Fantastic Four (*1/2)

FANTASTIC FOUR

Fantastic Four is like a bunch of six year olds trying to cook themselves breakfast. They have the basic idea of what they want to do, their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t have the skills to do it right, they make a big fucking mess, and the breakfast ends up looking and tasting like shit. Fortunately they manage not to start a fire and burn the whole house down.

Sometime during the interminable middle act of Fantastic Four, Susan Storm/The Invisible Girl/Woman/Jessica Alba scolds her hotheaded younger brother Johnny Storm/The Human Torch/Chris Evans.

Sue Storm: What's wrong with you? Why don’t you think?!

Great take. Cut and print that. Now, Jessica, do me a favor: why don’t you turn around and with the same tone of disappointment, say that exact line to your director Tim Story, your writers, your producers and whoever else makes the decisions around here.

Scene after scene until the movie grinds to a halt there is constant, illogical bone headedness. Take the first major action set piece in the movie… Wait, before I can get to that, I have to mention this: All right, so Ben Grimm/Michael Chiklis is transformed into The Thing and escapes the quarantine the Fantastic Four and Victor Von Doom/(Dr.) Doom/Julian McMahon were placed in after their whatever-they-were-doing in space went wrong ---

Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic/Ioan Gruffudd: We were trying to help mankind’s DNA by studying a magnetic cloud in space that accelerated, bombarded us with cosmic rays and fundamentally altered our DNA.

I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and neither do you. And I’m not the one who claims to be a genetic scientist so what’s Reed’s excuse? Jesus, where was I? Right, the Thing.

The Thing escaped the quarantine lab in the middle of the night and ran through the woods of wherever the lab is. He’s heading home to Yancy Street in New York City to see his wife. Whereever the lab surrounded by forest is, it’s easy enough distance for the Thing to make it into Manhattan without anyone noticing him; he makes it home before his wife has gone to bed. The Thing calls her from a payphone after some goofy comedy about how his orange rock fingers are too big to press the buttons on the payphone. He tells her to come outside.

Despite the fact that her husband was in outer space, was in an accident, has been quarantined for days and this is the first she’s heard from him, the fact that he happens to suddenly be outside, his voice is gravely, and he wants her to mysteriously go outside in the middle of the night when he could just come through the door of his own apartment doesn’t concern her in the least. Instead, she says she has “a surprise” for him and then runs out the door of their apartment in the middle of the night, onto a New York City street, in her negligee. What kind of idiot does that? Then she sees that her husband has turned into an orange rock man, screams and runs off.

The next day, the Thing is sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge feeling sorry for himself. At that exact spot, in that exact moment, someone shows up next to him planning on committing suicide. He freaks out when he sees the Thing, falls into traffic and the Thing heroically rams a semi-truck to stop it from colliding into the man. A neat little comic book moment.

Okay, but then, coincidentally, at that exact moment, the rest of the Fantastic Four happen to be on the Brooklyn Bridge looking for the Thing. By the time they get out of their car (not the Fantasticar), a traffic jam has piled up on the Bridge and there are dozens of gawkers separating the FF from the Thing. Reed Richards, who is supposed to be a genius, tells Susan Storm that she’s the only one who can get them to the Thing. Huh? Howzat? Reed can stretch and the Human Torch can fly so they could reach the Thing a lot easier than the Invisible Girl/Woman can. But okay, at this point the FF don’t want to attract attention (even though that’s exactly what they’ll get anyway once they reach the Thing. If we’re thinking.)

Reed, the genius’s plan: “Sue get naked and turn invisible, then get us past all these people.” Okay, naked Jessica Alba jostling past people, invisible or not, is a pretty hot idea. Despite the fact that there are people all around the FF, behind and beside them as well as in front, Sue Storm complies, turns invisible and strips off all her clothes right there in front of everyone. So much for not attracting attention.. But she can’t control her powers yet, turns visible again and then yells at Reed. Then she tries it again and somehow gets past some of the people blocking the way, but by the time she reaches the Thing, the cops have agitated him and the Thing goes berserk, knocking a fire truck halfway over the bridge. The Fantastic Four make their move and get in the middle of the action, so all that stuff about Sue needing to get naked and invisible didn’t need to happen since the crowd parted for the FF anyway. The only reason to even do any of that is to tease Jessica Alba getting naked, which they can’t deliver and have no intention of delivering.

The Thing pulls the fire truck back onto the bridge, Mr. Fantastic stretches and saves a falling fireman. More nice comic book moments. The crowd applauds them and hails them as heroes for saving the fire fighters. Apparently no one stopped to think that none of this would have happened if the Thing didn’t ram a semi-truck, then go berserk and almost send a fire truck flying off the bridge.

The clincher is the Thing’s wife suddenly appears through the same crowd the Fantastic Four couldn’t get through five minutes ago. She sees the Thing in broad daylight, takes off her wedding ring, leaves it on the ground and runs off. The Thing’s enormous fingers can’t pick the ring up (a runner they beat to death – he can’t pick up tiny objects or hold a glass without smashing it) and it’s supposed to be sad. The wife is never seen or mentioned again. That’s it? The wife leaves the ring on the ground and then it’s over? No divorce papers to sign, no lawyers. Who keeps the apartment? The money in the joint back account? And happened to the guy who tried to commit suicide, the catalyst for the entire sequence to even happen? Is he grateful? Frightened? Angry? Under arrest? I dunno. He just disappeared.

The entire movie is like this, ideas set up and not followed through, half-assed characters, no logic, no story. That last thing didn’t really hit me until about half way through the movie – there is nothing going on. This movie has no spine. Ostensibly, Reed is building a machine in his lab atop the Baxter Building to recreate the accident in space so he can return everyone to normal out of guilt for what happened to Ben. For this, cue the music from South Park – we need a montage! A genetic research montage!

Meanwhile Victor Von Doom is discovering he’s slowly turning metallic and can absorb and conduct electricity. He is completely oblivious to the fact that for a billionaire who runs a multi-national conglomerate, he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t go to meetings, make telephone calls, host a reality show or anything famous high-powered billionaire businessmen do. He just sits around frowning and gets more metallic.

Unfortunately for Von Doom, his board of directors noticed he doesn’t do anything and they take his company away from him. They apparently never watched Spider-Man, but Von Doom has so he does what Green Goblin did and kills his board members, only Doom does it in a parking lot and not in the middle of Times Square while Macy Gray is performing. After that, Doom decides he wants to kill the Fantastic Four. How does killing them help him? It doesn’t really, but it couldn’t hurt.

Doom decides the best way to go about this is to somehow off screen plant cameras all around the FF’s headquarters so he can watch them on TV. (He doesn’t seem to put a camera in the only place I would: Sue Storm’s bedroom and shower. Who gives a shit what the Thing is doing?) Doom then sits around his headquarters and watches his hated arch-enemies on his TV screens, which takes on the same basic tone as when The Simpsons had satellite TV installed and Homer could watch Bart and Lisa at Springfield Elementary.

Homer: (gasps) Bart and Lisa in the same grade?! (changes channel – gasps) An old army buddy is visiting Mannix?!

It’s just non-stop, how retarded this stuff is. Early in the movie, Johnny Storm breaks quarantine and gets his hot nurse Maria Menounos to go skiing with him. (This quarantine lab is located next to mountains and forests and is within running distance from Manhattan.) While skiing, Johnny bursts into flame, flies for a moment and crashes into the snow, his heat burning off his clothes and melting the ice around him so that he’s sitting naked in a wading pool, bewildered at what just happened. Maria Menounos shows up. He’s horny and invites her into the pool.

It’s suggested she consented and had sex with him because he shows up at the lab later completely naked with only her ski jacket wrapped around his crotch. What kind of a woman, a medical nurse no less, watches her patient suddenly burst into flame and then immediately consents to have sex with him? She’s not at all alarmed or frightened that he might burst into flame again, God forbid while they’re fucking, and he’ll burn her to death? Apparently not. And maybe the Human Torch did kill her and buried her body in the snow – he has her jacket and she’s never, ever seen or mentioned again. Fucking stupid.

Now, it’s not all bad. I liked the swaggering Johnny Storm character and his desire to use his powers to impress women and make money. The Thing came off effectively on screen and they competently touched on his pathos at being turned into a monster. The display of the Fantastic Four’s powers were done pretty well, especially Mr. Fantastic’s fighting style when he stretches, fully utilizing the variables of his powers. I liked when the Thing went berserk (for the 14th time) and Mr. Fantastic stretched around him to subdue him, placing the Thing in the Masterlock. (The Thing failed the Masterlock Challenge.) There were fleeting moments that worked, mostly involving the practical jokes the Human Torch played on the Thing, the physical confrontations between the two, and Sue mediating them.

There is a point in the third act when the Fantastic Four come together to face off against Dr. Doom and my pulse quickened somewhat in anticipation of the big showdown we sat through this entire movie to see. But instead of a knockdown, drag-out fight with the fate of the world at stake, it’s over in a couple of minutes with not a scratch on any of the heroes, and the fight wasn't really about anything.

Those are the good parts, the stuff I liked. Then there’s all the other the bad stuff:

The lack of chemistry between Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd. They’re not believable together as lovers, or even as acquaintances who chat when they run into each other at the bus stop.

The lack of genuine tension in the rivalry turned hatred between Reed Richards and Dr. Doom.

The blind black girl who sometimes forgets to act blind that gets crammed into the story as the Thing’s love interest, which begs all sorts of explanations that are never given.

The fact that three out of the five characters (Reed, Sue, and Doom) are introduced in the first scene as brilliant genetic scientists and not one of them acts like it, speaks like it, or is convincing in any way shape or form. What is it about Marvel when they make their movies that they refuse to hire technical consultants? The Fantastic Four writers know as much about genetic science (even fake comic book genetic science) as Daredevil writer-director Mark Steven Johnson knows about how a trial works.

All of the terrible sitcom dialogue and situations slapped together instead of real character moments that could deepen who these people are and what they feel about what’s happened to them beyond what’s superficial.

The wildly inconsistent tone of the movie, which is also reflected by the wildly inconsistent soundtrack, veering from lousy pop rock to a lousy score to soul music(!) with no rhyme or reason. 

Stan Lee, who makes his most obnoxious cameo in a Marvel movie yet.

This material has potential and Fantastic Four should have been a lot better than it turned out. The movie isn’t as terrible as the worst of its critics are suggesting. Fantastic Four is not worthless, but it’s not good, either. At its best, it’s pleasant. Every now and then it hits a funny or exciting note, but not nearly often enough. Most of all, it’s just really dumb and a waste of the material. You can see a better movie in the corners of this one, and it wouldn’t have been so hard to make it with just a few minor changes: Rewrite it, reshoot it, and hire a better director.

The first time Reed stretches his video game quality CGI arm under a doorway, a very dumb girl two seats from me who talked through the entire movie complained, “Ew, that’s nasty.” Seconds later, Johnny Storm delivers the punchline to Reed’s feat: “That’s gross.” Big laugh, especially from the dumb girl who was proud of herself because she broke the joke first. Congratulations, Tim Story, you’ve directed the movie to the remedial level of audience comprehension. Care to try for the next level up or even higher, for those of us watching who aren’t complete morons? No, you didn’t. What a fucking shame.

To bring all this to full circle, the scene I referenced at the start where Sue scolds Johnny comes about because he has disobeyed the team’s instructions to remain out of the public eye. Instead he has turned himself into a teen idol, soaking up the fame and the adoration of hot women. Sue tells him that he’s just a fad to them, but he scoffs, “These people love me!”

In a better movie, or even a sitcom like The Brady Bunch or Growing Pains, Johnny would then learn that he is just an amusing sideshow to the masses and the people that truly care about him are his invisible sister, the elastic guy who’s in love with his sister, and that orange rock man, no relation. Fantastic Four failed to even follow up on that subplot. It gets dropped entirely. If the filmmakers are expecting to pick that story thread up in a sequel, they just might be the most deluded of true believers.

Serenity (***1/2)

SERENITY

June 24, 2005

You Can't Stop The Signal

When Serenity started, I tried to put aside all of my previous knowledge about Firefly and mentally approach the material as if I were seeing it for the first time. If this thing can’t stand on its on as a movie, it’s dead on arrival. I liked the opening scenes – the voice over narration establishing the futuristic concept, and I really liked the Alice in Wonderland reality within reality of opening in a flashback, which was a dream of River’s, which was then revealed as a hologram recording of how Simon freed River from the Alliance. That was a question I never really thought about before – how did Simon free her? – but I was pleasantly surprised we got the answer.

I really liked the Assassin (there were no credits at this advanced free screening so I don’t know his character name, if any.) I expected that the concept of Blue Sun and the hands of blue would be swept aside and it was the right move since there’s already more than enough to explain to a general audience. But in this opening we ran into my first complaint, which is I can’t understand why that girl who played young River was cast. She looks nothing like Summer Glau and her performance and that entire scene were overly contrived. Bad casting that took me right out of the movie moments after it started.

The first act felt like another episode but that’s not a negative comment. It was clear from the very beginning that this was Joss Whedon writing and directing, that the characters were indeed back, that this was Firefly. It seemed like there was never a 3 year gap from when we saw them last. It’s rare to see such a pure recreation of something thought to be lost for good, but unlike say, the ECW One Night Stand pay per view, which was purely a recreation, this was much more of an organic continuation.

The character reveals, the arcs established, the interpersonal conflicts were generally clear and well done, as were the simultaneous camera reveals of the layout and rooms of Serenity herself, which is also a character and as important as the human characters. There was a lot of dialogue here and all throughout the picture, which is Whedon’s greatest strength and one of the biggest drawbacks in finding a mass audience. There are few movies in the action or sci-fi genre where characters talk as much as they do here. For those not familiar or fond of Whedon’s style, it will be a lot to process. But fuck them for now; for me, it was great to see everyone again. The desire to see these characters we love as we remember them was instantly met and that was the first gratification of the movie. The early set up of Simon’s Dramatic Need, to keep River out of harm’s way, was prominent and worked very well. His desire to keep his sister safe is the strongest idea in this part and the one easiest to relate to.

Seeing the dreaded, cannibalistic Reavers at long last didn’t disappoint, nor did the first major action sequence involving Mal, Zoe, Jayne and River escaping from the Reavers. Jayne’s leg being speared also worked as the litmus test for the level of violence Joss was going for, which would be considerable and quite shocking in volume and veracity as the movie continued. Once we got to the planet where River and Simon were supposed to leave the ship, we hit my second major complaint: Kung Fu River.

See, I never equated River Tam with Buffy Summers. River is River, she has next to nothing in common with Buffy, and she shouldn’t be Buffy. River is a tortured genius psychic and while she has displayed amazing acrobatic prowess, turning her into a kung fu fighting machine was not something I necessarily wanted to see out of her character. To me, Kung Fu River was more disappointing than exciting because while I understand the need from a conceptual and an action viewpoint for her to fight, River doing acrobatic martial arts is too derivative. A young girl with superpowered kung fu has been done, by Whedon on TV, and by many others in movies. It’s not unique and it’s not new.

I also don’t like the circumstances for River’s first fight scene. River wanders into the bar, is drawn by the subliminal message cartoon the Alliance planted and is triggered to reveal herself and her fighting prowess is activated. I got that. What I didn’t understand is why the people River was fighting were suddenly doing so. What was the motivation of all those people to attack River one-by-one black ninja style? When she walked into the bar, they were all sitting, drinking, and minding their own business. Suddenly, they were all on their feet attacking her.

The fact that River is psychic and a mind reader was what made her a threat to the Alliance. Her telepathy was used early when she, Mal, Jayne and Zoe broke into the cash vault before the Reavers arrived, but it was never used effectively again. When River turned into Bruce Lee, that became the focus of why she was dangerous. While there is a level of coolness to River being a fighting machine, it doesn’t make sense. She’s a tiny, skinny girl. How strong could she be? How does her psychic power translate into her being able to hit men twice her size hard enough to knock them out? Sarah Michelle Gellar is also tiny but Buffy has magical super strength so there is an outlet to explain how she can fight. It doesn’t make as much sense for River, although Summer Glau, who was a prima ballerina in real life, moves more fluidly and gracefully than Sarah Gellar ever could. River’s fight scenes have an appropriate ballet quality, but vicious and intense.

When Inara sent Mal a wave and Mal decided to take Serenity and come get her, I immediately cried a mental foul since Inara would never betray Mal and the others, even if an eloquent black space assassin was leaning on her. I was enormously pleased when Mal and the entire crew clearly saw it was a trap – that’s smart writing and it makes the audience and the characters share in being equally smart. I did note that only a fleeting reference was made to Inara being a Companion, and what that is, and whatnot was assiduously avoided. I can understand that – the concept of legal and respectable prostitution, even in deep space in the future, is a hard sell to the general public. Establishing Inara as a prostitute would instantly turn a mass audience against her. As such, she was just a woman who used to be on the ship and Mal and Inara clearly love each other, but there’s too much going on already so it’s right the Companion stuff had to go. Still, it reduces Inara to just being a beautiful woman who lacks a function and reason for being beyond a love interest for Mal that’s never consummated.

I really liked the visit with Shepherd Book on Haven where the last word was spoken on whether we’ll ever find out what Book’s mysterious secret past is: No. We’ll never find out. And that’s okay with me, I understand why and it’ll be more fun to imagine the answer from here on in. (Just like how I never, ever want to know what became of Angel in that alley - unless there is an Angel movie.) I didn’t like how Mal told Book he always sought counsel from him; that’s not quite the way it went. Mal never wanted to hear Book’s advice, so that rang a bit false.

The big mystery solved, what River knew that the Alliance wanted silenced, and the secret origin of the Reavers was just terrific. Again, like how Simon saved River, a question I never even knew I wanted answered was, and that was awesome. I thought it was a really good pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; it was different, and it was a big deal given what was established throughout the movie.

The villainous Assassin hunting River was a tremendous character. I also liked the clear philosophical differences established between Mal and the Assassin. All that stuff that they talked about in between and during their slugfests: faith, loyalty, love, what kind of world is ideal and what the costs and worth of creating such a world would be. Genuine ideas that drive the characters’ motivations, complicates them, challenges them, forces them to question themselves and reaffirm who they are. We just don’t see such things in today’s genre movies. To its credit, Serenity had a lot more on its mind.

The third act was shockingly violent. Again, I draw parallels to the ECW pay per view, the unlikeliest thing Serenity could be related to but they have more in common than it seems. Both Serenity and ECW are led by charismatic, balding geniuses within their entertainment genres (Whedon and Paul Heyman) who are indebted to multi-million-dollar mega conglomerates. Both had their pet franchise projects, which in their own ways turned their genres on their sides, ended before their time. Both have legions of loyal, cult followers who bemoan the state of their genres and cry out for a return of the brand of their genre they love. Both are comprised of performers who feel passionately about their characters, product, and the fans, and yearned to return. Both Serenity and ECW received phoenix-like resurrections this year to reward all those loyal, emotional, grateful fans, with the possibility of a continuation based on the performance of the resurrected franchise.

Given the stakes established and the dangers they faced, the third act was more violent than I could have imagined. The last sci-fi movie I can remember that was as bloody and unrelentingly, unapologetically violent was Robocop. There hasn’t been any sci-fi at this level of violence in many years, and because the characters are so talkative and funny, the violence blindsides you because you never expect it, even though the rules of the universe are plainly established. The desperation and the ferocity of the fighting for survival by every character was palpable. It’s funny that Joss may never be known as an action director, because he’s a very good one and he plays for keeps with his characters. They are never safe, there is no feeling that everything will turn out all right in the end, that only the bad people will be punished and perish. He pushed this as far as I think he can push and I admire his resolve. Mal getting skewered in the gut, Simon getting shot and Zoe getting her back sliced open were effective red herrings.

The deus ex machina of River killing the Reavers was held off a bit too long when it was apparent from her first kung fu fight scene that killing those monster men was what she was made for. It brings her fighting ability into justification – she’s a weapon, so of course, what else but the Reavers could River have been made a weapon to fight against? It worked overall and River looked cool fighting and posed in victory over the Reavers’ corpses, but again, it’s derivative and obvious. A more interesting resolution would be her psychic ability coming into play somehow – I don’t know how but it's too Buffyesque that a young girl kung fu fighting can solve all your monster problems. Joss has mined that to death already.

Wash and Book dying. Book’s death was not unexpected and it was sad but he went out in a brave, heroic way. No one could have expected he wouldn’t be the only one to go. Book’s death was the right move; on an ongoing series he has a place as a moral center, but in the movie he was an extraneous character. Book’s death was more than enough sadness but it was only a decoy. The death of Wash was one of the ballsiest moves I’ve ever seen from something in this genre. The fact that it comes out of nowhere, the speed, impact and the permanence of it, the fact that there is no resuscitation, no magical coming back to life, not even any parting words as he died was unbelievable. I'm not sure if I like that it was done but Joss killing Wash off was a hell of a move. Overall, I think it was a good move because of all of the Serenity crewmembers, he was always the one least cut out for a life of crime (one can argue Simon is as well, but Simon is still learning and growing while Wash was set and stagnant). Wash was the funny comic relief, everyone loved him and he served a specific purpose as the pilot. With his sudden death the perception that because Wash was the pilot and he usually doesn't leave Serenity that he’s “safe” was instantly shattered.

Another problem created by Wash's death is Zoe's behavior. Zoe’s lack of any reaction to her husband dying was awkward at best. I understand she is a soldier, they had a job to do and odds are they were all moments away from joining Wash in death when the Reavers arrive, but she took Wash’s death far better than anyone in the audience did. Some sort of reaction, of release, would have been more appropriate, at least from the standpoint of emotional completeness. Charging headlong at the Reavers and nearly getting her back sliced in half isn't enough. However, I did note that the movie did not clearly define that they were in fact husband and wife – obviously as fans of the show we know but the general audience may not have been significantly clued in, and thus Joss has some wriggle room to explain Zoe’s lack of emotion to her husband dying.

One of the major storylines, carried over from Firefly and re-established by Kaylee in act one when she admonished Mal for never making Simon and River feel like a part of the family, came full circle. In Serenity, Simon and River finally and truly became part of Mal's crew, the family, but room had to be made for them and Wash had to be the one to go. Simon as the doctor had a function on the ship, but River needed one. Taking Wash’s role as the person who flies Serenity was the logical choice. It was established in “Objects In Space” and fleetingly touched upon in scenes where River would be intimately pressed against parts of the ship that she has a tactile relationship with Serenity. With Wash gone and Serenity finally truly becoming her home, it’s fitting that River becomes the one to fly her.

My issues aside, I loved Serenity. It was a joy being with these characters again and going on one more ride with them. When the screening let out, I wanted to turn around, buy another ticket and immediately see it again, if only that were possible. It is instantly one of my favorite movies. Not “of the year”. I mean period. I have no idea how it will do theatrically upon its release. I just can’t conjecture. There is more than enough action, humor and fun that a general audience might enjoy the movie. It has many unique yet familiar qualities and it has the benefit of being quite unlike anything else out there. On the other hand, there are so many things that could turn off a general audience.

My feeling is if you have an affinity for science fiction action movies, there is enough here to engage you even if you’ve never heard of Firefly. But it’s also very easy to anticipate people being turned off or uninterested. It will be interesting to see how Universal markets it at the end of the summer. The ball is really in their court to get asses into the seats and sell this thing to the general audience. I can’t wait to see it again, especially when the effects are done, the final sound is mixed, and the picture is cut down a bit and tightened. I didn’t have any issues with the sound, edits and effects as they were – it was enough to convey what was needed, but I’ll be very excited to see Serenity’s final cut. Whether or not the box office exceeds $40 million domestically, which is a reasonable estimate, Serenity will do gangbuster DVD business. It will ultimately be determined more by the DVD sales than by its theatrical numbers whether Serenity will ever fly again.

I can’t hope for more, especially since we never should have had this movie to begin with, but as a final chapter, it’s a beautiful way to go out. And if by some second stroke of unbelievable fate there is another movie or something else that brings Joss and these actors back together, Serenity is still the last time we will ever see Firefly again as we knew it and loved it from the show. Firefly-That-Was will never be again. Anything more will be very different by design.

Top 25 Batman Movie Quotes

TOP 25 BATMAN MOVIE QUOTES

June 22, 2005

"Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in when a man dressed up as a bat gets all of my press?" - The Joker

The American Film Institute released their list of the Top 100 Movie Quotes. It's a pretty good list, I guess, but there's a big problem: There's nothing from any of the Batman movies. Six movies over 31 years and you're telling me the high-falootin' AFI 100 couldn't give any love to Batman?

I decided to compile my own list of the Top 25 movie quotes from the five Batman movies spanning Adam West's camp classic in 1966 to George Clooney's 1997 atrocity. Why did I pass over Batman Begins? It's too new. It's still in theatres. It needs some time to resonate and become part of the culture.

In truth, 25 quotes isn't nearly enough. I could probably have compiled a Top 100 lines from Batman: The Movie, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman and Robin given enough time, but that probably would have been going overboard. Also, I would have needed to consult my DVDs of the five movies or the IMDB and I didn't want to do that. The challenge was to compile this list entirely from memory. It wasn't easy choosing which dialogue to leave out. A lot of good Batlines were kicked to the curb.

It's fun to try to incorporate these quotes in everyday life. Try it sometime. 

Top 25 Batman Movie Quotes (1966 - 1997) 

25) "All right, everyone. Chill." - Mr. Freeze (Batman and Robin, 1997)

Marginally better than Mr. Freeze's first line of dialogue in Batman and Robin: "The Iceman cometh!", which he yells at the top of his lungs. You can say this line while trying to approximate Schwarzenegger's accent and you might get a chuckle out of someone, if they don't glare at you like you're an asshole and stomp away.

24) "It's the car, right? Chicks love the car." - Batman (Batman Forever, 1995)
Batman Forever is surprisingly lacking in iconic, quotable dialogue. The most memorable lines come from this rooftop scene as Dr. Chase Meridian summons Batman via the Batsignal. She comes onto him, prompting Batman to scoff. Note Val Kilmer's smirk as he delivers the line. He's almost disgusted that this woman wants to have sex with him. What does she think he is, heterosexual? Batman has a couple of more zingers here:
"You summoned me here for this? The Batsignal is not a beeper."
"You trying to get under my cape, doctor?"
The car line is the one that lasts, though. It's condescending and sexist as only a man wearing a rubber codpiece who's never had a steady girlfriend can utter.

23) "You are not sending me to the cooler!" - Mr. Freeze (Batman and Robin, 1997)
The second of my Mr. Freeze trifecta. Freeze mines every possible cold pun there is, then salts the earth so nothing further can grow.

22) "Power surplus? Bruce, shame on you. No such thing. One can never have too much power. If my life has a meaning, that's the meaning." - Max Shreck (Batman Returns, 1992)
The greatest and most overlooked addition to the Batman mythology is billionaire industrialist Max Shreck, played by Christopher Walken. In a movie that had Batman, Catwoman and Penguin, Shreck, a character no one had ever heard of before, ran away with Batman Returns. He had all the good dialogue and was the real villain of the piece, revealing the three characters named after animals as the fractured, sad little lost souls they were. Bruce Wayne has a business meeting with Shreck and points out the major flaw in Shreck's plan to build a power plant for Gotham. If Shreck could have dealt Wayne some defenestration like he did his secretary, he sure would have. Little does he know Wayne falls off of buildings every night and likes it.

Incidentally, if you have Facebook, you should Like Max Shreck.

21) "Wow. The Batman! Or, is it just 'Batman'?" - Selina Kyle (Batman Returns, 1992)
Selina's comment to Batman after he saves her life from evil circus people. Finally, this question that has baffled 6 decades of Batman fans is posed cinematically. Which is it? Instead of answering, Batman glares at her and stalks away, leaving us all hanging. The lesson? Some questions are just not meant to be answered.

20) "A laundry service that delivers! Wow!" - Mr. Freeze (Batman and Robin, 1997)
My jaw drops every time I hear this line. What the fuck? To set the scene, Mr. Freeze has been imprisoned in Arkham Asylum. Poison Ivy and Bane arrive to break him out and bring him his ice armor in a shopping cart, which prompts Freeze to delightedly exclaim the line. Seriously, what the fuck?

19) "Goodbye, my unintended. Go to Heaven." - The Penguin (Batman Returns, 1992)
Penguin horny. The Penguin was trying to get some Catwoman tail and framed Batman for throwing the ice princess off a building (this happened a lot in Batman Returns. It was the means of choice for disposing of women.) When Catwoman retched at the thought of sex with a deformed bird midget, Penguin strapped her neck to a helicopter umbrella and uttered this poetic farewell as he sent her to her death. It's kind of a sweet thing to say to a woman you're about to kill.

18) "Oh God. Does this mean we have to start fighting?" - Selina Kyle (Batman Returns, 1992)
This line actually comes right after number 6 on the list, after Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle realized who the other person really was at the Maxquerade Ball. Then Penguin blew a hole through the floor and rode up in a giant rubber duckie, so everything turned out all right for Bruce and Selina. At least for about 20 more minutes. Then she got shot six times and electrocuted herself.

17) "Well, come what may, Merry Christmas, Mr. Wayne." - Alfred
"Merry Christmas, Alfred. Good will towards men. And women." - Bruce Wayne (Batman Returns, 1992)
Batman Returns has two unique distinctions: it's the only Batman Christmas movie and the only Batman movie that ends in slit-your-wrists sadness. Poor Bruce thinks Selina Kyle is dead and sits in the back of his limousine with her cat as Alfred drives him home. No girlfriend for Bruce Wayne, no happiness; another lonely Christmas, just him and his butler sitting in a dank, sinister cave. He doesn't suspect that Catwoman's giant head is watching from above. There was supposed to be a spin off with Michelle Pfeiffer. Instead, 12 years later, we get Halle Berry's Catwoman. What a gyp.

16) "Women. Nothing surprises me, Chip. Except your late mother. Who woulda thought Selina had a brain to damage? Bottom line is, if she tries to blackmail me, I'll drop her out a higher window. 'Til then, I got bigger fish to fry." - Max Shreck (Batman Returns, 1992)
Sage fatherly wisdom from Max Shreck to his son Chip.

15) "Security? Who let Vicki Vale into the Batcave? I'm sitting there working, I turn around, there she is. 'Oh hey, Vick. C'mon in!'" - Bruce Wayne (Batman Returns, 1992)
By far my favorite dialogue uttered by Michael Keaton's Batman, addressing the most jarring, out of place moment from the previous Batman movie. It's also the only time Bruce Wayne admonishes Alfred, but seriously, what was he thinking letting Vicki Vale into the Batcave? In Alfred's defense, he was only trying to get his master laid so his heart was in the right place.

14) "What do you want?" - Batman
"Ah, the direct approach. I admire that from a man in a mask." - The Penguin (Batman Returns, 1992)

Penguin scored quite a bit off of Batman in Batman Returns. Later on, he and his circus folk sabotaged the Batmobile and turned it into an H-bomb on wheels. As much as Penguin wrecking his car must have pissed Batman off, Penguin coolly dissing him when they had their first face-to-face confrontation must have stung Batman mighty fierce. He got Penguin back before the confrontation was ended by Catwoman doing cartwheels and blowing up Shreck's department store.

13) "Nice outfit." - Jack Napier (Batman, 1989)

Seriously, what would you say if you were trying to rob a chemical factory in the middle of the night and a guy in a rubber bat costume showed up out of nowhere? And it is a nice outfit. The first Batsuit is still the best.

12) "You - you've got kind of a dark side, don't you?" - Bruce Wayne
"No darker than yours, Bruce." - Selina Kyle (Batman Returns, 1992)

Bruce Wayne wasn't quite sure why he was so attracted to Max Shreck's secretary until he ran into her on the street and she started waxing insanely. Her being hot got Bruce's attention. Her being crazy got her a dinner invite to Wayne Manor.

11) "I am the light of this city, and I'm its mean, twisted soul." - Max Shreck (Batman Returns, 1992)

Probably the coolest sinister words to escape from Max Shreck's mouth. Donald Trump wishes he were half the industrial tyrant Shreck is. Also, Shreck had better hair.

10) "Just the pussy I was looking for!" - The Penguin (Batman Returns, 1992)

Penguin horny. Dude, seriously, there are kids watching this. There's innuendo and then there's outright naughty words. You wanna fuck Catwoman. We get it. Tone it down, Oswald.

9) "And where is the Batman? He's at home washing his tights!" - The Joker (Batman, 1989)

A low blow from the Joker as he addresses the people of Gotham on television and promises to dump $20-million in cash on them. Joker knows damn well Batman doesn't wear tights, but I suppose "he's at home washing his rubber" brings forth a whole different set of nasty connotations.

8) "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!" - Batman (Batman: The Movie, 1966)

Ah, the greatest, most memorable line from Adam West's Batman. Batman literally had to dispose of one of those round, black spherical bombs that only exist otherwise in Bugs Bunny cartoons. No matter where he went on the Gotham waterfront, there was a parade, children playing, nuns passing by, or baby ducks swimming.

8) "This town needs an enema!" - The Joker (Batman, 1989)

When I was a kid, I had no idea what an enema was or what Joker was talking about. Then I looked up what an 'enema' is. Now I want to know how Joker was planning on giving Gotham one.

7) "Eat floor. High fiber." - Batman (Batman Returns, 1992)

Michael Keaton's Batman didn't quip much, or say much of anything, really. But when rooftop kung fu fighting with Catwoman, Batman loosened up and started cracking wise. This was his best zinger as he drove Catwoman's face into the ground.

6) "Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it." - Batman
"But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it." - Catwoman (Batman Returns, 1992)

You say strange things to each other if you're wearing a costume and you're intensely attracted to your arch enemy who is also wearing a costume. Bruce Wayne went to Max Shreck's ball to see Selina Kyle and she started having another of those emotional breakdowns that really get Bruce's engine running. Then she fired off the mistletoe line, Bruce automatically offered the retort, and the jig was up.

5) "This evidence is purely circumstantial!" - Commissioner Gordon (Batman Returns, 1992)

The greatest day of fat old Commissioner Gordon's life was when Batman showed up and started doing his job for him. Now, instead of catching criminals himself, he just had to turn a searchlight on, sit back, and unlock his jail for the incoming. But when Batman was framed by Penguin and Catwoman for killing the ice princess with Batman's own stolen Batarang, Gordon went to embarrassing lengths on TV to proclaim his meal ticket's innocence.

4) "'Winged freak terrorizes?' Wait'll they get a load of me!" - The Joker (Batman, 1989)

Awesome line from the Joker after quoting the headline of the newspaper: Winged Freak Terrorizes Gotham. By the way, as far as Batman movies go, the greatest headline in the history of Batman movies is in Batman Begins: Drunken Billionaire Burns Down Home. If they made a T-shirt of that, I'd buy it in a second.

3) "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker (Batman, 1989)

Turns out, he gets them from Morgan Freeman. The Joker always felt a little inadequate when Batman would come after him with his Batarangs, Batmobile and Batwing. So he handled it in a logical fashion: he got himself a big gun with a ten foot barrel and he hid it in his pants. Yes, that is a ten foot barreled gun in his pants and the Joker is always happy to see you.

2) "I'm Batman!" - Batman (Batman, 1989)

In the original script, the line is "Tell your friends, tell all your friends - I am the night!" That's stupid and they were wise to change it. How is exactly is Batman the night? Instead of that comic booky gibberish, we get the crowd-pleasing, defining moment that instantly and forever sold Michael Keaton as Batman. A moment so pivotal, Christian Bale also said it in Batman Begins. Keaton's was still better.

1) "Have you ever danced with the Devil by the pale moonlight?" - The Joker (Batman, 1989)

The best line in Batman movie history. Quote it to nearly anyone, and if they saw Batman when they were a kid, they'll remember it. They'll smirk or roll their eyes or grimace, but damn sure, they'll remember it. It's as purely a construction of the Batman movies as it is to have the Joker as the man who killed Bruce Wayne's parents.

By my reckoning, I have 14 quotes from Batman Returns. It's far and away the most quotable of the Batman movies if you like nasty, cruel, misogynistic dialogue. And who doesn't?

Tim Burton's first Batman (1989) commands the top four and The Joker boasts three of the top four quotes. The Joker/Jack Napier could potentially have fielded the entire Top 25 all by himself. Screenwriter Sam Hamm gave him all the best dialogue. Only Max Schrek in Batman Returns has dialogue that competes with The Joker in quantity, quality, and quotability. There are lots of good Joker lines I had to omit, such as:

"Never rub another man's rhubarb." - The Joker

That's good advice.

These Are The Voyages...

THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...

She's dead, Jim. 

Star Trek: Enterprise was a show that had its best days ahead of it. After two dull, meandering seasons and a better but still uneven third season, Enterprise briefly dodged the cancellation bullet and delivered a vastly improved, sometimes rollicking fourth season that occasionally harkened to the fun and adventure of the original Star Trek. 

Enterprise was more focused, more confident. The writing - which was always Enterprise and its franchise predecessor Star Trek: Voyager's fatal flaw - was markedly better. The Enterprise scripts were nowhere near as literate or passionate as the best efforts from Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - but overall they were far more engaging. This redundant, uninspired show overcame the majority of its problems and at its best moments became genuinely entertaining.

It wasn't enough to save the show. The millions of Star Trek viewers had long since abandoned the latest presentation of Star Trek. They are content with the Star Trek they now have on DVD and are uninterested in the (mis)adventures of a prequel series awkwardly shoehorned into Trek canon. They missed out on a good season of Enterprise this year, but it honestly was nothing better than what they've already seen and love.

The two million of us who remained and got to know the crew of the NX-01, mostly out of loyalty to a tired franchise we still find value in after all these years, had a pretty good time this year. Perhaps expectations were so low that any improvement was appreciated. Still, Enterprise was vastly improved.

Its progress was within Star Trek's historical parameters; The Next Generation did not truly gel until season 3; Deep Space Nine found its creative footing and ran away, never looking back, in its fourth season. Enterprise had followed suit. If the show weren't canceled, the best was yet to come. Coming off their best season, Enterprise was poised to at least go out with its head held high, as a show that was beginning to prove worthy of carrying the torch of Star Trek, as a show that didn't deserve to die.

Which brings us to the controversial series finale, "These Are The Voyages…", which also doubles as the finale of the current era of the Star Trek franchise. I didn't get to see it until late last night, but when I returned from my weekend trip, waiting for me was this review from the son of a bitch who is single handedly responsible for getting me interested - soon hooked, which was my own damn fault - on Star Trek eleven years ago after I'd spent my life up to that point mocking and despising Star Trek.

He writes:

Appalling. Jolene Blalock was right. The series finale of Enterprise was an abomination. And the blame lies completely at the feet of Rick Berman & Brannon Braga. This series finally got pretty darn good this year when those two fuckers finally took their hands off the product and turned the reigns over to Manny Coto and his staff of pretty good writers. But then those two assholes just had to stick their noses back in and destroy all of the good will Coto & Co. had spent a year building up with that horribly offensive piece of shit "These Are The Voyages . . ." What was wrong with it? Were to begin?

First off, the focus of the show wasn't on the Enterprise crew at all; it was about Riker trying to make a decision about whether or not to fess up about the Pegasus incident. The Enterprise crewmembers were reduced to mere holographic props to help Riker's soul searching. The added kicker is that I, and anyone who saw TNG, already knew what Riker was going to decide, so the whole morality play was pointless, as the outcome was predetermined. On the other hand, if someone didn't watch TNG, and was just a fan of Enterprise, the whole episode would have been meaningless because they wouldn't have understood Riker's dilemma and certainly wouldn't have given a rats ass about his pathetic soul searching. And may I also add, Riker and Troi looked like crap. I guess even actors are allowed to show their age at some point, but it sure is distracting when those actors are about 10 years older than the characters they are playing. Every member of the cast should have refused to do the finale until they wrote an Enterprise finale about the fucking Enterprise crew.

Second, related to the first problem, the last two actors ever seen in an episode of Enterprise were Frakes and Sirtis as Riker & Troi walking out of the holodeck. Let's look at the other shows, shall we. TNG ended with the whole crew playing cards. DS9 ended with the characters saying their goodbyes on the promenade before focusing on Jake and Kira staring out towards the wormhole thinking of Captain Sisko as the camera does a long pull out. Hell, that ending still gets me choked up whenever I see it. Voyager ended with the crew on the bridge staring out at Earth, having finally made it home. In other words, all previous shows ended with the focus on the characters that had made the show, not the backs of characters from another series. And the mixing of the voiceovers after the shot of Riker and Troi was stupid as well. The NX-01 was being put into mothballs. Its mission was over. It wouldn't be boldly going where no man/one had gone before, so the voiceover had no meaning. Ending Trek II with Nimoy doing the voiceover was poignant because the Enterprise still had a future, even after Spock's death. But come Trek VI, when the Enterprise A was being decommissioned (after a very short lifespan) Kirk gave an appropriate captain's log that evoked the classic opening narration but making it clear that it was up to another generation to continue the journey. Far be it for me to expect Berman & Braga to understand how to do a voiceover, when they can't get anything else right.

Third, they pissed on the Tripp/T'Pol relationship. That relationship was the heart of the show for me this entire season. It was easily the best thing on the show (followed by the female uniforms in the dark universe). According to Berman & Braga, Tripp and T'Pol apparently had no relationship between "Terra Prime" and "These are the voyages. . ." So while the heart of season 4 was the relationship between Tripp and T'Pol, so much so that the events of that season end with them grieving together over the loss of their daughter Elizabeth, immediately after that their relationship came to an abrupt end and they spent the next 6 years as dispassionate crewmates. Fucking great. Way to mock the best aspect of the show Berman & Braga.

Fourth, how many times did we need to be reminded that the holoprogram was set in Enterprise's future? At least 3 times characters worked it into the dialogue that their mission started 10 years ago. For example: Archer to T'Pol "remember when we first met 10 years ago?" People don't talk like that. On the other hand, it probably was necessary since the characters showed evidence of absolutely no growth from the events of the 6 years during which we didn't see them. I guess nothing important happened during those six years since, with the exception of nametags and T'Pol's hair, every member of the crew was exactly the same as they were at the end of "Terra Prime."

Fifth, and far and away the biggest sin of the episode, they completely botched Trip's death in every possible way on every possible level. First, signaling his death with Troi's line "he had no idea he wouldn't be coming back" was some of the worst writing in the history of Star Trek (and I've seen "Spock's Brain"). All of the shock and emotional impact of Trip's death was instantly drained from the episode. Instead, you just start waiting for it to happen. Second, what a stupid, meaningless death. Some aliens we have never seen before come looking for Shran because of some stupid alien diamond theft and Trip sacrifices himself to take out the aliens and save freakin' Shran? He couldn't sacrifice himself to save the Enterprise crew or in connection with the founding of the Federation? Or better yet, he couldn't find a way to take out the raiding party without killing himself? Stupid, stupid writing. Third, the death scene in sickbay was terrible. When he went into the tube and we cut to commercial, I thought Trip was still alive, and then we come back from commercial in Trip's quarters and he is already dead. So we don't even see him die! What the fuck is that? Fourth, we didn't see any member of the crew react to the death other than T'Pol and Archer. Everyone told Chef Riker how great Trip was before his death, but then no one got to show any grief after his death. Elizabeth's death was handled better than that. I always thought Jadzia Dax's death was pretty poorly done, but this was far worse. Dax's death may have been pretty meaningless, but at least it was connected to a major thrust of the show (the Gul Dukat/Pah'Wraiths storyline) and we got to see Worf at her bedside as she died. Moreover, at least the writers had the excuse that they had to kill her off since Terry Farrell was leaving the show. Here, there was no excuse for this steaming pile of shit.

Bottom line, after getting to the point where I was actually enjoying Enterprise this season, I'm now very glad that it has been cancelled. In the end I was left with a horrible taste in my mouth. The more I think about the episode the angrier I get. I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike Rick Berman any more than I already did, but now I loath the man. Stick a fork in Star Trek, fans, 'cause it's done.

All of that rage is correct. This episode had some big problems as detailed above. It was an ill-conceived, poorly executed piece of television.

A funny thing happened to me on the road to indignation, though: I found I liked the episode anyway. I like it because of the cast of Star Trek: Enterprise, all of whom impressed the hell out of me. In "These Are The Voyages…" I saw an energy in the Enterprise cast I'd never quite seen before. The actors' various emotions during the filming of the last episode of their show was evident on screen and they seemed determined to go out on high notes. While nothing spectacular was written for them in the way of dialogue or action, the charisma of the Enterprise cast was positively charming. The banter in the opening scene alone between Malcolm, Hoshi, Travis, Archer and T'Pol, again while not sparkling in the words, was relaxed and entertaining. The actors were enjoying themselves.

In this last episode, the entire cast of Enterprise delivered some of their best performances. Yes, structurally in the episode they were holograms and not the 'real' characters, but the idea here was to see them through Riker's eyes, in essence seeing them for the first time. Riker was looking at them as historical characters he'd only read about but as the episode progressed, he got to know them all personally. In effect, so did we. We met them all over again, very briefly, through Riker's eyes, and I realized the same way Riker did that I like these people. It's a real shame we can't spend more quality time with them like we had in season four.

The gimmick of Riker posing as Chef and meeting with each of the Enterprise crew members was conceptually flawed in all kinds of ways. (I'd always hoped the never-seen Chef character was an ancestor of Ben Sisko, but as usual DS9 gets no love.) Suddenly we're told that every person on the crew confides all their professional and personal to the ship's cook. This Chef is a major security risk waiting to happen. Kidnap the ship's cook and you can cripple the flagship of Starfleet in one fell swoop.

Not withstanding, watch the scenes as Riker meets with each Enterprise crew member individually and cooks with them. Watch the actors' performances. Every single actor relished their scenes with Jonathan Frakes and brought their best effort to the table. Jolene Blalock especially gave one of her most nuanced performances as T'Pol and the glint in ladies' man Riker's eye as he silently considered her attractiveness and wanted to kiss her (on the cheek, he ultimately decided) was amusing. As character moments, these scenes were a lot of fun and were perhaps some of the best of the series, despite how ill-conceived the basic idea behind them is.

The joy here was in watching the actors perform as they enjoy spending a moment with a veteran actor of The Next Generation. In turn, Frakes was clearly enjoying acting with the Enterprise cast members, with Riker admiring each character as he got to know them. With each scene, he was giving this maligned cast 'the rub', which was the intention of Berman and Braga. I think in that respect it worked. And Riker's exchange with Travis was hilarious.

Riker: "Did [Trip] ever want to take a swing at Picard?"

Travis: "Who?"

Riker: "I meant Archer."

Riker and Troi giving themselves a tour of the NX-01 was also fun, which is all those scenes were meant to be. Riker almost hitting his head on the low ceiling, the joke about there not being a fish tank in Archer's ready room, Riker complaining about how the first officer doesn't have a chair next to the captain, and Troi's confusion as to why the door didn't automatically hiss open as she stood in front of it were all fun. You could look at it as Riker and Troi mocking Enterprise, but let the crew that doesn't live on a ship with bright yellow floors and pastel pink chairs cast the first stone. On the sleeker, cooler Enterprise set, Riker and Troi, in their bright primary colored uniforms were the ones who looked like clowns.

Trip's demise was atrocious, although Sean is wrong when he noted that Trip was trying to save Shran. Trip was trying to save Archer, who was unconscious on the floor and was about to be killed. He was buying time to save his friend and he gave up his own life to do so. The method Trip used to kill the aliens was boneheaded, as was how Trip's death was handled. It was piss poor writing.

But again, watch the performance from Connor Trinner, the desperation, the love he showed for his best friend Archer as he impulsively decided that one of them wasn't going to make it out of that hallway alive and it was better Trip goes than Archer. Trinner's acting sold a badly written scene. What about the brief exchange in the shuttlepod between T'Pol and Trip about how they (will) miss each other? As rotten as the circumstances surrounding the existence of that scene are, watch how heroically the actors fight against their dumb script and deliver some poignancy to the moment. It was as bittersweet an exchange as any we've seen in Star Trek. If only there were more time for these characters, look what we could have had.

As for the final scene, yes, the camera was on Riker and Troi, but where is it written that a Star Trek series has to end with a shot of the crew?

Look a little deeper: what were Riker and Troi doing? They were watching Jonathan Archer deliver a speech that marked the founding of the Federation. (A speech we never hear, unfortunately.) These 'legends' from The Next Generation were looking at the captain of Star Trek: Enterprise with respect and reverential awe. And prior to that was a really nice moment between Phlox, T'Pol, and Archer, the Bones, Spock and Kirk substitutes.

Jolene Blalock and Scott Bakula were wonderful here. Watch how Archer's pacing cut through T'Pol's stoicism and actually made her nervous - so nervous she had to do something to cut the tension and her choice was to fix Archer's tie. And I loved the moment when Archer decided "fuck it" and hugged T'Pol, how T'Pol couldn't hug him back, but how her eyes and facial expression showed she wanted to and how hard it is to be a Vulcan sometimes. Blalock understands Vulcans almost as well as Leonard Nimoy does. It was a terrific moment.

This entire episode to me was the Enterprise actors' finest hour. Considering their disappointment, which Jolene Blalock and others made public, about how their cast was treated in this episode, how poor the writing is, how stupid Berman and Braga are, what little triumph there is to be had here rests completely with the underrated, underappreciated cast of Star Trek: Enterprise. Each of the actors fought tooth and nail for respect for four seasons and were disheartened to have to fight for even more in their own swansong. I think the actors succeeded and went out with a blaze of glory.

I like these actors a lot. I've grown to like this show a great deal, and just a year ago I wouldn't have batted an eye if it were canceled. It's a shame this show and the franchise are over. Despite its myriad faults, I like "These Are The Voyages…" because of the actors. Star Trek: Enterprise had a good cast, who deserve to stand proudly alongside the best of the franchise.

Sadly, it's their misfortune, and ours, that Enterprise was commanded by Berman and Braga, two bad captains who managed to photon torpedo a 40 year old franchise.

Kingdom of Heaven (***)

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

I'm no historian or theologian but I have some working knowledge of the Crusades. Kingdom of Heaven did a fine job of hitting the high points of the events that lead to the Third Crusade: Reynald of Chatillon kidnapping Saladin's sister, King Baldwin IV dying of leprosy, Guy of Lusignan becoming King of Jerusalem and royally fucking up, leading his army to a slaughter and losing the Battle of Hattin and the True Cross to Saladin, and Saladin retaking Jerusalem for the Muslims.

A Crusader knight named Balian, the character played by Orlando Bloom, did defend Jerusalem and surrendered it to Saladin, though he didn't run off to France with Queen Sibylla (Eva Green, heavenly). But even then, Kingdom of Heaven displayed an admirable amount of verisimilitude, certainly far more than Gladiator, Sir Ridley Scott's last foray into the historical epic.

The movie felt authentic enough. Short of a real Doc Brown actually inventing the flux capacitor and putting it in a DeLorean, we'll never know exactly what the Crusades of a thousand years ago looked like, but Kingdom of Heaven seems to be a believable depiction of that time period. It's not retarded like Troy, boring like King Arthur, or as flaming as Alexander, that's for sure.

Orlando Bloom wasn't the ideal leading man for this sort of picture but he worked hard and didn't embarrass himself. He didn't have the presence perhaps his character could have benefited from, but the movie compensated - as the son of Liam Neeson's character, Godfrey of Ibelin, everywhere Orlando went, he met someone who knew his father. "You're Liam Neeson's son? He was a good man. I guess you're all right." "I loved your father. I will love you as well." Good thing for Orlando his father wasn't an asshole. Rarely has a young man benefited more from being his father's son. Luke Skywalker is as green as his lightsaber with envy.

The first act or so felt a little like an Xbox role playing game. Orlando kept meeting people who gave him a little speech about virtue or religion or evil and offering him choices. It was like Knights of the Old Republic or Fable - Choose your path! Orlando was pretty set on playing the game as a good guy though; he never strayed from his promise to his father that he'd be a good knight, a man of conscience.

Late in the picture, Orlando gives what would generously be called a controversial speech for a Crusader Knight in defense of Jerusalem when he announced to his army that the Christians have no more righteous claim to the Holy Land than the Muslims do. That's some positively progressive thinking for a Crusader, but the movie was steadfastly in the corner of personal responsibility and honor over blind devotion to religion and the violence and sadism done in God's name. Which is a lot of what the Crusades were largely about on both sides.

Kingdom of Heaven's depiction of Saladin may have been its most admirable quality. Saladin by historical accounts was a fair and just king, as much as a king could be in that time and place. He was known for his generosity and character, although he was vicious when crossed. The way the movie depicted the surrender of Jerusalem, Orlando Bloom got a pretty good deal from Saladin. In actual history, Saladin did allow all the Christians to leave the city without getting slaughtered, although there was taxation and payment involved for their lives.

I wish the movie did more to depict just how monumental a moment it was for Saladin and the Muslims when they reclaimed Jerusalem after a century of Crusader control. It was one of the greatest triumphs and moments of Saladin's life - one of the greatest victories ever for Muslimanity over the Infidels of Christ. In the movie, Saladin acted like he'd just gotten a sweet deal on a house that was a fixer upper. But even then, it's good that movie audiences get some idea of who Saladin was.

Saladin also had the benefit of Alexander Siddig as his right hand man. With the genetically engineered Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine at his side, how could Saladin lose?

Though Gladiator-esque sword and horse battles are what the studio hopes will sell tickets, I was a lot more interested in the depiction of history and the progression of the story than in the requisite action sequences. We've seen enough sword and horse battles in this last year alone to last our generation of moviegoers for several years, although the strategy involved in the key battle for Jerusalem was communicated effectively and intriguingly.

I didn't particularly care for Orlando Bloom or most of the characters, save Saladin and the special guest star (initials E.N.) who portrayed King Baldwin. I certainly wasn't moved emotionally by anything like I was for Russell Crowe's anguish at the murder of his family and his spiritual reunion with them when he died in Gladiator. Still, I find myself rather fond of Kingdom of Heaven.

They should do a prequel: Kingdom of Heaven: The First Crusade, where the movie ends with the Christians slaughtering every Muslim and Jew in Jerusalem, wading waist deep in blood while singing praises to God. I think audiences are ready for it.

Luke and Leia

 LUKE AND LEIA

Sucks to be those two kids. From the moment they were born, their destiny was to kill their father. That's shitty. They were their only family but were separated at birth, raised on separate planets and never knew each other growing up. When they met by confluence of events, since they didn’t know they were related, Luke was hot for his sister. She even made out with him once to make Han Solo jealous. (The only people possibly not skeeved out by that would be George Michael and Maeby on Arrested Development.)

Luke said in Return of the Jedi that he never met his mother, except for the few seconds she saw him and named him "Luke" before she died from her broken heart (possibly also from complications from childbirth or even Medi-droid incompetence.)  It's true that baby Luke never got to suck on Natalie Portman’s supple little breasts. Aunt Beru probably didn’t offer herself up as a substitute.

The decision making process behind how the kids were assigned their foster parents hardly seems fair. Leia was given to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan and is raised as Leia Organa, a princess. Luke was given to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on Tattooine and raised as a dirt poor moisture farmer. Pretty good deal for Leia, shitty for Luke. At least he wasn’t given to Watto to be raised as a slave like his father was.

There was some logic to why Luke was sent to Tattooine. If he was going to be the one chosen to grow up and kill Vader, then hiding him on Tattooine was a smart move. Anakin hated Tattooine and Vader would never set foot on his homeworld ever again.

But what was the wisdom behind raising Luke as “Luke Skywalker?” The kid was constantly trying to get a piloting license and become a starpilot. Wasn’t anyone remotely worried the name “Skywalker” registering across Imperial channels would raise a red flag and alert that other Skywalker in the black helmet that there was a kid out there using his name?

Something else that makes little sense: Jedi are supposed to be trained from childhood in the Force. It takes a lifetime to become a Jedi. So why did Obi-Wan wait until Luke was twenty before he started training him? Wasn't one of the problems with Anakin that he was already too old to be trained as a Jedi? And Anakin was only 9. Luke was twice that when he finally got started. Why wasn't Luke just hidden on Dagobah so he could be raised in a swamp by the backwards-talking little Muppet? At least he'd know what he was doing as a Jedi. And Luke speaking with Yoda's syntax would have been fucking great.

Luke to Vader: "Full of surprises, you'll find I am."

And the lies, dear God, the lies! Obi-Wan spent two movies lying right to Luke’s face. “Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father.” That’s not what happened. A certain point of view? Really? Obi-Wan kept stringing Luke along, giving him little tidbits of false information. Then he up and died on him.

Next Obi-Wan became a Force ghost and kept right on jerking Luke around. My favorite moment of this is at the start of Empire Strikes Back when Luke gets attacked by the Wampa ice monster on Hoth, and is lying in the snow bleeding to death. Obi-Wan chooses this opportune time to haunt him.

Obi-Wan: “Luke.”
Luke: “What?”
Obi-Wan: “You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will meet Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.”
Luke: “Can this wait? I’m fucking dying here.”

But for all the shit Luke goes through, including getting his hand cut off and getting personally electrocuted by the Emperor, at least he gets to learn about the Force and become a Jedi. Leia totally got the shaft there. She was also Force-sensitive but she never even got the consideration of being the one to become a Jedi and kill her father.

It really doesn’t make sense. Leia was the twin who was tough, mature, worldly, and intelligent. Luke was whiny and callow, like his father Darth Vader. So why would you send the boy who’s just like his father to go kill him instead of the girl who's just like her mother Padme, who was Vader's biggest weakness? It stands to reason Luke would be more susceptible than Leia to the very same temptations that turned his father to the Dark Side of the Force. So why just train Luke? Why not train both twins as Jedi? Wouldn't two Jedi coming after Vader be better than one? Is it because Leia’s a girl? Yes.

Mr. Burns: I don't know what 'phallocentric' means, but no girls!

Yoda sat on Dagobah for twenty years watching those two kids from afar through the Force. I imagine he was more than a little disappointed when the whiny brat who’s the spitting image of Anakin Skywalker was the one Obi-Wan sent to him instead of his twin sister, the courageous freedom fighter and Rebel leader.

That’s probably why Yoda was so hard on Luke. They screwed up royally with Anakin; Yoda wasn’t going to coddle Anakin’s dope of a son like Obi-Wan did. Of course, at the first chance he got, Luke bailed on Yoda and went running off to get his hand chopped by Vader. Seems like they were hitching the horses to the wrong wagon.

Leia also got robbed of ever getting the satisfaction of seeing her father redeemed. Luke at least got to meet the real Anakin Skywalker before he died. Leia got squat. Luke landed on Endor and burned Vader’s body but didn’t invite his sister to the funeral pyre even though she was also on Endor. Nor did Leia get to see her sexy young daddy as a Force ghost at the very end of Return of the Jedi like Luke did.

If Luke was secretly bitter that Leia got the better upbringing, as I suspect he was, this must have been his revenge on his sister. What a dick.

But in the end, Leia got a handsome, dashing rogue boyfriend in Han Solo. Since he can't date the girl who turned out to be his sister, Luke is left with no love options except for gay droids or Ewoks. All Luke gets for his troubles are a bunch of Jedi ghosts to follow him around and tell him what to do. I guess everything worked out all right.

Constantine (***)

CONSTANTINE 

“What if I told you that God and the Devil made a wager, a kind of standing bet for the souls of all mankind?”


** SPOILERS **

Why would He do something like that? That doesn’t sound like Him. Nevertheless, this is the core idea Constantine is based on, that God and Lucifer are on opposite sides with Earth as a neutral zone. Man is regularly influenced, pulled in different directions, but with no direct contact from either side. “The détente of the original Superpowers,” as the film refers to it.

In the middle of this supernatural game of checkers stands a lone, weary warrior, John Constantine. Constantine is a rude, chain-smoking, meddler in the occult, who has spent his entire adult life hunting down “halfbreeds,” demons from Hell who have gained more then their fair share of influence on Earth, and forcing them back to where they came from.

 

This is not the John Constantine I, nor anyone who has ever heard of him prior, am familiar with. That John Constantine, created by Alan Moore in the early 1980’s, was a blonde, brown trenchcoat-wearing, acid-tongued, chain-smoking Englishman bearing no small resemblance to Sting who starred in a Vertigo comic book titled Hellblazer.  

Constantine's John has transformed into a raven-haired, black trenchcoat-wearing, laconic, chain-smoking American who looks, sounds and acts like Keanu Reeves. His stomping grounds, Great Britain and points beyond in the comics, are now a grimy, shadowy Los Angeles. And yet, immediately upon meeting him and watching him perform an exorcism that sets the wheels of the story in motion, Reeves creates a John Constantine as true to the comics in spirit as he is different in appearance. There is immediate verisimilitude. This is John Constantine, all right. He looks and sounds different, but God damn it, it’s him.

The movie’s story is loosely adapted from perhaps the most highly regarded of Hellblazer’s storylines, “Dangerous Habits,” in which Constantine must come to grips with being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. However, Constantine grafts an original story involving God, Lucifer, their Sons, Heaven, Hell, demons, angels, the Spear of Destiny, and the end of the world. John Constantine navigates a frightening maze, searching for the clues to the suicide of Isabel Dodson, whose soul is damned to Hell. 

Aiding him on his quest is Isabel’s twin Angela Dodson (both played by the fetching Rachel Weitz), a police detective running from her and her twin sister’s past and searching for the answer to her own future. They encounter a memorable cast of characters also late of Hellblazer: Papa Midnite (Djimon Hounsou), whose character somewhat resembles Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, except black, fearsome and supernatural, the Archangel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton), and the demonic halfbreed Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale, yeah, the guy from Bush).

It’s nice to see Hounsou no longer playing a slave of some sort. He’s finally been given us free of typecasting. Swinton, not so much, as she continues being the go-to actor for creepy, androgynous characters. Rossdale was a pleasant surprise, putting in a slimy and sinister turn, and getting that pretty face of his messed up. Shia LeBeouf plays Constantine’s would-be apprentice. Constantine even refers to LeBeouf as his Robin (not as a compliment). The film forgets all about LeBeouf during the entire middle act, and when he reappears again, his story ends differently from what you’d expect.

Reeves is much better as John Constantine than feared. He understands the doomed but defiant nature of Constantine and does a spin on the character that both respects its source material while playing to his strengths as an actor. What strengths? Come on, give the guy a break. Unlike Neo, who struggled with his mission in The Matrix trilogy, Constantine has no such internal conflicts. He’s damned, he knows it, fuck the Devil anyway. There’s real chemistry between Reeves and Weitz but John Constantine is not the best man on Earth to get emotionally involved with, and he’d be the first person to tell you that. 

Constantine is a horror picture crossed with a character study, much more akin to David Fincher’s Seven than a Wes Craven dead teenager movie. Even bounds by the restriction of a PG-13 rating, director Francis Lawrence had the balls to go for broke, taking Constantine and the audience on more than one jaunt through the flaming cityscapes of Hell, the golden gates of Heaven and points in between.

Lawrence’s visual style is bold and daring, yet he had a firm grasp of the characters and story. Constantine doesn’t play for laughs or irony either; this movie knows its subject matter is disturbing and isn’t shy about it. There are a few problems, notably the somewhat languid pace. Some of the CGI work on the monsters come off as less than convincing, although the location visuals were awe-inspiring, especially downtown Hell. Still, Constantine was a pleasant surprise in almost every way and is a superior effort from everyone involved.

What audience this movie is for isn’t entirely clear. It’s a dark, savage, supernatural thriller with horror elements and several nods to its comic book origins. Constantine is not a movie that will be readily embraced by the red states given the current cultural climate in America. But for those of us who don’t need to clutch the Bible to our chests in order to fall asleep at night, Constantine is a thrilling roller coaster ride right to the Devil’s doorstep, where we can all live vicariously through John Constantine as he walks up to Devil, sticks a middle finger right in his face, and gets away with it.