Tag Archives: Gareth Edwards

More Teeth

Jurassic World: Rebirth

by Hope Madden

Every great creature feature from King Kong to Godzilla to Jaws to Jurassic Park and on and on understands one basic principle. The monster is not the problem. Human greed is the problem. Some monster movies are just better than others at telling that story.

It’s not a new notion to director Gareth Edwards, who riffed on it in Monsters (2010), Godzilla (2014), and The Creator (2023). For Jurassic World: Rebirth, he teams with writer David Koepp, who adapted Michael Crichton’s novel for Spielberg’s 1993 original. Given the sheer volume of callbacks in Rebirth, I’d say Koepp is pretty pleased with how that first one turned out.

Scarlett Johansson is an extraction specialist hired by Big Pharma in white linen, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to gather DNA samples from three living dinosaurs: the biggest on the sea, land, and air. Mahershala Ali is the ship’s captain who’ll get crew and scientist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to the island no one is allowed to visit, they’ll gather some samples and get home. Zip in, zip out.

But wait! Naked alpha zombies!

Just kidding. But seriously, why can’t someone write a proper film for Mahershala Ali and Scarlett Johanssen? Because these are talented individuals (hell, one of them has two Oscars), and they are better than this retread.

To be fair, Edwards crafts some eyepopping set pieces early in the film as two different boats—Ali’s, and that of the cloying B-story family—run afoul of the swimming beasties. These action sequences set you up for thrills, but once both A and B story hit dry land, Gareth is more interested in recycled ideas and images, not just from this franchise but from the Alien series as well. Just get a look at the monster they kept hidden away on that island. I think I know what they were cross breeding that with.

The B-story about a shipwrecked family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda) is cliché straight from the family friendly action movie playbook, complete with a comically adorable (and tonally discordant) baby dinosaur stowing away in the littlest daughter’s backpack.

The presence of the family softens the best members of the elite team and amplifies the villainy in the worst. Of course it does because Jurassic World: Rebirth is nothing if not obvious. It obviously knows the story it’s supposed to tell, it just doesn’t tell it especially well.

That’s No Moon…

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

It is a Star Wars story, no doubt about that.

Familiar crafts and creatures are scattered about, buoyed with a stream of cameos that begin as clever and escalate to downright ovation-wothy. And, at the film’s core is a story of wayward fathers, longing children, and the paradox of “confusing peace with terror.”

Why this sudden pearl-clutching over the politics of the Star Wars universe? There’s been a “final solution” tilt since the outset (they are called stormtroopers, after all), and Rogue One takes us back to when the Empire’s prized Death Star had yet to be completed.

As an act of conscience, Empire scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelson) designed the Death Star with that fatal flaw that is exposed when viewing the original blueprints. It’s up to Galen’s daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones) and her band of rebel fighters to capture that file and ensure daddy’s flaw is exploited.

Sure, we know how it all turns out, but connecting those dots becomes a thrilling, thoughtful bit of fun.

Jones makes a fine hero: brave, righteous and naive – or, perfect for this series.

She and Mikkelson join a full slate of very talented character actors – from the genius Ben Mendelsohn to the under-appreciated Diego Luna to the up-and-coming Riz Ahmed. They’re part of an adventure that butts up against the New Hope, bridging tales swirling around that far away galaxy.

Like JJ Abrams’s The Force Awakens, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story peppers the action with welcome humor and continually reminds viewers of the film’s place – chronological and geographical – in the saga.

One or two of the tricks up director Gareth Edwards’s (Monsters, Godzilla) sleeve come up short, but the majority land with style. With his team of writers and a game cast, he takes us back to the height of the Empire’s smug attitude – their belief in their right to silence those who oppose them and dictate to a voiceless population with impunity.

It’s a clever, thoughtful slice of entertainment entirely apiece of the Star Wars history. It’s also a reminder that there is always hope.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 





Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!

Godzilla

by Hope Madden

Movies love to depict our fear of science, a trend that dates back to Edison’s 1910 rendition of Frankenstein. But the real frenzy came with the onset of the atomic age.

Among the countless “creature features” spawned by our global fear of the destruction science had wrought, Godzilla reigned supreme. Ishiro Honda’s Hiroshima analogy simultaneously entertained and terrified as it tapped our horrified fascination with the destruction, once unthinkable, that was suddenly an ever-present danger.

Back in 2010, visual effects maestro Gareth Edwards tread similar ground of societal guilt, dread and terror with his underseen alien flick Monsters. More than anything, though, that film clarified his aptitude for creature action, a talent that serves him well for his Godzilla reboot.

He’s assembled a phenomenal cast for the monster mash up, though I’m not sure why. Award-winning actors Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche and Aaron Taylor-Johnson appear onscreen (and do little else) as we wait for the epic battle between Godzilla and two new creatures with a taste for radiation.

Taylor-Johnson is a military bomb defusing expert who leaves his wife (Olsen) and their son behind in San Francisco to fly to Japan to bail his crazy scientist/grieving widower father (Cranston) out of jail. He’d been caught trespassing on a site quarantined for 14 years – ever since the nuclear reactor disaster that killed his wife.

Well, there’s more to that story than meets the eye.

The talent-laden cast doesn’t get the opportunity to flesh out their characters, so there’s little human drama to cling to as chaos approaches. Perhaps even more damaging, Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham’s screenplay fails to truly lay blame for this behemoth blood match on mankind.

Flaws aside, Godzilla delivers the creature feature goods. Few summer blockbusters contain such gloriously realized action sequences, gorgeously framed images of disarray, or thrillingly articulated beasts.

Edwards never hides his inspiration (the lead’s name is Brody, for God’s sake).  While he draws from Jaws, Aliens, Close Encounters, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and any number of previous Godzilla efforts, the amalgam is purely his own.

This is an easy franchise to take in the wrong direction. Who remembers Godzuki? But Edwards brings a competent hand and reverent tone to breathe new life into the old dinosaur.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars