“I asked Michael, ‘wouldn’t it be easier for NASA to train astronauts how to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?’ and he told me to shut the f*** up.” – Ben Affleck, Armageddon DVD commentary

And then he made Argo.

Oh, Mister Bay. How you vex me.

These movies are famous. Infamous, really. They made zillions of dollars and absorbed just as many critical potshots, becoming practically synonymous with dumb, loud, action blockbuster filmmaking. Outside of the Star Wars prequels it’s hard to think of any film and/or franchise that’s as easy a target as Michael Bay’s Transformers.

Pretty much everyone “knows” how stupid they are, but I posit that we really do not appreciate it. The general line on them is “Yeah, they’re stupid, but at least they’re entertaining” or perhaps less generously, “they’re just a bunch of nonstop action with no real plot.” But that’s not true; in fact, either of those would be a step up from what the Transformers franchise is. The Transformers franchise is nonstop boring punctuated by occasional bits of More Boring.

Fun, stupid action would be nice. It would provide a break from the dozens of superfluous human characters, the needlessly complicated plots, the pathetically bad attempts at humor, and the shockingly overt racism. A break, in other words, from the tedium. Even the people who are inclined to like porn movies wouldn’t like them if all the sex was cut out*, and that’s basically what the Transformers movies are: big dumb action movies without the action. There is some action, to be sure, but it’s often fleeting or poorly constructed or both.

[*I guess these would be poorly-lit short films where a creepy plumber or pizza delivery man makes awkward conversation with a sad-eyed girl who remains fully clothed throughout.]

The killer is this: Michael Bay is not untalented. He is supremely competent at certain things (you think making Martin Lawrence look like a badass is easy?), and has a unique visual style that the rest of Hollywood is trying to keep up with. I even admire his unabashed, non-cynical patriotism. But he’s wildly self-indulgent, and makes bad choices– over and over. It’s painful to watch him waste his talent. And the Transformers franchise? It came ready made for him to not screw up, yet he did it anyway. It carried a couple generations of nostalgic goodwill, and a deviously simple core concept: “There are robots that transform into other things, they punch each other.” Why he felt the need to bury that concept under hours of unfunny jokes, military fetishism and lazy stereotypes, I’ll never know.

Anyway, we’ll be looking at three fights from the film. It gets a little hard to distinguish what constitutes a fight here, especially as the climax is a little chaotic and it’s tough to decide if a Special Forces squad shooting at a Decepticon is a “fight.” There are basically three distinct ones that I remember, though, and we’ll stick with those for simplicity’s sake. If I rewatched the film from beginning to end I might find more, but as it is I’m only watching the ones I remember on YouTube, because the movie’s not on Netflix and if you think I’m actually going to pay money to watch Transformers again you can kiss my Allspark.

1) Bumblebee vs Barricade

The Fighters:

• Bumblebee, humble & heroic Autobot whose vocal cords were damaged in battle (he “talks” by somehow queuing up his radio to play appropriate song/movie clips). So, no voice actor.
  • Armed with: Cybertronians in these films are a bit unpredictable with weaponry. They use brute force a lot, but their bodies also hold varying weapons, both bladed and projectile. Currently “disguised” as a 1977 Chevrolet Camaro.
• Barricade, an evil Decepticon we don’t ever learn much about.Voiced by Jess Harnell, who you probably recognize better as Wakko from Animaniacs.
  • Armed with: a pair (or one? It’s hard to see) of some sort of spiky-whip things. He’s also one of those Transformers who comes equipped with a smaller Transformer inside them– in his case it’s the hyperactive Frenzy, who is tiny but all sharp edges. Currently “disguised” as a police car.

Sam & Mikaela (Shia LeBeouf & Megan Fox) are also there, and even though they don’t participate in the fight, you’ll see why I included them shortly.

The Setup: Bumblebee is protecting Spike from Barricade, because Spike is in possession of his great-great-grandfather’s glasses which have on them a secret tiny map to the film’s MacGuffin. It’s all needlessly elaborate, and that’s not even involving the stuff with the Special Forces squad, the creepy CIA agent, the Defense Secretary, or the hot Australian code breaker and her nerd pals. Anyway, it takes place in what looks like some kind of factory/warehouse area– I almost said construction site but no, it’s just another place where construction tools are helpfully left out overnight. Barricade has already revealed himself to Sam and confronted him about the glasses…

“The ‘good cop’ guy stayed home today.”

… and with Bumblebee’s subtle help (he’s just acting like a weird car, not having transformed yet) they’ve escaped to an isolated place for the confrontation.

The Fight: There’s actually a pretty good build-up here, as Bumblebee dumps the humans out of the front seat and transforms into his robot form, assuming a combat stance. If there’s one thing Michael Bay gets right, it’s hero shots. Barricade goes for a different route, driving toward his foe at full speed and transforming on-the-go, using the momentum to start off with a rather acrobatic flying tackle.

After a few more follow-up blows, the Autobot rallies and smashes Barricade into a small building. They continue fighting… but we miss it. Why? Because Frenzy, who Barricade released at the start of the fight, went to chase off after Sam & Mikaela and that’s what Michael Bay decides to show us.

Frenzy chases them, ripping off Sam’s jeans in the process, and after some wrestling Mikaela saws his head off with a drill. By the time that’s over, the real fight has finished: Bumblebee’s standing there alone, and Barricade is gone. We don’t know how he was beaten, but later on there’s a quick insert shot of the villain lying in pain on the ground, because apparently Bumblebee, a veteran soldier fighting a desperate war, didn’t want to finish him off, for… some reason. He shows up in the climax later, just fine.

This barely even qualifies for grading: there are maybe forty seconds total of the two aliens actually fighting (I counted) and about half of that is one or the other of them transforming, and Barricade swinging his chains as he unleashes Frenzy. Normally I might not even consider this worthy of inclusion, but I’m stretching a bit because I find this entire incident so perfectly emblematic of how Bay dropped the ball on the franchise.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think this scene happens somewhere close to halfway through the movie. So it takes about an hour for this movie, that is built entirely around the premise of giant robots punching each other, to get to its first scene of giant robots punching each other, and it’s over practically as soon as it starts because Bay cuts away to one of the least interesting things in the world. Did anyone walk into the theater hoping to see Shia LeBeouf’s boxer shorts and Megan Fox attacking a teddy bear-sized robot with a power tool? No, I don’t think they did, though a lot of guys might have been content if it had been the other way around. What we came for was giant robots punching each other. Michael Bay and his screenwriters cruelly denied this to us.

The only reason I can mark this as high as I’m going to is because what short glimpses we do see of the fight are really darn cool. The CGI here is actually quite convincing and “feels” weighty, like there’s real substance there, and the robots themselves move with a strange & brutal gracefulness. And of course there’s that cool intro. But in the end there’s simply no excuse for staging an action sequence this way. Heck, the fact that what we do see is so compelling is all the more reason to be upset that it gets yanked away from us in exchange for garbage.

Grade: D+

Recommended Links: The whole scene, if you want to time it yourself. Sam & Mikaela fight 20 seconds longer than Bumblebee does.

Shia LeBeouf is really kind of full of himself, apparently. But don’t let him hear you say that, because he’ll totes beat you up, brah.

Coming Attractions: The movie perks up a bit as we discover that Optimus Prime is one bad mothertrucker.

This will end badly for one of you.

Well it took about 5/6ths of a 2 hour+ movie, but Michael Bay was able to deliver some goods.

pew pew

2) Optimus Prime vs Bonecrusher

The Fighters:

• Optimus Prime (whose original Japanese name was the rather uninspiring “Chief Convoy.” So… U-S-A! U-S-A!), heroic leader of the Autobots. Voiced by longtime vocal actor Peter Cullen, who also played Prime in the 1980s cartoon.
  • Armed with: Mainly, a glowing energy sword that deploys from his arm. Currently “disguised” as Peterbilt 379 truck cab, though without the character’s iconic trailer (boo!).
• Bonecrusher, a Decepticon. Voiced by Jim Wood.
  • Armed with: His main weapon is an articulated arm with grabber claw (it comes from his vehicle form), which he uses a bit like a scorpion’s tale. Which is kind of weird because there’s already a scorpion robot in the movie, but whatever. Currently “disguised” as a Buffalo MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) armored vehicle.

The Setup: The heroes have the Allspark MacGuffin, but chief bad guy Megatron has been awakened and rallied all Decepticons on planet in pursuit. Bonecrusher seems to have gotten there first, and switches to robot form right there on a crowded freeway and starts smashing up civilian cars in his path. Optimus is having none of that, because “not getting crushed by a huge alien while driving to work” is the right of all sentient beings.

The Fight: Bonecrusher gets the first move with a running tackle that sends them both plummeting off road onto another freeway below. Once they both get up Optimus takes control of the fight and slow-mo uppercuts (you can see Bonecrusher’s eye rattle as the punch connects) the Decepticon so hard he falls down even further, onto the car-free underpass. The Decepticon rallies and is still down to fight, but Prime makes a canny use of a support pillar as cover– he dodges Bonecrusher’s lunging “tail” and quietly unsheathes his blade. When the villain moves in from the other side, Optimus is ready to slash him, then grabs him in a headlock and jams the energy sword through Bonecrusher’s skull. Vertically.

NEXT.

On one level, this is not much of a fight; it actually lasts slightly shorter than what we saw of the previous confrontation. But oh, what a difference a few details make.

First of all, it’s short but we see all of it. There is only the briefest of cutaways to some puny humans: a nearby child shouts “cool, Mommy!” which is mildly irritating at worst; I mean, it’s not like he’s incorrect, and it more complements the flow of the action rather than breaks it up. The brevity is also a function of the nature of this skirmish, its purpose in the plot being to establish Optimus’ toughness, as well as how this film’s version differs from the Prime most 80s kids knew– in addition to being inspiring and courageous, he’s also a ruthlessly efficient killer. Therefore, it’s less of a fight and more of a beatdown. Note that a second plot purpose has been served because between the short fight and the two-story drop, Optimus is separated from his companions, and will thus be making a fashionably late entrance to the climactic throwdown.

Speaking of that two-story drop, it plays very well on-screen and really helps sell the scope of the battle/the power of the combatants. The scene is shot in broad daylight, so all the details of the multi-level battle are perfectly clear, and while the steady concussion of Steve Jablonsky’s musical score is a bit generic, it serves the action nicely.

More would have been nicer, but more will come soon enough, and the improvement is much appreciated.

Grade: B

Recommended Links: For such a powerful character, Optimus Prime sure does die a lot.

Coming Attractions: The final battle (for this movie anyway) ensues. One shall stand, one shall fall, and one irritating human shall get to do the honors for some reason.

You’ll always be my Megatron, Frank.

In which Michael Bay gives us the titanic struggle between hero and the villain. After he’s done showing us a Mountain Dew machine come to life, of course.

3) Optimus Prime vs Megatron

The Fighters:

• Optimus Prime, still the heroic leader of the Autobots and still voiced by Peter Cullen.
  • Armed with: Oddly, Prime’s awesome energy sword is nowhere to be found in this desperate struggle, very odd considering how it was used in his previous fight and how much action it sees in the sequels. He does produce a gun from somewhere in his fuselage, though. Alternate form is still a big truck.
• Megatron, tyrannical leader of the Decepticons. Freshly awoken from suspended animation at the Hoover Dam (!). Voiced by an almost unrecognizable Hugo Weaving, better known as Agent Smith from the Matrix series.
  • Armed with: a powerful fusion cannon, which like Optimus he just sort of generates out of his own body. His alternate form is some kind of Cybertronian jet. In the cartoon he just turned into a big gun. Oh well.

There’s also Sam Witwicky, a smart-aleck teenager who’s holding the Allspark, played by Shia LeBeouf. Various other good & bad Transformers are battling it out in the background, along with the US military. And a bunch of civilians whose day is getting ruined.

The Setup: The pursuit of the Allspark has come to a head in downtown Mission City, a fictional burg of at least moderate size located somewhere in the American Southwest. The bad guys are there to destroy their remaining opposition, but they’re also trying to retrieve the MacGuffin from Sam’s puny flesh hands. The heroes are fighting outnumbered against the Decepticons, and things get worse when big daddy Megatron arrives. Optimus Prime pulls up in truck form not long after (but unfortunately too late to stop his nemesis from killing Black Robot Jazz), and Bay’s camera gives the virtuous Autobot a full tongue-bath, drawing out the transformation for an oddly long time and panning around him as triumphant music swells. Cheesy, but it works.

Similarly, I genuinely cherish the cliched moment when hero & villain lock eyes, and call out each other’s names: “Megatron.” “Prime!” With just one word each, the actors’ different deliveries manage to say a lot about their respective characters: Optimus’ voice is full of anger & grim determination, Megatron greets his old rival with a tone of sadistic relish. Let’s do this thing.

The Fight: Megatron opens with a bold move by turning back into his jet form (the inverse of what Barricade did) and charging forward; Prime grabs on from underneath and they crash through a building that is quite deliberately shown to be full of people. Sucks to be them. Once back on the ground the villain returns to robot form and they bash each other around while trading dialogue. Some of the lines don’t really make any sense*, but some work quite well, such as the villain punctuating a blow with “Join them in extinction!” (“Them” being humanity.)

[*Megatron: "Humans don't deserve to live!" Optimus: "They deserve to choose for themselves!" Uh, what? We deserve to choose whether or not we live? Seems like that choice is a no-brainer. Are these two having separate discussions or is this whole exchange some kind of fumbled abortion metaphor? Because like Shia LeBeouf's boxers, that's not something anyone came to this movie for.]

Soon enough they both pull out their guns and start trading shots. Cybertronian guns are kind of weird and inconsistent in this film series: sometimes they are about as damaging/lethal as real guns are against real people (tearing holes through them and such), but other times they seem to just chip a few hit points off the target and push them backward. Anyway, this seems to be the latter case, because Prime’s gun only irritates Megatron whereas the bad guy’s fusion blast sends Optimus flying through the air to hit a building. He grunts and doesn’t get up; one Wiki summary says he’s knocked unconscious, but it’s kind of hard to tell with robots.

Either way he’s out of the action for the next several minutes, which are largely filled by Megatron chasing down Sam. Prime manages to rescue the boy just in time, but in a way that sends all three of them falling several hundred feet. The fight nominally resumes when the two aliens recover, but at this point it’s pretty much over, because Optimus is much weakened and mostly gets tossed around by Megatron. There’s some more decent dialogue: “Now it’s just you and me.” “No, Prime, it’s just ME!”

Eventually the hero can no longer move, and it’s up to the Air Force to carpet bomb Megatron, though that only slows him down enough so that Sam can kill the Decepticon by holding the Allspark right up the his chest plate. See, the device’s energy can bring normally inanimate machines to life, but when held close to a living Transformer’s heart, it kills them. Sure, why not.

This is not as infuriating as the movie’s first pathetic excuse for a “fight,” but it’s still very disappointing. The showdown basically happens in two different stages, the break being after Prime is flung away by Megatron’s cannon. The first part is cool but ends just as it starts to pick up steam; the second part barely registers and mostly consists of the film’s great “hero” getting his butt kicked, to the point where it’s up to humans to save the day. (This is extra strange considering how the film’s previous fight went out of its way to sell Optimus’ supreme combat abilities, as do the movie’s sequels.)

This is more evidence that in Michael Bay’s Transformers series (or at least in this movie), Optimus Prime is actually not the hero, Sam Witwicky is. Sam and the US military. The Transformers are pushed to the sideline in a franchise with their name on it. So from that angle it’s understandable that the fleshy, non-transforming characters get to steal so much of the spotlight, but I ask yet again: Did you come to a Transformers movie to see a story about a bunch of humans?

To be sure, there is a lot that’s competent and effective about this whole sequence, even if much of it trades on the characters’ established legacy. But what ought to be the centerpiece of the action here trails off quickly, and finishes unsatisfactorily. If this was Iron Man and it was their one minor stumble after a parade of successes, I’d be more charitable, but it isn’t so I’m not. I sat through over two hours of unfunny jokes and lame “romance” just to get here. I watched Optimus Prime step on a suburban mom’s flower bed and say “my bad.” I do not feel generous.

Grade: C-

Recommended Links: It’s kind of astonishing just how many errors this movie made.

Interesting AV Club essay about the works of Michael Bay.

The movie I’m counting on to succeed where Transformers failed.

Coming Attractions: Turns out a “serious” filmmaker can make a better action movie than the action filmmaker, if he puts his mind to it.

Don’t look THAT surprised.

I wrote over 3,000 words about Transformers last week, you guys. I’ve earned this.

Tell me I didn’t. I dare you.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Remember how big of a deal this thing was? Over a decade ago, now. Huge international hit with critics and audiences alike, caused months of Internet buzz as its release crept slowly (agonizingly slowly, in my mind at the time) across the globe and word of its greatness spread. I believe I saw it four times in the theater.

It was a movie that really wanted to have it all. It was a serious, dramatic film with heavy social themes, a mature romance and a coming-of-age story… all while still attempting to deliver the goods with fun & entertaining chop-socky action. Not everything about it works perfectly, especially re-visiting it nowadays, but for the most part it succeeds, masterfully mixing the chocolate of High-Minded Art with the peanut butter of Kickass Action.

Also of of note: this manages to be an action film packed with thrilling fights even though “beat the bad guy(s)” is not really a major plot objective. In fact, the one genuinely villainous character is probably the least physically powerful of the principals. Here, the fights are usually about other things, mostly the expression of emotion– something the characters are otherwise forbidden to do by their society’s rigid rules and codes.

1) Yu Shu Lien vs Jen Yu (round one)

The Fighters:

• Yu Shu Lien: a veteran warrior and master martial artist, approaching middle age. Played by Michelle Yeoh, who herself was an accomplished actress in various kung fu flicks by this point, not to mention a former ballet dancer and beauty queen.
  • Armed with: naught but her mad skillz, yo.
• Jen Yu, the young daughter (late teens or so) of a rich aristocrat. Though we’re nominally not supposed to know it’s her yet because she’s in a “disguise” that’s only slightly more effective than Clark Kent’s, but she does definitely strike a cool figure in all that black ninja gear. Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: she has stolen the movie’s plot-instigating “Green Destiny” sword, but it doesn’t come into play here. She is however skilled in the martial arts of the “Wudan” school, the advanced techniques of which allow her to be even floatier than the rest of the film’s fighters– something Shu Lien deduces quickly.

There’s also Bo, a guard, who tangles briefly with Jen early in the sequence, but we’ll get to him later.

The Setup: Shu Lien and Jen have met and done some light bonding earlier at the house of their mutual acquaintance Sir Te. Rich girl Jen has been established to be unhappy with her circumstances and envies the “free” lifestyle of impoverished adventurer Shu Lien, unaware that the lower classes have rules they must abide by as well.

Sir Te is guarding the Green Destiny, the favored weapon of Shu Lien’s friend and legendary warrior Li Mu Bai, who is seeking to retire… though the much-ballyhooed Sir Te seems to be an odd choice for safeguarding the sword, since his “security” seems to be a locked door and a single wandering guard who’s fairly useless. Jen has decided to steal the sword late at night, apparently as a short-sighted act of rebellion (most of the film’s plot hinges on her impulsive & chaotic decisions, really) and does so easily but as she glides over the rooftops to escape, she’s confronted by Shu Lien, who wants it back. They fight it out.

The Fight: First of all, there is a sweeeeeet drum score that goes over the entire sequence, stirring up when black-suited Jen initially sneaks onto the premises and abruptly stopping after she makes good her final escape. The tempo fluctuates constantly throughout, all light & mischievous at the beginning as smoothly nabs the sword & smacks around the hapless Bo, picking up pace gradually as Shu Lien spars with & pursues her, then finally erupting into a thudding, lightning-fast percussion as the last and most intense portion of the fight commences. The whole thing is expertly timed and beautifully complements the entire sequence, lending the onscreen action even more rhythmic grace than it already had. Great credit is due to classical composer Tan Dun, who scored the film, and director Ang Lee, who surely worked closely with him to give this scene its signature sound.

That onscreen action isn’t messing around either, though. The two women’s battle escalates in fits & starts as Shu Lien chases Jen throughout the quiet city, and at first Jen is more interested in getting away than she is in fighting back. Another wrinkle is added by the fact that despite Shu Lien’s experience, Jen’s Wudan training allow her to (quite literally) defy gravity much better than her pursuer can, so while the younger woman can simply propel herself directly to the rooftops, Shu Lien has to find more inventive ways to keep up, such as building her own momentum by leap-frogging off walls or taking Jen down with projectiles. As the fight continues the older woman even keeps things more grounded by repeatedly yanking her opponent down via her shoulders, belt, and feet.

One interruption in the chase involves Jen getting briefly delayed by a father & daughter pair of fighters who mistake the disguised girl for the criminal Jade Fox, who we will later they’ve been hunting for. Although the thief quickly escapes the two, this is where Bo first meets them, which will be important later.

Jen and Shu Lien’s confrontation comes to a head in an open courtyard, the ferocity of their fight ratcheting up just as the music does. It is, in a word, gorgeous.

Now they just go nuts, with all the kicking and the punching and the jumping and the glavin. So fast you can barely keep up, but it never looks over-choreographed. It’s not a completely even contest: Yu Shu Lien is clearly the superior fighter here, but it’s also clear that Jen is making her work for it. It’s hard to communicate that kind of power balance in a fight, and commendable when the filmmakers pull it off. Also, Lee and his cinematographer Peter Pau manage to film the clash from all sorts of angles, but the camera is never too busy or ostentatious so as to distract from the combat (plotted out by Hong Kong legend Yuen Wo Ping).

Shu Lien gradually begins to take control of the battle and has her opponent on the ropes, when she is interrupted by mysterious figure firing a dart at her from behind. The veteran fighter catches the projectile, but it’s enough distraction for Jen to collect herself and whoosh away for good. Shu Lien is left standing alone, and a quick-cut to a wide shot of the empty courtyard excellently underscores her frustration just as the music hits a crescendo and halts. Rumor has it that preview screenings packed with jaded film critics burst into applause at the conclusion of this scene. I believe it.

Everything works. The action builds quickly while still having enough brief interludes to keep from being repetitive. The combatants move with fluid grace. And oh my goodness that music. This was a bold opening move from Ang Lee and a strong statement of purpose for the movie. It’s firing on all cylinders and it’s unapologetically awesome.

Grade: A

Coming Attractions: A certain foxy lady.

“In France, she would be called ‘la renard’ and she would be hunted with only her cunning to protect her.”

Remember what I said about how for this movie, finding the bad guy is not a “major” plot objective? Well, this is what necessitates the qualifier. And it’s quite the bench-clearer.

“Just three people for this fight? I bet we can double that.”

2) Tsai, May, Bo and Li Mu Bai vs Jade Fox and Jen Yu

The Fighters:

• Tsai, a police detective from another province, on a vengeful hunt for Jade Fox. Sportin’ some cool facial hair. Played by Wang Deming.
  • Armed with: Two deer horn knives, very slick-looking.
• May, Tsai’s daughter in her twenties or perhaps late teens. Seems unprofessional to bring her along on both the search for and the fight against Jade Fox, especially since she proves to be worse than useless. Played by Li Li. No, seriously.
  • Armed with: a ridiculously small knife, some kind of rope/hook she never uses, and a dart that is presumably drugged, though when it finally hits someone (her) it doesn’t seem to cause any lasting damage.
• Bo, Sir Te’s lantern-jawed security guard. An earnest and decent sort, but quite outclassed at this level. Played by Gao Xi’an. Fun fact: at one of the screenings I went to some of my friends confessed afterwards that for a good portion of the running time they thought that Bo WAS Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat’s character), even though the two dressed & acted differently, the only visual similarity being their hairstyles. What, like you don’t have racist friends?
  • Armed with: a spear with a fat sword blade at the end. Also has some kind of a cord with a claw at the end, but he doesn’t use it in the fight.
• Li Mu Bai, the master warrior who recently owned the even-more-recently stolen Green Destiny. Played by living legend Chow Yun Fat.
  • Armed with: a taijijian, or simple, straight, two-edged sword.
• Jade Fox, a deadly outlaw. Long ago she murdered Li Mu Bai’s master, Southern Crane, and more recently has killed Tsai’s wife/May’s mother, who was a police officer on her trail. Ruthless & clever. Played by veteran martial art star Cheng Pei-pei.
  • Armed with: a quarterstaff that’s full of all sorts of hidden goodies, including a sword blade, a knife that launches from the other end and some sort of projectile rope/whip. She also has a tiny knife hidden in her shoe like Rosa Klebb. The lady comes prepared.
• Jen Yu, from earlier. Still in her thief/ninja outfit. It’s here we learn that she is secretly Jade Fox’s apprentice, though as Li Mu Bai quickly deduces, she has long since surpassed her master. (The Fox’s combat prowess comes from a stolen Wudan manual, but being a barely literate peasant she could only study the diagrams, whereas Jen could fully read the complicated instructions.) Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: the Green Destiny sword, and though we’ve heard its capabilities explained before this is the first time we get to see it in action. In shape it’s basically another taijijian with a prettier design, but it’s lighter, unbreakable, rust-proof and so powerfully sharp it’s practically a lightsaber. She breaks one opponent’s weapon with it in this scene, and it will not be the last.

Phew.

Pictured: one of the very few people in this movie, if not all of China, who does NOT appear in this scene

The Setup: Bo had tracked down Tsai & May earlier and, figuring out that they’re the good guys, joined up with them to hunt for the Fox. Turns out she’s been in hiding for years and posing as a humble governess for the Yu family, which is how she managed to train & corrupt Jen from a young age. Some wanted posters have flushed her out and she’s made arrangements to face off against her longtime pursuer Tsai at midnight in this quiet courtyard.

Note that Li Mu Bai shows up about halfway through, with Jen showing up slightly later. Though it’s plausible that Jen clandestinely followed her “governess” here and intervened when she thought it necessary, it’s never explained how Mu Bai knew to show up. Mystical powers help him sense battle? Out for a midnight stroll? All the yelling & clanking woke him up? Ah, well.

The Fight: When Jade Fox shows up (she’s late. Passive-aggressive much?), there’s some taunts exchanged between her and the would-be heroes, then the fight begins. Really, it begins between Tsai and Fox; May is batted away easily and mostly stays on the sidelines from there on; Bo’s entrance is delayed because he clumsily left himself attached to the tree (for… some reason) by way of the claw-rope thing.

Fortunately, the Fox & Tsai show is plenty interesting. The choreography is excellent and much more ground-based than the previous battle we saw. It’s similarly distinct in that this isn’t a low-stakes pursuit/escape scenario; these two clearly despise and want to kill each other. The contrast between the villain’s single long-range weapon and the policeman’s twin short-range weapons makes for lots of interesting possibilities, and the staging explores them with relish.

Tan Dun’s musical score kicks in here again with gusto, and while it’s not as singular as the accompaniment to the previous action sequence, it’s plenty memorable and fits the mood of the scene perfectly: whereas the last scene’s pounding drums were all about raw adrenaline, this selection connotes genuine danger and powerful emotion. The music also rises & falls appropriately with the pace of the action, dropping to a subdued growl whenever the fight’s interrupted for dialogue beats or new challengers appearing.

Bo eventually untangles himself but mostly makes things worse. He’s far too slow to be a real threat to Jade Fox, and after parrying his swings easily she ends up using him against Tsai, first as cover and later by hooking his spear and sending him after her opponent. Bo’s main purpose in this fight is as comic relief; he cuts a very clumsy figure in this sequence and his facial expressions look downright goofy when Fox paralyzes him with a series of pressure point blows.

May’s contribution is arguably worse, as when she finally is able to shoot a dart at Fox, her enemy simply plucks it out of the air and returns it to sender. This infuriates Tsai, and Fox is able to get the best of him, but Li Mu Bai makes his entrance just in time to save the policeman (and Bo, who he un-paralyzes with another set of pressure points).

After introducing himself, Mu Bai utterly pwns Jade Fox, outclassing her at every step. This is where most of the criminal’s aforementioned tricks (which she didn’t need against Tsai) come into play: the shoe knife, the hidden cane sword, and one particularly deft move where a spin of her cloak disguises an unexpected blade thrust. But cunning or not, she’s no match for Li Mu Bai, who defuses all her tricks and even seems to revel a little bit in his long-delayed revenge. When he goes in for the kill he himself is interrupted by the arrival of Jen, who shears the tip of his sword off with Green Destiny in her opening block.

Rather than become a chaotic free-for-all, here the fight splits in two: LMB vs Jen on one side, Tsai & Bo against Jade Fox on another. The latter is just as frenzied as before, but the former takes on a different tempo, as Li is intrigued by this young girl who has learned so much. He’s mostly toying with and questioning her, as he’s (correctly) confident that she is no real match for him. There’s even one very well done beat where Fox, in a pause in her own battle, spots Jen’s movements in the fight against Mu Bai, and the shock & betrayal are quite evident on her face: her student (and closest thing she has to family) has deceived Fox about her true progress.

Too bad that Li’s curiosity doesn’t take a backseat to his need to take care of Jade Fox, because while he’s futzing around off to the side the villain kills Tsai but good: having caught one of his thrown deer horn knives (in a way that tricked him into thinking he’d killed her) she throws it back at him and it lands right in the middle of his bald forehead. Very wicked-looking, but it’s the fight’s one notable misstep, because the thrown blade is shown to travel more than slowly enough for him to get out of the way. This is even more aggravating considering that in a previous scene, we saw Tsai use chopsticks to pluck a smaller, faster-moving dart out of the air that had been shot at him while his back was turned. I appreciate that finding a good ending to a fight scene can be almost as hard as finding one for an SNL sketch, but it’s still unsatisfying when the conclusion is forced via a single act of credibility-straining stupidity (see also Revenge Of The Sith and its “I have the the high ground!” nonsense).

LMB goes after the pair but it’s pretty much over; Fox briefly delays him with couple more surprises from that seemingly bottomless staff, then she & Jen escape together. Bad guys get away, good guys are down one. Darn.

Mostly this all comes together excellently. Some slight dings for the aforementioned chumping out of Tsai, and the almost back-t0-back life-saving arrivals of new challengers (two dramatic entrances in quick succession tends to diminish the, you know, drama). Also, while the physical comedy with Bo is fairly amusing, it kind of jars tonally with the rest of the scene, especially the grisly ending.

But I can’t fault it too much. The escalating action, the varied combat, the juggling of multiple players, the dramatic beats and the excellent music– it’s just too much fun and crazy ambitious besides. It’s also the one time we get to see Chow Yun Fat’s character, who is by far the most powerful out of everyone, really cut loose. It’s to be treasured. But the best is yet to come.

(In an interesting post-script, a few scenes later it’s heavily suggested that Bo gets intimate with a grieving May, though in a way that’s a more sweet and less creepy than I just made it sound. Good for them, I suppose; it’s a happier ending than anyone else gets in this bummer of a movie.)

Grade: A-

Coming Attractions: Master Li gets out his whippin’ stick.

A blessedly small-scale scrap after last time’s chaos.

3) Li Mu Bai vs Jen Yu (round two)

The Fighters:

• Li Mu Bai, the legendary etc etc. Played by Chow Yun Freaking Fat.
  • Armed with: his own Green Destiny sword, though he doesn’t really use it against her as such. Also, a stick.
• Jen Yu, a very confused young girl. Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: a standard taijijian. Man, look at all the dots that word has.

The Setup: After some not-so-subtle hints to her civilian identity from Yu Shu Lien, Jen decides to secretly return the sword that caused all this trouble. After doing so she runs into Li Mu Bai, who’d been waiting for her. He’s intrigued with her abilities and, we later learn, is concerned about how much influence Jade Fox has had on her. He pursues her to a temple and offers to train her, but Jen, chafing at years of repression and an upcoming arranged marriage, is in no mood to call any man “master.” She opts to start attacking him instead, which is unwise– this guy’s one hard-boiled killer who could give her a better tomorrow.

The Fight: Li Mu Bai demonstrates his superiority by parrying all her blows without even removing Green Destiny from its sheath, and lands several strikes on her that would have been crippling or even lethal if they’d been with an actual blade. She continues to act stubborn in the face of a clear master, so he gives her a real shock by unsheathing Green Destiny and breaking off a chunk of her sword in one single move. “Real sharpness comes without effort!” he declares. Okay, sure.

He chases her out front and continues to fight her, this time defeating her sword strikes with a simple stick he finds on the ground. All the while he’s spouting fortune cookie soundbites at her: “No growth without assistance. No action without reaction. No desire without restraint.” Whether you think it’s empty-headed pseudo-philosophy or genuine Deep Thoughts, it’s still quite amusing to watch, and even more impressive that Chow was able to pull off the choreography while delivering complicated dialogue in a language he barely understood; supposedly native Mandarin Chinese speakers laugh their butts off at how silly Chow and Yeoh (who could only speak the Cantonese dialect before) sound in this movie. Once again, being an ignorant foreign devil helps me enjoy something more. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Anyway, he’s trying to teach her humility but all she gets is frustrated. Even after the impromptu training session ends (with the girl being disarmed), she’s not having any of this, and takes off.

As fights go, it’s fairly brief, somewhat inconsequential, and one combatant isn’t trying to “win” so much as he’s trying to get the other person’s attention. Still, it’s long & complex enough that it was worthy of inclusion and some manner of discussion.

Light as it is, it works all right, even if it’s not particularly outstanding. It accomplishes everything it needs to. And, even though it comes not too long after the previous setpiece, it’s a welcome snack because there’s soon going to be a loooooong stretch of this movie without any real fight scenes to speak of. It’s not going to be boring for the next 30 minutes or so, by any means; intrigue and excitement (both of the physical and of the, ahem, “romantic” kind) aplenty await, but it is a while before the movie returns to the chop-socky portion of its plot.

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: Jen runs away from home and manages to immediately find herself in a bar full of kung fu jerks. She’s… not that smart.

Herp derp.

In which pretty much everyone is in over their heads.

Yep, you too.

4) Jen Yu vs Various Martial Artists

The Fighters:

• Jen Yu, having ditched her cool black outfit in favor of a man’s clothes. Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: the Green Destiny and one heck of an attitude.
• A whole restaurant full of professional (though they come off more like amateurs against Jen’s Wudan skills) warriors. They have names like Monk Jing, Shining Phoenix Mountain Gou, and Iron Arm Mi. Played by various actors and stunt men.
  • Armed with: again, a wide variety. Swords, clubs, staffs, and one guy has iron bracelets under his sleeves. If you guessed that that guy is the one called “Iron Arm Mi,” you win a cookie.

The Setup: Fleeing from both her wedding and the smothering attentions of her erstwhile bandit paramour, Jen has re-stolen the Green Destiny and hit the road. Disguised as a rather feminine-looking man, she’s shown up at a restaurant/inn, but between her ostentatious sword and Too Cool For School demeanor, she’s attracted some unwanted attention. Soon enough word gets out about this fresh fish, and a whole soccer team’s worth of kung fu fighters shows up to teach her a lesson. Iron Arm Mi seems to be the alpha dog of the group and he takes the lead in talking to her (“I’ve got the death sentence in twelve systems” he doesn’t say, but might as well), but she disrespects him until he’s provoked into attacking…

The Fight: … at which point she defends herself and sends him flying, though not before embarrassing him and revealing his hidden armaments. After some more talk and the irritating coincidence of one of the other fighters sharing a name with Jen’s new husband, she basically goes nuts and attacks them all in a frenzy.

“Frenzy” being the operative word here. Jen is all over the place and not shy at all about using her acrobatic Wudan powers. Between her skills and powerful blade she’s basically unstoppable; there’s never really any sense that she’s in danger during the course of the fight.

It is, however, a LOT of fun. Jen is just a whirling dervish of destruction, taking on opponents from all sides, flitting in & out of various rooms and up & down inside the multi-story building. The building itself isn’t spared from her fury, either, as she bashes opponents against furniture and through walls. For the most part the fights here have been one-on-one contests of skill (even the six-person brawl that was Fight #2 is basically just a series of duels with alternating partners), so it’s nice to see the movie embrace the other action tradition– that of the lone warrior mowing down an army of adversaries. Her blows here are purposely non-lethal, too, so aside from the minor scars and property damage this is a guilt-free romp.

It’s also a welcome break from the seriousness that hangs over much of the rest of the film; as I talked about before, most of the fighting in the movie is about the expression of emotion, and in this case, it’s Jen being fully free and empowered– she is kung fu woman, hear her roar. Her dialogue and ostentatious theatrical flair (she even ends the fight with a dramatic pose) clearly show Jen’s playing out a fantasy. She has no real long-term plans and her playing at Vagabond Warrior Girl can’t last for  long, but she’ll enjoy her freedom while it lasts.

At one point, Jen declares she is “the Invincible Sword Goddess.” Which just about says it all.

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: The best thing.

Ladies.

Show-stopper.

oh em gee

5) Yu Shu Lien vs Jen Yu (round two)

The Fighters:

• Yu Shu Lien. Played by Michelle Yeoh.
  • Armed with: a Dao (saber that can be split into two smaller blades), a spear, dual hook swords, a metal club, and a broad sword. In that order. She also grabs a huge Monk’s Spade at one point but it turns out to be too heavy for her to lift.
• Jen Yu. Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: the Green Destiny.

The Setup: Turns out life’s not so fun for a young runaway leaving all she knew behind, and after her awesome adventures at the inn full of kung fu idiots, Jen goes running to her “big sister” Yu Shu Lien at her local… headquarters? Dojo? Safe house? Anyway she’s there awaiting the arrival of Li Mu Bai, who will be “sleeping over,” wink wink nudge nudge.

After some polite talk, Shu Lien tells her to go to Wudan Mountain, where her and Mu Bai have secretly hidden dragon Lo, Jen’s bandit ex-boyfriend. The news of these two pulling strings behind her back shocks Jen and she lashes out, once again wary of people manipulating & controlling her. At this point Shu Lien, who was really only trying to help, has had about enough of the young lady’s attitude, and fires back angrily, demanding the sword. Jen tries to storm out, but the older woman stops her in the open gym area, telling everyone else in the household to leave… and lock the doors.

There’s more to this upcoming throwdown than just reclaiming the sword and Jen’s snit, though. Jen is angry not just at Shu Lien but at everyone in her life who’s been pressuring her, and is also eager to prove herself. Shu Lien’s long-simmering feelings for Li Mu Bai (which are mutual, but they’ve denied themselves each other out of respect to her old fiancee dying to save LMB) have led to jealousy over the attention he’s been showing to this troublesome girl. These women are frustrated all over about the freedom they’ve long been denied, and that frustration is about to explode like dynamite. Awesome, sexy dynamite.

The Fight: is amazing. This is generally considered the centerpiece of the movie– it’s the scene all over the ads, promotional artwork and even the DVD menus– and it’s easy to see why.

Though both combatants are trying much harder than in their previous fight, the power balance is still roughly the same: Jen is flashy and talented but ultimately can’t hold against Shu Lien’s determination and years of experience. The only difference now is the weapons: Yu Shu Lien basically becomes a one-woman armory in the fight against Jen, or more accurately against Jen and the invincible Green Destiny. The veteran warrior grabs weapon after weapon to use against the legendary sword, and even though she fights excellently, each new implement eventually breaks against the blade’s might. (It’s clear that Shu Lien still could beat Jen, if she saw her as an enemy rather than a rival or annoyance and genuinely wanted to kill her. She had chances.)

“Want a free nose job?”

This of course presents opportunity for a marvelous amount of variety, especially for a two-person battle, and Yuen Wo Ping clearly had a blast plotting it out. Each new weapon that’s introduces slightly modifies the fighting style and picks up the overall pace. Ang Lee’s camera jumps around giddily, framing the combatants from up close, far away, and even overhead… but never confusingly, and always with an emphasis on the action rather than the camerawork itself.

For once, Tan Dun’s music is not terribly noteworthy but it’s still fun and serviceable, accenting the scene appropriately; my personal favorite touch is the deep bass and strings that play up when Shu Lien brings her broadsword into frame. The sound design is tops, perfectly selling every single clash of blades and leaping whoosh.

Like this one.

Later on, Shu Lien gives voice to what the audience is thinking: “Without Green Destiny, you are nothing.” Jen, ever the brat, of course dismisses the barb with unearned arrogance and presses the fight on. When the older woman goes to town on her with the broadsword it too ends up sliced in half by the emerald blade, but Shu Lien is still able to bring the remaining stump to a halt within an inch of Jen’s exposed neck. Jen fails to accept defeat & mercy gracefully, but she loses nonetheless.

Feels strange to say so little about this fight whereas I’ve talked forever about so many others, but sometimes, there’s not much left to say. This is everything a fight scene should be: smart, smooth, creative, packed with emotion, complex but natural, fast and furious. Even a few pinches of subdued humor. There is still plenty left in the film, both in terms of fighting and of the plot being resolved, but after this barn-burner the movie’s pretty much over.

Grade: A+

Coming Attractions: Let’s have a walk in the trees.

Bamboo-zled

In which our protagonists do their best Cathy Rigby.

Which is odd, because there’s not a lot of happy thoughts in this movie.

6) Li Mu Bai vs Jen Yu (round three)

The Fighters:

• Li Mu Bai. Played by Chow Yun “I’ve heard all the jokes there are about my name, thank you” Fat.
  • Armed with: a normal taijijian.
• Jen Yu, who’s had quite a busy day indeed. Played by Zhang Ziyi.
  • Armed with: Green Destiny, of course.

The Setup: This picks up right after the conclusion of the previous fight. Jen, being a sore loser, rejects Yu Shu Lien’s mercy and slashes her across the arm, just in time for Li Mu Bai to arrive. She flies away (this is a running theme for her) with LMB in pursuit. He catches up to her in a picturesque bamboo forest.

The Fight: It’s certainly different, a definite change of pace. They spent most of it going on top of or in & out of the trees. The actual element of “fighting” has been dialed down to a bare minimum (occasionally their swords meet), but rather than the intense physicality of the previous battle now the staging is given over to the complicated wirework.

Complicated indeed; this must have been quite the pain in the neck to block out and execute. Sometimes, it looks pretty cool:

And then sometimes, it doesn’t. Because the precariously perched participants often look less like warriors whose mystical powers can make their bodies lighter than air… and sometimes they just look like actors who are awkwardly being held up by wires:

This is a problem with a lot of wire fu movies, or at least a problem I have with them: use it too much or inappropriately and it’s more cheesy than exciting (I think Iron Monkey is about as boring as watching paint dry, for instance). For the most part this is a film that uses its wires judiciously, to enhance rather than replace the action. But this fight goes a bit in the other direction.

Which, to be fair, is a lofty goal. After all, just a few minutes previous we had an incredibly kinetic, ground-based showdown. Trying to do one of those again would not just be repetitive, but a foregone conclusion: there’s no question that Li Mu Bai could destroy Jen effortlessly if he really wanted to. Instead, this floaty “fight” is more about two characters probing at each other and trying to make a connection. The music, dying down to mostly a lot of soothing string work, is rather supportive of this approach. And there’s the occasional shot like this that is just downright breathtaking:

Overall I’d say this fight alternates between silly and beautiful, but never at any point is it exciting. Breathtaking, to be sure, and even a few amusing bits as Mu Bai’s simple leg work sends Jen flying from her bamboo perch, or at the end when she challenges him to take Green Destiny away from her “in three moves” and he smirks and seizes it in one. She remains insolent, so he tosses the sword down a nearby waterfall, which she foolishly dives after; her subsequent abduction by Jade Fox marks the end of the encounter.

(Note: from here the fight scenes are effectively over. There is a rather cool bit later in which the Fox ends up on the receiving end of Li Mu Bai’s sword, but it’s so brief as to not warrant inclusion.)

I can’t fault it from a dramatic or narrative standpoint, necessarily. However, as an action sequence, it’s lacking. Still… it IS awful purty.

Grade: B-

Goodbye, Crouching Tiger. You weren’t always perfect, but you were real good to me.

Coming Attractions:

It doth be hammertime.

Verily.

Thor is a wonderful but weird movie. Its structure is very unusual: it’s a “superhero” film where the superhero loses his powers in the first act and doesn’t regain them until the movie’s nearly over (Superman gave up his powers in Superman II, but not until later in the movie and not for nearly as long). The beginning and end are filled with brazen sci-fi/fantasy elements but most of the middle is basically an Earth-bound fish-out-of-water comedy. It starred almost total unknowns as the lead hero & villain, and was made by a director most famous for capturing Shakespearean chatter rather than big budget genre blockbusters. It’s understandable that the final product doesn’t work for everybody, but it’s really kind of miraculous the movie works at all, or even happened in the first place.

It does work for me, though. It’s my personal favorite of the first wave of “Marvel universe” movies, even if I grudgingly admit that other films are more well-rounded. But I love the character and the concept so much I can’t be so objective. More importantly for these purposes, I love the sheer gumption with which director Kenneth Branagh tackles the material: the extent to which the movie works as well as it does is mostly due to Branagh’s wholehearted commitment to the more out-there concepts of the comic book. Branagh’s Asgard is an amazingly realized version of the legendary Jack Kirby’s ideas. I could stare at it all day.

Also, there’s some fun fighting.

1) Asgardians vs Frost Giants

The Fighters:

• Thor, prince of Asgard and god of thunder. Cocky and eager for battle. Played with gusto by Chris Thorsworth Hemsworth.
  • Armed with: Mjolnir, his mystical hammer. Made of supernatural uru metal (stated in the film to be “forged in the heart of a dying star”). Short, blunt and ridiculously powerful. It also has a leather strap on the end of the handle so he can swing it around even more dangerously. He can also use it control certain weather effects (notably lightning) and fly. Although he can’t completely control it remotely, it flies automatically to his hand when he mentally summons it, so it’s also very useful as a throwing weapon. It’s awesome.
• Loki, younger prince of Asgard and trickster god. Though he’s the mischievous one, here he plays the voice of reason and tries to restrain his brother. Played by Tom Hiddleston, who is one of the movie’s secret weapons (even more so in The Avengers).
  • Armed with: Loki goes for magic and misdirection rather than traditional weapons. He uses the same attack repeatedly here and it’s kind of tough to tell if he’s throwing actual daggers or just magical energy bursts that are shaped like daggers.
• Sif, a ferocious warrior woman. In the comics she’s Thor’s off/on girlfriend, but that’s wisely ditched here, as is almost all of Thor’s mortal identity. Played by Jaime King.
  • Armed with: two swords that attach into one long double-bladed staff, and a small shield.
• Fandral the Dashing, a blonde rogue-ish type (hint’s in the name). Played by Joshua Dallas.
  • Armed with: a kind of rapier/cutlass that suits his style.
• Hogun the Grim, a no-nonsense warrior. Played by Tadanobu Asano. He’s fine in the small role, even if I miss the mustachioed Mongol look of the comic Hogun (which, okay, maybe would have looked kind of offensive on-screen).
  • Armed with: a sick mace with retractable spikes.
• Volstagg the Voluminous, the most portly member of the company. Played by Ray Stevenson, who even in a fat suit is not nearly the girth as the comics’ Volstagg.
  • Armed with: a double-bladed axe.

• The Frost Giants, aka the Jotun. The ancient enemies of Asgard, living on a barren world. Radically different-looking from the source material, they’re “giant” more in the “Andre” than the “Jolly Green” sense, being only about eight or nine feet tall. Blue as a Navi smurf and made of icy flesh, with creepy red eyes. Unlike Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze they avoid making cold-related puns, which was a cool bit of restraint on the writers’ part. Played by various stunt men and CGI models, but the leader, Laufey, is classically-trained actor Colm Feore.
  • Armed with: Nothing, but their bodies and environment basically ARE weapons. They can form icy constructs from their limbs and a few of them make the ground itself around erupt into blunt or stabbing protrusions.
• The Jotun’s big pet monster, which looks like a cross between the Rancor from Return of the Jedi and the cave troll from Fellowship of the Ring, but it runs on four legs. Pretty scary, but unfortunately its weakness is a 100 MPH hammer through the mouth. So is mine, coincidentally.

[Note that in the comics Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg collectively form a group of friends/adventurers known as the Warriors Three (because there's three of them, see). If I had one minor quibble with the way the movie adapted the world of Asgard it would be how Branagh sort of casually presents all four of these people as just being "Thor's buddies," which diminishes not just the unlikely alliance of the Warriors Three but also how special Sif is. No wonder they didn't mix things up more by including Balder.]

The Setup: Thor’s coronation ceremony was interrupted by three frost giants sneaking into Asgard’s treasure chamber. Disobeying his father’s order not to investigate the attack, Thor grabs his brother & friends, and storms off to Jotunheim to find out how they got in. Met with cryptic half-answers from King Laufey, and slowly surrounded by dozens of the large denizens, Thor is given the brush-off. That doesn’t sit well with his brash attitude, but with Loki’s calming he seems willing to walk away peacefully, until one of the giants provokes him with a taunt that is just so wonderfully schoolyard: “Run back home, little princess.” That’s all the excuse Thor needs to do what he really came here to do.

Because when all you’ve got is a hammer….

… everything looks like a face.

The Fight: There’s a fun bit just after the insult but before the action begins, as Fandral sighs and Loki mutters “damn” as both correctly anticipate what’s about to happen. Branagh pulls in close for a tight shot of Mjolnir being dropped into swinging position, and the mighty Thor starts thumping chumps left & right. His first victim goes flying upside down about 20 feet in the air and slams into a wall. That’s another one of my weaknesses, too.

Beautiful chaos ensues. The remaining Asgardians all draw their weapons and go to town. Loki starts chucking glowing projectiles everywhere and using magic tricks. More & more frosties continuously join the fray, forming ice armaments and using the world itself against the heroes. Thor’s at the center of it all, laughing and gloating even as he takes the occasional beating.

The various bits of choreography are not too complicated themselves, but Branagh does an excellent job of conveying just how frantic and busy the battle is. Each individual cut focuses on a warrior or two having their respective clashes, but in most every shot you can see more of the fight happening in the background. Loki pulls a very cool “disappearing act” move that tricks a Jotun into running off a cliff, and it’s done conspicuously enough to set up a good payoff for later in the movie (and in The Avengers). We also learn that the frost giant’s skin is like dry ice, so freezing cold that it burns Volstagg immediately on contact. This reveal is spaced out just long enough before another giant tries the same thing on Loki and finds it unsuccessful –rather than burning, the touched area turns a matching blue instead– so that the puzzling result gets the audience’s attention. There’s a nice little beat where Loki and the Jotun who tried to burn him trade quiet “WTF?” looks.

The staging seems designed to give every member of the team their own little moment in the sun, in-between shots of Big Stupid Hero Thor working out his aggression, of course. Sif plays it smooth and uses her shield to deflect a bunch of icy projectiles. Hogun is seen saving a comrade from certain death. Loki has those two aforementioned beats and Volstagg gets his burn. Fandral, nearly as cocky as Thor, does his Errol Flynn routine but gets sucker-stabbed by a sudden nest of ice spikes out of the ground. He’s alive but out of action; the casualty and the ever-increasing number of foes lead Sif to declare a tactical retreat is necessary. By then Laufey has unleashed his giant pet monster to chase them across the plain.

Honey badger Thor doesn’t give a crap and stays behind while his friends flee (Volstagg carrying the wounded Fandral), gleefully smashing in yet more Jotun-face. We get not one but two instances of Thor tossing Mjolnir straight ahead and having it fly directly back like the world’s most awesome boomerang. By the time his friends are away Thor has stepped up his game, swinging his hammer so fast it’s just a circular blur– in one nice bit, he lowers it to the ground to send chunks of ice & dirt flying into his foes’ faces like shrapnel. Eventually there’s so many frost giants around Thor has no choice but to call in an enormous thunderbolt, which strikes the ground and sends a shockwave that levels everything in sight. He ramps back up and goes flying off just in time to save the friends who had been cornered by the RancorTroll, one-shotting the poor beast by flying straight through its throat.

Unfortunately there’s still an army of pissed-off Jotun in front of the heroes, with the cliff at their back (this is the most poorly planned invasion of all time). Things look bad until the rather literal deus ex machina of Odin teleporting in on Sleipnir, his eight-legged horse. Odin tries to talk Laufey down, but Laufey demands blood and war. Odin squints his one eye (yarr), and leaves with the heroes in tow.

Fantastic fight, in every meaning of the word. In addition to the pure excitement of the glorious carnage detailed above, Branagh also manages to translate this high concept fantasy world into an action setting while still not losing a distinct superhero vibe. Pretty much all the Asgardians come across amazing here, but even amongst such heavenly creatures it’s obvious that Thor is particularly special. He’s particularly arrogant, too, and if the troublesomeness of that wasn’t sold well enough in the previous dialogue scenes, it’s definitely conveyed when watch him fight. At this stage of maturity Thor is basically a cosmic dudebro, an overpowered frat boy who can’t see past his own reckless whims.

So, six Asgardians against a small army of frost giants: how does the movie try to top this? That’s the thing… it doesn’t. It’s not that the other action scenes try and fail, it’s that they don’t even try; the remaining fights are varying degrees of good for what they’re supposed to be, but aren’t in the same league in terms of scope, excitement and intensity.This movie’s action is terribly front-loaded, which is another one of its structural oddities.

Still, can’t really hold against this fight what’s going to come (or rather, not come) later. I had a very good time.

Grade: A-

Coming Attractions: Poncho Thor vs the United States government. Advantage?

Who da ya think?

In which the Mighty Thor fights the Conspicuously Unarmed Humans.

2) Thor vs SHIELD agents

The Fighters:

• Thor, now depowered by his father Odin as punishment for his arrogance and exiled to Earth. The movie is a tad sketchy on just how powerful Thor is at this point– in a short period of time, he undergoes two glancing hits from a car and a zap from a taser without any lasting ill effects– but he’s at least as strong as a really buff human. Played by Chris Hemsworth, who is coincidentally also a really buff human. Not that I noticed.
  • Armed with: Nuttin’, honey.
• SHIELD agents and security guards, maybe eight or so of them. No names and not played by anyone of note, though if you weren’t paying attention you’d swear the last one was Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP). Thor doesn’t kill any of them, but they’ll definitely be really thore in the morning.
  • Armed with: Presumably most or all of them have sidearms, but they never get used; see below.

This is also the first movie appearance of agent Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, but he doesn’t take an active part in the fight, even though he was ready to.

The Setup: Despite the quality of Midgard’s coffee, Thor is finding mortality not to his liking, and when he gets word that his hammer has been found in the desert, he’s keen to get it back and with it, his powers. Which is odd for him to know, considering that Thor wasn’t around when his father put the “whosoever holds this hammer…” enchantment on Mjolnir, but whatever. The Odinson gets his googly-eyed caretaker Jane to drive him to the hammer’s location, but by now the US government has gotten wind of the mystical item, and created an ad hoc lab facility around it. The whole place is crawling with SHIELD agents and Thor only has approximately the superpowers of Chris Hemsworth (not inconsiderable), so he can’t quite charge right in.

The Fight: Basically, a series of small fights/beatdowns spaced out over a moderate-sized infiltration segment. Thor is a poor man’s Solid Snake, and gets extremely lucky as he sneaks around the dark facility in a poncho. Some of this not quite luck, though: an impromptu rainstorm gives the thunder god some extra cover, and the camerawork/Thor’s reaction implies that it’s his loyal hammer lending its assistance. Either way, his luck doesn’t last forever and soon the authorities are alerted to the man Die Hard-ing his way through their facility, especially as he rips through the cloth tubing walls while beating up more government goons.

Thor ditches his poncho soon enough (this may have been unintentional, but at a few points the poncho’s movements seemed to recall the cape he wears in his godly outfit) and quickly works his way closer to Mjolnir, beating up more guys on the way. One can’t help but notice that not a single agent draws a weapon on the intruder; this is papered over somewhat by the fact that Thor keeps getting the drop on his adversaries by either sneaking up on them or getting to them just as they’re rounding a corner, but come on– there’s only so many times that trick can work. Anyway, silly or no it’s still fun to watch Thor muscle his way through so many opponents.

Just before he can reach his objective, though, he has to face the mini-boss: a hulking security guard whose facial expressions seem to indicate he’s enjoying this as much as the cocky Asgardian is (presumably that excitement is the reason he too fails to draw a gun, despite having ample time). Thor even seems to accord this huge opponent a measure of respect, as their battle spills out of the facility again and into the mud. This is less homoerotic than it sounds, even with all the slow-motion. The hero takes out his adversary with a jumping double kick, and returns to his hammer… only to find that not only is it not restoring his godliness, he’s not even considered worthy enough to pick it up. When the realization sets in he goes all blue screen of death, and doesn’t even resist when the few agents he hasn’t knocked out arrive to arrest him.

“I swear, this has never happened to me before.”

Some interesting stuff is happening on the sidelines. There’s some cuts back to Jane as she realizes that she’s in over her head, and (in a handful of shots & dialogue probably added in post-production) facility head honcho “His Name Was Phil” Coulson deploys Hawkeye to a perch above the whole place as a sniper, to keep things from getting out of hand. Barton watches with arrow nocked, snarking out some of the funniest lines of the movie (“You want me to take him down, or would you rather send in more guys for him to beat up?”) as he waits for the kill order. Another nice touch is that not only does Thor’s tenacity win Hawkeye’s grudging respect, but it’s clear that Coulson can tell that something is special about this viking intruder, and eventually is even curious enough to keep off Thor’s back while he sees what will happen when blondie finds the hammer. A federal middle-manager with an actual brain, initiative and curiosity– what is this, some kind of wacky fantasy film?

This fight’s a decent change of pace from the movie’s opening bid. No more gods, monsters and magic; just ordinary fists and feet. This provides a good bit of action diversity, and it also demonstrates that even without his supernatural strength, Thor is a force to be reckoned with; he’s a warrior with skill as well as raw power, and has adapted quickly to his reduced circumstances. He even pulls a couple martial arts-esque tricks, such as binding one opponent with his own jacket. Demerits are due for the credibility-stretching contrivances necessary to make it so that not a single government agent draws on Thor, and for just how easily he’s able to get into even this impromptu federal fortress. It’s kind of like a video game, and not in a good way.

Still, it’s entertaining for what it is, even if it doesn’t aim all that high.

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY

“Don’t get in my face. No, really.”

In which a certain magic robot lives up to its name.

“EX-TER-MI-NATE!”

3) Asgardians vs The Destroyer

The Fighters:

• Thor, at first depowered but later not so much. Played by Chris Hemsworth.
  • Armed with: Nothing, and then later Mjolnir.
• Sif, played by Jaimie Alexander.
  • Armed with: same sword-staff and shield combo as before.
• Fandral the Dashing, played by Joshua Dallas.
  • Armed with: same sword as before, though he doesn’t use it.
• Hogun the Grim, played by Tadanobu Asano.
  • Armed with: same mace as before, though he doesn’t use it.
• Volstagg the Voluminous, played by Ray Stevenson.
  • Armed with: same double-bladed axe as before. He tries to use it.
• The Destroyer, a quasi-sentient suit of enchanted armor. About ten feet tall, incredibly powerful and laced with spikes down its sides. In the comics it really can’t operate on its own and has to be worn by someone in order to work but here it’s a mostly automated internal security system for Asgard, though it can be remotely controlled by the king, as well. Other than that it’s an amazingly faithful reproduction of Jack Kirby’s iconic design, an engine of pure cosmic destruction. This thing would make the Daleks piss their pants.
  • Armed with: aside from tremendous physical strength, it can fire blasts of heated energy directly from its face (which has a retractable plate).

There are also some SHIELD agents and a whole town full of civilians, but they’re mostly just cannon fodder.

The Setup: After his failure to lift Mjolnir and a few careful lies from his brother, Thor has learned humility and resigned himself to being stranded on Earth. So of course that’s just when his friends show up and plead for him to return. With Odin stuck in the Odinsleep (a comatose-like state the All-Father uses to regenerate his godly power), Loki is left in charge and has been making a hash of things, so Sif and the Warriors Three have snuck to Midgard to get Thor up to speed. Wary of his brother spoiling his upcoming plans, Loki dispatches the Destroyer to kill Thor, along with pretty much everything else in sight.

The Fight: After some funny fan-pandering where the SHIELD agents wonder if the Destroyer is Stark technology, the Asgardian relic opens up and starts Destroyerizing them (Hawkeye is off sharpening his arrowheads or something, I guess), and soon enough, the town itself. The ruthless construct is almost as amazing in moti0n as it is in design: it moves with a slow but deadly weightiness, and often lashes out with whip-fast speed. Most of its movements are very unnatural-looking, but that seems less like the product of awkward CGI and more like a deliberate choice to give it a sort of otherworldly creepiness.

Still humble, Thor knows he’d be less than useless in such a fight, and commits himself to helping evacuate the town. This leaves the remaining Asgardians to take care of business. Since they realize even together they couldn’t take the Destroyer head-on, they think up a quick plan to get the drop on it. There’s a brief shot of all four of them striding purposefully down the street in a line and it looks really cool; interesting to think that just five minutes previous the sight of them walking around a mundane Earth town was overtly comical. What a difference context makes.

The Warriors Three serve as the distraction, with Hogun and Fandral tossing Volstagg through the air (kind of weird since he’s the heaviest one, but okay) at the Destroyer, but the metallic beast swats him away before he can do anything. Just as it leans over him to finish the job, Sif comes crashing down from telephone pole and skewers the robot, from the back of the neck all the way through to the pavement.

The construct is only briefly stunned, then it pulls a T-1000 and morphs its whole body into reverse so that not only does Sif’s blade come loose, she’s now also face-to-face with her opponent.

She survives the encounter but the Destroyer resumes Destroyinating with impunity; the heroes now know there’s nothing they can do except run. Things get worse, especially when Volstagg gets barbecued as a face-blast blows up a restaurant he’d taken shelter in. Thor knows that the only way to stop this is to turn himself in.

He pleads with Loki (shown listening on his throne in Asgard) for mercy, for the innocents nearby if not for Thor himself. It seems like Loki listens to the better angels of his nature, but then he pulls a schoolyard “psych!” and the Destroyer turns to backhand Thor at the last second.

The armor’s spiked gauntlets have left deep scars on the hero’s face and neck, and verily this blow seems to have done him in. He “dies” in Jane’s distressed arms, and frankly the death scene is a little too protracted for my liking. Come on, guys, we all KNOW Thor’s not dead, and pretty much everyone guessed what’s going to come next: off in the desert, the hammer begins stirring and returns to its master, because Thor’s humility and selflessness have made him worthy again. Again, this is oversold, complete with a flashback to the moment when Odin laid the enchantment on it, I suppose just in case there are any particularly slow people in the audience who don’t remember something that happened about 80 minutes ago.

Aside from that, there is a nifty little sequence where the hammer leaps to Thor’s outstretched hand, restoring his life and power. There’s several quick close-ups of Thor’s armor rebuilding itself rapidly, and Jane sees her faith in this handsome stranger rewarded (though I think the whole superhero/demigod thing is just a bonus for her; she’s really just happy to have a boyfriend whose idea of “sweet talk” doesn’t consist of explaining all the ways she’s not like sand). The joke of her reacting with an “Oh. My. God.” (get it?) is either groanworthy or adorable, but I think Portman sells it well enough that I lean towards the latter.

To say this changes the balance of the fight is an understatement. Fresh out of his Power Rangers-style transformation sequence, Thor hits the Destroyer in the face with a well-aimed hammer throw which, in another nice touch, also clocks the construct in the back of the head on the return trip. This gives Thor time to form a tornado, which he flies to the top of and sucks his adversary up into as well.

The Destroyer unleashes a few more blasts, which Thor bats away, then he charges straight down, driving Mjolnir into the armor’s face even as it unleashes more energy. The combined strength of the blow plus Mjolnir redirecting Destroyer’s own energy back at it makes the armor explode real good. Thor calls off the nasty weather and does his cool guy thing, walking towards the remaining bystanders very casually even as the last suspended car comes crashing down behind him. Fight’s over.

[Epilogue note: shortly after, Hemsworth undersells a slight paraphrase of one of fandom's favorite Thor lines in recent history, quietly muttering "I would have words with my brother." Ah well.]

Mixed feelings here. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on: the other Asgardians being cool & professional, Thor’s mostly excellent re-ascension, a faithfully-rendered Destroyer wreaking merry havoc. There’s the aforementioned cheesy/condescending stuff that doesn’t work so well. But the main problem with this fight is that while it’s a suspenseful event for our characters, it’s just not exciting as a fight. First the Destroyer is unstoppable, then Thor is unstoppable, then it’s over; there’s no real struggle or back & forth. Ideally once Thor was restored to full power maybe he could have traded some genuine blows with the Destroyer, or at least taken more than 30 seconds to beat it. It’s a very slow build-up with a very quick resolution.

Also noteworthy: this is the only time in this superhero movie where the protagonist does “superhero” things– i.e., protects innocent humans from an enemy that’s too much for them to handle. But of course the reason the enemy is only there in the first place is because it’s looking FOR the protagonist. Again, this is an unusual superhero movie.

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: Brother vs  brother!

Oh, brother.

O brother, where art thou?

4) Thor vs Loki

The Fighters:

• Thor, now fully re-powered and back home. Played by Chris Hemsworth.
  • Armed with: Mjolnir
• Loki, now assuming the role of king of Asgard. Played by Tom Hiddleston.
  • Armed with: Gungnir, the “Spear of Heaven.” Also made of uru metal, and Odin’s personal weapon. At least a match for Mjolnir, though nobody does anything with it in this movie beyond just firing energy blasts.

The Setup: Thor would have words with his brother over the whole “you sent a magic robot to kill me” thing, and gets Heimdall to whisk him back to Asgard. Meanwhile, Loki has allowed a small contingent of frost giants into the kingdom and led them straight to the slumbering Odin, but, aha, triple cross: Loki spear-zaps Laufey (his biological father) at the last second, just barely stopping him from killing the All-Father. The whole thing was a trap on Loki’s part so that he could come out the hero and make Odin proud.

Thor arrives just after that, and starts blabbing about all of Loki’s machinations in front of Frigga. They could shake hands to settle their differences, but as Chris Farley almost said, brothers don’t shake hands– brothers gotta fight!

The Fight: Loki opens strong by blasting Thor right out of the tower, but rather than sticking around to finish Thor off he decides to jet away and set the Bifrost to destroy Jotunheim. This is dumb on multiple fronts: first off, tend to one problem at a time, buddy. Second, destroying Jotunheim was only part of his plan to come off as the hero after fending off Laufey’s assassination attempt; now that Frigga, Thor and a sleeping Odin (he can see what happens while in the Odinsleep) are all aware of his villainy, this part of the plan seems rather extant. Also, I think it’s a bit of movie-invented, convenient lore for the Bifrost (the rainbow bridge that connects Asgard to the other Nine Realms) to be capable of destroying whole worlds– why is their transportation system also a Death Star?

Thor flies across the bridge and catches up to Loki in the control room, even though the destruction has already begun. They talk some more, with the reformed Thor trying to reason with his brother– at one point he says, “This is madness!” to which Loki shows remarkable restraint by not replying in Internet meme-ready fashion. After Loki makes a threat against Jane, though, his bro finally comes at him.

The short hammer vs spear choreography is a little interesting. Mostly ground-based, with a few neat moves, including Loki spinning on the vertical spear like a stripper and using the momentum to kick Thor. Still a bit too short and none too spectacular, even if the weight of the fight goes a long way to sell the high power levels involved here.

It’s not long before Thor knocks the villain through the wall and out onto the pulsing Bifrost. Loki pulls his disappearing act trick again, and makes a couple dozen copies of himself to ambush Thor with. His buffer brother zaps them all away with a lightning strike, leaving the original Loki stunned. Then Thor pulls what is my favorite stunt of the whole fight: he keeps Loki from moving by placing Mjolnir, which Loki is physically incapable of moving, on top of his brother’s chest. It’s so brilliantly simple, and actually kind of hilarious.

By now the control room is too flooded with overwhelming energy for Thor to get back to, so he takes the Gordian Knot approach and recalls Mjolnir so he can use it to hit the bridge really hard until it breaks (this is said to be emotionally difficult for Thor, since the Bifrost is ostensibly the only way to leave Asgard, and without it Thor won’t be able to see Jane again). Loki eventually recovers and nearly skewers Thor with Gungnir, but once again Odin puts the “deus” in deus ex machina, arriving to save the day. He holds both his sons over the broken bridge, but when Loki sees daddy’s disapproving eyes, he lets go and falls into the space-like cosmos below. Thor bellows in sadness at his brother’s “death”, and it’s sort of weird that he doesn’t try to swoop down and save him, since he can, you know, fly. Too bad, since I’m sure Thanos is not the most cheerful company; “death” this, “conquest” that, blah blah blah.

Out of all the movie’s fights, this climactic battle is probably the least action-packed of the bunch. There’s certainly cosmic energy aplenty and a few neat moves, but the actual combat between hero & villain is brief & halting. Accepting the premise involves swallowing a few questionable plot/character elements, and the conclusion is not terribly satisfactory. I am inclined to be generous due to the high Thor content, but only so much.

[As a side note, I discovered when doing Google Images Searches for pics to use in this article that there is an alarming amount of drawings of Thor & Loki kissing each other. VERY alarming.]

Grade: B-

Recommended Links: The new teaser trailer for the movie’s sequel Thor: The Dark World, in which stuff vaguely happens and Loki’s hair grows even longer. Those dark elves won’t know what hit them (though by process of elimination they could probably guess it was Mjolnir).

Coming Attractions: A surprising change of pace and content.

wtf

A video game fight?!

“What manner of poppycock is this?!”

Bear with me. This is educational. The game is a masterpiece of the medium and very instructional as to how it can tell interactive, immersive stories.

Samus Aran vs Mother Brain

The Fighters:

• Samus Aran, the player’s avatar in this digital dungeon. Intergalactic bounty hunter and scourge of the Metroid series’ villainous Space Pirates. Though this is the third entry in the franchise, in the original NES game the fact that she was a woman was a shocking twist ending. You kids today don’t know how good you have it, with your Lara Crofts and your Buffys and your Jennifer Garners. Samus is hardcore. Played by nothing but bits and bytes.
  • Armed with: What isn’t she armed with? Samus is athletic, tactically brilliant, and infused with alien DNA, but her true weapon is her Power Suit. A piece of amazing technological armor that would make even the Destroyer run & hide, the upgradeable suit is kitted out with varying different types of blasters (including a freeze beam), missiles, bombs, an electric grappling hook, an X-ray scope, boots that can boost her run into a blur or send her jumping fifty feet in the air, the ability to roll her entire body into a compact sphere, and finally a deadly “screw attack” which transforms her spinning leaps into a whirling dervish of destructive energy. A few of these Samus starts out with but the rest she (aka you, the player) must obtain and upgrade during her quest through  the alien planet Zebes. I question the bad guys’ not-so-bright idea to build their lair around a bunch of power-ups that will make their most hated adversary even MORE deadly, but that’s video game villains for you.
• The Mother Brain, a sentient, biomechanical A.I. who leads the Space Pirates. She was the villain of the original Metroid game from the 80s, and hasn’t been seen since Samus vanquished her then. At that time she was literally just a big stationary brain in a jar, but now she is… considerably more. Played by 16 bits of of ugly colors and screeching sounds.
  • Armed with: A giant cyborg body not unlike like that of a T-Rex. Fires a number of different bombs and energy blasts, the most powerful of which is an undodgeable beam from her eye.

The Setup: As I said, Super Metroid for the SNES (generally agreed to be the peak of the Metroid series), is a marvel of simple, efficient, non-verbal storytelling. The game features a brief voiceover followed by a textual prologue providing the exposition (i.e., the events of the previous two games) but other than that is free of any pesky words until the final credits roll. This is helped enormously by the fact that Samus, behind her impassive armor, is largely a cypher, better allowing the player to immersively place themselves in her boots.

Hey girl

This serves the gameplay very well. Unlike modern games, which tend to spell out your objectives and instructions in the most explicit way possible, Super Metroid plops Samus onto an enormous world with virtually no assistance, and makes the player figure things out organically.

This is best executed in the game’s climactic fight, and the lead-up to it. Ask ten serious video game veterans to list their favorite game ending sequences, and nine of them will include Super Metroid. The impetus for the game is Samus returning to her old stomping grounds on the baddie-infested Planet Zebes to track down the last remaining Metroid– the titular space predator she’d spent the last two games eradicating, as the series’ recurring Space Pirate antagonists had been using them as weapons (Metroids are a kind of creepy, hard-to-kill, flying jellyfish that can latch onto a victim and rapidly drain its life force away). The end of the second game saw Samus finding the last baby Metroid but sparing its life, because when it hatched the innocent creature “imprinted” on her as its mother. Samus turned it over to some scientists to study its unique life-giving properties (most Metroids only destroy) but it was shortly stolen by the pirates and taken back to Zebes.

As Samus slowly conquers the pirates’ army she works her way into the bowels of Zebes, and, eventually facing a gauntlet of powerful Metroids as she approaches the leader’s lair, you realize the pirates have successfully cloned stock from that stolen hatchling. Going deeper, Samus/the player goes through an eerily quiet hallway full of what seem to be creepy statues of many of the game’s common bad guys. The statues crumble into dust at a touch, and the farther you go the bigger they get. In the next room you are approached by a particularly large & live enemy, but before it can touch you, a HUGE Metroid appears, latches onto it, and quickly drains the holy hell out of it, leaving it a dried-out husk identical to the dozen “statues” outside.

This is the nasty beast responsible for the strange decorations, and when it turns its attention on Samus there’s little she can do (this is not a passive cinematic cut scene; the player has autonomy, but will inevitably be overwhelmed) before it latches onto her and starts draining her life force as well. But just before it can finish her off, the creature pauses and lets her go. Its predatory screeches turn into a plaintive wail, and between that and its erratic body language (it hovers about, obviously confused and unsure), the player can only conclude that this mega Metroid must be the original hatchling who loved her, raised in captivity by the Space Pirates to be the ultimate weapon but now having second thoughts upon encountering its benevolent “mother.” It flies away in confusion, leaving Samus to replenish herself and head deeper.

Soon after, Samus faces down her old nemesis, the Mother Brain.

The Fight: At first the fight plays out like a repeat of Samus’ original 8-bit adventure: Samus travels through the last gauntlet of barriers & enemies and finds the Brain sitting in a glass jar, leaving her to pump missiles into the motionless gray matter while dodging small arms fire from the defense systems. But just when it seems that fight’s won, the “defeated” Brain rises from its proverbial ashes and shows off its new upgrades:

Now I note here that Metroid games are quasi-RPGish. At the end of each game, Samus is vastly more powerful and possesses a more diverse skill set than when she started it out; this is largely accomplished in small increments as you either come across or discover (some are quite hard to reach or well-hidden) power-ups that increase your health meter or missile count gradually.

But no matter HOW well you’ve stocked up & beefed out before entering Mother Brain’s chamber, you won’t beat her, you can’t beat her. She takes damage from your weapons– you can empty your entire arsenal into her pulsing face– but it’s never enough. Eventually in the fight the villain unleashes that undodgeable beam attack that pins Samus against the wall, depletes almost all of her health and leaves her essentially paralyzed. As Mother Brain charges up a second beam to finish Samus off, the Metroid hatchling dramatically swoops in and clamps onto the villain’s head, rebelling against its new master by stopping the attack cold and draining HER of energy.

Leaving Mamma Brain a seeming husk, the Metroid then envelops Samus and slowly fills the player’s life bar. As this happens, the villain’s body begins to gradually rejuvenate, her color floods back and she rises, weakened but seriously pissed off. But since Samus is still wobbly, the Metroid can only use its own body as a shield for her, visibly weakening as it absorbs multiple attacks from the Brain. Finally the Metroid floats up and tries to tackle Mother Brain once again, but is dramatically cut down in mid-flight. It cries out in pain, the music halts, and the hatchling falls crumbling onto Samus… and in the process, Samus’ bio-suit absorbs the Metroid’s dying body and becomes infused with its energy.

The music changes to a triumphant swell (it’s actually re-purposed background music from near the beginning of the game; the epic percussion meant to drive home the magnificent size of the opening areas now instead celebrates Samus’ own increased power) and the heroine stands up, ready for round two. Her primary weapon has now been replaced with a devastating beam (if you pause to look at your stats you’ll see it’s called the “Hyper”) that causes her body to glow with every discharge. The tormentor has now become the prey: the villain is helpless against your newfound strength, her head reeling back with every shot– if you time it right, you can even stun juggle Mother Brain to keep her from even getting off a single shot, and the whole thing’s over in about a minute or so. This is no longer a battle, it’s punishment. The Brain is quickly dispatched and Samus has to make her escape from the pirates’ imploding fortress.

Without a word of dialogue the game’s final minutes tell a simple yet highly effective & immersive story of family, redemption, sacrifice and revenge. It is one of a kind.

I am tempted to give it lower marks for the back & forth power imbalance (as far as pure combat goes, the fight against sub-boss Ridley is much more frantic & exciting), but somehow the same element that made Thor’s penultimate battle so disappointing does the opposite here. Maybe it’s the storytelling, maybe it’s the element of experiencing it through the protagonist’s shoes. I don’t know, but it works for me on every level.

Grade: A+

Recommended Links: The whole battle.

An excellent commentary on this game’s fantastic world in the form of a speed run/Let’s Play hosted by Super Metroid savant Brick Road

Coming Attractions: The Duke rolls his eyes at my silly nerd obsessions.

“Yer tellin’ me that idiot wrote 1700 words about a video game?! He oughta be glad I’m dead ’cause otherwise I’d kick his ass on principle, pilgrim.”

Going old school for this one.

Respect.

The Quiet Man! One of masterpiece-factory John Ford’s many great hits, and a labor of love for all involved. If you’re the kind of youngling whose idea of “classic” movies doesn’t get much older than The Goonies, you might remember it as the film playing on TV that E.T. watches during a kissing scene and telepathically inspires Elliot to act out.

If you haven’t seen it, walk away from your browsing device right now and go watch it. Not just because I’m going to spoil the crap out of it, but because it’s wonderful. You do yourself a disservice by not seeing this film.

Okay, you back?

1) Sean Thornton vs Will Danagher

The Fighters:

• Sean “Trooper Thorn” Thornton, the titular man of quietness. A wealthy American and former boxer who retired after inadvertently killing his opponent in the ring. Played by JOHN FREAKING WAYNE
  • Armed with: Naught but his fists and wits
• Squire “Red” William Danagher, Sean’s social rival and brother-in-law. An irascible, surly slab of beef, he’s technically the film’s antagonist but not truly a bad guy. Played by Victor McLaglen.
  • Armed with: “A tremendous right and a jaw of granite” according to one character. At least the second half of that’s true, because it’s Danagher who absorbs by far the majority of the blows.

The Setup: The setup to this fight is basically the whole plot of the film, so bear with me. In order to deal with the tragedy he inflicted, Thornton has returned to his family’s ancestral home in the tiny, traditional town of Innisfree. There he rather understandably falls in love with tempestuous redhead spinster Mary Kate Danagher (Maureen O’Hara, doing what she did best), but clashes with her brother, Will.

A traditional Irish handshake.

[The film couldn't get made today, and not just in the "eh they don't make 'em like they used ta!" sense. An outsider arrives at an isolated European community where his straightforward ideas clash with their funny old traditions and the lesson is that he has to adapt to them? Unthinkable! This movie is the reverse-Chocolat.

Many professional feminists would howl about the gender roles, dowry, etc., though if they really paid attention they would notice that it's the woman who ultimately controls the outcome of the film's greatest struggle; she successfully persuades her man to change, not the other way around.]

Mostly through the machinations of the friendly townsfolk, William does begrudgingly allow Sean to court and eventually marry his sister, but due to some complications and pride, William ends up starting a fuss at the reception and doesn’t give Mary Kate the traditional dowry (he’s even meaner to his other sister, Ashley).

Though they talk around it endlessly, Sean, a practical American who already has enough money for both of them, can’t see the point of his new wife’s obsession with her mere pittance of a dowry. He doesn’t get that she wants the money not for its value but because it’s hers, and her brother’s refusal to relinquish it is a wound to her pride– a wound she expects her husband to avenge. This is further stymied by Sean’s dark secret (only one other person in the town knows about his boxing past, and, you know, I rather think “I beat a man to death one time” is something you’d tell your wife about at some point), as he is hesitant to use violence again. All this causes a rift in their marriage, just as it’s starting.

When the shame becomes unbearable for Mary Kate, she flees (or at least makes a pretense of fleeing) town, and boards a train at the station not too far away. This is the last straw for Thornton, and he’s finally ready to show the wife who’s boss. She’s the boss, of course, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like a little backbone in her man. Sean demonstrates his newfound sense of purpose & determination by showing up at the station mad as hell, forcibly hauling Mary Kate off the train, and dragging her all the way back to Innisfree. And by dragging, I mean he literally drags her, by the wrist. On foot. Across the Irish countryside. For FIVE MILES. It’s played for laughs, and against all reason, it works. It is the most glorious, hilarious domestic dispute you’ll ever see. Even if you’ve seen The Ref.

“How DARE you do this awesome thing to me!”

Their destination is Danagher farm, where Sean confronts Will and issues the ultimatum he never wanted: give me the dowry or take back your crazy sister. In view of pretty much the entire town (they’ve all been following the family drama and have been spectators to the cross-country abduction for quite some time), Will reluctantly agrees and hands over the money. Sean immediately tosses the cash in a nearby incinerator, with Mary Kate’s gleeful assistance: it was never about the money, it was about her independence and having a husband who stood up for her (not to mention TO her). Will’s had enough of Sean humiliating him and throws a wild roundhouse, which Sean ducks and counters with a punch in Danagher’s sizable gut. Now, the fight the whole town (and the whole audience) has been eagerly awaiting begins!

[Incidentally, Mary Kate leaves at this point, telling Sean that supper will be waiting for him at home. She doesn't need to see the outcome, because she got what she wanted.]

The Fight: They punch.

They punch.

They punch.

They punch some more.

It is amazing.

Pictured: approximately 1/3200th of the punches dispensed that day.

Oh, I’m overselling the simplicity of it, I suppose (and, simultaneously, underselling just how well the simplicity works). Before the fight goes too far it ends up turning into a crazy free-for-all involving the whole village, but one of the craftier townsmen gets everyone’s attention with a few gunshots and tells them all to calm down so they can focus on the main event. Although both sides agree to “Marquis of Queensbury rules” this is immediately followed up with by a kick to Sean’s face, and they get back to business.

It doesn’t just keep going, it keeps moving. The two brawlers take their bare-knuckled exploits all over the countryside: out of the Danagher farm, through the hills, into a river, into the town proper, into the pub, etc. The whole town of onlookers moves along with them, gawking & cheering as a weird sort of living, mobile boxing ring. Ford stages the entire event so masterfully that these traveling fisticuffs never feel forced or unnatural, yet you simultaneously grasp & appreciate the absolutely bonkers nature of what’s going on here.

And what a happy kind of bonkers it is. The music is upbeat, the crowd cheers, and, bizarrely, this is the point in the movie when Thornton and Danagher are the least antagonistic towards each other. In sheer brute force and gleeful mayhem, they’ve forged a connection they could never make in their normal lives. What could be more manly than that?

In fact, the fight takes a breather as it travels in front of the local pub, and the two pugilists agree to break for a drink. As they toast & imbibe, they mutter some trash talk but also express sincere admiration for each other. Until, of course, it comes time to decide who’s going to pay– the argument leads to a beer in the Duke’s face, and a retaliatory punch that sends Will flying through the wall into the street.

The screen then fades to black, and when it cuts back, the sun is setting, Will & Sean are drunkenly ambling back to the Thornton house, arm in arm and singing. It’s a great transition, but if I had any major quibble with this fight, it would be that it ends too abruptly. It’s not completely clear if Sean’s haymaker in the bar is what officially ended the fight or if it continued for a while after. Either way I think it could have stood to linger for a bit longer. And if I had a minor quibble, it would be that Will doesn’t come across too well in the fight; he receives the majority of the hits and almost all the blows he does land are sucker-punches. But, ah well.

As inventive as the traveling nature of the fight is, the actual choreography here is not too complicated, aside from a few neat stunts like Danagher getting decked into a stream. That’s something of a product of the times, however, and not a knock. Besides, this isn’t about complex stunts and brutal beatdowns; this is about standing up for yourself and earning respect. It’s the culmination of an entire movie’s worth of buildup and simmering conflict (remember, this is not an action movie; it’s a comedy-drama-romance with one huge fight at the end). It’s about male bonding, Irish style.

You might say, “Hey, how can you grade this so high when you’ve been harsh before on scenes that work well thematically/narratively but are kind of weak as far as the actual fighting?” Well, I don’t know what to tell you, aside from asking why it’s so important for you to keep a silly movie blogger from being hypocritical (you weirdo). I just know that this fight is joyous, in every frame. It is a beautiful thing in a beautiful movie and we should be honored to have it.

Grade: A

Coming Attractions: We take the red pill.

No, I said the RED pill, pervert.

This movie was kind of a big deal, yeah?

I can see my house from here!

Interesting to go back to it now, with 14 years full of discussion, dissection, influences, knock-offs, jokes and controversial sequels (seriously, the Matrix series would probably be universal fanboy shorthand for “disappointing follow-ups” if George Lucas had never turned to the dark side) having passed. Love it or hate it, it was a landmark movie in countless ways, having brought deeply geeky obsessions like deep sci-fi concepts, fantasy-laden martial arts sequences and Eastern philosophizing to mainstream audiences. Its impacts are still being felt today; if Keanu had never taken the red pill and donned that black leather, would there ever have been an Inception?

A billion gallons of digital ink have already been spilled on the philosophies and construction of The Matrix so I won’t add too many more drops to it here before I get down to business, except to say that what really strikes me now is the movie’s confidence. The Wachowski brothers (before a little carefully-applied surgery and hormone shots made them the Wachowski siblings), on their sophomore filmmaking effort, undertook the massively challenging task of wrapping a number of wacked-out concepts into an entertaining summer blockbuster that was also an R-rated movie based on no existing known property, yet not once does the finished product project anything but absolute self-assurance. It’s that confidence that was a big part of what made so many respond to it.

One of those other important parts, of course, is its bravura action sequence. I’ll be thankfully leaving off on some of those, since a lot of them, such as the lobby fight or Neo’s first encounter with an Agent, are excellent but don’t really constitute what I’m looking for when I’m thinking of “fight scenes.” Fortunately, there’s no shortage of that stuff to work with, either.

1) Trinity vs Unfortunate Cops

The Fighters:

• Trinity, master hacker and soon-to-be love interest. One of the most deadly members of the human resistance. You have to dig pretty deep to find thematic resonance in her name choice (unlike such obvious ones as Neo, Morpheus, Cypher, Bane, etc. So, what, she’s three people in one? Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in her?), so I assume it’s mostly just because it sounds cool. Played by Carrie-Ann Moss.
  • Armed with: nothing but that sick leather outfit. Does anyone know if it’s actually easy to fight in that stuff? It looks tight to me. Is it constricting, or more limber? I really don’t know. After this scene ends we see her with two hand guns but it’s unknown if she took those from the defeated cops, had them but didn’t use them here, or they were with her but out of reach when the fight started.
• Three police officers who got more than they bargained for when their lieutenant sent them to capture Trinity, who is a wanted criminal. No names, but you can think of them as Officer Chest Kick, Officer Face Kick, and Officer Shot, if you want. I bet one of them was just two days from retirement. Played by Bernard Ledger, Robert Simper, and Chris Pattinson, according to IMDB.
  • Armed with: service pistols. And flashlights, I guess.

The Setup: Trinity is cornered in a ratty old building by a large number of police. Rather than awaiting for assistance from the sinister Agents, the officer-in-charge sent in three unlucky chumps to apprehend her. There’s three of them, they get her with her back to the wall, they’re armed and she’s not, so it would seem like she’s screwed here. But as Agent Smith calmly chides the lieutenant who jumped the gun, “Your men are already dead.” The movie immediately cuts back to the dingy room where Trinity has her hands up.

The Fight: Our gal immediately takes advantage the officers’ assumption that she’s cooperating. She whips around at lightning speed and uses a chop to break one of the arms that had been reaching to handcuff her. Then she palms him in the face and leaps into the air to do her signature move, which is apparently called the Double Eagle Kick.

The action slows and stops here, while the camera rotates a couple hundred degrees, showing us a multitude of angles while the heroine is seemingly suspended in mid-air. There’s not much practical purpose to this trick (which I believe was achieved by having a lot of special cameras operating simultaneously, and was originally engineered for a Gap commercial), but stylistically it’s a big deal. It’s the Wachowskis announcing Yes, you are seeing what you’re seeing; what she’s doing should be impossible but for her it’s not; this is deliberate and fun and this is the kind of movie we are making, so get used to it. See what I mean about confidence?

Anyway, the kick lands in the big guy’s chest and sends him flying into the wall, so ouch. Problem is the other two officers had been following procedure and standing at a safe distance, which leaves Trinity vulnerable. She makes up for the distance with one of them by kicking her chair into his face, and while that one’s stunned she dodges the other’s gunfire by running up the wall (making good use of the limited light as she moves) and is able to rapidly get behind & around him. Before he knows what’s happening she seizes control of his gun arm, shoots the other standing officer with his comrade’s weapon, and knocks out the poor guy with a vertical kick that goes so high it hits him right in the face.

She makes fast work of all three of them (the whole thing’s over in less than 25 seconds), a fact further underscored by the quick cut to a ceiling shot of Trinity standing tensely amongst the havoc she has so quickly wreaked. It’s so short I considered not including it, but it’s complex and admirable enough that I felt it merited discussion. Although it’s just an appetizer for what’s to come, this fight works excellently as a statement of intent for the movie. The movie’s action and aesthetic style is spelled out, and plot-wise we learn that Trinity can do seemingly impossible things but as amazing as she is there are other people she’s scared of. In one dense little fight (and the scenes surrounding it) the audience picks up a lot of information. It’s slight yet effective. I like it, but there’s better to come.

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: A fight that’s most non-heinous.

Pop quiz, hotshot.

“I know kung fu.”

Just so we get that line out of the way.

What I wouldn’t give for that chair and a USB headport.

2) Neo vs Morpheus

The Fighters:

• Neo, recently-inducted member of the human resistance and prophesied reincarnation of the man who has complete control of the Matrix. You know that saying “if you believe in yourself, you can do anything”? In the case of Neo within the world of this movie, that’s literally true. Played by Keanu Reeves, who’s a frequent target for jokes but I like the guy.
  • Armed with: downloaded martial arts skills.
• Morpheus, a leader of the resistance, captain of the ship the movie largely takes place on, and Public Enemy #1 for our robot overlords. Played by Cowboy Curtis himself, Laurence Fishburne.
  • Armed with: presumably all the same downloads as Neo has received, but he has the added advantages of being more experienced and, more importantly, having a more flexible mental state that allows him to better bend the rules of his virtual world.

The Setup: Recently freed from the cyber version of Plato’s Cave, Neo is beginning to adjust to his life, and (in a rather fun sequence) his mind has taken quite well to all its combat updates. Eager to try out his new mad skills, Neo enters a virtual sparring program with Morpheus, which takes on the appearance of a traditional dojo/gym. The program has rules similar to that of the Matrix and, as he advises his student, like any other computer program its “rules” (and therefore the reality they govern) can be tinkered with. He challenges Neo to hit him, if he can.

The Fight: It starts out a little silly, actually, and in a way that’s so over the top I must assume silliness was the intended effect. Both fighters assume exaggerated, cheesy poses, and Don Davis’ musical score trots out some very cliched Eastern drums & cymbal clashes for the first several blows. This adds some levity to the early proceedings, effectively loosening the audience up before reeling them in for what’s going to be a genuinely exhilarating fight. By consciously invoking the well-known tropes of corny kung fu flicks, the filmmakers establish a familiar base, and build from there.

Even their first, brief pass demonstrates a commitment to elaborate, focused choreography… and no small wonder, since the Wachowskis enlisted legendary choreographer Yuen Woo Ping (he had worked for decades in Hong Kong action films and would go on to make the magic happen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to stage their fight scenes. Each series of blows, swings and blocks is intense, fast and complex. Also, here even more so than in the opening fight with Trinity, almost every striking limb is accompanied by a melodramatic whoosh or swish on the soundtrack. It’s cheesy as all get-out, but it works excellently in selling the kinetic power of the fights, and unlike a lot of other movies’ indulging of similar artistic license (say, for example, the way every Indiana Jones punch sounds louder than a watermelon exploding on pavement after being dropped from the tenth floor), it has a sort of in-world justification. The Matrix and its similar programs are quite literally fake, so some aesthetic liberties being taken underscores the world’s inherent artificiality; note that none of these liberties are exercised in the film’s drab, grimy, “real” world.

Neo acts a bit cocky after the first round and drops his faux Eastern discipline for some showboaty hopping & grinning. His puppy dog enthusiasm may be infectious to the audience, but Morpheus remains all business and merely beckons him on, leading to a hand gesture that’s just one of the many things this movie indelibly imprinted on pop culture:

For their second exchange, you can see that Neo is starting to enjoy his newfound skills and the digital playground he uses them in. He opens up with an impossibly high jump during which he launches three consecutive kicks (the wire work here is subtle), and the tempo of the battle increases slightly. But he still can’t hit Morpheus, all of his blows either missing or being blocked. Morpheus ends this round with a distinctive move where he intercepts one of his Neo’s kicks and uses his foot to spin him like a corkscrew, sending him to the ground. Morpheus briefly compliments & encourages his protege, and from there things pick up significantly.

Neo lays back into Morpheus with renewed determination, and when the music abruptly picks up again, it’s no longer the stuff of cheesy kung fu flicks but a more distinctive & hyperactive techno beat, very much in keeping with the movie’s own unique (at the time) style. We quickly cut away from the match to back on the real world of the ship, where supporting player Mouse finds the rest of his comrades in the mess hall and excitedly blurts out “Morpheus is fightin’ Neo!” and they all frantically rush to join in (they’ll continue to spectate the rest of the fight, but not intrusively so). On the one hand it’s quite reasonable for them to be intrigued at watching the new & promising recruit test his skills against the veteran, but what makes the moment work is the more raw, giddy, immature side of it. It’s very… schoolyard– kids eager to see if the new scary student from out of town can beat up the resident alpha male. The characters’ excitement is so palpable that it extends to the viewer. Such a small & simple moment, yet it accomplishes so much.

The moves get even crazier. Not just punches & kicks but all sorts of intricate blocks, last-minute dodges, flips, fancy footwork meant to trip the other, etc. The camera moves around dynamically but not distractingly, tracking the fighters as they take Bruce Dickinson’s advice to heart and really explore the dojo space.

Neo still can’t land a hit on his teacher, though. Morpheus even mixes things up a bit by launching himself hiiiiigh into the air (lots of slow-mo and everything) to come down with a crashing knee which Neo barely dodges.

They clash some more, and Neo tries a similar aerial trick by running straight up a support beam and trying to back-flip behind his opponent. Morpheus is more than ready for it, though, and kicks Neo but good as soon as he lands. He takes this opportunity to ask the downed newbie some illuminating questions, reminding him that physical strength takes a backseat to willpower when you’re plugged into the machine. Even ostensibly vital functions like breathing are just vestigial habits within its boundaries, and clinging to such physical limits will only tie you down. (In a nice touch, from this point on neither of the two are shown to visibly breathe or pant while in this program.)

This begins yet a third distinct portion of the fight, and the music changes up to match it, switching to a rapidly escalating tune connoting excitement & potential. Neo noticeably steps up his game with more ferocious moves and Morpheus continues his Yoda routine, dropping little nuggets of Zen wisdom and encouragement at every turn.

“Stop trying to hit me, and kiss me! Um, I meant HIT me! I meant to say ‘hit’ both times!”

This seems to do the trick and soon Neo’s skills are more crazy than ever. Eventually he’s moving so fast his fists blur like a Super Saiyan:

One of those groovy punches halts less than an inch from Morpheus’ surprised face. He doesn’t hit him, but he could have, if he’d wanted. Probably. He seems almost apprehensive, muttering “I know what you’re trying to do….” The fight ends the only way it can, because Neo is full of potential but, as we will soon learn, is scared about what assuming his destiny could mean. As such the excitement slowly built up throughout the training session doesn’t explode or release, but just bottles up, to be used for later.

What else can I say? This scene’s got it all. Fantastic choreography, excellent camera work, believable acting/stunts, fun music, a brisk pace, smart escalation, and the whole thing plays excellently as characterization for both participants. Unfortunately none of the remaining fights fire on as many cylinders as this one, but we’ll get there.

Grade: A

Recommended Links: It’s become known lately that Keanu Reeves is a genuinely, in fact shockingly, kind & humble human being. Reddit collected a lot of first-hand stories of his unexpected generosity.

He may also be immortal, so there’s that.

On a somewhat less mature note, here is a bunch of scenes from the movie with farts added in. You think that’s air you’re breathing now?

Coming Attractions: Morpheus has the second-worst bathroom encounter of his life. (The first being when he stumbled into the one frequented by the trucker called “Sea Bass.”)

That one went kinda like this, too.

In which things go poorly for Bald Yoda.

I do the same thing whenever I see a spider.

3) Morpheus vs Agent Smith

The Fighters:

• Morpheus, a leader of the human resistance whose crazy Matrix skills have already been well-established. Played by Laurence Fishburne.
  • Armed with: Nothing.
• Agent Smith, the point man for the trio of hunter/killer programs who take care of “problems” within the digital world. All these A.I.s are sentient but Smith seems to have the most personality of the three, which manifests itself in a personal animosity against humans and the gleefulness he takes in rubbing them out. Played by Hugo Weaving, in a performance that instantly catapulted him from little-known cult actor to permanent Geek Royalty.
  • Armed with: presumably he has the pistol that all agents manifest with, but he doesn’t use it here. He doesn’t need to.

The Setup: Morpheus & crew are returning from a visit to the Oracle, but end up on the run after being betrayed by one of their own, Cypher (oh, if only he’d clued them into his devious nature, perhaps by picking a name that signaled his intentions were less than transparent!). They’re sneaking through the walls of a hotel when their lead pursuer gets too close, prompting Morpheus to take one for their team so that the rest (especially Neo, whose potential Morpheus is fanatically devoted to) have time to escape. I must say his roar of determination when he smashes through the wall to meet his presumed destiny is quite impressive. He’s left alone with Agent Smith in a bathroom that’s small for a fighting arena but actually quite spacious as a bathroom.

For all they’ve been seen & discussed throughout the movie, this is the most we’ve seen of an Agent so far. The threat of them has been both implicit (Trinity is clearly terrified of them in the opening scene) and explicit (Morpheus flat-out declares that not one human has ever successfully faced down an Agent), but now it’s time to show rather than tell. And how.

The Fight: Hero & villain exchange some tough-guy banter and introduce themselves. “You all look the same to me,” Morpheus growls quasi-racistly after hearing that this agent’s name is Smith. He opens with a headbutt that breaks Smith’s cool guy sunglasses (I believe this is the first time the audience sees Weaving without them, and let’s face it, he’s sort of a weird-looking guy), but Smith counters with several of his own, and ends with a punch that sends Morpheus flying up and into the wall. The Wachowskis use the camera angle to play a simple yet neat perspective trick here– the whole time the two combatants were talking they’d been shot vertically so you get the impression Morpheus was pinning his foe to the wall rather than laying atop him on the ground. When the perspective shifts just as the hero gets launched backward (against the wall the toilet’s attached to), it’s very jarring. Aside from being cool, the effect adds to the disorientation and helplessness the audience is meant to feel on Morpheus’ behalf. He’s out of his element here. (Increasing the creepy factor, Smith rises to his feet in a very unnatural way, without using his arms or any particular momentum; he just kind of rotates 180 degrees completely on his heels.)

Indeed, the fight goes terribly for Morpheus. Many of his blows don’t land, and the ones that do seem to cause Smith only a slight annoyance at best. Meanwhile the resistance leader takes a real clobbering here, absorbing repeated blows and getting tossed into things, including a particularly painful-looking bang to the head on the toilet during a fall. As great as the Wachowskis made Morpheus out to be earlier, he’s spared no dignity here. It’s brutal. I must say that Fishburne sells it all like a champ, showing equal parts pain & determination as he gets covered in plaster and knocked around like a ragdoll. Weaving meanwhile plays it all utterly untroubled, his movements not graceful so much as they are ruthlessly efficient.

With one final crash on the ground, Smith can tell his enemy has been so suitably subdued he doesn’t even need to finish the job. He walks away in disgust and leaves a squad of riot cops to detain poor Morpheus.

It’s not an epic battle but, as the refrain goes, it’s not meant to be; it’s quick, dirty, and mean. Morpheus knowingly bites off more than he can chew, and pays the price for it. All at once the scene conveys Morpheus’ devotion to the cause, the staggering power of the enemy, and the desperate circumstances the remaining heroes are left in.

Grade: B

Recommended Links: Agent Smith has popped up on your screens again lately, as the Wachowskis have licensed the character (played by Weaving) to appear in ads touting General Electric’s medical technology. Because nothing says “edgy transgressive filmmakers who love stories about upending the dominant power structure” like using your creation to shill for an enormous multinational corporation that’s notoriously cozy with the U.S. government.

Coming Attractions: “My name… is NEO!”

Neo Patrick Harris?

think again buddy

4) Neo vs Agent Smith

The Fighters:

• Neo, the prophesied savior of blah blah blah etc. Much less whiny and unsure than before– paradoxically, this is because, not in spite, of the phony reveal from the Oracle that he’s not The One. Since destiny was not going to make him an amazing hero, he had to make himself one… and Morpheus’ capture necessitated him getting to that lickety split. Played by Keanu Reeves.
  • Armed with: a handgun.
• Agent Smith, leader of the Matrix’s evil Agent trio. Even without backup he’s more than sufficient to be a deadly threat, as we learned last time.
  • Armed with: also a handgun.

The Setup: Neo & Trinity have successfully saved Morpheus from capture/interrogation, and made their way to an “exit”  from the virtual world– a land line phone in a quiet subway station. Morpheus exits first, but the group’s antics are witnessed by the only other person in the station, an old homeless man. All humans still connected to the Matrix via the machines’ breeding farms can act as unwitting sleeper agents for its cyber enforcers, so when this unfortunate derelict witnesses Morpheus’ disappearing act, he’s overtaken by Agent Smith. The two lovebirds dawdle for so long that Smith has plenty of time to materialize, get his bearings, and take aim at Trinity, who disappears just in time to avoid the bullet that disables the pay phone. Neo is left alone against his most powerful enemy.

The hero contemplates the stairs behind him, but he makes a conscious choice to face Smith head-on rather than make a run for it. Watching at the monitors in reality, Trinity is worried but Morpheus is excited at Neo seemingly ready to embrace his potential. Back in the cyber world, the Wachowskis prep the viewer for the impending clash, overtly using the cinematic language of classic Westerns just as surely as they invoked chop-socky flicks during the training fight: there’s a cheesy musical riff, a dirty newspaper blows across the screen in lieu of a tumbleweed, and mirroring low shots of hero & villain as they stare each other down. Showdown time, pilgrim.

The Fight: Fittingly, considering the Western homage, the two first draw their guns and open fire. Both miss, but they continue to shoot, while also dodging the other’s shots and zig-zagging towards each other. Then they leap in the air and this happens:

The Wachowskis do their by-now-patented slow-mo/rotation thing as the two combatants wrestle & fire in mid-air. All rounds just barely miss and the two fall to the ground, both guns empty. They rise and things get more physical. (No, not THAT way, perv. Go back to your slash fiction.)

Several things are clear early on: Neo is not just better than he was before but also fares even better than Morpheus did against Smith. Smith however is still clearly superior– stronger, faster, and most importantly, being a machine he cannot really feel pain or tire. While neither fighter is really “there,” the blows Neo receives are still wearing down his physical body, whereas each hit that lands on Smith merely staggers him briefly.

Even without that endurance, Smith’s raw power is tremendous; as with the previous fight we get some intimidating shots of Smith punching holes right through hardened brick & plaster. One especially strong blow sends Neo flying back a dozen feet and landing face first. He coughs up blood in both the real and virtual worlds, but marshals his remaining strength and remains defiant, repeating Morpheus’ cocky little taunting gesture, which actually seems to piss off the machine even more.

Neo’s determination is amazing and he presses the frustrated Smith back (his little triple-kick trick actually works this time and he manages to turn a stopped punch into a throat jab), but he is still only human, so Smith is ably to quickly whittle his resistance down. Things get even worse for the hero when he’s pinned against the wall by Smith and pummeled by his 100 mph fists.

Neo’s left too weak to fight back, so when Smith hears an approaching subway train he thinks of a sadistic way to finish off the would-be savior, and takes him down to the tracks. Holding him down as the train draws closer, Smith sinisterly lectures “Mister Anderson” about the inevitability of his death. This shoddy treatment inspires the hero to summon up a last surge of strength, which he uses to leap upwards into the ceiling and dislodge himself from Smith’s grip. He then jumps off the tracks just in time to watch the evil program get flattened by the oncoming train. His name is Neo, jerk.

Good stuff here. The setting is used well, playing on both the plausible isolation as well as the fortuitous presence of trains as a game-changer. As stated previously the choreography (and the actors’ performances) make the power dynamic abundantly clear, though things are not so lopsided as to be a complete beatdown. You can almost feel Neo growing stronger and inching toward his destiny as the fight unfolds. It’s still not enough to stop his implacable foe, but that only serves to set up satisfaction of the power-reversal of their final showdown.

From an entertainment perspective there are limited thrills in watching someone fight a guy who’s basically a brick wall (this fight is certainly less fun and joyful than Neo’s epic sparring session), but it helps that this plays very well into the narrative and character work. Similarly, it’s a little unsatisfying that Neo wins via what’s essentially a cheat. But you can look at it another way and conclude that the hero triumphs through a combination of skill, willpower, and sheer luck; what could be more “human” than that?

[As you probably guessed from the title this is the last of the entries on the first Matrix. The climactic rematch between Neo & Smith is barely even a fight, as it lasts only a few seconds and is utterly effortless on Neo's part. Good stuff but not worth grading. Goodbye for now, The Matrix.]

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: Bossanova!

… Chevy Nova?

This is not a “great” movie. It is, however, a movie that is far greater than it has any right to be.

The Ninja Turtles were originally born quite literally out of a drunken late-night joke-doodle that got turned into a one-shot indie comic (which satirized a lot of then-popular comic series, especially Frank Miller’s Daredevil), later expanded into a gritty pulp series and exploded into popularity thanks to a rather crappy kids’ cartoon. The franchise’s cinematic debut was a low-budget indie with no big stars and had stunt men doing martial arts moves in ungainly costumes; the fact that it ended up being a reasonably entertaining, mostly non-insulting movie that is surprisingly re-watchable and even makes a serious effort at genuine themes & characterization… that’s not just impressive, that’s miraculous.

And all this in the service of a concept that is frankly absurd. Wonderfully absurd, but absurd nonetheless. This makes writing about it even quasi-seriously a weird endeavor, so bear with me.

Also, I love this movie, turtle warts and all. I saw it four times in the theater when I was nine and probably about a hundred more in all the years since. I will try to be  as objective as I can, but keep in mind that if you don’t like this movie then you’re terrible and I hate you.

[Note: The earlier fights of Casey vs Raph and Raph blitzing a handful of Foot in the subway station won't count, as they are too halting/comedic and too brief, respectively.]

1) TMNT and Casey Jones vs Foot Clan (round one)

The Fighters:

• Leonardo, de facto field leader of the Turtles, the most responsible and probably the most skilled. Played by David Forman and voiced by Brian Tochi.
  • Armed with: dual katanas. Sometimes called “ninjato” a ninja-like variation of the katana, but those are not a real thing, so I’m calling them katanas.
• Raphael, the strongest and moodiest of the quartet. Also the only one with an identifiable New York accent. Played by Josh Pais both physically and vocally.
  • Armed with: dual sais, meant for stabbing and sword-breaking. Not much use to him here.
• Michelangelo, most unfocused and humorous of the brothers. Being the most overtly comedic he was the favorite of pretty much every child back in the day, but as you grow up you tire of Mikey’s showy antics, and pick a different favorite turtle. (Which, if you’re awesome, is Donatello.) Played by Michelan Sisti and voiced by Robbie Rist.
  • Armed with: dual nunchaku, aka “nunchucks” if you’re in a hurry or under twelve. The weapon’s popularity can largely be attributed to pop culture; prior to the movies, real soldiers and martial artists would rarely use them, as they’re impractical and nearly as dangerous to the user as they are to his opponent.
• Donatello, the smartest and most laid back of the Turtles. Though he’s not as silly as Michelangelo he spends much time bonding with him, so as to not get caught up in the eternal Leo/Raph melodrama. Played by Leif Tilden and voiced by Corey Feldman, of all people.
  • Armed with: a single wooden bo staff.
• Casey Jones, a one-time professional hockey player turned sports-themed vigilante. Sort of frenemies with Raphael, since the two clashed earlier in the film over Casey going too far in beating up a couple purse-snatchers. Easily the second most awesome movie character to sport a hockey mask. Played by Elias Koteas, who’s a delight.
  • Armed with: he normally carries all sorts of sporting equipment but here he limits himself to just his favorite weapon, a wooden hockey stick.
• Foot Ninjas, several dozen of them. Though a few might be more veteran warriors brought over from the old country, the majority are likely teenagers who have been taught just enough karate to be a nuisance. Against the Turtles (who have trained their entire lives) they’re basically cannon fodder, but troublesome in large numbers. They’re led by Shredder’s second-in-command, Master Tatsu (Toshishiro Obata), if your definition of “leading” means grunting a lot and occasionally saying “Attack!” (Still a better leader than most politicians, HEY-O)
  • Armed with: all manner of weapons including swords, nunchaku, clubs, and axes.

The Turtles’ friend and frequent rescuee April O’Neil (Judith Hoag) is also present, though she doesn’t factor much in the fight either way– she just passively guards Raph’s unconscious body with a stick.

“I’m contributing!”

The Setup: Ever since Raphael made the rather un-ninja-ly mistake of letting himself be followed back to the Turtles’ hideout, the foursome have been hiding out at April’s loft apartment (directly above an old antique shop that belonged to her family) and trying to figure out where their master/father figure Splinter has been taken.

Unfortunately, Danny, April’s boss’ son and a soulless backstabbing ginger, has sold out the Turtles’ location to the Foot Clan. They pick the right moment to strike (or maybe not, since it’s broad daylight), first converging on Raphael as he stalks alone on the rooftop, having a temper tantrum.

The Fight: Starts out slow, but builds to a crescendo. First we see Raphael pouting on the roof (as does Casey, fiddling with a police scanner atop a neighboring building) unknowingly being surrounded by Foot soldiers– again, Raph’s skills of detection and evasion are most definitely not up to ninja snuff. There’s a lot of cross-cutting between the fight that ensues against April talking with the turtles downstairs, the latter group unfortunately ignorant of Raph’s circumstances.

This provides opportunity for a lot of attempts at humorous mash-ups between the other protagonists innocent dialogue against things happening to Raphael (e.g., Don saying “He does this all the time. He likes it!” just before we see Raph getting painfully dragged down stone stairs, Michelangelo scaring Leonardo with clashing cymbals just as a Foot ninja double-punches Raph’s head in a similar motion, etc). Your personal affection for this will vary depending on your patience for such visual punning, but you have to at least admit it’s a good way to leaven the surprising brutality of what’s actually happening; remember, this is supposed to be a kids‘ movie, and most kids’ movies don’t have scenes where fifty people beat the hero into a coma.

Despite losing his sais early on (we see them get tossed off the roof in slow-mo. Curiously, he fights unarmed, not even trying to pick up any downed Foot soldier’s weapon), Raph puts up a good fight at first, so effortlessly overpowering his attackers that he feels cocky enough to quip “I get it, you guys must be studying from the Abridged Book of Ninja Fighting!” which is one of several jokes in this movie I didn’t understand when I was first saw it. However, the Foot’s ever-increasing numbers quickly close the skill gap, and things get worse for the moodiest turtle.

Zerg rush

This ends with Raphael being tossed through a skylight (just as Donatello says his brother should “drop in” in any moment now, yuk yuk), barely alive. In the brief face-off between the remaining turtles and the small army surrounding them, Michelangelo puts aside the many worries he should be attending to (including his nearly dead brother) and takes a minute to have a showoff contest with a nunchaku-wielding Foot solider. I suppose the gag might have been intended as a way to lull the bad guys into complacency, because it leads immediately to Donatello vaulting into action like a boss and wailing on bad guys’ faces.

From here the fight is a strange mix of silly antics and crushing odds. The turtles are clearly superior fighters but as with what happened to Raph, the Foot’s numbers (especially in such enclosed terrain) gradually overwhelm them, so nearly every sequence of one of the heroes dishing out punishment is capped by him getting subsequently blindsided or surrounded. And there are a lot of gags involved, mostly using the furniture of April’s apartment and, later, the knickknacks in her family’s old shop: Leo grabs onto a bicycle hanging from the ceiling and kicks opponents while suspended in the air, Mike grabs those cymbals again and claps them against a Foot ninja’s ears, etc. I suppose that as with the cross-cutting during Raph’s beating this is used to lighten up the desperate circumstances for viewers, but the heroes are facing inevitable defeat and their brother is comatose in the corner; the cockiness is unwarranted and the playfulness is inappropriate. Whistling in the dark only goes so far.

On a similar note, this is where the movie first encounters one of its main obstacles: it’s a children’s movie and therefore almost nobody should ever get killed or maimed, yet at least two of the turtles use weapons that are designed for lethality. The sequel got around this problem by having the heroes almost never use their weapons, and the 80s cartoon dodged it by making all the Foot ninjas into (sigh) robots. This movie handles the paradox by having Leo & Raph use their cutty/stabby implements mainly to block opponents’ weapons or force them to dodge; the main damage they dish out comes from their fists & feet. It mostly works (though the movie still received some knocks for its relatively excessive violence, including from turtle-suit designer Jim Henson). And it leads to what’s probably my favorite gag of the fight: Leo making several consecutive katana-swings at a Foot soldier who keeps ducking them, then saying “gotcha!” when the bad guy ducks again at a fakeout.

The game changes a bit when the floor, weakened by repeated axe strikes, collapses after several Foot reinforcements drop in from the broken skylight, sending everybody falling to April’s antique store below… where they’re greeted by Tatsu and another squad of Foot.

One of whom thinks he’s at a rock concert, apparently.

The music resumes it’s same playful yet frantic tune, faster than ever, and you can see the battle turn even worse against the heroes, even though some of those gag attacks are still deployed. Eventually, not long after Mike gurgles about how they could really use Raph right about now, the action stops again with the arrival of Casey Jones, backlit and pissed off but still willing to stop & flirt with April.

“ki ki ki, ma ma ma….”

(Once again, this occasions a joke I didn’t understand until years later, since I knew what neither “Wayne Gretzky” nor “steroids” were at age nine.)

Casey’s a valuable addition but too late to turn the tide, especially when an errant axe strike ends up starting a fire. The musical score finally catches up with the dire situation here, and the heroes realize it’s time to run away– fortunately April knows of a hidden panel that allows them to escape. Fittingly, the fight ends with a gag, as Casey overhears a voicemail being left on April’s answering machine (remember those?) that’s dangling from the hole in the ceiling; just as April’s boss finishes firing her by saying “I know this comes as a blow,” the cord snaps and it lands on a Foot head. Cute, but crappy for April, since it means she loses her job just as her home and all her possessions get burned down, and all on account of four weirdos she barely knows.

I like it. Barring the aforementioned brief tangles involving Raphael and the opening attack that’s just a bunch of sound effects in the dark, this is the first time we’ve really seen the titular turtles in action, so it’s kind of ballsy to have that fight be a losing battle, even if that loss is understandable. Considering that the main actors are all wearing heavy rubber suits the martial arts are rather decent, and the jokes work decently if you’re into that sort of thing. The escalating chaos is staged pretty well, as is the sense of the odds the heroes are up against; the defeat doesn’t come as a surprise.

Grade: B

Recommended Links: It’s too bad Obata didn’t get to participate in this fight, because he’s apparently a certified badass in real life.

Coming Attractions: Rematch time, punks.

So……… how did Raph get his sais back?