Overthinking the movies.

Went to the movies tonight, I have thoughts on a trailer and on the feature presentation, we'll start with the feature because it's my blog dammit.

It's a movie, and some beef.

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

I admit to loving the XXX movies, even the one with Ice Cube, there is just something strangely charming about how they throw all logic and physics out the window and just sort of expect us to go with it. In that respect the latest installment is more of the same, a lot more, with exotic locations, nonsensical stunts, pretty ladies in bikinis, Vin Diesel taking his shirt off for any and all reasons possible. And massive collateral damage in every action scene.

But it's actually kind of subversive too, the plot, such as it is, revolves around a device called Pandora's Box, made by parties unknown for purposes unknown, it can control any satellite in Earth's orbit. How? No idea. Why? Also unexplained, those who get their hands on it primarily use it to de-orbit satellites to use as precision targeted kinetic weapons, because that is also a thing it can do. The government wants it so they can spy on every satellite, various groups of extreme sports enthusiasts want to either destroy it or use it themselves, and rogue elements within the government want to use it to blackmail the world into disarming their international spy networks, I think, the time when the villain was explaining this Vin Diesel was literally not paying attention and having a secret conversation with an ally, so the explanation was kind of garbled, you get the sense that he didn't care, so why should we?

Anyhow, you get the idea that a global Panopticon of surveillance is something to be fought against at any cost, which in itself is not a terribly unusual idea, although certainly a liberal one, but what I found more interesting was the idea that combat against government overreach is noble and should be celebrated, more than that, that a group composed primarily of women and people of non white ethnicity (seriously, there are three of good guys who are recognizably white, of them one is Australian, one has about two lines, and one is tech support) are the heroes while committing acts that in the current climate might be considered terrorism, they directly attack government interests and defy laws in the name of personal freedom, not just their own, but everyone's. Also every villain, man or woman, who is portrayed on screen is white as driven snow, down to the throwaway mooks who only exist to be shot in creative ways by our heroes, I cannot believe this casting was done by mistake.
In a day and age where somebody punching a Nazi on camera becomes the center of a media firestorm, this idea slips under the radar because it is in a stupid action movie, it's actually kind of brilliant, what better way to normalize revolution?

Anyway, it's not going to change the face of film making but I had fun and there is stuff you can think about should you choose to. Part two is not so optimistic I am afraid.

Ghost in the Shell

Already mired in controversy due the casting of Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, if the trailer I saw tonight was anything to go by that will end up being the least of its problems. The trailer gives little indication of the plot other than sci-fi dystopian near future but the lines we hear on screen imply that much of the focus will be on the history of Major Motoko Kusanagi, a woman who has lived in a complete cyborg body replacement almost since birth. Now in the anime version she is not particularly angsty about this, nor do I recall her history being terribly sinister as to how she came to be in that situation, it appears that will not be the case in this version however, which cannot interest me less.

Ghost in the Shell explored themes of trans-humanism and the police and surveillance state combined with a wide ranging amount of philosophizing on any number of topics. But it rarely devolved into angst for the sake of angst and Kusanagi, while reserved due to her history, still clearly had feelings and motivations beyond "I am an inhuman cyborg woe is me" I didn't get a sense of that from the trailer I saw, and Johansson seems to be playing the character as if she was any other female action lead in a shitty movie, quiet, and reserved to the point of being monosyllabic.

But at least the effects should be cool right? Well, no, not that I saw, I mean sure they look better than the average video game cutscene I guess, but for the city shots it seems like they just took the scenery from Blade Runner and put more holograms on it. The cyborgs and robots looked really fake to me and it just didn't look believable at all.

I would love to be wrong, I want to see a movie that explores the above themes in a way that is interesting while looking cool too, but I don't think this version is gonna do it, and to be honest, the original anime still looks and sounds fine to me.

Also, Tachikoma are no where to be seen, fuck that noise.