Tag: Weta

Geekscape Review: ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’

by AllieHanley
Assuming that you’ve seen the first two ‘Apes’ films, this review is SPOILER FREE for the third installment.
In a film landscape filled with remakes and sequels it’s interesting that a trilogy of films about apes somehow supersedes all of the super heroes, robot-machines and furious car films not only in special effects, but in sheer story-telling ability. This third film in the franchise from  writer director Matt Reeves (his second in the series) cements itself as easily the best of the three.

In this outing Caesar and his growing family have made lives for themselves in the forest. The renegade gorilla Kubo, from the second film who wanted to destroy humanity, is long gone. All is well until humans bring war to the group of apes who just want to survive and prosper in peace. Caesar walks a deadly line where he will either become like Kubo to save his family or face extinction. That moral dilemma of either becoming like your enemy or transcending to a higher place is part of what makes “Apes” tick.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” isn’t a perfect film but the flaws are few and in between. “Apes” once again stars the very impressive Andy Serkis as Caesar and a bunch of green dots that enable him to appear as an erect walking and talking chimpanzee. Weta Digital who helped develop the special effects has truly outdone themselves. Of course people generally don’t go to a film just to see the special effects but this film could make a case for exactly that. Skillfully, it doesn’t have too because the film delivers on much more than just how realistic the actors look as apes.

 The story takes place fifteen years after the second, and while apes can communicate using sign language, only a few have the ability to vocalize due to the mutation that took place in the first film. Because of this plot point, an actor’s ability to be able to emote through layers of prosthetics in previous films was challenging; And while the green screen and CGI motion capture was really good, it was still obvious. The textures just weren’t there and the characters sometimes looked like animation. With the advent of even better technology though, this barrier that prevents actors coming across as real and genuine has been broken. The blur between an actor playing an ape has transcended to one that looks totally believable. While this is not the end all, be all why this film succeeds it does add a lot to the over all experience and quality of the story and film.

Adding to the film’s positive landscape is another bold and dynamic soundtrack from Michael Giachina (Rogue One, Doctor Strange) who is innately aware that a large portion of the actors are using sign language to communicate. His music takes great care to evoke emotions alongside actors who don’t get to vocalize a lot of audible language. Giachina even includes a few riffs of the original “Planet of the Apes” theme if you listen for it.

Reeves and his crew do an excellent job of creating an atmosphere of oppressiveness where the apes live in a world of rainy, cloudy environments. The color palettes are dreary and are expertly designed around characters who won’t be vocalizing. The environment and staging of the scenes go a long ways in helping to tell this story and it’s an easy bet that some nominations will be coming down later this year for the design work done on this film (besides the technical aspects which will be easily nominated as well).

There’s always going to be praise for Andy Serkis because he’s just so damn good. I almost don’t want to write about it because everyone will report on just how great he is when it comes to these kinds of roles but honestly its all true and deservedly so. It’d be nice if the Academy Awards recognized his work this year outside of something technical, and just gave him a Best Actor Nomination already, and not one he has to share with the entire cast. Outside of the challenges of performing with all the head gear and green dots, etc required by the role, Serkis has this physical ability to evoke so much with just a look in his eyes. Without Serkis, “Apes” wouldn’t be where it is today, hands down. There are plenty of big films out there with humongous stars leading the way with bigger than life talent, but many of them are interchangeable. This is so not the case when it comes to the esthetic that Serkis brings to Caesar.

 

The film is not perfect. Colonel, played by Woody Harrelson, is given the task of militarily leading a group of humans against Apes. It’s not Harrelson giving a lousy performance, he’s great, it’s just that the character is too overtly contrived. Yes, you need motivation for why a character will do what they do (vague to maintain spoiler free), however his underlying need for revenge is just the same old expectation you see in every film the revolves around revenge. Since Caesar is also walking that line it would have been nice to have just a bit less of you killed so and so, so now I must kill you. With that said, the plot twist near the end made up for it, and I absolutely loved the way the story ended up fitting into the original 1968 “Planet of the Apes” narrative from writers including Mark Bomback.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” stands on it’s own, stands as part of a worthy trilogy, and stands inside of the Apes mythos while never feeling like it’s stretching to do that.

All three films combined can go up against any re-imagined and or rebooted franchise films in the past twenty years and be cited as the best. That’s something to be said but when you really get down to comparing it to franchise films that rely heavily on action and go weak on character development and or story, “Apes” never forgets character development. Explosions, dramatic deaths, visceral fight scenes mean nothing if you don’t care about the characters. Reeves keeps that tightly in focus as he weaves a tale about survival of the fittest. As spectacular as the special effects are in this film, they wouldn’t mean anything if the actors didn’t have a meaningful story to perform. “War for the Planet of the Apes” is easily the best of the three in an already stellar franchise.

Final Verdict: 4 out of 5

Rating:
PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, thematic elements, and some disturbing images)

 

  • Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama
  • Directed By: Matt Reeves
  • Written By: Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves
  • In Theaters: Jul 14, 2017 wide
  • Studio: 20th Century Fox

 

Lord Of The Rings: The Worst Movies Ever Made Ever

by Joe Starr

This past Thanksgiving, to prepare for the upcoming release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I picked up the Lord of the Rings: Extended Editions blu ray set. I really loved the Lord of the Rings films and was excited to revisit them in on their glory!

I can’t explain to you what happened, because these movies are awful. They’re terrible. I can’t outright prove that these three movies caused all of the cancer in the three years they were released, but it can’t NOT be proved, either. Here’s a bunch of reasons why Peter Jackson ruined everything and also probably caused Superstorm Sandy!

Disagree? I’m @joestarr187. Let’s yell at each other! But also, you’re wrong and I’m a writer on the internet!

Crappy slo-mo shots!

I’m sure slo-mo shots looked fantastic in PJ’s wannabe Sam Raimi zombie films, but there’s really no place for them in a billion dollar epic franchise based on the king of all fantasy books. But there are a thousand of them anyway: In Fellowship, almost every shot of Orcs doing stuff in Saruman’s forges looked like Ash would be swinging in yelling ‘GROOVY’ while chainsaw arming people to death. I’m amazed no one got raped by a tree.

Maybe if Peter Jackson hadn’t been so worried about his beard looking nice against his piles of money he would have spared us all the B movie overkill cheese, because by the time Haldir slo-mo died I almost fast-mo died.

Justifications, please!

In Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, we’re just told things, and never really told why. It’s something that is in the book, so it needs to get marked off of the checklist. If you haven’t read the books, the vague justifications seem like lazy and nonsensical writing. Of course, lazy writing is to be expected from Peter Hackson.

In Fellowship, Elrond tells us that ‘the time of the elves is over’ and that they’re ‘leaving these shores.’

Ok.

Erm… Why? And if they’re leaving, why do they keep sticking around to do things? It makes no sense.

Why not just have Elrond remind Gandalf that the elves have been defending Middle Earth for centuries and are being ordered to evacuate. It’s more or less faithful to the books, as the elves had been encouraging everyone to get on the ships and get the hell out for ages and it’s a better reason than ‘they just are.’

And why does Gimli want to go to Moira? That place is clearly terrible and it seems like he’s the only guy that doesn’t know it. It’s like that one buddy who hasn’t been to a Pizza Hut since 1995 and always wants to go to Pizza Hut and doesn’t know that they fell into shadow sometime in 2001. Is Gimli an idiot? He keeps talking about going to Moira and Gandalf just rolls his eyes with intense fear at the idea and Saruman the Narrator tells us it’s full of crazy looking demons but Gimli keeps right on rambling about his cousin Balin and dwarf buffets.

Just let Gandalf explain why he doesn’t want to go: no one’s heard from Balin’s colony and they might be dead and you need to deal with that and Gimli can ach and laddie and bad date and I’d rather watch that scene than Cahadras, the most worthless ten minutes of any film ever made (and I’m including every youtube video ever uploaded).

Who are all those men fighting for Sauron? We’re never told. They’re just wicked, which with the robes and the elephants  just ends up being uncomfortable code for ‘brown people.’

No more original songs!

There are a million songs in Lord of the Rings. If you cut all of the songs out of Lord of the Rings books, they’re shorter than The Hunger Games.

So why Fellowship ended with a song written by Enya is a mystery so unsolvable that Robert Stack should be telling you about it.

Explain why LOTR is terrible? I can’t deal with that right now! #Transformersjoke

You really have to have Enya? Fine. Just have her open to a random page of the book and plink out some Pure Moods with a rain stick and some synthesized chimes. Just use the lyrics that are already there.

Tolkien is a better writer than you!

Thanks to Eater Jackson, Lord of the Rings is not a good example of an adaption that improves the movie. His version of Aragorn and Arwen’s story is a great example.

Aragorn is ‘one of them Rangers’ and he loves Arwen and he is supposed to be the king. What’s a Ranger? Why isn’t he King? Why hasn’t he just gone ahead and married Arwen?

Apparently in the book these explanations are super complicated, so they had to be changed. So Pete, why isn’t he the king? Well, he’s full of fear and self doubt! The most muddled and lame justification in movie history! Yay!

The problem with Aragorn being full of doubt and weakness is that throughout the next 3 days worth of movie, nothing Aragorn does remotely suggest that he’s afraid, weak, or unsure of himself. He is a total bad ass that sets the Witch King on fire at Weathertop. Gandalf couldn’t even do that, and he’s Magneto. And that guy in Da Vinci Code. Remember when that was a thing that mattered?

The explanations in the book? NOT COMPLICATED. Elrond won’t let him marry Arwen until he’s defeated Sauron and claimed the throne of Gondor. He’s a classic movie dad making the guy that loves his daughter prove himself.

One does not simply walk into Diane Court.

Oh and Sauron destroyed Arnor, his homeland. This gives Aragorn real stakes. How cool would him trusting Frodo to go to Mordor alone with his love life and revenge at stake have been? A lot better than ‘I swore to protect you! Remember earlier when we said you’d have all our weapons?’

The adaptation also tried to make Arwen a cool bad ass chick. They started out well enough with her showing up in the woods to save Frodo, but her storyline quickly devolves into a bunch of terrible nonsense about her leaving Rivendell but coming back six times and then almost dying for some reason and who cares. She’s a Bella Swan that sits and cries and then gets married.

Let the book do the work for you. In the book, Aragorn rides around being awesome with a group of rangers and Elrond’s sons. Later, Elrond’s sons deliver all of Aragorn’s king gear to him in Rohan. Just make the brothers Arwen!

Toss a scene after the Council in Rivendell of Aragorn and Gandalf ordering the Rangers, led by a likeable Phil Coulson character, to spread out and take warnings about Sauron throughout Middle Earth. Arwen tries to go and Elrond won’t let her because parents just don’t understand. And then instead of a random group of elves showing up at Helm’s Deep, Phil Coulson can show up with Rangers and we’ll like him even more.

With Arwen ACTIVELY refusing to give up on Middle Earth instead of just dreamily saying she won’t, Elrond eventually realizes that his daughter is awesome and deserves some support, and has the sword reforged and gives it to her to take to Aragorn herself. This also givens Arwen and Elrond a logical, satisfying story arc instead of collection of random shots of them lounging in an Instagram filter.

Which brings us to the worst part of Jackson’s adaptation: the Paths of the Dead. AKA, Aragorn shows up with a ghost army and saves the day, making the sacrifice of everyone that died defending Gondor completely pointless because there are no stakes when an unbeatable ghost army gets involved. It’s why I hated The King’s Speech.

Arwen shows up with the sword in Rohan with some rangers. She says ‘hey, me and Phil Coulson gathered all the Ranger companies and the militias on the coast because remember you told us to do that in the first movie but there’s a Corsair fleet penning them in. Here’s your sword. Here’s the banner of the King. Let’s get these ghosts to get our army free.’ That’s more or less what happens in the book.

How cool of a moment could we have had in the movie if the black fleet had shown up at Gondor, and then flown the banner of the King? And then Aragorn and a shitload of Rangers and his hot wife and a dwarf and Orlando Bloom charge out of the boats, inspiring everyone to fight harder and get excited about The Return of the King? Because in the movie I’m not sure anyone knew he was back until they put a crown on his head.

Instead we followed up that fantastic charge of Rohan with a big ghost fart. It was like dumping a Jar Jar scene into the middle of Empire. “I love you.” “I know.” “MEESA LOVES AN APPLE! OHHHBIDAISIES, ANI!”

Less Oscar Moments, Please.

Peter Jackson has two settings: Frodo and Sam Are Crying and Frodo Is Dying While Sam Cries. He’s about as subtle as an episode of ‘The New Normal.’ Do Hobbits breathe with tears? These fuckers cry and hug for two entire movies. Sam’s ‘I can carry you!’ moment is supposed to be the beautiful, emotional heroic moment of the film, but at that point we just want these assholes to quit crying and get up the damn mountain.

Take out 94% of the shots of Frodo and Sam gacking up eye butter and you’ve got an extra hour for Rangers and Paths of the Dead and probably some Tom Bombadil because people seemed really pissed off he was cut.

There you have it. You now know that Lord of the Rings was crappy and now your life has completely changed from reading this article.

Is there hope for The Hobbit?

I’d like to stroll into the theatre without a care in the world, ready to enjoy Martin Freeman take his rightful place as one of the world’s biggest movie stars. But more than likely, I’ll be hoping the eagles save me 20 minutes into the movie.

At least people will finally get what the hell those eagles were all about.

 

Brand New ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ Trailer Shows Lots of Story!

by Jonathan

For those who’ve never read J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’, this trailer will really help set up the story of the upcoming film, the first in the trilogy from Peter Jackson and company. It’s a really strong trailer too, showing us a solid mix of story, baddies and humor. And as funny as it is, you get to see a bit more to Gandalf’s character than we even got in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films. An Unexpected Journey releases on December 14 (only a few months!), followed by The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug on Dec. 13, 2013 and The Hobbit: There And Back Again on July 18, 2014. None of those dates are soon enough.

It’s Official! We’re Getting a Third ‘Hobbit’ Movie!

by Jonathan

A few days ago, I posted this piece on rumors that Peter Jackson and Warner Bros. were talking about the possibility of splitting Jackson’s 2-part ‘Hobbit’ movie into 3 films. At the time, I wrote that it’s a good idea. I still feel that way.

And the universe (or at least Peter Jackson and Warner Bro.) agrees with me, as today Deadline is reporting that it’s a done deal and that the 2-part ‘Hobbit’ will now be split into 3 films, the last to be released Summer 2014.

I’m all for it, and I’ll add even more reason. Jackson is using 125 pages of Tolkien’s notes about the planned re-writing of ‘The Hobbit’ that Tolkien intended to undergo in the hopes of making it work better alongside the ‘LOTR’ books. I know that a few of you are bemoaning that “it’s a children’s book!” or “aaagh! Return of the King had 15 million endings”… but I argue this:

The Powers That Be (in this case Warner Bros.) are going to make products based on this material whether we like it or not. If not ‘The Hobbit’ film than a ‘Hobbit’ videogame or comics or whatever (they’re still going to do that anyways). They’re going to push their rights as much as they can into the ancillary material and turn that into product (as they might be doing with the ‘Hobbit’ trilogy already in bringing in elements that were part of Tolkien’s  bigger picture but just weren’t in the original book’s pages).

Here’s what Jackson posted in his announcement today on Facebook:

“We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth.”

Jackson continued:

“So, without further ado and on behalf of New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wingnut Films, and the entire cast and crew of “The Hobbit” films, I’d like to announce that two films will become three.”

I’m of the opinion that this all happens under Peter Jackson’s guidance rather than the unknown ‘whoever comes next’. Really, make a list of filmmakers who could accomplish this task nearly as well as Peter Jackson and as loyally and appropriately? Sam Raimi? Guillermo Del Toro? I think I just exhausted your list. Now, do either of these guys have WETA at their disposal without Jackson’s involvement?

No. The Tolkien properties are going to be brought to the screen. At least Jackson insures that they’re done right. And give me 15 million endings (because I don’t really want this stuff to end).

Chances Are Getting Better That We’ll Get A Trilogy Of “The Hobbit” Films!

by Jonathan

According to this story at The Hollywood Reporter, tipped off to me by Ian Kerner, it appears that Peter Jackson is involved in deep discussions with Warner Brothers about expanding his two part adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” into a film trilogy.

Jackson teased the idea at Comic-Con on July 14, telling fans that he wants to shoot more footage. But since then, sources say that studio Warner Bros., Jackson, producer Fran Walsh and writer-producer Philippa Boyens began exploring the logistics of what it would take to make another movie. Those talks are said to have accelerated in recent days, with the studio on board if the right financial arrangements can be achieved. That includes securing new actor deals for the expansive cast as well as shoring up certain rights associated with the property (The Hobbit has a long a tortured rights history.)

While I was weary at first about stretching two films into three, it seems from the above blurb like the expansion would require additional shooting to smooth things out and in order adapt a hundred pages of material that JRR Tolkien had originally planned on using to rewrite/update ‘The Hobbit’ after his completion of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ books. Tolkien obviously never got the chance but his notes were included in a recent edition of his books and give us a fascinating look at a legendary storyteller.

The Hobbit is my favorite book on earth. I remember my father giving it to me shortly after my parent’s got divorced. A few days later, I left with my mom and brothers on a trip to Guadalajara to visit family and sat in the backseat reading the book once on the way down and again on the way back. I would look out the windows and imagine I was going on the same journey alongside Bilbo, Gandalf and his band of dwarven adventurers. As a 10 year old kid readjusting my view and place in the world, I needed that book. I don’t think I’ve ever needed a book like I needed that book then. It opened the door to fantasy and sci-fi and the later existence of this site, etc.

I trust that Peter Jackson knows what he’s doing. Since the night that I saw ‘Meet the Feebles’ and ‘Brain Dead’ at the Dobie theater in Austin, he’s been a filmmaker that I’ve trusted to deliver a fully engrossing experience. Three Peter Jackson ‘Hobbit’ films are better than two… and the inclusion of JRR Tolkien’s own notes on the updating of ‘The Hobbit’ from children’s book to something on par with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ both tonally and structurally, while putting it in the greater context of Middle Earth, is something I’m looking forward to seeing. He is using Tolkien as his guide, not just making things up to sell a third movie for profit. Jackson is making something that can fit appropriately alongside his ‘Rings’ trilogy and not feel like an addendum.

We’ll see what happens, but this is promising news for fans of the books and Peter Jackson.