The Rise of Skywalker: Initial (manic) reactions

SPOILER WARNING

Pictures to follow.

I changed my mind about both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi upon rewatch, the latter admittedly to a greater extent, so I can't necessarily trust my reaction to the latest instalment of Star Wars, but I also can't deny it when one of my reactions, unlike those previous two, is "I'm not sure whether I even want to see it again."

On the simplest level, my reaction to The Rise of Skywalker is that I was bored and bewildered simultaneously. The film is paced utterly frenetically, with almost no room for character development, and it's hugely plot driven to an embarrassing extent, with little real sense of natural conflict. As a result, it doesn't feel much like a Star Wars film at all, which both of its predecessors, in my view, did in their best moments, especially The Last Jedi.

It's been argued that the Sequel Trilogy had nowhere to go after Episode VIII, but to me it was fairly obvious: how will Rey fulfill her role as leader and inheritor of a great legacy? How will Kylo Ren be redeemed? What's noteworthy about this is that in this structure the conflict between the Resistance and the First Order is not particularly important; it's just dressing for the story of two young people who find themselves in positions in which their decisions will affect the fate of many: not a bad place for a narrative, in my view.

The Rise of Skywalker, however, either doesn't recognise this or doesn't want to, because while the film touches upon these points amid its relentless Macguffin-driven plotting, it pays them so little attention and breathing room amid the endless journeying and changing of location that they are practically lost, and in this regard the film, in contrast to, to make an obvious comparison, Return of the Jedi, cannot deliver a clear and satisfying resolution for its primary hero and villain.

The film has a handful of good moments, mostly centred around the bond between Rey and Kylo, and Kylo's moment of redemption, but these are soon over. In its inability to construct a character-driven drama, the film lurches from place to place in an exhausting fashion, struggling to give Poe and Finn some depth by giving them single conversations with irrelevant secondary characters who contribute nothing to the story. The film also suffers in its use of the legacy characters, with the exception of Han. The presence of Leia, achieved using old footage of Carrie Fisher, is unnecessary and encumbers the writing, and Luke's scene has absolutely no presence or gravitas, especially in contrast to Yoda's appearance in The Last Jedi.

The film is also frustrating in its cowardice and laziness, undermining the previous film by presenting Rey as Palpatine's inexplicable long lost granddaughter and using Palpatine as its villain rather than driving its narrative through meaningful conflict between Rey and Kylo. Instead of taking a mature approach in continuing the previous film's narrative it tries to create a new and arbitrary threat which also undermines the previous trilogy. The story structure and writing feel "off", out of kilter with the other films in their heavy focus on exposition, and consequently lack emotional impact.

I shouldn't be surprised that a film cowritten by Chris Terrio, who worked on some of DC's worst recent offerings, felt this way, but it's frustrating to see this writing inflicted on characters who may have had some potential for a satisfying resolution in more subtle hands. I feel particularly sorry for Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, who are given roles with none of the relative meatiness of the previous film outside of a couple of scenes still compromised by the grotesque focus on Star-Wars-mythology-based exposition. Their characters are not allowed to reach satisfying dramatic conclusions, only endings produced by the inertia of the plot; Rey wielding two lightsabers to disintegrate Palpatine with his own lightning means nothing when it's not clear what character journey is being completed in that moment.

The film wants to do something interesting with showing Rey's temptation by the dark side, and a noteworthy highlight is when Rey, in her desperation to save Chewie (she thinks) uses Force Lightning and seemingly kills him. However, this is lumbered with the unnecessary associations of Rey being a descendant of Palpatine rather than the situation symbolising an ordinary human desire for control in difficult circumstances. As a result the film pointlessly rehashes the thesis presented in The Last Jedi that lineage is not important, but in a rushed, clumsy and unsatisfying way.  Rey's temptation by Palpatine to assume the leadership of the dead Sith Order is a complete reprisal of his temptation of Luke in Return of the Jedi but without the tension and drama which that film possessed due to Luke's relationship with Vader; by eliminating Kylo from the scene by that point no relationship exists to inform Rey's decisions apart from her distant affection for Finn and Poe, which this film fails to provide with much chemistry despite trying to cram a madcap adventure for the three of them into the film's middle act. There's simply not enough motivation for Rey to want to join or lead the Sith, and thus the climax is weightless and lacking wholly in tension.

Similarly, the redemption of Ben Solo, born of Rey's kindness and his mother's sacrifice, is somewhat effective, largely due to the conversation with Han, but this is just a brief moment in a film too lacking in clear character arcs for the development to be wholly effective. I criticised The Last Jedi for not giving its critical character moments enough structural focus; in The Rise of Skywalker they don't receive enough composition at all. The film has the seeds of interesting ideas within itself, but they are completely drowned by the mindless obsession with plot and excessive action.

As irritating and frustrating as the other two films in the Sequel Trilogy could be, when I was watching them I always at least felt that I was watching a film with some degree of structure and vision. With The Rise of Skywalker I felt more like I was viewing a studio-mandated mess in the manner of Suicide Squad or Justice League. The Star Wars film it reminded me of the most, sadly in my case as I consider it the worst of the Disney-era projects  (perhaps until now) is Rogue One: characterisation dumped in favour of plot-driven setting-hopping and fanservice. Despite, say, Canto Bight, I dearly wish Rian Johnson had accepted the writer/director job after Colin Trevorrow was let go; even if what we'd received was flawed, even annoying at times, it probably at least would have been measured and thoughtful. Maybe I'll change my mind if I can face watching this again, but Lucasfilm and Abrams let down not fans or audiences but their cast and themselves in this stupendously botched finale.

"Captain America: Civil War"

"I can't breathe in this thing!"

When the subtitle of the third Captain America film was revealed to be "Civil War", I was disappointed but not surprised. I must admit I've never actually read the "Civil War" Marvel comics event, but there's a good reason for that; I was going to, but other than the fact that I would have had to have purchased about a dozen trade paperbacks in order to get the complete story, I did some research and found that it apparently wasn't very good. Added to this was the fact that I was introduced to the storyline by reading the first Omnibus collection of Ed Brubaker's celebrated run on Captain America, and I remember feeling rather annoyed at the time that Brubaker's standalone storyline featuring the reintroduction of Bucky as the Winter Soldier was interrupted so that Captain America could go off and get himself arrested in a completely different comic book. They even had to put a page into the omnibus explaining what had happened in the comics from Civil War that they naturally hadn't included as they weren't by Brubaker. All of those things put me off reading Civil War, along with the fact that it's by Mark Millar, who has gone from writing interesting character studies like Superman: Red Son to being a purveyor of adolescent shock-schlock which seems to think that the best way to do something original with superheroes is to have them swear a lot.

"Just have a chin strap, like me."

The trailers for this third Captain America instalment did little to improve my disposition towards the film. It looked, much as The Winter Soldier was in some respects "Avengers One and a Half", to be "Avengers Two and a Half", as not only was almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe hero other than Hulk and Thor going to appear, two more would be introduced: Black Panther, a character in which I've never been interested, and Spider-Man, who in my opinion was never been handled successfully in any of his 21st Century iterations. I had to find out, however, so like a good little consumerist slave I went and dutifully saw Captain America: Civil War today, fully expecting more of the "well-presented mediocrity" which has become my personal subtitle for the entire cinematic franchise. Would this be more like Captain America: The First Avenger, my favourite Marvel film but one which is regularly mocked for supposedly being stupid and/or boring by many with whom I discuss it, yet is the one that made me interested in Marvel comics and the character of Captain America in particular, who is one of my favourite superheroes, or would it be more like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the highly-acclaimed sequel which I personally found to be dry and repetitive?

"Your chin strap looks stupid."

We begin in 1991 with - who would have guessed - HYDRA, although at least in this case they appear to be Russian HYDRA people using some old Soviet "manual" for operating Bucky full of code words to control him. Obviously they have to use HYDRA but I'm certainly getting tired of seeing them. It also confuses the issue. Is Bucky a Soviet and HYDRA creation simultaneously? Was he created by HYDRA operating within the USSR? I guess so, but it's not terribly clear. Bucky's sent on a mission to go crash a car and kill any witnesses, so hopefully there were no wilderness ramblers nearby as he easily dispatches the vehicle in the woods somewhere. In the boot of the car are five blood bags full of blueberry Gatorade. How mysterious. One thing that I'm starting to find very tiresome about these films is their penchant for glowing McGuffins and pieces of science-fiction technology appearing in a present-day setting with no explanation. No one like Tony Stark exists in the real world; we don't have floating hologram diagrams and technology isn't made of blocks of metal covered in glowing lights. It's a petty complaint but it does cause me to struggle to suspend my disbelief a bit.

In the present day, Captain America and his backup singers are in Nigeria, preventing Crossbones from nicking some biological weapon. He was clearly a convenient supervillain to use at this point, but his presence feels arbitrary. If you're not familiar with Crossbones, he was traditionally one of the Red Skull's main enforcers, hence his name. In this he's more or less a stooge who has a punch-up with Cap while the Avengers dispatch his team. When he tries to blow himself up, however, Wanda the Scarlet Witch catches him in a red energy bubble or whatever it is she does, throwing the explosion up into the air and causing more of the collateral damage we've come to know and love from modern action films.

"What did you just say to me?"

I can't quite remember if it's the sequence immediately before or after this, but at some point we see Tony Stark giving a speech at MIT alongside a disturbing recreation of the last time he saw his parents, including a characteristically rubbery-looking CGI young Robert Downey Jr., whose voice still sounds like that of a middle-aged man. We also see old Howard Stark again; I was surprised enough when he reprised his Iron Man 2 role in Ant-Man. I wonder how much they offer these actors for these bit parts? I guess for a lot of them any Hollywood exposure is worth the triviality of the part. Stark the Younger gets all sad when the autocue mentions Pepper, who has apparently pissed off, probably because Gwyneth Paltrow got sick of the role, and he's confronted by a woman from the State Department whose son was killed in the Former Soviet Republic of Fictionalia, aka "Sokovia" in Age of Ultron. Time for Tony Stark to have his third or fourth emotional breakdown in as many film appearances. Back at Avengers HQ, the actions of Cap and his team in Nigeria turn out to have been a bad move PR-wise; despite appearances (and the fact that they saved countless people from a biological weapons disaster), apparently there were casualties from this mission and people are questioning whether the Avengers are being held sufficiently accountable for the damage. Notice anything, like for instance that this doesn't have a great deal to do with Captain America specifically? He's the leader of the team, I suppose, but these links aren't made especially firmly. Paul Bettany's Vision, introduced in Age of Ultron, makes a welcome reappearance and is amusing-looking in casual clothes. Where was he when they went to Nigeria? Watching the base or something? It's like Red Tornado in the Justice League Watchtower; what's with superhero teams leaving their android member behind to keep the seats warm?

"Oh you heard me."

What is more surprising is seeing William Hurt reprise his role as Thunderbolt Ross from 2008's The Incredible Hulk, which I assumed had quietly been more or less dropped from continuity after they failed to secure Edward Norton as Bruce Banner for any future films. This further raises the question I asked in my review of Age of Ultron: what happened to Betty? Does Banner not care about her any more now that apparently he's into Black Widow? Anyway, Iron Man's brought him along to tell the Avengers (Cap, Falcon, War Machine, Black Widow, Vision and Scarlet Witch) that everyone's getting fed up with all the mess that's left behind whenever the Avengers go into action and the UN wants them to be brought under their supervision. Apparently whenever the Avengers have finished blowing things up all over the world they then piss off back to their headquarters and shoot pool or something because there's an implication that they never stick around to clean up the damage they've caused. I found this a surprising remark. Surely Cap would stick around; part of the climax of The Avengers involved him working to get civilians to safety. The problem seems confused to me. Is it that the Avengers are seen as a private organisation that acts without jurisdiction or permission in foreign nations, or the fact that they cause collateral damage, or the fact that they don't help clean it up afterwards? I suppose it's all of these things, and Ross does hand them a document like a phone book which is meant to contain all the details, but the actual problem with the superheroes wasn't made sufficiently firm for my liking.

"Did I lock my front door?"

Much debate ensues; Vision claims that since the appearance of Iron Man on the scene the number of incidents has steadily risen, and that there might be a causation at work. He completely fails to recall, of course, despite being a genius android, that correlation is not causation. I can't remember what Black Widow's reason for supporting the "Accords" is, nor what Falcon's are for not doing it, or indeed Rhodey or Wanda. Iron Man feels all guilty about this chap who died in "Sokovia", and I suppose that's legitimate because Ultron was his creation. Maybe he's the only one who needs to be kept on watch; it's not like what Loki did in The Avengers, or what HYDRA did in The Winter Soldier, were the fault of the Avengers. In fact, everyone would have been buggered if superheroes hadn't been around in those scenarios, yet they're used as examples in addition to what happened with Ultron. It all seems a bit inconsistent to me. Maybe if they focused purely on Ultron and what happened in Nigeria in would make more sense. Cap's not having any of it because he reckons being at the beck and call of the UN will compromise their personal moral discretion, which is a reasonable argument, but it hasn't nearly the strength of his argument in the original comic, which was calling for all superheroes to reveal their true identities to the government. Then again, the dilemma in the comic was a stupid one in the first place, so it doesn't really make a difference. Perhaps Cap should have called Iron Man out for trying to make the whole lot of them shoulder his mistake for creating Ultron, but that would have run the risk of making this Captain America film even more about Iron Man than it already is. All this is cut short, however, when he gets a text saying that Peggy's died.

"My mutant power is to generate edible quantities of fairy floss from my hands."

I've been watching Agent Carter and while it's by no means perfect I find it enjoyable enough, primarily carried by Hayley Atwell's charisma and the confidence she brings to the role, so I was a little disappointed upon realising she wouldn't get at least a cameo here. At the funeral we discover, unsurprisingly, that Agent 13 from The Winter Soldier is her "niece", Sharon, like in the comics. I say niece, of course, because she calls Peggy "aunt" Peggy, which is what their relationship was changed to in the comics as time wore on; originally she was Peggy's younger sister and Peggy had gone a bit daft in middle age. Anyway, surely Sharon would have to be Peggy's great-niece or something. It seems very unlikely that Peggy, who would have to have been in at least her late nineties when she died, would have had a sibling who was Sharon's parent. It can't be Peggy's brother, because we saw in a flashback in Agent Carter that he was killed in the war. What am I going on about? Anyway it's good to see Emily VanCamp reprise her role as Sharon and, despite my fears, she actually gets a fairly decent bit of time in the film as a supporting character for Steve, although it really isn't enough. I can't help but feel that the fact that Cap's supporting cast for the second and third films have often been established superhero characters means that, other than Falcon and, to an extent, Bucky, Cap's supporting cast from the comics has never really been allowed to develop. Sharon's eulogy for Peggy includes a comic book quote, originally from Cap himself, that I recognised because I'm a huge nerd. After the service, Black Widow tries to convince Cap to come sign on the dotted line and put himself under the UN's jurisdiction but he politely gives her the one-fingered salute and she heads off to Vienna alone.

At some point in all of this we're introduced to Zemo, antagonist du jour, who tracks down Bucky's old Russian handler from the opening, nicks his book of secret game-winning cheats and passwords, and drowns him in his own sink just to add insult to injury. I'm not surprised that they used Zemo eventually, as he's probably Cap's next-biggest villain after the Red Skull, but personally I prefer him with a purple sock on his head. He's not a Baron, either. He wants to know about Bucky's mission back in 1991 for some reason, but the Russian gentleman won't play ball, his loyalty to, apparently, HYDRA, outweighing his desire to keep living. HYDRA must have had a pretty great benefits package to ensure such loyalty in its members.

They're grrreat.

This is one hell of a long film, and I was starting to wonder where things were going at this point; by now we're introduced to T'Challa, the Black Panther, whose father, as King of Wakanda, Marvel's go-to fictional super-advanced African nation-state and Vibranium-supplier, is supporting the Accords. Before anyone can so much as unscrew the top off their pen, however, one of the film's many bombs goes off, killing the king. The king is dead. Long live the king. The suspected bomber is none other than Bucky, who's been missing since Cap fought him in the last film. Despite the fact that they've been looking for him for two years without success, Sharon is swiftly able to provide Cap and Falcon with intelligence allowing them to locate him in a flat in Bucharest a couple of scenes later, after T'Challa has sworn revenge for his father's death and Cap has once again redundantly informed Black Widow that he won't sign the document. Heavily-armed policemen storm Bucky's flat but he and Cap fight them off, leading into one of those ubiquitous "car chase on a busy urban highway" sequences that seems to occur in almost every action film these days; we already had two or three of them in The Winter Soldier and at least another one in Age of Ultron. Batman v Superman had one as well. I blame whichever Matrix film it was that had Neo flipping petrol tankers over and stuff. Black Panther is in pursuit, his costume turned into a generic Marvel Cinematic Universe "panels and unnecessary-seeming textures everywhere" design, and Falcon executes some tricky manoeuvres flying through tunnels, achieving something that the Luftwaffe pilot chasing Indiana Jones couldn't in The Last Crusade. There's a decent bit where Bucky nabs a guy's motorcycle in a sweeping motion, but I always feel bad for the people whose vehicles get nicked in these sequences. I instantly thought of Cap's cheesy 70s era "Captain America Van" and wished he had it here. Despite their best efforts they get caught and to the surprise of hopefully no one the Black Panther is revealed to be T'Challa.

"...I fell down the stairs."

I wondered about their use of Black Panther here; he gives a little info about himself while he, Cap and Falcon are being driven off to the UN or wherever it is, but I can't help but feel that his back story was kind of assumed knowledge, and I wondered if anyone who'd never heard of the character before would have a clue what was going on. At this prison or facility, wherever it is, they meet Martin Freeman putting on an America accent and doing "Martin Freeman smug and ebullient mode", the less well-known but nonetheless recurrent twin of "Martin Freeman bemused and quietly surprised mode". Apparently he's playing a Black Panther supporting character and is presumably being set up for a future role. Sorry, I know very little about Black Panther. I've never found the character very interesting and only know him from a couple of issues of 70s Captain America in which he helps Falcon, a couple of 2010s Fantastic Fours, and the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, in which I thought he was presented as a boring character who had no flaws, was never wrong about anything and was never defeated in battle. I sometimes suspected that there was a Black Panther fanboy on the writing team for that show who couldn't help but portray the character as near-perfect. Anyway, back to this film...

"Allow me to bust some moves for you."

At some point in all of this we also see Wanda and Vision back at HQ, and after a bit of a deep and meaningful we discover that Iron Man wants vision to keep Wanda on site because the public is uncomfortable with her abilities. Vision is an android and all that but he really displays an inconsistent grasp of things in this film, at times being insightful and at other times failing to see the inconsistencies in what he does. If he wants to help Wanda, what good is hiding her from the public going to do? This comes to a head at the UN or wherever the hell they are - in Berlin somewhere, maybe? Iron Man makes another attempt to get Cap to sign, but Cap isn't having any of it after he hears that he's keeping Wanda behind closed doors. I can't really remember their conversation at this point apart from the pens Iron Man brings having been used to sign the Lend-Lease agreement in the war and Iron Man mentioning Ultron. This can be quite a talky film at points, but not everything the characters say is enormously memorable, and I think the characters' failures to effectively articulate their positions and standpoints on the issues they're facing is one of the film's shortcomings. If your characters are going to talk so much, at least have them say something coherent. I wondered at points, given Disney's historically softly-softly approach to any and all issues of social interest, if the screenplay was encouraged to not include the characters ever saying anything that might be construed as too specifically political for fear of pissing off one wing or another.

"I only know how to boil eggs."

Meanwhile, a man at the nearby power facility receives a mysterious package containing a device we saw in Zemo's hotel room earlier, as Zemo himself appears as the psychologist who's come to analyse the captured Bucky. Cap, Falcon and Sharon somehow figure out that Zemo's the suspicious one in all of this, although I can't recall why, but before they can do anything about it the suspicious package goes off; it's some kind of electromagnetic device that causes a city-wide blackout, leaving Zemo unobserved as he reads off Bucky's code words to him, eventually managing to get him under control so that he can ask him about the events of 1991. Cap and Falcon show up but in the ensuing confusion Zemo escapes. T'Challa tries to stop Bucky but gets owned, and then Bucky tries to escape as well, in a convenient helicopter which, much like Poe and Finn's tie fighter, is tethered down. Is that a real thing? Cap uses his burly muscles to hold the helicopter down in a quite decent moment. The two of them fall into the river; Falcon wanders outside the building while everyone's running around screaming (I can't quite remember why everyone's in such a flap at this point) and no one tries to stop him even though he was practically arrested a few scenes ago and had all his gear nicked. Cap and his newer sidekick take his older sidekick off to some warehouse somewhere, where Bucky reveals the truth behind the exclusive Gatorade variety from the opening: they were samples of super-soldier serum, used by HYDRA in the 90s to create five more super-soldiers even more dangerous than him. Now Zemo knows where they are: at HYDRA's old facility in Siberia. Obviously, everyone's very concerned about this.

Time to assemble a whole film from all of her scenes.

Cap and Bucky need to go and stop Zemo from presumably reviving the HYDRA super-soldiers and wreaking havoc, but rather than just going and doing it immediately they somehow figure that Iron Man is going to try to stop them because they're protecting Bucky, who's still wanted for the attack on the UN earlier; I'm having to remind myself of this because this is such a long film I'm starting to lose track of what's going on. Both leaders conveniently figure that they need to boost the strength of their respective teams. Iron Man's already got War Machine, Black Widow, Vision and Black Panther on side, but he pops home to New York to recruit our new Spider-Man. I ought to take a moment to digress on the friendly neighbourhood superhero; I've never thought the character has been done well on screen. The Tobey Maguire incarnation in the Sam Raimi films was, in my opinion, too shy and quiet even when in costume. I only saw the first of the two Andrew Garfield ones, but apart from the "small knives" joke that they gave away in the trailer his character seemed flat and lifeless. Although I think Marvel Studios plays things pretty safely these days, they seem to be on the right track now that they've negotiated with Sony to use the character. The new Tom Holland incarnation felt fairly convincing to me, good natured while also awkward and a bit glib. He's definitely one of the strengths of the film and we'll get back to him later.

"Hey... Mike!"
"...yeah?"

Cap, meanwhile, gets Hawkeye back in, who hadn't previously appeared in this film, having allegedly retired after he was nearly killed in Age of Ultron. He comes to rescue Wanda, who is forced to use her powers on Vision in order to free herself. They do sterling work with limited time developing the relationship between Wanda and the Vision here; Hawkeye's presence, by contrast, feels a little arbitrary, in my opinion. Sharon meets Steve to return his shield and Falcon's gear, and there is some good humour, like Bucky asking Falcon to move his seat forward and amusing image of the buffed-up Cap driving a tiny VW Beetle around the place. No one points out the irony of him driving a car designed during the Nazi era, however, nor does anyone question the point when he and Sharon kiss despite the fact that used to be in love with her aunt; the shot of Bucky and Falcon smirking after witnessing this tender moment makes up for this a tad. At times the film is quite light-hearted and amusing, although I feel it was a little inconsistent in this regard. They head for the airport, meeting up with Wanda and Hawkeye, who has also brought along a sleepy Ant-Man who gets to crack a few jokes as well. Despite the fact that I found Ant-Man (the film) pretty generic, I found that I was looking forward to the return of Paul Rudd's size-changing superhero, and in my opinion he's actually handled better in this film than he was in his own one. His segments are both more visually interesting and funnier.

"Quickly, before you're rebooted again!"

Cap and Bucky march brazenly out to their waiting helicopter ready to ferry them off to Siberia, even though we saw Zemo flying to Moscow ages ago - a day earlier or so according to how long Thunderbolt Ross gave Iron Man to find Cap - but predictably enough Iron Man and War Machine show up to tell Cap off. Spider-Man makes his entrance in his fancy new costume. They get into a big fight, however, with Spider-Man taking on Bucky and Falcon while the others have a general scrap. Spider-Man is done well here, talking constantly and cheerfully, bringing the energy and enthusiasm to the character that has been sorely lacking in previous iterations, but the show is stolen by Ant-Man, who jumps inside Iron Man's armour to start damaging it from within and performs the classic move of riding one of Hawkeye's arrows. Vision arrives to lend his overwhelming fire power to proceedings, halting the escaping Cap and Bucky in their tracks, and the two teams decide to adopt First World War tactics, lining up on opposite sides of the tarmac and running at each other purely for the sake of the trailer, which looks visually impressive, I suppose, but seems out of place given how much careful strategic placement has gone on earlier. The best moment comes when, to create a distraction, Ant-Man does the opposite of his normal effect and becomes Giant Man, grabbing a flying War Machine out of the air. Cap and Bucky high-tail it to the Avengers' jet, with the help of a coat-turning Black Widow. In the ensuing efforts to prevent their escape, Falcon dodges an attack from Vision which instead hits War Machine, causing him to crash from a rather uncomfortable height. The rest of Cap's team are imprisoned and Rhodey is left with paralysis. Given the fact that the power had failed and he was wearing metal clothes, I'm extremely surprised that he survived at all. Why didn't the suit have any kind of emergency eject system? Seems like one of the first things you'd put in. Also, they really need to put some kind of mantle over those arc reactors on the front of their armour. Those things seem vulnerable.

The illusion of three-dimensionality.

In Zemo's hotel room, the body of the real psychologist is discovered, as well as, according to the report, a Bucky disguise. So the dramatic irony is brought to an end; Iron Man now knows that Cap and Bucky were telling the truth. He flies off to the Raft, one of the traditional Marvel habitations of supervillains awaiting "rehabilitation", to tell Falcon that he believes Cap and to find out where he's gone so that he can, in fact, help. So currently he's looking pretty stupid, despite telling off Black Widow for effectively changing sides. I was actually expecting Spidey to switch like he did in the comics. This sequence on the Raft feels a bit like padding and I'm not sure it was really necessary. A couple of locked-up supervillains would have added to the atmosphere; the problem is that, unlike the comics and the cartoon adaptations, supervillains rarely survive for more than one film, so I can't imagine who would be in there. Was Blonsky killed in The Incredible Hulk? I haven't seen that film for a very long time, and the one time I did see it was by accident. Perhaps Batroc could have been in there. Incidentally, when Iron Man discovers Zemo's identity - in this he's a former colonel in Sokovian special forces or similar - there should have been a picture of him in a balaclava to evoke the character's traditional purple head-sock. Marvel normally loves doing those kinds of fan-titillating references, so I'm surprised it didn't occur here.

"Hey, a penny!"

Zemo opens up the old HYDRA base in Siberia and finds the super-soldiers while Iron Man heads there to help Cap; Black Panther is in pursuit too, now knowing the true identity of his father's killer. Cap and Bucky arrive at the site, believing that they must only be a few hours behind Zemo, I guess because he couldn't fly there directly. They meet up with Iron Man and go forth to take down Zemo. He's in a sheltered room, however, having killed the super-soldiers, having had no intention of using them. His real intention was to reveal to Iron Man through the magic of inexplicable security camera footage on a lonely 1991 road that Bucky, as the Winter Soldier, was the one who assassinated his parents. Cap, of course, was told by the computer-record of Arnim Zola in the previous Cap film that HYDRA were responsible for the Starks' deaths, and apparently he had never told this to Iron Man, although he did not know that Bucky was the one who had done it. Iron Man doesn't particularly care and starts fighting both of them, experiencing such important dramatic emotions as anger, grief and a sense of betrayal, while Zemo pisses off. Outside on the tundra, he reveals to an approaching Black Panther that he decided that the only way to defeat the Avengers was to cause them to fight each other rather than to battle them directly. He was motivated to do so out of a desire for revenge on them after what happened in Sokovia, as his family was apparently killed despite believing they had escaped to a safe distance. Personally I found this to be too similar to Wanda's motivation from Age of Ultron; she initially wanted revenge on Iron Man for building the weapon that had killed her parents. I also simply thought that this was a cliché motivation in general, seeking revenge for dead loved ones being a fairly common device in fiction. It also suffers from the fact that really his loss was Ultron's fault, and Ultron was Iron Man's fault, not the fault of Cap, Bucky or indeed any of the other Avengers. They can't really say this, however, even if they thought of it, because this is meant to be a Captain America film. Things like this, however, make it feel worryingly like "Avengers Two and a Half", if the saturation of heroes hadn't already caused that impression.

"Ow, my helmet."

Iron Man literally disarms Bucky but ultimately has the ever-loving shit beaten out of him by Cap; Cap says that Bucky's his friend, while Iron Man says that Cap used to be his friend as well. The whole situation seems a bit contrived. It's a touch dodgy that Cap never told Iron Man that HYDRA killed his parents, which was all he knew, but could easily have slipped his mind if nothing else. Similarly, it's well-established that the Winter Soldier acted under mind control, not of his own will, and is hardly accountable for his actions. In that sense Bucky acts as an analogue for what the Avengers would become, in Cap's view, if they were held to these UN "Accords". The idea of them, however, was to make the Avengers accountable. So is the film ultimately saying that if Iron Man is right about Bucky, then Cap is right about the Avengers? Both Iron Man and Bucky himself question whether it matters that Bucky was acting of his own volition, although in my view that doesn't really make sense. That's like blaming an unconscious person if you were slapped because another person grabbed their arm and slapped you with the unconscious person's outstretched hand. In any event, Iron Man tells Cap that he doesn't deserve the shield, although I don't actually see why he doesn't, but nonetheless Cap ditches it and pisses off with Bucky. Zemo's imprisoned with no-one but Smug Mode Martin Freeman for company, Rhodey can barely walk, Cap's allies are in prison and the Avengers have basically collapsed. Stan Lee gets his cameo delivering Iron Man a letter, Cap busts his guys out of the clink, Bucky volunteers to get put back on ice in Wakanda until his mind control can be cured, and the rather pointless final post-credits sequences informs us that Spider-Man now has the Spider signal torch thing. Big deal. Thus endeth Captain America: Civil War.

"If you had an 'A' on your head, Tony, it'd stand for 'asshole'. You dick."

The film has a few key strengths. Its uses of humour, while sparing, are generally effective. It also probably gets more out of its enormous ensemble cast than either of the Avengers films did despite the fact that it has more of them than ever. It's a good introduction to the new version of Spider-Man, Vision and Wanda are both used pretty well and Ant-Man gets a really good chance to shine. On the other hand, the main conflict feels, in my opinion, very contrived. No one points out that, without the Avengers and/or Cap and his allies, Loki and/or HYDRA would have taken over the world. No one points out that only Iron Man is really to blame for what Ultron did, and that it's unfair of him to want to punish them all for what was really only his fault. It's never really clear if the Avengers are under scrutiny for the fact that people die in the battles in which they fight, even though they are generally started by villains and not by them, or if it's just for all the mess and diplomatic bother they cause when they act. We're expected to believe that, after something like the Lagos mission, Cap and chums just piss off without bothering to help anyone any further and leave the emergency services to take care of it. Does this seem very fitting with Cap's character? They could have made more of the Lagos mission, I suppose, and argued that Cap acted too soon and shouldn't have attacked in an urban area in which there was a higher potential for casualties, but they don't. They also don't really dwell upon the idea that while Cap's discretion might be reliable the discretion of the others isn't, necessarily. Are we being led to believe that when Cap identifies a threat he and the Avengers just barge in without even bothering to try to contact the local government first? They could have focused it on Cap more, perhaps, and argued that he was treating the Avengers like a combat unit in the war rather than a modern task force trying to protect innocent people in peacetime. Of course, had they taken such an angle, the film could have been more of a personal journey for Cap trying to find his place in the modern world, but they botched that a couple of films ago really.

"What happens if he gets too close?"
"Uh, he can try to whack people with his arrows, I guess?"

As it is, it feels like the entire conflict is based on a premise so flimsy that it seems completely unreasonable that such a massive feud would erupt over it. Cap doesn't agree that the Avengers should operate under UN jurisdiction, but never really has the time or opportunity to properly explain the weight or nuance of his reasoning in detail. He only has the opportunity to inform us that he believes that his conscience is the best arbiter available. Ultimately it comes down to the following dilemma: what's a better way of making decisions: the agreement of many diplomats or the conscience of one good man? Captain America is shown to make mistakes, but the most serious consequences are for his relationship with Iron Man. The question of the authority under which the Avengers should operate is, to my mind, never really resolved. The problem with making his deteriorating friendship with Iron Man the dramatic centre of the film is that, in my opinion, the friendship between them has never really been established that well anyway. In The Avengers they frowned at each other in a flying conference room for a bit. In Age of Ultron I can't really remember what the two of them discuss, if anything. As such, I don't see the great tragedy in the destruction of this friendship. While it's obviously a shame to see the Avengers fall apart, and a problem given that horrible alien menaces are apparently in their future, the core character drama is, in my opinion, robbed of most of its pathos due to the fact that it is built on such weak foundations in the first place.

Don't forget your stick, lieutenant.

My evaluation, therefore, largely comes to this: the "Civil War" storyline should not have been the storyline of "Captain America 3". The fact that it's a Captain America film means that it's going to be a sequel to The Winter Soldier, but they're trying to make it a sequel to Age of Ultron as well. The problem with this is that they have to merge the "Captain America" plot with the "Avengers" plot, and as a result they get one weak plot when they could have chosen one of these two storylines and had one strong plot. This is a film that, in my opinion, was actually weaker than the sum of its parts. In some respects, this is the same frustration I had with The Winter Soldier, in that it tried to make a personal story for Cap and a wider story for the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" as a whole into catalysts for each other to the enfeeblement of both. Iron Man and Thor, by contrast, have had multiple films that add to the "Cinematic Universe" plot while to a reasonable extent standing on their own. For whatever reason, Cap is not afforded this luxury, his films being expected to pull double duty as a Universe-progressing event as well. This means that as a "Marvel Cinematic Universe" film its main weaknesses are the fact that Cap's friendship with Iron Man has never been sufficiently well-realised for their conflict to have enough impact and the fact that the need to focus on Cap and Bucky's storyline means that the "Accords" storyline is contrived and weak. By contrast, as a "Captain America trilogy" film its weakness comes from the fact that it barely qualifies as a Captain America-specific outing at all; his last film had the unnecessary presences of Black Widow and Nick Fury, while this one is burdened with every other hero under the sun. At times it actually feels like a Captain America-Iron Man double bill rather than Cap's own film, and at times it actually feels like Iron Man, not Cap, is the main character, and as a Cap fan this pissed me off.

It only has a flag inside.

It strikes me that the Russo brothers don't really know what to do with Cap or don't find him to be a particularly interesting character, and have basically been using Cap's films as Avengers-lite (or in this case, Avengers-rather-heavy) as ensemble piece show reels to get the Avengers 3 gig. Rather than bothering to explore Cap and what he means and stands for in any particular detail, they'd rather just make quasi-thrillers which happen to, perhaps begrudgingly, feature Captain America as the protagonist. This obviously takes inspiration from Ed Brubaker's run on the Captain America comics, which took a spy-fi approach to the character, but Brubaker simultaneously confined his story largely to Cap's core supporting cast, Falcon, Sharon and to an extent Nick Fury, with only cameo appearances by Black Widow, Iron Man and the like, while also revelling in the rich history of the character and the idea that if we could have a hero from the past who was a man out of time, the evils of the past might disturbingly survive into the present day as well (usually in the form of surprisingly longeval Nazi supervillains or their descendants). There was talk shortly after The Winter Soldier that the third film would feature the insane impostor Captain America, the racist McCarthyist who made the Cap identity look like that of a reactionary paranoiac, but obviously this never came to fruition. This would have been a great way to explore Cap's identity, perhaps with Chris Evans portraying both Steve Rogers and the deluded William Burnside, but I'm sure the idea would have been too politically charged for Disney. Thus I think there are several factors for why I was personally unsatisfied by the film. Firstly, it's too focused on Iron Man: it's his emotional state, and rather little to do with Cap, that drives the conflict of the film and the final drama, and furthermore Cap's beliefs and opinions are given shockingly little attention considering that he's notionally the protagonist. Secondly, it's too much like "Avengers Two and a Half" and it feels too much like something slapped together to check executive boxes: tie heavily into the wider universe as audiences like that; now that we've got him, have lots of Robert Downey Jr., because audiences like that; have very little weighty political content, as audiences prefer not to be challenged.

"Don't make me push you down the stairs again, Tony."

If they'd gone down the route that seemed to be proposed early in marketing, in which Iron Man was actually the villain of the film, trying to hunt down a persecuted Cap who was only trying to do the right thing, it might have been a more effective "Captain America" film, but as it is it just feels like a heated debate over a rather trivial philosophical point with punching thrown in. Zemo's method is ultimately fairly compelling; I only felt that his motivations could have been more interesting. Also, despite the more effective aspects of Zemo's realisation in this, the Cap fan in me would also have dearly loved to have seen him with a purple sock over his head and furry shoulder cuffs, fighting Cap with a sword. All in all, Captain America: Civil War has its strengths but I believe it's let down by some shortcomings I simply can't overlook. It is, however, probably better than The Winter Soldier in that the action scenes are less repetitive and the portrayal of, ironically, the Winter Soldier himself is more interesting. As a viewer of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" I found it to be better than Age of Ultron but more or less as average as most of the stuff they've been releasing for the last few years. As a Captain America fan in particular I found it deeply unsatisfying, but I fear that, absurdly, Captain America fans are not the target audience of Marvel's Captain America films. My knowledge of the character's very long published history is not comprehensive, but if you want some entertaining eras deriving from my own knowledge, I would recommend Brubaker's run, naturally, especially the first 50 issues or so, and Cap's outings in the early 70s.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens": Initial (Bad) Impressions

So I just saw The Force Awakens, the new Star Wars film. It was, in my opinion, not very good. That being said, there was a massive cock up at the cinema where I saw it, causing me to miss the first couple of minutes, and the immense frustration at that may have coloured my experience, but at this stage I can firmly say that I did not find much to enjoy in this film. Here's why:

1. It's a massive rehash of previous Star Wars films

Ever seen Star Wars, now known as A New Hope? Then you've seen The Force Awakens. Good guys have secret information inside droid, bad guys want droid, bad guys have huge superweapon that they use to blow up a/some planet(s) no one cares about, good guys blow up huge superweapon, old guy dies. Also Kylo Ren is just Darth Vader as a son rather than a father, so you can throw some rehashing of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in there as well.

And yeah, they did the whole "blowing up the superweapon" thing in both Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, and it was pretty unoriginal then; it doesn't somehow make it less unoriginal here.

2. The CGI is crap

There are some practical effects in the film, which is nice. As such, what's with the CGI? There are two characters in particular, some little orange lady with big glasses who reminds me of Edna Mode from The Incredibles called "Maz Kanata", and the Palpatine substitute, Supreme Leader Snoke (who I'm fairly sure is referred to interchangeably as "Snoke" and "Stoke" in the film), who are completely obviously computer generated in contrast to the aliens done with practical effects. The "Maz Kanata" character is bad enough because she comes out of nowhere yet apparently knows everything about everything (if so, why have we never seen her before?) but having an important antagonist like Snoke merely as some crappy and incredibly fake-looking CGI creation is beyond the pale.

3. It doesn't look like a Star Wars film
It looks like a J.J. Abrams film. Yeah, I get that in some respects that's a really stupid thing to say because he directed it, but it does. The "visual grammar" of Abrams' style, as seen in his rebooted Star Trek films, is very evident: shots of space ships flying through tunnels are extremely reminiscent in terms of composition, as well as the delayed reaction humour and some of the framing of the actors. I'm not a film expert so it's a little difficult to describe, but to me, even though they weren't all directed by the same people, there's something relatively consistent about the original Star Wars films which isn't present here, and yet was present to a greater extent in the prequels (even though I don't think the prequels are very good).

This is what comes to mind at this stage. Number One is the most glaring because the film's plot is so devastatingly unoriginal in many respects. I'm going to reiterate that my poor experience at the cinema almost certainly coloured my viewing situation, and I'm prepared to rewatch and reassess the film, but at the same time in this age of appalling mass consumerism and hype trains people need to stand up and say "No, I disagree."

"Spectre"

Not "SPECTRE" apparently, because here the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion seems to have no acronym and just be a bunch of people called 'Spectre' who aren't very nice.

Now Blofeld's back, surely Baron Samedi
is next on the 'villains to revive' list.

My review of Skyfall seems all too applicable to Spectre in some respects. I've yet to rewatch Skyfall (and I have little desire to do so, to be honest) but my primary objections to it haven't mellowed over time: I think it's fundamentally a rather pretentious film which absurdly expects me to take the character of James Bond seriously and care about his problems. As I stated in that review, I think treating Bond like a drama is inherently nonsensical, because it's a genre franchise about a larger-than-life character in almost wholly unrealistic situations, and therefore his feelings, thoughts and inner life fundamentally offer little for the audience to reflect upon.

Bond 25: Bond Has A Nice Cup Of Tea

The writers and directors of modern genre films need to realise that they are not writing the next great English/American novel, and that the nature of their medium innately precludes such aspirations from being sensible. The same delusions of dramatic grandeur affect current British television properties like modern Doctor Who and Sherlock, shows which similarly offer pointless masturbatory ruminations on the nature of unreal and unrealistic characters as if they have to compete with "literary" art.

Spectre is not as egregious in this as Skyfall was, but it suffers from many of the same problems: it's slow and dry, it's boring-looking, with a grey- and brown-dominated colour palette, and it's not shot or designed in a particularly interesting way. It feels more grounded in its own action than Skyfall admittedly, with a less dreamlike tone, but this accentuates its dryness. This is also emphasised by the fact that the plot is extremely unoriginal.

"Yeah, I'm all right."

Large parts of the plot of Spectre are extremely similar, if not identical to, 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, another dry and unexciting film. Consider this: in both films, the security agency (SHIELD, the Joint Intelligence Service) has a new headquarters in the nation's capital (by a body of water, even). It's revealed that the head of said agency (Pierce, C) is in fact allied with or a part of a nefarious secret organisation (HYDRA, Spectre) which wants to use the legitimate organisation to take over a massive surveillance network (Project Insight, Nine Eyes) to get up to mischief. A rag-tag team of surviving "good" members of the original organisation (Fury/Widow/Falcon/Maria Hill, M/Moneypenny/Q/Tanner) must infiltrate the new, compromised headquarters while the protagonist has a "personal" showdown with the film's other main antagonist with whom he has an almost fraternal connection (Bucky, Oberhauser). I felt like I'd seen a good deal of this before. Bucky and Oberhauser are both meant to have died in the snow only to have actually survived, for goodness' sake.

Good thing we all wear these suspicious rings
with this very retro-looking logo on them.

Now let's get to the main attraction: Spectre itself and Blofeld. I didn't think these were handled effectively. Having finally regained the rights, they shoot their bolt almost immediately by introducing the whole shebang: Spectre is this evil organisation which manipulates world events and their mysterious unseen leader is a man named Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Note that in the original Bond films, SPECTRE and Blofeld were dealt with over no less than six films. SPECTRE is first introduced in Dr. No as the titular villain's employer. In From Russia With Love they try to exacerbate tensions between East and West. Following an unrelated diversion for Goldfinger, Bond then deals with the second-in-command of the organisation, Emilio Largo, in Thunderball. It's not until You Only Live Twice that Bond finally meets Blofeld himself, and it takes that film and two more, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever, to finally deal with Blofeld and put an end to the entire situation. In fact, apart from Goldfinger, the entire Connery/Lazenby era involves SPECTRE in some shape or other.

"Seat belts on, please!"

That's a hell of a lot of story, and it makes SPECTRE seem appropriately sprawling and mysterious - octopoid, like its logo. And while some of SPECTRE's and/or Blofeld's activities are very over the top and have become clichés, like the volcano lair and the laser satellite, generally their motivations were fairly clear: to play the superpowers of the Cold War against each other for money and power. That's what SPECTRE is, essentially, in those films: a very elaborate criminal organisation. Yet at the same time it functions as a reflection and even a parody of the very powers it is playing: all of Bond's spying and all of the espionage and struggles between Western governments and the Soviet Union for political and economic supremacy are ultimately little different, in those stories' eyes, to the actions of criminals manipulating affairs for the sake of profit and control. Note that in Blofeld's fish tank in From Russia With Love, all three (the West, the USSR and SPECTRE) are the same creature.

Not so here, of course. The Cold War's long over (arguably), or has at least transformed, which leaves one wondering what SPECTRE's purpose really is. What do they get from the human trafficking, from the fake pharmaceuticals they apparently sell, from the elaborate surveillance network they intend to take over? It's all very unclear, and it seems as if the film can't really come up with a good reason for Spectre's existence in the "post 9/11 world", as opposed to the world of the Cold War, much in the same way that HYDRA's role in The Winter Soldier in my opinion lacked impact. Spectre seem menacing with their elaborate Rome meeting, but we don't have enough time to really see them do anything. The film tries to do far too much. Their most threatening element seems to be this bulky henchman with no neck who is apparently immune to punches, who seems to be intended as comparable to Red Grant or a similar figure but feels like an arbitrary stooge for Bond to have a difficult fight with.

"James, don't you remember how you shot my face off during The War?"

Let's turn finally to Blofeld himself. It's this which gives Spectre similar levels of pretension and delusions of grandeur equivalent to that of Skyfall. In that we saw Bond under siege in his old family home; here Blofeld is the pseudonym of Franz Oberhauser, who knew Bond as a child when his father looked after Bond for a couple of years when his parents died. Oberhauser apparently murdered his own father out of jealousy and faked his own death, before renaming himself Blofeld and establishing Spectre.

In my opinion, it's all far too personal. We learn all this "backstory", but nothing actually substantial about this new Blofeld, apart from the fact that he's clearly a patricidal psychopath. What else does he want? Why did he establish Spectre? What's he been up to for all these years? Most of all, how did he, as he claims, manipulate events behind the scenes in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall when all of those films already explained themselves? Spectre tries to establish itself as some kind of shocking resolution to the "Daniel Craig tetralogy", but does so by simply telling us that it is and expecting us to believe it. We constantly hear references to past characters: Vesper, Le Chiffre, Greene, Silva and the like, but Spectre has no way of actually establishing any of the narrative connections it claims because they don't exist, which gives Blofeld's claim to being "the author of all your pain" (Bond's, that is) no substance or profundity whatsoever. Oberhauser even states that he only started going after Bond because he got in his way, which makes the plot revelation of their shared past completely unnecessary and irrelevant; it doesn't provide either of them with motivation, and is only there to shock the audience with the largely meaningless concept that Bond and his traditional arch-enemy knew each other for a couple of years as kids. So what? The film does nothing with it, so why should we care? But we're meant to care simply because the connection exists, and in this way the film treats the audience like gasping idiots who will swallow any twist, no matter how trivial, purely because it is a twist.

Land, no.

The older films were from an age where everything didn't have to be "personal" and Hollywood action films weren't incompetently striving to involve novelistic characterisation and discourse in modes for which they were completely unsuited. Blofeld was there characterised perfectly well: as a ruthless, cynical man who toyed with the lives of the whole world simply for his own personal profit. In Spectre it's simply not clear what Blofeld wants or why he is the way he is: he describes himself as a "visionary" of sorts but we're never informed of his vision; I don't know why he particularly cares to torture Bond the way he does unless he's simply some kind of sadist. The weak "personal connection" element and the need to rush through the character wastes Christoph Waltz in an admittedly rather unimaginatively cast role, in which the character and his organisation seem to exist not for the sake of the story but so that Bond fans will recognise the names and be titillated. While I think the "personal connection" aspect was unnecessary and doesn't really work for Bond in any event, there was no need for either the Spectre organisation or Blofeld himself to have a role in the film. The character is simply not very interesting, being not as visually striking as Donald Pleasence's Blofeld, not as effective a foil for Bond as Telly Savalas', and not as amusing as Charles Gray's (my personal favourite).

Everything else is fairly bland, as I've already stated. The most visually interesting part of the film is the Day of the Dead sequence in the beginning. There's nothing else that is particularly glamorous in terms of location or activity. The script contains a few chuckles, but not much. Daniel Craig puts in a workmanlike performance as Bond, but he's not especially interesting to watch for most of the time. Bond girl Madeleine Swann is okay as this instalment's "reasonably competent female deuteragonist" but nothing too memorable. Ralph Fiennes as M mostly has to do a lot of the grouching and grumbling that I thought was subverted as the best element of Skyfall. The final capture of Blofeld by Bond simply shooting his helicopter (something which consistently fails to succeed in almost every Bond film) was a little anticlimactic.

For your cool, cool glasses only.

In terms of good parts, the pre-titles sequence in Mexico City isn't bad at all, featuring characterful location work and a frantic punch-up in a helicopter. I don't mind the song for this one, and the title sequence itself was okay, even if the octopus motif was rather laboured. I was glad that they used M more effectively towards the end. As I said before, there are a few humorous moments, including from Craig himself. Other than that I didn't find much that was particularly engaging about it.

Assuming Daniel Craig doesn't do another Bond, it's disappointing that he's essentially three for four in terms of mediocre films (although admittedly a lot of people thought Skyfall was good for whatever reason). I think the explanation for this, however, almost lies in the fact that Craig was cast for Casino Royale, which is in my opinion a good film which worked perfectly well on its own terms, and in which the chemistry of Craig and Eva Green was ideal for a striking standalone Bond film which didn't need and couldn't benefit from sequels or follow-ups. It's possible that the tenets established for Casino Royale, such as a more serious tone, arguably more realism, more emotional drama and the like, have in fact burdened the rest of the Craig era because they were invented for the sake and success of that single film and not for an entire sequence of films. In that sense it's possible that the last three films were doomed from the start.

"Well, if we destroy Kansas the world may not hear about it for years."

Daniel Craig may be departing, but the great success of Skyfall and the relatively substantial success of Spectre mean that we're probably likely to see more of this kind of thing in the future, unfortunately. It would be appealing if the Bond franchise could recapture a little of the colour, glamour and energy of days gone by but I doubt they'll bother. It's disheartening to say it, but it seems unlikely that we'll see that kind of Bond film made again. "Blofeld" may have been spared, but it's possible that Bond is, in many ways, dead.

The Dark Knight Rises

It's been six long years and Christopher Nolan's vision of Batman has finally come to an end. It all started way back in 2005 with Batman Begins, a refreshingly serious and realistic take on the Caped Crusader which was a very thorough and interesting origin story which had never before been fully explored onscreen for the character. This was of course followed with smash hit The Dark Knight, which amped up the gravitas and intellectuality of the concept to whole new levels. If I would aim any criticism at The Dark Knight, it would be that as much as I enjoy it as a film it doesn't feel like Batman. Batman Begins did a good job of blending certain more fantastic elements of the mythos like the League of Assassins (or "Shadows" in this continuity) and Ra's al Ghul, plus grotesquerie like the Scarecrow with his fear toxin into a satisfyingly gothic depiction of Gotham which nonetheless felt reasonably plausible. In The Dark Knight what we received was an excellently confronting and intense crime drama but one which felt very little like a superhero film anymore. In striving for realism and grittiness Nolan possibly began to perpetuate that issue which has always shadowed comic book superheroes since the mid-80s: an element of defensiveness about the inherently ridiculous nature of the genre, an effort to hide what is integral to the concept. You can make the Joker just a nut job in makeup and have plots about mob money and turn Two-Face into a rogue vigilante rather than a crime boss but in the end it's still a film about a billionaire who dresses in a bat costume to fight crime. There's only so realistic you can make it before it starts to feel, in my view, like it's somewhat missing the point.

Unfortunately this descent into morbidity and hyperrealism only continues in The Dark Knight Rises. Following the conclusion of the previous film, Batman has retired and Bruce Wayne has spent eight years as a recluse. The film hybridises elements of the The Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall and No Man's Land storylines into a film about Batman returning to work to fight Bane who has cut off Gotham from the outside world and placed it under mob rule. The film owes a lot, narratively, to Batman Begins more than The Dark Knight, and it's obvious that Nolan was trying to make the film feel like an effective sequel to both previous instalments simultaneously. The League of Shadows is heavily referenced, Ra's al Ghul appears in a brief cameo and Batman is returned to far-flung and exotic parts of the world but simultaneously much is made of the death of Two-Face and Commissioner Gordon's efforts to cover up his killing spree at the end of The Dark Knight. What makes this jarring is the complete absence of any mention or reference whatsoever of the Joker. It was increasingly obvious to me over the course of the film that Heath Ledger's death had thrown an even more massive spanner than was already expected in the proverbial works in terms of making an effective sequel to The Dark Knight. Nolan and co excised any account of the Joker out of respect for Heath Ledger, and while this tact is commendable it feels awkward when they reference the events of the previous film. He is, to put it simply, conspicuous by his absence.

The main villain, therefore, takes the form of Bane. I wonder if, perhaps, given Joker's absence, it was a mistake for Nolan to have eliminated Two-Face in the same film, arguably Batman's next most dangerous villain, or to have reduced Scarecrow to such a secondary antagonist. It feels like Nolan was scrabbling around for another Batman foe who could be portrayed as realistic; obviously characters like Mr. Freeze, the Penguin, Poison Ivy and Clayface were out of the question and it would be impossible to make Riddler realistic without putting him in the position in which he so often finds himself as little more than a poor man's Joker. Personally I always thought that Black Mask would have been a good choice of enemy in Nolan's Batman-verse but perhaps having a skull-themed villain so soon after Captain America wouldn't have worked anyway. Deadshot might also have had potential as a supporting foe, or perhaps Professor Hugo Strange.

Nonetheless we get Bane, and I suppose he's one of the more plausible members of Batman's rogues' gallery. However instead of a luchadore-masked Venom addict criminal mastermind, this film portrays him in a rather more bland "realistic" style as a terrorist trying to fulfil Ra's al Ghul's legacy with the assistance of a mask which provides him with constant anaesthesia, necessary after sustaining never-fully-disclosed injuries in his past. Instead of being Hispanic he speaks with a rather bizarrely exaggerated English accent and always walks around the place clutching his lapels. At first I thought it was an interesting depiction of Bane as an affably evil monster, and satisfying to see him depicted as the genius brute portrayed in the comics. However as his aims as a boring movie terrorist were increasingly established and he developed a propensity for delivering tiresome, cliché-ridden monologues I became increasingly exhausted with his presence. Some would argue that it would be impossible to have another villain as successful as Heath Ledger's Joker but I believe they made a mistake in turning Bane into a jovial English gent. It would have been more effective, in my opinion, to have had a villain which contrasted to both the humorous insanity of the Joker and the collected self-assurance of Ra's al Ghul by depicting Bane as still calculating and intelligent but furious and raging. Sadly it was not to be, and Bane becomes increasingly tedious as the film continues. Tom Hardy does as good a job as he can in the restrictive mask to portray Bane but he's let down by a weak script which leaves the character ultimately unfulfilled.

The other classic Batman character introduced in this film is Catwoman. Never referred to as such, only on a newspaper headline as "the Cat", Selina Kyle is once again a master thief and cracksperson intent on discovering a device called the Blank Slate which can erase one's existence from all records. The film maintains the typical depiction of Catwoman as a relatively neutral and self-interested character who turns to good only in duress or out of affection for Batman but in this case she's also trying to start afresh by erasing her criminal past. Shame she's got to commit crimes to stop being a criminal! Anyway if any character felt like a forced love interest for Batman in this film it was her. As the ultmate successor to Rachel it seems as if they just wanted Batman to have someone with whom to settle down. She disappears about halfway through the film and seems to have been practically forgotten about by the writers until the end. To be honest, I've never been much of a fan of Anne Hathaway in anything I've seen her in and this didn't change my mind. The film takes the predictable route of making Catwoman into a hybrid action girl-femme fatale as usual and doesn't really achieve much with the character. She changes her mind about being completely selfish and saves Batman in the end. Whoop de do. Maybe if Bat-fans hadn't seen this exact scenario last year in Batman: Arkham City it would have seemed more original, but probably not.

We get a couple more new faces as well in the shape of Marion Cotillard's Miranda Tate and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake. To be honest at this point with these two plus Michael Caine, Tom Hardy and a small role for Cillian Murphy returning as ever as the Scarecrow the film starts to feel like Batception at times. Miranda Tate serves as an initial romantic interest for Bruce Wayne in a contrived and implausible love story as well as a protector of the Wayne Enterprises financial interest due to bizarre economic factors which are over my head. Of course, spoilers beware, she turns out to be none other than Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ra's, out to complete her father's mission. John Blake, on the other hand, is a "hot head" police officer, a straight-edged "good cop" who helps out Batman and Commissioner Gordon and, as revealed by his birth name at the end of the film, serves as Nolan's extremely realistic interpretation of the character of Robin or effectively any sidekick to Batman. It is of course heavily implied at the conclusion of the film, in a revelation as predictable as possible due to an early scene where Bruce Wayne tells Blake that "anyone could be Batman" and in a later one where Batman suggests that he wear a mask, that he will become the new Batman. Indeed Batman himself spends a good deal of the film incapacitated, imprisoned or otherwise unavailable and as our supporting protagonist Blake fills the void of a hero very well, but it only serves to compound the impression that Nolan wants to make a Batman film which is as far removed from Batman as possible. You could believe, I think, that Nolan wouldn't have objected to making a film where Blake himself was the main character without any kind of comic book elements.

This leads me into the narrative of the film. It's all rather disappointingly simple; Bane is gathering a secret army of terrorists underground. When the time is ripe he blows up all the ways into and out of the city, has a scientist turn an experimental fusion reactor into a bomb and gives the citizens of Gotham a month or so of total anarchy before the bomb blows them all to Kingdom Come. This is all revealed to be part of Talia's effort to live up to her father's plan to destroy Gotham. Ultimately it feels far, far too much like nothing more than a re-hash of the plot of Batman Begins. Terrorists appalled at the decadence of Western civilisation want to destroy the city. Both of these plots end with a vehicle chase in which the relevant weapon of mass destruction must be hunted down and eliminated before time runs out. They both have a character twist where an associate of Batman is revealed to be orchestrating the entire plot. It is of course in the serialised nature of superhero comics to repeat some of their narrative conceits from time to time but this is ludicrously overt and, in this regard, seems to detract from Nolan's efforts to divorce the series from the less realistic aspects of superhero comics.

There's also a subplot where Bane injures Batman's back and leaves him in a prison in what appears to be the Middle East somewhere from which he must escape by mastering himself in some fashion. It's all awfully similar again to bits from the first half of Batman Begins. Once he's out he heads off to Gotham, there's a big battle and he apparently sacrifices his life flying the bomb out over the bay to save the innocents. Of course it turned out in reality he survived and is off living a wonderful old life with Catwoman in Europe. How lovely.

My point is that really it feels like a whole lot of nothing. The film drags on and on, going for nearly three hours, and at no point, in contrast to its title, does it really rise above its precursors and deliver something new to the plate. We are beaten over the head with neon signs advertising hard-edged psychological realism and character trauma but none of it feels especially profound or moving. Batman needs to recover value in life; that's about it. I realise that Nolan wanted to provide closure to his take on Batman and it's satisfying to at least see the property treated with that kind of literary seriousness; we don't end with alarm bells and someone shouting out that Killer Moth has just robbed the bank as Batman swoops back into action or anything. This feels conclusive and final, but it doesn't change the fact that it's long-winded, dull, and takes itself way too seriously. Batman Begins had, as I've said, elements of the fantastic and gothic, and while The Dark Knight moved perhaps a little too closely to the real the Joker's unique worldview was another important intrusion of the outlandish. The Dark Knight Rises lacks these elements in anything beyong a reprisal of what has gone before. The ticking time-bomb plot is devastatingly unimaginative and stale, Batman's inner journey takes him nowhere special and the other characters are underdeveloped and underused. The mere fact that Batman spends so long locked in a prison rather than out fighting crime as Batman, which is what we all want to see, is teeth-gnashingly frustrating. Perhaps Nolan understands this and wants me to be frustrated; perhaps in wanting to bring the normally endless world of a comic book hero to absolute closure he knew that we had to want it to end. Maybe in that regard the film is a success; it's an ending that left me not wanting any more, and I guess that's the best kind of ending.

Technically it's all very good and the direction is up to Nolan's usual high standard. The action set pieces and effects are all well done and the horrific unpleasantness of anarchy in Gotham is impossible to ignore. It is, perhaps, as good an end as could be expected while bringing the series to a realistic conclusion, but in this way it again reinforces the notion I can't shake that trying to make superheroes realistic is an interesting experiment but ultimately misses the point. There are a number of funny moments, although perhaps not enough, but the script is inconsistent overall and even in the time it takes it tries to do too much. It is, in my view, definitely the weakest instalment in an otherwise very good series, and feels too much like Batman-minus-Batman. If it taught me anything, it's that superheroes shouldn't be realistic - because they're not.