© Amazon/MGM

Project Hail Mary

As frequent readers probably know, I'm a fan of hard science fiction. I'll try to make a point of seeing new, high-concept sci-fi movies in theaters, especially if they are receiving positive word of mouth. Two of my favorite movies of the past decade or so have been The Martian and Arrival. Project Hail Mary is almost like a combination of those 2 movies, and its based on a book by the same author who rote the novel of The Martian, so it should be right up my alley.

I did still like it. But I also found myself disappointed that it was so "cutesy" and not quite as smart or thoughtful as I had hoped it would be.

Yeah, the rock alien is adorable. And the practical effects looked exceptional. The scenes of Grace and Rocky learning to communicate with each other, explaining concepts that are common to them, but alien to the other, and then solving problems together are the highlight of the movie to me.

And hey! Rocky is from 40 Eridani, which is the same star that Star Trek's Vulcan is supposed to orbit. So that was a fun little Easter Egg! Rocky is a Vulcan. He's a "Rock Spock"!

But Rocky is also a symbol of much of what annoyed me. For every moment in which the two are having slow, thoughtful conversations about the nature of existence, there is also a scene of Rocky running around like an excitable puppy for strictly comedic purposes. It just seems off for a character who is supposed to be a highly-intelligent engineer on an interstellar mission to save his species from extinction.

More generally speaking, this movie leans heavily on the trope of an in-experienced "regular guy" having to bumble his way through an incredibly technically-demanding mission. Yes, the guy is a PhD, so he is a very smart person. This doesn't quite fall into "Mary Sue" territory. But he's a biologist. He's not an engineer, or a pilot, or an astronaut. Yes, he does have months (or longer) to learn the spaceship's functions, but it's still not entirely believable that he would be able to single-handedly figure out how to operate a complicated spaceship. This is what separates Project Hail Mary from the much better movies of The Martian and Arrival. The characters in those movies are experts solving problems within their field of expertise and experience. They aren't middle school teachers thrown into a spaceship with no training at all.

©Amazon/MGM

Grace has to single-handedly figure out how to operate an advanced, experimental spaceship.

Well, Bloober Team, you're officially off the hook. I was dragged against my will, by my partner and daughter, to see Return To Silent Hill in the theater, and now Bloober's remake of Silent Hill 2 looks like an absolutely masterful adaptation in comparison. And to be clear, I thought Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake was good to begin with. I had some serious issues with some of Bloober's creative liberties, but the game was overall good. But after seeing Return To Silent Hill, I almost wanted to replay the remake to remind myself of what a decent adaptation of the game could be.

The problems begin right from the opening frames of the movie, with James lighting up a joint while driving a Mustang convertible. James comes off as such an unlikeable douchebag throughout the entire movie. From the way he looks, to the way he acts, to the way he dresses, to the way that the movie completely misunderstands his character by apologizing and vindicating him for everything he does, I absolutely hated James from start to finish. The expectation that writer/director Christophe Gans would have this exact misogynist mis-reading of the game was so obviously what was going to happen right from the start. But I still honestly did not expect Gans to jerk off James this hard!

And nobody at Konami -- not even executive producer Akira Yamaoka (who really needs to stop lending his name and credibility to these things) -- thought to restrain this particular impulse.

One of my criticisms of Bloober's remake was how it made James look a little bit too guilty, by explicitly emphasizing things that the original game only briefly and indirectly implied. Things like James being an alcoholic, and maybe being emotionally or physically abusive. Gans overcompensates in the exact opposite direction. Oh, James is still an alcoholic in this movie, and he's still physically and emotionally abusive. But this movie completely vindicates and apologizes for all of these traits, and makes James out to be an innocent victim, complete with a happy fairy tale ending.

© Davis Films.

James is so profoundly unlikeable in this movie,
but the movie bends over backwards to apologize for him and vindicate him.

Just awful casting, awful writing, and awful direction.

Ever since Captain America: Winter Soldier and And Man (and also Logan), I've been eagerly awaiting Marvel Studios to be able to make a Fantastic Four movie. Winter Soldier and Ant Man were both genre pieces (a spy thriller and heist film, respectively). And, of course, Logan (not made by Marvel) is a western. The success of those movies as both comic book films and also genre films had me excited for the potential of a Fantastic Four movie that would be a science fiction genre film.

After all, the Fantastic Four differ from most other comic book heroes in that they don't just save the city or the world from bad guys, but they are also scientists and exploders. Many of their comic book adventures involve them flying their rocket ship into space to explore new planets and phenomena, and interacting with cosmic and celestial beings.

It took a long time for Marvel to re-acquire the rights to Fantastic Four (by its parent company, Disney, outright buying the previous rights-holder, Fox). In the meantime, Black Panther kind of beat Fantastic Four to the punch as Marvel's "sci-fi" genre piece. But that didn't lessen my anticipation.

This is the first Marvel movie in a long while that doesn't feel like it requires homework. It stands alone, and is a welcome breath of fresh air. It also feels much more in line with the good movies from phases 1 and 2, in terms of both its quality, and also in its lack of baggage. It's easily the best Fantastic Four movie (and I'm someone who thought the first 2 from the early 2000's were just fine), and it's probably the best Marvel movie since Infinity War.

Silver Age Sci-Fi

But is First Steps a "science fiction" movie?

It certainly has a lot of the trappings of a science fiction film. First and foremost is its wonderful 1960 retro-future aesthetic that feels like it's pulled straight from a 60's-era silver age comic or science fiction pulp. Much in-line with science fiction, the central problem of the movie (and, in fact, many smaller problems as well) is treated more like a scientific or engineering problem that the four have to solve. This is in contrast to most other super hero movie that simply requires the hero to play "detective" to figure out where the bad guy is going to be, and what their weakness is. And of course, there's a healthy dose of outer space adventure in the middle of the movie.

Unfortunately, the space-faring adventure is just that: adventure. There's little in the way of exploration or discovery.

Image ©: Walt Disney, Marvel

There is a stand-out space-faring chase scene.

The outer space scenes do make for a pretty spectacular set piece though. I particularly loved the way that the heroes use the gravitational time-dilation of a neutron star to help them resolve a problem, and then have to calculate a sling-shot maneuver to seal their own escape. It's the sort of thing that you would see in a sci-fi pulp story, or even in an episode of Star Trek (though this movie involves a lot more visual spectacle).

Prey © 20th Century Studios.

I really did not want to watch this movie. But my partner wanted to watch, so we put it on, and I watched. I'm just so burnt out of all the constant sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes of 30 and 40-year old nostalgia franchises -- not to mention the impending proliferation of nostalgia reboots of 20-year old franchises from the early 2000's. The endless onslaught of terrible Alien, Terminator, and Predator movies has just been exhausting. At least when older movie IPs like Friday The 13th or Nightmare On Elm Street were making more sequels than one can count on a single hand, the producers knew that those movies were B-grade schlock, and treated them as such. Now, these studios think that releasing a new Predator movie every few years should be treated with the same anticipation and reverence as the release of The Phantom Menace, as if it's all some huge, monumental deal that deserves all of our attention. And much like The Phantom Menace, it always seems to turn out to be incoherent garbage.

So imagine my surprise when Prey actually turned out to be good.

The structure is similar to the original Predator movie. A group of warriors goes out into the jungle to hunt an enemy, only to be systematically hunted and killed from the shadows by the Predator. Except this time, instead of being a bunch of beefy, roided-out macho marines with machine guns, our heroes are 18th-century Comanche with bows and arrows and tomahawks.

Despite trying to follow the outline of the original Predator, Prey doesn't work particularly well as a horror movie. The aforementioned glut of Predator and Alien vs Predator movies has completely desensitized people like me to being able to see either the predator or xenomorph as a frightening movie monster. At this point, they are both borderline jokes.

The Northman © Universal Pictures.

The Northman was another Hollywood movie that I wanted to see in theaters but missed. Just like The Last Duel, even if the movie ended up being bad (which they weren't), I wanted to see it in theaters to support the continued production of movies like this -- movies that aren't just another in the endless onslaught of comic book movies and nostalgia reboots from the late 80's and 90's. I want Hollywood to keep making these sorts of serious historic dramas.

But I haven't been to a movie theater in over 2 years thanks to the COVID pandemic. I would have been willing to go to the theaters for this (as well as for The Last Duel), but stuff kept coming up. We kept putting it off until, before we knew it, The Northman was out of theaters. But I'm no hypocrite. I also haven't seen any comic book movies in theaters either. I waited to see Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman until they were on streaming, and I still haven't seen Multiverse of Madness.

Much like The Last Duel, Northman is a brutal and dirty movie. Nobody gets blood-eagled, but there is plenty of violence, both grotesque and cathartic. Even the non-violent parts of the movie are grotesque and intense. Grown men built like trucks scream at each other, dance around, and even occasionally cry. This movie is constantly bombarding the audience with weird stuff, and it's all mesmerizing.

Northman threads a fine line between completely believable historical fiction and some mythological elements. On the one hand, I would believe the movie if it told me that it was inspired by true events. On the other hand, it's never entirely clear if the mythological content is actually supposed to be interpreted as really happening, of if they simply reflect the characters' belief in their gods and magics. Either way, the gritty, dirty, realistic settings are occasionally juxtaposed with beautiful and imaginative fantastical imagery.

© Universal Pictures

© Universal Pictures

The gritty, realistic setting is juxtaposed with imaginative fantastical imagery.