I am not going to sit here and try to tell anyone that I am a big fan of the Warcraft games. That was true many years ago, when there were only two such games and I counted Warcraft 2 among my favorite video game experiences. But with Warcraft 3 and especially WoW, the series moved away from my interests. Still, I am a big fan of fantasy movies in general, so I had some anticipation for the Warcraft movie. That proved to be misguided, as Warcraft is a turgid, self-serious and simply dull affair that does nothing to leverage the possibilities of the games into a watchable movie.

The most obvious point of contention is movie’s visual effects. They are ever present and unignorable. As far as I can tell, it is never the intent of the film’s effects to present a realistic world, instead an attempt to translate the decade old visual style of WoW into something vaguely resembling live action. The Orcs are cartoonish hulks with hands bigger than their heads. The humans, while being the live action portion of the film, are decked out in the most absurd accoutrements. The overall effect is something out of a particularly garish cartoon, with a simultaneously strong sense of style and absolutely no personality.

It accomplishes that dubious feat the same way it bungles its story; by lavishing solemnity on the most generic of fantasy tropes. It takes all of the barebones ideas of Lord of the Rings, the orcs, wizards, noble kings, etc., removes all the unique and thought provoking elements and treats it all with the utter gravity of a Shakespeare tragedy. Giving a general plot outline is almost treating this movies story with too much respect. Orcs cross a gateway into the human’s world, escaping their own dying world, and start a war with the humans. After initially being shocked at their new enemy, the humans fight back. There are infighting factions and double crosses galore before it builds to an ill-defined final battle.

Treated as a fun fantasy romp, this could have been a delight. Instead, it plays it all as seriously as possible. It expects all of its viewers are intimately familiar with the minutiae of Warcraft lore, so merely saying a character’s name should tell the viewer all they need to know, but that doesn’t work for the uninitiated. It could have been saved with exciting, inventive action sequences, but those are not offered here. While indistinct CGI battles rage in the background, the movie’s heroes are more interested in talking amongst themselves on the battlefield. That stupidity reaches its apex at the film’s climax, but it is persistent throughout. Battles rage, but the heroes only have the most cursory interest in them. The best of these sorts of movies use the action scenes to cement character traits, like Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy using his rocket boots to various effects, but there is almost none of that here. Orngrimm Doomhammer does use a hammer I guess, but getting any sort of read on what that character thinks is next to impossible.

Warcraft is a movie that is garish, self-serious and inordinately stupid. Perhaps my opinion would be different if I already cared about this world and these characters, but the movie does not give a reason for the viewer to care. It treats its very existence are revelatory, as though everyone watching is waiting with baited breath to see Lothar and Durotan, as though they are not characters crafted on a completely generic fantasy template. The only thing this movie accomplishes is to impress upon the view of its sense of self-importance. That and it made me want to dig out my copy of Warcraft 2 and play that again.

*1/2

The X-Men film series is an odd duck. It has survived apparent franchise killing failures, back to back in X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and turned a reboot into a very X-Men like retcon of the series history. Throughout all of this, the movies have kept a more restrained take on super heroics than something like the usual Marvel film. X-Men Apocalypse goes into full superhero mode, with mixed and confusing results.

After a brief opening in ancient Egypt that shows something of an origin for the titular villain, X-Men Apocalypse picks up some ten years after Days of Future Past, or at least ten years after the past portions. In that time, everything has changed once again. Mystique is now a famous hero who works to save mutants by herself, Xavier has restarted his school and Magneto has disappeared to Poland to live a quiet life. Those are the three characters that have driven all of the reboot movies and they continue to do so here. I don’t know, though, how much their characterization is a continuation of what has come before and much is just endlessly repeating the same thing. Xavier, Magneto and Mystique all seem to bbe all but repeated their arcs each movie. While that is true to the comics, it makes for a somewhat frustrating viewing experience.

Really, X-Men Apocalypse is a big mess.  It feels like three different movies mixed in a blender.  Magneto’s, Xavier’s, Mystique’s, Apocalypse’s and the new kids’ stories don’t all mesh together.  There are just a few too many plot threads for all of them to get the attention they need.  The ones who suffer the most for this are all of the new mutants.  There is some insight into Cyclop’s character, or at least his relationship with his brother, but every other character introduced in this movie is a non-entity.  They take up quite a bit of run time, but they are not developed at all.  The same could be said for Apocalypse and his horsemen. Even Magneto’s character arc doesn’t go that many places.  He processes his grief enough to decide he doesn’t want to kill absolutely everybody.

Flaws notwithstanding, X-Men Apocalypse is still fairly enjoyable. It wins some points for being a fun sort of nonsensical and silly. It aims for grandeur and misses, but it ends up in a not unenjoyable place. The young mutants seem interesting; even if they are not given the time to fully develop. And there is something to be said for the sheer level of apocalyptic destruction that goes on in this movie. At no point do Apocalypse’s methods appear to help him achieve his proposed goals, but again that is just the movie staying true to the comics. Still, for a film series that has not hesitated to stray from it inspirations, it is sad they could get this character right even for the movie. The whole film is something like that. It is all wasted potential. The only things this movie does close to right are the things it has been doing over and over since this first film. I don’t need to see the conflict between Xavier and Magneto play out again, I’ve seen it enough. Hopefully, the next film can find some new ground to explore and maybe not bungle that exploration quite so badly.

**1/2

Two of the best comedies of the last decade are Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  Both are excellent send ups as well as excellent examples of their respective genres.  The third in this cycle of films directed by Edgar Wright and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost may lack the obvious genre ties of its predecessors, but The World’s End may be the best and most ambitious of the three. The World’s End is more specific, being a take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers rather than entire genres of film, but in addition to being a comic version of that, it is also steeped in Arthurian symbolism and an incredible depiction of addiction.

The World’s End tells the story of Gary King, a man desperate to recapture the glory of his youth so he gathers his high school friends together to try to complete a pub crawl of their home town, which they had failed years before.  Despite their very good reasons for not wanting to go with him, all four end up in Newton Haven with Gary once more.  Initially their problems are with the obsessed Gary; soon they realize that there is something more sinister going on in town.

Wright deftly juggles numerous concepts and plot threads, giving us a layered movie that delights on several levels.  What stands out most is its take on the Arthurian Cycle, with each of the protagonists serving a medieval role.  Those roles are spelled out in their surnames: King, Prince, Knightly, Page and Chamberlain.  Gary King is the leader, Andy Knightley is loyal retainer, Chamberlain keeps them on track, etc.  The quickly told story of their first attempt at the golden mile is echoed and expanded on their second attempt. The cycle repeats, only this time they finish.

While the movie is immensely funny, what puts it over the top is how it affects real emotion.  The characters feel like real people with real problems.  I would have loved this movie without its big twist, that the entire town has been replaced by aliens who are essentially colonizing the Earth, and it had just been five friends hashing out a couple of decades of problems.  As with all of these movies, the central relationship is between Pegg’s and Frost’s characters.  Frost’s Andy is a guy who has done everything right, and still his life is falling apart on him.  He is struggling to move forward.  Pegg’s Gary has screwed everything up and is desperate for his young glory.  To, the golden mile represents the lost promise of his youth.  That was supposed to be the prelude to his life, not its apex.  For the lead in what is ostensibly a comedy, Gary King is a deeply sad character.  It is actually a chilling look as the life of an addict.  

That the World’s End manages to include that, along with rousing action scenes and big sci-fi concepts and have every part reinforce the other parts instead of distract from them is what makes it a great movie.  For example, in one of the big fight scenes, Gary, despite being the second most able fighter after Andy, spends the bulk of his time trying to keep from spilling is drink.  There is chaos all around him, but he cares more for alcohol than anything else going. It results in some very fun physical comedy, but also in a sadly funny character moment for him.  The action serves to reinforce the character moments.

The World’s End is a great film, as are Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. My opinion as to which of the three is the most entertaining may be fickle, but I tend to point to The World’s End most often.  It has layers and depth that the other two movies can’t quite match.

The first two Captain America movies were among the best of Marvel’s solo movies and the ones most closely tied into the larger Marvel universe. In a lot of ways the first Cap movie was a prelude to the Avengers (It even had “Avenger” in the title) and the second Winter Soldier, aside from being the best Marvel superhero movie to date, was the bridge between the first and second movies. That connection is even stronger in Civil War, which is more Avengers 3 than Captain America 3. Captain America Civil War is everything that Age of Ultron should have been, even if it doesn’t quite nail the landing on the Captain America part of its story.

The bad first. I don’t think the movie fully sells its villain’s plot or the gives enough time to the ideological split that ignites the conflict. Time that could have been spent having Steve and Tony actually express their points of view rather than have them assumed by the other party was used instead to introduce new characters like Black Panther and Spider-Man, the latter of which has an especially small role in this film. Also, there is little resolution at the end of the movie; instead the characters all reach the end of this movie’s journey by the mid-point and the rest just kind of plays out with little consequence.

Those are my complaints with the movie; aside from some other inconsequential ones (I did like the location titles). Otherwise, it was pretty great. The Russo’s did great work with Winter Soldier and this continues that. What it might fail at from a plot perspective, it nails from a character one. Civil War is a movie with a lot of characters and nearly all of them are portrayed well. The newcomers, including Ant-Man, all shine and bring a lot of fun to the film. This movie does more to let viewers into the head of Scarlet Witch and Vision than Age of Ultron ever even attempted to, while still giving viewers good moments with Falcon and Rhodey and Black Widow and Hawkeye. The character’s journeys, as short as then end up being, are mostly well done.

While I found its last act anti-climactic and didn’t completely buy the confrontation in it, the big fight scene in at the airport is pretty much perfection. It is everything I want in a superhero fight, with a dozen heroes duking it out in a variety of combinations. Somehow it remains coherent while juggling all of these characters and letting each one show off their powers and personality. Most time these sort of extended, consequence free fight scenes end up being a drag, but Civil War’s airport scene keeps through new wrinkles on often enough to keep things interesting.

Civil War is, like the last Avengers movie, completely overstuffed. That this movie is trying to pass itself off as a Captain America movie is disingenuous, but that doesn’t make it unenjoyable. The perfect casting of each of the heroes really helps them find their voices and the sides they take feel like natural outgrowths of their characters, even if the conflict comes about absurdly quickly. This might not be the best Marvel movie (I would put it below Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy at the very least) but it is still highly entertaining.

****

Watching Snow White and the Huntsman was something of a surprise for me last year. I skipped when it was in the theater and only watched by happenstance. It looked bad. Then I picked it up on a whim out of a bin and was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t exactly good, but it is much closer in tone to the sort of 80’s fantasy movies I loved rather than something more like Lord of the Rings. As someone who grew up on Willow, Legend and Ladyhawk, it was something of a mild delight. The Huntsman: Winter’s War dropped the worst part of the first movie, Snow White, and added in a couple of really entertaining actresses. I wasn’t quite excited to see it, but I was slightly eager. The Huntsman: Winter’s War is not a great movie, but at its best it is completely charming and fun way to spend an afternoon.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War starts as a prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman with a dull opening half hour or so. It is not the worst thing ever, but it moves without life or energy as they set up Freya, who is essentially Elsa from Frozen. After that, it jumps ahead to after the first movie and gets picks up quite a bit. Instead of the full seven dwarves, this pares it down to two, at least for starters. Two with personality. Eric, the Huntsman, quickly gets a quest and is soon joined by his supposedly dead wife. It never breaks out of being a generic fantasy adventure, but it also never really tries to. It is content to let its largely fun characters play off each other on a series of small adventures that culminate in an epic showdown with two evil queens.

Chris Hemsworth is at his most charming in this movie, being the only well-adjusted protagonist. He smirks and saunters through the movie like a slightly off brand Harrison Ford. Jessica Chastain plays his stoic badass of a love interest. Nick Frost, Rob Brydon and Sheridan Smith are delightful as comic relief dwarves. The only disappointments are Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron, though that disappointment is not fault of the actresses. Theron continues to chew scenery are the unrepentantly evil queen Ravenna, but her role is small and her motivations completely lacking. Emily Blunt, meanwhile, is stuck between being a full villain and just being misunderstood, coming off as weak and flat.

The biggest problem I had with the movie is the ending. It sidelines so many characters for an ultimately unsatisfying fight. Ravenna steals the show at the end, but that mostly shoves all the characters that had been a part of this movie from the start off the screen. Some characters just disappear for the whole climax, essentially forgotten until it is over. The two protagonists, whose love is the central plot line of the movie, barely interact during it. It flails about and gets the job done, but in a wholly disappointing way.

Still, I like The Huntsman. The beginning and ending might be a mess, but that middle is oh so sweet. This is the kind of movie I would have fallen in love with renting the VHS from the grocery store as a child. It isn’t the best thing ever, but it also isn’t stupid or outright bad. It is a mostly okay, wholly generic fantasy movie. Sometimes that is enough.

There are two things at war in this new adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. There are the absolutely stunning visuals, all fake but are still seamlessly integrated with the one real element in the film. Then there is the nearly lifeless way the story has been told. There is no denying that this movie looks good, but it manages to feel much longer than its 105 minute run time. Despite all the stars showing up to give voice to these characters the never manage to give any of them life. The movie just plods along, occasionally buoyed by a bit of humor or a call back to Disney’s classic animated version.

The visuals are the real star here, so that is where I’ll start. This movie is a technical achievement, a movie about nature that convinces the viewer of the reality of its setting despite having no real nature in it. Director Jon Favreau and the effects team have managed to create gorgeous, realistic computerize generated jungle. The animals that populate it are expressive without ever looking like cartoons. Even the one real element, the boy who plays Mowgli, doesn’t stand out, instead his seamless interaction makes the rest of the movie look all the more real. This movie looks great.

How great it looks makes it all the more sad that it tells it’s story with sagging aimlessness. It goes through almost all of the same vignettes that made up Disney’s animated version (or maybe their first animated version, with this one being the second) but nearly all of them feel like they are dragging their feet. The problem is not on the performers, with the easily recognizable cast giving largely pretty good performances, but on just how turgid the whole thing is.

For instance, take the King Louie scene. It starts with Mowgli getting kidnapped by monkeys, with the film showing them taking him through the trees, up a cliff and into a crumbling temple. Then he has a long conversation with Louie, a bright spot thanks to the inclusion of the old song. Afterwards, Baloo and Bagheera arrive to save him. This turns into an interminable scene where a fake bear and a fake panther fight fake monkeys. Except the monkeys can’t do anything to hurt the other two and they seem unwilling to do more than smack the monkeys around a little. It just keeps going on and on, perfect in its pointlessness. Meanwhile, Mowgli hides from Louie in the temple, leading to that scene you’ve seen a dozen times where he hides behind a pillar from his pursuer, who appears beside him after a camera pan. As soon as you see the pillars you know what is coming and movie never does anything more than exactly what you’d expect.

The parts that work the best are the two songs, call backs to that animated version. And that is the big problem with this movie. As amazing as the visuals are, there is no life in this telling. It references that more well-known version often enough that I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t just watch it instead.

**1/2

Disney continued its recent string of animated hits with Zootopia. Since Tangled reignited the somewhat moribund studio, Disney’s animated movies have collectively been great. From the excellent and original Wreck-it-Ralph to the megapopular Frozen, their recent movies have rivaled their Renaissance output in the early 90s. Zootopia does nothing to upset the apple cart despite being very different from what has come before. Zootopia is a mystery built on a strong and digestible message.

Zootopia is about Judy Hopps, a rabbit who all her life has dreamed of movie from her farm home to the big city to become a police officer. This is despite the fact that no rabbit has ever been a cop. After she achieves this dream, she finds herself put on meter duty before forcing herself onto a missing person’s case. As Judy looks for a missing otter, she is helped by Nick Wylde, a fox scam artist who knows his way around the city. Together they get to the bottom of a mystery that could rock Zootopia to its core.

Zootopia‘s prejudice metaphor has gotten the bulk of the attention, and while it is a good message, it doesn’t come through as clearly as it could. It starts with the prejudice against small herbivore like Judy before flipping it to be about prejudice against predators. I can’t tell if it is a well-reasoned, complex message or one that gets muddled somewhere along the way. I need to see the movie again to judge for sure. Either way, its main thrust is easy to determine and perfect for children, coming down to essentially be “don’t judge a book by its cover.” The part of the movie that works best is its mystery. It is a mystery for kids, but it should keep the viewer guessing until late in the game. Still, it follows that addictive formula of each clue leading to another clue as the two leads slowly sort things out.

Those two leads are another triumph. Judy is bubbly and bright. She shoves the plot along with sheer enthusiasm. That contrast nicely with the sarcastic and street-wise Nick. It is not the most original pairing, but the formula is perfectly executed here. There isn’t as much time for the rest of the characters to be explored thanks to how much time is spent with the leads. And thanks to the story being a mystery, they can’t even spend much time with the villain. Still, the remaining characters are enjoyable if briefly sketched.

Not all the bits work, like the naked hippy commune place, which goes on too long and doesn’t really amount to much or the mob boss Mr. Big. While the animation largely looks very good, there is a scene in the rain that looks kind of bad. Still, these are minor complaint in what is otherwise a really good film.

I love that Zootopia is reminiscent of Robin Hood, which despite its apparent cheapness is one of the most charming of Disney’s output. Like that movie, this is one I could see kids throwing one time after time and continually enjoying. Zootopia may not be the best of Disney’s recent output, but it belongs in the conversation.

****