Modern Culture - Bourne in the USA

There are always spoilers in this blog... The following review is essentially almost all spoilers...

Complete and Utter Skrullshit

Secret Invasion concluded.

It was 29 minutes long. The finale of Marvel's big espionage alien invasion series was 29 fucking minutes long and it made no sense at all and was really shit. I mean really REALLY shit. I can't see them coming back from this now, the MCU is finished.

Really? I mean, do I really think that or am I just angry because we had a deus ex machina type conclusion that made some of the naffest comics ever written seem like Shakespeare to this rancid load of old shit. Giah is now about as powerful as... what? All of the Marvel heroes? She's at large on earth having ended the Skrull uprising; the President has declared war on alien races and Fury's wife has ditched her swarthy looks in favour of green with teeth and ears. Not even Liv Coleman could save this one.

Why did the Skrulls keep all their human doubles? Why didn't they simply kill them all off as and when they were taken over, why have them all in one place that you're going to nuke and no one would have known anyhow? How come none of them died in the radiation soaked bowels of an old reactor? Is Gravik actually as thick as the Super Skrull was originally written? Why was it lacking in jeopardy, interest or even fucking common sense? Why were the special effects so bad and why was the President of the USA stuck in a hospital that looked like the corridors of the BBC? I have said before - they couldn't even get the 'security' right and the people who wrote this watch POTUS on TV every week and are aware of just the visible presence of his entourage - how could they get it so wrong?

Dear God, I can't believe they thought they'd get away with this. There's a strike in the USA at the moment and writers and actors are worried about AI taking their jobs away from them. Well, maybe they need to start upping their games otherwise we're going to get to the stage where we actively WANT an Artificial Intelligence to write a TV series because it might actually be good.

It has to be said here, otherwise I'll end up conflating my opinions into a full-blown blog, which I'm not sure any of you want, but if you factor out the changes to schedules, reshoots, company reshuffles, criminal allegations against some stars, the writers' strike and all the other external bollocks that is tying Disney up, you have to start looking at the quality issues. There are still many people out there who are enjoying the journey and you could argue that everything has its detractors and people who are uninterested but feel the need to comment or troll are common place and it really boils down to whether people enjoy something or not - and if they do they don't want to hear from those who don't. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance - they don't want to see dissenting voices because these people might spoil their enjoyment by pointing out flaws they hadn't or didn't want to see.

The problem with Marvel output - James Gunn's most recent inclusion is the exception to the rule - is it's been lacking... the sense of wonder and awe has gone; we've had the cosmic battle to end all battles; we've witnessed Iron Man die, Cap grow old and drop out and Natasha sacrificing herself for the good of everything - where the fuck do you go now? 

It stopped being looked at with rose-tinted glasses and people become more circumspect, critical and less forgiving. What we've witnessed is the MCU go from this cool idea to a grind show; a mincer churning out the minced up chunks of what was left. This problem won't stop with the Fantastic Four or the X-Men because the problem is the stories and the scripts and the execution. We've had the pinnacle anything bigger is overkill, everything not as big we've seen before. There is nothing super-heroically new under the sun. Even if you adapted some of the greatest comics stories of all time, they're not going to be better; even if you have fantastic characters and a good story, when you get to the finale it's going to be wham bam thank you ma'am and we'll see you in four months. 

It has to stop or it needs a very long hiatus. 

First Bourne

See? If you stretch your memory enough you'll remember a shedload of films that you've seen or heard about from donkeys years ago that have become so unfamiliar it's like watching a new film. I think we've only seen one of the Jason Bourne films, the other three will be as mysterious as The Bourne Identity was 21 years after first seeing it, oh and didn't Matt Damon look young?

I figure that with James Bond and Ethan Hunt floating about, the cinematic world thought, 'we need another action hero franchise and Matt Damon can pull it off!' The problem with this film is it might have had something to do with the lack of subtitles on the copy I watched or it might have been that I simply didn't really understand what was going on or being suggested. It is, or rather it looks and feels like a straight to video Xerox of the two previous action heroes despite it being quite a huge success.

Jason is fished out of the sea with a couple of bullets in him, he can't remember who he is or what he's doing but follows a series of interestingly contrived situations to discover he's a living weapon trained by the USA as a killing machine but his loss of memory - never really explained - forces him into thinking he's just a normal Joe. It's a film of its time - 2002 - and had less full on action sequences than you'd expect from a film of this ilk. I'm not sure I enjoyed it, which might explain my general ambivalence to the rest of the franchise - if that's warranted, we'll find out over the next week.

Bourne Again

Well, that was about as exciting as the first film but with more intense car chases. I'm struggling to see what the actual attraction is to these films; they're like those generic action films where the protagonist is a martial arts expert but no one knows. 

Damon isn't capable of carrying this kind of film, he's too... everyman. Obviously that's just my opinion and his box office takings suggest I'm wrong, but it's all a bit lower quality, if you know what I mean? The set pieces, the story, the ongoing plot that links the first two films, there's nothing in any of them that's compelling or even really worth following; it's almost like they don't have much and are trying to stretch it out to seem like more. The problem I have is it's like The Fugitive meets one of those Steven Seagal films from the 1990s but less fun. The Bourne Supremacy - what does that title mean? - follows on from the previous film by two years. Jason and Maria are living in Goa and their peaceful life is shattered when someone kills her and leaves Jason scrabbling for more answers. Interestingly, for me anyway, is that the [currently] almost ubiquitous Michelle Monaghan appears in this as an almost-non-speaking analyst. 

It's him trying to remember more about the life he's forgotten and piecing together who he works for, with and what kind of a threat they pose at the moment. If the first film felt a little 'unfinished' this one finishes it more, but for all the assassins and espionage, car chases and stunts, it simply doesn't feel like an A list film.

Bourne to be Wild

The third film in the franchise is The Bourne Ultimatum and by now I'm wondering just what relevance the titles have to the actual story and then you realise that all three Bourne films so far have been essentially the same film split into three parts (and why Ultimatum the title feels like it should precede Supremacy).

This is by far and away the best of the trilogy; it has a story that you can follow, it has enough action and intrigue to keep you interested and yet it still manages to end on a kind of cliffhanger, leaving things open for other films, which of course there were, but not exactly what you would expect.

What these films do a good job of pointing out is that the higher you are in the upper echelons of the CIA you are the more likely you are to be involved in some cover-up or covert project that you don't want anyone knowing about and the films continue to have that contrived feel that the baddies are all good guys gone rogue and if they had proper auditing systems everyone would be uncovered as dodgy.

I think what makes the Bourne films feel so B list is they're not movies like Mission Impossible or James Bond because there's a gritty realism to them that makes them feel like grubby documentaries rather than glossy feature films.

The Miracle of Satire is Dead Meat

"YOU HAVE TO WATCH The British Miracle Meat" screamed several headlines in various papers; it's British satire at its cutting edge best etc yadda yadda blah. So we did and while it was definitely satire this 21st century mockumentary adaptation of Soylent Green isn't big or clever or even funny. 

It is if you read some of the reviews; The Guardian's journalist - presumably didn't watch it and got a mate to fill him in with the basics - suggested that the big reveal doesn't come until half way through the show and that the real joke was in the final scenes when the tastiest cuts of them all are given an even bigger reveal as to where they come from, but, seriously, Wallace hands you the punchline in almost the first sentence and continues to talk about donors and being paid for their prime cuts.

If this is the state of British satire in 2023 then Chris Morris would be spinning in the grave he doesn't currently abide in at the thought this was in any way 'cutting edge' or even 'satire', well good satire. There were some fine digs at the current cost of living crisis and how poor people would be forced into situation to sell bits of themselves for money to pay energy bills, but it was just a bit too BBC One Show. It was satire for the TikTok generation with all the subtlety removed and replaced with a hammer to beat the viewers with and it wasn't funny, even with Greg at his bombastic loud self. Regardless of what you've heard or read it isn't funny, it's not original and I can imagine some Daily Mail readers taking it as true and venomously complaining to their MPs about it.

Jason: Re-Bourne

Yadda yadda yadda, it's just more of the same. It's time for Jason Bourne to resurface and have another pop at the CIA when he remembers more shit about the life he ran away from. This time he's discovering his father was involved in the project that created him, or was he? Could he have just been used as the camel that broke the straws back? Has our intrepid hero discovered even more bollocks about himself? Not only does big Jase B get his moves out again, another head of the CIA with an ego and a tendency to be narcissistic is also in place. I mean, I warned you about this; the heads of the CIA are all as dodgy as fuck. It's trademark JB and yet it could be written by an average low level AI with aspirations to be a calculator...

This literally was more of the same with better film quality; it even has the same song to end each film - Extreme Ways by Moby, which I've now heard four times in a week after never in 20 years; this is a film franchise that knows how to not deliver and with as many destructive car chases as possible. It's even left open for another sequel; let's hope the world burns before that happens.

Constanpated

If that's a tortuous title, it's apt for what turned out to be a rather tortuous film. Constantine is a bit of a cult film apparently, with a growing army of people who like it. We watched it for the first time in about 18 years and apart from the usual story of not remembering any of it, we were largely unimpressed with Keanu Reeves's mumblecore performance and the rather contrived and convoluted storyline.

As for special effects, well by 2005 they were coming into their own and this has some pretty impressive scenes - especially in hell - but also suffered from some rather less impressive effects at other points in the film's two hour run time. I suppose the movie just about captures the essence of Hellblazer, the DC comic it was based on, but Keanu isn't from the Northeast of England and, for me personally, Lucifer wasn't played by Tom Ellis. It had a lot of stars in it - Rachel Weiss, Tilda Swinton, Shia LaBeouf, Djimon Hounsou and an uncredited appearance by Michelle (Ethan Hunt's wife) Monaghan and literally all of them were wasted in this.

Some Mexican discovers the Spear of Destiny and proceeds to move across Mexico and the USA - you never know what becomes of him because the next time it appears is being wielded by Swinton's Gabriel who is trying to force the birth of Lucifer's son onto the mortal plain. Possibly the reason we struggled to really feel anything for this film is because it's simply not very good; it's incredibly overwrought and Keanu, bless him, has never really been an actor. 

Doomed Patrol?

If anyone has been wondering what's happened to the last half of the final season of Doom Patrol you're not the only one. It's now been six months since the show ended its first half and it's sounding increasingly likely that the rug might have pulled.

James Gunn has said on social media that he wants the final parts to be shown but HBO Max don't seen keen so it might be a case of trying to find a new network to show the last seven parts. Frankly, given how the show has flip-flopped all over the place and the quality has diminished completely, if it never finds a new home it might not be a bad thing.

Fast-phrases

Three years ago the Fast Show team reunited for a UK Gold special Just a Load of Blooming Catchphrases and I still can't understand why it was commissioned by the now defunct TV station and not the BBC who was the original broadcaster and who had such success with what is probably the last great ensemble sketch show.

It has taken me over three years to track down this 'documentary' and as it's 90 minutes long it's anything but fast, but it is extremely entertaining and informative. The tribute focuses on Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson because they were the driving forces behind this madcap sketch show, but there's a huge amount of contributions from Mark Williams, Simon Day, Arabella Weir, John Thomson and Colin McFarlane, as well as views and opinions from the likes of Bob Mortimer, who was the inspiration for a lot of the sketches, Harry Enfield, who was probably responsible for the show happening and Rhys Thomas - sometime Swiss Toni foil and the man responsible for the legendary Brian Pern. 

Obviously an amount of time was spent on the death of Caroline Aherne and it was clear the rest of the cast were still deeply affected by this loss, but also the man who greenlit the show, Geoffrey Perkins who also died young. It was great seeing clips from the show and the characters updated for 2020 in a series of talking head interviews but in many ways the best one (apart from Rowley Birkin) was 'Roy', John Thomson's put upon husband of Aherne's Renee - it was a minute of sad, contemplative silence.

Windbreakers

We needed something less Bourney and a little more interesting than the MCU so we opted for a 2009 horror/thriller called Daybreakers, a film which we had seen before but decided to give it another go especially as it's gained something of a cult following, over a decade after it was released.

Ethan Hawke plays a vampire who won't drink human blood in a world where a virus has transformed a large percentage of people into vampires, who then turn the majority of the rest of the humans into vampires creating a situation where there aren't enough humans to feed the population so a substitute is needed to feed the masses because they've started feeding on each other and that means proper vampire mutations, wings and a Nosferatu look that isn't at all 21st Century.

Willem Dafoe plays a man who was once a vampire but is turned back into a human by a freak of sunlight and a large lake of water. He wants to replicate the thing that turned him back and as implausible as the premise is, it kind of works in spectacular fashion. This is a film with a lot of blood in it, most of it innocent until the cure takes a wicked twist as former vampires now hold the key in their own blood, creating an almost karmic denouement.

It's not a bad film; 90 minutes of intense action and slightly shonky dialogue, but considerably better thought out than say anything Marvel has done in recent years and while Ethan Hawke is an actor who is sometimes difficult to like, he does a good job as the bewildered hero while the vampire world around him begins to crumble.

Men on Fire

I'm not quite sure why Tony Scott's 2004 revenge thriller is called Man on Fire unless it's because of the number of people Denzel Washington - aka Creasey - sets on fire during the film. It is, however, an exceedingly entertaining revenge thriller only spoilt by Ridley's brother's propensity for going all arty-farty and avant-garde with the camerawork. Creasey's employed to protect the daughter of a rich Mexican but she ends up becoming his little mate.

Dakota Fanning is the little girl who steals suicidal alcoholic Denzel's heart and when she's kidnapped and he's left for dead his world becomes polarised and his time is limited. He's going to get anyone connected with the girl's kidnapping and her subsequent death and it's going to be messy. Christopher Walken tells the cop involved in the case that Creasey's art form is death and he's about to paint his masterpiece.

It's a really good film and I'm surprised we hadn't watched it sooner and the only thing that let it down for us is about a fifth of film's dialogue is in Spanish and I had a copy that had Italian subtitles hardcoded into it, so it was a case of literally trying to work out what they were saying and neither of us have much of either language apart from some foodstuffs. It was still a good way to end a largely dull week's worth of TV, even if the ending is both happy and tragic in equal measure.

Next Time...

Some stuff, but nothing from Marvel until at least October, so we can all be thankful for that. I've got the second season of Good Omens to watch, but I can't remember if we enjoyed the first series or not, it seems so long ago now. We have a couple of other 'recommended' series we might try. There's a few things of the Flash Drive of Doom to plough through and you never know something interesting might drop...