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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Summer Movie Preview: From Black Widow to The Suicide Squad and Beyond

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The summer movie season has returned. Finally. Once something we all just took for granted, like handshakes and indoor dining, a summertime season stuffed with pricy Hollywood blockbusters and cinematic escapism suddenly feels like a long lost friend. But, rest assured, the summer movie season is genuinely and truly here. It’s maybe a little later than normal, yet it’s still in time for Memorial Day in the States.

This is of course happy news since many of the big screen events of this year have been 12 months or more in the offing. A Quiet Place Part II was supposed to open two Marches ago, and In the Heights is opening almost an exact year to the day from its original release. They’re here now, as is an impressive assortment of new films. There are genre fans’ long lost superhero spectacles, with Black Widow and The Suicide Squad leading the pack (and Shang-Chi closing out the season unusually late in time for Labor Day weekend), and there are also horror movies like The Conjuring 3 and M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, aforementioned musicals, family adventures in Jungle Cruise, psychedelic Arthurian legends via The Green Knight, and a few legitimately original projects like Stillwater and Reminiscence. Imagine that!

So sit back, put your feet in the pool, or up by the grill pit, and toast with us the summer movie’s resurrection.

A Quiet Place Part II

May 28 (June 3 in the UK)

Fourteen months after its original release date, the first movie delayed by the pandemic is finally coming to theaters for Memorial Day weekend. And despite what some critics say (even our own), most of us would argue it’s worth the wait. As a movie about a family enduring after a global crisis that has left their lives in tatters, and marred by personal tragedy, A Quiet Place Part II hits differently in 2021 than it would have a year ago. And it’s undeniably optimistic view of humanity feels like a warm balm now.

But beyond the meta context, writer-director John Krasinski (flying solo as screenwriter this time) has engineered a series of intelligent and highly suspenseful set pieces which puts Millicent Simmonds’ Regan front and center. Also buoyed by subtle and affecting work by Emily Blunt and Cillian Murphy, here as a neighbor they knew a few years and a lifetime ago, this is one worth dipping your toe back into cinema for, especially if you liked the first movie.

Cruella

May 28

We’ll admit it, we had the same initial skepticism you’re probably feeling about a Cruella de Vil origin story set in punk rock’s 1970s London. But put your cynicism aside, Disney’s Cruella is a decadent blast and the rarest of things: a live-action Disney remake that both honors its source material and does something creative with it. Neither a soulless scene-by-scene remake of a better animated film, or a lazy Maleficent like re-imagining, Cruella more often than not rocks, thanks in large part to its lead performance by Emma Stone.

Also a producer on the picture, Stone takes on the role of Cruella de Vil like it’ll be on an awards reel and absolutely flaunts the character’s madness and devilish charm. She also finds an excellent sparring partner via Emma Thompson, young Cruella’s very own Miranda Priestly. Once these two start their verbal battle at the end of the first act, the movie is elevated into an electric period comedy (with plenty of heavy handed period music). It’s a pseudo-thriller for all ages, enjoying some very sharp elbows for a kids movie.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

June 4 (May 26 in the UK)

The latest big-screen adventure for real-life ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) sees the two drawn into the unusual case of the first ever U.S. murder trial where the defendant claimed he was innocent because he was possessed by a demon. This is the eighth movie in The Conjuring expanded universe—director Michael Chaves has already made a foray into this supernatural world with The Curse of La Llorona—and as with all the main Conjuring films, the hook is that it’s (very loosely) based on a true case that the Warrens were involved with.

Peter Safran and James Wan are back on board as producers, although with this being the first time Wan isn’t directing one of the main Ed and Lorraine investigations, we’re a little cautious about this return to the haunted museum.

In the Heights

June 11 (June 18 in the UK)

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Tony award winning musical is getting the proper big screen treatment in In the Heights. A full-fledged movie musical—as opposed to a taped series of performances, a la Disney+’s Hamilton—In the Heights is like a sweet summer drink (or Piragua) and love letter to the Latino community of New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood.

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Closer in spirit to the feel-good summertime joy of Grease than the narratively complex Hamilton, this is perfect multiplex escapism (which will also be on HBO Max if you’re so inclined). Directed by Crazy Rich Asians’ Jon M. Chu, In the Heights has a euphoric sense of movement and dance as it transfers Miranda’s hybrid blend of freestyle rap, salsa rhythm, and Caribbean musical cues to the actual city blocks the show was written about. On one of those corners lives Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), a bodega owner with big dreams. He’s about to have the summer of his life. You might too.

Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard

June 16 (June 21 in the UK)

You know Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a throwback when even its trailer brings back the “trailer voice.” But then the appeal of the 2017 B-action comedy, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, was its very throwback nature: a violent, raunchy R-rated buddy comedy that starred Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds, who exchanged quips as much as bullets between some genuinely entertaining stunts.

Hopefully the sequel can also be as much lowbrow fun as it doubles down on the premise, with Reynolds’ Michael Bryce now guarding Samla Hayek’s Sonia, the wife of Jackson’s Darius. All three are on a road trip through Italy as they’re chased by Antonio Banderas in what is sure to be a series of bloody, explosive set pieces. Probably a few “motherf***ers” will be dropped too.

Luca

June 18

Pixar Studios’ hit rate is frankly incredible. With each new film seemingly comes a catchy song, an Oscar nomination, and a flood of tears from anyone with a heart—and there’s no reason to believe that its next offering will be any different. Luca is a coming-of-age tale set on the Italian Riviera about a pair of young lads who become best friends and have a terrific summer getting into adventures in the sun. The slight catch is that they’re both sea monsters.

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This is the feature directorial debut of Enrico Casarosa, who says the movie is a celebration of friendship with nods to the work of Federico Fellini and Hayao Miyazaki. The writers are Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones—Andrews is new to Pixar but has experience with coming-of-agers, having penned Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, while Jones co-wrote Soul. Jacob Tremblay and Jack Dylan Grazer voice the young boys (sea monsters)—13-year-old Luca and his older teenager friend Alberto—with Maya Rudolph as Luca’s sea monster mom. After a year of lockdown, this could be the summer movie we all need.

June 25

You better start firing up the grill, because the Fast and Furious crew is finally ready to have another summer barbecue. And this time, it’s not only the folks whom Dom Toretto calls “mi familia” in attendance. The big new addition to F9 is

John Cena as Jakob Toretto. As the long-lost little brother we didn’t know Vin Diesel’s Dom had, Jakob is revealed to be a superspy, assassin, and performance driver working for Dom’s arch-nemesis, Cypher (Charlize Theron). Everything the Family does together, Jakob does alone, as a one-man wrecking crew, and he’s coming in hot.

Fans will probably be happier, though, to see Sung Kang back as Han Seoul-Oh, the wheelman who was murdered in Fast & Furious 6, and then pretty much forgotten in The Fate of the Furious when his killer got invited to the cookout. It’s an injustice that brought veteran series director Justin Lin back to the franchise to resurrect the dead. So it’s safe to assume he won’t be asking Cypher to bring the potato salad.

The Forever Purge

July 2 (July 16 in the UK)

We know what you’re thinking: Didn’t The Purge: Election Year end the Purge forever? That or “are they really still making these?” The answer to both questions is yes. Nevertheless, here we are with The Forever Purge, a movie which asks what happens if Purgers just, you know, committed extravagant holiday crime on the other 364 days of the year? You get what is hopefully the grand finale of this increasingly tired concept.

The Tomorrow War

July 2

Hear me out: What if it’s like The Terminator but in reverse? That had to be the pitch for this one, right? In The Tomorrow War, instead of evil cyborgs time traveling to the past to kill our future savior, soldiers from the future time travel to the past to enlist our current best warrior and take him to a world on the brink 30 years from now.

It’s a crazy premise, and the kind of high-concept popcorn that one imagines Chris Pratt excels at. Hence Pratt’s casting as Dan, one of the best soldiers of the early 21st century who’ll go into the future to stop an alien invasion. The supporting cast, which includes Oscar winner J.K. Simmons and Yvonne Strahovski, Betty Gilpin, and Sam Richardson, is also nothing to sneeze at.

Black Widow

July 9

The idea of making a Black Widow movie has been around since long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe first lifted into the sky on Tony Stark’s repulsors. The character has been onscreen for more than a decade now, and Marvel Studios has for too long danced around making a solo Widow, at least in part due to the machinations of Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter.

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But the standalone Black Widow adventure is here at last, and it now serves as a sort-of coda to the story of Natasha Romanoff, since we already know her tragic fate in Avengers: Endgame. Directed by Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome, Lore), the movie will spell out how Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) kept herself busy between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, primarily with a trip home to Russia to clear some of that red from her ledger.

There, she will reunite with figures from her dark past, including fellow Red Room alumnus Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Russian would-be superhero Alexei Shostakov, aka the Red Guardian (David Harbour), and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), another survivor of the Black Widow program and a maternal figure to Natasha and Yelena.

It’s a chance to say goodbye to Nat and see Johansson as the beloved Avengers one more time. But this being Marvel, we suspect that the studio has a few tricks up its sleeve and in this movie about the future of Phase 4.

Space Jam: A New Legacy

July 16

In the annals of synergistic branding, Space Jam: A New Legacy might be one for the record books. A sequel to an older millennials’ 1990s touchstones—the thoroughly mediocre Michael Jordan meets Bugs Bunny movie, Space Jam—this sequel sees LeBron James now trapped in Looney Tunes world… but wait, there’s more! Instead of only charmingly interacting with WB’s classic stable of cartoon characters, King James will also be in the larger “WB universe” where the studio will resurrect from the dead every property they own the copyright to, from MGM’s classic 1939 The Wizard of Oz to, uh, the murderous rapists in A Clockwork Orange.

… yay for easter eggs?

Old

July 23

Though he might be accused of being a little bit hit-and-miss in the past, the release of a new M. Night Shyamalan movie should always be cause for celebration. Especially one with such a deeply creepy premise. Based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, Old sees a family on vacation discover that the beach they are on causes them to age extremely rapidly and live out their entire lives in a day.

This is surely perfect fodder for Shyamalan, who does high-concept horror like no one else. The cast is absolute quality, featuring Gael García Bernal, Hereditary’s Alex Wolff, Jo Jo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie, Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps, Little Women’s Eliza Scanlen, and many more. The trailer is pleasingly disturbing too as children become teenagers, a young woman is suddenly full-term pregnant, and adults seem to be decaying in front of their own eyes. Harrowing in the best possible way.

Snake Eyes

July 23 (August 20 in the UK)

Snake Eyes will finally bring us the origin story of the G.I. Joe franchise’s most iconic and beloved member. Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) stars in the title role, with Warrior’s Andrew Koji as his nemesis—conflicted baddie (and similar fan fave) Storm Shadow. Expect a tale heavy on martial arts badassery, especially with The Raid’s Iko Uwais on board as the pair’s ninja master. Samara Weaving will play G.I. Joe staple Scarlett after her breakout a few years ago in Ready or Not, while Úrsula Corberó has been cast as Cobra’s Baroness. Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife, Red) directs.

Jungle Cruise

July 30

Jungle Cruise director Jaume Collet-Serra is best known for making slightly dodgy actioners starring Liam Neeson (Unknown, Non-Stop, Run All Night) and half-decent horror movies (Orphan, The Shallows), so exactly which direction this family adventure based on a theme park ride will take remains to be seen.

Borrowing a page and premise from Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951), Jungle Cruise stars the ever-charismatic Dwayne Johnson as a riverboat captain taking Emily Blunt’s scientist and her brother (Jack Whitehall) to visit the fabled Tree of Life in the early 20th century. Like the ride, the gang will have to watch out for wild animals along the way.

Unlike the ride, they’re competing with a German expedition team who are heading for the same goal. A solid supporting cast (Jesse Plemons, Édgar Ramírez, Paul Giamatti, Andy Nyman) and a script with rewrites by Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) might mean Disney has another hit on its hands. Either way, a lovely boat trip with The Rock should be diverting at worst.

The Green Knight

July 30 (August 6 in the UK)

There have been several major Hollywood reimaginings of Arthurian legends in the 21st century. And every one of them has been thoroughly rotten for one reason or another. Luckily, David Lowery’s The Green Knight looks poised to break the trend with a trippy, but twistedly faithful, interpretation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain, a chivalrous knight in King Arthur’s court who takes up the challenge of the mysterious Green Knight (The Witch’s Ralph Ineson under mountains of makeup): He’ll swing a blow and risk receiving a returning strike in a year’s time. Gawain attempts to cheat the devil by cutting his head clean off, yet when the Green Knight lifts his severed head from Camelot’s floors, things start to get weird. As clearly one of A24’s biggest visual fever dreams to date, this is one we’re highly anticipating.

Stillwater

July 30 (August 6 in the UK)

The Oscar winning-writer director behind Spotlight, Tom McCarthy, returns to the big screen with a fictional story that feels awfully similar to real world events. In this film, Matt Damon plays Bill, a proud father who saw his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) go abroad to study in France. After she’s accused of murdering her roommate by local authorities, the deeply Southern and deeply Oklahoman father must travel to a foreign land to try and prove his daughter’s innocence.

It obviously has some parallels with the Amanda Knox story but it also looks like a potentially hard hitting original drama with a talented cast. Fingers crossed.

The Suicide Squad

August 6 (July 30 in the UK)

You might have seen a Suicide Squad movie in the past, but you’ve never seen James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. With a liberating R-rating and an old school vision from the Guardians of the Galaxy director—who likens this to 1960s war capers, such as The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare—this Suicide Squad is absolutely stacked with talented actors wallowing in DC weirdness. One of the key players in this is Polka-Dot Man, another is a walking, talking Great White Shark, voiced by Sylvester Stallone. The villain is a Godzilla-sized starfish from space!

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So like it’s namesake, there’s probably a lot of characters who aren’t going to pull through this one. Even so, we can rest easy knowing that Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn will be as winsome than ever, and the likes of Idris Elba and John Cena will add some dynamic gravitas to the eccentric DC Extended Universe.

Free Guy

August 13

Perhaps pitched as The Truman Show for the video game age, Free Guy stars Ryan Reynolds as an easygoing, happy-go-lucky “Guy” who discovers… he’s a video game NPC living inside the equivalent of a Grand Theft Auto video game. This might explain why the bank he works at keeps getting robbed all the time. But as a virtual sprite who’s developed sentiency, he just might be able to win over enough gamers to not shoot him, and make love not war.

It’s an amusing premise, and hopefully director Shawn Levy can bring to it the same level of charm he achieved with the very first Night at the Museum movie.

Respect

August 13 (September 10 in the UK)

Before her passing in 2018, Aretha Franklin gave her blessing to Jennifer Hudson to play the Queen of Soul. Now that musical biopic is here with Hudson hitting the same high notes of the legend who sang such standards as “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Think,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and of course “Respect.”

The film comes with a lot of expectation and a lot of pedigree, with Forest Whitaker and Audra McDonald in the cast. Most of all though, it comes with that rich musical library, which will surely take center stage. And if movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman have taught us anything, it’s that moviegoers love when you play the hits.

Reminiscence

August 20 (August 18 in the UK)

Lisa Joy is one of the most exciting voices on television today. One-half of the creative team behind Westworld, Joy steps into her own with her directorial debut (and as the solo writer) in Reminiscence, a science fiction film with a reliably knotty premise.

Hugh Jackman plays Nick Bannister, a man who lives in a dystopian future where the oceans have risen and the cities are crumbling. In a declining Miami, he sells a risky new technology that allows you to relive your past (and possibly change it, at least fancifully?). But when he discovers the lost love of his life (Rebecca Ferguson) is cropping up in other peoples’ memories, which seem to implicate her in a murder, well… things are bound to start getting weird. We don’t know a whole lot more, but we cannot wait to find out more.

Candyman

August 27

Announced back in 2018, this spiritual sequel to Bernard Rose’s 1992 original is one of the most exciting and anticipated movies on the calendar. Produced by Jordan Peele and directed by Nia DaCosta, the film takes place in the present day and about a decade after Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects have been torn down. Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays an up-and-coming visual artist who moves to the now-gentrified area with his partner and is inspired by the legend of Candyman, an apparition with a hook for a hand, to create new work about the subject. But in doing so, he risks unleashing a dark history and a new wave of violence.

Tony Todd, the star of the original movie, will also reprise his role in a reboot that aims to inspire fear for only the right reasons.

The Beatles: Get Back

August 27

Director Peter Jackson thinks folks have a poisoned idea about the Beatles in their final days. Often portrayed as divided and antagonistic toward one another during the recordings of their last albums, particularly Let It Be (which was their penultimate studio recording and final release), Jackson insists this misconception is influenced by Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary named after the album.

So, after going through the reams of footage Lindsay-Hogg shot but didn’t use, Jackson has crafted this new documentary about the album’s recording which is intended to paint a fuller (and more feel-good) portrait of the band which changed the world. Plus, the music’s going to be great…

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

September 3

The greatest fighter in Marvel history finally hits the big screen with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Simu Liu (Kim’s Convenience) takes on the title role of a character destined for a bright future in the MCU. Marvel fans might note that the “Ten Rings” of the title is the same organization that first appeared all the way back in Iron Man, and Tony Leung will finally bring their villainous leader, The Mandarin, to life. Awkwafina of The Farewell and Crazy Rich Asians fame also stars. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12), this should deliver martial arts action unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the MCU.

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samleheny · 7 years

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The good that can come from this crappy Ghost in the Shell remake

I’m a big Ghost in the Shell fan. I love cyberpunk, transhumanism, Eastern design sensibilities, all that good stuff. It’s no surprise I didn’t expect this Hollywood remake to be any good, nor that critics so far are pretty unanimously reporting that it isn’t, nor that I’m not interested enough to find out for myself and send the message “Yes Hollywood, my curiosity will get the better of me and you will end up getting my money regardless of whether or not you did a good job”. Whatever. The word is it’s visually engaging but that the action is dull and it’s emotionally and philosophically desolate (the very latter is a death knell for any GitS project as far as I’m concerned). I’m less sad that it had to happen to this franchise in particular and more so because I yearn for those days when Hollywood sci-fi knew how to be both thrilling and intellectually stimulating at the same time. Now days it’s one or the other, or sometimes neither. But I’m trying to look to the good, and I think there is some good. About this whole white-washing controversy of casting Scarlet Johanson as Major Motoko Kusanagi. We all should understand that people are less pissed off about the particular instance of casting a white person in the role of an east Asian character than they are about the larger issue it points to. No movie executive at any point sat down and said “This 1995 Mamoru Oshii classic is brilliant! But it could be even better... It could be... white!” No, they just wanted a big star in the lead role and they valued that more so than artistic authenticity, which only becomes a practical issue when one realises that when it comes to big names in the English language film space, the only actresses of Asian ethnicity with that kind of ticket selling star power are... um... Lucy Liu, and... uuuh... ...that’s about it I guess.

How did we get here? The implications aren’t nice to think about unless you want to make unfounded claims that “Dude! White people and a smaller contingent of black people are just genetically more inclined to pursue a career in acting! I know science, I have the best science!” But the studio has actually bent over backwards to try and placate an internet crying bullshit. Do you think just five or ten years ago said studio would have given a shit what we thought on the matter? Probably not. Reports were that they at one point considered ‘yellowing’ Ms. Johanson up in post production, but quickly decided away from that, since unless you’re Cloud Atlas, that’s only going to make things worse. The solution they actually attempted in the end is a bit more... amusing.

I’m going to spoil the twist of the movie here. So they ended up renaming the character Mira Killian for this adaptation, perhaps reasoning that it’s slightly less damning to rewrite the character then to have people sitting in the theatre shuffling uneasily in their seats, subconsciously wondering “Why does seminal Japanese heroine Motoko Kusanagi look remarkably like white as hell Scarlet Johanson?”. This time around she has amnesia and can’t remember who she was before having her brain put into a prosthetic body. I’ve seen people in forums already taken to referring to the character as “MINO” (Motoko In Name Only).

The twist? Turns out she really is Motoko Kusanagi, and her brain was put into a Caucasian body and she was renamed by your standard big evil corporation, robbing her of her past and identity. ...Wait, what? You can see what they were going for, attempting a clever meta-narrative, shaking a finger at the internet and saying “Isn’t it what’s on the inside that counts?”. But it just amounts to the studio basically calling themselves out for their casting inflexibility. The evil corporation taking a Japanese character and dipping her in Caucasia being noticeably, almost deliberately analogous to what the film makers did with the character in the first place. Are they trying to tell us they know they did wrong by vilifying themselves in their own movie? Drawing attention to the issue, without actually doing anything about it?

To be fair, it isn’t a bad idea for a story, in the abstract. Highlighting things like race as being rendered truly tertiary and unimportant by cybernetic augmentation separating the identity and the flesh further apart then ever before in the human experience. But it’s depressing that they didn’t write that first and then reason “well that means we perhaps need an actress who doesn’t match Motoko’s traditional appearance.” But instead only conceived of this plot point as a way of retroactively justifying their casting choice. Just like it’s all well and good to talk about how The performance is what matters, and if race really shouldn’t separate us, then why do we insist a character’s ethnicity must remain rigidly consistent across the various reimaginings? But as soon as it’s the other way around, and a historically white character is being reimagined as black, or Latino, or what have you, then that philosophy gets switched out for a very different one. One that says race isn’t important, but race issues are, and when the western and usually Caucasian perspective already dominates huge chunks of the international pop culture, then it’s good, perhaps even necessary for concessions to be made to welcome people of other backgrounds into that dominant culture (a philosophy I find much more agreeable.)

Because this was never about white or Asian or American or Japanese or Japanese specifically or will any East Asian actress do? It’s about sharing the spotlight. Hence why taking one of the few international properties widely recognised and celebrated outside of its country of origin, sucking out the ground breaking Eastern philosophical tones, and bolting Scarlet Johanson onto the project because ‘She’s so hot right now!’ may not be a travesty or the end of the world, but it’s a disappointing waste of an opportunity. It feels like taking gruel from hungry orphans and feeding it to Bill Gates.

Plus... you know. A lot can be forgiven if the end product turns out really really good.

But the good in all this? Well like I said: even if their efforts just made the situation all the more laughable, they did go through pains to try and placate the backlash, which means they do care. Okay. Yes. The thing they care about is protecting a brand’s profitability in the face of an audience whose wallets are proving harder to seduce than anticipated, but now as opposed to yesteryear they might see that issues of diversity in the arts shouldn’t be shoved off to the side just because we gotta get dat sweet Scarlet Johanson money!

Because the cash-cow of Hollywood now, for better or worse, is the nerd. And nerds by definition care a lot about the minutiae. But perhaps more importantly than that, Hollywood is increasingly aware that the future looks a lot less western and a lot less white than the present. Why do you think Marvel is introducing all these Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, Mixed race, Gay, Asian, etc, characters into the comics? It’s because in ten years, when they still want to be making big superhero blockbusters, they’ll need new characters to replace the expired contracts of Captain America and Iron Man, etc. And they figure it behooves them to build into their future a lot more appeal for the increasingly diversifying movie going public.

I believe (with no small amount of chagrin) that we’re only going to see more and more adaptations of classic anime. Hollywood has a horrible track record with them of course, but consider that Hollywood is increasingly interested in courting the ever growing Chinese market, and making more films with Eastern themes, settings, and styles is a pretty good way to accomplish that. And consider also that there’s nothing the Hollywood genre-film machine fears more than spending money on new and untested ideas. With both of those factors in mind I think the solution for Hollywood will become obvious in time if it isn’t already, and it involves a crappy Akira remake, a crappy Sailor Moon remake, a crappy Evangelion remake, and crappy Studio Ghibli remakes (Oh you don’t think they'd dare? You wanna make a wager?). Japan is, after all, the most successful entertainment producer on an international scale outside of the English speaking countries. (Hmmm, possibly after France. Vivendi has its tendrils all over the place.) I don’t look forward to it, because I don’t look forward to a lot of remakes, because I find the current landscape of aversion to new ideas and forced franchise perpetuity incredibly depressing. But as far as learning how to do a better job of adaptation in the future, for once the studio didn’t just notice the backlash to white-washing a beloved foreign classic, they actually fretted over it. And perhaps they will next time. And with the memory of this “MINO” character fresh in their minds, hopefully they’ll have those frets before making a casting choice. At which point I hope the solution will be as obvious to them as it was to the fans.

Live action Akira will probably happen (it already almost did, and they wanted to move it from Neo-Tokyo to Neo-Manhattan) it will probably suck despite being a big blockbuster, but at least there’s a better chance now it will be a blockbuster that could be the breakout role of some talented young Japanese American somewhere who doesn’t otherwise have much hope of being offered a role as the latest superhero. And some young kid from Asian immigrant parents might see him on the silver screen and feel impassioned.

#Ghost in the Shell #representation matters

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years

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The Weekend Warrior’s Top 25 Movies of 2018!

What a year we’ve been having with all the politics and internet craziness and my own personal life, struggling to survive without a job and very little work, and YET, it was an absolutely fantastic year for movies. There is no arguing that fact when a good percentage of my annual top 25 came from movies I saw at Sundance way back in January. While there may be a few noticeable omissions that appear on many other top 10s, as well as a few movies I liked that were obvious awards fodder, I’m pretty happy with what turned out to be one of my more eclectic top 25 lists with a mix of smaller indies and big budget blockbusters. (In case you’re interested, I saw 248 movies in 2018, and that is only counting the new movies released during the year and not dozens more movies I saw at film festival and hundreds of older films.)

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it…. Or rather, I hope you enjoy reading this because it took me a long time to write it.

25. Stan and Ollie (Sony Pictures Classics) – One of the recurring trends I saw happening during what was a relatively sucky year was that many of my favorite things from childhood were brought to the big screen. In this case, it’s the story of Laurel and Hardy, as ably played by Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, as it covers the last few years of their partnership as they’re struggling to fill theaters during a UK tour. The performances by the duo were splendid, as were the two actors playing their respective wives (a hilarious Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson), the script by Jeff Pope really putting you into the comedy duo’s world and mindset. Kudos to Jon S. Baird for this fantastic biopic, which opens next week in New York and L.A.

24. Annihilation (Paramount) – Alex Garland’s sophomore film, his follow-up to the excellent Ex-Machina, was a fantastic adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s sci-fi novel that should have been as accepted as Arrival, especially with the fantastic premise and performance by Natalie Portman, as well as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac. Sadly, I didn’t rewatch it on Netflix when I had the chance but this is definitely something I’d buy on blu-ray.

23. Mary Poppins Returns (Walt Disney Pictures) – Continuing the theme from Stan and Ollie, Disney finally made a sequel to one of my favorite movies as a kid with the wonderful Emily Blunt stepping into the shoes of Julie Andrews, and I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it, especially since I wasn’t a fan of Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods… or Chicago, for that matter. For this one, Marshall perfectly captured the magic I felt first watching Mary Poppinsand listening to the album over and over as a kid, with really fun songs, including some co-written by Lin Manuel Miranda, I believe.

22. Aquaman (Warner Bros.) – While Aquaman has never been my favorite DC superhero, I had high hopes for director James Wan’s first foray into superheroics, and I wasn’t disappointed. Granted, there was a lot to keep up with, since he fit a lot of story into one movie… I mean, who wouldn’t, considering the chances of there ever being an Aquaman sequel? But yeah, Jason Momoa really sold me on the character, and the way the movie remained faithful to the Aquaman lore and mythos made in the comics, and there was just so much to enjoy that I can’t wait to see it again.

21. Boy Erased (Focus Features) – Another second feature, this one from Joel Edgerton, who adapted, directed and co-starred in this adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir of growing up with a preacher father and religious mother who sent him to participate in a gay conversion program run by a zealous fanatic (played by Edgerton). I thought Lucas Hedges was just fantastic in the lead in this as well as in his father Peter Hedges’ movie Ben is Back, so this year finally put me on the Lucas Hedges wagon despite him appearing in multiple Best Picture-nominated movies over the last couple years. (I also want to point out the Honorable Mention The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which was also quite good as it looked at the problems caused by these gay conversion programs.)

20. Crazy Rich Asians (New Line/Warner Bros.) – I fought tooth and nail against buying into the hype for this all-Asian cast adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, but I’m a total sucker for romance, especially the romantic comedy genre, and this was a fine one for the ages. My worries about this being seen as Asian wealth porn was somewhat off-base – although there was some of that in there – and this ended up being the perfect movie for one of my fave directors, Jon M. Chu, to finally be taken seriously in Hollywood. Granted, I already loved Constance Wu from Fresh Off the Boat and Michelle Yeoh from a million movies, but I loved what newcomers Henry Goulding and Awkwafina brought to the mix, and I even liked Ken Jeong in this, so yeah, a pleasant surprisw, and one I probably will rewatch again soon.

19. Roma (Netflix) – Likewise, I finally saw this movie at New York Film Festival after tons of hype out of Telluride, Toronto and Venice, but I immediately was able to relate to the love the kids in the film have for their maid, something similar to my own childhood living in Brazil in the early ‘70s. There’s no denying that director Alfonso Cuaron makes stunning films that leaves your jaw agape in every scene, and what an amazing coup for first-timer Yalitza Aparicio, an indigenous woman who might have had a hard time getting roles if not for Cuaron’s brilliance in casting her. This movie hit me even harder emotionally a second time, although I still wouldn’t place it higher on my year-end list since I thought some of it was noticeable directorial wanking i.e. Cuaron could do these big set pieces merely because he had the ability and money to do so.

18. On the Basis of Sex and RBG (Focus Features / Magnolia) – I’m cheating here a little bit just because this year saw two fantastic films about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, first in the doc by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, which created a beautiful portrait of the amazing woman. Later in the year, Felicity Jones portrayed Ginsburg in a pivotal point in her career where she goes before the Supreme Court to fight for gender equality. It’s an important case but also an important turning point in our country, and I love how Ginsburg’s relationship with her husband, played by the dashing Armie Hammer, was portrayed.

17. Monsters and Men (Neon) – A movie that was seemingly missed by anyone who didn’t see it at Sundance, and even by many who went to Sundance was Reinaldo Marcus Green’s drama about a shooting by a Brooklyn policeman and how it’s viewed by three different people from the neighborhood. Two of those people are Anthony Ramos’ Manny and John David Washington (from BlackKklansman) as a fairly young policeman dealing with the corruption and racism in the force. It also deals with a young baseball prodigy (Christopher Jordan Wallace) who wants to get involved with the protests against the killing even if it might hurt his chances at getting into a good college. If you have a chance to see this movie, you’re likely to be impressed by Green’s storytelling abilities and how it’s used.

16. Searching (Sony/Screen Gems) – Aneesh Chaganty’s directorial debut was an amazing thriller starring John Cho as a man whose daughter has disappeared and using only what can be viewed on a computer screen. Sure, it sounds like a gimmick, and it’s one that’s been used in films like Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows and the Unfriended series, but Cho’s performance is a career-best, and Chaganty finds a way to create a plausible thriller that keeps you invested in Cho finding his daughter. (And I loved the hint I discovered to the movie’s big twist on watching a second time.)

15. Widows (20thCentury Fox) – While I liked 12 Years a Slave just fine, Steve McQueen really blew me away with his foray into the heist genre, starring Viola Davis as the wife of a criminal (Liam Neeson), who dies in an attempt to steal millions from a local Chicago mob boss… and political candidate (Brian Tyree Henry – one of this year’s major MVPs). It seems like a fairly simple plot, but McQueen finds a way to integrate the local politics (incl. amazing performances by Colin Farrell and Robert DuVall), surround Davis with some amazing women (including Cynthia Erivo and Elizabeth Debicki) and create a heist film unlike any you would have seen before, as it was far more unconventional than other heist films, as one might expect.

14. Mary, Queen of Scots (Focus Features) – Fantastic performances by Saoirse Ronan as the title character and Margot Robbie as her cousin and rival Queen Elizabeth made Josie Rourke’s feature directorial debut quite an amazing film. It wasn’t just another costume drama, and as much as it sadly is being overshadowed by The Favourite, the material told this fascinating story about two feuding queens in such an interesting and exciting way, including an impressive battle sequence, making this very different from other period pieces, including the many that have been directed by men.

13. Instant Family (Paramount) – Another one of this year’s surprises was seeing Sean Anders, the director behind Daddy’s Home and its sequel, take on a more serious comedy based on his own real life. Apparently, he and his wife adopted three kids, so in this very funny, sweet and warm comedy, it’s Rose Byrne and Mark Wahlberg as a couple who take in three Latino kids, including the amazing Isabela Moner, who I think is going to be amazing as Dora the Explorer. But there was so much to enjoy about this film from the easy laughs to some of the sweeter and more touching human emotions on display.

12. Hereditary (A24) – Another film that premiered out of Sundance (that I missed there) was Ari Aster’s directorial debut, an absolutely horrifying film about a mother (Toni Collette) dealing with all sorts of strange supernatural occurrences after the death of her own mother. A24’s marketing for the film was such a brilliant bit of Red Herring creation that you might go in thinking that Collette’s daughter Charlie (played by Milly Shapiro) was gonna be the main antagonist/conflict… nope! Colette’s amazing performance was countered by a similar one from Alex Wolff, and if you weren’t totally creeped out by this movie’s ending, there’s probably something wrong with you. Aster proves himself to be a fascinating visual storyteller, so I can’t wait to see his next movie.

11. The Citizen (ArtMattan Productions) – Roland Vranik’s Hungarian film that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival all the way back in 2016 finally got a U.S. release thanks to New York’s Metrograph where it played for a number of weeks. After seeing the trailer a bunch of times, I ended up checking it out, and I was blown away by how timely and prescient the story of an African immigrant trying to become a Hungarian citizen related to what was going on in this country over the past year. It’s a wonderful indie film that sadly didn’t get the attention it deserved.

10. Eighth Grade (A24) – Yet another Sundance “discovery” was comedian Bo Burnham’s debut, which featured newcomer Elsie Fisher as 13-year-old Kayla, who is trying to deal with puberty, her last year in middle school and a pesky but lovable father, played by Josh Hamilton. This is just such an enjoyable even if you went to middle school so long ago that you barely remember it. Even so, Burnham found a way to tap into those feelings to create an extremely enjoyable comedy. I’m convinced Elsie Fisher is gonna be a superstar.

9. The Hate U Give (20thCentury Fox) – Probably one of the most underrated films of the year, which thankfully has gotten some critical love in the past few weeks. I thought this adaptation of Angie Love’s Y.A. novel about a teenager named Starr, played by Amandla Stenberg, fighting with the two sides of her life with the advent of #BlackLivesMatter after watching her childhood friend killed by a white police officer. The cast that producer George Tillman Jr. built around Stenberg was quite impressive, including Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie and Common, with many powerful emotional moments that did a good job explaining what young black people in urban areas must deal with daily. It’s a fine return to form from the director of Notorious and Soul Food.

8. Ant Man and the Wasp (Marvel Studios) – I bet you didn’t expect to see THIS Marvel Studios rank so high while a couple others didn’t even place in my list (or even Honorable Mentions), huh? Maybe I’ve just gotten sick of the whole thing where every movie is basically set-up for the next movie, which has been the case for a while now. Sure, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a sequel to Ant-Man and there was a post-credits Avengers: Infinity War tie-in, but otherwise, this was the Ant-Man movie I had been hoping for after the rather disappointing first movie. Obviously, having Paul Rudd involved in the writing and not working from a previous plot (as was the case with the first movie) helped the characters from the first movie shine. (Also, loved the Ghost as an antagonist.)

7. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (Sony) – It was a fairly tight race for my favorite superhero movie of the year, but after seeing this animated take on Marvel’s webbed wonder a second time, it was obvious to me that this was indeed one of the best feature film iterations of Spider-Man outside the comics. Sure, I was a fan of what Brian Bendis had done in the Ultimate comics, maybe not some of the Spider-Verse stuff introduced by Dan Slott, but taking those two disparate things and turning it into a true story about Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore, who should be cast as Miles in a live action MCU movie) and then having Jake Johnson voicing the older “mentor” Spider-Man just made for a fun movie that exemplified all of the previous films directed and produced by Lord and Miller including The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street. I’m looking forward to more big-screen animated superhero movies, and yeah, I liked Incredibles 2 just fine but I was never that attached to the Pixar movie.

6. Love, Simon (20thCentury Fox) – After blowing up the DC Universe via his many CW TV shows, Greg Berlanti returned to the movies with this coming-out coming of age romantic comedy starring Nick Robinson as Simon Spier, a closeted gay teen who discovers that there might be another gay teen in the closet at his high school. This simple plot led to a wonderful high school coming-of-age rom-com that really brightened me up on a miserable day I was having (the first of many this year), and I loved how relatable Berlanti made the story.

5. Bad Times at the El Royale (20thCentury Fox) – Possibly one of the most underrated films of the year, Drew Goddard’s second film as a director after the similarly excellent Cabin in the Woods, featured a cadre of individuals converging on a mostly-abandoned hotel on the border of California and Nevada. Jeff Bridges plays a priest, Jon Hamm plays a travelling salesman and Broadway star Cynthia Erivo (also in Widows) is a singer who all show up at the same time, as we quickly discover, very little about the El Royale is as it seems. I almost don’t want to reveal too much more, because it’s the way the story unfolds which had many comparing it to Tarantino (both positively and negatively). I felt that so many filmmakers have tried to ape Tarantino and not understood what makes his storytelling style work so well, but Goodard figured it out, and delivered a rich film full of many surprises. I can’t recommend the film more, since I know very few people had a chance to see it in theaters.

4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Paramount) – Considering how much I was disappointed by Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, I expected its direct sequel to be more of the same, and boy, was I wrong. Tom Cruise and McQuarrie pulled out all the stops to create a viable conclusion to the four movies that had been produced along with JJ Abrams and Bad Robot, which included the extraordinary 4thmovie directed by Brad Bird. I was impressed the first time I saw this in IMAX… but then I saw it again… and again… and again. I just couldn’t get enough of the amazing action scenes and the intricate plot (even though I found a few holes in it). I’m so psyched to see what McQuarrie does next, and it successfully reminded everyone why Cruise is the star that he is.

3. Juliet, Naked (Lionsgate / Roadside Attractions) – The fact that filmmaker Jesse Peretz was able to adapt one of my favorite Nick Hornby novels in a way that’s faithful but not to a fault made this one of my favorite movies of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. If you couldn’t tell from my love for Instant Family, I absolutely love Rose Byrne, and she killed it as Annie, a woman living in a seaside English town with her boyfriend Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) as an avid fan of musician Tucker Crowe. When Annie posts something negative about a newly-discovered Crowe rarity on Duncan’s blog, they break up, but she also ends up having a long-distance relationship with the actual Crowe, played by Ethan Hawke. There’s just something so spot-on about Hornby’s book and this adaptation was just as enjoyable, genuinely warm and very, very funny. I wish more people went to go see it.

2. A Star is Born (Warner Bros.) – Believe me, there may be no one more surprised by how far this movie has placed in my year-end list than myself. I’m not a huge Bradley Cooper fan, nor do I particularly like Lady Gaga or her music, but this is a great old Hollywood story that’s perfectly modernized with Cooper playing rock star Jackson Mane who sees Gaga’s Ally performing at a cabaret club and falls for her just as he tries to help her career. It’s a story that’s been told a number of times before, and sure, I can understand why some women might not like the implications that a man might help the woman have success in the movie industry, but Gaga killed it playing a character possibly not too removed from herself. I’ll be thrilled with any and all Oscars this movie earns, especially for Bradley Cooper, making a stunning directorial debut. (And I always love Sam Elliot in anything he does. He’s so deserving of an Oscar here, too.)

1A. Won’t You be My Neighbor (Focus Features) – As always, I separate the docs from my overall year’s best list just because I tend to like the genre so much that my entire top 10 would be docs if I didn’t separate them into their own category. But yeah, Morgan Neville has done it again with another 10/10 doc following his Oscar-winning 20 Feet to Stardom. Barring some major push by one of the other docs that made the shortlist (and my top 12 below), there’s a very good chance that Neville’s doc about beloved PBS host Fred (Mister) Rogers will win him a second Oscar. Rogers is beloved by adults who grew up watching his show and getting a chance to look behind the scenes made many adults cry, mainly for joy but also for sadness that these trying times doesn’t have a Mister Rogers to help us through it.

1. Green Book (Universal) – Yes, I’m well aware of the controversy and backlash from many black film critics (most of them who write for ShadowAndAct.com, oddly enough) who hate this movie for one reason or another. By the time all that controversy had reared its ugly head, I had already seen the Peter Farrelly historic buddy comedy twice, and I loved it both times I saw it. If you’re unaware, it stars Viggo Mortensen as Italian stereotype club bouncer Tony Lip, who is hired to drive and safeguard Mahershala Ali’s jazz pianist Dr. Don Shirley on a tour of the Deep South during the early ‘60s when racism still was running rampant. The growing chemistry built by these two actors through the situations they find themselves in made me far more interested in Shirley and the Green Book of the title, so anyone complaining about the movie should realize that through entertaining humor, Farrelly has opened a conversation that I hope will continue through next year.

Honorable Mentions:

There were so many good movies this year that all of these fine films ended up just outside my top 25…

A Private War (Aviron) Operation Finale (MGM) First Reformed (A24) Lean on Pete (A24) The Rider (Sony Pictures Classics) Collette (Bleecker Street) Cold War (Amazon Studios) The Miseducation of Cameron Post (FilmRise) Leave No Trace (Bleecker Street) Suspiria (Amazon)

TWELVE GREAT DOCS

This was most definitely the year of the theatrical doc, even though, yeah, there’s still a few Netflix docs on here… okay, one. Otherwise, it was important to see most of these movies in a theater, which culminated in Peter Jackson’s 3D WWI doc They Shall Not Grow Old, which just missed my top 12. Sorry, this feature has gotten a little too long or otherwise, I’d write more about each of these, but most of them I wrote about in the weekly column.

1. Won’t You be My Neighbor (Focus Features) 2. Free Solo (National Geographic) 3. Hal (Oscilloscope) 4. Three Identical Strangers (Neon) 5. Minding the Gap (Hulu) 6. RBG (Magnolia) 7. Rock Rubber 45s (Saboteur Media) 8. Crime + Punishment (Hulu/IFC Films) 9. Shirkers (Netflix) 10. Fahrenheit 11/9 11. Far from the Tree (IFC Films) 12. Whale of a Tale (Giant Pictures)

STUDIO OF THE YEAR:

Every year I like rewarding a studio that goes above and beyond both in terms of releasing great, entertaining movies and also being generally decent to deal with. While Universal has the top movie and Warner Bros. is #2 and Fox has a lot of movies on the above list, I think I’ll have to give this year’s award to Paramount Pictures, not only for making the best Mission: Impossible yet, but also with two wonderful surprises in Instant Family and Overlord, which both were far better than their trailers. (They also released A Quiet Place, which didn’t make my list but was still a solid thriller.) But most importantly, they’re the most improved in terms of press/critical outreach, and I greatly appreciate that, especially in the tough year I had.

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

I always like sharing some of the music I’m listening to each year and though my music budget has been cut rather drastically this year, my favorite album of the year was Metric’s “Art of Doubt,”followed by Buffalo Tom’s “Quiet and Peace”and The Fratellis’ “In Your Own Sweet Time.” I also dug Monster Magnet’s “Mindf*cker,” Ash’s “Islands” and James’ “Living in Extraordinary Times,” but none of this gets me more excited as the prospect for a new Cure album in 2019!

Oh, fine.. I’ll tack on my Terrible 10 for the year, but I don’t feel like revisiting any of these: 10. Kin 9. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich 8. The Spy Who Dumped Me 7. Before I Wake 6. Truth or Dare? 5. London Fields 4. Head Full of Honey 3. Mandy 2. Aardvark 1. Assassination Nation

That’s it for this year. Hopefully, I’ll have more to come soon.

#WeekendWarrior Top252018 Movies Reviews GreenBook MissionImpossible AStarIsBorn WontYouBeMyNeighbor

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Robert Rodriguez on We Can Be Heroes and How Pedro Pascal Reminds Him of Harrison Ford

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Robert Rodriguez is a man of many hats – in every sense of the word.

While he has been known to rock a fedora or two down the years, the idiom is more a reflection of his “one-man film crew” approach to movie-making, with Rodriguez known for not only writing, and directing but also doing everything from editing to operating the camera.

It’s also a reflection of his ability to turn his hand to disparate genres and movies aimed and markedly different audiences.

Having made his name with movies like El Mariachi and From Dusk till Dawn, the new millennium saw Rodriguez’s career take a surprising turn into the world of family-orientated action with Spy Kids.

A major success with critics and audiences alike, the film spawned three further sequels, with Rodriguez even roping in Sylvester Stallone for the third and fourth efforts.

Since then, he has happily flipped back and forth between the two worlds, with 2005’s The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl sandwiched in between work on Sin City and Planet Terror.

It’s a pretty stark contrast in cinematic terms but one Rodriguez happily explains while speaking to Den of Geek about his latest movie, We Can Be Heroes, a superhero movie about a group of kids forced to do battle with alien invaders who have kidnapped their superhero parents.

“You are using the same skills. You just have a different mindset as far as tone. It’s just like if you’re at work or out with your buddies, you’ve got one way of talking and then when you go home and you’re with your kids it’s dad time. You have your dad hat on.

“When I make these movies, I have the dad hat on and then when I am out with my buddies that’s Sin City mode, that’s Machete mode. That’s when that other side of me comes out.”

While the kids take centre stage in We Can Be Heroes, they are ably supported by an impressive adult cast that includes Boyd Holbrook, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christian Slater and Pedro Pascal.

It was the first time Pascal and Rodriguez had worked together, but it wouldn’t be the last. While working post-production on We Can Be Heroes, Rodriguez was recruited by Jon Favreau to direct an episode of The Mandalorian.

As such, he knows more than most about what makes Pascal such an engaging and intriguing presence on the screen.

“He reminds me of Harrison Ford in a way, he’s like this everyman type guy. He can be funny, he can be really intense, he can be very heroic but in We Can Be Heroes he kind of has to be a dweebish dad where it’s just all about him and his daughter [YaYa Gosselin].”

“He played that really well and was then also able to become this superhero. He can be very human and warm. In The Mandalorian he does a similar type of thing but with that heart. But he can play intense too. He’s got a wide range.”

“He reminds me of some of my favourite actors that I have worked with before like George Clooney. That’s why he’s got such a big career right now. People can see that he’s very much able to do 180 degrees in any direction.”

Working on The Mandalorian served as a stark contrast to his efforts on We Can Be Heroes but Rodriguez believes it definitely informed the making of this film.

“The Mandalorian is wonderful because you’ve got such a great big crew and they all know what they are doing and it’s a well-oiled machine. Jon Favreau is there, Dave Filoni is there, so I can just go in and direct.

“It was great to take a little break, go play with all the Star Wars toys and then come back and apply what I learned there to We Can Be Heroes, because they have a lot of cutting-edge technologies and techniques. I think this movie really benefited from side projects like that and Alita.”

We Can Be Heroes has been billed by some as a sequel to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl but Rodriguez is keen to stress that this film doesn’t take place in the same universe.

“I wrote this as an original story for Netflix because they found movies like Sky Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl played really well on their service. Also, it is so rare to have live-action kids adventures for the whole family.”

“I love the genre so I came up with the idea for We Can Be Heroes where you have this adult Avengers-style team and then have little kids with superior powers but they don’t know how to use them.”

“I was surprised that there had never been superheroes that were kids, except for Shark Boy and Lava Girl back in the day, even after all these superhero movies and TV shows and spin-offs and reboots. I thought it was ripe for the taking.”

“The first script I turned in didn’t have Shark Boy or Lava Girl in it. But then I just thought let’s borrow their characters and bring them in as parents because it will help legitimise the adult team to have someone recognisable. It was more like we borrowed them. It’s not set in that universe.”

Working on the film has certainly given Rodriguez an appreciation for the superhero genre, which he would be keen to explore in future movies though he does note that it’s a genre that could benefit from more diversity.

“I think superhero films are just like westerns. It’s really about the story being told through that genre.”

“That’s why people live in there. It’s not because they’re superheroes it’s because the stories are relatable.”

“The superhero genre is still really vital. There’s a lot of room to grow. I think it could use more diversity and I know I could bring that. So yeah, I would be interested in continuing with it.”

Rodriguez has always been a strong advocate for representation on the screen and once cited his biggest creative victory as having the kids in Spy Kids be part of a Latino family.

In that sense, We Can Be Heroes is another big win with the film’s cast of 11 child superheroes notable for featuring a female lead, several black and Asian characters and a boy with special abilities who uses a wheelchair.

“I’m always looking to do that in my films since the beginning and that was what I liked about this early,” Rodriguez explains.

“It’s just something that was very organic to the story because the adult superhero team would have been assembled from the best of the best all over the world. That works well with this audience too with Netflix movies going out all at once all over the world.”

Still, having such a large ensemble cast created something of a logistical nightmare when it came time to shoot the film.

“You ask any director what is the most difficult scene to do and they will say a dinner scene. A dinner scene where there are like 10 people around a table because you have got to shoot a wide shot and then you have got to shoot everybody in there talking to each other. Close ups of everybody. “

“It’s very tedious because you have got 10 or 11 people and that’s what this whole movie was because there are 11 kids in every scene because they are all together, they’re not split up.

“I had to wrangle them for every shot and make sure they all had a very specific thing to do. We only had six hours a day, that’s like half a work day. So that was a challenge.”

While Rodriguez insists he makes kids films “purely for the innocence of children” with no adult jokes that go over their heads, We Can Be Heroes does feature a US President, played by Happy Gilmore’s Christopher McDonald, who audiences are initially told sleeps in until 12 and struggles to put a sentence together. Could this be a reference to anyone in particular?

Rodriguez laughs at this suggestion.

“It’s funny because I really did think maybe the adults would laugh at that but when we tested it to an audience in one of the earliest versions before the pandemic hit, kids laughed the most. So, they all thought they knew what we were talking about.”

Ultimately, he insists that was simply “misdirection” as part of the film’s wider message about the importance of parents being role models to their kids in order to ensure they make the world a better place because, as Rodriguez puts it, “obviously we’ve screwed this place up.”

“It’s designed to be something to inspire the next generation. It’s supposed to show that the world is kind of falling apart. That adults are not working together – just like the adult superhero team shows.

“There are constant battles within the group and this only underlines the problems in not being able to see eye to eye, to make a compromise, to make concessions, to make things work.”

Rodriguez hopes that while We Can Be Heroes entertains it also encourages better communication among parents and children to ensure the same mistakes found in society today, which have been drawn into sharp focus over the past 12 months, are not repeated.

“The kids need mentors; they need role models. Parents have to step up and be better examples and kids have to know that they are the future. They have to do things a better way and they are going to have better ideas.”

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We Can Be Heroes is available on Netflix from 25th December.

The post Robert Rodriguez on We Can Be Heroes and How Pedro Pascal Reminds Him of Harrison Ford appeared first on Den of Geek.

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