The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review

The second Hobbit film is such a massive improvement that, now we've seen the film it leads into, the first one will either seem much better than we remember or much worse.
I actually really like An Unexpected Journey - it was one of my favourite films of last year - but there's no denying that it doesn't even come close to the heights of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Desolation of Smaug still hasn't reached those magnificent peaks, but it at least feels like it's in the same mountain-range.

Where Journey, with its multiple extended intros, tried to ease us back into Middle Earth gently, Desolation plunges us straight into the world of the original films. I knew where we were before the title card even came up - we know this place, we've been here before, we recognise that guy with the carrot.
By the end of this opening flashback, I was already more immersed and invested in this world than I had been for the whole first movie. Last time felt like visiting an old stomping-ground - this one feels like coming home to family.
It's not just a matter of familiarity - though that's certainly a part of it - it's more about tone. New locations like the dwarf city of Erebor or the elf halls of Mirkwood feel more like Lord of the Rings than anything in Unexpected Journey. Even though we've never seen them before, the flooded slums of Laketown have the same tactile feel as Edoras in The Two Towers. It feels like the same world, in a way that Goblin Town never quite managed.

This new depth stretches to the characters, too. My big complaint last year was that I felt nothing for any of the thirteen dwarves - they were so weakly characterised that I couldn't tell most of them apart. In Desolation, as the group begins to argue and split (much like the Fellowship) each dwarf gets their own distinct character-moments and traits.
Did you know Oin is a medic? Or that Gloin is hoarding money for his family? Neither did I, but we do now!
We even gain some real insight into Thorin, who was just a bare archetype in Journey, as we see him struggle with his legacy. Richard Armitage was always great in the role, but this time he actually gets time to breathe and explore who this dwarf is.

New characters, like Bard the Surprisingly Welsh Bowman and Stephen Fry's slimy Laketown mayor, also feel more fleshed out and real, despite lacking the oh-so-drawn-out introductions of the first film. Evangeline Lilly is excellent as a new character who wasn't even in the books, melodramatic subplot and all, and Orlando Bloom is actually pretty great returning as Legolas. Though he clearly looks older, it's fun to see him as a younger elf, totally prejudiced against the race who would produce his best friend.

But the most important new character, of course, is the dragon. Chances are that's what you came to see - whether you're a full-on Tolkienite or just a casual film fan, this is the big one.

First, a caveat: I hate when films give dragons two legs. I hate it. They look awkward and they walk stupidly and they don't have the regal, powerful quality that dragons are supposed to have. Technically, they're not even dragons; they're wyverns - an entirely different species!
Everything from Harry Potter to Skyrim gets this wrong and it annoys the hell out of me. But it really looked like the Hobbit would be the one to break the cycle. Tolkien said Smaug had four legs, and he has always been represented that way - in fact, we see a drawing of a four-legged Smaug on Thorin's map in the first film, and in the Erebor flashback we actually see his forelegs!
Yet, at some point between the release of the first film and this one, they changed his design. Smaug is a wyvern now, with rediculously long pterodactyl arms that look even more stupid than usual. As he lumbered gracelessly around on his wing-joints I was hugely disappointed and annoyed.

So please understand that it is a big deal when I say, despite all this - despite not strictly even being one - Smaug is the single greatest dragon ever committed to screen.
Smaug, as Bilbo himself says, is stupendous. The effects are stunning (as you'd expect from Weta) and, beyond the insulting lack of legs, the design is pretty much perfect. His face is beautifully expressive, with horns and spikes that bristle and flatten with his mood. It's rare for a dragon to give a performance at all, but we've certainly never seen one this good. At least some credit goes to Benedict Cumberbatch, who not only voiced but also motion-captured the part, and his excellent work clearly shines through Smaug's reptilian features. He's proud and vain and greedy and jealous and just wonderful.
Smaug, like Gollum before him, becomes just another character in this film. You forget that this towering monster isn't real; and that's incredible.

His first scene - a tense standoff with Bilbo atop his mountain of treasure - is the film's standout moment and, were it not for Gravity, would be easily the best sequence of this, or any year. It's perfect - ripped straight from the minds of anyone who's read the book - and if Desolation had ended there, as it easily could, it would have been a perfect movie.

Apparently someone decided that the film had to end with an action scene, though, because there's a whole half-hour after this that feels unnecessary and tacked-on. The dwarves battle Smaug through what looks like the droid factory from Star Wars: Episode II. The scene is messy and chaotic, with nothing properly explained, and it ends in a way that's completely bizarre. It didn't need to be here and it really undercuts the fear and wonder of that treasure-hoard scene. For me, it spoiled the whole film a little, which is a shame because it got everything else so right.

What compounds this is that the rest of the movie's action is excellent. When they're fighting orcs and giant spiders early on it's fast and frantic, but it's always clear and structured. There's some really good stuff with the elves too, with Legolas getting a lot of great action gags.
The centrepiece is an incredible sequence where the dwarves, in barrels, tumble down a raging river. First they're chased by elves, then they're attacked by orcs, and it's always finding ways to keep the action fresh and inventive. Heads are stepped on, axes are passed back and forth, and the least-likely dwarf unexpectedly steals the show. There's so much going on but, despite the manic creativity, we never get lost - the execution is spot on. The whole sequence is pure joy from start to finish.
Chances are that the barrel scene was envisioned as the ending of the first movie, back when they were only planning two. Tight and thrilling - what an ending it would have been!
Unfortunately it now only serves to highlight how the Smaug fight, presumably a rushed addition to tie up this new middle film, feels sloppy and underdeveloped. The last twenty minutes really don't do the preceding film justice.

But that's the only chink in Desolation's armour; the single hole in Smaug's diamond waistcoat. Otherwise, this movie is impeccable.
Peter Jackson has a stronger grip on his tone this time, delivering a much more solid experience and a far more textured world. The action is terrific (with that one exception), the characters are finally compelling, and the dragon - dear sweet gods, that dragon - is everything you ever dreamed.

NerdTech's Film of the Year 2013!

It's been one year, give or take, since this site randomly turned into a movie blog for no reason. The first stuff on here was the 2012 Film of the Year awards so, naturally, we're marking our first anniversary with the 2013 awards!

The rules are the same as last year: this is not the best films of the year, it's the films that had the biggest effect on me - be that emotional, exciting, hilarious or terrifying. The best film I saw this year, objectively speaking, actually is on this list - but, because it's an intentionally subjective list, it barely made it into the top 3.
Gut reactions are the order of the day.


5: Iron Man 3 - Shane Black

It's been a pretty crappy year for blockbusters. Star Trek was fun but, in retrospect, indefensibly stupid; Man of Steel was a boring, self-serious mess; and GI Joe was just plain terrible. Even Pacific Rim, much as I loved it, peaked too soon and sagged at the end. Thank Odin, then, for Marvel.

Of their two offerings this year (three if you count Agents of SHIELD) Iron Man 3 was the clear winner. Shane Black made a superhero movie that breaks all the rules and never does what it's supposed to; at once both a part of the Marvel universe and its own crazy thing.
Iron Man, the guy in the suit, is barely in it - his biggest villain, likewise - and somehow that's actually to the movie's benefit. Black's film goes out of its way to be different, and the result is a fresh and unusual take on an overplayed genre. Even if it did upset a few people.

Many franchises this year split their fanbase down the middle, and Iron Man was no exception. Man of Steel and Star Trek both delighted and disgusted fans in equal measure. But where they caused divisions with their plotholes and problems, Iron Man 3 did it on purpose, with a pitch-perfect reveal that flipped everything on its head.
It's that mischievous nature - true to the comics yet completely subverting them - that earns it a place on this list. The fact that it also has a great script, brilliant action, and is often really funny is just the polish on this shiny metal suit.

Read the full review here!


4: Monsters University - Dan Scanlon

I can't say I was thrilled when I heard that they were making a prequel to one of my favourite films. Prequels tend to be a Bad Idea - I can't think of the last one that actually lived up to the original (X-Men: First Class maybe, but that's actually more of a reboot).
And, if we're being honest, MU can't match the pure magic of Monsters Inc. either. But it's different enough and funny enough and, as it hits its final act, clever enough that it never actually matters.

At first glance it's a pretty generic collage movie story, but the specifics of the film and its world make it far more unique and, more importantly, flat-out hilarious. Every moment of the film boasts a joke of some kind - be they tiny visual puns in the background or huge set-piece gags - and every single one lands.
It's Pixar's funniest film but, in true Pixar fashion, they don't let that get in the way of the great characters and their surprisingly heartfelt story. If nothing else, it's great that it keeps surprising us, even though we already know how it ends.

It's quite possible that Monsters University would have made this list merely for being the funniest film of the year but then, in a final act as dramatic as it is unexpected, it cements itself as one of the year's absolute best.

Read the full review here!


3: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Peter Jackson

For a number of reasons - including Christmas, and something you'll see in a moment - I still haven't finished my review of The Hobbit. Because I don't want to spoil that review, which will be up first thing next year, I'll keep this brief.
Just know that, even though I've given it the same ranking, Desolation is the film we all hoped An Unexpected Journey would be - a lighter, less serious tale than Lord of the Rings, but still recognisably set in the same world. Middle Earth is alive again, and everything from the characters to the locations has the depth and texture that the first Hobbit seemed to lack.

But none of that is why it's on this list. It's on this list for Smaug, and that's all you need to know.

Full review soon!


2: Gravity / Rush - Alphonso Cuarón / Ron Howard

This second position was originally going to go to Gravity alone; but then I crashed my car. Suddenly I'm jumping out of my skin every time I see break-lights, and Rush is very much at the forefront of my mind.
Since then I've been trying to rank them properly - to figure out which is better - but it's an impossible choice. Rush is probably the better film, but Gravity is the more powerful experience, and they both work so perfectly. In the end I've decided to cheat: my number 2 goes to immersive, beautiful, terrifying white-knuckle movies. Both of them.

They're very different films, of course. One is a true story that spans years, with a bunch of characters and a lot of talking; the other is a very fictional day-long story, with barely four characters and minimal dialogue. Also one of them happens in space.
But, as I'm lumping them together, they're actually more similar than they might appear. Both films are about their characters' single-minded determination to reach a goal - being World Champion and not dying respectively - and the horrific events that get in their way. By dragging us intimately through their stories, and by getting incredible work from the actors, they both make us care and feel for characters we normally wouldn't, either because we know nothing about them or because they're kind of awful.
The biggest similarity, though, is that they're both just flawlessly executed. Even though Howard uses a thousand shots where Cuarón might use three, every single one of those shots is necessary, meaningful and stunning to look at; and every one propels the film at a breakneck pace. Neither director wastes even a moment.

Despite their huge differences in story and style, these two share a spot because they're both transportive, breathless, powerful movies. And they both scared the shit out of me.

Read the full Gravity review here!
Read the full Rush review here!


1: Wreck-It Ralph - Rich Moore

All my favourite animated films seem to centre on unlikely friendships. Sully and Boo, Lilo and Stitch, Wall-E and Eve, Hogarth and the Giant, Hiccup and Toothless, even Wallace and Gromit. It was probably inevitable that Ralph and Vanellope would jump straight onto that list, too.
What wasn't inevitable is that they would do it with such style.

I don't just mean that it looks gorgeous - though it certainly does, with brilliant design work and ingenious game-like animation - but also the flair with which it pulls off its story. We're rapidly plunged into not one, but a whole handful of worlds, each with their own rules and textures. Characters feel fully-rounded from the first moment they appear. The main villain is somehow set up without us even knowing that there's meant to be one.
It's all just so clever and assured!

Cleverest and most assured of all, though, is how emotional things get. It's very funny the entire time - the whole cast is made up of comedians - and yet it choked me up again and again. That central pairing, for whatever reason, grabbed my heart as only animated odd-couples seem to do.
Often that emotion would come at the expense of scale but here, even at its most quiet and private, this film is never afraid to go big. When it all reaches its tremendous, apocalyptic climax everything, from those intimate emotions to the wonderful designs to tiny ideas we didn't know were important, collide to create an ending both huge and wonderfully personal.
The defining moment of the cinematic year, for me, was when a big dumb guy holding a cookie chanted a totally meaningless mantra, and somehow made it mean so much.

Wreck-It Ralph was the first new film I saw in 2013 - and nothing topped it. Honestly, nothing even came close.

Read the full review here!

Frozen Review

Walt Disney Animation Studios, reborn from the ashes of the early two-thousands, still haven't figured out how to make the songs work. Tangled came the closest, but neither The Princess and the Frog or now Frozen quite capture the magic of the old classics.
I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but the songs don't gel with the rest of the action the way they did in, say, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. It might be as simple as the type of music; where Tangled has a fairly traditional feel, Princess had its jazz thing and Frozen is more of a modern pop musical - it's no coincidence that one of the leads is Idina Menzel from Wicked. It might also be a pacing issue; Frozen crams all its songs into the first half, leaving the second half feeling kind of empty, and the last song we hear is a jokey comedy number which just doesn't seem right somehow.

It's clear, though, that Disney is truly passionate about keeping the animated musical alive, long after it was declared dead, and that is a wonderful thing. Maybe they haven't nailed it yet - there's bound to be a few hiccups in this early stage - but they've come damn close, and the fact they're trying at all is a triumph in itself.
Besides, while the songs may not blend seamlessly with the rest of the film, they're still great songs. There's a couple I'll be humming well into next year.

Their real strength, though, is how earnest and heartfelt they are. Every number, bar the aforementioned comedy one, crackles with emotion and really lets us into the hearts of the characters. What we find there isn't always obvious, either. A cute song about building snowmen suddenly becomes incredibly poignant, an even cuter song about snowmen is surprisingly bittersweet, and a duet combines the excitement of one character with the dread of another. The single best sequence in the entire film is when we're expecting one kind of song but get the complete opposite - it's just so unexpected and powerful!

That's sort of Frozen's entire philosophy; to be moving in unexpected ways. We have the traditional Disney setup of a princess with no parents, a handsome prince, a magical curse. But the unexpected part is that there's two princesses, sisters Elsa and Anna, and every part of the story - both the warmth and the conflict - comes from their relationship. Except for one snivelling ambassador, there's not even a villain, and it's amazing how well that works.

When they were younger the sisters were extremely close, as you'd expect, but one day Elsa, the oldest and heir to the throne, suddenly shut herself away and they've barely spoken since. The reason, unbeknownst to Anna, is that her sister can magically manipulate ice and snow. When, as children, those powers almost got Anna killed, Elsa became a recluse to keep her sister safe and try to repress the magic. All Anna knows is that her best friend suddenly shut her out and she misses her deeply.
When Elsa's secret is eventually revealed, in the most explosive and public way possible, she flees to the top of a mountain, accidentally trapping the country in an unending winter. This leaves Anna as the only one who can follow her up there and make things right - and that double meaning of "make things right" is basically the whole point. It's a quest to save the country, sure, but it's equally about saving their broken relationship.

While this sounds pretty heavy - and it is, particularly for Elsa - the film stays light and fun, with Anna almost hyperactive from being cooped up in a castle her whole life with no-one to talk to or play with. The side-characters help with this too, as Anna collects a small posse on her way up the mountain - Kristoff the hunky ice-farmer, Sven the reindeer, and Olaf the comedy snowman (he likes warm hugs) are all very funny and bounce off each other nicely.
While every character is important and has something to do within the story, including a handful of townspeople and the dashing Prince Hans, all of it's ultimately incidental to the central tale of two sisters. We never lose sight of the film's heart.

As a result it's a very touching film but, like Brave last year, the intimate focus leaves everything feeling quite small. There's only a few locations, and travelling between them seems to take very little time (Elsa's mountain must be quite a short one). But, like Brave again, the lack of scale allows for a very fine level of polish, and the emotions are anything but small. Though the finale in particular is technically tiny, it feels big - it's such an emotional moment for the sisters, and it staunchly refuses to take the obvious or traditional way out. It works brilliantly.

In the end, Frozen fully embraces everything that makes Disney musicals great, centring itself around a heartwarming family story, and balancing fun with genuine feeling. But, importantly, it always finds ways to mix those things up - from the number of princesses to the direction of the songs - becoming something unusual and special. This slightly subversive streak runs through everything, right down to the message of the film, which basically boils down to "most Disney movies have a stupid message." Add to that the only Disney song that will ever contain the word "fractal" and it's worth the ticket price already.

The Birthday of the Doctor

It's weird, but my relationship with Steven Moffat's run on Doctor Who seems to be closely mirroring my real-life relationship. There was the initial giddy joy, where everything was exciting and new; there was the part where we grew closer, but things got tangled up and complicated; then there was the rocky part where we didn't see much of each other, and when we did we just got into fights. In both cases we were on the verge of violently splitting up - and yet, in both cases, we rekindled our passion in the flickering darkness of a cinema.

Too much information? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely.

So, after a dragged-out two-year series that I borderline loathed, Doctor Who has won me back with its excellent 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. It probably helped that my birthday is only two days after the good Doctor's, and that, as a special birthday surprise, I got to see it in 3D on a cinema screen - we even had a Doctor Who cake!
Since I wrote three massive posts about why the last series sucked, I think it's only fair I write one about why the special didn't.

The 3D is actually a good place to start because, knowing they were going to film this in 3D, they seem to have written the plot and shot the episode specifically around that feature. This ends up being both a blessing and a curse.
It's a blessing because they created those cool 3D Timelord paintings to justify using the format and, as well as being a clever and interesting device and just plain looking really cool, travelling through them allowed for some crazy stuff with the camera. The whole thing was shot more cinematically than usual and looked great, but those painting sequences really stood out.
Unfortunately, while the story-centric painting stuff used deep and immersive 3D, the episode sometimes fell into using gimmicky comin'-atcha 3D as well. The many quick shots of Zygons lurching at the screen, and closeups of shattering glass, got annoying very quickly, and the intro of the TARDIS randomly swinging over London was just gratuitous. They actually seem to do that in every other Doctor Who special, for some reason, but this time felt rushed and cluttered and it was obviously only there to flaunt the 3D.

There were other problems too - this episode is far from perfect - but most of them are incredibly minor. The biggest problem for me, though, was that utterly baffling scene with Tom Baker.
Everyone else seems to have loved this (and I swear I saw an article somewhere calling this the "best handled cameo ever") - to which I can only say, what cameo were you watching? It begins really strong, staying gently ambiguous while informing the plot... but then it just turns into nonsense, making it far too overt who Baker is while also somehow making it more confusing and then they congratulate each other about it and then it tries to be sad and weighty even though he's delivering happy news and it makes no sense! There was a way to make Baker's cameo work, but this definitely wasn't it.

Conversely, a problem that a lot of other people had - that we never get to see the outcome of the Zygon situation - I had the opposite reaction to. I loved how open-ended that was, letting us know that they definitely worked something out, but not telling us what. I can see how it seems a little incomplete, but any more time with them would have spoiled that clever, and surprisingly deep, bit with the inhaler.

And that deep, clever writing is the hallmark of this episode. The script is sharp, with the characters bouncing off each other brilliantly, and the story is a strong one. But what really set The Day of the Doctor apart is this one line:

"What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grownup?"

That single sentence from John Hurt, and the look that the other two then give him, completely floored me. It instantly changes so much, adding new context to everything we've seen since the 2005 relaunch and giving meaning to things that were never intended to matter.
The Doctor is a thousand-year-old man in a body that keeps getting younger and younger, acting sillier and sillier. Until now that was just a matter of casting and writing, but now it's a plot-point. Not just a throwaway plot-point to explain something, either, but a meaningful decade-long arc that ends with this special, allowing the Doctor to move on and explaining why his next incarnation is the much older Peter Capaldi. It's fantastically clever and, more importantly, the pain in Tennant and Smith's silent reaction gives it great emotional power, too.

That whole dungeon scene, with Matt Smith's perfect delivery of the word "spoilers", was better written and better acted than the whole of the last two years put together. From that moment on I was back in love with Doctor Who.

The special as a whole actually works the same way, reframing things we thought we knew or just accepted as read. Until now we thought Gallifrey was destroyed but, without actually changing anything that happened, The Day of the Doctor gives new meaning to everything we've ever seen. We can go back and watch the Eccleston series again and, although nothing has changed, it all means something different. Again, where the Time War was previously just an event that happened, there's now an arc, with the Doctor coming to terms with what he's done and eventually owning it and facing it. Twice.

Of course, while this episode heavily influences the whole of the timeline, it's heavily influenced by the timeline in turn. It does what all anniversary episodes should: referencing and commenting on the past, while remaining a self-contained story.
Beyond using an obscure legacy monster, and returning to UNIT, the War Doctor's exasperation at his successors (and, later, Tennant's "I don't want to go") felt like a critique of the show itself, and the changes it's undergone in fifty years. It celebrates but also criticises, and then it goes one further. Where all programmes can reference the past, Doctor Who can actually visit it, filling in gaps and following up eight-years of loose ends. The Time War is the obvious one, but Captain Jack's transporter and the Doctor's marriage to Elizabeth are just as vital and just as welcome. Even the ending's cruel Eccleston cocktease, infuriating though it was, works perfectly in this respect. It's pulling the whole timeline together, giving things new meaning and purpose.

The ultimate example of this is obviously that massive, crowd-pleasing finale - a half-century of television brought together all at once - and it might be the cleverest part of a very clever episode.
It's not that it's particularly ingenious as an idea, but the way it's built up so subtly, without us even noticing, is astounding. Moments we think are throwaway gags or just neat ideas - like the four-hundred-year sonic-screwdriver calculation, or the 3D pictures which could so easily have only been a gimmick - unexpectedly come back in that huge, monumental payoff. Bringing in all thirteen Doctors at the last minute could have felt eye-rollingly silly, but because it's set up earlier, using nothing more than a door and a screwdriver, it becomes an overwhelmingly powerful moment and, in our cinema at least, it made the crowd explode.

This special is full of the stuff Moffat does so well, and it's the same stuff that was missing all series. Wibbly-wobbly stories across multiple timelines that weave tightly together in surprising ways. Like the series it seems to be a jumble of disconnected ideas - Zygons, paintings, queens, sentient superweapons, complex maths and more - but, unlike the floundering series, it all turns out to be important and relevant, and it all slots together to form something great.
It's so cleverly done, in fact, that it's basically showing off. I think the Doctor would approve.

Going forward, the biggest takeaway from The Day of the Doctor is that it gives Who a specific purpose. Over the last two years we've seen what happens when Moffat's Doctor is left drifting aimlessly, and it wasn't pretty. With its clear new goal of finding Gallifrey, the show has found a strong foundation of story to build upon. That, as this episode once again proved, is when Moffat excels as a showrunner, and that fills me with hope.
The other major issue this series was, of course, Clara. She isn't actually in The Day of the Doctor a great deal, but already we're seeing her vague character become a little more settled and defined. She's a teacher now, which is nice, but much nicer is that she seems to be developing actual traits; she's pragmatic and sensible and, while she may well have been those things before, they never really stood out against whatever other random traits she had this week.
She's not there yet, but Clara is beginning to look like a character. If Series 8 can continue to sketch out her edges, and if it ties that process to a more focused story, then maybe our relationship can blossom again. In fact, if it continues to follow real life, I may very well end up proposing.

Bending the Rules

Legend of Korra's second series ended this week with a pretty great double episode, but it brings up something that we really need to talk about. As such, expect massive spoilers from this point on.

It's been obvious for a while now what this series was leading up to. They revealed that the Avatar was created by the melding of a human and the Spirit of Light, they introduced an equal and opposite Spirit of Darkness, and they had a human working with and trying to free that spirit. There was only one logical place this setup was going: a Dark Avatar.

When, sure enough, Korra's pantomime-villain of an uncle merged with the evil spirit Vaatu, his eyes burning with the familiar (yet evil) power of the Avatar State, it looked like this finale was going to be epic.
And it was epic, insofar as it became a giant-monster fight for some reason. That harbour battle (weird bit with Jinora not withstanding) was probably the perfect ending for the series, with Korra finally connecting with her spiritual side and learning to cope without the Avatar State. But the preceding fight, where the two opposing Avatars clashed as equals, felt lacking somehow. Something was off, but I couldn't quite figure out... wait, why is Unalaq only bending water?
Oh. Oh no.

The problem - and it took me far too long to realise this - is that the word "Avatar" no longer means what we think it means.

For three years, Last Airbender opened with Katara's voiceover saying, "Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them." When you say "Avatar", that's the definition that comes to mind. That's what the show and the world it created were about. Naturally, it's the same definition that comes to mind when you say "Dark Avatar", too. But, as this finale made painfully clear, that's not what it means any more.

We've been told from the beginning that the Avatar was also an important spiritual figure - the Bridge between Worlds. This series of Korra, Book Two: Spirits, aimed to explore and focus on that side of the character, which is admirable because its not something we've really seen before. This all came to a head in Beginnings, a big two-part episode set ten-thousand-years in the past, which showed us the origins of the first ever Avatar.
I explained last month how I found Beginnings both wonderful and deeply problematic - but this finale, and the way it treats the Dark Avatar, shows that the problem is much worse than I thought:

Beginnings, and this whole second series of Korra, actually separates the spiritual and physical aspects of the Avatar into two different things. The Avatar is no longer a spiritual being who can bend all four elements - the Avatar is now a spiritual being, and also someone who can bend all four elements for totally unrelated reasons.

The worst part is that "Avatar", as a word, now only seems to refer to the spiritual, glowy-eyed part of that equation. The physical part - the bending all the elements part - does not fall under that umbrella.
Wan, the first Avatar, could bend all of the elements before he became the Avatar. Every Avatar since has inherited this skill from him as a side-effect, but it actually has nothing to do with being the Avatar. In theory, there's no reason the Avatar should necessarily be a bender at all.

In practice what it means for the story is that when Unalaq, a waterbender, becomes the Dark Avatar it has no effect on his bending. It doesn't grant him the power over all four elements, as any sensible person might have expected it to, because that's not actually what "Avatar" means any more. Unalaq is still just a waterbender, albeit a very strong one with glowing eyes.
After a whole series of building up to this ultimate villain, Korra's equal and opposite - the yin to her yang - is nothing of the sort. He's just another super-bender, like the Firelord or the bloodbenders from last series. He may be an Avatar in name, but he certainly doesn't feel like one.

If this new definition of "Avatar" had already been established - if Beginnings had occurred in a previous series - then fine. They'd be stuck with it and they'd have to work around it, with their Dark Avatar limited to just one element. But it wasn't! This series was all planned together as a whole - meaning they chose the Dark Avatar as the villain, and chose to substantially weaken that villain by redefining "Avatar" at the same time. That means it must have been a conscious decision to make things work this way - and it's a decision I do not understand at all! It utterly cripples this finale, and it undermines the rest of the show.
Unalaq is supposed to be a dark mirror of Korra herself, showing us how easily her powers could be used for evil, and how devastating that would be - but that powerful theme is lost because he doesn't actually have her powers. Plus, far more importantly, their fight would have been so much more awesome if Unalaq had been using all four elements. As it was, the battle was far too short and offered nothing we hadn't seen before. It was disappointing, basically, when there was absolutely no reason for it to be.
I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the fight. It was fun, it was dramatic, it was exciting. I just didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I could have.

This whole thing makes no sense to me. I don't understand why you would even include an evil Avatar if it's not only a version of the Avatar we're unfamiliar with, but not even one we'd associate with the word. Calling him that sets up certain expectations and, in the case of most viewers, I'm guessing those expectations involved bending more than just water. When he didn't do that, what else could we feel but disappointment?
They could have called him something else - the Dark Vessel, say, or the Dark Prophet - and then there would have been no problem. But no, they called him "Avatar", which instantly brings four series' worth of baggage and expectations with it. Unalaq simply doesn't live up to those expectations. It's like they made it disappointing on purpose.

From the perspective of the writers, I cannot fathom the reason for any of this. They chose a potentially incredible villain, with thematic weight and a plethora of elemental powers; then they stripped him of those things, keeping his name but not much else. In doing so, they've forever bent the meaning of the mythology's central concept - they've entirely changed what it means to be the Avatar - and I don't see a single upside to any of that.

On the other hand, from an in-universe story perspective, I understand the reason all too well. What exactly is the reason Korra can bend all the elements, where Unalaq cannot? Why, it's because of those bloody lion-turtles. It always is.

Gravity Review

Gravity opens with a deafening roar - a wave of sound that rises to drown out the world - and then suddenly cuts to silence. As planet Earth hangs there on the screen, hauntingly beautiful, you realise that you’re holding your breath. And so is every other person in the room. You won’t start breathing again for an hour-and-a-half.

I almost feel I should stop there. That’s all you really need to know about this incredible film: it is breathtaking in more ways than one, and it doesn’t let up for a second.

Gravity is a weird one. I don’t want to say much for fear of spoilers, yet it might be impossible to spoil. What actually happens is just a short list of events that Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s astronauts go through in linear order. No reveals, no twists, not even much in the way of developments, just a fairly simple journey. The story really isn’t the point, so recounting it won’t spoil anything at all.
What can be spoiled is how this journey, and each event along the way, plays out. What makes this film so special is just how incredibly immersive the experience is. We are not watching them take this journey - we are taking the journey ourselves. For the duration of the film we are actually there, in space, feeling all of the awe and fear that comes with that.

Alfonso Cuarón, director of the superb Children of Men and the best Harry Potter film (Azkaban, obviously), has crafted one of the most powerful, visceral movies I’ve ever seen. Using his trademark über-long takes (that first shot of Earth is something like fifteen-minutes long), incredible dynamic camera work, and some of the best 3D since Avatar, this world swallows you up into its reality. Then it shakes you like a ragdoll. Because it’s not enough for Cuarón to simply put his audience into space, in a more immersive way than anyone ever has before, he has to put us through hell when we get there.

The voice of Houston’s Mission Control is provided by Ed Harris. It’s a wonderful nod to Apollo 13, but it should also give you some idea where this is going. Following the destruction of a Russian satellite, a deadly cloud of space-debris is sent hurtling round the planet towards our shuttle, currently docked with the Hubble Telescope. Things go very wrong very fast, and things continue to spiral breathlessly out of control for the whole rest of the movie.
Things fall apart and explode and tumble weightlessly, just out of reach. The astronauts spin off into the void and, worse, fall towards the planet itself. People run out of oxygen, they run out of fuel, they get tangled in wreckage and constantly - constantly - slammed into things as they fall apart. We feel every moment of it on a primal, emotional level; and, all the time, we’re painfully aware of that satellite wreckage, speeding back around the Earth to take another shot.

Everything Cuarón does is designed to pull us in and make this feel as real as possible, and that it certainly does, but there's two things that deserve special mention. First is his absolute dedication to silence in space. There is, of course, no sound in space, but most films ignore this because it feels weird. Here we see collisions and explosions, but the only sounds are ones the astronauts themselves would hear - distant vibrations through the objects they touch, dampened by their spacesuits. As well as making the world more real, it also adds to the sense of isolation and strangeness of the environment.
The second is Sandra Bullock's performance. Clooney's good too, but as the assured veteran astronaut he's basically just playing George Clooney in space. Bullock, though, is incredible as a medical doctor thrown into this impossible situation. She starts off vulnerable and helpless (as you probably would) but she slowly begins to fight back, determined to make it through. What sold it for me is how she slowly opens up - starting off quiet and dejected, but eventually talking to herself and grinning with adrenalin-fuelled madness. It's exactly how I get if I lock myself out of the house, and I totally bought it. Some have said she's not a very fleshed out character, but she doesn't need to be - because Bullock so inhabits this woman, and because we share her trip through hell, we intimately know her even though we know nothing about her.

There are problems. There's one sequence which doesn't really work, feeling too forced and pulling us out of the world, and there's a moment of symbolism that's beautiful and evocative but goes on for far too long. The most problematic is that, while the whole film frequently bends science for its own purposes, there's one crucial story-moment that hinges on some seriously dodgy physics. But that's more or less it - those are the only hiccups in this otherwise believable and completely immersive universe.

In my review of Rush I called it tense - "cripplingly so" - but Rush is a carefree romp next to Gravity. This film is pure white-knuckle terror; except in those few quiet moments of dread, while you wait for the next thing to go wrong. Those parts are somehow even worse. It's a phenomenal film with truly gorgeous visuals and one amazing central performance. It's not much of a narrative but, bloody hell, it's an experience. Gravity is atmospheric and gripping and unyieldingly intense, and once it has its claws in you it doesn't let go.
The crazy thing is that, as much ridiculous hyperbole as I'm using, I'm still selling it short!

You need to see this film. You need to see it in 3D. And you need to see it right now.

Thor: The Dark World Review

Dear Man of Steel,
I saw two different films this year that ended with godlike aliens hitting each other impossibly hard over and over again. One of them managed to keep this fresh and interesting, and had personal stakes for the audience to connect to. The other one was you.

Thor: The Dark World manages to keep its final battle entertaining and engaging, even though it's just a repetitive sequence of blows, by constantly changing the nature of the fight. It keeps shifting location, so the visuals never get stale and the fighters have to deal with their environment as well as each other - caught on a collapsing ledge or sliding down a building. The tone keeps shifting too, breaking the tension with funny moments, which makes the serious parts all the more impactful.
Even though the combatants are pretty much invincible, the fight has real peril and danger because there are human characters running around and helping, almost getting killed in the process. It's a battle over the fate of the world - nay, the universe - but it's the fate of these characters that we actually care about. That's also what the hero cares about, fighting to protect these people rather than just fighting to win.

What I'm saying, Man of Steel, is that Thor 2 does everything you didn't. I hope you're taking notes.

Before the ascension of The Avengers, benevolent god-king of superhero movies, the original Thor was the film that, to me, felt most like a comic book. These are silly films about silly people in silly costumes, and Thor's bombastic, over-the-top tone captured that perfectly. It's just so much fun, from its first frame to its last.
But a lot of people disagree. Thor usually gets ranked at the bottom of the Marvel pile for exactly this reason - people don't like that it's silly. So, when Marvel announced that gritty Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor would be at the (winged) helm of the sequel, and later when all the stills and footage looked like Lord of the Rings, there was a real danger that this light-hearted series had been turned into, well, you.
But rest assured, though it even goes so far as having "Dark" in the title, Thor 2 is every bit as light and breezy as its predecessor.

What Taylor does bring is a sense of realism that was missing from Kenneth Branagh's very operatic original. This is the same thing you were aiming for, Man of Steel, but Taylor understands that it needn't sap the joy out of the experience. The acting here is more naturalistic, and Asgard feels much more like a real place, but the movie still knows how to find enjoyment and humour in that - something you completely forgot. Though it does carve out a more believable world for itself, nested within the larger Marvel Universe, that doesn't prevent it from shoving the massive God of Thunder into a tiny car or having Stellan Skarsgård in his pants. Realistic doesn’t have to mean serious.

Yet The Dark World has its share of serious, too. The plot this time kicks off when Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster becomes the unwitting host of the Aether - an ancient, all-purpose alien superweapon. This is staggeringly convenient, of course, but it works because it immediately gives Thor, and us, a reason to heavily invest in what is otherwise a very bland McGuffin. Thor spirits Jane away to Asgard to figure out what’s going on, and the two quickly rekindle their romance because, in both cases, wouldn’t you?
The seriousness comes from the fact that Jane is slowly dying from exposure to the Aether, and that having it also makes her a target for the villains of the piece. They want to use the Aether to destroy the universe but, problematically, they’re also the only ones who can get it out of Jane. This all works to make her a more active part of the story than last time, as she finds herself at the centre of the conflict rather than watching from the sidelines.

For that reason and others, it’s a stronger and more propulsive story than the first Thor, rushing us through scenes and locations where the original often meandered. This is great in that everything feels very urgent and energetic, but not so great in that is skims over things that probably needed more explanation and depth - namely those villains.
The Dark Elves are a race who existed before the universe (somehow) and who now want to destroy that universe. They have awesome designs and technology, which leads to some brilliant action, but there’s barely anything to them. They feel both underused and underserved - especially their leader, Malekith. There's talk of his backstory and motivations, but there's nothing there we can actually latch onto. He basically boils down to angry guy with grudge. He's certainly no Loki - but the film ultimately gets away with that because Loki is Loki, and he's here too.

In a lot of ways this is actually Loki's movie. He has the strongest character journey, going from traitorous prisoner to untrusted ally and beyond. This is probably Tom Hiddleston's best performance yet, as this arc means he can play more than just the jealous prince. Loki gets to be a brother and a son; an enemy and a friend; wrong but also wronged. More than anything else, though, Thor 2 reminds us that Loki is the God of Mischief, not of Evil, and he gets to be far more of a trickster here than he has in the past.

Loki, like Jane, also has more to do. That’s something that applies to almost every character, actually. Even minor players like Kat Denning’s Darcy, Rene Russo’s Frigga, and Idris Elba’s awesome awesome Heimdall are far more involved in the story this time. Sif and the Warriors Three may be missing a member for some reason, and they may even have less screentime, but they feel more fleshed out and have a bigger impact on the plot. Everyone feels necessary and important.
The only person with less to do, weirdly, is Thor himself. Because the main arcs of the film aren’t his - they’re Jane’s and Loki’s - he sometimes seems to just be along for the ride. It’s never a problem, though, because Chris Hemsworth continues to embody the character so wonderfully. Whether he’s cheerfully destroying rock monsters or angrily confronting his brother, Thor is such a great presence that you don’t mind his reduced role.

Any other problems are similarly minor. An important scene involving Malekith's face is mishandled, and a subplot with Sif is implied but never takes off. There's also nothing that comes even close to that one blisteringly hot kiss from the first film. But these are tiny complaints, drowned out by the overwhelming positives - and when Hemsworth gets his shirt off, in a scene that’s somehow even more gratuitous than the first Thor, you’ll be willing to overlook all of them.

Thor: The Dark World is a great addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe but, far more than that, it’s a great continuation of the Thor series. It takes the groundwork of the original film and builds upwards in every way. The world and characters are both more fleshed out and more grounded; the story is more focused and polished, and gives every single character (except one) something to do; the action is bigger and better; and all the while it sticks to the world and the light-hearted tone established by its predecessor.

The reason I'm telling you all this, Man of Steel, is that the first Thor suffers from many of the same problems as you: characters are underdeveloped or don't have much to do, and the story is nebulous and unfocused. If Thor 2 can build on these problems to become something stronger, then I'm hoping you can too.
Of course, Thor still worked because it offset these problems with an abundance of fun and energy, where you opted for darkness and brooding. You can learn from Thor 2 here, as well. This world feels as real as yours, without having to sacrifice its sense of humour. It feels more real, in fact, because it's easier to relate to the people who live there.

Failing that, at the very least, please try to learn something from that final action scene. When I watch two space-gods repeatedly punch each other, I want to see variety and creativity, I want to see highs and lows, peaks and troughs, I want to feel real human stakes and, above all else, I want to enjoy it.
And that's exactly what The Dark World delivers.

Best wishes for the future,
Matthew


P.S. One last thing to learn from Marvel is that you should call your sequel Man of Steel 2, either with or without a subtitle. Dropping the numbers from their non-Iron Man films is the one slip-up Marvel have made thus far, and now is your big chance to exploit it. Who knows - being easy to arrange on a shelf might make all the difference!