From the late 1970s through the 80s, three major non-Star Wars sci-fi franchises were all born into existence, all of which concerned some manner of spectacular creature born or willed into existence to eradicate the human race as we know it. The Terminator, the third such of these franchises, demonstrated to audiences the dangers of playing too comfortably in the world of artificial intelligence. The one before, Predator, took place within a new kind of jungle warfare against an extra-terrestrial foe following a wave of films about the ultimate jungle struggle in Vietnam. But the first of these franchises – and one of only two in which director James Cameron played a part – was Alien, which began in 1979 under director Ridley Scott, the first film of which quickly became known as the greatest sci-fi horror film ever made. It wasn’t long before James Cameron, following his success on the original Terminator, would execute the famous pitch for directing the film’s sequel, Aliens, eventually launching the property into the conversation of greatest sci-fi horror franchises ever made. Now, 45 years and eight films later – including two widely-maligned crossover events with the Predator films – we have arrived at Alien: Romulus, which sees Fede Álvarez stepping into the director’s chair to bring things all the way back to basics.
 
With its story set between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), Alien: Romulus stars Cailee Spaeny as Rain, an orphan girl working on a mining colony in deep space for the Weyland-Yutani corporation, who hopes to earn enough working hours to secure a travel permit to the planet Yvaga III with her brother Andy (David Jonsson), a Weyland-Yutani synthetic android. Once it becomes clear that the corporation does not plan to offer travel permits of any kind, Rain decides to join a group of other young space colonists in seeking out a decommissioned spaceship floating above their planet, having been convinced that they can all travel to Yvaga III together using the cryo-sleep pods left on board. It becomes quickly apparent, however, that the ship was not decommissioned, but abandoned, and things turn awry quite quickly as the group comes face to face(hug) with most terrifying and perfect organism to ever haunt the stars. This film also stars Isabela Merced, Archie Renaux, Spike Fern, and Aileen Wu.
 
At their heart, the best of the of the Alien movies have typically had rather simple set-ups. There’s a group of space truckers, they end up on a spaceship somewhere with no ability to contact the outside world, and the titular creature wrecks shop, picking them off one-by-one. (The first movie is literally just called “Alien.”) Over time, and especially recently, the franchise has seemed more interested in exploring the sci-fi origins of its plot machinations in films like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, having drifted further away from the horror that made the series a household name. Whichever approach one prefers, it’s been generally agreed upon that the franchise needed a solid reset (much in the same manner The Force Awakens gave a reset to the Star Wars). And while there are certainly elements of Alien: Romulus that feel too attached to the past, on the whole, it’s about as solid of a return to form for the series as one could have hoped under the new 20th Century (read: Disney) banner.
 
If there’s one thing the Alien films are known for besides perhaps the best creature design ever conceived, it’s the set-pieces, the most iconic of which is the chest-burster scene in the first movie. Luckily, Fede Álvarez knows how to do horror set-pieces better than just about any horror director working today, and Romulus contains around 3 or 4 major ones that immediately jump to mind, two of which are some of the best work the series has offered to date, both reinforcing the imagery of the face-huggers as a disturbing metaphor for sexual violence while also while also relishing in the grosser, more horrifying elements of birth as a xenomorph’s head begins to crown out of a literal birth canal. Both the music in these moments and the beautifully-crafted practical effects underscore just how terrifying the titular alien is in both concept and execution, a monster without equal whose emergence can be comfortably compared to death itself coming to life. But it’s not just the set-pieces involving the aliens that increase the the tension of the film; space itself is as terrifying as any extra-terrestrial monster, and as things continue to escalate, so too do the more basic elements our characters need to survive (i.e. depressurization, lack of oxygen, frozen cryo-fuel, etc.) These sequences  wouldn’t work nearly as well if the sound or production design lacked even an inch of quality, and with Álvarez committing to using as little CGI as possible to achieve the look of the film, only the sound could have afforded a little slack, which the film refused to give it. Of the Alien films I’ve seen to date, this is one of the best-sounding, most intentionally designed, and every bit of effort shows on a theater screen.
 
It's not just the design elements or the musical score in the film’s upper half that make Romulus worthwhile, however; the film also boasts two of the series’ best performances to date in Cailee Spaeny and particularly in David Jonsson. Spaeny’s star continues to rise as the Priscilla and Civil War star takes center stage here, never straying so far into Sigourney Weaver’s territory from the original films that her performance risks impressionism, but always staying just solid enough that the two characters could easily exist side by side without any viewer questioning whether they belonged next to each other. It’s doubtful that Rain becomes as iconic as Ripley, but at their core, the two parts are played similarly. The standout, though, is David Jonsson of Industry fame, whose performance as Andy anchors the film in its deepest humanity despite the fact that the character is not biologically human. Jonsson is able to play both the humanistic and the corporate practically seamlessly, cementing his place in franchise history as one of its finest new additions.
 
There are moments in which Romulus’ fan service feels too derivative of its inspirations, as though the divided responses from previous entries attempting to do something new had scared off the producers from continuing to try new things entirely, though in on case towards the unfortunately overlong ending, it did feel as though that derivativeness wore thin. I also won’t spoil a fairly major plot point here that has major ramifications on how the story of the film plays out, but suffice it to say, while the execution of it doesn’t read as anything especially egregious given its nature, the thought of whatever producers’ meeting gave the green light does make me feel a little queasier than anything involving the xenomorph ever could. There’s nothing wrong with going back to basics as a method for re-adjusting course, but as I’ve said many times, relying on those basics too much, beyond just a few cursory awkward line reads that harken back to what came before, ultimately detracts from the idea that filmmaking itself is a medium for growth and pushing the boundaries of storytelling.
 
Overall, there’s not much to say about Alien: Romulus that would offer any deeper insight into the movie itself or the franchise as a whole from my end of things. It’s just a really solid, well-crafted sci-fi horror film with a few great set-pieces, some great performances, and a good sense of what made those original films work in the first place. I doubt that it’ll end up in my Top 10 by year’s end, but if back to basics was what it took to get the acid blood on this ship pumping again, there’s not a whole lot more a viewer can expect than what was offered here. If anything, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not Fede Álvarez sticks around after this, and whether his apparent dream of a new Alien vs. Predator movie can actually come to fruition.
 
I’m giving “Alien: Romulus” an 8.6/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

If ever you’ve wondered why video game movie adaptations have begun migrating to television, or why their theatrical output has such a tarnished overall reputation, I’ll first ask how it’s possible that The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been your only VGM experience (even then, not a great one), but if somehow their notorious reputations have spared your eyes to this point…well…wonder no more. Based on the popular video game franchise of the same name, Borderlands stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a bounty hunter who is hired by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to find and rescue his daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), who supposedly holds the key to unlocking a secret treasure vault on the chaotic planet of Pandora – Lilith’s home world – and who was released from captivity by former disillusioned soldier Roland (Kevin Hart). In the course of her mission, Lilith meets and forms an alliance with a ragtag team of misfits, including Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a muscle-clad “psycho” who protects Tina, Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Claptrap (Jack Black), a scrappy robot companion programmed to help Lilith accomplish her goals upon her return home, as well as Tina and Roland themselves. Together, this scrappy team of six must brave desolate landscapes, alien monsters, and bandit attacks, surviving long enough to figure out where the vault is, what’s inside, and whether the real treasure was each other all along.
 
I’m not what you might call a traditional gamer; I’ve never played the Borderlands games, I don’t really even know what they look like, and I have no special attachments from them that would indicate whether or not I thought this worked as an adaptation. What I would consider myself is a film connoisseur, albeit one still very much in the early stages of that connoisseur-ship, so regardless of the adaptability demonstrated by this version of Borderlands, I can confidently tell you that it doesn’t work as a movie, especially not a movie with little-to-no sense of self and even less teeth for the world it inhabits. If it sounds as though the plot description above is overly chaotic and messy, friend, it is only because whatever plot this film has to begin with is simultaneously over-complicated and drearily under-written.
 
The truth is, Borderlands is as desolate a film in terms of entertainment, inspiration, creativity, or even pure visual flow as its many desert locales and bare-bones sets are in relation to the most basic forms of color theory. In fact, the only set that has anything close to a real identity in terms of its color, or indeed its characters, is a bustling town our ragtag misfits come to about halfway through the film’s 102 energy-draining minutes, which is only used to introduce Jamie Lee Curtis, set up a bland and overly long action set-piece, and tease a plot “twist” anyone who’s seen a movie before could see coming 40 miles away. Visually speaking, it’s an eyesore, so lacking in anything remotely interesting to look at that the copious amounts of poorly-composited green screen backdrops become the only interesting thing to look at simply for being included often enough that one could make a dangerously effective drinking game out of just noticing them. In fact, the film is so devoid of anything tangible or even recognizable from a pure narrative storytelling perspective that any fan service or entertainment it offers doesn’t just go unappreciated but unnoticed by anyone who’s not joined to the games at the hip. Even Deadpool & Wolverine’s cacophony of cameos – which I still contend ultimately don’t mean much to the film itself, to the legacy of the 20th Century Fox canon, or the MCU itself – are at least recognizable enough that there’s a drip of entertainment in just seeing some of those guys show up again. Borderlands doesn’t even have the right level of relevance in the world of gaming anymore for people to have absorbed any recognition of its fan service through pure cultural osmosis (apart from the parts of the movie that are made from that).
 
What really kills any momentum the film builds, however (on the off chance it builds any momentum at all), is that the script itself seems entirely uninterested in the story being told and makes no effort to actually create or sustain any creative sparks that might be resting in the margins of its hollow shell, ditto for its cast, not that most of them seem even remotely aware what kind of movie they’re in, apart from Blanchett; her dead-eyed, practically expressionless pitch is the film’s most clear indicator of just how over this sort of thing everyone is by now. Even amongst that cast, Greenblatt seems to be the only one making a game effort at actually injecting any life into the film at all, and as fun as her performance could be to watch in a film that actually cared about character development at all, whatever efforts she makes here are immediately shot down like a bird out of the sky by Eli Roth’s rush to just get to whatever the next set-piece is without so much as the balls to make that set-piece as fun as Greenblatt’s performance clearly indicates it should be.
 
I won’t wax on and on as to how draining this film’s inclusion into the “cultural canon of cinema” is or whatever, or how it doesn’t actually have anything meaningful to contribute to that canon, because the truth is there are lots of movies way better than this that also don’t contribute a lot of meat to movie history and are just around for the fun of it, and also because as much as I like the ones the ones that do meaningfully contribute, I wouldn’t consider myself pretentious enough to pretend that every good movie has to. But what I will say for Borderlands in regard to whether or not it even could do that is that the movie wouldn’t have anything to offer even if whatever it had was meaningless. In other words, the film is…nothing. It didn’t piss me off, it didn’t make me cringe, it didn’t even bore me to tears so that I begged it to stop or offered my soul in exchange for something interesting to happen. The only thing it did make me feel, for one hour and forty minutes it ran, was the worst thing a movie like it could ever make anyone feel: complete and total apathy. Even then, I struggle to confirm with myself that it made me feel anything at all.
 
I’m giving “Borderlands” a 2.4/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

It may seem at first glance, given all the odds stacked against it, that the very existence of a film like Deadpool & Wolverine should be regarded as an out-and-out triumph, and in some manners of speaking, it could be considered one. The opening weekend box office was practically guaranteed to be overwhelmingly large (to the degree that any film’s box office in the year of our lord 2024 can be a guarantee), the CinemaScore for the film is an A, the Rotten Tomatoes numbers look solid even on the critics’ side, and the myriad of production roadblocks the film had to overcome just to get made – from Disney’s acquisition of Fox to an entire worldwide pandemic between films to SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes taking place during filming – could make even the most anti-superhero critic offer up some sympathy votes toward the idea of the film actually coming to pass. But ideas are not final products, and in a cinematic manner of speaking, Deadpool & Wolverine’s final form is as shallow and unremarkable as any of its lesser MCU contemporaries are typically regarded – in truth, it’s far from a triumph at all.
 
This isn’t to say that the film doesn’t have anything in it to recommend; the fan service itself is rather inspired in a vacuum, and a couple of key performances – chiefly Hugh Jackman’s return as Wolverine and Emma Corrin’s introduction as Cassandra Nova – actually shine in a few spots despite the script giving them very little to work with. Jackman in particular brings real pathos and weight to a performance that could easily have just been a cruise control job. Plus, despite my issues with the music supervision on the film as a whole, the introductory titles sequence’s use of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” remains a great deal of fun. Past that sequence, however, the “fun” of Deadpool & Wolverine becomes less about rewarding audiences for investing in the story or characters, and more about distracting the viewer from the fact that the movie has nothing of real weight to offer. In fact, there really isn’t much of a story at all. There’s a plot (or at least the outline of a plot), locations, characters, action beats, etc, but none of it ever congeals into something meaningful or cohesive. Rather than use its fan service as an additive or enhancement to the storytelling, D&W instead elects to use fan service as storytelling, bouncing from cameo to cameo without much rhyme or reason and squeezing every last drop out of any recognizable, newly-Disney-owned IP it can get its hands on. (There’s also a particularly egregious Furiosa joke that makes less and less sense the more one thinks on it.) This is made especially apparent by how the film chooses to deploy its soundtrack, which is chock full of recognizable songs, most of which come careening through the speakers at seemingly random moments with little – if any – connection to what’s on screen, and a not insignificant portion of which are played for a less than a second during a scene where Deadpool is smashing Wolverine’s head against a radio. Even most of the characters we’ve come to know and love from the other Deadpool films, like Vanessa, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Dopinder, Colossus, etc – characters we’ve grown attached to – are shoved to the side in favor of getting Deadpool to the “Void” so we can get to all those fan service cameos quicker, a big one of which turns out to be fairly disappointing given the actor’s single-note performance in the film.
 
But perhaps D&W’s greatest sin, even more than the hollow fan service or the less-than-half joke hit rate, or even the fact that it’s also quite an ugly-looking movie (does Disney just not do location shoots anymore?), the cardinal nail in the coffin for both the film itself and its vision of the MCU going forward, is its treatment of the chief piece of X-Men film history that’s renowned for its artistic vision and genuine emotional depth: Logan. Without question the best X-Men film to date, Deadpool & Wolverine takes the legacy of closure and catharsis that both audiences and Logan’s titular character finally experienced after 17 years of Hugh Jackman’s stewardship, and turns it into a punchline before outright robbing it of any sense of finality. Whatever your patience for Ryan Reynolds’ shtick as Deadpool (and being a fan of the first two films, I know I have enough patience to still enjoy the bits where he’s just playing the character), the very idea of a studio such as Marvel refusing to let a genuine artistic endeavor that was meant to act as finale be a finale – just because they own the rights to it now and have the option to undo its finality – is probably the biggest indicator as to why their multiverse plans have gone so awry. Stories need endings, but if there’s one thing Disney doesn’t seem to believe in, according to D&W, it’s that.
 
As unfortunate as it is, all I got out of this movie is that the MCU is far more desperate to be liked again than I initially thought, to the point that they’ll throw any amount of money at fan service just to buy back audiences’ good will, regardless of how little sense most of it makes both in the larger context of both the MCU and in this film proper. There are bound to be a lot of people who will have tons of fun watching this movie for that very fan service, and that’s great, but for me, it’s the cinematic equivalent of dangling a mobile in front of a baby in order to distract them from the fact that the dangler has nothing of actual substance to offer. And if this, plus Disney shelling out over $80 million just to get RDJ back into the MCU and bringing back the Russo Brothers to direct more Avengers movies is a sign of just how desperate things have actually become, I’m afraid whatever good will I’ve had towards the post-Endgame phase of this undertaking is likely to be quickly squandered into relative detachment, or worse, active disinterest.
 
I’m giving “Deadpool & Wolverine” a 4.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

It’s been nine years since Mad Max: Fury Road roared the once-thought-dead action franchise back to life with one of the most perfect action spectacles ever put to screen, and while there is still no direct sequel to that film (though The Wasteland remains in pre-production), Australian mad lad and franchise director George Miller has resurrected that film’s principle character for an origin story all her own. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Furiosa, a young girl belonging to a place of abundance who is kidnapped from her home by the madman Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Over the course of many years, Furiosa must learn how the wasteland works by way of trade and road war, how to survive its many cruelties and trials, how to rise through the ranks in order to eventually seek revenge on the man who took everything from her, and above all, how to find her way home.
 
The best of the Mad Max films have never been all that concerned with complicated stories, which makes this Mad Max Saga an especially interesting test case in seeing whether or not Miller and company can pull off a slightly more nuanced version of the Fury Road feeling without it seeming like they’re just trying to do the exact same thing again, and to that degree, it largely succeeds. While Furiosa absolutely makes an excellent companion piece to Fury Road in tying everything together in way that doesn’t feel cheap or condescending from the origin points of certain character traits to the introduction of specific vehicles to even some musical motifs from the original Tom Holkenberg score, it is still very much its own movie, with its own ideas, its own story, and its own sense of place. The plot mechanics of our titular character’s odyssey across the desert are decidedly more complex than those of its predecessor, which thrived largely due to its magnificent craftwork overlayed on top of its simplicity, rather than attempting to weave it into a tale requiring more finesse. This movie a tale of the blood-soaked tragedy behind all the rage and resolve our titular character possesses when we meet her in the previous film, which by nature invites further complications into determining how those parts of Furiosa came to be, and its deliberate avoidance of peddle-to-the-metal pacing present in Fury Road – along with the longer runtime – is the clearest indicator that Miller is attempting to paint a complete and all-consuming portrait of who Furiosa is as a character; he is not crafting an action extravaganza, but a revenge epic.
 
That said, the action sequences that do appear in this film – at least most of them – all carry the same visceral adrenaline that those of Fury Road did. There is a chase sequence towards the middle of the film (which is broken up into five distinct segments) which could easily outclass all other action sequences made this year; at one point, the man next to me’s jaw actually dropped in response to one of the fighting mechanics introduced during the scene. It’s the kind of action filmmaking only the truly insane are capable of performing at this level, and despite the fact that it is clearly laden with more visual effects than any singular scene of Fury Road has, the way it’s shot and edited makes it feel like something no one except George Miller ever could pull off. And while that scene in particular was the definite highlight of the film for me personally, there are a few others that deserve near-equal praise in how they utilize the sound design, as does the entire film in that specific respect; you can feel the rumble of every engine, the power of the tires in the sand, the crack of the gunshots across the desert air. It’s the sort of sound design that forces one to realize just how much better great sound can make an already great movie. There are a few admittedly nitpicky areas in which Furiosa falters, chiefly in the visual makeup of the film (some of the green screen is a bit obvious and the color grade doesn’t feel as saturated as Fury Road does, making it less vibrant) and the fact that unfortunately, that epic sense of pace does mean that this movie feels longer than it probably should, despite the fact that everything within that length is working about as well as it can be expected to, but the craftwork in this still operates high above almost anything else being produced in Hollywood right now.
 
A great film can’t rest on craftwork alone, though. All the performers have to step up to the plate, and dear reader, they all knock it out of the park. There are, of course, some familiar faces involved which we get to know later on in Fury Road, and Tom Burke’s character does ultimately feel a tad superfluous when all is said and done despite his admirable performance, but this film truly belongs to the new blood. Anyone even remotely familiar with Anya Taylor-Joy is aware of her immense talents going all the way back to The Witch in 2015, but she gets to turn on a new mode here of feminine rage that feels not so much like a reaction to what was done to her, but an evolution of who she was destined to become; that’s a very hard line to act with minimal dialogue across two-plus hours, and she nails every moment she’s asked to. That said, Chris Hemsworth is the performance everyone is sure to be talking about coming out of this film; he's chewing scenery left and right, clearly having the time of his life playing the despicable (and occasionally hilarious) Dementus in what might be his finest performance to date. I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to hop on that train yet as we can only see how his part in all this stacks up with time, but it’s certainly the most fun he’s been to watch since at least Thor: Ragnarok, and probably ever.
 
In the end, though, this is still very much a George Miller film, and although Fury Road may be a better movie on the whole, this – I believe – is a better-directed piece of work, if only because the direction is more visible without a whole lot of other masters at work sharing the spotlight. It may seem trivial, but refusing to just play the hits again, even if they are hits for a reason, is an exciting thing for a filmmaker at Miller’s caliber to commit to, and despite any shortcomings the film may have, making this a different kind of movie than Fury Road was still absolutely the correct approach to telling this story, which he has rendered into existence with an exciting fervor. It’s so clear he cares about this world and these characters to such a degree no one else has even tried to make one of these, and if I had my way, no one else ever would, even after he’s long passed from this Earth.
 
I’m giving “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” a 9.1/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Breaks Down the Latest from director David Leitch.

Stunt work is – without question – some of the most underrated work in the movie business. Stunt performers are the true lynchpin of just about every action movie people have ever watched, and more often than not, a lot of non-action fare as well. They take hits, they fall down, they get back up to give a hit back, and they give their job everything they’ve got so the movie they’re in can work as well as it’s intended to. That’s the ultimate mission of The Fall Guy, a new action comedy starring (among others) Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt: to celebrate stunt workers as the unsung heroes of moviemaking, the ones who make it possible to actually make something larger than life. It’s a noble effort for what, in the end, is a fun, slightly zany comedy about the guys whom the industry would die without but who have not yet gotten their dues. There’s enough going for it that I would consider this a good movie; it’s just a shame it’s not a better one.
 
The story concerns our main character, Colt Severs (Ryan Gosling), who’s gone off the grid for quite some time after an apparent accident with a stunt rig which resulted in a back-breaking injury. Having heard that former flame Jodi (Emily Blunt) needs a new stuntman to head up the team on her directorial debut – and that the lead movie star on the project has gone missing – he suits up once again to discover if he may be able to save the production from imminent disaster, and hopefully, be able to rekindle what was once thought lost. The film also stars Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Teresa Palmer, and Stephanie Hsu.
 
The issues The Fall Guy experiences can essentially be attributed to this: David Leitch is just not a good enough director on his own. Sure, a lot of the scripts he works with have the right among of wit, action, and engagement to keep audience entertained, but rarely have I come out of a David Leitch film – pretty much all of which I’ve enjoyed – and made note of how good the direction of the movie was. (I even like Bullet Train.) Unfortunately, the same is true of this film. Essentially coasting off the strength of its two key elements, those being the stunts and performances, the direction of the film feels very flat, as if it doesn’t quite know what it’s meant to be doing with itself. As a result it feels as if the film is simply waiting for someone with a clear vision to steer it along, and no one ever really takes the wheel. This could be attributed to a few script issues as well; between the stuntman love story and the missing movie star story, the film never really establishes which is its A-plot and which is its B-plot, so the two are sort of fighting over screen space for longer than the climax of the film takes to finally wrap up. It’s a very wonky mashup of genres which features some great editing choices and other not-as-great ones, forcing the structure of the film to compromise both genres rather than elevating one or the other.
 
All that said, The Fall Guy does offer enough entertainment for summer audiences to sit back and relax to as an opening summer tentpole. The stunt work is genuinely great, and it’s nice to see a film with a mainstream reach and mass-audience appeal highlight stunts in such a major way. From car rolls to being set on fire to large falls to jumping boats, every action sequence is well-choreographed and exciting to watch, thanks in no small part to the talented stunt team this movie has. I’ve got little hope that the Academy will now do the right thing and add some form of a Stunts category to the Oscars before the next decade has wrapped up, but that’s better than no hope at all, and frankly, the possibility of that happening is closer than it’s ever been.
 
The performances also really sell a lot of what the script has to offer in the positive sense, particularly for Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, whose on-screen chemistry sizzles when they get to share scenes, as unfortunate as it is that they don’t get to share quite enough scenes together to make the romance work in this story. (The romance itself always seems on the edge of the frame, like a tantalizing bit we can’t commit to because the movie has to follow this other missing persons plot.) Gosling and Blunt have been on the road promoting the movie since the Oscars when they each showed up for their “rival” Best Picture contenders, and it’s clear that the film takes full advantage of each of their strengths – Gosling’s comic timing, Blunt’s action abilities and line-reading skills – in order to elevate what’s on the page. But I’d also like to give a shoutout to my man Winston Duke, whose work in the film nearly rivals that of its two main stars, especially in the one action sequence he gets to share with Gosling. He gets a lot more screen time than one might expect, and he makes the most of every moment.
 
As summer movie season openers go, we’ve certainly had better than The Fall Guy, but we’ve also had worse, and this film feels appropriately positioned as a movie star-driven action comedy with enough mainstream appeal that it’ll attract a decent-sized audience back to theaters. As unfortunate as it is that it needs to coast on the stunts and performances in order to keep its sub-par direction and scattered storytelling from overwhelming the two hours it has to get everything done, those performances and stunts are well worth the big-screen treatment, and in the end, it’s a fun enough movie that I would say without question it is worth seeing. At the very least, we could all do our part in supporting a pure celebration of the stunt community to get the Academy’s attention on their importance.
 
I’m giving “The Fall Guy” a 7.1/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Reviews Alex Garland’s Directorial Swan Song.

What is the point of journalism? What is its essence? Is it objectivity, or truth? And who’s to say the two aren’t always the same? What responsibility do we bear in observation when atrocities occur before our very eyes? These questions lie at the heart of Alex Garland’s latest and perhaps last directorial effort, Civil War, a film set in the modern day which follows a group of rogue photojournalists as they traverse a divided America in the midst of an ongoing and increasingly deadly conflict – a literal civil war. But while the script offers a perspective on these questions, it doesn’t exactly answer them, preferring instead to present the audience with ideas that films such Jordan Peele’s Nope have also wrestled with regarding the human obsession with spectacle, the perfect shot, and what level of ethics we find ourselves sacrificing in order to attain it, whether in service of ourselves, or in this case, in the pursuit of objectivity. Even then, to focus on the act of journalism itself may be missing the point. As a largely apolitical film which doesn’t simply refuse to present the ideologies of either the in-power American government or the Western Forces (henceforth referred to as the W.F.), but actively avoids even hinting at them, Garland’s story lacks a point-of-view in the traditional sense, but to watch the film play out, one gets the idea that the mere observation of all the havoc wartime violence wreaks – not a stance on whether that violence is justified or not – is exactly what he’s aiming for here.
 
The story, as it goes, is largely centered on Kirsten Dunst’s Lee – a wartime photographer whose previous efforts in the field she viewed as sending a warning back home against the very idea of war – and her colleague Joel (played by Wagner Moura). Lee’s ultimate endeavor is to capture the shot and get the story every photojournalist is after: the President of the United States on the brink of invasion. However, in order to acquire those two things, she needs to get to Washington D.C. before the W.F. is rumored to be reaching the White House on July 4, which in turn brings reluctant but respectful rival newspaper writer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) along for the journey. Joined by a young up-and-comer named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) with dreams of being a wartime photographer like Lee, the group needs to cross over 300 miles of dangerous terrain, passing through the front lines of the conflict on their way, where any threat could be the last one any of them ever meet.
 
By and large, the plot of Civil War is rather simple and often fairly repetitive as our protagonists run into conflict, manage to narrowly escape it, run into a different kind of conflict, escape that, and so on and so forth. What ultimately sets this film up for success is not the unpredictability of its plot or complexity of storytelling, but the ways in which – despite knowing that certain scenes haven’t happened yet, so there’s no way they die in this scene or that scene – one constantly feels as though these characters’ ultimate peril is imminent. There are but one or two moments where things feel safe or restful, thanks largely to the film’s exceptional craftwork. This is some of the best pound-for-pound filmmaking in Alex Garland’s entire career, particularly as a director, and especially vis-à-vis the on-the-ground action sequences along the road to D.C., which are filled with fantastic camerawork and terrifically-crafted sound that could very well be competitive at the Oscars next year. The third act in particular is one of the most harrowing and visceral of any film in recent memory, a non-stop military raid on D.C. that belongs with the likes of Zero Dark Thirty in terms of sheer intensity.
 
The film is also near-perfectly acted; readers may recall a thrilling sequence in the film’s trailer which features Jesse Plemons with bloodied finger grooves asking Wager Moura’s Joel “what kind of American are you?” before lifting his rifle to fire on him, presumably for offering an answer Plemons’ character wasn’t too fond of. The scene in question is every bit as rife with tension as the trailer presents it to be, and while it unfortunately largely bears little weight on the film as a whole, the performances contained within it are second-to-none. Stephen McKinley Henderson is as excellent as ever, though he doesn’t get any “moments” – even small ones like he did in Lady Bird – and Wagner Moura is consistently engaging, but the movie really belongs to Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny. What Dunst does with this performance is subtle, but all the more effective for it; she essentially has to be the rock of the group, but one can see in real-time that she’s slowly getting to the point where an at-home conflict where she can’t ever remove herself from the environment (such as with the others) is wearing her down to her last bit of resolve; I don’t think I would call it a career-best, but it’s certainly up there with the best of her work, even if the technical elements of the film are clearly what shines brightest overall. The slightly showier part – as “showy” as one can be with performances this wisely unassuming – belongs to Cailee Spaeny, who is now sure to have a firm grip on the attention of moviegoers everywhere after putting out this and Priscilla back-to-back. Spaeny’s ascendency from eager-to-please tagalong to somewhat tragic master of her craft is remarkable to watch; she carries so much in her eyes, and the performances she’s been able to pull off from one point to the furthest thing from that point in just over two hours without a second of it feeling unnatural (and she’s done it twice, no less) indicate a once-in-a-generation-level talent.
 
Overall, while Civil War struggles to offer any real point-of-view or substance in terms of its themes or vision of the world, the good contained within it far outweighs what it lacks, making a not insignificant hole in its center seem more like a missing feature than an outright defect. The excellent cinematography shines on large-format screens and the visceral sound design worthy twice the admission price by itself. Any answers to the questions it presents may be a bit muddy when all is said and done, but the film nonetheless remains an exceedingly well-crafted piece of work which puts Alex Garland firmly back near the top of his game.
 
I’m giving “Civil War” an 8.9/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​The Friendly Film Fan Reviews the Actor’s Directorial Debut.

​Dev Patel has always been one of the most interesting people to follow in Hollywood. While following his breakout film performance in Danny Boyle’s Best Picture-winning Slumdog Millionaire to his latest work alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the Wes Anderson short films Poison and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar has not always yielded perfect results, there has always been something about him that draws the viewer in regardless of each film’s varying qualities. Don’t get me wrong, no one escaped The Last Airbender unscathed, but beyond that, there’s almost nothing Patel has done that I haven’t either watched or at least wanted to watch. He's come a significantly long way since starring in Skins back in 2007, and there’s been a lot to celebrate in that time: Lion, The Personal History of David Copperfield (a grossly underrated movie, in my opinion), and The Green Knight all speak to Patel’s immense talent in front of the camera. But acting and directing are two very different beasts. Now, Patel finds himself behind the lens for his feature directorial debut, which he also co-wrote and stars in.
 
Originally intended as a Netflix release before producer Jordan Peele bought it from the company to put it in theaters with Monkeypaw Productions (a bit on the nose there, eh Mr. Peele?), Monkey Man follows Kid (Dev Patel) as he seeks revenge on those who killed his mother and burned his childhood village to the ground. Along the way he encounters friends, foes, and a whole host of bodies to hit the floor with as he works his way toward completing his mission. What he doesn’t know is just how many corrupt people are involved in some of India’s political circles…or just how high up those circles go.
 
One of the greatest compliments anyone can give a debut filmmaker is that they want to see what this person does next, and after seeing this movie, I’m more than ready for whatever Dev Patel wants to do next. While the story itself is rather plain and the film’s structure does little to lift it out of that plainness, Monkey Man still pulses with energy and passion in every step. Setting Kid’s journey as both parallel and homage to the tales of Hanuman may seem like an obvious choice at first glance, but it’s in how the film forges its own path outside of that parallel that makes it stand apart from other action fare like it. That said, the first half of the film does feel as though it’s unsure of just how to forge ahead, which one can feel when watching how often the editing jumps around from beat to beat without much of a breath or even a bridge between plot points. Long stretches go by without much in the way of action, and when the action does happen – again, first half only – the shaky-cam effect only serves to obscure the talent and work put into those sequences. Extreme close-ups in action sequences can be big moments, but only if used sparingly. Perhaps the point of the film being made in this way is to reflect the character’s initial mental state – fractured, on edge, etc. – whereas later he becomes more confident in his ability, so the film eases up on the viewer; that said, there are other methods of demonstrating that sort of blind rage that don’t involve shaking the camera that much or that often. Where the film truly excels is in its second half, which I won’t spoil except to say that the camerawork sees a significant improvement in establishing and wide shots, and the editing doesn’t feel so scattered as it did in the film’s early stages.
 
If there’s one thing Monkey Man has going for it that few other directorial debuts – especially in the action space – could match, it’s style and personality. While comparisons to other films like John Wick are simply inevitable now whenever a new, highly-choreographed action film is set to be released (and this one drops that franchise by name), there’s no denying that this movie is still very much its own thing. From the costumes to the narrative to the filmmaking itself, this film has an identity it doesn’t share with almost anything else, and one can tell that real blood, sweat, and tears (plus a few broken bones, to boot) were put into making this thing the best it could be with what they had to work with. You can feel the passion for this film just oozing off the screen with every scene. The very notion that the film almost lost funding at one point makes even the existence of this film an outright miracle, but Patel’s hard work to haul it over the finish line himself is up there in every frame (especially in the film’s occasionally frantic but always impressively-designed action sequences), and that in itself is a beautiful thing to witness.
 
What I hope for this film, and films like it, is that audiences will buy into and take a chance on them the way Jordan Peele took a chance on Dev Patel as a filmmaker. Mid-budget flicks like this are all too rare already, and while Monkey Man may be a simple tale of revenge without much in the way of narrative innovation, what it lacks in structural originality, it more than makes up for in sheer verve. Dev Patel’s efforts to get this movie made are all right up there on screen, and that effort was clearly a concentrated one given how the film’s identity is able to (mostly) spring free of comparisons to others that inspired it. The performances are fun (who doesn’t love a good Sharlto Copley appearance), the action is kinetic and occasionally brutal, the comedy mostly hits despite how little of it there actually is, and it’s very clear Dev Patel has as much of a future behind the camera as he’s had a past in front of it. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I’m giving “Monkey Man” a 7.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

What is the overriding philosophy of The Gray Man? Even almost a week after seeing the film for the first time, I can’t discern what the movie is trying to say – if anything – or what the point of it all is supposed to be. In Top Gun: Maverick, it’s to celebrate how cool aviation is. In Pacific Rim, it’s to showcase how cool robot vs. monster fights can look. In The Gray Man…see what I mean? Yes, The Gray Man is an action movie directed by the Russo Brothers (of MCU fame), so its action sequences largely stand out as its greatest asset, but beyond those set pieces, it doesn’t ultimately seem to have an identity or goal beyond “showcase the Russo Brothers outside of the MCU.” The simple spy thriller framework would work on its own, sure, but the ensemble cast is largely taking things too seriously for there not to be something more to the convoluted narrative, which features so many twists and turns, it’s a wonder the whole thing doesn’t ultimately end up being some sort of bad-movie-within-a-movie plot device. Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans are clearly having fun with what the movie actually is, but everyone else seems to be more or less in line with what the movie thinks it is. Even the incomparable Ana de Armas seems far more misdirected here than she was in No Time to Die, another a spy thriller in which she has significantly less screen-time.
 
You’ve heard the phrase a million times before: “turn your brain off.” Oft used in contexts wherein people shut down the analysis segment of their thoughts during a film or show in order to enjoy something purely as entertainment, the phrase has been uttered by many a moviegoer when someone within earshot complains that a certain kind of tentpole film (typically in the action genre) lacks the substance necessary for them to truly consider it good or even worth revisiting at all somewhere down the line. The Jurassic World franchise, Legendary’s Monsterverse – even some sects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – have fallen into this purview a few times, as has much of Netflix’s general slate of action cinema. And, to be sure, there are plenty of films that exist that don’t require deeper thought or further analysis beyond what’s literally happening on screen at a given time and still work quite a lot on those terms. Pacific Rim doesn’t bother to explore how the multi-national cooperation of an entire Jaeger strike force affects the overall economic state of the world, or whether the monsters coming from the Pacific floor are really just looking for a new home; it’s simply about enormous robots punching giant monsters in the face, and occasionally hitting them with a cargo ship acting as a makeshift baseball bat. Hell, even the excellent Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t exactly stand up to scrutiny when one considers the international geopolitical world in which it operates, something that it’s not-so-subtle about not addressing; then again, Top Gun has never really been about that, just skilled pilots dogfighting in fast planes. These two aforementioned films could both fit into a “turn your brain off” categorization because their very natures don’t require the viewer to think about more intricate subtexts beyond the story being told. However, what these films do have are clear stakes, a set of goals for their characters to accomplish, and motivations that allow the audience to get on board with the mission hoping to be accomplished. The Gray Man doesn’t have these – not really.
 
This has been an ongoing problem for Netflix with their action filmography. The action is good, often great, and easily the best part of the film, but nothing else is given as much attention due to the way that many of Netflix’s hits are algorithmically-generated to get maximum possible engagement with as little possible effort. It’s one of the reasons why they’ve decided to stop producing “vanity projects” like The Irishman or Roma in favor of quicker, slightly more expensive but ultimately higher viewer-count projects. If Netflix can keep a viewer on its service who thinks seeing a decent-if-not-great action film from a couple Avengers directors is better than going out to the theater for a movie they’re not guaranteed to like, that’s the route they’ll take. To that end, The Gray Man will likely do very well on Netflix when it hits on July 22. But beyond boosting subscriber numbers and getting Ryan Gosling back into the movie fold, it doesn’t really seem to have an end goal in mind.
 
The film also suffers from what seems to be the Achilles heel of the Russo Brothers outside of the MCU, if 2 for 2 can be counted as a pattern – rather than “less is more,” more is more. The Russo Bros directed the biggest movie of all time – Avengers: Endgame – to unprecedented success, and anyone who’s seen that film is more than aware of how huge an event it was. Three hours long and containing almost every callback, easter egg, reference, and tease that could fit, it is very much fits the idea of throwing everything at the screen, a “more is more” philosophy. The difference between that and The Gray Man is that Avengers is big by necessity; if you’re wrapping up a 22-film saga you’ve been building since 2008 and hoping to craft a truly proper sendoff, you don’t want to leave anything on the table. But with The Gray Man, it’s as if they can’t seem to help themselves by just taking the table with them. So much is happening all the time that any characters outside the big three (Gosling, Evans, Armas) can only operate as mouthpieces and plot drivers based on the needs of the script. Even poor Julia Butters and Billy Bob Thornton – both excellent performers with solid resumes and presumably added greatness to come – are wasted here as simple exposition dumpers and plot devices. They’re hardly characters at all.
 
In the end, The Gray Man may satisfy those hoping for a simple action flick with some dynamic performances and a decent sense of pace, but I grow increasingly weary of Netflix’s “more is more” style overriding what might otherwise be something fun if only as much effort were put into their scripts as was put into their bottom line. Gosling and Evans are clearly here for what the film is, but it continues to get in its own way, trying its hardest to be generic when it doesn’t have to be. If Netflix truly wants to reclaim its title as the leading subscription service for quality content of all varieties, it’s going to have to start making better content (and giving auteurs like Scorsese and Noah Baumbach their funding back).
 
I’m giving “The Gray Man” a 6.5/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

After Marvel Studios rolled out Thor: Ragnarok in November of 2017, courtesy of director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows), the entire landscape surrounding the character changed, seemingly overnight. Gone was the self-serious, dour god with his grandiose Shakespearean aura and booming voice, and gone was the dramatic emphasis on world-ending stakes (at least in Thor’s own movies). Also gone was Jane Foster, Thor’s love interest in the first two of his solo films, and the driving force behind the plot of the second. With a striking tonal shift and Natalie Portman refusing to come back for the third film due to its fallout with original Dark World helmer Patty Jenkins, Ragnarok felt like a reset, a fresh-faced new start for both the character of Thor and for the way in which the MCU would handle most solo films going forward, at least if they weren’t already in production. Even with the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy films – which thrived on their absurdity and James Gunn’s comic sensibilities – no one knew if people would buy into a character whose entire mode of being was revamped just before he showed up for the grand finale of the whole Infinity Saga with everyone else. For any other character in the MCU, the switch would have come way too late. And yet, the gamble paid off. Not only was Ragnarok a bigger hit than the first two Thor films, it was a major hit on the critical scale, its highest praises being Chris Hemsworth’s comic timing and Taika Waititi’s heartfelt storytelling. It came the closest of any solo film apart from Captain America: Civil War to grossing $1 billion at the domestic box office (Black Panther would shatter that record only three months later). Naturally, Marvel Studios wanted Waititi back for another go-round, but unfortunately, Love and Thunder isn’t nearly as successful in its storytelling (and is likely to be less successful in its box office) as its predecessor was.
 
To be sure, there is a lot to like about Love and Thunder, from its design work to most of the performances. Chris Hemsworth is so much Thor now that seeing him outside of the MCU feels alien, as if those are his alternate personas whereas Thor is his real one, and it works here just as well as it always has, with great comic timing per usual. Christian Bale - easily the best part of the movie – is gripping as Gorr the God Butcherer, wringing a genuinely terrifying, nuanced performance out of a character whose screen time essentially amounts to threats of action but little else. And of course, as heavily advertised, there is the return of one Doctor Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) to the franchise. Portman is definitely having a lot of fun here, and you can feel it coming through the screen (though her character’s story leaves a bit to be desired, which will be discussed in the spoiler review I may or may not forget to write). Who wouldn’t love wielding Mjolnir with biceps like those and summoning lightning from the heavens? Essentially, almost everything that worked last time – good performances, cool villain, fun side characters, uniquely styled production, solid classic rock-heavy soundtrack – works again. Even some of the jokes land in unexpected ways. But that’s not enough to carry a movie that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be or what story it wants to tell. As a matter of fact, it seems like it doesn’t know whose story it wants to tell.
 
As Korg narrates (which happens multiple times), we’re taken through the storylines of a few different characters, and while I won’t spoil much more than that here, a lot of time is spent with each before we have to go back to do the whole thing again with whoever’s next in line. This causes the film to feel messy, unfocused, and improperly paced. If anything, Love and Thunder isn’t quite long enough to give the necessary space to everything it wants to do. The adventure this time around has almost nothing to do with helping the characters resolve any inner conflicts – as all the best stories do – and that adventure occupies most of the runtime without ever truly coming together with what the characters are going through except by proxy or when it’s unavoidable. This is where the issue arises wherein the film doesn’t seem to know what story it’s telling, or whose.
 
Plot-wise, this one is already pretty thin, so any time devoted to non-plot-essential stuff has to focus on emphasizing whatever themes the movie has through its characters’ actions. The first Thor was about humility being the key ingredient in leadership, knowing that one cannot lead without first humbling themselves. Ragnarok was about a civilizations demise in the wake of their own genocidal past not only being justified but righteous and that any true nation is made up of the people within it rather than the ground they stand on (it really is a subtly deep movie). In fact, The Dark World is the least liked Thor film largely due to the fact that it’s not actually about much other than setting up what’s to come (that and its first half is genuinely boring). Love and Thunder – though it’s not setting up anything in particular – has the same problem.
 
There doesn’t seem to be a unifying theme or message here. What is this movie about? The question isn’t “what happens in the plot?” or “what beats does the movie hit before moving on to the next?” or even “what do the characters have to do to advance the story,” but what is this movie about? Having seen it a few days ago, I still don’t really have an answer. The film doesn’t really have an identity of its own, only one similar to its predecessor and nostalgic for its franchise beginnings. And as far as whose story this is, that sort of thing would typically arise from whose internal conflict the movie is attempting to resolve. Some would say Thor’s, but there’s not a lot of emphasis on his “figuring out who he really is,” as the marketing told us, since the conflict with Gorr takes up most of that space and doesn’t really explore that aspect of Thor’s character at all. Others may say Jane’s or even Gorr’s, but Jane doesn’t really have an internal struggle to speak of, and while Gorr does have both internal and external conflicts, they don’t really match up with each other very well.
 
As far as character, Love and Thunder also skews fairly close to the bones of what it needs for any interactions between them, and apart from Thor and perhaps Valkyrie, hardly any of them are given anything interesting to do. To justify bringing Jane Foster back into the fold so she can become “The Mighty Thor,” the film doesn’t really give more than a half-assed answer, and the rest of the time, she doesn’t really drive the plot forward at all. It’s as if she’s “along for the ride” but never actually gets to drive. Gorr, too, is also given almost nothing to do for most of the film, which testifies to Christian Bale being one hell of an actor, since his performance remains the best part of the movie. Even Korg and Valkyrie don’t really do a whole lot. As I’ve noted before, though, these are larger issues kept beneath a shiny surface, and that surface does look pretty nice on the whole.
 
All in all, the MCU’s latest entrant is a fun summer romp, tailor-made for a casual Sunday afternoon viewing, but doesn’t have much else going for it beneath the surface. Unfocused, oddly paced, and thinly plotted, its best moments can’t suffice for the fact that it doesn’t really seem to have much substance beneath its candy-coated exterior, or anything it wants to say. Even Doctor Strange 2 at least had Sam Raimi’s whacky filmmaking to keep it interesting, but this one doesn’t really make a lot of interesting choices in that vein, at least not choices that haven’t been proven to work before. It mostly succeeds on its own terms, and it’s hardly the most aimless thing or one of the worst efforts that Marvel Studios has produced thus far, but Thor: Love and Thunder will likely rank pretty low when paired with the whole of what the MCU has to offer.
 
I’m giving “Thor: Love and Thunder” a 6.5/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

On June 11, 1993, audiences were treated to the most fulfilling summer blockbuster event (without Star Wars in the title) since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, a pseudo-horror film from the same director which substituted the boogeyman for the world’s most dangerous predators that we didn’t even know enough about to realize that many were covered in feathers and sounded almost nothing like the echoing roars coming from their animatronic throats. The film – a hard one to guess, I know – was Jurassic Park, which earned almost $1 billion during its original theatrical run, and held the record for the highest-grossing film of all time until James Cameron’s Titanic released four years later. Today, articles, think pieces, rankings, reviews, and analyses continue to be fascinated by the main draw of the film: the dinosaurs.
 
Based on a combination of animatronics, model work, and early-development CGI, the dinos in that original film are still viewed as the most life-like ever created (though their realism has since been called into question), a towering achievement in visual effects that not only pushed the CG era forward in good and bad ways, but became the gold standard for the whole of the movie industry. To this day, the visual effects of nearly any major blockbuster with creature effects are compared to them, and four sequels later, even the film’s own franchise has been unable to capture the same magic. But what made the dinos themselves iconic – apart from the VFX – was their use in the story to teach humanity a lesson in hubris. When you unleash a monster, it’s going to do what monsters do. The dinosaurs’ presence in the film was essential to telling its story. So why is it that the supposed final film in the whole franchise seems so disinterested in its flagship creatures?
 
Jurassic World Dominion – directed by returning Jurassic World helmer Colin Trevorrow – picks up some time after the events of its immediate predecessor, Fallen Kingdom (directed by J.A. Bayona), with a literal plague of locusts threatening the world’s food supplies that aren’t grown by the most subtly-named big tech company ever, BioSyn. This where the returning legacy characters are brought into the fold, as the scientist who begins investigating this phenomenon is none other than Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), who recruits the help of Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and eventually re-teams with Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to stop BioSyn from destroying the world’s crops. That’s the first story. The second story is that Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are now harboring the clone girl from the last film, who is kidnapped along with Blue the Velociraptor’s child, and they must launch a rescue mission to get both children back. If these sound like two ideas from two separate movies, neither of which has much to do with the other apart from simply being in the same franchise, they are. In fact, the former has almost nothing to do with anything from the previous two films. And within all of that, where are the dinosaurs? The film’s answer? “Around.”
 
It may be genuinely astounding to hear, but the dinosaurs themselves are actually the least important element in Jurassic World Dominion’s bloated runtime. They happen to be where many of the main characters go due to their being unleashed on the world at the end of Fallen Kingdom, but they are not the enemy, nor are they especially helpful. If anything, the creation of a “Joker-like” dinosaur in this movie is proof positive just how little thought went into the one element most people are paying to see when they go to the theater. In Dominion’s terms, the dinos are simply there because the word Jurassic appears in the title, not because they are at all essential to telling either A-plot story or to the B-plot underneath them. In fact, if one took the dinosaurs out of Dominion entirely, the main thrust of the film would not really change at all. The only times they actually matter are at the beginning, at the end, and whenever the film wants to falsify and then immediately deflate any tension it presents. Hell, even Fallen Kingdom had the guts to literally blow up the island and wring some emotion out of the moment.
 
This isn’t all to say that Jurassic World Dominion is an outright pile of garbage in film composition or storytelling – it’s certainly a failure, but not even the worst film in its own franchise – but in practically abandoning its flagship creature’s essence to the story in favor of concluding a story from Fallen Kingdom that no one really cared about and having to justify bringing back franchise legacy characters that have nothing to do with the main thrust of the film itself, it loses the magic of what made this all happen in the first place. Jurassic Park movies are (or should be) about how mankind reacts to the presence of dinosaurs and vice versa, but instead, Dominion’s only real showcase of them is once at the beginning, and once at the end. The rest of the time, they’re in a manmade valley that BioSyn created specifically so that they couldn’t get out into the world, which was the whole point of the last film’s conclusion. It’s never actually explored – apart from the two segments I mentioned – what dinosaurs living amongst humanity would mean to the common man or to those not directly tied to either of the two main stories, except in the film’s most effective sequence (also towards the beginning) when the manufactured locusts surround a barn with children inside. So, if the film can’t justify the presence of dinosaurs in its own narrative, what about the legacy characters it brought back? What makes Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum so essential to concluding the franchise that they needed to be in this movie?
 
Legacy character fan service can be fun. In fact, it can even be one of the best parts of films that know how to both honor and build upon those legacies. In successful attempts, you get Creed, Blade Runner 2049, and most recently Top Gun: Maverick. Even in The Force Awakens, one can see how Han’s presence is not made redundant even as it is largely unnecessary (though the circumstances by which that film came about are entirely different). But in unsuccessful attempts, one is left with films like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and the film to which Dominion is most often compared to, The Rise of Skywalker. (Jury’s still out on Spider-Man: No Way Home.) These are films that use legacy characters for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to nostalgia-bait audiences into buying tickets while never doing anything interesting with those characters. They don’t grow, they don’t change, they don’t really affect the narrative at all, but they’re always brought in as some part of an “epic conclusion,” even when they don’t really matter. Dominion falls under such a curse, as it only gives Sam Neill and Laura Dern one thing to do for two-and-a-half hours, and leaves poor Jeff Goldblum (who is weirdly bad in this) to the dinos. I’m sorry, no, to the locusts.
 
Jurassic World Dominion isn’t the worst film in the Jurassic Park franchise (Fallen Kingdom continues to hold that distinction), but it’s certainly not doing itself any favors by extending its already overly-bloated runtime only to include stories and characters that don’t end up mattering while it flip-flops between what story it wants to tell. It’s not thrilling, interesting, subversive, or satisfactory. If anything is true of it, it’s actually the most boring one of the bunch. All this to say, a Jurassic movie can’t be a Jurassic movie without dinosaurs playing an essential part in the narrative. Dominion sees treats both them and the human legacy characters as box office punchlines.
 
I’m giving “Jurassic World Dominion” a 4.6/10

- The Friendly Film Fan