Review of Birds of Prey

This is a R-rated 2020 superhero film based on the DC Comics Birds of Prey, distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures. It’s the 8^th installment of the DC Extended Universe and a sequel to Suicide Squad (2016). The film was written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan. Stars include Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Chris Messina, Ali Wong and Ewan McGregor. This review contains spoilers.

Harley Quinn and her main squeeze, the Joker, have broken up. Harley is determined that its going to stick this time. She takes a room over Doc’s restaurant, cuts her hair, takes up Roller Derby and adopts a hyena instead of a dog. Things seem to be going well, and she continues to be her nasty self, until Gotham City seem to get the idea that the Joker really has abandoned her. Then all her past mis-deeds come home to roost. Suddenly a lot of people are trying to kill her in the most gruesome way possible. Meanwhile, child pickpocket Cassandra Cain steals a diamond containing the account numbers of the massacred Bertinelli crime family. Harley, captured by crime lord Roman Sionis, promises to get the diamond back if he will release and protect her. She finds Cassandra, but the girl has swallowed the gem. Harley steals a lot of X-Lax and holes up in her apartment with Cassandra. Doc sells her out, and then Harley sells out Cassandra. The Birds of Prey assemble. Can they rescue Cassandra and Harley from Sionis’ evil clutches?

The Birds of Prey are an all-female team consisting of Harley Quinn, Helena Bertinelli (Huntress), Dinah Lance (Black Canary), and Renee Montoya (Question). The film is narrated by Harley Quinn, who provides background on all the characters and how they have come to the present point. Sionis is a scary, evil man. Montoya is disrespected as a police officer, Bertinelli is avenging her family, and Lance is picked up by Sionis as his driver after Harley cripples his old one. This film moves right along. There’s a lot of decently well-choreographed action as Harley and team kicks ass amongst the various evil minions coming after them. The main point, of course, is that Harley doesn’t really need the Joker. She can deal with things herself, and she can ally with a great team of women instead, so they can help protect each other.

But, there are subthemes going on here. Beneath the kick-ass action choreography, Harley is a pretty sad creature. The whole thing makes me wonder (again) about what kind of value system DC is pushing. Harley postures and makes silly faces like always, but at this point she’s been rejected by someone she gave up her whole life for, so she’s broken. She goes through the motions of hurting people, stealing, cheating, lying, and selling out, but without the Joker’s protection, she’s now seeing the consequences of her actions and has to face how this makes her a terrible person. She makes a move toward redemption by assisting with Cassandra’s final rescue, but why would these other superheroes accept her into their team? I know Harley’s character is the standard for a born-this-way, petulant, willful anti-heroine, but there’s hardly any investigation of where she’s gone wrong or what she’s going to do about it, and no reason for these women to suddenly embrace her as one of their own. She’s also presented as fairly dumb. She’s supposed to have a doctorate degree, but she can’t spell “mercenary”?

So, are a bunch of young women going to identify with this awful value system? Or is it a promise of redemption for kids that act this way? I dunno. Also on the less positive side, there are lags in the action sequences. You can see the evil minions run up and wait for Harley to whack them.

Four stars.

Review of Avengers: Endgame

This Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie was produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It follows The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). It was directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and features a large cast of superheroes, including Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Paul Rudd as Antman, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Karen Gillian as Nebula and Josh Brolin as Thanos, etc., etc., etc., while Stan Lee makes his final cameo. This review contains spoilers.

After Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to disintegrate half of all living things in the universe, Tony Stark and Nebula are rescued from space by Captain Marvel. The Avengers who are left organize and go after Thanos. Thor kills him, but this does nothing to reverse what Thanos has done. Back on Earth, everyone tries to get on with life, but they have to deal with the huge losses. Existence is hard and bitter, but they try to make new lives. Meanwhile, Scott Lang (a.k.a. Antman) has been stuck in the quantum realm since the catastrophe. Five years later he manages to find his way out. He takes stock of the situation and approaches Captain America and Black Widow with a plan to go back in time to reverse Thanos’ actions. Can the Avengers pull off a complex plan to capture the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get them? Can they create a new Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos and bring back everything that was lost?

Good points: This movie has a little of everything: humor, pathos, love. It’s an ambitious script, and a lot of it goes by really fast. This is one possible explanation for the way it’s blown past USD$2B box office take in just a couple of weeks—people are going back to see it more than once because they missed a lot the first time around. It takes the main characters back in time for a brief visit with people they’ve lost, and in some cases, provides a do-over. For example, Gamora, who was sacrificed in Infinity War, gets a second chance. However, some other people apparently don’t and seem to be permanently dead. This may reflect the retirements of some of the bigger stars, including Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ), Chris Evans and Scarlett Johannson. Rocket the Raccoon is, as usual, a huge star in this film. The script didn’t tie up everything, though, which suggests a direction for future films: Loki got away with the Tesseract at the end of Infinity War, which sequence is reviewed in this film, and Carol Danvers’ not-a-cat puked it up at the end of Captain Marvel. Does this mean more time travels lie in our heroes’ futures?

On the not so positive side, this was a three hour movie that hurried through everything, suggesting they might have broken it up into two or three films and made better use of their stars. One big issue with putting all these highly charismatic people together is in suppressing the charisma to make clear leads. In all the Avenger films, it’s clear that Iron Man and Captain America are expected to be the leads, with Black Widow as a strong second. This probably reflects their seniority, contracts and the amounts they’re being paid. However, there are clearly obstacles to this plan. The first is Chris Hemsworth (a.k.a. Thor). In some of the other films, he’s had very few lines, and in this one, the script makes him into a cartoon figure. Surprise, surprise—Hemsworth is good for it. He does comedy well, too. Maybe this is supposed to demonstrate the dangers of alcoholism, but regardless, the role he’s given is offensive and smacks of body shaming. Ruffalo, also a strong personality, is disguised with CGI. Other obstacles include Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Chris Pratt as Star Lord, both of whom could steal the movie in a heartbeat. The directors were apparently expecting trouble here, though, so both are given very minimal appearances. In a three movie sequence, characters like these could have been given better roles and more screen time to develop subplots and make the film less jam-packed and hurried. Given the loose Tesseract and the fact that Thor went off with the Guardians at the end of this, we might expect they’ll get to follow up in future films, or maybe TV shows on Disney’s streaming service. Last, if RDJ, Evans and Johannson are all retiring, this will be a huge hit to the MCU films. Disney’s choices for replacement so far, like Brie Larson as Captain Marvel and Don Cheadle as War Machine, don’t really have the charisma and presence to carry the roles.

Highly recommended. Four and a half stars.

Review of Incredibles 2

This is an animated film written and directed by Brad Bird, starring Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson and Samuel T. Jackson. It was produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and released to theaters June 15, 2018. This is the second animated film in this series. For anyone who missed it, the first film titled The Incredibles was released in 2004. This review contains major spoilers.

This film picks up right where the last one left off. The Parr family are “Supers” who are hiding out under a government enforced program of secret identities called the Super Relocation Program. The Underminer bores into the Metroville Bank and the Parr family (a.k.a. The Incredibles) tries to stop him from vacuuming all the money out of the vault. There’s a lot of property damage but they fail to stop the robbery. This leads to bad press. Man-in-Black Rick Dickers informs the Parrs that the Super Relocation Program has been discontinued, which means, at this point, they’re on their own in maintaining their secret identities. The program will only pay for two more weeks at a motel, so the family is facing homelessness. Bob and Helen are approached by media mogul Winston Deavor and his sister Evelyn, who admire superheroes and want to launch a media campaign featuring Elastigirl to get them back to work on stopping crime. Bob agrees to watch the three kids, Dash, Violet and baby Jack-Jack, while Helen takes the job. This turns out to be more than Bob bargained for, as he has to deal with math homework, budding romance and Jack-Jack’s emerging powers. He gets support from his buddy Frozone and super-costume designer Edna Mode. Meanwhile, Helen finds her job isn’t what she thought. Can Bob and Helen figure out what’s going on? Can the kids save the day again?

So, Brad Bird made his point about superheroes hiding out in the first film, and the messages here are a little different, leaning heavily to the adult philosophical. Some of it comes out in straightforward conversations between Helen and tech talent Evelyn, and between Helen and Bob, while more of it is embedded in the characters and plotline.

Message #1: Can you help people too much? Evelyn thinks superheroes make everyone weak and unable to fix their own problems, while, as a Super, Helen thinks it’s right to help people in any way she can. When asked what people really want, Evelyn thinks it’s always ease over quality, and to be taken care of by Supers, which will lead to disaster. Again, I’m not the greatest on ideologies, but this looks like libertarianism vs. socialism with some overtones of Social Darwinism. How much should we help others? Does too much help really keep people from reaching success on their own?

Message #2: What should you do if laws are wrong? If laws are immoral, is it more right to follow the rules or to break the rules? Helen decides on breaking the law to appear as Elastigirl, with the hope her actions will bring about a change in government policy.

Message #3: Role reversals are tricky. Everybody needs to respect the jobs other people do to make the world run—especially moms. Bob really struggles through the family thing, but eventually gets it under control.

Message #4: Beware of social media. Evelyn turns out to be a social media activist. In her role as Screenslaver, she hypnotizes anyone who looks into her screens and forces them to become her minions in a bid to destroy the Supers. Besides this, Winston looks suspiciously like someone who recently testified before the US Congress about the use of social media in the last US presidential election.

Highly recommended. High five on the Ideation Scale.

Five stars.

The Incredibles, an Elitist Skreed?

When I was reading the press leading up to the release of Incredibles 2, I was (and also wasn’t) surprised to find that The Incredibles (2004) was apparently criticized as elitist because of the message it sends.

The Incredibles (a.k.a. the Parr family) are all “Supers,” that is, people with talents that make them different. Mr. Incredible is super strong and fast: Elastigirl is stretchy: Dash is really fast, and Violet can become invisible and project force fields. Because of government policy, they are required to bury their talents and to adhere to secret identities and live as ordinary people. The kids have grown up under this program, and are surprised that mom and dad, when things get dire, expect them to step up and perform as superheroes. Syndrome, the villain of the story, means to sell inventions that will make everyone super, so everybody will be the same. As I interpreted this, the message to kids is: Don’t hide out; step up and learn to use your own talents for the good of society.

So, is this message really elitist? Where did it come from leading up to 2004? And why did writer/director Brad Bird feel it was necessary to say this in a children’s animation film? Everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, of course, and democratic ideals say that everyone should be respected the same regardless of race, creed, talent or color. But does that mean everyone should be an ordinary interchangeable cog in the great machine of society?

There’s some background here: For anyone who isn’t aware of how the Bush era No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was interpreted, it meant the US educational system should work for equal outcomes from all students—no one should have undue advantage or disadvantage. The Act set minimum standards and required that schools spend their time and resources to bring all children up to this level, but no further. In some states, funding for gifted programs was cut by 90% as a result. Schools shifted to achieving the mediocrity of minimum scores. Add to this the tendency of children to persecute anyone who is different, and the result was that talented kids were hiding out left and right, without any avenue to discover and develop their talents. All the emphasis in the public schools is still pretty much on achieving minimum performance, and anyone who stands out is pretending they are better than everyone else. Right?

So, what do we do about the fact that people really do have individual talents? Some people are world-class athletes and some are Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and some are Nobel Prize-winning scientists. If you try to substitute a scientist for a ball player, then there’s going to be a problem. Right? And if you try to dump all those kids who have been encouraged to adhere to minimum standards into a job market, then there’s going to be a problem there, too. Right?

But then, maybe I’m wrong. Surely it’s elitist to look for the best job candidate.

Ahhh. Okay. Now I feel better.

Next, a review of Incredibles 2.