#it’s a little embarrassing that the main characters are the weakest actors in the whole thing

[jupitersflytrap]

okay actually that one wasn’t too bad. still think the long-form plot is a shambles and the dialogue is not getting any better but i can’t say no to weeping angels.

might head back to the coal face to try and watch another episode of doctor who series 13 because i feel like i have to catch up before the 60th special

[roominthecastle]

Mike Schur on Ted Danson, the ethics of surprise twists, objectives vs superobjectives, and the narrative pitfalls of the reset button

(2017 Gold Derby interview)

How did Ted Danson come to join the project?

Mike Schur: He's my hero, acting-wise and comedy-wise. Cheers is my favorite show and Sam Malone is my favorite character in the history of TV. So I decided to pitch him the character, to write the character for him. I was driving to meet him at his manager's office and I had one thought going through my head constantly, which was "You've gotta be cool. Don't look like an idiot." I'm not a person who gets really revved up by a celebrity. There's a movie star or a TV star at my workplace every week, so I've kinda got inoculated to it a little bit. There are still some people who would make me jittery but not many. Ted was the biggest one. Honestly. Cheers was so formative for me, so important to me, that I got actively nervous. I kept thinking "You gotta be cool. You gotta be cool. You gotta be cool." I got to his office and I met him and he said, "I'm very excited to meet you." And I said, "I BET I AM MORE EXCITED!!" and immediately I was like "you are already blowing it." And he said, "Oh. Why is that?" And I said, "Because I consider you to be the greatest actor in the history of the medium of television." And it was so embarrassing, so not-cool, after telling myself to be cool a hundred times. I honestly thought I had blown it. I remember thinking that if I were this man, I would either think I was a disgusting suckup, or I would think this guy is trying so hard to make me believe something that isn't true, which is that he loves me this much, that either way I am out. Fortunately, Ted is a more centered person than I am. He let it go and I pitched him the show, we had a really great conversation and he signed on. That was the bumpiest moment for us. The first moment when I was an idiot. After that, completely smooth sailing.

He couldn't be a nicer person. He's very thoughtful and very kind and very chill. The reason I fell in love with him as an actor is his timing. I remember loving his comedic timing before I knew what the concept of comedic timing was. There's something about the rhythm of his delivery and the way he would pause. He commands a space better than anyone I've ever seen. We are writing these lines for him and I look at a script and because his style is so distinct and his timing is so good, you can imagine exactly how it's gonna sound, and then he executes it and it's exactly the way you imagined it. He's worked so hard at being good, it's inspiring. He's in his 60's and he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone ever, and yet he works so hard, he wants to get it right so badly and he's so humble in his approach. By human standards, it's great, we should all try to do our job well. But by Hollywood standards, it's shocking and truly inspiring how hard he works at his craft to try and get better every day at his age with his resume.

It's hard to think of a person who has done a better job in more different genres. You put him in a multi-cam sitcom, he creates an all-time hall of fame iconic character. You put him in a very dark, twisted drama in Damages, and he's still probably the best villain that show had. You put him in a single-cam sitcom, and he just blows the door off of it. Especially one where the character had to undergo a massive transformation over the course of the season. He was playing six different things at any one time and once we got to the end with the big twist, they all had to retroactively fit together, they had to be consistent. And Curb is largely improvised, for God's sake. It's like he's checking off genre by genre, being great in every one of them.

Did Ted know that twist was coming?

MS: Yes, from the beginning, from the meeting where I cracked into pieces. Ted and Kristen knew. I felt that actors of their stature deserved to know the full range of what they were signing on for. The entire show was going to be on the backs of Kristen and Ted in different ways. It was almost an ethical question for me because I was approaching these two actors who can basically do whatever they want in TV or movies or anything. In order to get them to sign on, I felt it would be almost unethical - knowing where I was going and what I wanted to do with the season and the show in general - I felt it would be borderline unethical to get them to sign on without them knowing the whole thing. And it was more unethical with Ted because SPOILER ALERT the secret is that this is not actually heaven, it is hell, and this entire thing is a torture chamber. Michael - Ted's character - has appeared to be the architect of a little slice of heaven, but everybody else except for the main 4 characters is an actor and they are torturing these four people. This neighborhood he put together was designed for the four of them to torture each other. They are supposed to be driving each other crazy for all eternity.

It wouldn't have been super unethical if I hadn't told Kristen because she was playing the same character all the way through the 13 episodes. But for Ted, I felt that if I don't tell him this, what I'm doing is getting Ted Danson to sign on to a show where he thinks he is playing essentially an angel, and then I'm going to reveal at the end that he is a demon. And that felt uncool. If he, for whatever reason, didn't want to do that, he should be able to say, "I don't like where this is going." If I hadn't come up with that twist when I pitched the show to him, I don't think it would have been unethical. But since I knew from before I ever talked to him or Kristen, I felt I owed it to them to tell them the whole story. Fortunately, they both liked it, they were both into it, and Ted was far more interested in playing a secret demon who appeared to be an angel than he was in just playing an angel, which I understand. It's a better gig. It's more fun to play the guy who turns out to be a crazed person than just a nice, pleasant, boring, happy nice guy.

It was also probably good to fill him in because it could have influenced the way he played scenes earlier in the season.

MS: True. Ted and Kristen knew and the other four actors in the main cast did not. [Their characters] were being fooled and I was like "let [the actors] be fooled, too, for as long as it's appropriate”. But because they didn't know, Ted, Kristen, and I had to come up with ways on the set to talk about what was going on. We used these acting terms called "objective" and "superobjective". Objective is what you are trying to accomplish in the scene and superobjective is the emotional, kind of resonant thing like a giant umbrella you are going for. So I'd say, "Ted, your objective in this scene is to make Chidi feel better, but your superobjective is to get him to throw his life's work into the garbage.” That's the "true task" that you're quietly, secretly aiming for. “What am I appearing to try to do?” versus “What am I actually trying to do?” He and Kristen handled it amazingly well. I really think that if you go back and watch everything that's in the show, you will see these tiny glimpses from time to time of Ted taking a certain amount of delight in what appeared at the time to be something good that was happening for one of the characters, but in reality it was a thing that was going to make that character's life even worse. It's a testament to how well they can juggle these objectives and superobjectives.

Ted really locked onto this one idea that he was a sort of a middle manager. That was a thing that appealed to him very early, that he is not God, or, in this case, the Devil, but he's in the middle, sort of a bureaucrat. He really liked that because it allowed him to play a middle manager trying to climb the corporate ladder, but also he doesn't have a lot of power and there's people above him that he has to answer to. Sometimes he screwed up and was incompetent, sometimes it looked like he was screwing up and incompetent but it was all part of the plan. He really liked that idea of inserting himself - in terms of this hierarchy - right in the middle. He's not the weakest guy but he's not the strongest, either. He really enjoys playing the nuanced middle, which is a very smart instinct.

Season 2

MS: The advantage of the way that we produced the first season and of knowing what the ending was before we even started writing episode two was that it gave us a lot of time to think about how we’re gonna dig ourselves out of the hole we were about to put ourselves in. Because when you upend the show to that extent and you literally press the reset button, it's a very risky thing creatively because number one: you hope the audience doesn't think "am I just gonna watch the same season again? How's that interesting? Everything goes back to square one." And the other dangerous thing is, you start to run the risk of the audience feeling like nothing matters. If Michael can just reset them whenever he wants to, then who cares? Who cares what they go through? Who cares whether they learn or grow or change or become better? So the main thing we tried to do was come up with a couple different structural pieces that couldn't happen, so it wouldn't be just the same season from beginning to end.

There is some external pressure that meant that Michael couldn't just reset them for the next five seasons. That pressure comes from this boss played by Marc Evan Jackson who basically says, "You can try again but if it goes sideways, you're done." There is a threat, a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over his head. And Eleanor managed in a very quick thinking kind of scrappy Eleanorish kinda way to sneak herself a note by shoving it in Janet's mouth. It says "Find Chidi." So when she wakes up, instead of having to put the whole thing together from scratch over the course of an entire year, she has directed herself to a person who can accelerate the process. These and a couple of other things we buried in there are our way of saying to the audience "it's not the same season, things are going to change and move on."

[robedisimo]

Double-decker review: Marvel’s Luke Cage & Iron Fist (season 1) [MILD SPOILERS]

Netflix’s own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe got off to a decidedly good start with 2015′s Daredevil, but it’s safe to say that – like the theatre-bound side of the MCU, some would argue – it never managed to recapture the heights of that first outing.

As new chapters in its own microcosm keep pouring in and the same formula is repeated time and time again, a few crucial weak points have started emerging. This culminated in the release of the first outright-panned Marvel production to date, Iron Fist, earlier this year, following the universal praise heaped upon Luke Cage in late 2016.

But do the two shows really sit at opposite ends of the quality spectrum? And if not, what are the reasons behind such disparity of treatment? What follows is a brief(ish) review of both series, with my usual opinions on their strong and weak points, followed in turn by some final conclusions. Let’s see where we end up.

LUKE CAGE

Marvel’s Luke Cage picks up where we left the character after his introductory supporting role in Jessica Jones, a smart move that also plays organically to the two heroes’ relationship in comics canon. Cage is still laying low in Harlem and a long way away from widespread recognition as a public figure, but things keep getting in the way of his constant struggle to maintain a low profile.

The show’s strongest point by far is its identity, in more than one sense. Capitalising on its all-black cast and NYC setting, it embraces a musical aesthetic reminiscent of 1970s blaxploitation movies to great effect, using its soundtrack as a pervasive narrative element as it swings back and forth between funky and hip-hop tunes.

So Luke Cage has a very definite style, and rolls with it. The cast is also quite excellent in spots, although unfortunately not in the person of the main man himself, whose stony countenance doesn’t really offer much throughout the season aside from the odd quality of being the visual equivalent of anti-Will Smith (in that when viewed from the front he appears to have no ears).

Not that he’s given a lot to work with in the first place. Luke Cage’s rendition of the titular character is remarkably subdued, almost passive: in the comics, Cage is a brash, loud, enthusiastically boisterous hero, often all too happy to show off his powers in a good round of fisticuffs.

This TV version of Luke Cage isn’t the bombastically-named “Power Man” yet, and perhaps never will be. And, in my opinion, it’s mostly a matter of the showrunners being afraid to go too far with him. I don’t know whether it’s because they wanted the first solo outing of an African-American hero in the extended MCU to be a role model of sorts, or if the issue transcends racial identity altogether: the fact remains that Luke Cage is largely a hagiography, in stark contrast with Daredevil’s and Jessica Jones’s hyper-flawed portrayal of their protagonists.

The highest point of the season is probably its obligatory “origins” flashback, in which Cage can chew on some more rage and fury. It also unnecessarily complicates the backstory presented in Jessica Jones – not the only change to the character, as he’s also rewritten into someone who’s not a New York native, for some reason – but that’s a mounting issue with the series as a whole, as the story gets more convoluted and less effective after a decidedly solid first half.

On the whole Luke Cage offers an intriguing crime drama atmosphere, inspired musical ambience and some good casting choices, but also an uneven narrative experience that peters out as it should instead raise the stakes. That, coupled with a reluctance to do anything new visually speaking – it’s still the same old, boring super-strength stuff, achieved on a two-dollar budget by making actors bend resin gun props and adding metal crunching noises in post-production – keeps the show from reaching the same peaks of quality of its two predecessors.

[Verdict: MIXED TO POSITIVE]

IRON FIST

Iron Fist’s premiere carried with it a brand of topicality radically opposed to its direct forerunner: while Luke Cage confidently brandished the striking image of a bulletproof black hero in an American sociopolitical climate shook by police brutality, the last piece in the Defenders puzzle had the misfortune of hinging on a “rich white man” narrative – both on the protagonist and the antagonist side – right in the middle of a rampant wave of anti-Trump sentiment.

Not that the show was free of controversy even before it aired, due to some exceptionally contrived outrage over the subject of racial casting: many viewers and critics took up arms against the perceived slight of casting a white leading actor – Game of Thrones’s Finn Jones – in the role of a hero whose central theme revolves around far-Eastern martial arts, ignoring or outright dismissing the fact that the character has always been depicted as Caucasian in the source material. Terms such as “unwoke” were unironically used in allegedly-professional reviews, which is likely all you need to know on the subject.

So Iron Fist stepped out the gate on the wrong foot already, but that alone certainly can’t account for the entirety of its negative press. For starters, it’s undeniable that its “orphaned industry magnate returning home after being presumed death, and having acquired exceptional abilities from Asian mentors in the bargain” narrative is by now increasingly tired, having been employed in films and on television twice already on the DC side of things – in multiple Batman adaptation and CW’s Arrow – and, obviously, in the MCU's seminal Iron Man.

Therefore the show definitely doesn’t start its game with a good hand to play. It doesn’t help, either, that its main drawing point – good martial arts action – is consistently disappointing throughout the series, with very little in the way of the brutal, heavily stylised fight choreography seen in both seasons of Daredevil.

To make matters worse, Iron Fist takes a significant number of steps backwards where source material representation is concerned, coming across as something from the “dark and gritty” age of superhero adaptations from the early 2000s. After Doctor Strange blew open the gates to the mystical side of the MCU, even the not-that-ambitious Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. decided to have fun with it by reintroducing the character of Ghost Rider to the Marvel stable; instead, Iron Fist chooses to do little to nothing with its protagonist’s praeternatural powers and, even more baffling, to never show the arcane realm of K’un-Lun where he was imbued with them.

It’s not that much of a surprise, given these Netflix shows’ track record: Daredevil notably refused to play with the more ultramundane aspects of the canon such as the character’s radar sense – only giving in to the sillier side of things in season 2, half of which prominently featured mystical resurrecting ninjas – while Jessica Jones really didn’t want to have a purple-skinned guy as its main antagonist and went so far as to openly mock the heroine’s original comic-book costume, something Luke Cage did as well.

It’s the kind of embarrassment at the source material you’re adapting that borders on blatant disrespect, and an overt contradiction of the trend of happily embracing the wacky side of comic canon established by Marvel Studios over the last decade. It works when the quality of the story you’re telling trumps this kind of snide insult to comic fans – as was the case with Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, or indeed Daredevil and Jessica Jones themselves – and it just doesn’t when the content is lacking, as was the case with the sarcastically-titled Fant4stic.

Iron Fist can’t, unfortunately, offer a compelling enough storyline, although not for lack of trying. The thirteen-episode series packs enough double-crossing, backstabbing and allies-becoming-enemies – and vice versa – to fill three seasons of a different show, but the execution is rather lacklustre and the acting is often rather poor across the board, with Jones in particular not being a good fit for the main character regardless of race.

And, again, the character just isn’t there. At the radically opposite side of the spectrum from Luke Cage’s titular hero, this rendition of Danny Rand is one of the most flawed protagonists on recent television... sit-coms excluded, perhaps. Which again is not a bad thing, provided you don’t go overboard with it: many superhero characters are flawed individuals, but in order to deserve the label they need to possess some aspect of their personality which makes them impressive, admirable, makes the audience look up to them not necessarily from a moral standpoint but at least as an example of endurance, determination, courage.

This Danny Rand is a supremely naïve, unfocussed character. He’s prone to be manipulated, emotionally unstable, unsure of his responsibilities and to be frank almost utterly incompetent, which makes his role as the leading decision-maker among the show’s cast not credible. His character arc – and this is true of almost all characters in the series – is a litany of reiterated and often clichéd dialogue bits, reasserting the same goals and the same failure to meet them from episode to episode.

That’s not to say that Iron Fist is in itself a massively bad show. It’s adequate, like a lot of other stuff; but it should have been a lot better, which is what prompted such backlash in the first place. Is all the hate it got justified? Hardly, since judgment regarding the degree of fulfilment of the show’s potential could only be expressed after watching the whole series, and early reviews were compiled based only on an advance packet of six episodes to avoid spoilers. It is what it is, and what it is, without a doubt, is one of the weakest links in the extended Marvel canon so far.

[Verdict: MIXED TO NEGATIVE]

I have my misgivings regarding these Marvel/Netflix shows, but overall nothing so far – Iron Fist included – has fallen below my absolute watchability threshold. One things that’s clear, however, is that these series have boxed themselves into a format that works against them, and it all comes down to a matter of runtime.

Both Luke Cage and Iron Fist are too long for their own good: both shows could’ve managed their core narratives within half the number of episodes, maintaning a more engaging pace and ditching unnecessary secondary villain plots. Which is why I’m surprised that Marvel didn’t seize the chance to take the other obvious road: a Heroes for Hire show.

Introducing Luke Cage as a supporting character in Jessica Jones’s own show was an excellent idea. Why not do the same with Danny Rand, then, introducing him as a co-protagonist to the already-established Cage in a shared buddy-cop (of sorts) series? Both characters would share the screentime, each of their separate narratives running in parallel before, ideally, converging for the climax. All while getting more variety out the deal, potentially a bit of humour – something both shows severely lacked, Iron Fist in particular – and a pre-existing bond between the characters going into the Defenders team-up.

I understand why this wasn’t done. Two shows instead of one move more money, and the temptation to give a black hero his own show is hard to resist: adding Iron Fist and his allies and enemies to the mix would’ve broken the insularity of the Luke Cage series, especially where the issue of an almost all-black cast was concerned. The choice that was made is a solid one, if more on the marketing level than in the interest of storytelling.

And yet the connection between the two heroes is so established in the comics that an effort was indeed made to connect the two shows: specifically by way of their soundtracks, as Iron Fist is itself occasionally imbued with hip-hop sensibilities and ‘70s vibes, only of the Bruce Lee kung-fu variety rather than the blaxploitation kind. Shame nothing more came out of it.

Nevertheless, the higher-ups seem to have somewhat learned a small lesson from these past few years of programming: Marvel’s Defenders will only consist of eight episodes, a remarkable change of pace considering the fact that the story will have to juggle four characters at once. We’ll see whether that will improve things or present the usual issues, but who knows: maybe these crooked puzzle pieces will fit together after all.

[robedisimo]

Thor: Ragnarok [SPOILER-FREE REVIEW]

[Disclaimer: this review is based on the Italian dub of the film. As such, all opinions on the quality of dialogues and acting are subjective and partial.]

In May 2018, a little over six months from now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will celebrate its ten-year anniversary with the release of Avengers: Infinity War, what will by then be its nineteenth instalment. That number is made even more baffling by the fact that the franchise will get there – if trailers for the February-bound Black Panther are any indications – with not a single unquestionably bad movie to its name, an accomplishment of truly astounding proportions when it comes to sequels.

Still, if you went and asked, you’d find very few people with actual doubts regarding one specific fact: in Marvel’s chain of cinematic successes, the Thor franchise was the weakest link pretty much from day one. While never exceedingly terrible, its films’ narrative shortcomings and tonal inconsistencies – and lack of a coherent voice, due to their bouncing from one director to another – always betrayed the fact that it was the property Marvel had the least clear idea what to do with.

That’s almost certainly why it was the last of the original “Phase One” franchises to get a third chapter... and, as it turns out, that’s exactly what the film series needed. Much like the Wolverine film franchise, whose scattered release schedule resulted in each chapter reflecting very different sensibilities within the ever-evolving superhero genre, the Thor films have gone through different phases, showcasing different approaches to the source material. Still, it was pretty clear that both Kenneth Branagh’s and Alan Taylor’s attempts at capitalising on the property’s more Shakespearean and Tolkien-like aspects didn’t completely click.

That’s perhaps because despite the character’s stories being known for their epic scale – in the most literal sense of the term – their ultimate underlying quality is actually sheer outlandishness: much like DC’s Superman, Thor isn’t defined by the villains he fights as much as by what he can do, which is to say pretty much anything. His immortal and virtually invulnerable nature mean his adventures can take place in the Middle Ages or the far-flung future; he can get punched through a sun, or hammer moons to dust; he can travel to the land of the dead on the back of a flying goat and be back for dinner with Captain America.

And sure, the MCU still has a long way to go before it can truly catch up to the comics; but there’s no denying that since those first shaky steps – in which Norse gods had to be explain away as aliens with “magic-like science” – Marvel has grown way more confident in embracing the more insane aspects of what has made these stories so popular for over half a century. Which is why it’s important that Thor: Ragnarok comes to us after Guardians of the Galaxy clearly showed how ready audiences are to cheer for talking raccoons and walking trees, and after Doctor Strange took a decisive step forward into the realm of sorcery. Free from the burder of having to shoulder the mystical side of the MCU, and with zany, indie-film comedy the new hot thing on the table, the god of thunder can finally do what he does best: have a lot of grand, absurd fun.

That’s maybe too long an introduction before finally getting to the film I’m actually reviewing, but really: I don’t have that much to say about it aside from “see for yourself”. Ragnarok is a relentlessly entertaining space romp that’s filled to the brim with love for the more visually iconic – Jack Kirby reigns supreme in this threequel – and narratively far-fetched facets of Marvel comics, resulting in two-hours-plus of fun, funny adventure blending larger-than-life epic with what’s easily the most laughter-filled script in the Marvel universe to date.

The plot is pretty straightforward, which likely accounts for why the original cut of the movie ran to a bare 90 minutes; the extra 40 added through reshoots mostly consist of jokes a character development – both often blended together to hilarious effect – and it’s frankly impressive how well these two apparently separate parts of the film gel together. Still, don’t be fooled: while character-driven fun is absolutely the script’s main focus, Ragnarok does have its fair share of story – and action, showcasing some of the best super-powered brawling in the genre’s history – and surprisingly doesn’t shy away from taking real, tangible chances with the characters and setting, to mostly satisfying ends and to (hopefully) concrete, lasting effect on the franchise’s shared universe.

The counterpoint to that is that the narration’s brisk pace often results in rushed story beats. There’s not a single wasted second in the whole movie, which is a spectacular achievement by itself, but on the other hand that also means the script never stops to catch its breath, occasionally leading to excessive levity: at least a couple moments throughout the film, while clearly meant as momentous, earth-shaking developments, aren’t afforded enough time to really sink in with either the audience or the characters. Ultimately, however, that doesn’t take much away from the entertainment value of a movie that’s entirely built on the strength of its director and cast.

The cast itself has never looked more comfortably at home than it does here, and that goes especially for those actors now inhabiting their roles for several years: this brash, jokey Thor definitely suits Hemsworth way better than the stoic portrayal of the title character in comics ever did, and Hiddleston’s Loki – while certainly at the waning end of his MCU relevance – is as charmingly shifty as ever. Meanwhile, Ruffalo’s Hulk enjoys some long-deserved character development, something that will be very interesting to keep up with in the upcoming Avengers movies.

The film also benefits from franchise mainstays getting support by a really solid influx of talented newcomers. Cate Blanchett bends – but doesn’t manage to break – the Marvel villain formula as the stunningly page-accurate Hela, while Tessa Thompson steals every scene she’s in as a rendition of Valkyrie that, while sitting on the opposite end of the specturm when it comes to adherence to the source material, comes across as consistently entertaining. Even out-of-the-blue addition to the series Skurge, arguably one of the hardest sells Marvel’s had in years in terms of character design, fares well thanks to Karl Urban’s self-effacing performance.

Throw into the mix the goldblumiest Goldblum that ever goldblumed – not to mention director Taika Waititi doubling as the motion-captured Korg – and the final recipe is definitely a tasty one. All that, it must be said, comes at the expense of previous central characters in the series, most notably the entire Earth-bound human cast; but then Ragnarok definitely seems bent on doing just what its title suggests: tear down the old and usher in the new, rewriting the rules and drastically altering the franchise’s narrative. And for that, sacrifices had to be made.

In that respect, Thor: Ragnarok is a possible peek into the future of the MCU, and certainly the most outright postmodern of the Marvel movies so far. Its acceptance of the genre’s quirks is so earnest that it feels more like excited, benign self-parody than the cringing embarrassment at the geekiness of it all that was so pervasive in early-2000s “dark & gritty” superhero fare. More than anything, it shows that Marvel can learn from criticism, embracing the parts of its formula that work – lighthearted humour above all – and adjusting those that don’t. One example? After years of mostly-bland soundtracks, Ragnarok takes a cue from James Gunn’s spacefaring franchise in making use of licensed music... and the results are pretty darn enjoyable.

Indeed, this third Thor rumbles into theatres a more accomplished follow-up to the first Guardians of the Galaxy than this year’s Vol. 2 could ever hope to be. If you’re in search of a good time at the movies, look no further than here: turns out it doesn’t take a hammer for a sequel to finally be worthy.

[Verdict: POSITIVE]