There was a movie called Thank You For Smoking, and it had Robe Lowe in it as a Hollywood movie executive, and Aaron Eckhart as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. In one scene, Eckhart’s character is trying to work a deal with Lowe’s character to get cigarettes placed more prominently and positively in upcoming blockbusters, and Lowe describes a scene he has in mind.
It’s set in space, and the idea is that two superhot A-List actors like say Johnny Depp and Scarlett Johansson have sex in a room with zero gravity, and it’s all sexy and graphic, and then they’re floating there afterward smoking cigarettes, and the smoke is spiraling around them and that’s exactly what Eckhart’s talking about.
“But,” he asks. “Wouldn’t the whole thing blow up, lighting up in an oxygen rich environment like that?”
“Well, yeah,” says the movie producer. “But that’s just like, one line of dialogue. ‘I’m so glad we got the whatever installed so we can smoke in space.'”
Very matter-of-fact, because it’s often that simple, and as far as watching the new Star Trek movie goes, don’t go complaining that they didn’t add the extra lines of dialogue for you. They’re already talking plenty. Some things just aren’t going to make sense, and they’re going to spare us the token explanations as to why.
Like you might be wondering why the Enterprise, which can teleport a grown Vulcan male out of the center of the volcano, can’t remotely operate whatever device he’s got down there with him. I think they may have even muttered something about how they can’t be seen by the natives – but you know, they’re usually teleporting from orbit, where the natives wouldn’t see them.
Well, the crust is rich in radioactive isotopes, and they’re screwing with the sensor array, and the device Spock has is too sensitive – the interference could reverse the polarity and then it wouldn’t work. Only way to do it is by hand.
Or something like that. On the television show, they get pretty bogged down explaining stuff all the time, acting like this is science and not silliness with science stickers on it. I think the new Star Trek movie makes a pretty good decision realizing that it doesn’t need to explain everything.
Like why they could stun Khan briefly on the Bridge, but Uhura unloaded on him about eight times and he supershrugged it off, even with one Metric Vulcan Asskicking in him. That’s how the action needed to flow, don’t make them explain that. Maybe he took a bite out of a tribble before he left, who knows?
We could quibble about how they were beaming folks out of midair in the last one, and this time they can’t get a lock during the final fight scene because “they’re moving around too much!”
It was already awkward enough when Bones is suddenly had a dead tribble next to him and sort of stretched and said, “Yep. Better inject some of Khan’s weird ass blood into this dead tribble while you guys proceed with your action movie. See what happens.”
Everybody even sort of turns to look at him. Sure, Bones. You do that. Right here, why the hell not?
And of course a little dialogue tap dance regarding the need for an extraneous bra-and-panty shot for Dr. Marcus. Because she’s hot, and her agent said so, that’s why.
The problem always comes in when there’s no line of dialogue that could save them from the problem – like when Iron Man doesn’t have any extra suits. That’s dumb, Iron Man. You’re not dumb. Last time you had an extra suit in your car. Keep extra suits somewhere, you big ding dong.
A fine line I’m drawing there, I guess. Star Trek silliness is cool and you shouldn’t ask questions, Iron Man silliness is questionable but still cool, just not as cool as Star Trek. Also, did you notice that Star Trek wouldn’t even have happened if everyone would have just listened to Scotty with regards to seventy-ish torpedos which no one can see inside, and with regards to taking said torpedos on board?
He basically had the whole movie beat if everyone had just said, “Hey, Scotty’s right, like he usually is about engineering and missiles. We usually do all right without mystery torpedos, anyway – right?”
All right, well, that’s my advice, and I’ve thought it through carefully for well over twenty-six minutes, so I can’t imagine there is anything inconsistent or hypocritical about it. I was going to bag on the Pope for a little bit, but I was too tired, and he really does seem nice. I guess just being a Pope freaks me out, that’s all.
Cool, now I’m going to use the gravitational pull of the Sun as a sling shot and go land on my couch. You have a nice evening, blogosphere.
I’m Just Going To Pile On Iron Man III For A Moment
Not for very long, I liked the movie. It was, well it was fine. When it was over I said, “Oh. All right then.” And I wasn’t mad or anything.
I can’t say I was thrilled or disappointed, just kind of fine. I guess in general, I had to dial the brain down just a little lower than I’m normally comfortable with, even for a superhero movie, and that’s fine, too, but that’s why I need to plug my nose and whine about it for a little bit. It’s my mystic way.
You shouldn’t read any further than this is you haven’t seen it yet, by the way. I’ll put a big picture of something beneath this so you don’t get a glimpse of any spoilers. How about Angry Nick Cage?
There you go. Now I’m assuming that everybody here has seen Iron Man III. And I know, I just lectured the Doctor Who crowd about going all Comic Book Guy on the 50th Anniversary Episode, but that’s because it hasn’t been filmed yet and nobody’s seen it. The time to go all Comic Book Guy is after you walk out of a movie like this, and when you find it hard to do that, you’ve seen an awfully good comic book movie.
The other half is special effects and in particular, giant things being destroyed. Good work on both counts there.
But Tony Stark having panic attacks? No, thank you. I get that we need him to have some vulnerability so there’s danger and peril and threats to overcome, just again. No thank you. I don’t need realistic weaknesses. Just take away his Iron Man suits.
Which they do. But they’re not normal Iron Man suits, are they?
All of the sudden, they work just fine without anyone in them. Probably, that’s in the comic, I’m just not really interested in what’s in the comic. I like how the suit comes to him, yes, and I get that if the suit comes to him, he could have it programmed to do complicated things. But the suits all kick pretty decent ass on their own.
But okay, that’s how they work. Let’s hold that thought a moment.
Tony gets super duper mad at the Mandarin for nearly killing his pal. Already, I’m a little weirded out by Tony Stark not getting super duper mad at the first nine bombings, but okay. He uses the media frenzy to challenge the Mandarin to a fight, because he’s so mad.
Nothing about the Mandarin suggests that he likes to fight, just that he’s good at blowing things up. But Tony tells him his home address as if the Mandarin himself is going to show up. I’m not sure why he thinks that a man who can take control of every channel at the same time and broadcast untraceable threats against the President, wouldn’t be able to locate the address of Tony Stark, but that’s fine. We needed it to be Tony’s ego causing him to lose everything. Got it.
But he doesn’t lose everything. He loses his big house, Bruce Wayne-style, and they sort of lead us to believe that all of his Iron Man suits have been destroyed, but no, they’re still down there. They have to dig them out with a crane. How long’s that going to take? Oh, about til the end of the movie.
And then they show up and save everything, so Tony destroys them all and removes the ARC reactor from his chest and now it appears he’s going to start over. That’s fine, but it’s a remarkable level of confidence he’s got there, that no other super villains are going to show up while he’s finding himself and kissing Pepper Pott’s ass and having panic attacks.
Which brings me back to the autonomous Iron Man suits. If they are so functional on their own, don’t you think they should have been roaming his house, maybe stationed at strategic defensive positions, after he threatened the Mandarin and told him to come over? Does he have any other Iron Man suits at Stark Tower in New York, the one that had an A on it at the end of The Avengers? Do you think he should have had a couple extras somewhere, anywhere at all?
How many eggs should you keep in your basket again, Mr. Stark?
Anyway, not the way to watch a superhero movie, and yes, I know this. Like I said, it was good, they blew a bunch of stuff up, the villains were tough, and you really just had to dial the brain down and go with it. Best part was the dialogue – a lot of times I was getting slightly bored or irritated, and then they would crack me up, so that’s nice.
Generally, I was just sort of startled that I didn’t care. I knew he’d survive, knew he’d be in the other Avengers movies minus the panic attacks, knew Pepper was going to be fine and that she was going to kick some ass so people didn’t complain that all the girls do is scream for help. It was like they tried to hamstring him so much, it reversed itself and made the peril less compelling. Also, I accidentally went to a theater that doesn’t serve beer.
I’ll sleep on it, because the best way to describe my feelings right now are “weird.” I don’t know what to make of this thing. It was like my good friend came over but had a little too much to drink, started just barely getting on my nerves and I wasn’t aware he could do that. Probably I just need to get some biscuits and gravy in my belly and forget it.
Posted by Tom Chalfant on May 5, 2013 in Television/Movies
Tags: Commentary, film, humor, Iron Man 3, Iron Man III, movies, review, Tony Stark