The Odyssey (5/5 Stars)

There is a primal quality to this most ancient of tales. It speaks to a deep seated fear of the ancient traveler, that these things you have, your wife, your family, your property, your place in the community, can be taken away by usurpers behind your back as soon as you are far enough away to be unable to defend them. What makes men respect the possessions of a man called to war across the sea, where fate and/or chance can delay or prevent his return. Well, there is this most well known and oft-told story of a hero of the Trojan War, one Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who was lost for almost ten years after the Fall of Troy (gone from home home twenty years in total), but did indeed come back, stronger than ever, and with vengeance for all those who sought to take advantage of his absence.

The Odyssey is a long convoluted tale with a lot of different set pieces. I believe it would be exceedingly difficult to parse this ancient material, honor those elements that are famous, and keep a core through-line. Christopher Nolan’s masterful adaptation not only does this, but adds material that enhances and develops his themes, making the movie version of the story, in important ways, superior to the original text. This movie is not only easier to follow, it means more, because it knows better what the story is about than the original text (or it is at least clearer what Nolan wants the story to mean).

Everyone knows the various encounters that disrupt Odysseus’s return home, the island of the cyclops, the sirens, Charbydis and Scylla. In many tellings, these well-known set pieces overwhelm the scenes at home because, in Ithaca, there is no action, just subtle political intrigue. The strength of this movie comes from Nolan’s focus on first establishing the Ithaca subplot, developing it in an important and dramatic scene in the center of the movie (in the Land of the Dead), and then paying those scenes off in the climatic ending.

How Nolan does this is entirely his addition to the story. He adds two characters not in the original text. In the beginning they are teenage boys, subject to the Ithaca draft for the Trojan War. One, Antinious, draws the short straw, but since he is the only son of his family, Odysseus (Matt Damon) allows another boy, Sinon, to take his place. Antinious promises to Sinon to take care of his family while he is gone.

At the end of the Trojan War, Antinious (Robert Pattinson), we learn, has broken his vow to Sinon and not taken care of his family. Indeed, we find him squatting with a bunch of other suitors in the home of Odysseus, putting pressure on his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) to choose another husband. The situation is fraught with danger. Penelope intuits, I think correctly, that any man she chooses to be her husband would eventually see her son (Tom Holland) as a political threat and kill him. And she can’t just crown her son the king, because, not being of age, he again, would be a target for assassination. The best thing she can do is what she does here, proclaim her confidence in her lost husband’s survival and stall for time. Realistically, she can only do this until her son comes of age. Then her son will have to claim the throne and all hell will break loose.

Sinon (Elliot Page) dies at the beginning of the movie (i.e. the end of the Trojan War), but comes back onto the screen at the midway point in the Land of the Dead to warn Odysseus of the dangers at home. He speaks of Antinious' pledge to support his father and how, when he showed up in the Land of the Dead, his father was the first to greet him. Sinon provides Odysseus a token that Antinious will recognize as the promises he didn’t keep. This exchange is paid off handsomely in the final scenes. Again, there is nothing in the book that provides the character arcs of these two added figures. In the text, Odysseus doesn’t know any of the suitors by name. Nolan added Sinon and Antinious and they do much to hold together the frame of the movie while Odysseus goes on his many journeys between the flagposts.

It is also a testament to Nolan that he puts much effort into strengthening the weaker segments of the journey, as opposed to omitting them entirely or gliding over them, so that all scenes have their merit (a good idea in a 3-hour movie). A particularly good example is Odysseus' encounter with the land of the giant cannibals. The text is unsatisfying. Odysseus loses the majority of his men, and all of his ships but one, in the space of a few pages against a foe with no special characteristics. In the movie, these beings have been transformed into truly terrifying armor-plated giants that have mystifying control over the forest they dwell in. They look so cool, that this usually forgotten part of the story is being used for the movie poster. The scene is also a good example of Nolan’s use of practical effects as opposed to digital trickery. (It involves casting 7 foot tall actors as the giants, and using a 4 ft 11 inch stunt double for Matt Damon. An old Hollywood trick)

The world of 1000 B.C. was an unforgiving place, and within that unforgiving place was an even more unforgiving element, sea travel. One could see a person off on a sea voyage and not only have no idea if they would ever come back, but really have no idea of what actually befell them when or where. Once the boat passed the horizon literally anything could have happened to them. On the open sea/ocean, there are no witnesses. It is no surprise that in Shakespeare there is a consistent trope of shipwrecks and miraculous survivals. Since there was no way to tell if someone died in a shipwreck, there always existed some hope that they could come back someday. This primal hope of the return is as deep-seated as the fear of the traveller mentioned above.

The solution to this anxiety is to instill in society a “Golden Rule” culture, which extends hospitality to strangers. In turn, those strangers are to respect the house and possessions of those extending the hospitality. In The Odyssey, this is known as “Zeus’s Law” and it is mentioned frequently in the movie. Nolan adds one more thing that the writers of the Odyssey could not have possibly known. The story was born in a period of darkness, between the collapse of the Golden Age of Egypt and the Near East (of which Troy was a principal city) around 1100 B.C. and the revitalization of Ancient Greece, circa 600 B.C. One of the cited causes of this first dark age were invasions by “Sea Peoples”. (This phrase comes from contemporaneous Egyptian Heiroglyphs). Nolan makes a connection that the original Trojan Horse is a violation of Zeus’ law since it takes advantage of hospitality, and also makes a connection that the sack of Troy is an invasion by “Sea Peoples”. This is not ahistorical per se (the Mycenaeans did invade by ship) but it would certainly be a surprise to the Mycenaeans to be described as such. Nor would anyone in Ancient Greece conclude that the Trojan Horse was a harbinger and/or the cause of the dark times to come. Instead, they celebrated Odysseus’ cunning. Again, this is an addition by Nolan, but it is not unwelcome. Really the most satisfying element in this movie is Nolan’s ability to meld modern morals onto this ancient tale and still keep and earn its climatic ending, that most primal of cautionary tales. I bet this tale lasts another 1000 years.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (4/5 Stars)

 

Making that sweet sweet corporate lemonade.

Right at the top, we should talk about the writing of this movie. Our screenwriters are Christ McKenna and Erik Sommers known for some of the best episodes of Community, the first two Marvel Spider-Man movies and the Jumanji reboot. What these two excel at is synthesis and adaptation, the ability to take existing material and turn its seeming limitations into features. The intellectual property of Spider-Man is in a unique place in the realms of moviedom due to the odd financial position of its corporate parentage. Way back in the day before Marvel created its own universe with Iron Man (2008), it was licensing its characters to other movie studies. Its most popular character, Spider-Man, was licensed to Sony, whose first movies in the deal included the Sam Raimi trilogy in the early 2000s that featured Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and such villains as the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), and the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church). These were enormously popular movies, but as soon as Raimi and Maguire seemed to be done with the franchise, Sony rebooted it with Andrew Garfield in the title role, Marc Webb directing, and such villains as Rhys Ihfans as the Lizard and Jamie Foxx as Electro. That is, Sony didn’t continue the story, they restarted it. In the first Andrew Garfield movie, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider etc.

Why? Well two reasons. First, Sony’s contract with Marvel allowed it exclusive rights to make Spider-Man movies just as long as they made at least one Spider-Man movie every five years. Second, Spider-Man’s defining feature is that he is an endearing teenager going through everything for the first time. These two factors combine in Peter Parker getting bitten by a spider in a new blockbuster movie every ten years or so. In 2018, someone at Sony had the great idea of meeting their corporate largess in story-form head on. The resulting animated movie was Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which explained the multitude of variations of Peter Parker’s story over the years with the pseudoscientific application of a physics theory called the multiverse. The idea being that there are a multitude of universes and that there is a Spider-Man for each of them ranging from the traditional Peter Parker-Spiderman to Miles Morales as Spiderman (Peter Parker, but black) to Gwen Stacy as Spiderwoman to Peter Porker as Spider-Ham (a spider that was bitten by a radioactive pig) etc. This worked so well, that Marvel used the multiverse as a plot red herring in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and now in Spider-Man: No Way Home fully engages with it. There is indeed a multiverse and it includes all the villains from the Sony franchises of the last twenty years and...all the Spider-mans.

The last sentence was kept well underwraps by Sony and Marvel the past year with much credit to them. I expect now that everyone has seen this movie, it isn’t much of a spoiler anymore. Anyway back to the writing. With great ability, the screenwriters have sorted out the last twenty years of Spider anthology and put together a movie that makes it seem like the whole thing was planned from the very start. Even more so, they end this movie on a note that allows the whole thing to start all over again in the hands of Sony. It is an especially adept way to maintain and extend a giant money making machine. Chris McKenna and Erik Somners deserve to get paid a lot of money.

For the obvious reason, this movie lacks the originality of the previous movies. Like Infinity War and Endgame it feels more like the culmination of plenty of other movies, not something stand alone. It’s a nostalgia tour and one’s appreciation of it would likely be increased or decreased by one’s appreciation of the older movies. For myself, I only saw the Raimi trilogy and the latest Marvel movies (the ones with Tom Holland as Spider-Man) to the exclusion of the Andrew Garfield movies. I’ve become a little more interested than not interested at all in the Garfield movies now.

To illustrate the enduring appeal of Spider-Man one needs only to briefly summarize the plot. Peter Parker has been outed as Spider-Man by Mysterio and is now the subject of intense press speculation. Since Peter is just a humble kid, he would rather not have his private life and that of his sweet Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) intruded upon. So he goes to Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him for a spell that will make the entire universe forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The spell goes haywire and instead of everyone forgetting that Peter is Spider-Man, people from other universes who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man are pulled into this one, namely villains from past movies. So now we have the same villains from the Raimi and Webb movies in this one and because Marvel is made of money, you get the same actors coming back too. In an inferior movie, this would result in a simple plot of Spider-Man fighting and defeating five villains instead of one. But here, the story takes a really nice, dare I say, cute turn. Once Peter Parker realizes what all of these villains have in common, in the previous movies they all die fighting Spider-Man, he goes out of his way to try to help them. Why, because he has the ability to do so and as Aunt May says in this movie (and this is the first time it is said in a Tom Holland movie), “with great power comes great responsibility.”

That line is as effective as ever and the context in which it is spoken (different yet the same) speaks to the seeming timelessness of the Spider-Man story. For me at least, it has not yet become cliché, instead I got chills. I made this point before in a different Spider-Man movie review and I think I’ll make it again. As Llewyn Davis said, If it isn’t new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song. The same applies to Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (5/5 Stars)

“EDITH, is this real?” asks Peter Parker in the denouement of the penultimate scene. Spider-Man has just seemingly vanquished an enemy that was made up of intricate and complex technological illusions, something not unlike what you would see in a Marvel movie. But unlike all those other Marvel movies with spectacular otherworldly dangers, this one was not really there? Or was it? Peter Parker can’t immediately tell. This is a line that could not have existed fifty years or maybe even fifteen years ago. It is very 2019. When the movies can do anything, when video and photography can be so intricately manipulated, how can you tell what is real anymore? We usually say, “I’ll believe it when I see it?” What do we do when we can’t rely on that.

The villainous plot that befalls Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) on his school trip is way over his head. All he wanted to do with go on a school trip to Europe with his friends. He wanted to buy a gift for his secret crush MJ (played by Zendaya) and give it to her on the Eifel Tower. He really deserves such a trip too. Put aside that he is superhero doing superhero things around his friendly neighborhood of Queens. Peter Parker along with half of his high school class were victims of what is being called the Blip, the five years between Infinity War and Endgame where half the life in the neighborhood vanished and then reappeared. The weight of this happening is deftly lifted within the parody of a high-school news program wherein Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow are shown in montage to the tune of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. A particularly interesting development is that the high school has essentially been held back five years and are now sharing classrooms with kids that used to be five years younger. One of the new kids in the class is a guy named Brad Davis (played by Remy Davis) who seems to have used up all his puberty overnight and is now a competitor in love for the affections of Parker’s girl MJ.

This ability to utilize otherworldy and extraordinary events in the service of minor jokes is the hallmark of two of my favorite writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers returning from Spider-Man: Homecoming. (They are also responsible for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and several of the best episodes of the TV show Community). What these two very much excel at is finding a heart of the story amidst special effects sequences and making sure that it isn’t being shunted aside or treated as Story B. Spider-Man: Far From Home has two goals here: Save the Planet and Tell MJ How I Feel. The second story is always as equally important as the first.

It is such a relief that Peter Parker does not have a crush on the head cheerleader at his high school. MJ looks like a normal person. She has a personality, albeit a little dark and sarcastic, but it is her own. It is a credit to Peter Parker that he would like her. And it is a credit to MJ that she would be willing to drop her sarcasm for a moment to become vulnerable enough to like Peter back. I have a running critique of high-school movies where I simply do not believe that the put-upon nerd male protagonist is good enough for the hottest girl in the school. This is not that at all. I found both Peter and MJ endearing as fuck and their entire storyline was really sweet.

Our villain of the week is Mr. Quentin Beck aka Mysterio. He is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor who is one of the best at walking the line between affable and super creepy. Mr. Quentin Beck is from another dimension. He does not seem to be aware of the recent Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, but he could have explained the situation by referencing that movie. Mr. Beck says that a powerful natural force called Elementals are afoot and he is attempting to stop it here before it destroys more Earths. Peter Parker is party correct in thinking that he is not qualified enough for this particular mission. He tries to get out of it but the storyline keeps drawing him back in.

Meanwhile because of all the outside forces revolving around Spider-Man, the school trip gets routinely upset by extraordinary events. In this respect, the continuing Marvel saga shows its utility by bringing in many old characters that do not need to be reintroduced. Among them are agents of S.H.E.I.L.D Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) that had large roles in the Captain America movies. There is Happy Hogan (played by Jon Favreau) from the Iron Man franchise. And then there is Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), side-kick Ned Leeds (Jacob Batolon), and Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr). One of the more pleasurable aspects of this movie is watching Mr. Harrington and the newly introduced Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove) get increasingly frazzled when more and more crazy shit happens on a trip they are ostensibly responsible for all the young lives on.

The one thing to talk about left is EDITH. I was not under the impression that STARK enterprises had this type of technology (basically armed space drones) and that the whole point of Captain America: Winter Soldier was that this type of capability was UnAmerican. Why does a corporation have it now? Why would you will its capabilities to a kid? This isn’t the responsible and democratic Tony Stark I got behind in Captain America: Civil War. Someone should do something about this whole EDITH thing. Maybe break the glasses.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.