TOP TEN 2015

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This Christmas, a holiday season inundated with an insurmountable flood of Star Wars merchandise, I heard my nephew describe one of his toys as a "Lego Movie Lego Set." In other words, this is a toy set based on a film adaptation of that same brand of toy set. Setting aside the meta-awareness that The Lego Movie brought to the conversation, that playset throws into stark reality the perpetual cycle of film and merchandise, forever feeding off of each other.

Before my second viewing of The Force Awakens, a ticket purchase that I felt some vague guilt about, there was a big screen commercial that by all appearances advertised neither a film nor a product, but rather urged its audience to talk to more people about Star Wars and watch more Youtube videos about Star Wars. We've gone beyond advertising products, and are now advertising cultural monopolies--the utter domination of discourse.

Culture is eating itself. 2015 exists at the nexus of rampant reboot/remake/requel culture. Movies that make significant money are almost never original properties anymore. That being the case, production companies have delved deep into their reservoirs to try to dredge up old properties that still carry with them a modicum of brand recognition. Thus we get the crushing inevitability of a nostalgia-pillaging Jurassic Park sequel. A wretched Fantastic Four cobbled together out of sheer corporate obligation. A new Terminator movie that nobody liked, the third Terminator movie in a row that was meant to kick off a subsequently aborted trilogy. A trilogy of failed trilogies. And on the horizon, a Die Hard remake, a Labyrinth remake, a Memento remake, and cinematic universes for Marvel, DC, Ghostbusters, Avatar, Transformers, Hasbro, the Universal Monsters, and The Fast and the Furious, among others.

The cart is firmly before the horse.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION: Roguish Charm

Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Drew Pearce
Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris
Runtime: 131 mins.
2015

Mission: Impossible is a minor miracle of a modern action franchise. Much like the Bond films, M:I has maintained a commitment to old fashioned stuntwork. Even more impressive is Tom Cruise's manic insistence that he perform these insane stunts himself. The fifty-three year old megastar has weathered the sands of time and the fickle whims of the viewing public by maintaining a pressing desire that you and I should enjoy his movies, no matter what. It's easy for an actor to become withered and cynical after years of being churned through the Hollywood system, but Cruise has a vitality only matched by a younger Tom Cruise.

The unquenchable enthusiasm of perennial producer and lead actor Tom Cruise is certainly one of the primary forces that has transformed Mission: Impossible from a series of convoluted spy capers that exist only for the setpieces into a series of engaging spy capers that exist only for the setpieces. That doesn't sound like as much of a compliment as I intend it to be.

STARRY EYES: Constellation Frustration

Directors: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Writers: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer
Cast: Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan, Fabianne Therese, Pat Healy, Maria Olsen
Runtime: 98 mins.
2014

As you can see above, the DVD cover for Starry Eyes features a young dehydrated woman with her head tilted at a strange angle. She's probably looking up at that bizarrely generous pullquote from Time. "Did you see the same movie I did, Michael Roffman?" she asks. "Or maybe it's that you've never seen any of Lynch or Cronenberg's work." After all, those are two directors known more than anything for their uncanny weirdness, their ability to make us squint and squeam and walk away feeling gross, but also feeling like we'd just witnessed something totally unique.

The Starry Eyes DVD cover literally features a woman with stars on her eyes. That's pretty on the nose for a movie about eyes.

The central beat-you-over-the-heady metaphor gets even worse when you start watching the movie. Our protagonist is this girl Sarah (Alex Essoe), and she wants to be a star (!), but hasn't managed to land a breakthrough role. So instead of living the la-la land dream, she's stuck working at a lousy restaurant called Big Taters (essentially Hooters but potato-themed) and hanging around with a group of lousy millennials who just want to hang around at the poolside and party in dumb ways. But when a mysterious production company called Astraeus (!) Pictures (which means "starry surprise" in Greek or something like that) posts an ad seeking a young actress full of life and eager to give herself to the production of a film called The Silver Scream (!), she feels she has found her breakthrough role. Unfortunately, the casting process requires more of Sarah than she may be willing to give... such as her immortal soul (!).

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - Furiouser and Furiouser

Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton
Runtime: 120 mins.
2015

The current age of Hollywood has been defined by the resuscitation of long dead intellectual properties. Film producers have been picking through the elephants' graveyard of defunct franchises in an effort to find bankable properties that have preexisting brand recognition. The idea is that if we recognize a string of words in the title of a new product as something familiar that existed ten or twenty or thirty years ago, that's free advertising. It's treading water. It's safe.

So we've been given the dubious gifts of humongous updated versions of Robocop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Trek, and The Evil Dead. Coming down the pipeline are new Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, Terminator, and even National Lampoon: Vacation updates. Not to mention the impending annual release of Star Wars film after Star Wars film.

These safe choice reboots elicit little more than a shrug from folks with the slightest degree of better judgment. Dipping into the pool of nostalgia just because it is relatively risk-free never produces anything worthwhile. The businessmen at the top do this because the built-in fanbases will bring in enough $$$ to turn a profit on these films regardless of quality. They aren't passion projects. They're where passion goes to die.

I can't wait for the Full House reboot.

But what about reboots that see the original creators return to the franchises they birthed decades ago? Surely there is some merit in this, surely the passion can be rekindled? Unfortunately we have seen this a few times, and we have let ourselves be excited, only to have the rug pulled from under us. George Lucas returns to Star Wars in 1999. Steven Spielberg returns to Indiana Jones in 2008. Ridley Scott returns to Alien in 2012. Crushing disappointment after crushing disappointment after crushing disappointment.

Everything mentioned above is what Mad Max: Fury Road is not. Now let me tell you what Mad Max: Fury Road is.