Alison Lohman as a haunted banker in Drag Me to Hell
A largely effective, enjoyably slimy neo-schlock picture from Sam Raimi, Drag Me to Hell takes root at dead center in the vast middle ground that stretches between the modi operandi of the two trilogies that have thus far defined him: the stateliness of Spider-Man and the kitsch-horror of Evil Dead here join forces, although it is the relative restraint of the former that supersedes the crazed, dime store ingenuity of the latter. This tipping of the scales will more than likely make the film more palatable for audiences accustomed to the banality of Spider-Man, but it keeps Drag Me to Hell from realizing the potential for inspired loopiness seemingly promised by both title and author.
Taking modest potshots at the U.S. Banking industry and zero-accountability corporate culture, the plot concerns the ambitious loan officer Christine Brown, played admirably by Alison Lohman, who, in an attempt at gaining favor with her callous supervisor, declines a loan to an aging gypsy woman, and is consequently visited by a vengeful, supernatural curse. While encouraged to identify with the plight of the young, essentially decent former-Midwesterner (Christine is carefully portrayed as a misguided pawn in the corporate hierarchy, sharply contrasted with an unscrupulous coworker) audiences are still treated to the perverse, timely thrill of seeing a banker thrown about her bourgie home by invisible demons or spraying a bloody nose all over her superiors. As Christine’s idyllic life in California begins to fray, she grows increasingly desperate, eventually consulting an astrologer and a medium, seen in prologue being defeated by the same spirits decades before, to cast the goblins out, presumably so she can get back to peddling bad loans and romancing an achingly vanilla blue-blood played by Justin Long.
Over its brisk 99 minutes, we are privy to countless leaking and spewing orifices, insect infestations and violent séances, as Ms. Lohman attempts to rid herself of the gypsy woman’s curse, and therein lay the film’s delights: this is jolly body horror, a happily juvenile (though certainly not stupid) approach to the twin anguishes of embodiment and corporate lending. Fittingly, the film is awash in mucus, blood and vomit (often exchanged between hosts), affirming its lineage of exploitation horror. It is disappointingly dissimilar from its forebears, on the other hand, in that its gags are crafted digitally in several key sequences, giving the bodily fluids (along with the other special effects) a digital sheen that removes any trace of menace from the splatter.
Raimi’s career has thus far been a wild-card, cementing for him an image as a more modest variation on Steven Soderbergh’s one-for-me/one-for-them trajectory: reeling between unassuming efforts such as A Simple Plan (1998) and The Gift (2000) to the epically expensive Spider-Man films (2002-07), his jovial wit behind the camera seems to have no permanent generic home base, which is frustrating for the taxonomically-inclined cinephile. Oddly, he has exhibited much more consistency (in terms of classification at least) in the fifty or so films he’s produced, most of which could easily be squared as horror pictures or (wonderfully) gaudy retellings of classical mythology (1). But whether it’s hacksaws or swords and sandals, Raimi’s trademark is a goofy, chortling sense of humor, unabashedly earnest in execution. The signature is sorely missed in his latest film; a lapse that will, with any luck, be remedied in future efforts.
Shockingly, given its pedigree, the film’s attempts at humor are lifeless and undeveloped, not so much funny as fleetingly amusing. It’s uncertain whether or not Raimi saw the high camp of Evil Dead as risky at this juncture in his career, or simply rushed the picture so he could move on to the next Spider-Man installment. The director does make tentative, if unsuccessful, stabs at the goony slapstick of Evil Dead (a key scene at the end involving a disturbed grave exhibits great potential but yields neither scare nor chuckle) but fails to inject the proper amount of lunacy in these sequences, each of which is far too tight, whereas the Dead films were airy and affable while still managing more than a few genuine scares. This film’s seriousness cannot jibe properly with its oddball wit, to the detriment of the overall result. The film could have worked better played either way – as overtly comedic horror tale or unsettling haunting picture – but Raimi finds himself unable to strike the proper balance in this context, a feat which once was his strength.
Ideally, this thing would hit susceptible audiences late at night on cable television, as it functions better as a pleasant surprise that exceeds mild expectation than it does as a mid-career effort by a Hollywood titan ostensibly at the height of both influence and craft. It has the labored charm of a late-blooming cult classic, and it’s not unlikely that it will be considered as such in the future. As of now, however, it clashes when placed alongside Raimi’s bona fide midnight romps, which still exert power enough to fill convention houses and midnight screenings to capacity. Though financially successful beyond expectation, there is little here to inspire fervent devotion among genre fanatics, and it’s possible that the box office tallies will work against the film as it’s scrutinized by future generations of splatter buffs – not to mention film critics.
Taking into account all of the moronic pictures utilizing 3-D technology that have paraded through theaters during the past few years, it’s a pity that Raimi opted out of employing the latest innovations in multidimensional cinema, as this film is one of the precious few that could conceivably be improved by 3-D: the leaky wounds, pus geysers and dislodged dentures would be the stuff of inspired, William Castle-esque schlock if sent hurtling toward audiences. Such a move could have redressed the effects of the aforementioned glossy carrion on display throughout the film, because, unfortunately, it remains the Achilles’ heel of digital effects that they’re inept at portraying the corporeal or simple detritus, instead casting physical monstrosity in texture-less polygons and thereby sapping them of the ability to frighten and unnerve, the coveted results easily achieved by the same practical effects (latex, pea soup and raw meat) used by exploitation mavens for more than half a century. Computers have been a serviceable facilitator of science fiction for nearly two decades at this point, and they are certainly the future of horror as well, but a premature embrace of the technology and its limited capacities threatens to neuter an old-fashioned, spooky picture like Drag Me to Hell until these practices are up to the task. Perhaps all this film needs is time enough for its unconvincing special effects to signify quaintness, thus endearing it all the more to the horror throng. This is unlikely given the bland characterizations and pulled punches endured throughout this conspicuously PG-13 outing, but the throng can dream… and wait.
Speaking of, Dead-ites and Raimi fanatics will no doubt anxiously await the finished product of Raimi’s forthcoming remake of the first Evil Dead film, but Drag Me to Hell is, unfortunately, a spotty, inauspicious warm-up, one that is hopefully not a harbinger of what’s to come.
Drag Me to Hell / USA / 2009 / Color / 99 min. / Directed by Sam Raimi / Written by Mr. Raimi and Ivan Raimi / Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao and David Paymer
NOTES:
1 – The former includes The Grudge (2004), The Boogeyman (2005) and 30 Days of Night (2007), while the latter is comprised mainly of syndicated television series such as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), Legend of the Seeker (2008-2009), Hercules: The Legendary Journey (1995-1999), and the forthcoming Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The third Evil Dead film, Army of Darkness (1992), which Raimi directed and co-write, combined elements of both genres quite successfully.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
DUDES GONE WILD
The Hangover, reviewed
Batchelor party becomes recon mission as three uber-dudes are forced to retrieve the groom-to-be from the clutches of Vegas after he disappears mid-debauchery in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover.
Justin Bartha plays the groom, excised from most of the running time, and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis play the three amigos scouring Vegas for their fallen comrade. Cooper is the straight man, the balance between Helms’ neurotic clicking and Galifianakis’ autistic jabbering, and the overall dynamic of the film suffers as only the latter two deliver any sort of juice. After a curiously and unironically morose title sequence (one wonders if we were meant to believe initially that a film advertised as the ultimate Vegas comedy would actually turn out to be an existential thriller by the Coens or John Dahl), The Hangover introduces its characters posthaste – each united by an expediently proffered need to escape their emasculated lives – and gets them to Vegas within fifteen minutes.
The nonentity played by Bradley Cooper is the ostensible star of the whole thing, and perhaps the most relatable to the target audience’s idealized self: good-looking, with a bit of money and taste for wine, women and song. He is the lovable, hunky scoundrel, full of common sense and sex appeal: the utterly straight man. Both the screenplay’s languid character beats and Cooper’s hollow performance erase the character from memory almost immediately, and his continued presence onscreen only perturbs when it could and should facilitate the story or underscore the insanity of his costars. One hopes, on the other hand, that Galifianakis and Helms form a lifetime cinematic bond and remain inseparable onscreen until they’re remaking Grumpy Old Men in forty years. Each playing a variation of an established persona – Helms’ high-strung, if naïve, drone on NBC’s The Office and Galifianakis’ absurdity-spouting standup creation – the two strike a hilariously off-kilter tone throughout as comic foils, reminiscent of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber, albeit on Ritalin and Ketamine, respectively. Their antics, particularly those involving Galifianakis and an infant, appear largely improvised, whereas all hilarity provided by the script feels labored and unconvincing by comparison. We can only hope that Helms and Galifianakis each find a better forum for their work in the future.
The rest of the film’s (presumably scripted) jollies involve a swishy Asian gangster, a bumbling drug dealer, a dimwitted hooker and two of Vegas’ finest on a taser bender. If it seems disingenuous merely listing the supporting players as the film’s roadside attractions, it is in keeping with the spirit of The Hangover, which ambles lazily from loony character to zany situation and back again without much in the way of transition or rhythm. Accordingly, trotting out Mike Tyson, as himself, mid-film, feels desperate, the same sort of pretzled irony that makes Chuck Norris jokes so tedious: Dude, it’s Mike Tyson... in the movie! Playing himself! That’s so random! There’s something very safe about this kind of rote transgression; ten years ago a Mike Tyson cameo could have been a ballsy move in a mainstream Hollywood comedy, but at this historical remove it’s about as benign as a guest appearance by Mr. T or MacGyver.
Unfortunately engineered to be exactly as daring as is permissible for a contemporary studio film and not a single degree more, Phillips’ proudest visual achievements are parodies of notable Vegas movies, though the referenced films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Casino, Rain Man) exhibited much greater insight concerning the pleasures and terrors of sin city. If the film had a more modest set of ambitions for itself, its failures could be forgivable, but the film is so loud and bombastic in its self-definition as a comedy of ultimate excess that it buckles under the strain of its own ambitions, which Galifianakis and Helms prove unable to support, though not for a lack of trying.
Even as the film fails to provide enough laughs across its running time, it is refreshing in its utter disdain for all manifestations of maturity, which gives it a defiant leg up on the recent spat of “bromance” comedies, making them appear duplicitous in contrast. In the past few years, Judd Apatow has reinvigorated the lovable loser to his greatest proportions in decades, having grown the archetype outward in both directions, simultaneously leaving it relentlessly crass and hopelessly (painfully) maudlin. In a sense, what Phillips does is much harder: he makes movies, often very funny movies, about privileged white males behaving like regressed, adolescent versions of their privileged white selves. Lovable losers they are not; rather, they are aggressive, hormonal and largely unsentimental frat types carefully driven down a peg or two for comic relief while still emerging as sympathetic heroes. This is not a feat worthy of canonization, and The Hangover’s homophobia and sexism should not go unnoticed, but one can’t help but admire a body of work that revels so thoroughly in its own stink, bereft of the sentimental concessions that mar far superior works. Phillips’ films have thus far lacked the saccharine anesthetic that dilutes the sting of Apatow’s work, making them a pleasant alternative to the chick-flicks in cargo shorts that have become so lucrative and ubiquitous in recent years. Somewhat ironically (at least at first glance), The Hangover has resonated with female audiences, perhaps as a result of this refusal to placate or condescend to them as a demographic ripe for conquest, the obnoxious, market-driven ploy that hampers the efforts of Phillips' contemporaries (1).
Despite the dramatic trappings that require him to punish all transgressions and reaffirm the family life as the ultimate aim for American males, it is to Phillips’ credit that he never truly betrays his instincts. He provides a hurried sense of domestic tranquility with a largely uninteresting denouement, but the associations he’s provided between betrothal and misery are not so easily ameliorated. Helms’ character drowns in the P.C. universe constructed for him by the emancipated, domineering and unfaithful (the portrait implies the conflation of all three traits without getting too specific) fiancée played by Rachel Harris, while Cooper describes his married life as utter hell at the slightest provocation. Galafianakis remains blissfully unaware of romantic entanglements, and indicates only the most rudimentary understanding of sexuality (his characters’ poor imitations of adult behavior at time recall a more subtle variation of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner.) It’s not insignificant that the only character content to exist within his long-term monogamous relationship disappears for all but ten minutes of the film’s running time.
The film could, perhaps, be read as a journey of domesticity reclaimed by its malcontents, but the actual search at the story’s core is merely pretext for three men behaving badly (or struggling to recall the previous evening’s bad behavior), as opposed to a semiotic field worth mining. Whereas most recent mainstream comedies (romantic and otherwise) seem to believe earnestly in the normalizing, stabilizing power of domestic partnership and true love, Phillips is far more at ease detailing the hideous side of interpersonal commitment and the consequent regression of grown men to the earlier, unbound stages of their development. This commitment to the noncommittal has its cringe-worthy excesses –Helms triumphantly jettisons his feminazi (the shrew whose freedom has been achieved at the expense of his own) at the film’s end to woo a hooker, overcoming his disgust at the latter’s low socioeconomic status, and thereby indulges the privileged white male’s most idiotic fantasy of social, sexual and economic transience – but it is mostly harmless. While there is much to be said for the place of stability and domesticity in the overall development of young men, The Hangover’s lack of pretension in this arena is refreshing. Here is a film that is unafraid of its desire for a purely homo-social civilization, and it is absolutely shameless in the most fantastic sense. Phillips understands that ruminations on the lure of family life are not quite the best proposition for screen comedy. His more talented peers would be well-advised to take note.
Despite a plot twist (leading up to Phillips’ most hilarious directorial flourish: a pitch-perfect Rain Man homage/parody) requiring big casino winnings, there’s nothing to convince the audience that the film couldn’t have happened anywhere. For all of its supposed (and heavily advertised) Vegas-ness, The Hangover is more or less After Hours in the desert: not a bad idea in and of itself, but the result feels like the film missed an opportunity to make an indelible Las Vegas comedy. It narrowly avoids coming across as merely a 80-proof episode of Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, which is about the extent of its achievements. Sadly, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trifles are far funnier, cleverer and more enjoyable than this would-be romp, which never fully exploits Vegas for all its worth. Vegas may be the ideal setting for rutting white guys, but these dudes fail to capitalize on its true possibilities.
The Hangover / USA / 2009 / Color / 100 min. / Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by John Lucas and Scott Moore / Starring: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Heather Graham / Warner Bros.
Notes:
1 – Though its presumptions are based solely on the grosses of the film’s opening weekend, the article located at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-bigpicture9-2009jun09,0,1401760.story cites the enthusiasm of female audiences (though somewhat anecdotally) as one reason for the film’s unexpected financial success.
Batchelor party becomes recon mission as three uber-dudes are forced to retrieve the groom-to-be from the clutches of Vegas after he disappears mid-debauchery in Todd Phillips’ The Hangover.
Justin Bartha plays the groom, excised from most of the running time, and Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis play the three amigos scouring Vegas for their fallen comrade. Cooper is the straight man, the balance between Helms’ neurotic clicking and Galifianakis’ autistic jabbering, and the overall dynamic of the film suffers as only the latter two deliver any sort of juice. After a curiously and unironically morose title sequence (one wonders if we were meant to believe initially that a film advertised as the ultimate Vegas comedy would actually turn out to be an existential thriller by the Coens or John Dahl), The Hangover introduces its characters posthaste – each united by an expediently proffered need to escape their emasculated lives – and gets them to Vegas within fifteen minutes.
The nonentity played by Bradley Cooper is the ostensible star of the whole thing, and perhaps the most relatable to the target audience’s idealized self: good-looking, with a bit of money and taste for wine, women and song. He is the lovable, hunky scoundrel, full of common sense and sex appeal: the utterly straight man. Both the screenplay’s languid character beats and Cooper’s hollow performance erase the character from memory almost immediately, and his continued presence onscreen only perturbs when it could and should facilitate the story or underscore the insanity of his costars. One hopes, on the other hand, that Galifianakis and Helms form a lifetime cinematic bond and remain inseparable onscreen until they’re remaking Grumpy Old Men in forty years. Each playing a variation of an established persona – Helms’ high-strung, if naïve, drone on NBC’s The Office and Galifianakis’ absurdity-spouting standup creation – the two strike a hilariously off-kilter tone throughout as comic foils, reminiscent of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber, albeit on Ritalin and Ketamine, respectively. Their antics, particularly those involving Galifianakis and an infant, appear largely improvised, whereas all hilarity provided by the script feels labored and unconvincing by comparison. We can only hope that Helms and Galifianakis each find a better forum for their work in the future.
The rest of the film’s (presumably scripted) jollies involve a swishy Asian gangster, a bumbling drug dealer, a dimwitted hooker and two of Vegas’ finest on a taser bender. If it seems disingenuous merely listing the supporting players as the film’s roadside attractions, it is in keeping with the spirit of The Hangover, which ambles lazily from loony character to zany situation and back again without much in the way of transition or rhythm. Accordingly, trotting out Mike Tyson, as himself, mid-film, feels desperate, the same sort of pretzled irony that makes Chuck Norris jokes so tedious: Dude, it’s Mike Tyson... in the movie! Playing himself! That’s so random! There’s something very safe about this kind of rote transgression; ten years ago a Mike Tyson cameo could have been a ballsy move in a mainstream Hollywood comedy, but at this historical remove it’s about as benign as a guest appearance by Mr. T or MacGyver.
Unfortunately engineered to be exactly as daring as is permissible for a contemporary studio film and not a single degree more, Phillips’ proudest visual achievements are parodies of notable Vegas movies, though the referenced films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Casino, Rain Man) exhibited much greater insight concerning the pleasures and terrors of sin city. If the film had a more modest set of ambitions for itself, its failures could be forgivable, but the film is so loud and bombastic in its self-definition as a comedy of ultimate excess that it buckles under the strain of its own ambitions, which Galifianakis and Helms prove unable to support, though not for a lack of trying.
Even as the film fails to provide enough laughs across its running time, it is refreshing in its utter disdain for all manifestations of maturity, which gives it a defiant leg up on the recent spat of “bromance” comedies, making them appear duplicitous in contrast. In the past few years, Judd Apatow has reinvigorated the lovable loser to his greatest proportions in decades, having grown the archetype outward in both directions, simultaneously leaving it relentlessly crass and hopelessly (painfully) maudlin. In a sense, what Phillips does is much harder: he makes movies, often very funny movies, about privileged white males behaving like regressed, adolescent versions of their privileged white selves. Lovable losers they are not; rather, they are aggressive, hormonal and largely unsentimental frat types carefully driven down a peg or two for comic relief while still emerging as sympathetic heroes. This is not a feat worthy of canonization, and The Hangover’s homophobia and sexism should not go unnoticed, but one can’t help but admire a body of work that revels so thoroughly in its own stink, bereft of the sentimental concessions that mar far superior works. Phillips’ films have thus far lacked the saccharine anesthetic that dilutes the sting of Apatow’s work, making them a pleasant alternative to the chick-flicks in cargo shorts that have become so lucrative and ubiquitous in recent years. Somewhat ironically (at least at first glance), The Hangover has resonated with female audiences, perhaps as a result of this refusal to placate or condescend to them as a demographic ripe for conquest, the obnoxious, market-driven ploy that hampers the efforts of Phillips' contemporaries (1).
Despite the dramatic trappings that require him to punish all transgressions and reaffirm the family life as the ultimate aim for American males, it is to Phillips’ credit that he never truly betrays his instincts. He provides a hurried sense of domestic tranquility with a largely uninteresting denouement, but the associations he’s provided between betrothal and misery are not so easily ameliorated. Helms’ character drowns in the P.C. universe constructed for him by the emancipated, domineering and unfaithful (the portrait implies the conflation of all three traits without getting too specific) fiancée played by Rachel Harris, while Cooper describes his married life as utter hell at the slightest provocation. Galafianakis remains blissfully unaware of romantic entanglements, and indicates only the most rudimentary understanding of sexuality (his characters’ poor imitations of adult behavior at time recall a more subtle variation of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner.) It’s not insignificant that the only character content to exist within his long-term monogamous relationship disappears for all but ten minutes of the film’s running time.
The film could, perhaps, be read as a journey of domesticity reclaimed by its malcontents, but the actual search at the story’s core is merely pretext for three men behaving badly (or struggling to recall the previous evening’s bad behavior), as opposed to a semiotic field worth mining. Whereas most recent mainstream comedies (romantic and otherwise) seem to believe earnestly in the normalizing, stabilizing power of domestic partnership and true love, Phillips is far more at ease detailing the hideous side of interpersonal commitment and the consequent regression of grown men to the earlier, unbound stages of their development. This commitment to the noncommittal has its cringe-worthy excesses –Helms triumphantly jettisons his feminazi (the shrew whose freedom has been achieved at the expense of his own) at the film’s end to woo a hooker, overcoming his disgust at the latter’s low socioeconomic status, and thereby indulges the privileged white male’s most idiotic fantasy of social, sexual and economic transience – but it is mostly harmless. While there is much to be said for the place of stability and domesticity in the overall development of young men, The Hangover’s lack of pretension in this arena is refreshing. Here is a film that is unafraid of its desire for a purely homo-social civilization, and it is absolutely shameless in the most fantastic sense. Phillips understands that ruminations on the lure of family life are not quite the best proposition for screen comedy. His more talented peers would be well-advised to take note.
Despite a plot twist (leading up to Phillips’ most hilarious directorial flourish: a pitch-perfect Rain Man homage/parody) requiring big casino winnings, there’s nothing to convince the audience that the film couldn’t have happened anywhere. For all of its supposed (and heavily advertised) Vegas-ness, The Hangover is more or less After Hours in the desert: not a bad idea in and of itself, but the result feels like the film missed an opportunity to make an indelible Las Vegas comedy. It narrowly avoids coming across as merely a 80-proof episode of Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, which is about the extent of its achievements. Sadly, Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trifles are far funnier, cleverer and more enjoyable than this would-be romp, which never fully exploits Vegas for all its worth. Vegas may be the ideal setting for rutting white guys, but these dudes fail to capitalize on its true possibilities.
The Hangover / USA / 2009 / Color / 100 min. / Directed by Todd Phillips / Written by John Lucas and Scott Moore / Starring: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Heather Graham / Warner Bros.
Notes:
1 – Though its presumptions are based solely on the grosses of the film’s opening weekend, the article located at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-bigpicture9-2009jun09,0,1401760.story cites the enthusiasm of female audiences (though somewhat anecdotally) as one reason for the film’s unexpected financial success.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
BACK FROM THE FUTURE
J. J. Abrams' Star Trek
How’s this for time travel: As it reboots itself for a 21st century crowd nursed on the hollow pandering of multiple Star Wars and Matrix films, the once forward-thinking Star Trek series has backtracked at warp-speed from a thoughtful, if idealized, utopian future to the mindless, specious present of the tent-pole summer release calendar. One would think that in the era of audacious hope Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a united humanity traversing the cosmos could once again prove a viable pop-culture vehicle, but in the hands of television wunderkind J. J. Abrams (Felicity, Lost), Star Trek has instead devolved into yet another juvenile and ultimately banal exercise in blowing shit up. Abrams and co. have retooled and reinvented the Enterprise and her crew, emerging with a souped-up muscle car zipping about the galaxy in search of cheap thrills and even cheaper platitudes.
George Lucas envisioned Star Wars as the quintessential panhuman cultural document filtered through a kinetic “pure cinema”; a semiotic code bereft of specificity, relying exclusively on speed and volume, epitomized in the only scrap of directorial guidance the visionary offered his performers: “Faster, with More Intensity!” We can now imagine Abrams echoing this command to his writers, editors and thespians. One winces to think that it may also be the rallying cry of today’s audiences. After famously mining Joseph Campbell’s pioneering work on centuries of human mythology, Lucas reconstructed a phantom past that was gleefully decentralized: his landscape was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, belonging to no one and everyone, as technologically advanced as it was morally simplistic. Unsurprisingly, this construct was adopted by the aimless post-boomer generation as its own center of cultural gravity. Gazing backward with a bushy-tailed sweetness and casting his net widely, Lucas sidestepped an engagement with his calamitous present while unveiling the future: the massive, meaningless film spectacle populated almost entirely by machines, with a plot cobbled from military tactics and good ole’ fashioned derring-do. Almost immediately, Star Wars became mile marker zero.
Ten years earlier, Star Trek had captured the collective imagination of a much smaller group of earnest science fiction obsessives during it’s abbreviated three year run in prime time. Riding the emotional high of the Apollo program, the series reveled in allegorical allusions to the social ills and moral quandaries of the Cold War era. With an array of alien life forms rendering human discrepancies meaningless (and the concomitant belief that the future would see a human nature expanded and evolved beyond petty grievances), the crew of the Enterprise set about on a series of ventures whose closest television equivalent may have been The Twilight Zone. Along with the six feature Trek films that followed in the wake of Star Wars, the original series was comprised, unabashedly, of Shakespeare- and Milton-quoting chamber dramas set in outer space.
Almost a half century and several worthy spinoffs later, the series has finally succumbed to those middling standards set forth in 1977 by Star Wars and happily maintained each subsequent year by new installments of James Bond, The Terminator and a slew of superhero comic book adaptations. Rather than plumb the depths of racial antagonism, political legitimacy and the moral boundaries of science, Abrams’ newfangled Trek is yet another mouth-breathing, juvenile fantasy awaiting a full line of increasingly bloated sequels and candy-colored merchandise.
To provide himself with enough wiggle room to reinvigorate the series, Abrams and his screenwriters Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman fashion a parallel universe storyline in which a Romulan ship (resembling a bunch of mechanical bananas) breeches an artificially created wormhole in order to travel back in time and destroy the federation-aligned planets one by one. The ship’s pilot, Nero (Eric Bana) is seeking revenge for the destruction of Romulus, which Starfleet (the peace-keeping arm of the United Federation of Planets) will fail to prevent 250 years in the future. Nero’s first target is the ship USS Kelvin, the command of which falls to a young George Kirk after his Captain is taken prisoner by the Romulans. Kirk the Elder subsequently sacrifices his life in order to ensure the safe evacuation of his crew, including his unborn son, James T. We then flash forward 12 years to the rambunctious, fatherless Kirk’s pre-adolescent escapades, before flashing forward again to his teenage years and his joining Starfleet, and flashing forward yet again to his third year in Starfleet, as he has matured to a meritorious, if no less unruly, student of intergalactic diplomacy. Devotees of Abrams’ Lost series should have no problem being constantly shot ahead in these narratively convenient chunks of time, but newcomers might feel as though trapped in a stuttering elevator. Eventually, Nero resurfaces through his wormhole to battle a second Kirk, and the film makes a beeline for it’s predictable outcome, scarcely worth spoiling. It will suffice to say that by the end we’ve all learned that revenge poisons the soul and a bit of unvarnished gumption gets the job done over rationality and compromise every time.
What’s interesting about the story’s trajectory is the translation of Kirk – the fulcrum of Roddenberry’s original universe and the standard by which all subsequent starship captains are judged – into the idiom of Star Wars: Shatner’s Kirk was red-blooded and cocksure, but also introspective and pensive, as apt at quoting classical literature as he was in a scuffle. This new Kirk (played by the relatively unknown Chris Pine) is an amalgamation of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, equal parts rapscallion and starry-eyed farm boy, prime for reckless adventure but simple at his core. Even as the United States elects its first avowedly intellectual president in decades, we still demand of our heroes a temperament closer to the recently departed George W. Bush, a pistol-packing, uncompromising anti-hero with complete disregard for both consensus and the law alike. Kirk is balanced by Zachary Quinto’s Spock (the third point of the triangle, Bones McCoy, is far less involved in this incarnation, and it doesn’t help that Karl Urban’s performance is an occasionally embarrassing imitation of DeForest Kelley) is a touch more Obama-like, but here rendered largely impotent with humility, shame and inadequacy, much as the political right wishes Obama would be. It is doubtful this portrait of our current political discourse is intentional, as the film was set in production before the current international climate solidified into this dynamic, yet even without intent it is nearly impossible to shake the parallels between this dynamic and the world that we’ve recently built for ourselves. It’s worth considering the implications of the disparity. As we experiment with a cool customer at our highest office, why is it that our most lucrative chunk of culture (already the highest grossing Trek of all time) during his first year in office showcases as its exemplar of heroic maleness a man remarkably similar to his loathed predecessor (let alone Kirk’s similarity to Obama’s foe in last year’s election)? Twenty years ago a Star Trek film may have questioned the viability of such a leader, but this film is far too busy looking for things to eviscerate.
Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has described our contemporary cinema as one of concentrated efficacy, and it is in this instance that this new Star Trek logs its most glaring acquiescence to Lucas’ hegemony. The perfunctory manner in which entire planets are destroyed, or evil is vanquished, or a young hotshot assumes command of a starship, removes all sources of tension, leaving the viewer (or at least those with any resistance left to the perennial blockbuster onslaught) feeling throttled rather than engrossed. This efficacy largely began in the 1970s with Star Wars and Jaws, and more thrills at ever-increasing rates have been offered up summer after summer on thousands of theaters simultaneously ever since. For the past quarter century, the Star Trek films also utilized bigger budgets and prime Cineplex release dates in the search of boffo box office, but The Series as a whole always felt out of step with the narrative trends of the day, admirably preserving its tendencies of earnest pontification. As Hollywood guns blazed, average shot lengths plummeted, and “Summer Movies” became a genre, the Stark Trek franchise stubbornly maintained a slow, inquisitive burn as it probed more than popped. At the center of these films were deep, timeless questions. Sadly, this new film has only answers in the form of payoffs to which the setups hardly have time to register. That’s progress for you.
Depending on whose account you trust, Gene Roddenberry either thought the idea of a Star Trek: The Young Years a worthy extension of his vision or a laughable indulgence. But even if we accept an attempt at an origins story (practically a compulsory move for any franchise these days) what has resulted is at odds with the tone that Roddenberry cemented firmly for his brainchild. One thing that Wars and Trek have always had in common was their existence as the work of a sole mastermind; Lucas and Roddenberry each maintained an equal mastery over their creations, employing talented, if pliable, stewards to tend their gardens. It’s clear that this Enterprise has room on the bridge for only one captain, so Abrams’ blockbuster ambitions (informed by his fervent adherence to the gospel of Lucas) have elbowed Roddenberry out of the chair. Abrams as an auteur is less the yeoman that Lucas found in Irvin Kirshner and Richard Marquand, so this Star Trek is his baby entirely. (2)
But is it necessary to discuss this film entirely within the context of another, altogether separate series? Has this become something of a false dichotomy? It’s now fair to conflate the destinies of Star Wars and Star Trek, as the latter has prostrated itself to the mandates of the former. Abrams has said in a recent interview that he has always preferred Lucas’ series, and sought to implement its lessons of aesthetic and narrative vigor in Roddenberry’s lumbering universe (3). However, if one evaluated each on its own terms as revenue-generating Hollywood product (the barometer most suited to the task, considering how thoroughly all ideological divergences have been purged) it could easily be said that Abrams’ film is vastly superior in both sentimental and aesthetic acumen. That Star Trek is so utterly superior to the past three Star Wars films is faint, if significant, praise. Abrams has a natural photographic eye whereas Lucas compositions have always been leaden, the most obvious evidence of which is the universal preference among fans for The Empire Strikes Back, which was not directed by General Lucas himself. The protégé also commands the ability to elicit identifiably human emotions from his actors, which his predecessor famously lacked. Abrams’ affinity for his human characters provides the film with a merciful absence of humanoid robots. Instead, Abrams has the decency to populate his films with biological creatures, and this touch of warmth keeps the film from feeling like an auto show or toy convention, giving it a leg up on most recent science fiction.
What’s most dispiriting about this film is that for a younger generation unfamiliar with the franchise’s venerable history, this new entry (and its future sequels) exists cozily alongside every bombastic franchise that soaks up summer dollars before returning to the trough at Christmastime with Unrated and Collector’s Edition DVDs. Rather than spark a renewed interest in the series’ previous installments and their progressive optimism, Star Trek is more likely to inspire anticipation for its own sequels – along with graphic novels and video games. Sequels which will continue to pay lip service to the window dressing of Star Trek lore while pulling further away from the original premise of Roddenberry's endeavor. Abrams’ film has eradicated, along with the hapless planet Vulcan, its own past, consequently destroying a better future. Through a wormhole, indeed.
Yet again, we’ve imagined a future nestled within an imaginary past. This film envisions a destiny rooted in the mythologies of violence and misanthropy that have plagued our popular culture for most of the postwar era. Roddenberry’s vision of a better way of conducting our affairs no longer has a place at the table (or, to be accurate, market). J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek has dreamed for us a colossally stupid and banal future, which should position it well within a culture hungry for squeeze and release arcs tucked within insipid master narratives. A pity the collective imagination has developed such a ravenous appetite accompanied by such a limited capacity.
Star Trek / USA / 2009 / Color / 127 min. / Directed by J.J. Abrams / Written by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry / Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Karl Urban, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana and John Cho / Presented by Paramount Pictures
NOTES:
2 - For a humorous and detailed account of Lucas’ obsession with brand maintenance, see “The Empire Wins,” collected in John Seabrook’s Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing – the Marketing of Culture.
3 - Paradoxically, Abrams expresses admiration for the “optimism” of Star Trek as “positing a future that is incredibly inspiring,” while claiming that his film is necessarily in “the shadow of George Lucas,” and thus must be made to beat Lucas at his own game, rather than opt for any sort of alternative. The interview can be accessed at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/01/star-trek-dir-1.html
Either due to the unavailability of footnotes and superscript on Blogspot or my inability to figure out how to use them, I’ve resorted to a simplified, MLA-inspired method of annotating this and future essays. While aesthetically unappealing, these notes still serve the same purpose as traditional footnotes. With any luck, Blogspot will soon allow for footnotes, or I will figure out how to use them. Suggestions are welcome.
How’s this for time travel: As it reboots itself for a 21st century crowd nursed on the hollow pandering of multiple Star Wars and Matrix films, the once forward-thinking Star Trek series has backtracked at warp-speed from a thoughtful, if idealized, utopian future to the mindless, specious present of the tent-pole summer release calendar. One would think that in the era of audacious hope Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a united humanity traversing the cosmos could once again prove a viable pop-culture vehicle, but in the hands of television wunderkind J. J. Abrams (Felicity, Lost), Star Trek has instead devolved into yet another juvenile and ultimately banal exercise in blowing shit up. Abrams and co. have retooled and reinvented the Enterprise and her crew, emerging with a souped-up muscle car zipping about the galaxy in search of cheap thrills and even cheaper platitudes.
George Lucas envisioned Star Wars as the quintessential panhuman cultural document filtered through a kinetic “pure cinema”; a semiotic code bereft of specificity, relying exclusively on speed and volume, epitomized in the only scrap of directorial guidance the visionary offered his performers: “Faster, with More Intensity!” We can now imagine Abrams echoing this command to his writers, editors and thespians. One winces to think that it may also be the rallying cry of today’s audiences. After famously mining Joseph Campbell’s pioneering work on centuries of human mythology, Lucas reconstructed a phantom past that was gleefully decentralized: his landscape was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, belonging to no one and everyone, as technologically advanced as it was morally simplistic. Unsurprisingly, this construct was adopted by the aimless post-boomer generation as its own center of cultural gravity. Gazing backward with a bushy-tailed sweetness and casting his net widely, Lucas sidestepped an engagement with his calamitous present while unveiling the future: the massive, meaningless film spectacle populated almost entirely by machines, with a plot cobbled from military tactics and good ole’ fashioned derring-do. Almost immediately, Star Wars became mile marker zero.
Ten years earlier, Star Trek had captured the collective imagination of a much smaller group of earnest science fiction obsessives during it’s abbreviated three year run in prime time. Riding the emotional high of the Apollo program, the series reveled in allegorical allusions to the social ills and moral quandaries of the Cold War era. With an array of alien life forms rendering human discrepancies meaningless (and the concomitant belief that the future would see a human nature expanded and evolved beyond petty grievances), the crew of the Enterprise set about on a series of ventures whose closest television equivalent may have been The Twilight Zone. Along with the six feature Trek films that followed in the wake of Star Wars, the original series was comprised, unabashedly, of Shakespeare- and Milton-quoting chamber dramas set in outer space.
Almost a half century and several worthy spinoffs later, the series has finally succumbed to those middling standards set forth in 1977 by Star Wars and happily maintained each subsequent year by new installments of James Bond, The Terminator and a slew of superhero comic book adaptations. Rather than plumb the depths of racial antagonism, political legitimacy and the moral boundaries of science, Abrams’ newfangled Trek is yet another mouth-breathing, juvenile fantasy awaiting a full line of increasingly bloated sequels and candy-colored merchandise.
To provide himself with enough wiggle room to reinvigorate the series, Abrams and his screenwriters Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman fashion a parallel universe storyline in which a Romulan ship (resembling a bunch of mechanical bananas) breeches an artificially created wormhole in order to travel back in time and destroy the federation-aligned planets one by one. The ship’s pilot, Nero (Eric Bana) is seeking revenge for the destruction of Romulus, which Starfleet (the peace-keeping arm of the United Federation of Planets) will fail to prevent 250 years in the future. Nero’s first target is the ship USS Kelvin, the command of which falls to a young George Kirk after his Captain is taken prisoner by the Romulans. Kirk the Elder subsequently sacrifices his life in order to ensure the safe evacuation of his crew, including his unborn son, James T. We then flash forward 12 years to the rambunctious, fatherless Kirk’s pre-adolescent escapades, before flashing forward again to his teenage years and his joining Starfleet, and flashing forward yet again to his third year in Starfleet, as he has matured to a meritorious, if no less unruly, student of intergalactic diplomacy. Devotees of Abrams’ Lost series should have no problem being constantly shot ahead in these narratively convenient chunks of time, but newcomers might feel as though trapped in a stuttering elevator. Eventually, Nero resurfaces through his wormhole to battle a second Kirk, and the film makes a beeline for it’s predictable outcome, scarcely worth spoiling. It will suffice to say that by the end we’ve all learned that revenge poisons the soul and a bit of unvarnished gumption gets the job done over rationality and compromise every time.
What’s interesting about the story’s trajectory is the translation of Kirk – the fulcrum of Roddenberry’s original universe and the standard by which all subsequent starship captains are judged – into the idiom of Star Wars: Shatner’s Kirk was red-blooded and cocksure, but also introspective and pensive, as apt at quoting classical literature as he was in a scuffle. This new Kirk (played by the relatively unknown Chris Pine) is an amalgamation of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, equal parts rapscallion and starry-eyed farm boy, prime for reckless adventure but simple at his core. Even as the United States elects its first avowedly intellectual president in decades, we still demand of our heroes a temperament closer to the recently departed George W. Bush, a pistol-packing, uncompromising anti-hero with complete disregard for both consensus and the law alike. Kirk is balanced by Zachary Quinto’s Spock (the third point of the triangle, Bones McCoy, is far less involved in this incarnation, and it doesn’t help that Karl Urban’s performance is an occasionally embarrassing imitation of DeForest Kelley) is a touch more Obama-like, but here rendered largely impotent with humility, shame and inadequacy, much as the political right wishes Obama would be. It is doubtful this portrait of our current political discourse is intentional, as the film was set in production before the current international climate solidified into this dynamic, yet even without intent it is nearly impossible to shake the parallels between this dynamic and the world that we’ve recently built for ourselves. It’s worth considering the implications of the disparity. As we experiment with a cool customer at our highest office, why is it that our most lucrative chunk of culture (already the highest grossing Trek of all time) during his first year in office showcases as its exemplar of heroic maleness a man remarkably similar to his loathed predecessor (let alone Kirk’s similarity to Obama’s foe in last year’s election)? Twenty years ago a Star Trek film may have questioned the viability of such a leader, but this film is far too busy looking for things to eviscerate.
Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has described our contemporary cinema as one of concentrated efficacy, and it is in this instance that this new Star Trek logs its most glaring acquiescence to Lucas’ hegemony. The perfunctory manner in which entire planets are destroyed, or evil is vanquished, or a young hotshot assumes command of a starship, removes all sources of tension, leaving the viewer (or at least those with any resistance left to the perennial blockbuster onslaught) feeling throttled rather than engrossed. This efficacy largely began in the 1970s with Star Wars and Jaws, and more thrills at ever-increasing rates have been offered up summer after summer on thousands of theaters simultaneously ever since. For the past quarter century, the Star Trek films also utilized bigger budgets and prime Cineplex release dates in the search of boffo box office, but The Series as a whole always felt out of step with the narrative trends of the day, admirably preserving its tendencies of earnest pontification. As Hollywood guns blazed, average shot lengths plummeted, and “Summer Movies” became a genre, the Stark Trek franchise stubbornly maintained a slow, inquisitive burn as it probed more than popped. At the center of these films were deep, timeless questions. Sadly, this new film has only answers in the form of payoffs to which the setups hardly have time to register. That’s progress for you.
Depending on whose account you trust, Gene Roddenberry either thought the idea of a Star Trek: The Young Years a worthy extension of his vision or a laughable indulgence. But even if we accept an attempt at an origins story (practically a compulsory move for any franchise these days) what has resulted is at odds with the tone that Roddenberry cemented firmly for his brainchild. One thing that Wars and Trek have always had in common was their existence as the work of a sole mastermind; Lucas and Roddenberry each maintained an equal mastery over their creations, employing talented, if pliable, stewards to tend their gardens. It’s clear that this Enterprise has room on the bridge for only one captain, so Abrams’ blockbuster ambitions (informed by his fervent adherence to the gospel of Lucas) have elbowed Roddenberry out of the chair. Abrams as an auteur is less the yeoman that Lucas found in Irvin Kirshner and Richard Marquand, so this Star Trek is his baby entirely. (2)
But is it necessary to discuss this film entirely within the context of another, altogether separate series? Has this become something of a false dichotomy? It’s now fair to conflate the destinies of Star Wars and Star Trek, as the latter has prostrated itself to the mandates of the former. Abrams has said in a recent interview that he has always preferred Lucas’ series, and sought to implement its lessons of aesthetic and narrative vigor in Roddenberry’s lumbering universe (3). However, if one evaluated each on its own terms as revenue-generating Hollywood product (the barometer most suited to the task, considering how thoroughly all ideological divergences have been purged) it could easily be said that Abrams’ film is vastly superior in both sentimental and aesthetic acumen. That Star Trek is so utterly superior to the past three Star Wars films is faint, if significant, praise. Abrams has a natural photographic eye whereas Lucas compositions have always been leaden, the most obvious evidence of which is the universal preference among fans for The Empire Strikes Back, which was not directed by General Lucas himself. The protégé also commands the ability to elicit identifiably human emotions from his actors, which his predecessor famously lacked. Abrams’ affinity for his human characters provides the film with a merciful absence of humanoid robots. Instead, Abrams has the decency to populate his films with biological creatures, and this touch of warmth keeps the film from feeling like an auto show or toy convention, giving it a leg up on most recent science fiction.
What’s most dispiriting about this film is that for a younger generation unfamiliar with the franchise’s venerable history, this new entry (and its future sequels) exists cozily alongside every bombastic franchise that soaks up summer dollars before returning to the trough at Christmastime with Unrated and Collector’s Edition DVDs. Rather than spark a renewed interest in the series’ previous installments and their progressive optimism, Star Trek is more likely to inspire anticipation for its own sequels – along with graphic novels and video games. Sequels which will continue to pay lip service to the window dressing of Star Trek lore while pulling further away from the original premise of Roddenberry's endeavor. Abrams’ film has eradicated, along with the hapless planet Vulcan, its own past, consequently destroying a better future. Through a wormhole, indeed.
Yet again, we’ve imagined a future nestled within an imaginary past. This film envisions a destiny rooted in the mythologies of violence and misanthropy that have plagued our popular culture for most of the postwar era. Roddenberry’s vision of a better way of conducting our affairs no longer has a place at the table (or, to be accurate, market). J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek has dreamed for us a colossally stupid and banal future, which should position it well within a culture hungry for squeeze and release arcs tucked within insipid master narratives. A pity the collective imagination has developed such a ravenous appetite accompanied by such a limited capacity.
Star Trek / USA / 2009 / Color / 127 min. / Directed by J.J. Abrams / Written by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, based on the television series created by Gene Roddenberry / Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Karl Urban, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana and John Cho / Presented by Paramount Pictures
NOTES:
2 - For a humorous and detailed account of Lucas’ obsession with brand maintenance, see “The Empire Wins,” collected in John Seabrook’s Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing – the Marketing of Culture.
3 - Paradoxically, Abrams expresses admiration for the “optimism” of Star Trek as “positing a future that is incredibly inspiring,” while claiming that his film is necessarily in “the shadow of George Lucas,” and thus must be made to beat Lucas at his own game, rather than opt for any sort of alternative. The interview can be accessed at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/01/star-trek-dir-1.html
Either due to the unavailability of footnotes and superscript on Blogspot or my inability to figure out how to use them, I’ve resorted to a simplified, MLA-inspired method of annotating this and future essays. While aesthetically unappealing, these notes still serve the same purpose as traditional footnotes. With any luck, Blogspot will soon allow for footnotes, or I will figure out how to use them. Suggestions are welcome.
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