Diamond it is used as a full on torture device on the lieutenant, complete with a jazz drum solo on a nearby radio. Then finally when McClure is betrayed and faces death, we get to experience that in complete silence.

The Plot

The plot is a bit of a mixed bag. The scenes are strong but there tends to be a lot of conveniences to move the plot on (Such as Mr. Brown responding to the word “Spaghetti” in a lie detector word association test by blurting out the name of a retired gangster that was key to the case). Most of it works though and some of those scenes are very good. Such as the torture scene with the hearing aid, which was one they clearly spent a lot of time over (Definitely not a single take on that one).

The slow unravelling of the mystery works well and proceeds at a constant pace giving plenty of time for character moments and of course visuals. The mystery itself isn’t especially clever but it does it’s job. This is a movie of visuals first, characters second and last of all plot. But it’s coherent and well paced so I’m not complaining. There is a certain edginess to a lot of this movie though and it’s clear they were pushing just how much they could get past the censors. Remember this was a good 10 years before the Hays code was scrapped, so that torture scene was controversial.

Tropes And Controversy

Perhaps more controversial though was a scene earlier between Conte and Wallace which may be first on screen suggestion of cunnilingus, very skilfully implied without actually giving the censors anything to censor. I wonder if perhaps directors doing things like that made such a mockery of the code they decided it was time to just scrap it anyway. Certainly the film has many things they wouldn’t have gotten away with in a 1940’s Noir. Another example that seems to have slipped past most people in the day was the fact that Mr. Browns two henchmen (Played by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman) were blatantly a gay couple.

While presenting an A to Z of Noir tropes and visuals in 1955 wasn’t exactly the most original or inspired piece of work it can’t be argued that it has in many ways become a near perfect example of the genre. If I was to recommend a movie to someone as a genre primer, this would be it and the closing shot of the film with the male and female lead silhouetted on their walk from the airport in the fog is perhaps the most famous visual in the whole genre due it’s overuse in pretty much every article about the genre. If you go and do a google image search right now for “Film Noir” it’ll probably be the first picture you get.

Conclusion.

Is it the best Film Noir? No, not by a long way. But it is probably top 20. There is a suggestion that the producers may have meddled with the film after most of it was film, most specifically Wilde may have felt outperformed by Conte, since much of the apparently added footage involves closeups of Wilde. Many of these worked against the feel of the film and it’s visual style so it’s a shame if true. Outside the great visuals Conte’s performance is the most notable thing about the film and it is probably why he was the original front runner to play Don Corleone in The Godfather. Obviously that changed when Marlon Brando came on board, so he ended up playing Corleone’s rival instead.

Ultimately, this is a great Noir. One of the best looking and Conte is one of the best villains of the genre. The movie’s occasional slip both visually (badly covered up sound stages and awkwardly inserted closeups) and plot wise (Those conveniences) count against it a bit as does the fact the protagonist is far less compelling than the antagonist and so much of it could have been taken directly from earlier movies. However, this still get’s high marks from me. This is a strong 7.5/10.