“AN AMERICAN PICKLE”

The feature-length directorial debut for long-time cinematographer Brandon Trust and written by Simon Rich based on his own short story, An American Pickle was an HBO Max film which happens to be getting a theatrical release as well with select cinemas. And it does have its big selling point of its main star Seth Rogen, with a lot of emphasis being placed on the fact that Seth Rogen is playing dual roles within this film. Now, this film feels like a bit of a strange one to have one actor playing multiple roles in this way. It’s being done very similarly to the film Legend which had Tom Hardy play both of the Kray Twins. But there are a few big differences this time, the major one being that this film’s a comedy so it can work with the ridiculousness of it, but I really wanted to see how this film would turn out. Plus, it was one of the few big new releases that are in cinemas at the minute so I thought I would take a chance on it.

The film is based on a 19^th century pickle factory worker Herschel Greenbaum played by Seth Rogen who, after immigrating to America with his wife Sarah played by Sarah Snook, falls into a pickle brine and is perfectly preserved in it for 100 years (don’t ask – the film never addresses the science behind it and just waves it away after it’s first brought up), and is sent to live with his only living relative, his great-grandson Ben, also played by Seth Rogen. The film then chronicles Herschel’s desire to repurchase the family cemetery plot after a Russian vodka billboard advert that is hung above it—trust me, it’s offensive because of the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe at the time—and Ben gets into a fight with him after his app that he’s designed isn’t getting investors, and Herschel, to prove him wrong, starts a pickle business which takes off and sends the two into conflict.

This film is definitely an absurdist comedy which you can tell from that premise, but it also tries to have a bit of heart. It’s somewhat commendable – they introduce the fact about Ben being rather distant from his Jewish heritage and the fact that he’s having trouble grieving for his parents, but it actually creates another problem. When this thing decides to be an absurdist comedy, it can feel really tonally off; this film has a real tone issue. That being said, some of the absurdist stuff actually makes some sense and has some real-world context. It certainly is a film that, for once, actually understands to a certain extent how some things go viral and how good marketing works, and it even has some good jokes about how you can get in trouble on Twitter, which feels apt. Now, this film does have a lot of humour which some people would describe as problematic, though the film at least addresses the problematic nature of it and, in that sense, actually does a pretty good job of showing why someone from 100 years ago would have a very different attitude to the world than someone that’s alive now. The film doesn’t address it too much, but it’s at least there. But the film’s biggest issue is just the fact that it keeps going back and forth between tones.

So, where does that leave us with this film? Well, it’s not as if there’s nothing to work with here – there’s definitely a very good film trying to get out, but I think this film really needs to decide more with either being a complete absurdist comedy, actually trying to have the drama of a man out of time, or try to be more of an odd-couple film. It never really sticks to one, but that being said at least none of the elements feel weak. What does seem interesting to me though is the fact that they’d gone to all this trouble of having the dual Seth Rogens and they’re barely on screen together; they certainly share a lot of scenes but it’s very clear that some aspects of this have been somewhat altered. These scenes have really been made with the intention of keeping the effects budget down. I don’t think the two Rogens actually share many scenes of them both together in the same shot, and it is somewhat distracting. There’s not much like the famous scene in Legend of the crazed fighting each other, though that being said there’s nothing as bizarre as Michael Fassbender acting with himself in Alien Covenant.

Now, as a comedy, some of the jokes hit quite well; some of them don’t. It’s alright, all things considered in that sense. Where it does have a lot of strength is when the jokes hit – when the jokes hit, they do quite well. I actually think some of the jokes are really genuinely quite good, and it did pass the test of making me laugh quite a few times throughout the film, and there were genuinely a few scenes where I thought this was very well-written and directed. I did actually come out of this film kind of happy that I had seen it in a sense because it feels like Seth Rogen is taking on a lot more rather mature roles that certainly seem to have made more of his talents, and it definitely seems like Seth Rogen has brought a lot of the experience he has from working with more acclaimed directors in this film – he seems to be doing quite a good job balancing his comedic and dramatic side within this film. The rest of the performances are just really so-so. In fact, not a lot of characters appear in the film long enough to really reach such an impact; this really is kind of the one-person Seth Rogen show.

Now, that being said, it is of course absurdist comedy, and if you’re not really into that style you’re not going to enjoy it. And really, this definitely doesn’t feel like it was meant for the big screen; this definitely felt like it was made HBO Max subscribers, which leads me to believe this one might have done a big better if it had gone straight to Netflix over here or another streaming service, but considering just how few films are going to cinemas at the minute, I’m not going to complain.

“UNHINGED”

Yes, it’s happened. Reviews are back. Some cinemas have started opening up and new releases are being slowly trickled out. So here’s where The Film Society will be going forwards: I will be getting these reviews out whenever I can, however, for safety purposes, I will not be going to see more than one film in the cinema a week. And I would say no matter how much you want to see your film, if you cannot social distance in a screening and you are at all in a high risk category, it is in your best interest to leave and ask for a refund. If the cinemas have put you in a dangerous position, you are well within your right to demand your money back for loss of services. However, I would say if you can go to the cinema and you feel safe to do so, by all means go and see films – the cinemas really could use the trade right now and the cinema industry, and the film industry by extension, could be in very serious jeopardy to do so otherwise. Obviously, not every week is going to have a new release anymore and my area could be put into a lockdown at any time, so I might not be able to get to the cinema at all times. So, don’t expect these reviews to be weekly. From now on, I will not be stating what next week’s review will be, though I will state that I’m going to be consistently looking for new releases to review.

Now, Unhinged is the first film to be back. It’s been kicked around the release schedules quite a bit, obviously because of the situation right now, though it’s been pushed forward from what was intended to be a September release to a July release. The film has been directed by Derrick Borte, director of American Dreamer and The Joneses, and has a very basic plot – it’s basically about a road rage incident between a single mum named Rachel, played by Caren Pistorius, and a man played by Russell Crowe. We never actually find out his name, and in the closing credits he is referred to as “the man”. After refusing to apologise for honking her horn when he was meant to move, he goes on a tirade rampage and works to make her life a living hell. No, really, that’s the plot. That’s all it took. Okay, I’m being a bit facetious – the early portions of the film do make clear that Russell Crowe’s character is taking a lot of pills, which is clearly messing with his inhibition, and the very first thing we see in the film is him murdering his ex-wife and, presumably, her new lover. I have some thoughts on that, but we’ll get back to that in a minute.

I’m going to start by saying some positives because this film does not deserve a 33 on Metacritic; we are not talking bottom-of-the-barrel here by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m not saying that just because this is the first time I’ve been allowed back in a cinema since March. Unhinged’s strongest point is the fact that its characters are not dumbasses. How many times do you see films like that where someone won’t ask for help or makes a really stupid decision that would obviously get someone killed? For example, early on, Rachel believes that she’s seen the man’s car in a petrol station that she’s due to go in, and normally in a film like this she’d just dismiss it, but in this case she actually asks people in the petrol station for help who believe her and actually attempt to help her. My reaction in the cinema was, “Finally, film characters who aren’t morons and actually ask for help when something’s clearly wrong!” The only reason that this film goes on as long as it does is because the man’s actually quite decent at outsmarting Rachel and kind of gets a bit lucky every so often. And again, another film where the police aren’t dumbasses and don’t take ages to react to something. It actually kind of lends the film a semi-realistic feel that they haven’t lengthened the plot through dumb clichés.

Now, that being said, I can’t say too many more nice points about the film. What I find interesting about it is that the early footage is showing real acts of violence usually involved with teen drivers, which clearly sets up that this film is meant to be some sort of commentary on society; how anyone can just snap when they are having a bad day. The problem is that the film doesn’t really have much to say about it; it never suggests that Russell Crowe’s character has been wronged. He’s obviously gone through a terrible divorce, as seen in a rather tense scene later when he interacts with one of Rachel’s best friends who’s acting as her divorce lawyer.

But here’s the thing: the film kind of betrays itself. The very first thing we see is Russell Crowe’s character abusing pills and killing two people, then setting a house on fire. And the film never really portrays him much as an everyman because then he has to transition into being a blood psychopath, and it almost makes it seem like he always was that. As a result, any sort of commentary this film was meant to give is gone. Unhinged’s biggest problem is that, but it’s also the fact that it’s got a lot of rather dull transition scenes at the beginning of the film. Many early portions of this film are spent in traffic jams, and this is usually designed to deliver exposition and set up plot points for later on in the film. Trust me, I predicted one-liner dialogue was going to come into force at the end of the movie and I was absolutely right. Though, on that note, I don’t even play Fortnite all that much and I even know that strategy is rubbish. Trust me, that will make sense after you see the film. Thank you once again, Fortnite product placement. It’s so blatant in this movie I have to wonder how much money they paid, and why the hell is their Fortnite product placement in a 15-certificate movie? (Moving on to me ranting about product placement for an overhyped videogame in a rated R movie. And I know, I probably lost a lot of you by bashing Fortnite but let’s keep going with this.)

So, where does this film really leave us? Well, it’s now kind of become a slasher film. I’ve been watching so many kill counts on the YouTube channel Dead Meat—highly recommend watching it, by the way—that I’ve actually gotten to a stage where I’m just counting, and I think the thing that made me realise partway through that this film wasn’t exactly gripping me was when I was actually trying to tally up how many people had died and realised I’d gotten it wrong. Side note, I’m actually starting to now hear the sound effect from that YouTube channel any time I’m watching a horror film. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a slasher film—I love a good slasher movie—but I feel like this film only decided to be a slasher movie halfway through, and halfway through the film all sense of realism is kind of lost and the laws of Physics are in the corner crying. And of course, as you’d expect since this is an R-rated film in America, the deaths are brutal. There are some really brutal deaths in this movie. Like, seriously. Now, that being said, the gore factor is not really a thing – the film actually is rather light when it comes to gore, and I think that’s actually to this film’s benefit. By cutting away from a lot of these scenes, they’re actually leaving more to the imagination and it actually makes it worse.

As for the performances, well, Russell Crowe’s American accent is a bit dodgy at times but he does a decent job with it, although he seems to definitely be getting more typecast in these sorts of roles; I think this is getting to a stage where he is getting a bit unfairly typecast due to his reputation by some directors and writers that he is hard to work with, and I would like to see more casting agents give him a bit more. In fact, the standout performance in this one is lead actress Caren Pistorius who does a very believable role. And I actually went in not having seen her in another film prior to this; she’s relatively new – the last big project she was in was the Peter Jackson film Mortal Engines, which I haven’t seen.

Tales From Earthsea vs The Black Cauldron

So, when I started having to do more of these retrospective pieces, I was looking a lot into Disney and I talked a lot about Studio Ghibli as well at the same time. So, I thought, since cinemas might be coming back soon, this was a time really to start comparing the two studios. And I decided for this one, I was going to going to compare two of their biggest bombs, both critically and financially. So, for this week, we’re going to have The Black Cauldron face off against Tales From Earthsea. You might think the fantasy setting is the only thing that connects these two films, but they both were based on Western fantasy novels, combined several books within their respective series, both received backlash both critically and financially, and are generally considered by many individuals to be the worst films of their respective studios. Let’s look at them.

The Black Cauldron released in 1985, though the rights were procured in 1973. This film had a terrible production history; it went through so many scripts, so many storyboards, and by the time it came out, Disney did such a bad job of marketing it and selling it, it lost big time. It’s still one of Disney’s biggest financial flops to this day. In fact, it was so bad it lost to The Care Bears in its opening weekend. Yikes, that’s bad. So as a result, Disney practically buried this movie – it didn’t even receive a home-release until a decade after the film came out. They had that much lack of confidence in it.

Tales from Earthsea, on the other hand, came out in Japan in 2006, but it came to the West much later. It was directed not by Hayao Miyazaki but his son Goro, taking the stories of British writer Ursula Gwynn’s Earthsea series, and combined several of the books to tell their own story. Gwynn was famously rather protective of the Earthsea novels and didn’t allow them to be adapted very often, but she was very impressed by Ghibli’s previous work that she had some faith in them to get something done. Earthsea, while not a major financial flop to the extent that The Black Cauldron was, definitely was still a critical fail; it did not move critics all that much. I have not heard too many people really go nuts for it. In fact, it actually on Metacritic has a lower score than The Black Cauldron, though that might be the fact that there were simply more reviewers at that time working in various different kinds of publications, which probably affected the average pool for it. So, for the purposes of this one, I’m going to talk about the animation, how the story works as an adaptation of their book, and how the story works in and of itself. And whoever wins the most wins overall. Let’s begin!

Now, I know it’s not entirely fair to compare a film from 2006 to a film from 1985, so instead of comparing them against each other, I’m going to put them as a composite against what films were doing slightly before, slightly after and around the time. Now, The Black Cauldron was an ambitious film in terms of its animation; they were desperately trying to get new animation techniques in the films. Too bad it didn’t work out too well. CGI was definitely getting more and more used in animation, but The Black Cauldron was not really an example of it. There were definitely some character designs and world-building that’s excellent – I actually really like the design of The Horn King who acts as the main villain of this film. More on him a bit later, but he has a really ghoulish design that I liked. In terms of its art style, its rather similar to what a lot of Disney films were around that time. It certainly hasn’t got much of the look of many of the films that were going on around that time. This was around the time Disney was transitioning into the style that would make up the Disney Renaissance, and this one was still resembling older films. In fact, several of the characters look like they could easily fit into productions like The Aristocats and 100 Dalmatians. I think the failure of this film definitely gave Disney a bit of a kick in the pants to think that maybe it was time to look for a different art direction.

Now, Tales From Earthsea also has a bit of an issue with CGI. In fact, some of it looks really ropey. But world design is also rather interesting. While we’re not thinking about the fact that this film is an adaptation, it does seem interesting that one of the biggest defining factors of the Earthsea setting—the fact it was not a lot of land and more ocean—being discarded was just a rather bizarre choice. I think Ghibli’s talent could definitely have brought that to life. Character designs are rather interesting though. I once again have to look at the villain design for Cob. His design is freakish; they did an excellent job with this one. I actually think other character designs are also great – I think I like the design for characters like Sparrowhawk or Fayru. It’s just a really excellent combination of brilliant character designs and brilliant world designs. And, in all honesty, where the animation kind of flubs is very minimal. I’ve heard a lot of people bring up the big dragon that was the selling point doesn’t look that great, and I’d have to agree. But man, Black Cauldron did not look good. It was trying to move to a lot of animation techniques that were going to become more standard, but it didn’t really know how to introduce them.

If you want a prime example of how good computer generation mixed with traditional animation went, you really need to look at the Be Our Guest sequence in The Beauty and The Beast and the magic carpet in Aladdin – both of those ones have excellent use of computer generation but they blend well in to the traditional 2D animation that’s being used. While Black Cauldron is not a terrible animated film, its biggest issue is the fact that it’s lighted terribly. I don’t know what but the colour often feel washed out in a lot of environments. Earthsea, while it’s not one of the better animated Ghibli films and the world design feels a little more generic than most Ghibli films, it still has some of that charm there.

Point goes to Tales from Earthsea.

Right, let’s look at these things as stories in and of themselves. We can look at adaptations later, but I think these things need to stand on their own, so let’s take a look at how they stood on their own. Well, Earthsea’s story revolves around Prince Arren responsible for his father’s murder after a curse, and then goes on a run to atone for what he has done. He meets up with Sparrowhawk and they start working at a range run by one of Sparrowhawks’s older friends who is looking after a small, mysterious mute girl named Fayru. And there’s a big story of choosing one’s own destiny and what it means to be a true hero. There are some interesting themes going on from Earthsea, though the film doesn’t entirely capture it. There’s a really great movie trying to get out here. The Black Cauldron story, on the other hand, is all over the place. It is basically about a young pig farmer named Taran who’s tasked with transporting a pig that can read the future when it drinks, to stop the evil Horn King, but he wants to be a great hero, and then he comes across a princess named Eilonwy who wants to restore her kingdom, and then they do so many side plots in trying to get this black cauldron that can revive an army from the dead and- I have no idea what’s going on! And God, this film dances around! This film can never stick with a plot. True, Earthsea has a similar issue but Earthsea at least feels like it is more concentrated on its central plot. The Black Cauldron is all over the place. It’s definitely a lot clearer from The Black Cauldron that it was a result of combining multiple novels in order to tell a more complete story.

Earthsea has the different novel aspects blend into one another. What’s more, I really like the character arcs in Earthsea. They feel a little underdeveloped in certain ways, especially with Arren confronting his past, which the film decides they don’t really want to focus on after a certain point and then just randomly transports back to it, but he’s certainly more interested in Tarran who is completely all over the place. Then, comparing the villains—which incidentally are some of the best parts of both of these respective films—you’ve got Cob and The Fawn King. The Fawn King is really awesome because he gets some really badass monologues. Again, he’s a slight change from the book but he does a decent job bringing him up to his position. But Cob feels really devious. While both of these guys seem like they’re big planners, Cob feels like he has mapped out everything, and what he turns into when he doesn’t get his way is amazing. I think the casting of Willem DaFoe in the English language version of this really proved that. Willem DaFoe puts on actually a very interesting voice for this character. Honestly, I kind of forget at one point that he was playing that role. Also, if we compare the female leads, yeah, Eilonwy is nowhere near as interesting as Theru, and a lot of people complain that Theru is underdeveloped.

Also, we can look at a lot of other things. Soundtrack: Earthsea beats The Black Cauldron hands down. Side characters: While Earthsea doesn’t have that many, it has characters like Sparrowhawk who is voiced brilliantly by Timothy Dalton. The Black Cauldron has Gurgi, one of the most annoying characters in film history. Seriously, just listen to five seconds of this little idiot speak. You thought Jaja Binks’s voice was annoying? It’s got nothing on him. And he’s the worst character of the film by far; his active presence actually drags the movie down. When you look at it overall, Earthsea did way better.

Point goes to Earthsea.

Okay, so Earthsea’s got the win, but let’s see if it fails in this department. Which one was the better adaptation? Well, both of these were trying to combine multiple books in fantasy series. In the case of The Black Cauldron, it also combined the first book in The Chronicles of Prydain as well. Tales From Earthsea doesn’t really have any one book it borrows from; it borrows from quite a few, and really it’s kind of its own thing. There’s not too much of a structure in that sense. There were several changes made from the Earthsea books, but fans would still recognizably be able to piece a few elements together. The problem is that it’s not really trying to be an adaptation of the Earthsea series, but it still contains the title, which means it feels like it is kind of failing as an adaptation in that sense; it’s not attempting too much to be the book in any sense of the work.

Here’s the thing, The Black Cauldron has a much darker tone than many other Disney films around the time, but the thing is that The Chronicles of Prydain were not dark books. They were children’s novels, yeah, but dark? Wouldn’t describe them like that. From what I’ve read and heard of them, they were pretty well-done kids’ fantasy novels. And Disney had no real direction for the film. As a result, they had no idea really how to adapt the book. This went through a lot of different scripts, and they made a lot of changes. In fact, the minimal change is probably adapted more than the massive changes that Earthsea did. But as a structure? As a story structure, it is way more in line with The Chronicles of Prydain than Tales From Earthsea was with its respective book series. However, some of those changes that Black Cauldron made are awful – I already explained how Gurgi is one of the most annoying characters in film history, but compared to his book counterparts, he is very different. He was purely turned this way so they have a mascot character for the film, and it shows. The same as with a lot of other events.

The fact of the matter is though that they didn’t really adapt this to a film script very well. As a result, it does kind of bounce around like a book can do. A book like this can have all these different subplots that just suddenly interrupt the main plot because, again, it’s part of a series; you’ve made a lot of books to get a lot of story out of it. In a film environment it feels like a jumbled mess. This is most notable when we get to locations like the witches’ houses where we have this big magic battle which is completely just another excuse to do what Disney had already done in Sword In The Stone. Man, it’s weird.

Really, the best way I’d sum this up is that it depends on your opinion: Do you go with the film that tried to adapt the book but didn’t do it very well, but give it the point because it at least tried to adapt the book, or the thing that was kind of always meant to be its own thing but only took elements from the book? While normally I would say The Black Cauldron would take this, since it did put more of an effort to bring those books to the screen, all the little changes felt like they took away from the story, not added to it. Okay, for example, some good changes that worked: The Horn King is promoted to being the main villain, whereas in the book he was actually a sub-villain for a later one that would show up. But then you’ve got all these other little changes like with Gurgi and the fact that the dwarf characters were taken out to be replaced by fairies, and none of the tone really matches. It’s just kind of all over the place as a result. Earthsea might not be as much of an adaptation of their books, but it at least feels like, in a sense, they had a bit more respect for the book than The Black Cauldron did. The Black Cauldron just doesn’t work in that sense.

Point goes to Tales From Earthsea, and it wins hands down again.

Pocahontas vs Hercules

I’ve already talked a bit about Disney films when lockdown first came into effect, but I thought I’d go back to the subject after a conversation that I had in the office with some of my friends around Disney films of the 90s, and which ones did and didn’t work. I was under the belief that the two Disney films that worked the least that came out from the 90s animation department were Pocahontas and Hercules, two films that are often considered to be a bit of a mess by most film critics.

Pocahontas was definitely not in a great position considering it was released around the time of Aladdin and The Lion King, and it did not end up doing very well with critics after those releases. But Disney put a lot of faith in the film; they believed this film was going to be their break into The Big Time with awards, to such an extent that they thought it was going to break the barrier and be the first animated film to win Best Picture, especially after Beauty and The Beast got a nomination. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t. But the idea that it was going to happen made a lot of the animators working on The Lion King want to jump to Pocahontas as that was considered the more prestigious film. So, a few years have gone by and Disney has only released one animated film after Pocahontas, that being The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a personal favourite of mine; did better with the critics but didn’t do as financially well as Disney expected and wasn’t incredibly as well-received. Though, a large portion of that was down to the fact that The Hunchback of Notre Dame (THOND) was a very hard film to market, and the marketing only really concentrated on ‘The Feast of Fools’ scenes and omitted a lot of the more dark sides of the film.

Hercules was made by The Little Mermaid and Aladdin directors, Rogers and Clements, who would go on after this to direct Treasure Planet and Moana. There was a lot riding on Hercules for them, mainly that the film needed to be a success in order to get Treasure Planet off the ground, which was a film the had wanted to make for a long time. If you want more information on that, I would recommend watching Lindsey Ellis’s video, ‘Hercules: A Hot Mess’. It actually informed the arguments that I’m going to be making in this piece. Hercules, though whilst it was somewhat financially successful, it was not to the extent that Disney was hoping for. I think it’s rather telling that there was only one other traditional animated Disney film, i.e. fantastical setting, cuter animation, and it being a musical after this, that being Mulan. Tarzan was definitely a step in a different direction, especially with the Phil Collins soundtrack, and it would have a very different direction going in the early 2000s, most emphasized by the fact their first releases in the 2000s were The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis. So, I decided to look at these two films which are often considered to be a bit of a mess by a lot of critics and decide which one was slightly better. I took a good look at both of these films – I wanted to look at both the positives and the negatives and decide which one is the better film. For this, I’m going to be talking across five categories: the songs; the animation and art style; how each movie interpreted their respective culture; the characters and performances, and the story structure. Let’s begin.

Round 1: Songs

Well, this is a tough one. Both of these are sort-of traditional musicals, but Hercules is a little different. After THOND and Pocahontas had not been as financially successful as Disney were hoping, this seemed to be their first step in maybe moving away from the traditional musical. Hercules certainly has those moments in there – ‘Go the Distance’ and ‘I Won’t Say I’m In Love’ are both very traditional in that sense, but the majority of the songs in Hercules are done by the Muses. This is one of the things that has really characterised Hercules; it’s a real mismatch of strange choices, and the major song style for Hercules was American Gospel Music. Pocahontas, on the other hand, is completely traditional. The best way to put it is, to go back to something I learnt from Lindsey Ellis videos, musicals are often either diegetic or non-diegetic (i.e. they are actually happening in the plot, it’s all entirely real and the characters are genuinely breaking into song – a la, something like West Side Story – or they’re completely separate, like in a dream sequence or like, for more of a contemporary example, Chicago). Hercules tends to go for the latter, whereas Pocahontas tends to go for the former. There are very few moments in Pocahontas where the musical numbers are about an interpretation of the character. Personally, I think in that sense it works better in Hercules. I think there’s a lot of suspension in disbelief you have to have in musicals that don’t often work, and Hercules kind of uses that to its advantage.

But let’s go into the songs themselves, and this is where we have a bit of an issue. If I count the number of songs I liked in these films, you’re not going to get a very high number in Pocahontas. I really hate the song ‘Just Around The Riverbend’, and ‘Colors Of The Wind’ is now so generic it’s actually become a source of parody and rightfully so. This was considered very cliché in the 90s when it came out, and it has not aged well. There are songs I do like though, mainly the villain songs, mostly notably ‘Mine, Mine, Mine’ and ‘Savages’. One of the things I found interesting though is that some of the songs on Pocahontas did receive lyric changes, but they had never been changed for the actual film. The film still kept the line, ‘Their whole disgusting race is like a curse,’ whereas the soundtrack had the more palatable, apparently, ‘Here’s what you gets when the races are diverse.’ Now, I know what they were going for with this film, but Jesus, it doesn’t look good either way. I know Radcliffe’s character is a horrible racist, but I have no idea why Disney wrote that in in the first place. There were other changes in the song they had to make, but the soundtrack CD keeps these in. What the- As a result, it’s created one of the biggest senses of confusion.

Now, the Hercules songs definitely avoided a lot of the controversies that Pocahontas had. I’m not a fan of ‘Go the Distance’ or ‘I Won’t Say I’m In Love’ which incidentally are the two songs which are most like a traditional musical. But the song ‘Zero to Hero’ is really good, which unsurprisingly was used for the theme song for the Hercules animated series which, trust me, is way better than you remember it being. But then they also had ‘A Star Is Born’ which is also an excellent song. If I had to compare the two, I think I’m going to give the point to Hercules on this one. I do like the song Savages but it is really hard to listen to now, especially considering that they kind of half make out that the Native Americans are just as blinded by rage and racism as the white guys, which is incredibly tone deaf. So I kind of can’t really reward it on that basis, and ‘Mine, Mine, Mine’ is the only other song in the film I actually really quite like, and even then it has a tangent in the middle with John Smith which kind of goes off into the middle of nowhere and really doesn’t know what it is doing, and I’m just thinking, “Can we please get back to Radcliffe?” Meanwhile, Hercules has three songs I legitimately quite like and on that basis, Hercules gets the point.

Winner: Hercules

Round 2: Art Style and Animation

So, let’s talk about the art style and animation of these films. If you’ve seen a Roger and Clements Disney movie, you know what to expect with Hercules – it’s very similar to Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, to such an extent that the Hercules animated series actually had a crossover with Aladdin’s animated series. It’s just as fun as you would expect, in spite of the fact that the genie does not appear in the entire episode. No, Robin Williams was not still upset with Disney, he just wasn’t available. But they couldn’t even get Dan Castellaneta back? Sorry, tangent, let’s get back to the point. Now, Disney went with Hercules in a similar fashion that they took Aladdin; the idea that this is a sort of Vegas interpretation of Greece. Pocahontas, on the other hand, is going for a more realistic approach. But here’s the thing – I kind of think the art style in Hercules is a lot more distinct. This is maybe because they hired Scarface who did the art for Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ to be the animation director, and again, weird jumbled choices that were brought into the production of Hercules. But here’s the thing: As good as Hercules’ art style is, and there are a lot of great interpretations of character design as well as the world design, and the animation flows really well, it doesn’t feel like it’s that experimental. The only really experimental moments are the scenes which are designed to look like mosaics, mainly in sequences like the ‘Zero To Hero’ sequence and the stuff for ‘The Gospel Truth’. Scarface’s designs just feel like they’re kind of out of place. This was one of the first Disney films though to really experiment with computer-generated animations since it was used in Aladdin for bigger sequences and to vibrantly animate the magic carpet. Again, mainly used for the hydra, which, urgh, that animation has not aged well.

Pocahontas’s animation is not as experimental but there are a few moments. Definitely one of the bigger moments is once again in the ‘Savages’ sequence, in a particular with Pocahontas’s run to stop the conflict, Pocahontas’s shadow reflecting an eagle, or the two charges being in both the foreground and the background. There are a lot of decent animation ideas done here. This was very even. While Hercules is a little more experimental, Pocahontas does not play it safe. And, as a character design, Pocahontas is very good at being realistic, that when you get a character like Radcliffe, he almost feels like he stands out too much. It’s not just the fact he’s a lot taller and pudgier than everyone else, but his design looks really elongated and there are a lot of straight lines, no round lines. I know, this is meant to point out that he’s the villain, but I think they overdid it a little bit.

So, which one wins? Um, the point once again is going to go to Hercules in this one. I went back and forth on this one, but Hercules takes more risks and there are less points where I think it fall down per se. As much as I think the hydra sequence has not aged well, we still remember that sequence a lot, and it would be a moment which would give Disney more to work with. When Pocahontas’s animation flubs, it really flubs. I never liked the design of Grandmother Willow; it definitely looks like the computer animators did not really know what they were doing as well as they thought they did. And I must repeat: Radcliffe’s design is still atrocious, and he sticks out too much. He kind of looks like he was designed for a different movie.

Winner: Hercules

Round 3: How They Interpreted The Culture

Okay, first things first, this is not going to be a discussion on cultural appropriation – I am not willing to go down that rabbit hole. And secondly, I am fully aware that the real Pocahontas’s story was way, way darker, and that will play some factor in my decision-making for this but will not be the total deal. That is going to be pushed to one side entirely, though I will be talking about how their individual cultures felt when the films were released. Now, in real life, Pocahontas was a member of the Powhatan tribe so that is the culture that the animation team were aiming for. And, of course, Hercules is Ancient Greece.

Since Hercules’s story was a myth rather than historical fact, they had a lot more interpretation to work with. Obviously, they did not go all-out with how the Greek myth and legends worked. That would have probably scarred you considering how the Greek Gods are interpreted in the classic myths and legends. The guards in Disney’s Hercules are not vain and they aren’t completely egomaniacal. They also seem to only be Gods of one thing, whereas the Greek Gods often would swap jobs or have multiple jobs. They really don’t explore that many of them. The animated series definitely did more with the Gods than the movie did. Now, there are also a lot of minor changes to the mythology and how the Greeks worshipped the Gods that was obviously not put in, to make it more palatable to an American audience. But in terms of the myths and legends, it is not entirely inaccurate. But yeah, they are more Easter egg sequences. You get most of the challenges that Hercules had to do in the ‘Zero To Hero’ sequence, something that was probably a wise idea, though obviously they cut out when Hercules had to help clean a farm of a literal river of crap. I think the biggest change they made was the fact that Hades might be the lord of the underworld, he’s not the devil and he’s not the villain in the original mythology. Though, really, given how Hades is in the movie, would you want him any other way?

Now, Pocahontas obviously had a bit more of an issue. While the Greeks are very interested in their personal history, it is not incredibly secret to them, and it’s not very recent history. For Native Americans, however, this is very sacred for many of them and this is very recent and very painful history; you have to get this right. And wow, Disney’s film is the definition of “token gesture, not brilliantly executed” – many Native American audiences still do not take the film very seriously and find it rather insulting. It doesn’t really just focus on the Powhatan tribe but actually merges quite a few Native American tribes’ cultures into one. Not a bad idea in theory, but it plays more into a stereotypical angle that we’ve had about Native Americans that we still haven’t been able to really get around. There were a lot of differences between all these different tribes and they all had different belief systems and even different languages. Honestly, it’s genuinely fascinating when you look into it. It’s for that reason I’d actually be genuinely interested for someone to make a Pocahontas film that is close to the actual history.

That’s another problem – Disney were basing a lot of this story on John Smith’s biography which he wrote several years after he left James Town, and it’s been widely discredited and considered inaccurate. And what’s more, there is some screwed-up stuff in that book about his relationship with Pocahontas. If you want more information on that, Adam Conover did an excellent segment for his show Adam Ruins Everything on it, which is made even funnier when you realise how John Smith actually left what is now America and under what circumstances. Now, Disney obviously cut out the more, for a lack of a better word, problematic elements of John Smith’s biography and turned him from a pudgy bearded man into an Adonis voiced by Mel Gibson. Obviously, that doesn’t play a factor in this category, but you can obviously see where they’re going with it.

Both of these make token gestures and both don’t do too well, but really, with Hercules you know what you’re getting – while you’re not getting a very accurate take on Greek myth and legend, you’re getting something of it and it kind of works. Pocahontas, on the other hand, there were some nice features, but this is still a film that a lot of people still do not like to this day in relation to its interpretation of culture.

Point goes to Hercules.

Round 4: Characters and Performances

Okay, so Pocahontas is only playing for pride now, but let’s see if we can win back a few points here. The performances I’d say are pretty even. There are obviously more A-List stars in Hercules, with Danny DeVito and James Woods in their respective roles. The biggest star in Pocahontas is Mel Gibson who was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time that film came out. This is obviously before we knew how nuts he really was. As for the performances, I really think they’re kind of evenly matched. I think there are some good performances both sides, so now I’m going to look at the comic relief characters. Pocahontas has a couple, mainly the animals, and while we’re on the subject, for a film that’s all about communicating with nature, why don’t the animals talk in this movie? This would be the one time I would actually think it would kind of work; it just seems like a very strange decision. Not a lot of these moments got a laugh out of me. That’s not to say I thought that Phil was a good comic relief character in Hercules. This was still around the time that Disney were desperately trying to recapture Robin Williams’s performance of the Genie to not great effect, but I will say that there are some half-decent decisions.

As for character arcs, well, again, going back to the Lindsey Ellis video, I have to agree with her point that Moana is kind of Pocahontas’s story arc done better. Again, really check out her video on Pocahontas – it’s another fascinating watch. Pocahontas has a decent character arc, but it is not the best one; she didn’t really have that much of a personality. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I think Radcliffe sticks out for a lot of people as he has a lot more personality than most of the rest of the cast. Now, Hercules does not have as many characters and the use of them is actually really not great. There are a lot of characters who are very prominent in the first half of the film that are virtually gone by the second half. Have you noticed how Zeus kind of basically disappears for virtually the entire middle act of that film? Hercules’s adoptive parents don’t get any lines after he leaves home—again, they were better used in the animated series—and everyone kind of feels a bit underutilised. Hell, Hades doesn’t even really do much until the film portion of the movie. So Pocahontas might have more characters and it might use them well but they’re not as interesting as Hercules’s characters which just work a bit well.

This point is going to go to Hercules, and it’s mainly for one reason: James Woods as Hades. This is another perfect actor to character match – James Woods really makes that role his own, and he really can bring out that smarmy side of the character. He’s properly into the role and is one of the best parts of that film. If the plans of a Disney live-action remake of Hercules are true, I really wouldn’t mind if he came back to reprise the role.

Point to Hercules.

Round 5: Story Structure

Okay, I’ve already talked about most of what these films are, but I’m also going to talk about the thematic elements of both of these films. Now, Pocahontas fails on a lot of levels because, again, it kind of implies a false history on a few levels. Yes, there was a peace for quite some time after the James Town settlers, but it was not as peaceful as the ending of the film implies, and I’m not going to get into that whole history right now. Honestly, look it up if you are genuinely interested. But more to the point, it does feel like another one of these 90s films that puts down the idea of racism as being an individual issue rather than a systemic problem. So, any sense of the fact that the villains are meant to represent how modern-day racism takes a hold is kind of lost, especially considering that everyone kind of changes on a dime. You ever noticed how at the end everyone kind of just puts down their weapons almost out of nowhere, it doesn’t feel like there’s been much growth?

So thematically, on that sense, Hercules wins. Sort of. Hercules is still a very confused film thematically on a lot of levels. It doesn’t really quite know what it wants to be, and there’s a lot of conflicting ideas that are going on. This is where Hercules’s biggest weakness is: Its story structure is kind of all over the place, and there are a lot of plot holes actually throughout the film. I shouldn’t be thinking this much about this. That being said, as much as Pocahontas kind of fails a bit on its themes, it wins on its story structure – it’s actually a decent 3-act structure. The story structure is actually quite well-handled. I personally think, while I prefer Hercules’s story, on a technical level, Pocahontas is better in terms of its structure. But here’s the thing, I find Pocahontas’s story way more boring and way more forgettable. With Hercules, I could tell you every beat from that film. So as much as I think I should give the point to Pocahontas due to the fact that it technically is better in this field, it’s as a result of that that its story is not as memorable. And when it fails on its themes, it fails miserably.

Hercules, on the other hand, might not be as well done but I personally remember it more, enjoyed it more and for that reason Hercules wins this entire thing 5-0.

I didn’t set out for this thing to be just a rag on Pocahontas and praise Hercules. I think Hercules has a lot of issues with it – I wouldn’t put it up there with the best 90s Disney films or even the best animated Disney films, but I went to look at two messes that had both been allotted by critics as the downfall of Disney, and when I look at them, while I think Hercules probably did more damage to Disney’s stocks since it was the wrong film at the wrong time, I think Pocahontas has had more of a lasting down turn for Disney. I think there’s a very good reason why Disney does not bring this film up a lot, and is also why I think they want to not be a part of the live-action remake that are being brought out repeatedly.

If you like Pocahontas, that’s perfectly valid. There are perfectly valid reasons to like that film. I was just saying why I think Hercules is the better movie. And hell, in a couple of categories it was close. Story structure it could have easily won, and it was very 50/50 when I talked about the art styles and the animation. But overall, I have to say that Hercules is the better movie of the two.

30-Day Film Challenge

So around the time lockdown went in, Cineworld introduced the 30-day film challenge. So, on June 1^st for the entire month, they would introduce the 30-day film challenge, and I thought that I could put my spin on it or at least give my thoughts on each, on how and which film I would put in each category since it seemed like a good time. Here’s the thing, this time next month I’ll be 30 years old and it’s going to be a major milestone in my life, so I figured that a 30-film challenge would be a good way to mark the occasion, and that was a way to get 30 films in there so why not? It’s a good way to celebrate being alive for 3 decades nearly. Now, these will not be in-depth reviews or in-depth thoughts; I’m just going to state which one, why I picked it and small bit about it. You’re probably going to ask me in person my thoughts on the films. But hey, it’s a good bit of fun, so let’s get started.

Day 1: The 1^st Film You Saw at The Cinemas
Jurassic Park

I say this with a pinch of salt. I think it’s the first film I saw at cinemas; I have a vague memory of my auntie and my gran taking me to go see it, but I definitely did see Jurassic Park in cinemas. I might have seen a film earlier than that in cinemas but that’s the earliest I can remember. And well, Jurassic Park is still in my top ten favourite films. I still absolutely love it and it’s been a big part of my life ever since.

Day 2: A Film You Watched Over and Over Again as a Child
Aladdin (1992)

Okay, this one was a bit of a difficult one because I only had to pick one. I watched a lot of Disney films on a VH set when I was a kid, but Aladdin’s the one I have a very big recollection of. Honestly, I could have also put 101 Dalmatians or Beauty and The Beast in this bit, but I figured Aladdin’s lasted a bit longer with me, so that one made the cut.

Day 3: A Film That Made You Laugh Out Loud
Hot Fuzz

This is still one of the funniest films I have ever seen in my life. Me and my friends are still quoting this film years after the fact, we love it that much. I don’t think I’ve laughed in a cinema more than when I saw this film.

Day 4: A Film That Starts With ‘The’
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

This was a bit of a weird one, so I thought why not kick off the Ghibli films? We’re going to be seeing a lot of them in this, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya is an excellent retelling of the classic story of Japanese folklore. You really should give this film a chance if you haven’t – its art style is way more different to the other Ghibli films, and the animation team lovingly worked on it for 8 years and it shows.

Day 5: A Film That is Underrated in Your Opinion
Song of The Sea

How did this film not catapult Tom Moore into being a directorial superstar for family animation? This film is amazing! It even got an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film. Oh yeah, that’s right, because it was only shown in limited run and then was only in a few cinemas – there was only one cinema in Liverpool that was actually showing it. Seriously, excellent film; does an excellent job doing a storybook take on Irish myth and legend. You really ought to check this one out at some point.

Day 6: A Film to Put on When You Feel Sad
Inside Out

Inside Out is definitely my pick for this one. I really like this film for the fact that it basically reminds us that all emotions are good for us on some level.

Day 7: A Film You Would Love to See on The Big Screen
Gravity

I never got to see Gravity in cinemas, and I kind of wish I had because I think I would appreciate it more if I went to see it in the cinema. I didn’t really have much of an appreciation for it when I did see it after I bought the Blu-Ray, and I think it’s really one that I really ought to give a bit more credence to considering just what an achievement it was from a technical level, though I stand by that on a story level it does not entirely work.

Day 8: Your Favourite Film Set in Space
Alien

Ridley Scott’s sci-fi debut is fantastic. He really does a good job with this film giving us an excellent horror movie, where space itself feels like this barren wasteland that is deliberately trying to kill this crew.

Day 9: A Film with a Soundtrack That Gets Stuck in Your Head
Guardians of The Galaxy

Guardians of The Galaxy really to me was an excellent soundtrack and I really had all those songs stuck in my head afterwards. Let’s face it: Many of those songs are now majorly more significant in a pop culture sense because of Guardians of The Galaxy. Those songs really have a way of sticking with you.

Day 10: A Film That is Also a Book Where You Loved Both Versions
Holes

Yeah, this one always surprises me that it does not come in really great book to film adaptations. While it’s not a one-to-one of the book, it’s damn near close and I actually thought that the changes made were fairly decent; I think both versions work in their own respects. It’s also one of the times when Shia LaBeouf actually gives an excellent performance. Trust me, if you really look out for it, the guy is a decent actor. I’d also recommend his performance in the English language version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; he gives a really good performance in that film as well.

Day 11: A Film That Made You Want to Cheer at the Cinema
Avengers: Infinity War

There was one film that probably fit this more, but it’s coming up later in this countdown, so I decided to put Infinity War in. I really adored so many of the scenes in Infinity War, they really do make you want to cheer – particularly the scenes in the Battle of Wakanda. Though, that being said, I definitely would not have wanted to see this film in a cinema in America.

Day 12: A Film That Left You Confused
Southland Tales

I still have no idea what is going on in this completely pretentious nonsense that Donnie Darko director, Richard Kelly, put forward. It’s one of the most nonsensical films I have ever seen in my life, and it’s one of the worst. I utterly hate it.

Day 13: A Film That Made You Want to Travel
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

I actually have travelled quite a bit, but I don’t think any films really made me want to do it per se, more travel documentaries. But if I go by a film that does make me want to go back to travelling, it would definitely be Lord of the Rings. I’ve never been to New Zealand and I’ve never been to Hobbiton. I’ve been to Saint Vincent to see the sets of Pirates of the Caribbean, but I’ve never been to see these sets – I really should get round to that later when it’s safer.

Day 14: Your Favourite Film From Your Least Favourite Genre
My Big Fat Greek Wedding

I’ve made it no secret that I am not a fan of the Romantic Comedy genre, especially in film form as they don’t work well in their time period and often resort too much to cliché over genuinely good writing and chemistry, but My Big Fat Greek Wedding is definitely one of the exceptions to the rule. I think this is mainly down to the screenplay being written by lead actress, Nia Vardalos, which is based on her one-woman-show of her real life, and that lends an authenticity to the film that is not often present in many movies like this. The less said about the much weaker sequel, the better. Though my patience for the film is definitely starting to wear, as my Greek-culture obsessed mother insists on constantly quoting the film at every chance she gets, even nearly twenty years after the film came out.

Day 15: A Day That Broke Your Heart
Beauty and the Beast (2017)

To see one of Disney’s best films be turned into this soulless cash-grab of a lazy film just got rid of the joy around me. I really knew at that point that this was the future of Disney remakes. It’s not just how bad the film was that broke my heart, it’s the fact that a lot of people gave it a pass, and that it made a lot of money at the box office. It just broke me.

Day 16: A Film With a Number in the Title
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek 2 is actually my favourite of the Star Trek films, and I’m not a trekkie. I don’t think you have to be to enjoy this one; this film is just excellent. I really think that this is one of the premiere sci-fi films ever made, and though it is a bit of a cop-out to pick a sequel for this one, I’m going to take it so that I finally get to gush a bit about this film.

Day 17: Your Favourite Animated Film
Spirited Away

I’ve made it no secret that Spirited Away is not only my favourite animated film, it’s my all-time favourite film, and while a few films have tried to take that title, I think, for now, I’m going to stick with that. Spirited Away is simply a masterpiece of animation; you really ought to have seen it if you haven’t already. It’s a beautiful film on every level.

Day 18: A Film You Can’t Stop Thinking About
The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s masterwork of suspense and paranoia is a film I’m constantly thinking about every time I’ve watched it. Who was infected? Who wasn’t? Who was to be trusted? You’re thinking throughout the entire film. Carpenter rarely offers answers and the ending is really excellent for that.

Day 19: A Film Set in the Future
Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell is still set in the future from now, so I’m going to go with it. I’ve gone on and on about how this is a brilliant film about the human condition and what it means to be human, and if you haven’t seen it already you really should. Believe me, this is a film that’s really relevant right now for several reasons, that I wouldn’t want to give away.

Day 20: A Film That Frightened You
The Witch

The Witch is genuinely terrifying. It creates a brilliant atmosphere that is completely creepy. I was honestly really disturbed and left wondering ‘what is going to happen next?’ This is one a lot of people disagree with me on, but I really think it works well as a horror film, just by how well its atmosphere is delivered.

Day 21: A Film That Made You Want to Fall in Love
Your Name

This one was a bit of a weird one based on its wording; I don’t understand how a film can really make you do that, so I went with one of my favourite love stories in film, and I decided to go with Your Name, an absolutely brilliant film that is Makoto Shinkai’s best films to date, and one of the highest grossing foreign-language films ever. It does have an English language version, which means if you’re not into that, you can see it, and I won’t talk much about it as this is a film you really need to see; but absolutely check it out before the J. J. Abrams-produced version comes out, which I’ve now found out is being directed by one of the directors of The Amazing Spider-Man Films (Oh, ‘deep joy’, he says, sarcastically).

Day 22: Favourite Film From a Fantasy World
Howl’s Moving Castle

This one’s a bit more steampunk than it is fantasy, but it’s based on a fantasy book and still has a lot of the ‘swords and sorcery’ aesthetic, so it counts for me. Howl’s Moving Castle is fantastic, and it’s genuinely a good book adaptation, and one of Miyazaki’s best films. It’s an absolutely brilliant watch.

Day 23: A Film That Feels Important to you, Personally
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Tintin has always been a big deal for me, and it was one of a couple of films I never thought would come to cinemas, but when it finally did, it was a joy to see Tintin completely there, and it was exactly the film I wanted to see. It meant a lot to me to see that adaptation finally happen.

Day 24: A Film Made by Your Favourite Director
Kiki’s Delivery Service

I already have two of Hayao Miyazaki’s films in here with Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, so I decided Kiki’s Delivery Service gets this spot. I really love this as a film – it’s fantastic. It’s not got too much of a plot, but it doesn’t really need one; it’s a really nice slice of life movie about a witch who uses a broom to fly to people’s houses. It’s a story about a nice girl moving to a new town. It sounds boring, but I promise you, it’s genuinely good and wholesome.

Day 25: A Film That Inspires You
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

There are all sorts of ways to say that something inspires you, but I wanted to go with a film that actually inspired me to do something – and considering I wanted to go to the actual sets and travel a bit more, the fact that I went to the locations where they shot Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl means that that film definitely inspired me to do that. And, hey, it’s a fantastic film, it’s just too bad that it was ruined by a bunch of sequels. But that first film is still there, and it’s still amazing. Here’s hoping that the reboot with Brie Larson will work out okay.

Day 26: A Film That Made You Happy
Sonic the Hedgehog

I know it’s fairly recent, but this film just put a grin on my face the entire time I was watching it. It was great to know that this film just exists and is brilliant. I really like this movie on so many levels, and I’m glad that I’m living in a world where there’s a good Sonic movie.

Day 27: Your Favourite Super Hero Movie
Avengers: Endgame

I adore Avengers: Endgame; it’s absolutely the perfect part 2 to Infinity War and it feels like the event film of my generation. We probably won’t get another film like this for quite some time, and I think that makes a big difference to a lot of people.

Day 28: A Film That Changed Your Life
Pride

Pride came out around the time I was just starting to do film reviews, and I think it’s the film that really proved I could be a proper film critic, since it was the first time I was able to be happy about one of the reviews I had done, and that I could keep doing this. Considering how much of my career I owe to this film, I think it deserved this spot.

Day 29: A Film You Didn’t Want to End
When Marnie Was There

When Marnie Was There was, at the time, going to be the last Ghibli film, and knowing that when it ended, it was the end of a legacy, it really made me want that film never to stop. Thankfully, that studio is back in gear, and we are finally going to be seeing a new film from them down the line.

Day 30: A Film with a Beautiful Ending
A Silent Voice

This was my best film of 2017, and the ending is a big reason why. I won’t go into detail, but believe me, A Silent Voice has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen.

I am a huge fan of Hey Arnold!, it’s one of my favourite Nickelodeon series. It probably would be my favourite if Avatar: The Last Airbender did not come out. I enjoy it so much I could probably do a ‘Top 10 Episodes’ list and I would really struggle to narrow it down to my ten favourites. But one of my favourite episodes was ‘The Journal’. It was a follow-up to the episode ‘Parents’ Day’, and both worked to establish what Arnold’s parents were like and what had happened to them prior to Arnold ending up in the Boarding House under the care of his grandparents. Fans were genuinely interested to see where it would go, especially considering that the episode ended on a cliff-hanger of Arnold finding a map in his father’s journal. The plan was that Nickelodeon was going to release two films, a made-for-TV movie and The Jungle Movie, which would go to cinemas and would follow on from ‘The Journal’. However, their plans changed, Nickelodeon got cold feet and swapped them round. Now the made-for-TV movie would go to cinemas and the other one would either go straight to video or would get a TV broadcast, before they gave up on the jungle film entirely and just released the made-for-TV film which became Hey Arnold! The Movie. And well, it’s not very good if I’m honest.

This was one of the last times Nickelodeon would put on their films in cinemas – they were definitely on the decline. It hadn’t helped that it had followed on from a lot of really good Nickelodeon films. Nickelodeon are actually one of those companies that are really good at transferring their TV shows into films, or at least they were. Say what you like about them, but they definitely did a better job than Disney did with transferring their TV shows into films, and in most cases vice versa. You can see this when comparing films like Recess: School’s Out—which was a major success and did a great job—vs. Doug’s 1^st Movie, which is awful. Now, I will say in the Hey Arnold! movie’s defence, it is not the worst Nickelodeon film based on one of their TV shows. That would definitely go to Rugrats: Go Wild, which really struggled to mix the tone of The Wild Thornberrys with Rugrats and is one of the strangest crossovers I have ever seen. Seriously, you got Bruce Willis in to play Spike and it’s incredibly dull. But there are some good points to the Hey Arnold!! movie: it does have some genuinely good jokes, there’s a decent running plot at the beginning of the film, and it’s still got some of the Hey Arnold! charm in it but it all loses it very quickly. I think it was kind of around the 20-minute mark I realised this film was really starting to lose its identity.

Now, The Jungle Movie was always petitioned for years, and show creator Craig Bartlett was trying to convince Nickelodeon to give it a chance for nearly 10 years. There were fan outcries; everyone wanted to see it, especially considering Bartlett had detailed what his plans for the film were. And to be honest, despite being part the community trying to get the film made, I had given up hope the longest time it was ever going to come out. Now, fortunately, Nickelodeon looked on at the nostalgia bandwagon that’s been dominating film and television in the past decade and deciding to capitalise on it by finally giving Bartlett the go ahead to make the movie. And when I saw it, it was fantastic. Sure, there are some cons to the jungle film – it’s still rather absurdist at times and some of the redesigns of the characters are not great. Especially Gerald, I don’t know what they did with Gerald’s design but they kind of made him short and pudgier, and I don’t get why; I always felt that making him tall in Arnold was a good decision since it made him seem like kind of the slightly older but cooler kid that we all knew at school. There are a few other redesigns I wasn’t a fan of. Stinky’s redesign is a bit weird and doesn’t entirely work as well – I think they lost a bit of his character by making him not look so lanky. Those are minor nit-picks but they’re aside from the point.

1. Use of characters

The Jungle Movie is excellent with its use of characters. It actually finds a decent excuse to have all the characters travel with Arnold to the fictional South American nation of San Lorenzo. And everyone kind of gets something to do, even if it is a small achievement. Again, this is mostly the Helga, Arnold and Gerald show again, but it’s not entirely surprising. Some characters feel a bit underused – we didn’t see much of the members of the boarding house , but that’s mainly down to the fact that the actors that play some of the roles were not coming back, such as Oscar’s voice actor and Mr. Wynn’s voice actor. But while I’m on it, I actually thought the re-casting of some of the voice actors worked well. Some of them weren’t even immediately obvious, though again there are a couple of exceptions where you could tell, yeah, they didn’t bring back the same voice actor and this new one does not fit. They even managed to get a bit of fan service in at the beginning with a highlight reel of showing Arnold’s good deeds throughout the series, which meant we got cameos from one-off characters like Stoop Kid and Pigeon Man. The point was, they made good use of their cast.

Hey Arnold! The Movie really doesn’t; it’s just Arnold, Helga and Gerald that really get much to do. Arnold’s grandfather and the people in the boarding house get a minor subplot which does not really go anywhere, and a lot of times turn to Helga’s dad of all people who’s really a minor character in almost anything he’s in. This is probably one of the times he’s been most used, and it’s when you’re in that scenario that you realise why he’s a minor character in most episodes. Most of the cast are really under-utilised and not really brought in for the film. It’s really surprising considering that this was the one time that they had the entire cast and all their voice actors. The show had only just stopped airing. Bottom line is the characters are used in a more satisfactory way for fans in The Jungle Movie and the original movie fails miserably at it. It’s probably one of the biggest weaknesses. You have this very likeable, very diverse cast and we only really concentrate on three of them. That’s also not to talk about the one-off characters which are pretty much limited to other celebrity cameos and the villains. Now, The Jungle Movie doesn’t really have any apart from the main villain The Sombre, being played by Alfred Melena, but in the Hey Arnold! movie, they had quite a few one-off characters, including the mortician who is played by Christopher Lloyd and a sort-of pseudo spy character played by Jennifer Jason Lee. But again, they get barely anything to do – Christopher Lloyd’s part is so short you can practically hear him running out of the recording studio to cash in his pay-check.

2. Stakes

Now, the stakes are pretty high in both films – the plot of the Hey Arnold! movie revolves around a businessman named Scheck wanting to tear down the neighbourhood that Arnold lives in with all his friends and family to build a new shopping centre, with really ludicrous motivations for why that get established later down the line. Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie involves Arnold winning a contest thanks to his friends, and his whole class travelling to San Lorenzo as an end-of-year trip and him wanting to use the opportunity to follow his father’s map in order to find the location of his parents.

Okay, here’s where they diverge a bit. Both of these films seem like they are kind of personal, but the fact of the matter is that it’s a lot more personal in The Jungle Movie. This has been directly tied into things that have been built up throughout the show and directly tie into Arnold’s character. In the original movie, yeah, we don’t want to see the locations that we have grown in love with destroyed but the set just feels somehow less relevant, especially considering that a decent investigation would just reveal that everything about this is really shady. It doesn’t really handle those stakes. In fact, the film actually has to keep reminding you that the neighbourhood is going to be torn down – they talk about it constantly. The Jungle Movie actually lets the stakes speak for themselves. There is a lot more going into this and, more to the point, it’s not as predictable of a film. You really can predict virtually everything about Hey Arnold! The Movie including how it’s going to go; the motivations behind certain characters; the mysteries involved, including who the deep voice on the phone that’s giving Arnold all the information he needs is. In The Jungle Movie, I really had no idea where it was going, and as a result, it kept my interests a lot more.

3. The Villains

Now, the villains in both of these are very different. In the Hey Arnold! movie, the villain is Scheck played by Paul Sorvino of Goodfellas fame, and in The Jungle Movie, it’s Lasombra, played by Alfred Molina. You’d think you’d be able to do more subtly villainous things with the character of an American businessman with ill intentions compared to a South American cartel leader, but it’s actually the other way around – Lasombra is way more interesting of a villain. For a start, we didn’t know that much about him. He had been built up slightly in The Journal as someone who was after the riches of the secretive green-eyed people, but we didn’t know that much about him. We didn’t even know what he looked like. The film finally answered many of those questions, and not only do they make a genuinely interesting and devious villain, they also managed to make him somewhat humorous. I don’t think that was possible. Now, his motivations may be a lot simpler since it’s just pure greed and revenge, but man did you know where you stood with him. Compare that to Scheck, he’s a really dull villain. In fact, he’s not really in the film all that much, being pretty absent for most of the first and second act and only really has a prominent role in the third act. Despite the fact they got Paul Sorvino to play him, he’s downright uninteresting – he doesn’t really get any humorous moments, he doesn’t have much nuance to him, and his motivations are weak as hell. Also, you kind of know what his motivations are when Arnold’s grandfather goes into the backstory of the neighbourhood. Seriously, I barely remember anything about Scheck; he’s honestly one of the worst parts of that film and is a waste of a talented actor who’s clearly giving his all.

4. The Animation

Okay, this seems a bit unfair comparing a 2002 film to a 2017 film, but I hate the animation in Hey Arnold! The Movie. Honestly, it’s my biggest complaint. This was a time when you had to do a lot more to transfer television characters to the cinema. We saw that with the two Rugrats films which did a very good job transferring the Rugrats cast of characters and their world to cinemas. I don’t know what happened with the Hey Arnold! movie but I don’t they did a very good job considering that the majority of the time they were making a TV film and then were suddenly tasked with making a cinema release. There’s a lot I don’t like about it – it doesn’t seem as expressive as the TV show but, more to the point, the colours are washed out as all hell. Hey Arnold! as a TV show actually has a brilliant use of colour in its animation. They actually are very good at setting the tone through slight animation changes that are only noticeable on a re-watch. The Hey Arnold! movie has like one tone and filter and they seem to use it throughout the entire film. As a result, everything looks really dark and bleak. Compare that with Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie, it’s bursting with colour. Again, this was made for television, but even then, it looks like it had a lot more love and care put into it. I think this is as a product of deadlines. The Jungle Movie was a passion project – they had time to iron out each of the aspects of every single scene, so that probably affected it.

5. Humour

The humour in Hey Arnold! The Movie isn’t that great. It didn’t help that if you were watching a lot of kid’s TV around that time, they were in tons of trailers for it and showed off pretty much all the jokes, including the weird Incredible Hulk parody. As a result, there were not many good jokes left by the time we all got round to watching it. And even if you went in blind, the funny jokes are few and far between. Hey Arnold! really is praised for its excellent slice of life in tackling a tough subject, but it also should be stated that it has excellent humour and some very funny characters. It seems absent in Hey Arnold! The Movie; there’s not that many great moments. I think one of the funniest moments was Eugene trying to break into song at the beginning of the film which at the time was actually quite funny but now, considering how often that joke’s been done as a massive middle finger to Disney, it’s lost all sense of charm. The Jungle Movie certainly has way more laughs, and while some of them are directed a bit too much at fans, there’s also some genuinely good ones in there as well that anyone can enjoy. I particularly found a joke around Wi-Fi incredibly hilarious when I first saw it. And surprisingly, the villain gets some of the most humorous moments yet, again, they still manage to make him intimidating.

6. How they Handled The Over-The-Top Nature

Both of these films are going to jump the shark from what is a slice-of-life show, but there’s a difference in how they handled it. Again, The Jungle Movie built this up and still feels like it somewhat within the realms of reality. Hey Arnold! The Movie goes for a weird spy-thriller edge like it’s trying to be Men In Black and James Bond all in one in the second half, which feels weird and out of place. It almost feels like one of the fantasies that the characters would have in Doug turned into a full-length movie. I don’t think anyone expected this when they heard there was going to be a Hey Arnold movie. Again, this was kind of a product of the time where the idea was that if you were transferring a TV show into a film, you had to raise the stakes exponentially and do things that were really out there, something that I think a lot of TV shows turned into films now know not to do. The Jungle Movie, again, all feels like it’s in place. Plus, it’s building off ‘The Journal’ which also introduced some of these over-the-top elements, and while they don’t entirely work in that episode, it’s written so well you almost don’t care. Same goes with The Jungle Movie. Because Hey Arnold! The Movie doesn’t have the best writing in the world, the over-the-top elements stick out exponentially.

7. The Endings

Videogame adaptations have been a prominent things ever since the rise in popularity of videogames in the 90s, and they’ve also received the stigma of the fact that they tend to not turn out very well, though we’re starting to see an increase in good ones, populated by the fact that last year one of the best films to come out was Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, and this year we had a genuinely great adaptation of Sonic The Hedgehog.

But this is not a new thing – back in the day, the only chance you are getting a decent videogame adaptation was if you watched a lot of Anime, and even then it was a bit of a hit and miss job, which is why it stuns me that when they talk about the conversation on really good videogame adaptations, the subject of the day never comes up. I’m of course talking about Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist. Not the first Street Fighter adaptation.

Street Fighter has been adapted quite a number of times by quite a different number of directors and studios from various countries around the world. Street Fighter really has been one of the most adapted videogames of all time, receiving the questionable movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia, which I actually kind of like even though I know it’s terrible. The Chun Lee movie which was so awful because it had all the problems that the Street Fighter movie had but actually made it worse, and the various Anime which vary in quality in my personal opinion.

But Assassin’s Fist which came out in 2014 was an internet-based mini-series, though it got later released as a film on DVD and Blu-ray which I think is the absolute best way to see this. This was a fan project that got turned into a fully-fledged series after they received the blessing from CapCon for them to do so, probably one of CapCon’s wisest decisions to get the word out considering that it was coming at a time when Street Fighter was one of their only major franchises that they were still making games for. Now a lot of you might be thinking, ‘I don’t want to see a martial arts movie that’s based on a videogame franchise I only have a vague recollection of from decades ago.’ Well, I think I have five reasons why you should definitely take a chance on it even if you don’t think this is your thing.

1. The Fight Scenes All Have Meaning

Now, the one thing the original short that spawned Assassin’s Fist nailed was that it was a very impressive-looking fight scene with actors who really closely resembled their videogame counterparts. Seriously, it’s haunting how close Christian Howard is to Ken. But the fight scenes are very well-choreographed, which once again in this project was also the case. All the scenes are incredibly choreographed – these are some of the best live-action fight scenes I’ve ever seen. These guys were clearly well-trained, and they wanted to show it off in the best way possible. But more to the point, each fight scene has a meaning to it: it’s to show character development; a coming of age moment; the culmination of years of self-reflection. There’s a later moment in the story where Ryu and Ken are doing what is essentially a final exam and you can tell they’re pushing each other to their absolute limit just through the great choreography alone. Each fight scene has been well built up to and has an excellent reason to be in the film. It doesn’t feel like there was an actual quota to reach.

2. The Central Performances

I really like all the performers in Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist. It feels like everyone was giving an excellent performance in this one. Not only do they take the time to make sure they have actors who could do the fights and also look like their videogame counterparts, but they also made sure they could act like those characters. The chemistry between Mike Moh and Christian Howard really feels like what I’d imagine the chemistry between Ryu and Ken would be like, an absolute brotherly bond. And special mention should definitely go to Akira Koieyama who does an excellent role as Gôken, even if he probably looks the least like his counterpart. His performance really gets down the dread he feels of the inevitable clash that he will take part in, and the fear for what will essentially become his adoptive sons should they become too involved in what has essentially been the past that he failed to correct. I even really love the performances of the actors in the flashback sequences – these actors were really given excellent direction and you can really feel all the subtle nuances in their performances. Everyone involved feels like they’ve known each other for years and have real history together, in spite of the fact we don’t see it or gain an explanation; that’s how good the performances really are.

3. It Resists The Urge To Make Tons Of References

Here’s the thing. Many videogame films really feel the need to put in as many references out of nowhere to other aspects of the franchise, and at best they’re usually very restrained, say like in Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was an advert for The Pokémon League from the fourth generation games. But fan films often have a problem that they put in a ton of references for no rhyme or reason. Now, this is usually because they have a limited amount of time and they want to get out as much of the franchise that they can use as possible. Assassin’s Fist is wise in the sense that it doesn’t overly do this. For one thing, it reduces the cast – of in-game characters, there is only four: Ryu, Ken, Gôken and Akuma. There are not many much references to other characters in the franchise other than a brief reference to Dan which was kind of funny. There is not too much of a sense of trying to bring in all this aspect of the game that was necessary, and that’s sort of for the best. This is a very small, intimate story. As a result, you really get a sense that they want to get this story out, and then they’ll worry about bringing in other aspects of the franchise if they can go any further. It’s very interesting to see this level of restraint and it’s to the film’s benefit – it keeps just enough of the games to be recognisable but does not overly do it with it references to make sure it’s its own thing, something that Hollywood blockbusters could really benefit from.

4. It’s Thematically Well Thought-Out

It’s very hard to get across the basic idea of why this story would work based on the game alone. The game is essentially just a group of people from all over the world fighting in a tournament run by a shady organisation in order to eliminate the best street fighters in the world so that they can move forward toward global domination through various means that are never made entirely clear. Hard to translate, hence why it’s been difficult to do that. Assassin’s Fist actually is a prequel to these events. The creators wisely decided to focus purely on the story that is one of the inciting incidences for the main characters, Ryu and Ken. It focuses on their final year of training in the Japanese countryside with their master Gôken and how they’re going to use this as their self-improvement to go out into the world, whilst coupled with the story of Gôken’s past and how his failure to save his adopted brother from himself turned him into the demon fighter Akuma, the guilt that has given him, and their inevitable clash. Fans of the game series know where this is going and as a result it feels like you’re watching a tragic retelling of a story which you know will end badly but are begging for something to change.

Even with that knowledge, this film works really well because they’ve got the themes down perfectly. It’s about regressing the past, learning to conquer yourself before you can conquer others, confronting things rather than running away from them, and it also tells us about the family you make vs the family you’re born in. A lot of the themes revolve around brotherly bonds and fathers and sons, and you can really tell that all the characters that care for each other do so through very subtle meaning. There are all sorts of mini moments which really show that they had a clear thematic idea about where they were going with this story and wanting to get it down; it’s a very focused film in that regard. As a result, it really does a brilliant job.

5. It’s Genuinely Emotional

Yeah, I know, that sounds weird about a Street Fighter movie of all things but this one is genuinely emotional – there are moments where you feel really elated for a character and really sad for them, it really will hit you. This one does an excellent job just telling the story of two groups of three people and the man that connects them both, and it does a decent job really getting down why this training is important for Ryu and Ken, why Gôken is so protective of them and preparing them to face the world now that they’ve become men and are preparing to leave him and the dojo. You really get a sense that this is the most important event in Gôken’s life and he’s contemplating on everything that’s come before him. I won’t spoil the ending, but it is a massive gut punch and makes me really wish I got a chance to see the sequel Street Fighter: Resurrection which has still not had any official release in the UK yet. Get on that, Capcon.

What’s more, the cinematography and score are also both excellent – the cinematography in this film actually kind of makes the environment itself a character, it almost feels like it has personality. I mean, I could go on forever about how they did an excellent job with the costume design that worked so well; how even the characters wearing wigs makes them look very much like their videogame counterparts (though Akuma’s does kind of look ridiculous on occasion); how this film does an excellent job with lighting, but I really want you to see it for yourself.

Okay, let’s talk about endings. A friend suggested to me that I do a ‘Top 10 Good Movies Ruined By Their Ending’ list a while back, and I tried to work on it only to realise that there are very few examples of that. Not too many can still be considered “good” if the ending did not nail it, and it’s really hard to nail an ending. One film, for example, where the ending does not quite work but the film did quite well was Hereditary. Hereditary’s ending is actually a bit of a weird one all round and it seemed like the writers did not know how to end the movie but had the twist in mind so they just kind of threw everything at the wall and hoped something would stick.

So for this list, I decided to talk about 5 films that demonstrate why an ending is paramount. These films are prime examples are something you really should put a lot of effort into – if you fail at the ending, you fail with the story. Now note, I am not going to be talking about underwhelming endings, I’m going to simply be talking about films that lost all of their good will that they possibly could have had by their endings. And incidentally, since I will know how to talk about the ends of these movies, this one will be the first time I’ll have to put a massive SPOILERS warning here. As a result, I’m just going to have to come out and say that the following films are going to be talked about: Dragon Quest: Your Story, Red Lights, I Am Legend, The Girl With All The Gifts, Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, Book of Eli and Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II. With all that being said, this will not be done in a specific order; these are going to be rather random. But each of the films that I’m going to go into more detail about will represent one of several ways an ending does not quite work.

Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald

Reason Why The Ending Sucks: It forced multiple retrospective continuity changes and leaves the audience more confused than when they started.

Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald is not a very good film. I actively reviewed it last year and it is indicative of how far off the ball JK Rowling has fallen. It seems that Rowling has never been that comfortable with just putting the Harry Potter universe to one side. There were a lot of big twists in Crimes of Grindelwald. The ending left with Grindelwald leaving with his cultist, including the taking of Ezra Miller’s character from the first film, and they had really been building up this character. After resurrecting him from the first film, they were trying to go with the idea that he was actually the long lost little brother of Leta Lestrange, however they then completely dump that twist because it turns out that that baby was swapped with another one on the trip to America on a ship that sank, which means—yikes—we’ve now had a film with two cases of infant death within it. But then, by the end, Grindelwald reveals two credence: He’s actually the long lost brother of Dumbledore, and this now forces a massive load of retrospective continuity changes since the Harry Potter books and films both went into great detail about Dumbledore’s family history, and this never came up. This does not put all the other Harry Potter stories into a new perspective like a good twist would. Instead, it’s just a twist for the sake of a twist even though it makes no sense.

Also, this means a franchise that was promising now has no enthusiasm going forwards. I really have no enthusiasm for the third part in this trilogy which is kind of stuck in development hell right now, and I would not be surprised if it is just abandoned entirely. What’s more, I’m not hopeful for David Yates coming back to direct it. I’ve heard some reports that he is not too keen on going any further, and honestly this ending is a prime example of it. Another ending that is similar in my mind in terms of how they make the older films worse was Blair Witch (2016), which had a similarly bad ending that did not fit in line with continuity changes.

I Am Legend /
The Girl With All The Gifts

Reason Why The Endings Sucks: The ending was either changed from the book and did not match the tone, or they kept the ending from the book but did not keep the events leading up to the ending.

I put these two together because they are both examples of adaptational changes but for different reasons, and they’re both zombie apocalypse storylines. The Girl With All The Gifts goes with a zombie apocalypse that is a bit different – it’s a fungal infection rather than a viral outbreak that causes a rise of the zombies in this world, which is interesting considering that it was coming out around the same time as The Last of Us which would do the whole concept a lot more successfully. The problem is that, while it does keep the ending from the book, they made tons of changes to the middle of the book, which did not make sense. The Girl With All The Gifts is essentially a story about children being asymptomatic carriers of the zombie virus and a group of adults learning how to control it, with the main character being potentially immune to what essentially is zombie-ism. Wow, now that I actually say it out loud I realise just how much The Last of Us borrowed from this. However, the end of the film has this idea of a rejection of most of the adults and the destruction of humanity, but it comes completely out of nowhere – there have been several character changes from the book throughout the film so this ending feels tacked on and does not actually work. As a result, the film was a complete mess. Still, it’s got nothing on I Am Legend.

I Am Legend did a pretty good job doing a modernized take on a very old book. Will Smith does a very good job having to play essentially a role with no one to interact with, and the way they do zombies in this one is really interesting. The fact they can’t come out in daylight is genuinely cool, and they do a very good job having the idea of a man going through his daily business in order to stay sane. The film has him looking for a cure and then results in the zombies coming to overthrow the house in which he has been keeping an infected person he has been treating, following by the two newcomers that Will Smith discovers having to hide in a safe bunker whilst he takes himself out along with the zombies with a grenade, and they deliver a potential cure to a survivor’s colony. The problem is that this was not what the message of the book was, and the worst part is that they shot another ending. Yeah, they shot a brilliant ending: Will Smith’s character makes the exact same pleas but the zombies do not attack him, they take the infected woman and they leave. It was a brilliant twist – the zombies were entirely sentient, and he is now the monster in their world, not the other way around. Why was this ending scrapped? This was a much better ending! It really ruins any good will the film had prior to this. Trust me, we’re going to be getting back to that one.

Red Lights

Reason Why The Ending Sucks: It comes completely out of nowhere and contradicts a lot of what has been established throughout the film.

This film was a prime example of a twist ending that does not work. I talked a bit about this a few weeks ago but as a recap, Cillian Murphy plays a psychic debunker who works with a woman played by Sigourney Weaver to expose a supposedly blind psychic medium played by Robert De Niro. I was actually really on board for most of this film, but then it had its second half where it dips, culminating in an appalling ending. It does not help that a lot of the actors don’t really get a lot to do in the film outside of Cillian Murphy. Robert De Niro is not in it as much as you would expect in spite of his top status, Sigourney Weaver’s character actually dies halfway through the film, and Toby Jones feels wasted.

Now let’s gets to the ending, however. The film has a lot of weird scenarios going on in it, and then culminates in an ending where it turns out that, in spite of the fact he thinks he has the ability to expose the psychic, Cillian Murphy’s character actually has paranormal powers and has had all throughout the entire film and has been causing most of the weird things that have happened. Right, quick point, this ending comes out of nowhere! This is sub- Shyamalan levels of bad. Incidentally, to put this film in was one of the reasons I had to take out virtually all the bad Shyamalan endings from this list. It also goes along with Book of Eli which also similarly had another twist which falls into the category of this-film’s-twist-is-not-as-clever-as-the writer-thinks-it-is. Red Light’s ending really was just another ending that was there as a twist for the sake of a twist, and it really shows. The film really fails to build up this ending, and as a result it comes completely out of nowhere, and it also comes off as really pretentious. There’s a reason why the critics eviscerated this film. I’m also thankful that this film hasn’t achieved a cult following because I really don’t want to have to defend my position on this film’s ending much longer. Honestly, my description hasn’t done it justice – it’s one of those where you will not get how insane it is until you’ve actually seen it.

Dragon Quest: Your Story

Reason Why The Ending Sucks: It made the entire film pointless.