Adapting a series of beloved novels spanning thousands of pages and countless characters and worlds into a consumable stand-alone movie was never going to be an easy task. Over the years, many names have been attached to developing Stephen King's Dark Tower novels, including the combined efforts of J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof during their Lost days, and Ron Howard. When it became apparent that these novels were indeed unfilmable, they understandably bailed, and the film found itself in limbo once again. After 10 years of rewrites and personnel changes, The Dark Tower finally arrives in the hands of Nikolaj Arcel, the director of fantastic Danish period drama A Royal Affair. Reports of heavy re-shoots and a frustrated cast was never a good sign, and while it isn't quite the incoherent, tumour-inducing non-entity of Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, The Dark Tower will leave fans of the novels shaking their heads and newcomers scratching them.
The final result is a stuttering mess of disconnected scenes loosely held together by a baffling plot that seems to throw in every fantasy element except the magical kitchen sink. We have a western without the West, a fantasy without the fantastical, and a familiar 'Chosen One' thread fronted by a forgettable child actor. In part a sequel to King's novels and an origin story of sorts, The Dark Tower doesn't know what it is, and increasingly throughout the film it feels as though the studio just stopped trying in the hope that it would eventually make its money back from book fans and teenagers hungry for some fantasy action. Scenes play out with seemingly no connection to what came before and -although I don't know if I was just imagining it or simply looking for something to distract my attention from the sheer tedium of the plot - actors' lips seemed to have been altered by CGI as the script was re-written after scenes were shot. You may also find yourself jolting awake every 5 minutes at the sound of Idris Elba's magical guns.
Eleven year-old Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) possesses the 'Shine', a power of shady definition but one which allows him to subconsciously peer into other worlds. In his dreams, he has visions of a giant dark tower, an evil man in dressed in black intent on bringing down the tower, and a mysterious gunslinger. He draws his visions and hangs them on his bedroom wall, so naturally his mother and douchebag stepfather think he's crazy and arranges for him to spend some time away in a psychiatric facility. He runs away to find a building from his dreams (which just happens to be in his home city of New York), and finds a portal which transports him to the apocalyptic wastelands of Mid-World. There, he quickly encounters the gunslinger from his dreams: A man named Roland Deschain (Elba) who is part of an ancient order of knights who carry out justice with guns forged from Excalibur. He is also visited by the man in black, a sorcerer named Walter Padick (Matthew McConaughey) who aims to harness children's screams in order to topple the Dark Tower holding all the worlds together.
When the film isn't trying to explain everybody's backgrounds to the audience through endless exposition, it expects us to simply accept this nonsense. I haven't read King's books, but it carries a reputation as being a complex and detailed piece of work requiring audience investment to drink in its slow-build approach. Arcel's movie opts to cram as much as it can into just 95 minutes, without dedicating anywhere near enough time to properly explain the universe's mythos. For a film so short and convoluted, it's almost impressive how boring it manages to be. Elba, like he does in most franchise-building, big-budget affair, seems to huff his way through the film with his eyes half-closed as though he is waiting for his next 'serious' project. McConaughey at least injects some energy into his poorly-developed bad guy, although he may just be happy he's not making horrible rom-coms anymore. It's scant praise for a movie that feels nothing like a final product, and more like a bunch of outtakes found in a bin and glued together with Pritt Stick by a janitor with a penchant for generic fantasy CGI.
With Maniac Cop 2, director William Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen imagined a mixture of bloody slasher and crime thriller The French Connection, and delivered just about the most satisfying sequel imaginable to an original that was hardly great. It delivered on car chases, action set-pieces and slasher mayhem, backed with a witty, sharp script and an impressive cast. It also delivered a full-body-burn climax that was as exciting as it was technically impressive. While part two looked at William Friedkin's classic thriller for inspiration, just where Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence found inspiration is anyone's guess, other than perhaps the sort of drivel you used to find buried on the bottom shelf of the video store. Lustig and Cohen have both disowned the movie since its release, and it isn't difficult to see why.
Citing studio interference, Lustig walked from the set half-way through filming for the movie to be picked up by inexperienced producer Joel Soisson, who is uncredited. The resulting film is less than a half-baked idea: a lumbering mess of a film, primarily made up of filler that is, at times, downright unwatchable. Having clear Matt Cordell's name and buried him with honours in tact, Detective Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) had hoped to have seen the last of the 'Maniac Cop'. His close father-daughter-like relationship with young police officer Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker) is ground to a halt when she is gunned down and placed into a coma by junkie Frank (Jackie Earle Haley), only for two 'nightcrawler' cameramen to smear her name with some edited footage. After being resurrected by a Voodoo priest, Cordell sees Sullivan as an equally tortured and unfairly disgraced soul, and sets about claiming her for his own.
It's hard to know where to start with Maniac Cop 3, as the film is so lacking in ideas and structure that it barely has a beginning, middle and end. When it hits a wall, it looks to its predecessor for ideas. So we are treated to another convenience store shootout, another high speed chase, and another finale involving a full body burn. In its defence, the climax mixes both a high speed chase and a full body burn, and while it goes on for a little too long, you have to appreciate the complexity of such an intricate set-piece. Cordell, again played by Robert Z'Dar, is relegated to little more than a glorified cameo in his own movie, appearing ever now and then to carry out a bloody deed seemingly for Voodoo priest Houngan (Julius Harris), whose motives are still unclear when the credits roll. As a fan of the first two Maniac Cop movies, it's easy to feel as cheated as Lustig did as he stormed off set.
Bringing Alan Moore's cerebral and sprawling novel to the screen was always going to a near-impossible task. It's very much an anti-superhero story, where the 'heroes' are merciless psychopaths, government weapons of mass destruction, or sexually impotent. Spanning decades and featuring snippets from books, comics and newspaper reports within the world Moore creates, any film adaptation simply could not match the level of details and authenticity of the much-lauded novel. Zack Snyder, a fan of the original, and a director who was just off the back of the surprisingly excellent Dawn of the Dead (2004) and the shouty, crass 300 (2006), puts all of his heart and soul into Watchmen.
Using a no-name cast, a convoluted and dangerously slow story, and an adult rating thanks to all those snapped bones and a massive blue willy, it's a wonder this ever got made at all. It was in development hell for years, with names such as Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass becoming attached and then quickly detached from the project, and even the nerve-jangling possibility of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the movie's only true superhero was banded around in the mid 1990's. It's almost impossible to think of a more faithful adaptation than Snyder's, often re-creating frames from the comic in the minutest of detail, and even including Tales from the Black Freighter, the comic-within-a-comic from the novel with the voice of Gerard Butler (this is a review of the 215-minute cut, which I feel is the best version out there). Yet, you could still argue that Moore's book is un-filmable.
The 1980's, and President Nixon is running his fourth term in office, and superheroes have been outlawed. Ageing government assassin The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former member of two superhero groups named the Minutemen, is murdered in his home. Vigilante and wanted man Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) investigates the murder, and brings his theory that someone is hunting down retired superheroes to his friend and former partner Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), formerly known as Nite Owl. With the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets becoming frequently more inevitable, heads turn to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a neo-God with the ability to bend matter to his will. But when he learns that he may have given his friends and loved ones cancer, he flees to Mars, leaving the world vulnerable to complete annihilation.
The Watchmen world is thick and meaty, re-writing history as if masked heroes and super-villains actually existed. In the film's opening titles, we are treated to an impressive collage of famous historical events, such as the Moon landing, but here it's Dr. Manhattan photographing Neil Armstrong. It's a hell of a lot of back-story to fill in, and the movie spends most of it's time filling in the gaps between the 1940's and the 1980's. Luckily, the characters Alan Moore wrote so beautifully, are fascinating, and the extended segments dedicated to portray their personal evolution are arguably more interesting than the movie's main plot. These are not flawed superheroes like Batman or Wolverine, they are complete fuck-ups, getting sexual stimulation from violence, battering minor offenders to a bloody pulp, or, in Dr. Manhattan's case, literally losing every trace of his humanity.
Moore's novel made them a parody of the idea of masked superheroes protecting the weak. The Comedian especially is a piece of work, gleefully frying a Viet Cong with a flame thrower, while a giant Dr. Manhattan stalks the jungle vaporising any enemies in his way, helicopters whizzing by his head while 'Ride of the Valkyries' plays. Like with 300, Snyder way overplays it. The comic itself wasn't exactly subtle, but Watchmen the movie amps everything up to 11, and while this admittedly makes the film more exciting, it makes the themes heavy-handed and sometimes plain laughable. Dreiberg can only get it up for the Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) after he's murdered some criminals, but when he finally does, Snyder captures it like a soft-core porn movie starring Shannon Tweed, with the cringe-worthy use of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' in the background. In fact, the entire soundtrack feels as if it's been picked by some stoner student with Jimi Hendrix posters on his wall.
It's no surprise that, after a very successful opening week, Watchmen plummeted once word-of-mouth got around. Audiences drawn in by the possibility of another superhero spectacle were no doubt left baffled by the existential musings of it's characters and the extreme darkness of the film's themes. Perhaps it was what the film deserved, as when it's good, it's the work of a true artist, and when it's bad, it's quite embarrassing. But it's the best that us fans are likely to ever get, and we must be thankful that a director who really knows and loves the source was on board, and insistent that it wasn't destroyed by the studio butchers. Snyder has also rounded up an excellent cast, with Haley and Crudup standing out especially (Akerman suffers from some dodgy delivery occasionally but she sure pulls off that costume). It will continue to divide it's viewers, but it'll be somewhat cherished by it's fans.
The focus of screenwriter Tony Kushner and director Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic is very specific, following the presidents administration for a short period of around two months in early 1865. It is a significant moment in Lincoln's term as president, not just for the passing of the 13th amendment to the United States constitution, that would free the thousands of black slaves, but for a change in Lincoln's opinion of the black population. It is also a significant period for American culture as a whole. Lincoln's image and reputation are wholly constructed from this short time. In the opening scene, Daniel Day-Lewis' Abraham Lincoln, discusses the black experience, and a previous speech he conducted, with two black soldiers on the front line in the civil war, still raging five years since it began. This opening is critical to the change that he experienced when he saw young black men fighting for the Union against the Confederate army. Before this face-to-face encounter, Lincoln had been involved in the Emancipation Proclamation (passed in 1863), but actually had plans to deport the blacks out of the United States, if slavery were abolished, as he felt that blacks and whites could not co-exist.
It is typical of all adaptations of Lincoln, "The Great Emancipator," is that the 16th president has been mythologised even by many history scholars since his death in April 1865. Spielberg is no stranger to revisionist historical cinema, of course (Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) instantly come to mind), as the director tends to hold onto an idealised sense of sentimentality, a heightened range of emotions. It's often a cheap trick in Spielberg's cinema, but in Lincoln, the screenplay does hint at a man who is a little ambiguous on the subject of race. Day-Lewis, in a scene on a porch with his wife's ex-slave confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben), he plays Lincoln with an awkwardness. He asks her what he thinks will happen to the black population if slavery was abolished. Is he uncomfortable because of his views on deportation, or is he exploring the idea of absolute freedom? This is another scene that leads me to believe that Kushner and Spielberg were aware of the more dubious history concerning Lincoln's possible racism before 1865. That is not to say he wasn't against slavery, he was, but as a lawyer, it appears he approached it totally pragmatically.
Lincoln focuses it's attentions on the debates both in congress and behind the scenes within the seemingly cavernous rooms of the White House. The arguments and anecdotes about the meaning of freedom, and the race differences. The film attempts to show the bureaucratic and labyrinthine nature of policy change, let alone the grievances of changing the constitution written out in 1776. Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, a staunch opponent of slavery, and advocate of total freedom for blacks. As his story unfolds in congress, his secret personal life reveals itself almost revelatory in its conclusion. Small moments of comic vignette are provided by James Spader's Lobbyist W. N. Bilbo, and his crew, as they attempt to persuade democrats and republicans to vote for the passing of the 13th Amendment. Bilbo is seen in congress, sitting in the public seat mezzanine, providing character exposition, commentary and funny observations with his cohorts, like the two old men, Statler and Waldorf, in The Muppet Show. However, these escapades offer nothing more tangible than a little relief from the seriousness of the politics. Of course, with Spielberg attached to this project, the politics is also backed up with the emotional core of the Lincoln family. Sally Field plays the grief stricken wife, Mary, who is struggling after the death of a son.
Lincoln shows an ambiguous family, whose inner conflict juxtaposes the husband and the politician. In scenes with Mary, Lincoln is defensive, conflicting with the emotional stability of his wife. He has emotional detachments from his youngest son, whilst the visiting Robert Lincoln (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), battles with his father to join the civil war, a path that the president does not want for him. The American civil war was a brutal war, mechanised by the rise of the industrial revolution, leading to hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Whilst the scenes between son and wife are well scripted and acted, their presence seems secondary to what will, in part, contribute to awards heavy adulation of the Day-Lewis performance. Not only does he portray a president adored throughout history, but the script gives the actor a series of hyperbolic and anecdotal monologues. In practically all of Day-Lewis's performances, he has a moment in which he orates a lengthy, passionate speech, bringing stories to their emotional peek. In Lincoln, he almost explicitly has one of these fervent, impassioned moments, in every scene in which he is sitting. They are often humorous, but after a while, the obvious pleas for Oscar recognition, and fundamentally, to over emphasis the man as a great orator, and a man of complete honour and tolerance.
Undeniably, the film is sumptuously beautiful to look at. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski conjures up a dark, candle-lit and fire-lit image when photographing inside. The minimal light, and contemporary decor, produces a palate of ochre's and earthy colours. When shooting outside, the grey of January winter bleeds from the sky into the skin of the characters, and the spacious clutter of buildings. The film juxtaposes these primitive images of the mid-ninetieth century surroundings with the very modern debates of morality and enslavement. There is a clear reason why Lincoln has been made in 2012. Lincoln's status as the emancipator of the black population, his image (still exploited for financial gain today in America), and his outstanding myth, were used during current president, Barack Obama's, presidential campaign in 2008. His myth is enduring (his Washington D.C. monument being the sight in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly about the failure of the Emancipation Proclamation to truly free black people in America), but his (and Day-Lewis's) performance as a saviour and saint, would always win over a nation of people whose emotional attachment to their history can be easily manipulated and perpetuated through mass communication (newspaper, film, television, Internet), and fact and fiction merge to create an acceptable narrative.
Lincoln is an interesting film. The machinations of politics are a subject that should be relevant to most people in this period where nefarious politics are happening in plain sight, but whose unknown activities are most likely darker and fundamentally scarier than is possible to imagine. This Lincoln has very slight moments of enigma, his character is at times inscrutable, but the film doesn't offer insight into these confusions of intention or social outlook. However, when these ambiguities present themselves, they are soon reversed by ever-present adoration of the historical figure, this is perfectly illustrated in the closing moments. The film uncomfortably and unnecessarily attaches Lincoln's death scene at the end (which occurred two or three months after the time period the film is set). A tactic that opens the film into stomach churning celebration and lionising, where his famous speech lingers over the ghost on Lincoln, the generic emotional music of John Williams echoing into the credits. It's a shame the filmmakers perpetuated the myth instead of penetrating a character whose true identity is clouded in over a century of storytelling, and pseudo-religious worship. A missed opportunity perhaps, but Lincoln seems to have been made at this time to simply highlight to the world the social and political progress that has been made in America, from the passing of the 13th amendment, to the inaugaration of Barack Obama in 2008: Well done America, you're so enlightened (sic)!
The final result is a stuttering mess of disconnected scenes loosely held together by a baffling plot that seems to throw in every fantasy element except the magical kitchen sink. We have a western without the West, a fantasy without the fantastical, and a familiar 'Chosen One' thread fronted by a forgettable child actor. In part a sequel to King's novels and an origin story of sorts, The Dark Tower doesn't know what it is, and increasingly throughout the film it feels as though the studio just stopped trying in the hope that it would eventually make its money back from book fans and teenagers hungry for some fantasy action. Scenes play out with seemingly no connection to what came before and -although I don't know if I was just imagining it or simply looking for something to distract my attention from the sheer tedium of the plot - actors' lips seemed to have been altered by CGI as the script was re-written after scenes were shot. You may also find yourself jolting awake every 5 minutes at the sound of Idris Elba's magical guns.
