Pixels

For F*** Magazine

PIXELS

Director : Chris Columbus
Cast : Adam Sandler, Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad, Kevin James, Jane Krakowski, Peter Dinklage, Brian Cox, Ashley Benson, Sean Bean, James Preston Roger
Genre : Comedy/Sci-Fi
Run Time : 106 mins
Opens : 13 August 2015
Rating : PG

Beloved characters from days of gaming past are no longer confined to arcade cabinets, rampaging through the streets and tearing across the skies in this sci-fi action comedy. When aliens invade earth in the guise of classic arcade characters like Galaga and Pac-Man, President Will Cooper (James) calls upon his childhood best friend Sam Brenner (Sandler) to combat the threat. Brenner was once a Pac-Man champion, but was beaten at Donkey Kong by his rival Eddie Plant (Dinklage), who is provisionally released from prison to help fight the aliens. Rounding out the team is the mal-adjusted conspiracy theorist Ludlow Lamonsoff (Gad), who has an unhealthy obsession with buxom video game character Lady Lisa (Benson). They answer to Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten (Monaghan), who has helped develop cutting-edge light ray guns to use against the invaders. Brenner and his team, branded “The Arcaders”, are all that stands in the way of the disintegration of the planet. 

Pixels is based on Patrick Jean’s 2010 short film that quickly became an internet sensation. It’s not the first good idea that has been completely mishandled by Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison production company, nor will it be the last. It’s an utter disappointment that Sandler got his hands on this – it may seem fashionable to hate on the actor/producer, but it’s completely understandable that many filmgoers are not swayed by his frat boy humour and his penchant for varying shades of prejudice in his movies. His lack of popularity is such that there have even been only semi-joking conspiracy theories that his films are elaborate money laundering schemes. Director Chris Columbus does not have a spotless track record, but having directed the first two Harry Potter and Home Alone movies, is more successful than Sandler oft-collaborators Dennis Dugan and Frank Coraci. This gave this reviewer a glimmer of hope that Pixels would end up better than other Sandler movies. This glimmer was quickly extinguished. 

This is especially a shame considering the technical polish with which Pixels is made. The visual effects work, supervised by Matthew Butler and produced by Denise Davis, is excellent and some of the imagery is eye-catching and inventive. A battle against the Centipede from the Atari game of the same name is an absolute blast and the film makes great use of stereoscopic effects, with visual gags like the game scores floating off the screen. The sequence in which our heroes hop into kitted-out Mini Coopers (with the license plates “Pinky”, “Inky”, “Blinky” and “Clyde”) to fight Pac-Man in a high-speed skirmish on the streets of New York is plenty of fun as well, even if it owes a huge debt to Ghostbusters. 

This might have worked with a different plot and different characters, because the characters are generally very unlikeable. Sandler stars as a ne’er-do-well home theatre system installer, his ego overwhelmingly apparent as he’s cast himself as the underdog who is “the only man for the job” and is eventually adored by the public as an international hero. Kevin James is the least believable movie president since Charlie Sheen in Machete Kills. Granted, it’s supposed to be a joke, but the casting of a credible actor as the President would have given the film at least some grounding, because if it’s all a joke, then the stakes are diminished. 

Josh Gad plays the stereotypical basement-dwelling, mouth-breathing nerd, who actually seems to have some very serious issues that we’re supposed to laugh at instead of be concerned about. It’s a shame that the character is as loathsome and unimaginative a caricature as he is, since Gad has displayed a fair amount of charm in other roles. Peter Dinklage is similarly wasted as the show-boating Eddie Plant, who was apparently modelled after real-life Pac-Man and Donkey Kong champion Billy Mitchell. Dinklage is clearly having a lot of fun in the role, but his character is so repulsive that’s it’s difficult to enjoy his performance. Part of Eddie’s terms in order to help the government fight the aliens is that he gets to have a threesome with two unlikely female celebrities, a joke which is followed up on instead of being treated as an absurd and offensive request. 

This brings us to the lead female character, Michelle Monaghan’s Lt. Col. Van Patten. We’re left picking at scraps, and at the very least, this reviewer is grateful that there’s a woman in a position of power in the film and Monaghan carries herself with as much dignity as she can. Of course, there’s an inane romantic subplot involving Van Patten and Brenner, complete with the “they start out hating each other!” romantic comedy arc. Ludlow’s slobbering obsession with the Red Sonja-esque Lady Lisa is nauseating, and one of the takeaways of the film is that women are trophies who can be won and owned. On top of that, there are multiple casual sexist remarks, such that the film’s atrocious attitude towards women is impossible to ignore. Not content with being flagrantly misogynistic, Pixels also tosses in a stereotypical portrayal of Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani (Denis Akiyama) and a nigh-incomprehensible, buffoonish British Prime Minister (Penelope Wilton). A scene set in India takes place in front of the Taj Mahal, because how else are audiences supposed to recognise that it’s India otherwise? 

Pixels is Adam Sandler’s attempt to hop on the geek bandwagon in a bid to cash in on the retro nostalgia trend. The film bombed upon its opening in the U.S., another blow for Sony just as the studio has been reeling from a massive cyber-attack. This could have been excellent in the hands of someone with a genuine love for classic arcade games, a passion that was palpable in Wreck-It Ralph, which was fuelled with lots of heart and had jokes that were actually funny instead of offensive and cringe-worthy. Animated sci-fi comedy series Futurama also did the “aliens attack earth in the guise of video game characters” plot way back in 2002 – and, needless to say, far better. It’s truly a shame that all Pixels amounts to is Adam Sandler hurling barrels at the audience for two hours. 

Summary: Pixels has Adam Sandler’s grubby fingerprints all over it, smearing a fun premise and some engaging visuals with crass, tasteless jokes and unlikeable characters.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5 Stars 


Jedd Jong 

Live from Nerd HQ - Geeking out with Zachary Levi

As published in Issue #67 of F*** Magazine

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LIVE FROM NERD HQ: GEEKING OUT WITH ZACHARY LEVI

[San Diego Exclusive] by Jedd Jong 

It’s that time of the year again, with the city of San Diego bracing itself for an influx of over 150 000 geeks, all here for the pop culture mega-event that is Comic-Con. For the fifth year running, actor Zachary Levi is hosting Nerd HQ, the “mini-con” complementary to the main event and part of his Nerd Machine lifestyle brand. Levi is best-known for such geek-friendly roles as the likeable title character on the NBC action comedy series Chuck, and Thor’s swashbuckling ally Fandral the Dashing in Thor: The Dark World. He can also be heard as the voice of Flynn Rider in Disney’s Tangled (a role he will reprise in the upcoming Tangled cartoon series) and is set to return to the small screen with a leading role as vengeful father Luke Collins in Heroes Reborn, the 13 episode spin-off of Heroes.

Nerd HQ, which has been held at different locations over its history, is intended as a hangout spot where like-minded fans can chill out, play demos of games, rock out at dance parties and try out new tech. There are also the “Conversations for a Cause” panels, with past guests including such fan-favourites as Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Stan Lee and the casts of shows such as Sherlock, Doctor Who and Supernatural. These ticketed events sell out faster and faster each year and benefit the cleft palette surgery charity Operation Smile. Fans can also make donations to the charity to get their photos taken with celebrities in the Smiles for Smiles photo booth.

This year, Nerd HQ’s home base is the New San Diego Children’s Museum, across the way from the sprawling Convention Centre. It is a Wednesday afternoon, just before the madness kicks into high gear, when this writer arrives at the Children’s Museum. Levi is dressed casually, clad in a shirt, shorts, a cap and slippers as he greets and high-fives the personnel putting the finishing touches on the museum’s transformation into Nerd HQ. Charming, laid-back and with no airs about him, Levi is extremely approachable throughout one of the breeziest interviews this writer has ever participated in. There are no minders hovering over his shoulder and while attending the hectic Comic-Con may be a chore for some actors, Levi seems right at home. He shares his personal definition of what it means to be a “nerd”, speaks fondly of the iconic guest stars who graced Chuck and enthuses about getting to play in the sandbox that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

So here we are at the very centre of geekdom. Would you say geeks rule the world now?

[Laughs] You know, they do, right? I feel like the world that we live in now is far less of a manual labour world, not too long ago there were a lot of jobs where you’d be a farmer ploughing fields. Now there’s so many jobs in tech and using your mind and using computers so yeah, geeks do rule the world!

What has your journey been like as a champion of nerdiness in Hollywood?

Well, it’s been interesting. First of all, I definitely am trying to redefine what it means being a “nerd” because being nerdy just means you’re passionate. I’ve said that a lot; it’s kind of one of our mantras at The Nerd Machine. They’re synonymous, “nerdy” and “passionate”. You can be a fashion nerd, you can be a food nerd, you can more of a traditional, stereotypical nerd and be nerdy about comic books, videogames, I’m nerdy about all those things too. Technology, [I’m] probably most nerdy about technology. The future, how technology and entertainment work together…I like that though.

I’m a firm believer that when people speak about things that they’re passionate about, that’s what means the most and that’s when you’re trying to convey something to somebody, they can feel your passion for your nerdiness about it and it’s infectious and it really means a lot. When I first started the Nerd Machine and when I first started playing Chuck, people had a hard time going “that guy, he doesn’t seem like a nerd” or whatever. And I’d say “clearly, you don’t know me very well” because I was made fun of [for] incessantly playing video games and doing lots of theatre. I was a theatre nerd. It’s fun to be able to challenge people’s stereotypes and challenge their ideals of what it all means. It can be difficult too.

Do you find yourself missing the character of Chuck since the show’s conclusion?

Um, I miss our cast and I miss our crew. I was so much playing a lot of myself in Chuck so I feel like I’m still playing Chuck every day in a lot of ways [Laughs]. So I don’t miss it as much I guess, but I do miss the family that we have and creating television together, that was really excellent. I hope that I can get to doing like a Chuck movie a year. I think that would be a lot of fun.

What was it like working with geek icon guest stars such as Linda Hamilton, Scott Bakula, Mark Hamill and Christopher Lloyd on Chuck? Did you get star-struck often on the set?

Oh man [Laughs]. It was awesome. Every single one of them was excellent, they were really sweet people, very talented people and very iconic. It’s very cool to say that Scott Bakula is my dad or Linda Hamilton is my mum. Or even Timothy Dalton was just so incredible to work with, he was such a great villain and a great actor and I learned a lot from him. I learned from all of them, really. When you have seasoned, veteran actors like that who have already done this and been in this world, there’s a lot to glean from them so I was really blessed to be able to work alongside all of them.

Tell our readers about how Nerd HQ and the Nerd Machine came to be.

I had been coming to Comic-Con for a while, doing Chuck panels at the convention centre and we would have a great time, but there were always a few things about my experience while I was here that I felt “if I did my own thing one day, how would I do it differently?” One of those things was dance parties, there were never really any dance parties so I wanted to do that for sure [Laughs]. I guess it even started before that because I was looking around and to me it seemed that there was no one unifying brand for nerd culture, in the same way that athletes have Nike or Adidas or Reebok, you can go and get shirts and shorts and hoodies and all that stuff. There are a lot of little one-off apparel things if you’re a Doctor Who fan or an Avengers fan but there was never one brand that all people who congregated in a place like this could wear and say “regardless of whatever your niche or your fandom is, we’re all in this together.” So I wanted to create that lifestyle brand for nerd culture and that’s how The Nerd Machine came about.

And then, when I was figuring out how we activate that brand, how we get people to know it, how we succeed as a business, merchandise, all that stuff, it seemed to be that the best place to activate the brand would be at San Diego during Comic-Con, it’s Nerd Mecca. Then I started applying all the things that I thought “what can we give to fans and what can we give to celebrities that will be really special?” And hopefully by giving that to them, we’ll build brand awareness and we’ll build brand loyalty. People will look at us and say “I like what you do as a company, I like your spirit, your passion, I like your product and you’re not forcing anyone to buy it, it’s totally up to them.” That’s why we make the event for free: the parties are free, the gaming is free, the tech is free, the only thing you really have to pay for are the celebrity interactions, the Conversations for a Cause or the Smiles for Smiles photo booth. I didn’t want to make money off of that, I just wanted to bring people together and make it about a bigger thing than all of us, which is the non-profit world, particularly Operation Smile, which I am an ambassador for.

Personally, what are some of the most memorable moments during the Conversations for a Cause panels? Tom Hiddleston doing an impression of a Velociraptor ranks pretty high up there for me; missed opportunity that he wasn’t cast in Jurassic World.

[Laughs] Absolutely! God, so many. Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan all just breaking out into Bohemian Rhapsody was incredible, Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman just busting into Richard Madden’s panel a couple of years ago in 2013, Joss Whedon Skyping into his panel actually because he had injured himself in London and we had him on a giant screen and he was puppeteering all of his former employees on the stage! There are so many moments because it’s all unscripted, nobody knows what’s going to happen, you don’t know the audience is going to ask and you don’t know what the panelist is going to answer with. A lot of magic comes from that. Nathan Fillion just doing impromptu auctions with a bag of s**t, it’s those things. The mystery panel every year, we don’t know who’s going to be on until the last second and then it’s “I hope everybody likes them, here we go!” It’s just those magical moments that are organic, they’re completely off the cuff, you don’t know what’s going to happen and when they happen, it’s so much fun.

Do you think it’s difficult to preserve that sense of spontaneity given how crazy everything is and given that the schedules are tight?

Um, no, because…the questions and answers are always going to spontaneous so you’ll always have that, and because we allow our panelists to do or say whatever they want, they’ll often surprise their audiences with a surprise guest that we might not even know about sometimes, we just say “sure, do it!” And sometimes, you never know, because schedules are so tight, you think you might not be able to get a panelist and then all of a sudden they go “hey, it worked out,” and that’s very spontaneous. So much of the Smiles for Smiles is spontaneous, you never know what’s going to happen on the dance floor, it’s all those things, it’s fun.

What do you think of the notion that San Diego Comic-Con has become too commercialised and harder to get enjoyment out of in recent years?

Well, I don’t think that’s fair to San Diego Comic-Con. I say that because we’ve sat down with those guys and it’s a very, very difficult thing to create this, it’s a behemoth. In a lot of ways, they just responded to the desires of the people. The people want bigger and bigger stars and more of them every year, it’s a supply and demand world and they’re trying to do what they can over there and we’re trying to do what we can over here. It’s like apples and oranges sometimes, it’s a pretty massive undertaking for us but we’re still a very small company and we want it to be small, we never wanted to compete, we wanted to be a complement to what they’re doing over there. I think Comic-Con has smartly just kind of gone with the flow of how pop culture and nerd culture are very much intertwined now. Whereas before, you might have a few people who were very into Avengers comic books, now there’s Avengers movies, so you have a lot of people who want those panels. How do you do that, how do you that while pleasing everyone? You’re not going to be able to.

In order to pay for it all, you need the corporate side – we have a corporate side of things, I hope that nobody thinks we’re a sell-out because we’ve got AMD or Sony PlayStation 4 or IGN…you need corporate help in order to make these things a reality so I don’ think it’s fair to say that San Diego Comic-Con has sold out in any way. I think that they’re doing the best they can to facilitate the desires of everyone and unfortunately, we know this very well, you’re not going to be able to make everyone happy. We hope that people take a second to step back and say “well, what am I really upset about? Am I upset that I couldn’t get into the panel or am I upset that they have lost touch with who we are?” Look, what they do over there has provided the landscape for us and so many other pop-ups to exist, so we’re grateful for it.

What is it like being a part the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how awesome a compliment is it that you’re playing a character called “The Dashing”?

[Laughs] Well, it’s a dream come true, I’m a big Marvel fan. Playing Fandral the Dashing is awesome, I love that I got to be blonde, I love that I got to speak in a British accent…

You got to swash and buckle?

I got to swash and buckle, he’s very Errol Flynn, and that’s just fun, it’s just fun! Being an actor, this world of Hollywood is all just playing dress-up and make-believe anyway, so to do that in a really big and splashy way, it’s nothing but awesome.

Is there anything you can tell us about Thor: Ragnarok without getting into trouble with Kevin Feige?

The truth is, I don’t know anything. I even talked to Chris Yost, who’s writing it with Craig Kyle, they both worked on the last Thor, they’re hard at work. There’s a lot of things that are under wraps but I know that they’re going to shoot next year because they already have the release date for 2017, November 2017, so here’s hoping that I get a call in the next four months saying “pack your bags, because wherever we’re shooting, you’re invited.” And I certainly hope that Fandral and Volstagg, the Warriors Three and Lady Sif and Hogun have a little bit more to do. Tadanobu [Asano], Ray [Stevenson] and Jaimie [Alexander], it was just a really fun experience and I’d like to do more, I want to do more.

What was it like working with the other actors who make up the Warriors Three and Lady Sif seeing as you were replacing a different actor from the first Thor film?

Yeah, it was very strange because they had all built relationships and friendships on the first film but it was also a really crazy story because I was originally cast as Fandral and I couldn’t do it because of Chuck and then Josh [Dallas] ended up doing it and he couldn’t do it [the sequel] because of Once Upon a Time, so it was this very strange changing of the guard but Josh was very cool about it, the cast embraced me with open arms and we had a blast!

Heroes was kind of ahead of the superhero TV show curve when it came out. What can we look forward to in Heroes Reborn and what is the nature of its connection to the original show?

Hopefully what people are going to find in Heroes Reborn is a really cool new set of characters and new storylines but that’s very tied to the original show in tone, feel. Jack Coleman is obviously back as HRG and he’s the glue that holds the old series and the new [together]. There are also some great cameos from Masi Oka, from Greg Grunberg, Jimmy Jean-Louis and a lot of references back to…and also Sendhil [Ramamurthy], Sendhil’s back as well. There’s a lot of nods to the original series, specifically what happened at the end of the original series so I think that what’s nice is that if you’ve never watched Heroes before, you can jump into it, but if you’ve watched Heroes before, you’ve also got some of those cool Easter Eggs from the original series.

Would you say you’re an athletic person and what has it been like learning stunt choreography for projects like Chuck, Thor and Heroes Reborn?

I think I’m a pretty athletic person but I think I’m not nearly as athletic as other people, but I love that stuff. Fight choreography is almost like dance choreography because you’re almost dancing with whoever you’re fighting with. They’re gonna throw this punch, you’re gonna block it, it’s really this interesting kind of fight dance. Especially when you get to use weapons, swords and guns, things like that, I mean I love it, I love it. It’s the kind of stuff that you only get to do…it’s the only job in the world where you get to do the things that nobody else gets to do other than the real people. The only people that get to go on spy missions are real spies and the actors that play spies. The only people that get to have swordfights are real people…I mean, not that there’s a lot of people having swordfights anymore, but people who actually did that stuff and actors who are now portraying it. So, it’s a really fun job to be an actor and get to do those things because you wouldn’t normally get to do those things in everyday life.

There is a swordfight club, but the first rule of swordfight club is you do not talk about swordfight club.

You do not talk about swordfight club, yeah [Laughs].

Providing the voice for an animated Disney hero was a long-time dream come true for you with Tangled. Were you caught up in Frozen fever and what did you think of Flynn and Rapunzel’s cameo in Frozen, during Elsa’s coronation?

I saw Frozen and I was so happy for them, for Disney for making such a giant success in that, I thought it was really fun seeing Flynn and Rapunzel make that little cameo. I didn’t see it [at first] while watching the movie, I wasn’t even thinking to look, it was online that people were like “check this out!” and I went “oh, that’s fun, that’s fun!” Yeah, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad and Idina Menzel, I know them all, they’re all lovely and talented people. I was just happy for them and the success of that and now they’re making a sequel which is awesome and there’s going to be a Tangled animated series, which is awesome, and Mandy and I are both back for that. It really was a dream come true. Like singing at the Oscars, I was like “what is happening?” It was so weird, so surreal.

Do you enjoy singing and pursuing the musical side of your career?

Oh yeah, I love singing man. I’ve sung since I was a little kid, it brings me a lot of joy and happiness. I’d like to incorporate it more in my career in the future. It’s always a matter of finding that right project, whatever fits correctly.

What was it like debuting on Broadway in First Dates the Musical?

It was amazing, it was amazing. I started my acting life doing nothing but theatre and it’s a great training ground, it’s a great place to find and refine your craft. Television and film are amazing also but they’re very different animals, you’re fulfilled in different ways and I was longing to get back to stage and do it live. No safety net, you can’t cut, you can’t try again. And to sing as well, to have a connection with an audience, it’s very symbiotic: they feed you energy, you feed them energy, they feed you energy, it’s very cyclical, very symbiotic. The theatre we did First Dates at sat about a thousand people and on a packed night, making a thousand people laugh or cheer, it’s the greatest joy in the world, nothing beats it.

What was it like being in Tomb Raider as a DLC playable character, and are you looking forward to the sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider?

Yeah, definitely. I’m a big fan of the Tomb Raider series and to be able to do that lead-up docu-series for it was really cool. I already knew a lot about how games come together but I learned even more doing that. And that they gave me that as kind of a fun gift to me, a DLC playable character with my “Nerd” shirt on, talk about being immortalized in fun ways, that’s a fun way to be immortalized for sure.

Superman Lives, Superman Dies, Superman Lives Again - The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? Jon Schnepp and Holly Payne interview

As published in Issue #67 of F*** Magazine

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SUPERMAN LIVES, SUPERMAN DIES, SUPERMAN LIVES AGAIN

F*** speaks to the filmmakers behind The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, the documentary that lifts the veil on the bizarre Superman movie that almost was. 

By Jedd Jong [San Diego Exclusive]

The DC cinematic universe is now taking shape, having been established with 2013’s Man of Steel. This will be followed up with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad in 2016, with an upcoming full slate set to include movie outings for characters such as the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg as well.

Somewhere in time and space, there is an alternate universe where the landscape of DC movies and indeed superhero movies in general would have been vastly different. Superman Lives, a Superman movie which would have been directed by Tim Burton and which would have starred – wait for it – Nicolas Cage in the title role, was set for a 1998 opening and just barely missed coming to fruition.

For years, the extent of most fans’ knowledge of this intriguing project was the anecdotes related by writer and raconteur Kevin Smith, who was hired to pen the first draft of the screenplay. He would recount how infamously eccentric producer Jon Peters laid down certain specific stipulations, including that Superman not actually fly, not wear the iconic red and blue outfit with the cape and that he had to battle a giant spider in the third act.

F*** sat down with director Jon Schnepp and producer Holly Payne in San Diego during Comic-Con, where the team were promoting their documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? The partially crowd-funded documentary peels back the layers and deciphers the fascinating enigma of this lost Superman movie, including not only interviews with Burton, Smith, Peters, and other writers and producers, but stylised, animated re-creations of scenes that would have been in the film. The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? also contains unearthed concept art and rare footage of Cage’s costume tests. Schnepp and Payne reveal what the process of piecing together this lost cinematic history was like, reflecting on just how Superman Lives fell apart and the bizarre, wondrous Superman movie that could have been.

If you could narrow it down to one thing about Superman Lives that was so fascinating it made you decide to make this documentary, what would it be?

Jon Schnepp: For myself, it was the artwork, there’s a few things, but for me, it was a different take on the characterization of Superman and the artwork that I saw looked so different from anything else that I’d seen cinematically or on television or from the Superman mythos, the mythology of the comic book character, that really interested me, especially knowing that it was Tim Burton’s take on Superman.

Holly Payne: For me, it would be both the artwork and the casting. I would have love to have seen Nicolas Cage as Superman…I can’t pick one! Christopher Walken as Brainiac would’ve been amazing, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, which we ended up seeing in Superman Returns, but which I would probably prefer to see him in Superman Lives.

Were you able to find out who, other than Nicolas Cage, was considered to play Superman?

Holly: Yes. There was a list from Peters Entertainment, some of the names were Skeet Ulrich, Matthew McConaughey…help me out here…oh gosh, all of these 90s actors, some of them you can’t even remember who they are now, they’ve kind of fallen off the face of the planet…

Jon: Cage was always at the very top of the list.

Was there an interview subject in the film you initially thought you wouldn’t be able to secure and were pleasantly surprised when he or she agreed to appear in the film?

Jon: Most definitely, and that is Jon Peters. We were working on the documentary for over two years at that point. Everyone we had talked to didn’t have the greatest things to say about Jon Peters, I myself had developed a slightly negative thing like “I don’t know if I want him to be in the film…”

Holly: I forced him to do it.

Jon: Holly persisted in me staying at trying to find a connection, someone who knew how to talk to Jon Peters. Eventually I found a connection through his lawyer, his attorney. I just cold-called his attorney and told him who I was and what I was trying to do, he responded greatly, had him laughing in about 10-15 minutes, he felt at ease, talked to Jon Peters. Originally, Jon said no. A week later, he said yes. A week after that, we went and interviewed him, and it was fantastic.

Holly: It was a really fun time.

Jon: Great interviews, he’s a great person, really fun to talk to and he shed a lot of light, not only on all the opinions about himself and his take on things, but just on producing in general.

What was it like getting Tim Burton to open up, because he’s been cagey about this project and it’s hurt him quite a bit?

Holly: We caught him at a good time. Basically, we flew out to London not knowing whether or not we were going to get an interview. We flew out to meet Tim Burton. The pre-interview was about 10 minutes long and then he agreed to do it because he liked our vibe and we’re all artists, so we got along. Honestly, I think that if we had even come to him [just] two years prior, I don’t think he would have said yes. I think that enough time had passed that that wound had healed just enough for us to explore it with him. Even in the film he says “is there any cyanide I can take, why am I still talking about this?” but he had a great sense of humour about it and I think it was cathartic for him too, ultimately.

Dan Gilroy spoke out against comic book films at the Independent Spirit Awards. Do you think the experience working on Superman Lives had something to do with his attitude towards comic book movies?

Jon: No, not at all. You know, Dan Gilroy is just talking as an independent filmmaker and a lot of independent filmmakers feel the squeeze and it’s not about superhero films, to point the finger at superhero films, it’s about blockbuster filmmaking in general. The studio system and the need to be able to spend over $100 million in promotion, globally…cinema is different than it was in 1996 which is way different that it was in 1985 which is different than what it was in ’75. The idea of what independent film is, is someone spending a hundred grand, making a film, putting it on YouTube, that’s an independent movie. Anything else is not an independent movie. The idea or the words “independent film” just don’t exist anymore. There is no “independent film”.

Was there something you learned about the film that was so bizarre you didn’t believe it at first?

Holly: Yeah, the first thing that I would say was looking at the casting list, seeing the possible casting choices before Tim Burton even came on. One of the names on the list for Brainiac was Howard Stern. My jaw dropped on the floor. Then again, Private Parts came out around the same time so he was a real hot ticket at that time.

He was being looked at for Scarecrow in the fifth Batman film…

Holly: That’s right, you are absolutely right, you know your s***. [Laughs]

Jon: His name was on every list. After Private Parts came out, he was the hot guy. Sure, he’s an incredible funny guy, but right then his star was popping. For myself, finding out that Christopher Walken was going to play Brainiac blew my skull off. I was like “what?! That’s amazing!” And it really made me so much more want to see the combination of “Luthoriac” or “Lexiac”, whatever it was going to be, it was going to be Christopher Walken as Brainiac, Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, and then [their] heads combined arguing about stuff. That’s classic and I wish that would’ve happened.

Holly: If I ever run into either one of them, I gotta ask them that question.

What do you think the current landscape of comic book movies would be like had Superman Lives been made?

Jon: The Superman Lives movie, my personal feeling about it, is that it would’ve been a big hit. I think it would have changed the perception not only of Nicolas Cage whom everybody was boo-hooing about, it would have been the same thing as Michael Keaton as Batman, it would have changed the perception of Superman, it would have been a light-hearted cosmic fairytale, it would have had humour but it would also have had that Burton touch to it. It would have been like that Mars Attacks! movie that has that flavour to it. I think it would have spawned several sequels, it would have made a Justice League movie that much more possible, I think Michael Keaton would have eventually returned as Batman, we would have had a Batman/Superman crossover, maybe with World’s Finest happening in 2002. I think the landscape that we live in, if we peek into the alternate dimension where Superman Lives was made, it’s a whole other dimension of superhero movies.

Holly: A parallel universe

.

A Bizarro World, if you will.

Jon: Yeah, for sure.

Do you think the performance of Batman and Robin had anything to do with what happened to Superman Lives?

Jon: Most definitely it did. Even though he had nothing to do with Batman and Robin, he was linked as a producer. So even though he did nothing on the film, his named was linked…

Holly: Smeared.

Jon: Smeared, basically, by that film. It was like association destruction.

Holly: Collateral damage.

Jon: They were already worried about Nicolas Cage, they were already worried about “is Tim Burton’s take on Superman going to be too dark,” “here’s this movie that crapped out that lost all this money” and not only is it a box office bomb, it’s a critical bomb and every fan who saw it hated it. It’s different though, for people who grew up watching it, who saw it when they were 3 on TV, some people have a soft spot for it – “I like the colours!” Yeah, I get it, garbage looks cool when you’re a child.

What were the major differences in the drafts of the screenplays that existed?

Jon: The biggest difference was the tone. Kevin Smith’s two different drafts had a little more of a comical tone and definitely a more nuanced knowledge of the characters of the comic book series. He was able to put a lot of cameos in there, he was able to squeeze to squeeze in a lot of references that true comic book fans would have appreciated…

The geek cred.

Jon: The geek cred was all over Kevin Smith, both of his drafts, the story stayed the same. When Wesley Strick came on, he’s admitted he’s not a comic book fan, he hasn’t read comics, he’s not into it, and that shows in his draft, it’s a lot more tongue-in-cheek, the jokes are a lot cornier. The most different of all the drafts was Wesley’s. He didn’t have a lot of time to work on the script as well, I think he worked on it with Tim for about four or five months before he was taken off and they replaced him with Dan Gilroy. Dan Gilroy came in with a little more of a focus on Clark Kent and focusing on like the whole idea of Superman being an alien also transfers over to Clark Kent. He’s also an alien, he’s also a guy hiding the fact that he’s an alien. Superman’s hiding the fact that he’s Clark Kent. Clark Kent’s hiding the fact that he’s an alien.

Masks behind masks.

Jon: Yeah, multiple masks, that is something Tim Burton is great at exploring, with Edward Scissorhands, with Batman, all of his characters in all of his films, the façade is there, and that is something Nicolas Cage wanted to bring to the character as well, his portrayal of Clark Kent and his abilities. How weird would it be to have these powers and hear a comedy club comedian like a mile away, laughing at a joke while you’re talking to someone else? Just those kinds of things, being a comic book fan, is something that Nicolas Cage brought to the character, he was able to add these nuances while they were developing the character.

Some of the footage that we got, being a fly on the wall, of Tim and Nic doing the costume tests, their talking about their interpretation: what does the cape mean? What does the costume mean? Clark Kent, how are we going to portray this character, what are we going to bring to it? When you see this, you hear where they’re coming from, from footage from 1997-98, it’s very inspiring to see what they would have done.

Any time there’s an adaptation, particularly a film adaptation of a comic book, there’s always the war of “iconic imagery vs. original thought” and that war seems to have been raging very fiercely in Superman Lives.

Jon: Yeah, I like that war because to me, all movies are “Elseworlds” of comic books. Every movie or TV show is not the comic. Guess what? You’ve got the comic. That’s all you really need. To validate a movie as being like the comic, I don’t need anyone to validate a comic book to me at all. I don’t care if the movie was terrible, I have the original comic. If the original comic was great, that’s all that matters. The movie is a different take, you don’t just pull the storyboards and then make a movie, it’s a completely different beast entirely. Television, spread out over time, is a soap opera. A movie is act 1, act 2, act 3, it’s a finite thing. That’s why you have superhero characters’ and their villains’ origins tied in, because it makes it a lot simpler and cleaner to be able to tell that story within a 90 minute context. So for myself, it doesn’t matter that the X-Men didn’t wear yellow outfits, it doesn’t matter that Wolverine didn’t have the bright colours, it’s like a different take on the perspective of the material and that’s what all these movies and TV shows bring us as comic book fans, people who love the superhero films and the genre who don’t read the comics will never get that take.

Finally, we’ve seen Lex Luthor on screen many times, Zod onscreen a couple of times and Superman Lives would have had Luthor but would also have had Brainiac. So, is there a Superman villain we haven’t seen before in a Superman movie that you’d like to see?

Jon: Definitely not Mr. Mxyzptlk.

Holly: I was going to say Mr. Mxyzptlk!

Jon: I always hear people say that and I’m like, “that’s boring”. Number one, he’s too powerful, he’s from a different dimension, and you’ve got to trick him into saying his name backwards, how lame is that? I would go with Metallo. He’s a fun character. I would throw in the Parasite, I would chuck him in. They’ve played out the Kryptonian Phantom Zone characters quite a bit so I don’t really need to see them return. Bizarro would be a lot of fun. But once you bring in Bizarro, that brings in that bizarre comic [element], like “I live on the square planet!” “Me am Bizarro” I don’t know about that, so I would take Bizarro back.

Holly: For me, I would go with Mr. Mxyzptlk, I have to go against Jon. Maybe just as an ancillary villain, not like the main villain.

To give it a trippiness.

Holly: Exactly! Exactly.

Jon: If they could do Mr. Mxyzptlk the way Alan Moore did Mr. Myxyzptlk in The Last Superman Story Ever Told, where he was like literally a freakish demon from another dimension, twisted, then that’s the way to play it.

The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? Is available for purchase exclusively at www.tdoslwh.com. 

Fantastic Four

For F*** Magazine

FANTASTIC FOUR

Director : Josh Trank
Cast : Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Tim Blake Nelson, Reg E. Cathey
Genre : Comics/Action/Adventure
Run Time : 100 mins
Opens : 6 August 2015
Rating : PG (Some Violence)

Change is coming, whether we like it or not, with Marvel’s original superhero team getting a do-over in this reboot. Reed Richards (Teller) is a brilliant young misfit who has spent most of his life tinkering away on a teleportation device. Nobody really gets him, except for his best friend Ben Grimm (Bell). Dr. Franklin Storm (Cathey) sees the potential in Reed and awards him a scholarship to the Baxter Institute. There, he gets to work alongside Dr. Storm’s daughter Sue (Mara) and disgruntled genius Victor Von Doom (Kebbell) on a scaled-up version of his experiment. Dr. Storm enlists his hot-headed son Johnny (Jordan) to help out. Together, they crack the code to inter-dimensional travel. A journey to the alternate dimension, code-named “Planet Zero”, alters their physical forms in unfathomable ways. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben must learn to use their newfound abilities for good and defend the earth from Victor, who has become the monstrous villain Doom.

The first two theatrically-released Fantastic Four movies are generally regarded as goofy, disposable fluff - silly and cringe-worthy but not outright disasters. Therefore, it makes sense that director Josh Trank of Chronicle fame wanted to steer the Fantastic Four in a more credible direction. Here’s the thing: the Fantastic Four are inherently goofy – and that’s fine! They’re a dysfunctional sitcom family with superpowers and it’s right there in the title - “fantastic”. This take seems to want to be as mundane as possible. We’ve arrived at a point where comic book movies no longer need to be embarrassed of their roots, and films of this subgenre have achieved considerable success by embracing the source material and being smart with how they go about adapting the comics. Fantastic Four tries to reject the silliness but becomes all the sillier in spite of this. This is not an uneventful film, but it feels like one. It lacks the crucial element of escapism and entertainment a movie of this kind needs, the buzz-words of “serious” and “grounded” be damned.

What is even more frustrating is that the film does not fall flat on its face in abject failure. There are aspects that work and that are intriguing. The screenplay by Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Trank is formulaic, but attempts to give its titular characters a fair bit of character development and have them become more than cartoon characters. Unfortunately, all the exposition makes this seem tedious rather than credible. Also, the visuals are extremely underwhelming. Following the logic that the team’s outfits are “containment suits” rather than superhero costumes, they look very dull. Reed’s suit is supposed to have a homemade feel to it, but that doesn’t make the slinkies on his arms and legs any less ridiculous. Planet Zero feels like a walk-through attraction at a theme park rather than an immersive, treacherous landscape. The Thing doesn’t wear pants. We’ve all heard the jokes, but it does seem like it would’ve been really easy for Trank to avoid the ridicule aimed at this aspect by just giving him pants. Dr. Doom probably suffers the most, looking like he's covered in glowing gangrene and sporting a comically oversized hood. Many people have left the theatre after a superhero film thinking it would be really cool to own a collectible figure or statue of the characters as they appear in that film. It’s safe to say pretty much nobody will leave Fantastic Four thinking that.

One of the biggest aspects of this reboot that fans seized on was the cast. Nobody really resembled their comic book counterparts and on the whole, everyone just looked too young. To this reviewer’s surprise, the cast wasn’t too much of an issue. As an origin tale, perhaps it doesn’t hurt that they’re all a little younger. It may be a serious take on the whole, but there are still nice moments of levity when the team members are together. Miles Teller’s Reed is appropriately awkward and nerdy, just like Reed is in the comics. Kate Mara makes for a far more credible scientist than Jessica Alba did. The change of Johnny Storm’s ethnicity really wasn’t much of a sticking point for this reviewer, beyond feeling like an alteration merely for the sake of political correctness. Michael B. Jordan’s Johnny is impulsive and showy, but not to an annoying extent.

The casting that really doesn’t work is Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm. We can’t wrap our heads around how anyone looked at Billy Elliot/Tintin and said “there’s our resident big guy”. Apparently, he was cast because he’s the physical opposite of The Thing, which is kind of missing the point of the character, but that’s not Bell’s fault. Reg E. Cathey, a younger and more affordable Morgan Freeman, is a competent Obi-Wan-style mentor figure. Toby Kebbell’s Victor Von Doom barely makes an impact, which is a shame considering how compelling a villain he was as Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Marvel Studios has been churning out superhero blockbusters that have generally been well-received by both fans and critics and have managed to be upbeat on the whole while still packing in sufficient emotion and some depth. Fox wants to hang on to the film rights for the Fantastic Four – that’s the primary purpose this film was made and nobody is going to be fooled into thinking otherwise. We all know it – the property would be handled better at Marvel/Disney. It’s been said before but it bears repeating: The Incredibles is likely the best Fantastic Four movie we’re ever going to get. To go a little more recent, Big Hero 6 did the “science-loving pals become a superhero team” thing with more panache as well. This version is not terribly made, it has its moments and the cast does have pleasant chemistry with one another, but it’s still very much a disappointment.

Summary: This take on the Fantastic Four wants desperately to be regarded seriously, and for the most part, fails. That should’ve been a four-gone conclusion.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Mr. Holmes

For F*** Magazine

MR. HOLMES

Director : Bill Condon
Cast : Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Patrick Kennedy, Milo Parker
Genre : Drama/Mystery
Run Time : 104 mins
Opens : 6 August 2015
Rating : PG

Sherlock Holmes – he’s the greatest detective who ever detected, the greatest sleuth who ever sleuthed and the greatest crime-solver who ever, uh, solved crimes. In this film, we find Sherlock (McKellen) in his twilight years. It is 1947 and a 93-year-old Sherlock has long since retired from detective work, living in a remote farmhouse in Sussex with housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Linney) and her young son Roger (Parker). Holmes has taken up beekeeping, harvesting royal jelly in the hopes of improving his failing memory. He makes a trip to Hiroshima, meeting up with plant enthusiast Matsuda Umezaki (Sanada) in search of the fabled prickly ash, which Sherlock hopes will prove more effective in staving off senility than the royal jelly. In the meantime, he revisits his final case, the case that brought about his self-exile, a case involving the mysterious married woman with a peculiar obsession (Monahan).

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the “most portrayed movie character”. The iconic detective has been played by over 70 actors in more than 200 films and to call Sir Ian McKellen a worthy addition to that pantheon would be an understatement. The character has been through myriad interpretations in his nearly 130 years of existence and Mr. Holmes can stand alongside the recent contemporary re-imaginings of the character, each take bringing something different to the table. This film is based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of Mind, adapted by screenwriter and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Modern audiences have grown enamoured with the BBC series featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s mercurial, misanthropic Sherlock paired with Martin Freeman’s harried everyman Dr. Watson. Here, we find that Sherlock and Watson’s partnership has dissolved and that Watson has been writing fictionalised accounts of Sherlock’s cases. This is Sherlock at a point of his life that we don’t see too often, but he is by no means less interesting a character.

The film is slowly paced and while there is an element of mystery, it is intended that the audience be captured not by a whodunit but by the enigma of the title character himself. There is a sense of scope to the tale, which sees Sherlock visit a post-Second World War Japan. A moment in which he sees a woman scarred by radiation poisoning and stops in his tracks, shaken, is effectively haunting. A good deal of the film is spent on the bond the elderly Sherlock forms with the precocious Roger, played by Milo Parker, a child actor very much in the Thomas Brodie-Sangster mould. This relationship is given meaningful development rather than being superficially twee. The primary conflict arises from Mrs. Munro’s concern that her son is spending too much time with Sherlock and chasing intellectual pursuits when she means for him to live and work at an inn her sister runs. This feels believable and earned.

The film also takes a meta-fictional look at the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, with Sherlock directly addressing the depiction of him wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe, calling these mere embellishments of Watson’s illustrator. In an amusing scene, Sherlock goes to see a movie based on a book Watson has written about him – the actor playing Sherlock in this film-within-a-film is portrayed by Nicholas Rowe, who played Sherlock in 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. There is the sense that Sherlock himself is struggling to parse where the legends end and the real person begins. McKellen is able to bring out many colours in his portrayal of Sherlock, fleshing out the character rather than presenting a mere assemblage of tics. Because the use of his mind has been so important to him all his life, it is all the more heart-rending to see Sherlock come to grips with his waning faculties. 

Director Bill Condon paints a picture of Sherlock in which whatever cases the character is working on are secondary, with Sherlock Holmes, “the man beyond the myth” as the tagline puts it, at the fore. For those itching for a whodunit and who derive satisfaction at seeing the great detective unravel labyrinth mysteries, Mr. Holmes won’t quite do the trick. However, as a character study and commentary on the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, it is intimate, well-acted and emotional. 

Summary: Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that Mr. Holmes is a character piece rather than a thrilling mystery, it’s easy to embrace Ian McKellen’s stirring portrayal of the iconic detective. 

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars 


Jedd Jong