The Wolfman

The Wolfman? Didn’t that movie come out like two years ago or something? Why would I review a movie that’s almost two years old outside of a Rewind segment? Well as it turns out this film turns out to be a great example of a bad example, and passing up a chance to review it would be a huge mistake to express a great number of personal beliefs when it comes to making a quality film. Plus when you think about it, the film isn’t really THAT old, so we can use it to properly discuss the importance of great potential in film being completely squandered.

When I first heard they were going to remake this film my first thought was something along the lines of “Why?” I thought that remaking this film was yet another example of Hollywood using a established brands to try and cash in the quick buck.

But when I calmed down and got over my initial shock I realized that this film was actually a perfect candidate to be remade. At this point it was the last original Universal Monster film to be adapted (Dracula and the The Mummy had both been released and more or less embraced by audiences, Frankenstein… not so much), and when it was originally released it lacked a lot of the tools and funding that could have made it a really good monster movie. Then I heard Benicio Del Toro was attached to the film as the titular character, and my hopes really started to peak. Not only is he one of my favorite actors, but casting him was perfect, as even on his best days he looks like Javier Bardem perpetually transforming into a werewolf.

Then I heard that some more of my all time favorite actors (Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving) and one of my favorite up and comers (Emily Blunt) were on board, and my excitement flat out started to soar.

And then I heard Joe Johnston was directing…

Well, I can deal with that I suppose. I mean I liked The Rocketeer, and October Sky, and… Timothy Dalton in The Rocketeer. And even though Johnston has made some real stinkers in his time (Jurassic Park III, The Pagemaster) the bulk of his films were very passable. Plus he fought his ass off to get this movie made as an R film instead of PG-13, so clearly he knows what this film is supposed to be about. Then I saw the trailer and I was back to being like “Hey, neato! This looks really cool, this looks like what a Wolfman movie should be!”

Oh how I was mistaken, oh the sad, sad pain I was in for once the second half of the film systematically began to violate my childhood memories.

Now in all fairness I’m not gonna hesitate to say that I absolutely loved the first half of this film. The film looked absolutely beautiful, and Victorian era London has never looked more alive or more terrifying. Dark, twisted, foggy forests and bogs are used to great effect to create an atmosphere that elicits fear while an industrial city of London elicits an atmosphere of a spooky early metropolis full of tasty Wolfman treats. The opening scene brings us into the action with a short, terrifying chase leading to an off screen death, the only reveal of the Wolfman being a bloody claw, a perfect throwback to the classic Universal monster films of old.

We meet the bulk of our main characters and for the most part I like them. They may be one dimensional and shallow, but they are real enough as simple werewolf bait, and Del Toro brings a fantastic sense of sorrow and remorse to the role of Lawrence Talbot that hasn’t really explored that side of a monster before. We meet the love interest, and this is the first sign of impending doom that we get from the film. There is NO chemistry between the two leads, and while I typically love Anthony Hopkins it appears that in this film he seems to be almost… parodying himself. To make matter more complicated is the fact that his entire character seems to be contradictory, and while this may be alluding to the nature of his character (I’ll touch on that later) it seems like it’s more of a writing problem than a character point.

But all these problems go right out the damn window once we see the wonder that is the Wolfman in this film. Our first glance occurs at a gypsy camp, a gory tour de force that shows a crowd squealing with delight at how an R rated monster movie SHOULD be filmed, entrails raining and blood spurting at every possible moment. This culminates with Lawrence being (of course) bitten by the Wolf, and following this is a montage of his healing for the majority of the next month. We pick back up just days before the next full moon, and it’s during this time that we see the transformation Lawrence has already gone through.

This is a great moment, as we see a new, confident, and dangerous Lawrence beginning to emerge. One of my favorite scenes revolved around Talbot casually walking (actually more like strutting) into a room with a formerly aggressive dog following on his heels to meet the detective following the murders. The sheer confidence and quiet menace that Del Toro exudes is palpable, and his calm grin says more than all the dialogue in the world could accomplish. This all leads into Lawrence’s first transformation, and it’s at this point that I really began to love this film. The transformation scenes are nothing short of perfection, bones snap and crack to realign as Lawrence’s form becomes that of a feral, savage beast.

Each transformation scene is fantastic to watch, with the final product being a perfect combination of modern make-up and prosthetics and the original design from the Lon Cheney Jr. version. There’s a segment that really stands out where Lawrence transforms in front of a college class in the middle of London, and this scene is hands down my favorite moment in the film. Johnston pulls out all the stops in this moment, giving us a beautifully shot gore-fest that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was so exciting and so indulging to the monster movie lover that it almost single-handedly justified why a remake of this film should be made. Everything was going great in the film… until the second half began ruining it all.

Just like this

Right around the second half of the film things begin spiraling down the drain in terms of direction and story, and surprisingly it’s not because of the effects. Instead, it’s because the story apparently doesn’t know what it wants to be and suddenly transitions into something a werewolf movie should never be. The film goes from focusing on the duality of man’s nature and turns into a cheesy, ham-fisted attempt at becoming an Oedipal story.

You see, what makes the legend of the werewolf so terrifying isn’t the fact that it’s a big scary monster that’s going to eat you (well… maybe it’s that a little), but it’s the idea of losing yourself to the dark side of man’s dual nature. The idea of devolving from a man into a raging, hulking animal beast that would eat your friends and family if you could is waaaaaay more disturbing to the psych, especially since man’s nature has always had two sides to it, a yin to every yang. It’s the same reason the modern idea of the zombie is so terrifying. A slow, shambling stupid person who could bite you isn’t as scary as the idea of becoming a zombie, losing your humanity and transforming into one of the masses, nothing on your mind except eating those closest to you is way scarier than just getting bitten.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored the idea of man’s dual nature, and if you think about it the original Wolfman could almost be seen as an adaptation of the classic story. A great deal of the story revolved around Larry Talbot having visions of his time as a monster and fighting the urge to hurt those he loved, which was a metaphor for Larry fighting the dark side of every man’s nature. His transformation into a monster is really nothing more than a man losing control and letting himself give in to that dark side of humanity that threatens to turn every person into an agent of evil.

Unrelated photo

In this film however, this interesting execution is completely replaced with something that doesn’t belong anywhere near a Wolfman movie, a metaphor for the Oedipal Complex.

In a nutshell, the Oedipal complex is a psychoanalytic idea that everyman has a subconscious desire to murder their father and have sex with their mother. It’s a highly debated and often rebutted idea in psychology, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a driving force in many classic films. This theory and idea has been featured in the most diverse films imaginable, in everything from Psycho to Star Wars, but a good film usually tends to incorporate personal struggles and themes into their films. The main protagonists in Robocop and The Matrix were supposed to actually be interpretations of Jesus , Spiderman is supposed to be a thinly veiled coming of age story, Batman in The Dark Knight was supposed to be a representation of George Bush fighting terrorism, and even Top Gun was supposed to be an allegory for a gay man struggling to come out of the closet. Every script worth its salt will typically have an underlying purpose to it.

Although some are less subtle than others

The problem with The Wolfman however isn’t that it tries to convey a message, the problem is that is decides to depict the least appropriate message imaginable for the type of film it comes across as. When you are making a monster movie, and addressing the duality of man falls directly into your lap, then you should just go with it and give the film a little more depth while your werewolf is eating villagers by the dozen. Instead, Johnston decides to shoehorn a really inappropriate message into the film about halfway through instead of just sticking with what he started to address in the first half of the film. It just comes across really awkward, and it would be like if halfway through Iron Man 2 they decided to completely throw away the entire reference of Tony Stark being the “objectivist hero” from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged the and turned it into a coming of age story instead.

The writing also seems to drop right off the face of the Earth about halfway through as well, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the actual writing itself or because there is nothing going on between Benicio and Emily chemistry wise. It just feels like they knew the film had a great first half, but then they panicked and thought they needed more depth and soulful writing in the second half to make it a more meaningful film. Monster movies aren’t supposed to be Oscar contenders, they’re just happy, pulpy, guilty pleasures for twisted people like me. If you wanted to you could even make a great monster film without any blood, just look at Monster Squad.

As much as I loved the first half of this film I felt devastated as the second half completely derailed all of the credit the first half created. I’d love to tell you that we have another great monster movie remake in our midst, but much of the appeal this film could have had is somewhat squandered by the end. If you’re a fan of gore and monster films you definitely shouldn’t pass this movie up, but there isn’t much more going for it than that.

6.5 OUT OF 10

March Rewind: Children of Men

I love me some film, and those faithful readers who have been following this blog since the first article will know that one of my favorite all time films is Children of Men, but sadly most people out there haven’t even heard of this film, let alone seen it and told their friends about it. Due to this lack of knowledge combined with the super high quality of the film, I think it’s only fitting that Children of Men be my pick for the February Rewind.

Children of Men tells the story of the decay of society following a planet wide infertility crisis in which every single female has apparently lost the ability to carry a child. In the face of this crisis, every major government has collapsed to revolutionaries and fear mongers except for London. Surviving refugees flock to London by the thousands, and as a result London has been transformed into a militarized police state which rounds up and “disappears” them into refugee camps scattered across the countryside. This has led to immigrants creating increasingly militant rights groups that have become more and more hostile as their rights become more and more trivial.

Enter our protagonist Theo Faron, a former activist turned bureaucratic government worker who has grown weary and disillusioned following the death of his son and the decline in hope through the world and has become just another hopeless citizen waiting for the world’s final clock to tick down. In fact, our first impression of Theo is utter apathy when he pushes past a group of shocked onlookers who are watching a story on the news about the youngest person in the world being killed (the equivalent in their world of the Pope being assassinated) just so he can order a cup of coffee. Even worse is that after this scene, even though the news of this persons death doesn’t even phase him, he doesn’t pass up the chance to use this as an excuse to go home early from work to “grieve”.

Theo is not your typical protagonist, he’s cynical, he’s angry, and at times he’s borderline depressed about the world dissolving around him, but as we see the world he lives in we understand why he is this way. In the opening scene we a café explode less than thirty feet behind him from a terrorist bombing mere moments after he leaves, but it doesn’t even phase him and he goes to work later that day like nothing happened. We get a sense that events like this have just become commonplace annoyances in this world, the way forgetting your wallet or losing your keys would be annoyances today. In fact things are so bad in this world that the government has taken to handing out suicide pills for those who just want to end the story early.

Theo’s world is turned upside down when he is kidnapped by a radical group of activists called “The Fishes” who bring him in front of the last person he expected to see, his estranged wife. She pays Theo to obtain immigration papers for a refugee name Kee and to escort her into the country, but while helping this young woman safely obtain passage Theo comes to realize the big secret behind her importance, Kee is pregnant.

Like most other dystopian films Children of Men is a film about hope in the face of adversity, but where this film distinguishes itself from other films is the fact that the hope feels particularly desperate and unlikely. Theo’s mission seems more than impractical, it seems flat out impossible, and as the plot moves forward not only does Theo’s mission seem less and less likely to succeed, but we see his desperation take him and Kee to some truly dark and dangerous places. Yet all of these dark and sometimes depressing turns manage to convey a sense of dread and fear in the audience that perfectly encapsulates the dark feeling of fear and abandonment that Theo and Kee must be facing.

Yeah… pretty much like that.

In fact, this may be one of the best movies I have ever seen when it comes to making the audience associate themselves with the characters and situations in the film, which in turn creates characters that we genuinely care about and want to succeed in their endeavors. It’s not just the writing (which is admittedly fantastic), it’s every single facet of the film, from the stellar cast, to the practical effects, to the intricate and original story being told by the film. All of these facets however, pale next to my favorite single component in the entire film, the single-shot sequences.

The single shot sequence is an idea and execution that has been used before, but never before has it been used as expertly or stylistically as in Children of Men. Basically, the single-shot sequence is an extended, unedited cut used for an extended period which, when used correctly, can bring a sense of realism to an intense scene by putting the audience directly into the scene. A good example of this shot can be seen in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (also by the same director) when Hermione and Harry use the time device to run through Hogwarts for a second time.

Here though, this effect is used for much longer periods of time, one of which is an intense action sequence and lasts over seven minutes. One of these sequences was so original and so hard to do that the crew had to create a special vehicle and camera rigging system just to be able to create the shot. The end result is a film so chock full of exciting and original cinematography that it creates a sense of excitement and suspense that no other film can even compare to. Another shot took place during an intense chase through a warzone that lasts over seven minutes without a single cut.

Remember a few articles back where I referred to camerawork as “The Ancient Lost Art of Giving a S**t”? Well this movie is a good example of how, with a little creative camerawork, you can create a scene that is light on special effects, but still sooooo much more impressive and involving than your typical Transformers kind of action film. The film comes off gritty and violent, almost like a wonderfully shot documentary in the middle of a war, and there are some brutally awesome violence like a guy getting his face smashed in with a car battery. In fact I haven’t seen camerawork this original and crisp since Sam Raimi, and this film shows that there are still talented directors out there (rare, but still out there) that have original ideas that they can share with the rest of Hollywood to break up the monotonous piles of action movie crap being shoveled into our faces.

Seriously Hollywood… WTF?

As much as I loved the camerawork though, it’s just one facet of a film that just plain fired on all cylinders. The story is powerful and involving, and offers a realistic alternative to how the world might possibly end, through the machinations of science instead of hatred or violence between countries. The characters are wonderfully written as well, and whether it’s Clive Owen as the cynical Theo, Julianne Moore as the idealistic Julian, or Michael Caine as the disillusioned and bitter stoner Jasper (yes, this film has a stoner Michael Caine in it), every character is believable and likeable in the desperation of the world’s dire situation.

Another facet of this movie that worked really well was the fact that the antagonist was realistic and thoroughly believable in the pursuit of his goals. I can’t really talk too much about the villain without revealing some of the surprises of the film, but in this day and age of villains being cardboard cutouts of bad guys doing bad guy things for bad guys sake, it’s really refreshing to see an anti-hero like this who we can associate with in their misguided but genuine beliefs that what they are doing is noble and the right thing to do. Even more impressive is the fact that someone so unassuming and dignified could really be so capable of the horrible things he plans.

When casting antagonists it is generally a good idea to refrain from casting big names in the roles, particularly if this role is a well known one. An overly popular actor portraying the role of what is essentially the second banana can detract from the importance of the protagonist, and most great movie will go out of their way to ensure they cast a B-actor at the highest to maintain the appropriate levels of importance. A lot of times poorly chosen “in thing” A-list actors are cast into roles not because they can properly portray the character, but because casting directors think this is what kids will pay to go see on the big screen. This sort of casting can be… awkward.

Pictured: Evil Incarnate

No better example of this can be found than in the abysmal Fantastic Four film. While she may not have been the antagonist of the film, Jessica Alba’s turn as the legendary Sue Storm was nothing short of nauseating due to the worst casting imaginable. Apparently a casting director read the description “Fair skinned: Blue-eyed: Blond Haired: and mid thirties” and said “Hey, I’m sure a twenty-something Latina girl would be PERFECT for this role!” Pop in some creepy as hell blue contacts, a horrendous looking wig, and bam! You’d never know the difference.  If you could change her looks so heavily if it meant landing a talented actress like Meryl Streep or Sigourney Weaver that’s one thing, but Alba stinks up everything she’s ever been in with her acting, relying solely on her looks to get her countless roles.

Pictured: Acting

Once she opened her mouth in Fantastic Four, all bets were off.

With it’s beautiful writing, gorgeously shot scenes, fantastic acting, and solid supporting cast, Children of Men still ranks as one of my top five films of all time. This is a powerful film, and should not be seen as a feel good film due to its brutal violence and incredibly dark content, but at the end of the day it still conveys that beautiful bit of hope buried in the darkest of places.

10 out of 10