Peacemaker: Review of First Three Episodes

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***

James Gunn’s HBO superhero series ‘Peacemaker’ isn’t great, but it’s good enough.

DC Comic’s show is a mixed bag, but it’s elevated by the relentless effort of star John Cena.

Peacemaker is the new DC Comics superhero series for HBO Max which premiered its first three episodes on January 13, with new episodes being released every Thursday until February 17.  

The show, which stars John Cena and is written and directed by the controversial James Gunn, is a spin-off from Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie from last summer.  

Peacemaker is DC’s first foray into prestige tv, and it’s in direct contrast to Marvel’s bevy of family-friendly Disney Plus tv shows in that it is decidedly raunchy, racy, irreverent and R-rated.

You see, Peacemaker the superhero isn’t the pretty poster boy for perfect patriotism like Marvel’s Captain America, no, he’s more like Captain America’s unbridled shadow. At best, Peacemaker is a morally ambiguous, sociopathic, white trash, trailer park superhero who demands the Dove of Peace be branded on all his weapons and who “loves peace so much he doesn’t care how many men, women, and children he has to kill to get it”…which sounds like something that should be chiseled in stone above the entrance to the Pentagon.

Of course, that’s what makes Peacemaker an interesting character is that while he is a lovable lunkhead, he’s also a walking, talking monument to America’s unadulterated adolescence and unabashed addiction to militarism, colonialism and fascism.

When the series opens, Peacemaker is given a clean bill of health after recovering from the grievous wounds that he received in The Suicide Squad. Upon his release from the hospital, he’s supposed to go back to prison to serve his life sentence, but instead gets co-opted by a “black ops” squad to assassinate some bad people under the moniker of “Project Butterfly”.

The very best thing about Peacemaker is unquestionably John Cena. I remember the first time I saw John Cena act it was in the 2015 Amy Schumer comedy Trainwreck. Cena had a small role in the film but stole every scene in which he appeared. The movie was awful but he was the best thing in it. He did the same thing in last summer’s The Suicide Squad, nearly stealing the whole movie.

What makes Cena so compelling is that he obviously isn’t a natural comedian, but he is absolutely fearless if not shameless, and works relentlessly hard to get a laugh, which is why he wins over audiences.

Admittedly, at times Cena’s act can wear a bit thin, but overall, it does work well on Peacemaker. Cena, with his cartoonish, comic book, pro wrestler’s body, comes across as a charismatic, magnetic and endearingly goofy on-screen presence.

The other driving force on Peacemaker is writer/director James Gunn. Gunn has grown a cult following for his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and the signature bawdy banter he writes for his projects.

A few years ago, Gunn got into hot water when old tweets surfaced where he made some offensive rape and pedophilia jokes on Twitter. Not surprisingly considering our hyper-sensitive era which only grows more sensitive with every passing day, Disney fired him from future Guardians of the Galaxy movies because of his bad jokes. Incredibly, after actors and media outlets pushed back against Disney’s Gunn cancellation, the studio relented and brought him back into the Guardians of the Galaxy fold.

But while he was in Disney/Marvel purgatory he signed on with DC and Warner Bros. to make The Suicide Squad and now the spin-off Peacemaker.

Gunn’s work is an acquired taste and to be frank, I’m not exactly sure I’ve acquired it just yet. I liked his The Suicide Squad (2021) considerably more than the dreadful original Suicide Squad (2016), but that isn’t saying much.

I think what sort of grates me in regard to Gunn is that while he may pose as a rebellious edge lord, at his core he’s a kiss-ass sycophant who lacks the testicular fortitude to speak truth in the House of the Woke.

For instance, in typical flaccid fashion, on Peacemaker every white, male character is either an imbecile, a cuckold or an outright Nazi. How original.

According to Gunn, the second lead on the show is the character Leota (a poorly cast Danielle Brooks), who is, of course, a black lesbian, for no apparent reason other than blatant woke tokenism. How edgy.

To be fair, Gunn does at least occasionally get a bit clever with the woke stuff, like when he has hard-nosed beauty Emilia Harcourt (an excellent Jennifer Holland) give a passionate monologue to Peacemaker about how sick and tired she is of the oppressive and aggressive sexism of men in the world, and then cuts to a naked woman as Peacemaker has aggressive sex with her. But even that bit of self-awareness only results in highlighting Gunn’s overall weak-kneed woke acquiescence on the show.

Other issues are much more obvious, such as the action sequences being less than stellar and the production value being painfully thin.

But with that said, and even though the show is more amusing than laugh out loud funny, thanks to John Cena I still found Peacemaker compelling and entertaining enough that I will watch the rest of the series over the next month as the final five episodes become available.

Thus far the show isn’t anywhere near as good as say, The Boys, the more profound and less pubescently profane, brilliant superhero series on Amazon, but it is good enough.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking for some rather mindless, mildly amusing, bawdy and base, family unfriendly superhero fun featuring John Cena, then Peacemaker is definitely for you.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Suicide Squad: A Review and Commentary

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!***

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A significant upgrade over 2016’s Suicide Squad, this movie is a stylized, at times amusing, blood-soaked comic book comedy that boasts a shockingly subversive political message at its heart.

This article contains spoilers to ‘The Suicide Squad’.

Despite garnering mostly good reviews and generating positive word of mouth, I didn’t watch director James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad when it hit theatres and HBO Max on August 5th here in the U.S.

I was, pardon the pun, ‘gun-shy’ about the film because I’d suffered through the previous cinematic crucifixion that was Suicide Squad, the David Ayers directed movie monstrosity from 2016.

Still bearing the scars from the Suicide Squad atrocity, I expected Gunn’s new pseudo reboot, oh-so-creatively titled The Suicide Squad, to be more of the lifeless, corporatized, Pentagon approved propaganda that passes for blockbuster entertainment nowadays.

That expectation was based on the fact that Warner Brothers is notorious for squeezing the artistic life out of their superhero movies and that leaked documents revealed that the Department of Defense were, not surprisingly, nefariously involved behind the scenes in the making of The Suicide Squad, no doubt assisting in extraction of anything remotely interesting from the final product in exchange for the use of military members as extras and the use of an Osprey aircraft.

But then a funny thing happened when I watched The Suicide Squad, I actually found a shockingly subversive movie wrapped in the usual corporate comic book cloak.

Now maybe I’m wearing my tinfoil hat too tight, but it seems to me that Gunn’s greatest accomplishment with The Suicide Squad was sneaking its remarkably subversive political message past his controlling corporate overlords and censorious Department of Defense bureaucrats.

How else to explain a mainstream comic book film that boasts ‘9-11 was an inside job’ symbolism at its narrative heart, and anti-American imperialism at its sub-textural center?

The plot of The Suicide Squad is that two ‘suicide squads’ of super-villains are taken out of Belle Reve prison in Louisiana and sent on a mission by the U.S. government to invade a small island off of South America, Corto Maltese, which was ruled by an American-friendly dictator now deposed by a hostile military coup.

The first group of suicide squaders hit the Corto Maltese beach like the Bay of Pigs invasion force, and meet a similarly gruesome fate.

In another tinfoil hat moment, during this initial ‘Bay of Pigs’ type invasion fiasco, Blackguard (Pete Davidson) storms the beach and gets his brains blown out by a high-powered rifle, just like JFK did in Dallas, and yes, both of their heads went “back and to the left”.

When supervillain Savant (Michael Rooker) tries to run away from the fray, U.S. government official Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) detonates an explosive device implanted in his head in a Stalinesque lesson to the others to never retreat.

This is not exactly standard issue Pentagon propaganda.

This invasion is simply a distraction so a second suicide squad, led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba) and made up of Peacemaker (John Cena) – a super patriot and psychopath, Ratcatcher (Daniela Melchior), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) and King Shark (Sly Stallone), can arrive unnoticed on Corto Maltese.

As the Suicide Squad go on their odyssey, they mistakenly massacre a group of rebels intent on overthrowing the anti-American military junta due to Ms. Waller’s order to “kill anything they see”.

Again, not exactly the usual pro-America message the Pentagon prefers.

The Squad’s mission is to break into a heavily fortified tower named Jotunheim that houses a powerful, one-eyed Sauron-esque alien named Starro, which can control entire populations of people by taking over their brains.  

The U.S. were complicit in capturing Starfish from space and now that an unfriendly government has taken over Corto Maltese, they want the Suicide Squad to blow up Jotunheim and kill Starfish.

The Suicide Squad eventually get to Jotunheim and, hold onto your tinfoil hats, they place C4 explosives on each floor of the tower. But the plan goes awry and the explosions happen too early, thus the tower only partially collapses.

The visual similarities of the demolition of the Jotunheim to the WTC towers collapsing on 9-11 are pretty blatant, and one doesn’t have to be a “conspiracy kook” to notice them.

For instance, Bloodsport escapes the tower’s initial collapse and finds himself atop what is left of the Jotunheim, but then the floor he’s standing on collapses to the floor below, which begins a cascading collapse where each floor pancakes onto the one below with Bloodsport surfing the crumbling building to the bottom.

The symbolism when Bloodsport arrives at the bottom of the tower is striking, as he finds super-patriot Peacemaker poised to execute Ratcatcher at the behest of the American government so as to keep a computer file detailing the U.S.’s involvement in Project Starfish from ever coming to light.

Donning an Izod shirt and short shorts, and brandishing a flag-waving, violent self-righteousness, Peacemaker is Reagan’s America incarnate, who’d do anything to maintain America’s ‘shining city on a hill’ image.

In the aftermath of the tower’s collapse, Starro escapes and sets out to control or kill the entire population of Corto Maltese but the U.S. government doesn’t care as long as America’s connection to the alien is forever hidden.

Speaking of hidden, in a nod to Operation Paperclip, Jotunheim was built by Nazis who escaped Europe after World War II, which is not the only Nazi symbolism in the film. Javelin, part of the first suicide squad invasion force, is a former Olympian who uses his javelin as a weapon. He’s German, a model of Hitler’s dream of Aryan supermen, and Harley Quinn, who has a crush on him, uses his javelin to pierce the eye of Starfish and ultimately destroy the alien, with the help of hordes of hungry rats (it’s a long story).

As for Starro, the beast released by the tower’s destruction, it’s symbolic of the mindless militarism and neo-conservate group think belched up by America after the twin towers were destroyed. Similar to America’s militarism and neo-conservatism, which led to the disastrous and failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, Starfish’s invincibility is punctured by a rag-tag group with primitive weapons (javelin) assisted by the reviled that live in the shadows (rats).

With an authoritarian, deceptive, murderous American government slaughtering friendly rebels and shrugging at the massacre of innocent women and children, a super-patriotic sociopathic serial killer, Nazis and implying 9-11 government nefariousness, this movie is definitely not the usual Pentagon approved propaganda.

The Suicide Squad is, like most comic book movies, a corporate money grab and commercial for future corporate money grabs, but it’s also a movie with a gloriously subversive political message hiding in plain sight. That’s either a testament to James Gunn’s creative stealth or to the winless-in-wars-over-the-last-80-years Pentagon beginning to slip in the propaganda department too. Regardless of how the message got there, the reality is that the film’s alternative politics are one of the things that make it at least a somewhat interesting and worthwhile watch.

All Gunn had to do with the The Suicide Squad was make it not as awful as Ayer’s Suicide Squad. A major step in the direction for the project was jettisoning the abysmal dead weight of the always dreadful Will Smith as Bloodsport and casting Idris Elba in his stead. Elba is an actor, Will Smith is a poseur.

The rest of the cast acquit themselves well enough, with Margot Robbie and John Cena as the standouts. The elevation of the acting can be attributed to Gunn as Viola Davis was utterly abysmal in the first film but actually does pretty well in this one.

The bottom line is this, I’m no Gunn fanboy, but it’s obvious he succeeded in his task by making a very stylized comic book comedy with a rip-roaring soundtrack that is best described as a foul-mouthed, blood-soaked, raucous romp akin to a second or maybe third-rate Deadpool…and I guess that’s good enough.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Birds of Prey: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: NEVER SEE THIS MOVIE.

This is an extended version of a review that was originally published at RT.

The new film Birds of Prey is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: Financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan, is the story of Joker’s ex-girlfriend, Harley Quinn, as she navigates Gotham and a series of bad guys trying to take her down. The film stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, with supporting nods from Ewen McGregor, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rosie Perez.

Birds of Prey is marketed as a girl power manifesto that re-imagines Harley Quinn without the condescending sexism feminists felt was so prominent in Suicide Squad (2016), the last movie that featured Margot Robbie as Harley.

Suicide Squad was a horrifically shitty movie, and was regarded as a box office under-performer with a notoriously troubled production history, but it still was able to scratch out $750 million in total.

Despite oddly positive - to the point of delusional - reviews from woke pandering mainstream critics, Birds of Prey won’t do half that number in its theatrical run. With a reported production budget of $100 million (which includes re-shoots) and additional marketing costs, Birds of Prey is going to lose big money for the douchebag suits at Warner Brothers.

How did things go so wrong?

Birds of Prey banished the problematic “male gaze” of Suicide Squad that allegedly dehumanized Harley by making her purely an object of desire, by employing an all female creative team that included producer Margot Robbie, writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan. The production goes so far in exorcising men as to even have a soundtrack with all-female artists on it.

The problem though is Birds of Prey tries to thread the needle and make a chaotically cool combination of Deadpool meets Wonder Woman, only it doesn’t have the first clue about the sardonically masculine humor of Deadpool and the appealing feminine power of Wonder Woman, or masculinity and femininity in general.

The film’s sexual politics are aggressive to say the least. In our current cultural moment, toxic masculinity and masculinity have become synonymous, so it is no surprise that Birds of Prey goes to great lengths to denigrate and disparage all its male characters and yet also to venerate all its female ones.

Every man in the movie, with the lone exception being a character (played by the criminally underused actor Eddie Alfano!) with fifteen seconds of screen time and no dialogue, is either entitled, conniving, maniacally violent, a rapist or all of the above.

In contrast every female character wears the noble crown of resilient victimhood after having suffered at the cruel hands of men.

The portrayal of men as misogynist beasts is pretty heavy handed, as at one point Harley and female friends are surrounded and the sadistic Roman Sionis (Ewen McGregor) yells to his army of all-male thugs, “Men of Gotham, go get those bitches!”

What’s so bizarre about the supposed girl power message of the movie is that while it relentlessly tells us that men are despicable creatures, all of the female characters are lionized for trying to behave like men. Like the recent batch of feminist movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey believes that feminism means women should act like men.

Even more baffling is the cinematic schizophrenia of Birds of Prey, as it obviously loathes men yet is so desperate for their attention it serves up a steady supply of hyper-violence. As Harley Quinn says, “nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence…blow something up, shoot someone.”

Totally coincidentally, The New York Times published an op-ed by an actress, Brit Marling, titled “I Don’t Want to be the Strong Female Lead” on the day Birds of Prey premiered.

In the piece Marling describes strong female leads as, “She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.”

In some ways this applies to Birds of Prey, since the women in it are smarter, tougher and stronger than the men, except they have been stripped of their sex appeal in a convoluted attempt to be pro-feminist.

For instance, Harley Quinn wore short shorts and alluring outfits in Suicide Squad, but in the female empowering Birds of Prey she dresses in baggy, Bermuda length shorts and a pink sports bra. It’s as if Harley went full Lady MacBeth and cried “unsex me here” and the filmmakers dutifully complied to stick it to the patriarchy.

Contrast this with the Super Bowl halftime show where Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were declared fiercely feminist when they wore skimpy outfits and literally danced like strippers.

How can female filmmakers like Cathy Yan properly tell an empowering feminist story if feminists haven’t even figured out what feminism is just yet?

This confusion manifests when Birds of Prey defines women solely in opposition to men, but then has them emulate masculinity as a show of their feminine strength.

Brit Marling wasn’t commenting on the troubling Manichean anti-male sexual politics of Birds of Prey, but she could have been, when she eloquently wrote, “I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance?”

That is a good question, but Birds of Prey is oblivious to balance…and quality for that matter. It’s a hot mess of a movie that features derivative, repetitive and dull action sequences, and that tries to be funny, but isn’t…hell…there is a hyena in the movie and even he wasn’t laughing. Watching this thing felt like wading through an Olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive girl power vomit.

The cast, including lead Margot Robbie, who is one of my favorite actresses, are dreadful. Robbie’s New Yawk accent is brutally distracting and completely idiotic. Robbie’s Harley Quinn makes no sense dramatically, comedically or artistically.

The supporting roles are equally incoherent. Jurnee Smollett’s Black Canary and McGregor’s Sionis are cardboard cutout caricatures that are embarrassing to behold….as is Winstead’s Huntress. The biggest crime these actors commit is that they are all suffocatingly dull in their roles. There isn’t a spark of life at all from them…or from Rosie Perez who is wildly miscast as a girl cop done wrong.

In conclusion, if equality is women making misandrist, hyper-violent, incoherently vapid and dreadful movies…then Birds of Prey is a smashing success for feminism. It is also an abysmal failure for cinema…and probably humanity. It deserves to fail.

©2020

Trump, Parasite and the 2020 Election

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 57 seconds

This is an extended version of an article that was originally published on Friday, February 21, 2020, at RT.

TRUMP HATES PARASITE BECAUSE IT PREDICTS HIS ELECTION DEFEAT

Movies are a bellwether of public sentiment, and last year’s crop of class-conscious nominees, such as Best Picture winner Parasite, spell doom for Trump’s re-election.

Last night (Thursday February 20th) President Trump told a raucous rally crowd that he was not a fan of Parasite winning Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.

I think Trump despises Parasite, the South Korean film about class divisions and class struggle, because he unconsciously understands that it is a foreboding omen that foretells his electoral defeat come November.

As longtime readers know, I have developed a theory, named the Isaiah/McCaffrey Wave Theory, that is meant to track trends in the collective unconscious through various data points. These data points are then turned into waves - such as historical waves, empire waves, generational waves, time waves, and culture/art waves.

The theory is rather complex and is simply too long and complicated to coherently boil down in a blog post. So for this article I have simply focused the lens of the theory down to the culture/art waves as a way to measure unconscious trends before, or as, they turn into public sentiment.

In terms of the McCaffrey Wave Theory’s (MWT) viability, it did accurately predict the last presidential election - the first in which it was used…which most prognosticators, political scientists and other theories did not. In fact, the MWT thought that Trump’s victory was glaringly obvious…which is why I was so puzzled when everyone else was so shocked by the result.

In regards to the culture/art wave of the MWT, the primary (and most easily digestible) data points are the top ten box office films and Oscar nominated films for the year previous and the year of a presidential election. There are other secondary data points as well, but box office/Oscars are the one that we will use in this article because those films are the ones that most resonated with the general public. (And it should also be noted, film is not always the primary art/culture data point, that changes through history as different art/culture forms take precedence over others.)

Artists…even those that work in corporate Hollywood, are like antennas attuned to the collective unconscious, and their art is the act of taking the unconscious and making it conscious. In other words, artists take dreams and put them into reality. These artists are not consciously predicting the future, they are just acting on whatever resonates with their own subconscious when they are choosing what stories to tell and how to tell them.

Due to the nature of the film business, it takes years for their work to come to fruition…which is why cinema can be a leading indicator of what comes next in public sentiment as the lag time between concept and fruition gives time for those sentiments to come closer to the surface of the collective consciousness.

According to the McCaffrey Wave Theory, the titles, narratives, themes, color palettes and archetypes present in the most popular (box office/awards) movies hold clues as to what lies ahead in terms of public political preference.

The basic premise regarding these pieces of information, is to consider them like a dream and interpret them through a Jungian perspective. Dreams come from the unconscious, and movies/art are collective dreams born of the collective unconscious. Jungian dream interpretation is used because it is the best way to try and decipher the language of symbols with which the unconscious (collective or personal) communicates.

With this in mind it is also worth remembering that Oscar nominated and Box Office winning films aren’t just about the movies, but the marketing around those movies. The messages of these movies are not confined to the two hour viewing experience or to just those who see the film, because marketing will put incessant advertisements, tv and radio commercials, magazine and newspaper coverage, and billboards and posters in front of the entire populace. This will have the effect of not only being a leading indicator of public sentiment by expressing the symbols of the collective unconscious, but, as Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays teaches us, also being somewhat of a driver of that sentiment.

With all of this background in mind…let’s take a look at recent electoral history using the MWT before we dive in what lay ahead for 2020.

2016 ELECTION

The box office and Oscars accurately foreshadowed Trump’s 2016 win as in 2015 both Spotlight and The Big Short, two stories about outsiders taking on a corrupt establishment – The Catholic Church and Wall Street respectively, won Oscars, with Spotlight winning Best Picture.

Three other nominees, The Revenant, The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road, were about men overcoming long odds and surviving in the starkest of situations. These films also had very distinct color palettes, with Mad Max and The Martian having red as their primary color, and The Revenant having blue as its primary color. These films also had similar visual schemes as they frequently used wide panoramic shots of bleak and desolate landscapes.

Even the title, Mad Max: Fury Road, was a sign of what lay ahead, Mad, Max, Fury…these words are obviously pointing to a jolting amount of anger coming to a boil in the collective unconscious. In terms of Trump, he was Mad to the Max, and his road to the White House was paved with Fury -and in the wake of his election, Democrats were the ones at Maximum Mad and filled with Fury.

Symbolically, these films tapped into the archetype of the outsider taking on the corrupt establishment (Spotlight, The Big Short), and the individual man overcoming staggering odds to survive in the bleakest of environments. Trump followed suit as he ran as an outsider taking on Washington and survived bleak odds and the grueling gauntlet of a decidedly adversarial establishment media to win.

The 2015 box office also presaged Trump’s election, as the box office champ, The Force Awakens, could’ve been titled “The Populist Force Awakens”, as it foreshadowed a forceful awakening of something. That something was the populism that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination and elevated Bernie Sanders to be a threat in the Democratic primary.

Like The Revenant, The Martian and Fury Road, The Force Awakens also used similar wide shots of bleak environments as the previously mentioned Oscar nominees, and also had a clashing red and blue color scheme…most notably in its movie poster…where red (the color of Republicans) is superior to blue (the color of Democrats). (See visual aids below)

Another top ten box office film in 2015 was Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. The title “Hunger Games” is all about warfare and a lack of resources…people being hungry and there being winners and losers. This is the same theme that Trump ran so successfully on in both the party and general elections. In addition Trump’s favorite political tactic, “mocking”, is also prominently highlighted by the title.

Two other 2015 top ten box office winners signaling Trump’s victory were Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Minions. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation could be the title of Trump’s entire campaign and presidency…as his winning was deemed “impossible”, and the nation needed to go “rogue” to elect this “rogue” candidate. “Minions” is also an apt description of Trump’s devoutly loyal followers.

The word “rogue”, defined as “a dishonest or unprincipled man”, made a very large appearance in the 2016 box office as well when Rogue One was a big box office winner. This meant that the “rogue” was not only a symbol the collective unconscious was desperate to make conscious, but also one that was advertised and marketed to the American public from the Summer of 2015 through to the end of 2016.

The top ten of 2016’s box office was chock full of primal words that indicated a less civilized, animalistic, predatory nature…such as Zootopia (a utopia of madness), Jungle Book (a handbook for life in a jungle), and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (a road map to the beast).

2016 also brought us the very clear signs of the hellaciously contentious energy in both the party primaries and in the general election. The most glaring examples were Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman which both told stories of internecine warfare with blue (Captain America) versus red (the billionaire Iron Man) as the opposing colors. (See visual aids below)

Another comic book movie, Suicide Squad was a top ten box office earner and it astutely summed up the feelings of the anti-Trump establishment Republicans and the Democrats after Trump’s victory.

But the biggest box office clue to Trump’s impending victory was the astounding success of Deadpool, the red clad, wise-ass outsider superhero, who premiered on the big screen in February of 2016. Is there any more Trumpish a superhero than the irreverent, anti-establishment Deadpool?

Hell or High Water, a 2016 Oscar nominee about two brothers who rob the corrupt banks in Texas that robbed their family, was another movie with wide shots of bleak environments (with a bleak reddish color palette), that thematically was right in Trump’s wheelhouse.

2012 ELECTION

Looking at other elections through the MWT is enlightening as well.

In 2012 Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, films about government accomplishing great things, were nominated and monopolized attention throughout the year leading to Obama’s re-election. These films told the narrative of government as effective and good…and obviously reflected a satisfaction with the status quo…which would mean an incumbent’s re-election.

Silver Linings Playbook was another Oscar nominee that year and its title is one of optimism (silver lining) and planning (a playbook)…which sums up Obama’s re-election message.

2012 also saw Django Unchained get Oscar nominations and do very well at the box office. The film is about a black man, Django - played by Jamie Foxx, getting revenge upon racist Southerners and slave owners. Of course, this archetype of the empowered black man in a racist America, was attached to Obama during his presidency.

2011’s Oscar nominees had two films that pointed towards Obama’s impending victory, the first was The Descendants, a movie set in Hawaii, the state of Obama’s birth, and The Help, a film about working class black women dealing with racism in the Deep South.

2008 ELECTION

Obama’s election in 2008 is also apparent when seen through the MWT perspective.

In 2007, No Country for Old Men won Best Picture and could have been a bumper sticker for Obama’s campaign against his older opponents Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain.

Other nominees from that year were Michael Clayton, a story about a lone man taking on a corrupt corporate establishment, and Atonement. Obama ran as the archetypal fighter against corporate malfeasance…and his election would symbolize, among many voters, an atonement for the sin of slavery and Jim Crow.

2007’s box office also gave indication of a major shift occurring in the collective. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix were the top two movies that year. At World’s End symbolizes the ending of something, and the title Order of the Phoenix is a cry to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes (of the Bush administration, Wall Street collapse etc.) and restore “order”…which was the narrative and archetype Obama embraced.

Another top ten box office film was Legend, which starred Will Smith and told the story of a black man surviving a pandemic and working to find a cure. Once again, the archetype of the black savior is perfectly embodied by Obama.

In 2008, the box office was dominated by Hancock, a story of a black superhero, and The Dark Knight, both metaphors for Obama (a black man as a white knight, hence the dark knight) as the man to save America from the disastrous chaos of the Bush reign.

Other 2008 box office winners signaled pro-Obama sentiment as well, with Madagascar: Escape to Africa 2 and Narnia: Prince Caspian landing in the top ten for the year. Escape to Africa has the word “Africa” in the title, which is significant in an election where there is an African-American candidate…and “Prince Caspian” once again indicates preference for the younger - “prince”.

Although these film’s were not released until right after the election, both 2008 Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire and nominee Milk, pointed to Obama winning. Slumdog Millionaire is the story of a poor Indian boy (who is brown skinned and born into poverty), overcoming great odds and making it big, while Milk is about a first…the first openly gay politician elected to public office. Obama, of course, would become the first black man elected to be president.

2004 ELECTION

Bush’s re-election in 2004 is also found in the MWT data.

In 2003, The Return of the King, a title that is an incumbent’s wet dream, won both the box office and Best Picture Oscar. Another Oscar nominee was Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, which is a powerful title in an election involving a “commander” in chief waging two wars on the “far side of the world”.

A plethora of sequels in the top ten box office of both 2003 and 2004, such as Matrix Reloaded, X2, Bad Boys 2, Spider Man 2, Shrek 2, Meet the Parents 2 and Ocean’s 12, all foresaw Bush’s reelection as he was going for a sequel in the form of a second term.

2004’s Oscar winner, Million Dollar Baby, could have been a moniker hung on Bush, as he was labeled by his critics as an entitled, petulant, silver spooned child born into enormous wealth, power and privilege. Another nominee, Sideways, indicated not a moving forward but rather a perpendicular movement…thus re-election.

2020 ELECTION

Which finally brings us to 2020.

Purely as a political observer I have long felt Trump was going to win re-election in 2020, and 2/3rds of the American public feel the same way. The MWT has also pointed, ever so slightly, in that same direction…until very recently. It was on Oscar night, when Parasite, the ultimate outsider (a foreign film with subtitles), beat out 1917, the status quo nominee, that I noticed a pronounced shift in the waves.

Parasite’s Best Picture win is a very clear signal that the economic populism of 2020 is an even more vibrant energy in the collective unconscious than it was in 2016.

Further proof of this is that in 2019, of the nine films nominated for Best Picture, a staggering six of them deal specifically with issues of class. Parasite, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman and Little Women all tell varying tales of class warfare and struggle. This is as strong an indicator of a single sentiment as we have ever seen in the art/culture wave of the MWT in recent memory.

The box office indicates a dramatic change coming as well, with Endgame (the highest grossing film of all-time) - which signifies a definitive ending, and Rise of Skywalker - indicating something rising, dominating, as did the overtly revolutionary populist Joker.

It is also noteworthy that both Endgame and Rise of Skywalker are the end of the respective story arcs of two record-breaking, blockbuster franchises. This Star Wars narrative arc is a cultural cornerstone and is over forty years old, and Marvel’s narrative arc has monopolized the culture for well over a decade. Both of these iconic stories ending in the same year is an extraordinarily compelling piece of evidence that the end of an era is upon us.

Rise of Skywalker is not only significant for these reasons, but also because of its color scheme. In the movie’s poster, the dominant color is now blue, whereas in 2016’s The Force Awakens, red dominating blue was the color scheme.

Endgame too has a color scheme of a purple-ish blue completely dominating red in its posters which is fascinating. The off-blue-ish color is striking because it is so unusual…and portends that not only is red waning but that it is not business as usual on the blue side of the divide.

These symbols in the art/cutlure wave could not be more clearly telling us that the thing ending is Trump’s presidency, and the thing rising is Bernie Sander’s class-fueled populist revolution.

Here are some more pieces of evidence to back up that assertion. Aladdin, the tale of a blue (Democrat) genie who grants wishes, was a top ten big box office winner last year. The symbolism is obvious as, fair or not, Bernie Sanders is being labeled as someone “giving away free stuff” by his critics in the establishment.

Another sign is much more esoteric, and that is the film Jumanji:The Next Level. The film was in the top ten of the box office last year and on its surface seems quite benign, but when you dig into it, things become pretty fascinating. Let me preface this by saying once again that this is Jungian dream interpretation, and you may find this interpretation to be a bridge too far. But here it is…

When you break the word Jumanji down into what it sounds like….it becomes “jew” + “manji”. Of course, the word “Jew” in the consciousness is striking in a year with the potentially the first Jewish presidential candidate.

The other part of this equation is even more subtle, but potentially much more powerful. The word “manji” is a Japanese word for a symbol…the symbol being the left facing swastika - as opposed to the right facing swastika used by the Nazis. To interpret this data from a Jungian perspective, that would mean that “Jew” + “manji” could be interpreted as a Jew who reverses the swastika/Nazism. I am not calling Trump a Nazi, but there is a strong sentiment in the culture that does attach him to the Nazi archetype. The conclusion to draw from this is that Jumanji symbolically means the current right (Republican) facing swastika will be reversed into a left (Democratic) facing manji. It might also signify Bernie Sanders, potentially the first Jewish candidate for President, will reverse the gains of the archetypal “Nazi”, Trump. (Again…I am not calling Trump a Nazi, only that he has been branded with the Nazi/“not-see” archetype in the public consciousness)

Another vital point is that like Trump in 2016, Sanders is running as the archetypal outsider. For instance, the media keep saying that Bernie is a joke and he can’t win the nomination or the general election, but remember, the media once said the same thing about Trump, and treated him with the same contempt.

Sanders is running against the establishment of both Washington AND the Democratic party. Also like Trump, he is despised by the mainstream media, who, like establishment politicians, belittle, dismiss and denigrate him every chance they get.

On a purely political and psychological level, it is obvious that the public viscerally loathes Washington and the media more than anything, which means that just like Trump in 2016, Sanders has the right enemies…and this will be a key to his success.

In conclusion, there is certainly a chance that the data that makes up the History, Empire, Generation, Time and Art/Culture waves, will shift in the crucial coming months, and the waves will obviously reflect, and I will report, that shift. But with that said, as currently configured, the Isaiah McCaffrey Wave Theory, most notably but not exclusively the art/culture wave, clearly indicates that Bernie Sanders is going to be the next President of the United States.

©2020

VISUAL AIDS

The blue-ish purple of 2019 Endgame surrounding red.

2019’s Rise of Skywalker has blue dominated red…in contrast to the color scheme of 2016’s The Force Awakens.

Blue once again taking up a larger percentage of the frame than red in 2019’s Rise of Skywalker.

2016 - The Force Awakens has red front and center over blue.

2016 The Force Awakens with its protagonist having the appearance of holding red…the color which dominates the frame over blue.

Red v Blue in 2016’s Civil War.

Red v Blue in Batman v Superman…notice that red wins.

Deadpool…the Trumpiest of superheroes…being snakry and wearing red in 2016.

'Birds of Prey' Hates Men, but Wants Their Money - No Wonder It's Bombing at the Box Office

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

The new film Birds of Prey is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: Financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) opened on Friday and stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie reprising her role as DC Comics super villain Harley Quinn.

The film is marketed as a girl power manifesto that re-imagines Harley Quinn without the condescending sexism feminists felt was so prominent in Suicide Squad (2016), the last movie that featured Margot Robbie as Harley.

Suicide Squad was a horrifically shitty movie, and was regarded as a box office underperformer with a notoriously troubled production history, but it still made $750 million in total.

Early numbers suggest that despite oddly positive reviews from woke pandering mainstream critics, Birds of Prey will struggle to do half that number in its theatrical run. With a reported production budget of between $80 and $100 million, and additional marketing costs, Birds of Prey looks primed to lose money for the suits at Warner Brothers.

How did things go so wrong?

Birds of Prey banished the problematic “male gaze” of Suicide Squad that allegedly dehumanized Harley by making her purely an object of desire, by employing an all female creative team that included producer Margot Robbie, writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan. The production goes so far in exorcising men as to even have a soundtrack with all-female artists on it.

The problem though is Birds of Prey tries to thread the needle and make a chaotically cool combination of Deadpool meets Wonder Woman, only it doesn’t have the first clue about the sardonically masculine humor of Deadpool and the appealing feminine power of Wonder Woman, or masculinity and femininity in general.

The film’s sexual politics are aggressive to say the least. In our current cultural moment, toxic masculinity and masculinity have become synonymous, so it is no surprise that Birds of Prey goes to great lengths to denigrate and disparage all its male characters and yet also to venerate all its female ones.

Every man in the movie, with the lone exception being a character (played by the criminally underused actor Eddie Alfano) with fifteen seconds of screen time and no dialogue, is either entitled, conniving, maniacally violent, a rapist or all of the above.

In contrast every female character wears the noble crown of resilient victimhood after having suffered at the cruel hands of men.

The portrayal of men as misogynist beasts is pretty heavy handed, as at one point Harley and female friends are surrounded and the sadistic Roman Sionis (Ewen McGregor) yells to his army of all-male thugs, “Men of Gotham, go get those bitches!”

What’s so bizarre about the supposed girl power message of the movie is that while it relentlessly tells us that men are despicable creatures, all of the female characters are lionized for trying to behave like men. Like the recent batch of feminist movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey believes that feminism means women should act like men.

Even more baffling is the cinematic schizophrenia of Birds of Prey, as it obviously loathes men yet is so desperate for their attention it serves up a steady supply of hyper-violence. As Harley Quinn says, “nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence…blow something up, shoot someone.”

Totally coincidentally, The New York Times published an op-ed by an actress, Brit Marling, titled “I Don’t Want to be the Strong Female Lead” on the day Birds of Prey premiered.

In the piece Marling describes strong female leads as, “She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.”

In some ways this applies to Birds of Prey, since the women in it are smarter, tougher and stronger than the men, except they have been stripped of their sex appeal in a convoluted attempt to be pro-feminist.

For instance, Harley Quinn wore short shorts and alluring outfits in Suicide Squad, but in the female empowering Birds of Prey she dresses in baggy, Bermuda length shorts and a pink sports bra. It’s as if Harley went full Lady MacBeth and cried “unsex me here” and the filmmakers dutifully complied to stick it to the patriarchy.

Contrast this with the Super Bowl halftime show where Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were declared fiercely feminist when they wore skimpy outfits and literally danced like strippers.

How can female filmmakers like Cathy Yan properly tell an empowering feminist story if feminists haven’t even figured out what feminism is just yet?

This confusion manifests when Birds of Prey defines women solely in opposition to men, but then has them emulate masculinity as a show of their feminine strength.

Brit Marling wasn’t commenting on the troubling Manichean anti-male sexual politics of Birds of Prey, but she could have been, when she eloquently wrote, “I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance?”

That is a good question, but Birds of Prey is oblivious to balance…and quality for that matter. It’s a hot mess of a movie that features derivative, repetitive and dull action sequences, and that tries to be funny, but isn’t…hell…there is a hyena in the movie and even he wasn’t laughing. Watching this thing felt like wading through an Olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive girl power vomit.

If equality is women making misandrist, hyper-violent, incoherently vapid and dreadful movies…then Birds of Prey is a smashing success for feminism. It is also an abysmal failure for cinema…and probably humanity. It deserves to fail.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

3rd Annual SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY AWARDS ™® : 2016 Edition

Estimated reading time : 19 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film, and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®  loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!! 

Now…onto the awards!!

WORST FILM

Nocturnal Animals - Nocturnal Animals has two, equally insipid and flaccid story lines running concurrently through it which makes it twice as awful as it could have been. In addition, the film vomits a horrendous Jake Gyllenhaal performance all over its audience like a sun-baked clam chowder. I would rather be abducted, dragged out to the desert, gang raped and tortured to death by a bunch of backwoods yokels than have to watch another single second of this abysmal trash.

Hacksaw Ridge - Desmond Doss was a remarkable man of great faith and courage…sadly, in Mel Gibson's version of Doss' life story, Doss is a mildly retarded fool with an almost accidental and minimal connection to some nebulous religion. Hacksaw Ridge, like all of Mel Gibson's other films, is an exercise in a masturbatorial masochism marinated in a heavy-handed, mawkish melodrama. This film is just the worst type of cookie cutter, war movie dreck. I wish a kamikaze pilot flew right into this movie and put us all out of our misery.

Suicide Squad - I was psyched to see Suicide Squad. Then I saw it, and I wanted to kill myself. When Will Smith is the best part of a movie, that is a strong indicator that that movie is a giant pile of steaming dogshit…and so it is with Suicide Squad. I still haven't gotten the stink of this movie off of my shoes.

And the loser is….a tie between NOCTURNAL ANIMALS and SUICIDE SQUAD : 

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS : Just a muddled mess of pretentious incoherence. This film didn't reek of the art house, it stunk of the dungheap. Nocturnal Animals, or as I keep calling it, Nocturnal Emissions, is not a wet dream, but a bone dry nightmare. Awful. Awful. Awful. 

SUICIDE SQUAD : A repetitively repetitive film that repeats itself repetitiously, one repetition after another repetition, over and over and over again. A most boring and idiotic endeavor that could have been truly magnificent, but instead it made me want chop my head off and throw it in a septic tank….repetitively. 

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Vince Vaughn - Hacksaw Ridge : I like Vince Vaughn. I really do. He is great at the things he is great at…he is not great at the thing he was asked to do in Hacksaw Ridge. Vaughn stutters and stumbles his way through the most derivative and hackneyed performance imaginable as the Sergeant who must lead his men from boot camp to battle. I was genuinely embarrassed for Vaughn as it felt like he was reprising his role from Dodgeball with a world war II setting around him. 

Nicholas Cage - Snowden : I have always felt Nic Cage was a shitty actor. Even when he was winning Oscars and was a critical darling, I thought he was a bullshit artist who was just mimicking what he thought a great actor should be like. In Snowden, Cage is stripped bare and revealed for the artistic fraud that he has always been. Cage is so extraordinarily awful in the film, it is utterly amazing. Watching Nic Cage act is like watching a dog eat its own poop. Both the viewer, and the poop eating dog, wonder why they don't just stop their self-destructive and disgusting behavior. How Oliver Stone didn't cut Cage entirely out of this film is the one of the great mysteries of life.

Jesse Eisenberg - Batman v Superman :  Eisenberg is an interesting actor, but he is so overwhelmed and out of his depth as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman, that it is painful to watch. Never has an actor who needed to come across as big, felt so small. 

And the loser is…NIC CAGE : A cringe-worthy display of the most forced and phony acting imaginable garners Cage the least coveted award of the season. Cage's long spiral down into cultural and artistic oblivion seems to be stuck in a bottomless pit of embarrassment.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

Hacksaw Ridge - Hacksaw Ridge, its lead actor Andrew Garfield, and its director, Mel Gibson, all got Oscar nominations. Was it that bad of a year in cinema? Did the Academy watch this movie? After seeing the film, I kept reading about how great it was and wondered if the critics were simply suffering from PTSD from having to sit through this ridiculous bucket of amateur-hour slop. Hacksaw Ridge SHOULD HAVE BEEN great…but it just wasn't. And anyone who thinks otherwise has absolutely lost their mind.

Manchester by the Sea - Question : You know who loves Manchester by the Sea? Answer : Manchester by the Sea. This movie was so in love with itself I needed to shower after seeing it. The film is fine…but not nearly as good as it thinks it is…or as good as many critics think it is. It is a paint by numbers art house film, and that is painfully obvious for anyone who sees through the marketing bullshit that tries to polish the most mundane of turds.

Nocturnal Animals - Some jackass at the Guardian thought this was the best film of the year. He should have his eyes cut out and never be allowed to look upon this earth ever again. This same critic described the film as a fascinating meditation on masculinity. When you are relying on the impeccably fabulous fashion designer Tom Ford to direct a meditation on masculinity, you need to have your head, and loins examined. Tom Ford wouldn't know genuine masculinity if it walked up to him kicked him in his perfectly coiffed and powdered nuts.

And the loser is….HACKSAW RIDGE : This film is an unmitigated disaster of a movie that somehow got 6 Oscar nominations and even two wins (film editing and sound mixing). How the hell did that happen? Across the board the acting is atrociously bad, most notably by Vince Vaughn and Hugo Weaving. The direction is utterly abysmal as Mel Gibson brings his usual ham-fisted approach to storytelling. A remarkably overpraised and underwhelming film. The dash cam footage of Gibson calling a cop "sugartits" is a considerably more entertaining and note worthy piece of cinematic art than this excrement.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE

Woody Allen :

Woody gets his long awaited induction into the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame this year after a stellar career as a gigantic piece of shit. Where to begin with Woody's piece of shit credentials…should we start with the very believable charges of molestation by his daughter Dylan? or with his numerous references to his desire for young or underage woman and girls in his films (check out Stardust Memories or Manhattan…they are creepy as hell in retrospect)? Or how about the piece de resistance, his having an affair with his adopted daughter and then marrying her? Or maybe we should just stick to his insidiously awful, narcissistic, self-serving films that the elite love to love?

Wherever we start looking for proof of Woody Allen being a piece of shit, we stumble upon a target rich environment of shitbaggery. History will not be kind to Woody Allen…and if I ever have the displeasure of meeting him…neither will I. Congratulations Woody Allen…you are an all-time piece of shit. Welcome to the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame!!

2016 P.O.S. ALL-STARS

Billy Bush - Billy Bush is a douchebag. He has always been a douchebag and will always be a douchebag. Like all of the Bush clan, he is a feeble minded and needle-dicked mid-wit, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a chip on his shoulder. Bush was exposed for his douchebaggery by the "grab her by the pussy" video of Donald Trump released during the campaign. Bush's ass kissing of Trump in particular, and his sycophancy in general, along with his complete lack of a spine, soul, brain or balls, are why I knew he was a douchebag from day one. Nice to see the rest of the world finally catching up to me. Fuck you Billy Bush…and the rest of the Bush family. 

Lena Dunham - This is back to back trips to the P.O.S. All Star game for Lena Dunham. This year she gets in for lamenting the fact that she never had an abortion. Way to stay classy, Lena. The cool thing is that Lena doesn't need to have an abortion, because she is one. So is her awful show, her awful writing and her awful presence in the public square. Dunham is a repugnant, repulsive pig, and I for one, am hoping for an abortion of her career, post haste. 

The Butter Brigade : Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Jessica Chastain, Jenna Fischer  - Remember these dipshits who got their panties all in a tussle when they idiotically thought Marlon Brando anally raped Maria Schneider while filming Last Tango in Paris?  The bunch of them are gigantic pieces of shit, and have earned their all-star status. None of them recanted, none of them apologized, and none of them set the record straight. I hope Brando's ghost haunts them all by shoving a stick of butter so far up their asses that their eyes turn yellow…and then he gives them all the business but good up their well lubed butter chutes. 

And thus ends the third annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards!!! To the winners/losers…don't take it personally…and God knows I hope I don't see you again next year!! To you dear reader…thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again next year!!

©2017

X-Men : Apocalypse - A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THERE ARE ZERO SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!!!****

RATING: 1.42 STARS OUT OF 5 STARS

RECOMMENDATION : SKIP IT. THERE IS REALLY NO REASON TO SEE THIS FILM UNLESS YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE COMIC BOOK AND X-MEN FANATIC WITH A LOT OF TIME TO KILL.

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 5 MINUTES 4 SECONDS

I did it, I went and saw ANOTHER super hero movie. Last summer I was unable to go to the movies during blockbuster season, so I am making up for lost time by giving as much money as possible to those fine people at the movie studios for all of the selflessly great work that they do (God Bless Them!!!). I feel, deep down, that if I didn't make multiple pilgrimages to the theatre this summer and missed a second straight blockbuster season, I would be a bad American…and frankly…the terrorists just might win, and I simply cannot let that happen.

Before I begin my review in earnest I must make a Full Disclosure: during my teen years I attended and graduated from Charles Francis Xavier's (Professor X) "School for Gifted Youngsters" in upstate New York. I have struggled for years to say this but...I am officially a mutant. My mutation gives me two super powers, a Level 5 Contrarianism and the ability to smell bullshit from over a mile away. Granted these powers aren't exactly invisibility and flight but you take what you can get and do the best you can with what you've got..at least that's what they taught me at "XSGY" (Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters) or "X School" as we alumni call it. I cherished my time at X School, where I excelled on the J.V. quidditch team and was voted "least likely to succeed" in the yearbook.

With all of that off my chest, let's get to the film X-Men: Apocalypse. The film is the ninth installment in the X-Men franchise and is the fourth X-Men film directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men, X2, X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse). The film stars a cavalcade of top notch young actors, including Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence, Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, James McAvoy, and Oscar Isaac, to name but a few. 

The X-Men comic book mythology is nothing short of brilliant. Mutants are a fantastic metaphor for various modern issues, civil rights and gay rights to name but two, and are symbolic of archetypes both new and old. The X-Men source material is genius, the problem though is that the X-Men movies have never failed to be anything other than pedestrian even at their zenith. I have never left an X-Men film without feeling underwhelmed and disappointed. It is too bad because it would be a glorious thing to have a truly great director, like a Christopher Nolan for example, take the complex and nuanced X-Men foundational material and do something really great with it, like he did with the Dark Knight trilogy. But instead we are stuck with Bryan Singer, a hack personified, driving these films into a ditch for over a decade now. And so it is with the latest installment, X-Men: Apocalypse.

The main problem with the film is that it lacks any dramatic cohesion and tension and is therefore rendered remarkably dull. That lack of dramatic cohesion and tension falls squarely on Mr. Singer, as does the films uninspired and flat visual style. The film feels shallow and rushed and frankly, devoid of any purpose. I should clarify that comment, the film is devoid of any artistic and creative purpose, but it has plenty of corporate purpose, not the least of which is Fox's contractual obligation to make X-Men films in a timely manner or lose the rights to the characters. Oh…and there is always the desire to fleece idiots like myself who will give our hard earned dollars to go see anything with super men and women in tights kicking bad guy ass. 

There is nothing original or even remotely interesting in X-Men: Apocalypse, only the same old tired tropes and cliches, which is not shocking considering it is the ninth cinematic go around for the X gang. I mean, the Fox cinematic X-Men horse has not only been beaten to death, but drawn and quartered and then beaten further into dust. 

From the very beginning the X-Men films have boasted very serious and quality actors, such as Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen and Halle Berry, who did the best they can with the little they were given, and so it is with the actors in this latest film. Michael Fassbender's Magneto is such a rich and fascinating character that he could easily carry a film about himself alone, but I would want that film to be directed by someone with a command of the craft of filmmaking…in other words, not Bryan Singer. Fassbender salvages what he can from the scraps of a script he is given, as does the always luminous Jennifer Lawrence and the solid and steady James McAvoy. Other actors don't fare quite as well. Oscar Isaac plays Apocalypse, and is given nothing of substance to work with at all. His costume and make-up are atrocious and undermine any sort of sense of power and menace the character might have been able to generate, and Isaac is left looking embarrassingly ridiculous. Olivia Munn, who has proven herself to be a very capable actress in other projects (HBO's The Newsroom for example), looks completely lost and terribly uncomfortable her entire time on screen. Her discomfort is palpable and distracting, and while Ms. Munn isn't entirely blameless for her poor performance, a good portion of the blame for her struggles falls once again on the ineptitude of Bryan Singer.

I enjoyed the last two X-Men films, X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, they weren't great films or even very good films but they were at least clever and interesting. In both of those films the storyline jumped back in time and the films became period pieces. First Class was set from World War II up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Days of Future Past was set in the early seventies. Adding the element of time period to the films gave them a bit of a boost in terms of interesting material, costume and the intrigue of history. X-Men: Apocalypse tries to do the same thing by setting the time period in the eighties and it simply doesn't work. The third time around is not the charm in regards to time period, as this time it feels stale, forced and creatively bankrupt.

The time period element is a symptom of the greater disease afflicting the X-Men franchise, that disease is artistic insolvency. The creative team behind the X-Men franchise are simply destitute in regards to good ideas, and due to sub-par directing from the likes of Mr. Singer, they were never even able to make the most of the pittance of good ideas they had in the first place. This franchise is in dire need of new artistic blood. They brought in new acting blood, McAvoy for Stewart, Fassbender for McKellen etc, in the X-Men: First Class film and have rode that horse as far as it will take them. The new blood needed is not in front of the camera, but behind it. A new director, a whole new creative team, from writers on down through to cinematography, costume and set design are desperately needed to salvage the X-Men franchise and give the X-Men mythology the cinematic glory it so richly deserves. I doubt that will happen though, as Fox has made it clear that in regards to the X-Men franchise, quantity will always top quality.

In conclusion, X-Men: Apocalypse is another in a long line of missed opportunities in the X-Men film series. If you are a huge comic book and X-Men fan, you will have probably already seen and already been disappointed by the film. But if you are even a slightly below a fanatical level consumer of comic book films and the X-Men, then skip this film. You will never have any need to see it in the theatre or on cable/Netflix. Now I think I can take a little rest from the theatre as my cinematic comic book calendar appears to be free until Suicide Squad comes out in August. I'll spend this long, hot summer honing my Level 5 Contrarianism and bullshit smelling powers for the fall, when I'll really need them, as it will be election time!!

©2016