Scifi Film Winners and Losers of Summer 2011

John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.With the kids returning to school, Labor Day approaching and the weather ever-so-slightly beginning to turn fall-like, we have come to the traditional end of the summer cinema season. So now is a fine time to look back and see who some of the winners and losers were in science fiction and fantasy films this summer.

WINNERS:

Paramount Pictures: Four of the top ten films of the summer (and of the year so far) are this studio's, and three are science fiction or fantasy: Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. That's a pretty nice summer no matter how you slice it, even if Transformers is shared with DreamWorks.

Harry Potter: This decade-old series stuck the dismount, delivering the most exciting and most mature installment at its close and reigniting Pottermania to the tune of $370 million at home and another $900 million elsewhere. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 is the one that finally gets the series a Best Picture nod; Hollywood respects several billion dollars worth of success.

Michael Bay: Credit where credit is due -- after the fetid awfulness that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, there was every chance that director Bay had a damaged franchise on his hands. But then the man did the smart thing: He owned up to the mess of his previous film and took steps to make sure his next Transformers film was better (at least within the context of the series). It worked: Dark of the Moon kept the franchise a hit at home and made it a bigger hit internationally, becoming the first film of the series to gross a billion dollars worldwide.

Apes: No one expected Rise of the Planet of the Apes to do close to $150 million in domestic box office to date. It's a long-tardy prequel to a series whose most recent (and underwhelming) installment hit a decade ago. So how to explain the success? First: It was a more than decent film, with a good script, good acting, and decent direction. Second: It got lucky in being a standout in an otherwise sleepy late summer. Third: a fantastic performance by Andy Serkis as main chimp Caesar. I've already praised that performance, but mentioning it two times doesn't hurt.

LOSERS:

Cowboys & Aliens: So, how do Indiana Jones, James Bond, and the guy who directed Iron Man fail to open a film? The answer in hindsight appears to be in the question: Harrison Ford wasn't playing Indy, Daniel Craig wasn't playing Bond, and Jon Favreau wasn't directing Iron Man, and Cowboys & Aliens as of this writing still hasn't crossed the $100 million mark at home. It's not a fatal blow for the above -- Craig in particular gets a second shot at the brass ring this year with the upcoming Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film -- but it sure as hell wasn't good for anyone. Plus it nearly got its butt kicked by The Smurfs, which is a real testosterone reducer.

DC Comics: Marvel has done a fine job of transferring its superheroes to the silver screen, but outside of Batman, DC's had a hard time of it. That fact was reinforced this summer by the underwhelming performance of Green Lantern, which worldwide has barely recouped its $200 million production cost. The good news for Warner Bros (which owns DC) is that Batman's coming to the rescue in 2012, and then Superman will be back in town the year after that, courtesy of director Zack Snyder. But the DC superhero bench is a lot deeper, and if the studio can't convert, in the long run they'll end up leaving a lot of box office on the table.

Superhero Films: Wait, what? I hear you say. And yes, Thor and Captain America did fine this year, and the latest X-Men film clicked along to just short of $150 million domestically. But none of them got close to the $200 million domestic box office benchmark, which is realistically where these films, with their budgets and hype, should be getting in order to justify their existence. This subgenre seems to be cooling, which is not necessarily what the studios want to hear, with both the next Batman and the first Avengers films taking flight in 2012.
Pixar: Cars 2 is Pixar's first sub-$200-million-grossing film in 13 years, and likely the first of its films where the majority of reviews were not rapturous. It's also the first Pixar film where you get the feeling that the reason for its existence really is to sell more toys, the Cars line being a merchandising bonanza for Disney. This is mitigated somewhat by the knowledge that the Cars films are the special pets of Pixar head John Lasseter, so it's not all about the merchandising. That said, Pixar holds a place in people's hearts and heads because they don't just crank out barely-sufficient films. Here's hoping Cars 2 is an aberration, not a harbinger.

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Final Destination 5 (2011)

Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.What does it say about a horror movie -- especially the fifth in a long considered DOA franchise -- that you simply want the storyline to stop and the inventive deaths to occur? Let's face it -- the Final Destination films have long since stopped being interesting as expressions of dread. Instead, it's the creative kills that keep us locked in. This time around, the splatter is just as spiffy, but missing is a sense of urgency, as if the series has actually caught up with the fanbase and realizes no one care about the characters. Still, first time director Steven Quale wants to get all touchy-feely with the targeted individuals and their emotional motives. All we end up caring about is the blood.

After they survive a horrific bridge collapse, the so-called "Lucky Eight" of a local corporate manufacturing interest become convinced that Death itself is out to take back what it has been cheated out of. For wannabe chef Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto), his on-again, off again girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell), co-workers Peter (Miles Fisher), Candice (Ellen Wroe), Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), Isaac (P.J. Byrne), and Nathan (Arlen Escarpeta), as well as their boss Dennis (David Koechner), it appears they are destined to die, one by one. According to a mysterious coroner named Bludworth (Tony Todd), the only way they can escape their fate is to take the life of another. As they begin to perish in more and more peculiar ways, a Federal Agent (Courtney B. Vance) tries to establish some kind of pattern. Of course, when dealing with something as diabolical as the Grim Reaper, all bets are off.

Lacking the spark and spunk of previous installments, Final Destination 5 -- supplanting the supposed finale from two years ago tagged The Final Destination -- is a so-so pseudo slasher. Taking the slice and dice dynamic and modifying it via a supernatural stalker, the results are basically the same as when Jason Voorhees gets a wild hair up his hockey mask. Each film starts with a set-piece (airplane crash, traffic accident, amusement park tragedy, NASCAR pile-up) and the near flawless treatment of the suspension bridge collapse prepares us for something special. But then the script, by Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, the upcoming Thing prequel), keeps trying to get us to care, to worry if Sam and Molly will get back together or if Peter will ever get over the death of his beloved...and nothing hinders suspense more than meaningless melodrama.

Luckily, the killings here are top notch. They do the typical Destination thing -- making us believe one item will do the deadly deed (a random screw, an eye surgeon's laser) before changing up and going all Rube Goldberg on our expectations. Brains fly. Guts explode. Heads are crushed, and torsos are eviscerated. By the time we get to the twist ending (and it's a good one), we've once again experienced a madman's imagination's worth of wounds. Quale's lack of experience can't undermine the fun,. Even the unnecessary 3D fails to put a damper on our brazen cinematic bloodlust.

Since it delivers what we expect in the manner in which we expect it, Final Destination 5 succeeds. It's no classic, and one can easily see the studio continuing to milk this material as long as there are screenwriters capable of concocting crazier and crazier deaths. A word to the wise -- next time, nix all the unnecessary character development and personal backstory.  We fans just want to see gore...and when we get it, the flaws in Final Destination 5 are all but forgotten.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.Ever since Charlton Heston crumbled in the rising surf, realizing that the alien world overrun by intelligent primates on which he had been marooned was actually Earth thousands of years in the future, Hollywood has tried to trump the original Planet of the Apes. From several early sequels (Beneath, Escape, Conquest, Battle) to a TV series and a misguided 2001 reboot (which director Tim Burton still wishes he could forget), the lure of evolution spiraling out of control has just been too great to avoid. Now, Fox is once again offering a complete overhaul of the franchise, giving us a brand new explanation for the end of humanity and the rise of the chimp. Luckily, it's a late Summer season surprise, a throwback to the days when science fiction could have heart...and a little horror...as part of its often solemn designs.

Will Rodman (James Franco) is an earnest young scientist working on a cure for Alzheimer's Disease. While his company and his boss (David Oyelowo) only see dollar signs, the concerned researcher has a more personal reason for his studies -- his father (John Lithgow) is in the final stages of the disease and Will just can't stand to see him fading away. Unfortunately, most of Will's work is on hold after an "incident" leaves officials less than enthusiastic about further funding. In the aftermath, Will takes a small ape child into his home, hoping to save its life. As the newly dubbed Caesar (Andy Serkis, via motion capture) grows, he shows signs of remarkable intelligence. Later, it's determined that the drug works, and that more animal subjects should be tested. However, when Caesar ends up in a cruel compound filled with others of his kind, he decides that the real enemy is man...and that man has to be destroyed.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an excellent post-modern meditation on animal rights and human complicity in the continuing fulfillment/failure of same. It's a smooth and slick entertainment, loaded with emotional heartbreak and angering abuse. It sets ups its heroes and villains in strange, restricted strokes and then paints in the subtleties once our simian protagonist prepares for revenge. Make no mistake about it, this is a film founded on payback. Caesar is treated like a nominal entity, fine when he's funny and friendly, relegated to a gulag-like "sanctuary" when his behavior becomes more instinctual and uncontrollable. There is a nice dichotomy between what Franco's Will knows about his ape and what the rest of his neighbors see. Their over-reactionary dread helps fuel the animal's shocking stand at the end.

This is a movie that flows effortlessly from idea to idea; it takes nice natural narrative leaps and hopes the audience will go along for the ride. This is not some goofy or gratuitous attempt to cash in on the series name -- someone clearly sat down and took a serious look at how to recreate the classic scenario (fall of Man, rise of Ape) as well as how to make it resonate with a cynical contemporary crowd. All praise to newcomer Rupert Wyatt, whose direction and sense of spectacle are rooted in ideas, not eye candy. The action scenes, when they come, are genuinely exciting and the pathos is clever and well-earned. Even better, it all makes sense. Rise avoids the "Monkey Lincoln" illogic of the 2001 version to, instead, play everything straightforward and sound.

Of course, the excellent CG ape work mostly out-acts its human counterparts and there are a few moments, here and there, where the movie misses opportunities and mishandles important moments. Still, when you consider what it could have become and what it ends up being, Rise of the Planet of the Apes triumphs. It is an excellent example of restrained speculation, something there is very little of in today's slam bang spectacle driven sci-fi.    

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30 Minutes or Less

Winner of several imaginary literary and filmmaking awards.30 Minutes or Less could've been titled Paycheck, since that seems to be the only motivating factor for anyone involved in the movie -- from above-the-title stars to below-the-line crew members -- to actually participate in its creation. Popular, talented, well-known actors run around with as much energy as they can possibly feign, being directed by a talented filmmaker who apparently realized too late that this was the wrong project to take on as a follow-up to his dynamo first feature, and the result feels as phoned-in as an order to the local pizza shack.

Nearly every element feels forced and incongruous in the film, from the screenplay -- which wants desperately to mimic the gleeful chaos of a Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg script like Pineapple Express or The Green Hornet -- to the directing of actors, which must've consisted of director Ruben Fleischer telling his cast, "Go watch any Judd Apatow movie and then act like that." Unfortunately, imitating successful comedy filmmakers does not make a movie funny, or interesting, or even morbidly curious as a failure. This one sits dead on the screen, stringing stale and offensive one-liners through a series of leaden action sequences and telling a story so uninspired, incoherent, and insignificant it barely registers as a potential entertainment.

So how, exactly, did the project attract all this talent? Jesse Eisenberg, fresh off his brilliant Oscar-nominated performance in The Social Network, plays the hero, while the typically hilarious and in-demand Danny McBride plays the villain, with en vogue offbeat comedians Aziz Ansari (Observe and Report) and Nick Swardson (Just Go With It) as their respective sidekicks. Insert Fleischer as director, on the heels of gaining serious cinematic capital after the guns-blazing awesomeness of Zombieland, and one would hope for the summer's smartest, coolest, most anachronistic comedy. But the actors appear less interested with every subsequent line reading, never coming into sync with the quirky charisma that made them stars. And Fleischer, who deftly created his own zeitgeist-y world in his first film, now appears lost in a tonal haze, unable to ignite a single moment of charm, let alone recapture the magic of Zombieland.

The "story" is tissue paper-thin and yet is somehow overly-complicated, with Eisenberg's pizza delivery boy drawn into a bank-robbing scheme by idiot slackers McBride and Swardson. They strap a bomb to the kid's chest (these idiots can build a bomb?) and give him 10 hours (so...maybe call it 10 Hours or Less?) to bring them $100,000 from the local bank, which they will give to a stripper, who will get her hitman boyfriend to kill McBride's rich father (poor Fred Ward) so the slackers can claim the inheritance and use it to open a tanning salon with a backdoor prostitution ring. Comedy gold, right?

A plot this stupid should at least understand its vapidity and take an attitude toward it, but 30 Minutes or Less operates under the apparent assumption that its story is engaging, or that it at least makes sense within a screw-loose comedic context. It doesn't. The movie is a tonal disaster, blending smart-aleck comedy with hard-boiled crime and vague satire with insipid earnestness, all peppered with language and scenarios so ugly and cruel that the only emotion that arises out of 80 minutes of near-constant boredom is uneasy disgust. Raunchy comedy works when it is humane. 30 Minutes or Less seems to use inhumanity as a plot mechanism, and it's not even slick enough hide its disdain under a sheen of professionalism. The actors are bored, the director is lost, the writing is hateful, and the audience will be non-existent.

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