Category: Reviews

Joe Corallo: Is Gwar Dynamite?


Back in October, an inarguably simpler time, I got the chance to interview writer Matt Miner and editor Brendan Wright on the project they were promoting on Kickstarter, Gwar: Orgasmageddon. Since then, not only did that Kickstarter get fully funded, but it got picked up for distribution by Dynamite Entertainment. The first issue is scheduled for release next month. I got my hands on a review copy, and since I asked you all to support the Kickstarter for this comic I might as well tell you what I think.

Before I jump in there are a lot of credits to this comic, so let me get through that first. The main 18-page story is written by Gwar’s own Matt Maguire and Matt Miner, line art by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer with Matt Maguire, colors by Marissa Louise and Doug Garbark, and letters and designs by Taylor Esposito. The four-page backup, X-Cops/Zipper Pig, was written and drawn by Gwar’s own Bob Gorman with colors by Hank Jones. The two-page backup, Gwar Slave Follies “Pissing Match,” was written by Matt Miner, line art by Scott Wygmans, colors John Bailey and letters by Taylor Esposito. Interior cover by Megan Muir. Covers by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer with Josh Jensen and Scott Wygmans. Edited by Brendan Wright.

Now that I got through that, it’s time to talk about my thoughts on Gwar: Orgasmageddon! Gwar, as you may know, is a band with a lot of theatrics. It’s kind of like if KISS (which is also a comic book at Dynamite) was a Troma production. They’re a group of unapologetically violent and somewhat homoerotic aliens that fight against other unapologetically violent and somewhat homoerotic aliens, except their manager is not an alien. They also travel through time, so throw some Bill & Ted into my analogy earlier. Maybe some Conan too.

Anyway, the story starts out by introducing most of the characters with caption boxes on the first page like a Legion of Super-Heroes comic. Both Matts weave a story with breakneck speed as we start right in the middle of a Gwar show and goes right into murder and mayhem, and that’s before the bad guys get there! Once they do, we’re propelled into a time jumping murder spree in an overtly phallic rocket that’s called exactly what you think it should be called. Hilarity ensues as the bodies pile up.

Jonathan and Matt’s line art is absolutely wonderful. The pages are laid out primarily in four or five panels with most of it being very traditional looking. This makes for a good contrast to the absurdity throughout the story and reinforces some of the parody elements we see in the issue. Their expressive facial expressions really sell the tongue-in-cheek dialogue and the fourth wall breaks that occur sporadically throughout. It sometimes feels like I’m reading an X-treme Marvel type comic from the early 90s.

The best part about this story might be the coloring. The colors throughout this, heavy on greens, blues, and reds, really make this story pop. Honestly, the colors in this story make it feel so fluid that after you put this comic down for a minute you’ll swear that you remember watching a Gwar cartoon. Taylor Esposito’s lettering also sells how Gwar and the other characters talk in such a way that even if you haven’t heard of the band, you’d know their voice.

The shorts at the end are fun too, and really give it a throwback feel. X-Cop/Zipper Pig has a more simple art style and is done as an origin story. “Pissing Match” is a quick two-pager that helps flesh out a couple of characters you already saw in the bigger story, again like something out of a Legion of Super-Heroes comic.

I will say that if you are easily offended, this book is not for you. I don’t mean to say that as a slight to people who would be easily offended; it’s perfectly within your right. I’m just saying you probably won’t like this. The blood gets bloody, the gore gets gory, there may be a joke or two that comes off as culturally insensitive as well as some events that Gwar experiences in the past that they influence in a way that may upset you.

All in all, Gwar: Orgasmaggedon #1 is a fantastic debut filled with the kind of fun you miss in comics. It’s a wild ride that never tells you it’s sorry but does remind you to not take it too seriously. Everyone that wants to do a comic about a band needs to read this and take notes. And whether you read this because you’re a Gwar fan or just because it’s a fun time, you won’t be disappointed.

Gwar: Orgasmaggedon #1 hits the shelves June 7th.

REVIEW: DC Super Hero Girls: Intergalactic Games

REVIEW: DC Super Hero Girls: Intergalactic Games

What a great time to be a grandparent (or so I’m told). There are now plenty of books, games, clothing, and video to encourage girls to be strong and independent. DC Comics offers up their Super Hero Girls line and this week they have released their second animated feature, DC Super Hero Girls: Intergalactic Games, a 77-minute romp.

Writer Shea Fontana improves on the first offering with a story set at the Intergalactic Games where Earth’s powered women take on the vile challengers from Korugar Academy. To prepare for the competition Academy teacher Doc Magnus (Phil LaMarr) is building battlebots and supervising Batgirl (Mae Whitman) and Bumblebee (Teala Dunn) as they build their own. Principal Waller (Yvette Nicole Brown) is not amused nor is she happy that Magnus’ bots seem to have free will but were not programmed with any morality, a theme that plays out across the 77-minute fast-paced story.

Lena Luthor (Romi Dames) steals the robots for her own use, complicating matters when everyone assembles for the games. On one side we have the likes of Platinum, Batgirl, Bumblebee, Wonder Woman (Grey Griffin), Supergirl (Anais Fairweather), Starfire (Hynden Walch), and the Flash (Josh Keaton) Under headmaster Sinestro’s (Tom Kenny) command are Starfire’s sister Blackfire (Hynden Walch), Lobo (Tom Kenny), Maxima, Mongal (Julianne Grossman), and Bleez (Stephanie Sheh). There’s also Granny Goodness’ (April Stewart) Female Furies team including Lashina (Jessica DiCicco), Mad Harriet (Misty Lee), and Stompa (April Stewart).

Additionally, Hawkgirl (Nika Futterman), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Katana (Stephanie Sheh), Lady Shiva (Tania Gunadi), Big Barda (Big Barda (Misty Lee ), Star Sapphire (Jessica DiCicco), Frost (Danica McKellar), Poison Ivy (Tara Strong) , Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), and Harley Quinn (Tara Strong) play parts large and small.

So, right there, teens and adults more familiar with the comics than the target audience will love the characters plucked from throughout the DC Universe continuity. There are plenty of other little asides such as Steve Trevor’s Capes & Cowls Café.

Thankfully, it’s not just mindless action before, during, and after the competition. Fontana nicely weaves in all the inter-person drama one would expect when mixing all these characters together. Everyone does not get along nor are things overly simplified for the young viewer.

The standard DVD looks and sounds just fine. The feature comes with several extras including Fifth Harmony song “That’s My Girl” and seven short cartoons: “New Beginnings”, “Hero of the Month: Supergirl”, “Batgirl vs. Supergirl”, “Quinn-tessential Harley”, “Doubles Trouble”, “Franken-Ivy”, and  “Dude, Where’s My Invisible Jet?”

REVIEW: Logan

Given how incredibly popular Wolverine has been since his introduction in comics forty years ago, it’s always been a little odd that he has not fared well on the silver screen. While he’s been one of the strongest elements in all the X-Men films to date, his solo offerings — X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine – have not exactly worked. Hugh Jackman has said he had one solo film left in him so the challenge for Director James Mangold was making this one good.

Thankfully, Logan, was more than good. It was a thrilling experience on screen and now on home video. The movie, out now from 20th Century Home Entertainment, works on multiple levels but is a fitting finale for Jackman’s portrayal of the canucklehead. Where the others were solo stories with lots of extra characters around, this is more of a buddy film with the first half focusing on the relationship between Logan and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the second half with his sort of daughter Laura (Dafne Keen).

We leap ahead to 2029, a world where mutants haven’t been born in twenty-five years, and where most of the existing ones are already dead. Xavier is dying, both from old age, and metal disease that has turned his psionic abilities into deadly force that has to be treated medicinally. He’s squirreled away in an abandoned Mexican refinery, watched over by Caliban (Stephen Merchant). Logan, the adamantium covering his bones, is slowly poisoning him so he’s finally aging and his healing factor is not what it used to be. To support his drinking and Xavier’s drugs, he drives a limo in a world that has seen better days but has not yet slipped into total dystopia.

There meager existence is upended when Logan is approached by Gabriela Lopez (Elizabeth Rodriguez), toting a young girl with her. She is on the run from Transigen where she worked as a nurse and the girl was raised in captivity. She appeals for Logan’s help but he wants nothing to do with her, no longer a noble figure but a broken hero. However, things change when Transigen’s enforcer Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) warns Logan off and Lopez is soon dead.

Pierce is out for the girl, Logan, and Xavier so the chase is on. The buddy film is merged with a road race as Logan tries to keep them safe while slowly learning that Laura and the others were raised from mutant DNA experiments, making her his genetic daughter, altering his view of things.

Several of the children have escaped and gone to Eden, a mountain retreat, reportedly revealed through an X-Men comic so Laura convinces Logan to bring her there but along the way, they are stopped by a clone of Logan, dubbed X-24, and there is death and destruction in their wake.

Mangold paints a bleak portrait of a world without heroes and a man without a future. There’s a sense of hopelessness that pervades the story and it takes a youth to awaken the hero within. The writing gives everyone plenty to do and other than a stop at a farmhouse for dinner, the pacing is excellent.

Jackman and Stewart play off one another exceedingly well, a familiarity born from their previous work together. They bicker like the tired old men they are. As a result, the real revelation in this film is Keen, who is expressively silent during the first two-thirds of the film. When she speaks, though, it changes their dynamic and adds a new layer.

Interestingly, the combo pack comes with two Blu-ray discs – the film itself and Logan Noir, a black and white version that is chilling in its own way. The film can also be found on the DVD and the Digital HD code.

The AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1 is superb, sharp, and near perfect. Coupled with Logan’s DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix, you have an excellent home viewing experience.

The special features include a handful of Deleted Scenes (7:45) with optional commentary by Mangold. Of these, only one could have made the film better. There is a multipart Making Logan (1:16:05) that breaks down the film from its origins in Old Man Logan and the X-23 storylines in comics to the casting process (Deen’s screen test is well worth a look) to production. Finally, there is a strong Audio Commentary by Mangold (which is repeated for Logan Noir).

If this is truly Jackman’s farewell to the character, he couldn’t have asked for a better story to share with his audience.

Box Office Democracy: Alien: Covenant

I’m not entirely sure what I can ask of Ridley Scott at this point.  He’s made four or five honest-to-goodness classics and inspired an entire generation of science-fiction films.  He doesn’t owe me anything and I’ll watch just about anything he puts out because I have that kind of faith in him as a filmmaker.  He’s made a scary film with Alien: Covenant, but not one that I find particularly interesting.  Scott seems obsessed with giving me lore I don’t want instead of a higher concentration of scenes with scary aliens.

It’s impressive that they made the grossest Alien movie yet.  The one with the most visceral body horror.  They topped the terribleness of the chestburster in this one by making the alien birth process less discrete and more, for lack of a better word, fluid-y.  I don’t think it’s particularly worthwhile to discuss the particulars of the plot further.  There are scary aliens, some you’ll recognize and some you won’t, that chase a bunch of humans you never quite care about around a distant planet that is suspiciously earth-like.  This suspicion is both in the film and in the audience because it sure is cheaper to film in a planet that happens to be covered with plants from earth.  There are other things to be scared of, it isn’t important really as long as you find something in each scene potentially terrifying.  It definitely works as a horror movie; it will never be mistaken for a better Ridley Scott film.

Alien: Covenant is a movie carried by Michael Fassbender.  Playing a robot that struggles with showing emotion seems like a big challenge as an actor, and playing two that each have different motivations and different ways of hinting at their true intentions is just an incredible performance.  This prequel franchise is going to succeed or fail based on the audience willing to come and see more Alien-based horror, but artistically they’re inescapably linked to Fassbender at this point.  I wouldn’t go see the next one (and there shouldn’t be a next one but we’ll get there) without him.  He’s almost bigger than the Aliens at this point, even if I would kick him to the curb in a heartbeat for more Ripley.

The flaw in this movie is that I could not possibly care less about the origins of the Xenomoprhs.  I didn’t watch any other Alien movie thinking “if only we knew where these things came from” or anything like that.  Any explanation is going to make them less scary.  A bump in the dark is more scary than anything you could show on camera.  I won’t tell you the origins of the Xenomorphs, that would be cruel, but it’s not as good as whatever you had in your head, or even the non-explanation of “they’re just some terrifying aliens, those exist” that I had always assumed was the truth.  This is a movie answering a question I never asked and don’t care about what they have to tell me.

I wish I knew why they thought Alien prequels were more interesting than Alien sequels.  That what we want from a science-fiction horror franchise is less fantastical technology and more exposition.  I wonder if the whole Alien braintrust learned the wrong lesson from Resurrection and have decided they can’t move further in to the future.  I would rather watch an Alien without Weyland or synthetics or any of that rather than have more needless exposition shoveled on me.  That’s not what they’re making though so I have to make do with what we have— a legitimately scary movie with one tour de force performance and a fair amount of useless prattle.  Better than all the bad movies we’ll see this year full of useless prattle, I suppose.

REVIEW: Get Out

The trailer for Get Out intrigued me but ultimately I chose not to see it in the theater because it seemed a bit more of a thriller than I desired. But then lots of people I knew were recommending it, as were the critics. I was impressed by the 99% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score so when the opportunity came to review the film on disc, I decided to give it a shot.

I have never seen anything Jordan Peele has done but appreciate his work here as both writer and director. The film’s first two-thirds are very strong as everything appears idyllically normal with a loving, upper crust family welcoming the daughter’s boyfriend for a weekend visit. But, in many, many subtle ways, there’s also something very unnerving just below the surface. The house too perfect (despite the “black mold” in the basement), the dad just a tad too accommodating, and the maid a might too subservient.

Increasingly, things feel “off” and you get an unsettling feeling without fully knowing what is happening. Is it supernatural in nature? Is it white supremacy gone off the deep end? You get the clues slowly and by the time you figure it out, the film goes off the rails and devolves into standard horror fare, undercutting and spoiling the marvelous tone Peele established.

The movie stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington, a well-balanced, loving black boyfriend to Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). She has not told her parents, Dean (Bradley Whtiford) and Missy (Catherine Keener), that she has been dating a black man, which at first feels remarkably modern but is actually the first warning sign. The first real sign that not everything is right comes with the arrival of Rose’s brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones).

At the party the following day, the various friends seem particularly taken with Chris, who grins and bares it, while people recreate that uneasy feeling I first got when I watched Mandingo, checking him out. And that’s when the racist themes really get an airing in a nice variety of exchanges. But what about the maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and the handyman Walter (Marcus Henderson)? They’re the only other black people on hand and neither one seems welcoming; in fact, it’s the opposite. That raises new questions.

Chris shares his concerns with his pal, TSA Agent Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery), so when he disappears for two days and can’t be reached, Rod goes into detective mode. Unfortunately, his concerns are laughed at by Detective Latoya (Erika Alexander). This in itself is a reflection of how black issues can be overlooked by authorities, even black ones,

The performances are well-mannered and downright creepy at times with high marks to Kaluuya and Williams, who get the most to do with their characters. Peele makes us uncomfortable with the very normalcy of the race relations along with the class structure on display. He doesn’t get showy…until that final third.

We then have the usual assortment of over-the-top blood and mess, predictable thrills, and an anticipated climax. What’s interesting about the film’s end comes with the Special Features which offers up a vastly differently final scene that changes the tone and the optional commentary from Peele explains his choices. While I’m reviewing this as a straight thriller, others have viewed it as a satire but it doesn’t entirely work on that level given the horror undercurrents driving the characters and issues of race.

The film is out now from Universal Home Entertainment in a variety of packages including the Blu-ray, DVD< Digital HD Combo Pack. The high definition transfer is crisp, clear, and colorful with an excellent audio track,

Along with the alternate ending, there are a score of deleted scenes including seven different versions of the actual end scene, showcasing Howery’s adlib skills. A few of the other scenes would have helped the film and again, these come with optional Peele thoughts. There is the far more perfunctory Unveiling the Horror of Get Out: Behind the Scenes and an engaging Q&A Discussion with Peele & Cast, hosted by Chance the Rapper. Finally, there’s an okay Feature Commentary from Peele.

Terms and Conditions by R. Sikoryak

Sikoryak has made his comics career out of taking words and pictures from other people and mashing them together — most notably collected in Masterpiece Comics. His thing generally is to redraw famous comics pages — sometimes new pages in the style of someone old and/or dead, but usually the famous art itself — and put different words into the balloons, for amusing, satiric, and or artsy purposes.

A couple of years ago, he decided, for whatever reason, to abandon high literature and take his text from much duller reality — Apple’s iTunes Terms and Conditions, a legal document that millions of us have accepted without actually reading. The book Terms and Conditions explains, in a short postscript, how he went about working on this project, and which iterations of the changing legal document were used for various versions of these pages, but it never actually tells us why he did it.

The book also never mentions that Sikoryak replaced the main characters in all of this redrawn art with what looks like a Steve Jobs figure — the name Jobs is never mentioned, nor the fact that this book has a single main character throughout all of its hundred art styles. But it’s what he did, and you can see many of the styles of Job on the front cover.

Sikoryak’s postscript also notes that he worked on his book in batches of pages, a dozen or so at a time. He would draw those page and then shoehorn some T&C onto them, and then go onto the next batch. So he didn’t pick pages to coincide with the text; he just redrew a bunch of famous comics pages to star Steve Jobs instead, and then tossed what is essentially lorem ipsum text onto those pages.

It’s all very arty. But I don’t really see the purpose or use of it. Terms and Conditions can have no artistic unity in any way — each page in completely independent, and the text is pure legal boilerplate. The enjoyment in reading it is primarily in recognizing each page (if you do so instantly) or in trying to figure out the source if it’s vaguely familiar. It is a cold and pointless thing, of interest primarily to people who like conceptual art.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Vixen the Movie

REVIEW: Vixen the Movie

It’s hard to imagine Vixen as a member of the DC Universe for over 35 years now, an early victim of the DC Implosion before arriving as a guest-star in Action Comics. She’s been a constant presence if not a major one, but was exactly in the range of secondary characters ripe for development for television since her powers were not entirely special effects-laden.

Interestingly, she was brought to The CW through their CW Seed website, a way to expand the Arrowverse with original content. In 2015, there were six short animated episodes that performed well enough that a second season arrived last October. The dozen episodes have now been edited into a 78-minute feature, Vixen the Movie, out now from Warner Home Entertainment.

The series is only kinda sort of close to the source material as we learn of Mari Jiwe McCabe’s (Megalyn Echikunwoke) upbringing in the African land of Zambesi, but raised in Detroit by her foster father Chuck Neil Flynn). The series opens with Mari wanting to learn the truth about her birth parents and the origins of the Tantu Totem necklace she was given by her birth mother. People are now after it and she discovers it imbues her with animal powers, bringing her to the attention of Flash (Grant Gustin) and Green Arrow (Stephen Amell). She rejects their offers of help and instead turns to college professor Macalester (Sean Patrick Thomas) for answers, leading her back to Africa and a confrontation with Kuasa (Anika Noni Rose), the sister she didn’t know she had, and one who wants Mari dead so she can possess the totem.

The second season went way beyond the comics and introduced the notion that there were five powerful totems – air, earth, water, fire, and spirit. The fire jewel has been found and comes into the possession of Benatu Eshu (Hakeem Kae-Kazim), a general who has been seeking any one of the jewels for years. He appears too powerful for Vixen until she digs deep and finds a way to persevere. Along the way, she demonstrates how comfortable she has gotten with her powers by aiding Flash, Firestorm (Franz Drameh/Victor Garber), Atom (Brandon Routh), and Black Canary (Katie Cassidy) during an attack from Weather Wizard.

The animated story suffers from the same weakness of its live-action colleagues, an inability to effectively write team action or proper use of powers. In this case, Eshu uses fire much as Heat Wave does, as some sort of force rather than something that burns. The dialogue has the same snap to it, though, which is welcome.

The animation is adequate if a little stiff and angular in character design while the live-action actors needed far better direction for their animated counterparts. Thankfully, Echikunwoke does a far superior job, which earned her a guest spot on Arrow last year and would be most welcome back for a third season or another live-action appearance.

The movie comes on a Blu-ray with Digital HD code. The lone special feature is “Vixen: Spirit Animal” which has comics historian and ComicMix contributor Alan Kistler, series executive producer Marc Guggenheim, Victor Garber, and Carlos Valdes weigh in on how her magical background fills a gap between the super-hero and the vigilante in the Arrowverse. Not much about her comic book origins are ever discussed, though. Additionally, there are two episodes from Justice League Unlimited included – “Hunter’s Moon” and “Grudge Match”.

Amadeo & Maladeo by R.O. Blechman

Blechman has been making comics and related art for six or seven decades now, going back to 1953’s The Juggler of Our Lady. Most of that stuff was collected a few years back in Talking Lines — but Blechman is still around and still making art.

(If anything below ends up sounding critical — I never know which way my fingers will tend — let me say up front here that it’s really damn impressive that Blechman is still around, still working, and still getting books published. This is a man who was born in 1930 and got into the Art Directors Hall of Fame nearly twenty years ago…and he had a new book out in 2016. I only hope I can be around when I’m 86.)

Amadeo & Maladeo is a historical graphic novel, something of a compare-and-contrast about two musician-composers in the late 18th century, loosely inspired by the life of Mozart. And it looks like it will have a crisp, defined contrast between the two of them, but then…wanders off into specifics on both sides that make that comparison muddied.

I’m torn on whether that makes this book stronger or weaker — on the one hand, the book it seemed to be heading towards could have been dull and obvious, with the rich prodigy brought low in the end and the poor kid finding fame and success in America. On the other hand, their careers aren’t particularly parallel, and there’s a moment where something bad happens to a middle-aged Amadeo — a carriage accident of some kind — that Blechman never quite explains.

But, anyway, Amadeo is a prodigy, performing for the crowned heads of Europe in the 1750s, before the age of ten. Maladeo, born on the other side of the blanket to a servant girl who had a happy night with Amadeo’s violin-teacher father, performs on street-corners and is shanghaied to New York at a young age.

In the end, we are with Maladeo as a happy old man, which I suspect is the big clue — Blechman himself lived to an impressive old age, and he had Amadeo die at an age similar to Mozart’s. Neither man could choose his life, of course, and both had successes and happiness along the way — but Maladeo is still going at the end, and that has to count for something.

So there may not be a moral here, just the story of two contrasting lives. The world has enough morals, though, so the lack here is not a problem. And Blechman’s trademark “shaky line” is as expressive and wonderful here as ever — note that it’s not because of age; he’s always drawn like that on purpose. If you’re not expecting something stark and classical in its construction, you’ll likely enjoy Amadeo & Maladeo a lot.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Wonder Woman – Commemorative Edition

REVIEW: Wonder Woman – Commemorative Edition

Warner Home Entertainment is commemorating Wonder Woman’s 75th Anniversary leading up to the June 2 release of Patty Jenkins’ feature film. Joining in on the fun is this week’s rerelease of 2009’s animated film, directed by Lauren Montgomery.

This new edition, out as a Combo Pack with Bu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD, comes with just one new extra (the old ones remain): What Makes a Wonder Woman with a nice assortment of people chatting about her cultural significance, including Jenkins, Montgomery, Phil Jimenez, William Moulton Marston biographer Jill Lepore, and a few others for good measure.

Here’s our original review, which remains unchanged:

The DC Universe series of animated features got off to a rocky start with the Superman vs. Doomsday offering but has gotten steadily better.  New Frontier was pretty amazing and now they offer up Wonder Woman, which may be the closest we get to a feature about the Amazon Princess for quite some time.

And I’m pretty okay with that, given how good this direct-to-DVD offering is.  It’s not perfect, but it’s entertaining and a great introduction to the character. If you’ve been following the interviews we’ve been posting here at ComicMix, you know that it comes from the usual suspects behind the animated DCU along with a very strong voice cast.

The movie posits that Wonder Woman exists in a world of her own and there are no references to the greater DCU, allowing you to dwell on the mythological background that spawned the character.  Created by William Moulton Marston, his grasp of the Greek mythology he predicated the character on was shaky at best and frankly, it wasn’t until the George Perez-driven version of 1987 before anyone explored the Greek gods and their role in the Amazons’ world.

This is an extended origin story hewing fairly closely to the familiar canonical tale although there are several different interpretations of characters and events to make this another flavor of the origin.

We get to learn of the Amazons and how they arrived on Themyscira and how their queen, Hippolyta, longed for a child, fashioning one from clay and given life by the gods she worshipped.  Life in paradise was fine for some, not for others but the island also served as a prison for Zeus’ son Ares, god of war.  His scheme for freedom coincides with the accidental arrival of Steve Trevor, an Air Force pilot and the decision to hold a contest to allow the winner the right to bring the man back to his world.

The look of the island and its inhabitants is nicely designed and many of the familiar characters are given more personality and wit than their comic book templates.  Steve Trevor, voiced by Nathan Fillion, has more charm and unique characteristics than in any previous interpretation and makes you understand what Wonder Woman eventually sees in him.

Once Diana wins the contest and takes Steve back to “man’s world”, the story begins developing logic problems which are never resolved (or even explored in the accompanying commentary).  She’s given the invisible robot plane with no explanation or training in its use and then they go to America.  The Air Force doesn’t seem remotely interested in his whereabouts so he’s never debriefed but remains free to use their equipment.  He then says that Ares, now freed, is leaving a trail of destruction and a pattern will form and he can be followed, a logical point but never followed through.

Instead, Ares finds an ancient cult that remains active, and uses them to gain access to Tartarus where Hades aids his cause.  Let me say that the look and handling of Hades wildly varies form the comics but works perfectly here and I applaud the design.

Ares, now more powerful, summons an army from…somewhere…and launches his campaign of war against mankind from Washington D.C. which, from his point of view, makes no sense. He makes a pretty speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial which also makes little sense.  But it does kick off the climactic fight which is well handled throughout.  The arrival of the Amazons, though, makes it appear the Potomac River is as large as an ocean and is a little too reminiscent of moments from Troy and Lord of the Rings.

While the story doesn’t hang together as well as one would like, it also is filled with deft little moments and great bits of dialogue so kudos to WW scribe Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic for the overall story and Jelenic’s script.  The voice cast, led by Keri Russell, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson, and Fillion, is also strong, letting the animated people feel more than two-dimensional.

The score is a generic animation score and in that regard is like wallpaper but could have done more.

The disc comes with a 10-minute background to their next offering, the just announced Green Lantern feature due in July.  There are other background features to several other DCU animated projects and trailers for related product from Warner Home Video. The commentary from the production team could have been more focused but does provide some interesting insight into what made it to a storyboard and what made it to the final cut.   The two-disc set comes with several Justice League episodes as does the Blu-ray.

Box Office Democracy: The Wall

I’m not sure what it would take for me to get solidly behind a war movie these days.  There’s certainly a fatigue component from the unending wars we seem to be fighting in real life, full of drama and heartbreak in their own kind.  It’s also very hard to get anything new out of the genre right now.  Perhaps because so many fantastic directors have made big important war movies, or maybe just because we seem to get three to five every year.  I would need either a fantastic take on the themes I’ve seen a thousand times (and I think you’re about to fall well short of that with Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan) or some fantastic new way of telling a story in the backdrop.  The Wall is an attempt at doing the latter; this is a horror/thriller movie set in the Iraqi desert, but it isn’t a good enough movie to get over my general distaste for the genre.

The Wall is not a complicated movie.  Two soldiers are in the Iraqi desert to investigate an attack and are ambushed by a sniper.  Staff Sergeant Shane Matthews (John Cena) is hit first and is incapacitated, and Sergeant Allen Isaac is shot in the leg and is trapped behind the eponymous wall.  The rest of the movie is mostly Sergeant Isaac talking to his assailant (Laith Nakli) over short-range radio while he devises numerous plans to stay alive, identify and locate his attacker, and try to escape.  It’s not the strongest plot in the world, but it’s only an 81 minute movie and it’s more than enough to make that time feel full.  It hits the necessary action beats, it has some unsatisfying twists which I’ll come back to, and it does what it can to find catharsis.

What the movie is missing is a coherent thesis statement.  For a short film it does an awful lot of bouncing around.  There’s a fair amount of assuring the audience that war is hell, but there’s not a person alive that hasn’t heard that a thousand times by now.  There’s a lot of dialogue about who is really the terrorist, the insurgent fighter or the invading army, but they undercut it pretty dramatically with the way in which the Iraqi sniper threatens to gouge out Isaac’s eyes or staple his tongue to his chest.  Ideology aside, I’m not looking to even entertain the idea of rooting for someone that wants to do that so there’s no incentive to look at both sides.  There’s a desperate last minute attempt on the part of the movie to perhaps assert that this was a movie about the way people deal with guilt and grief.  I could entertain that idea if it weren’t introduced in the last ten minutes of the film, that’s a little late to be telling me what the movie is actually about and seems more like a last ditch effort to seem important.

This isn’t a story that needed to be set in the Iraq War.  You could have set this in a city with only a couple changes.  It could be in the distant future or an awful lot of the earth’s past.  I kind of want to know why they decided to make it a movie about a modern war.  One of the twists late in the movie (and this is a spoiler and this is your spoiler warning and I hope you’ve stopped reading by now if this bothers you) is that the Iraqi sniper is using the information he gets from talking to Isaac to fake a distress call to command and he plans to ambush the rescue team, and he probably did the same to get Isaac and Matthews out here to begin with.  It turns the sniper from a troubled person who claims to feel forced by the circumstance of the war into a cold blooded serial killer in a snap.  It bucks the trend of the last 40 or so years of war movies, and instead of showing the adversaries as people fighting for country this man is undeniably evil and is killing for sport or pleasure.  If the whole movie were set up like this it would be one thing, but as a last minute reveal it works to dehumanize the enemy in a war we aren’t even fighting anymore.  It left me cold, I didn’t like it.

That said, I don’t think I was supposed to like it.  I’m not entirely confident who The Wall is made for but it isn’t me.  It’s violent and graphic in ways I’m not interested in seeing.  It’s a gritty war movie and I don’t need any more gritty war movies;  it’s not interested in deep or meaningful characters as it is in manipulative drama and shock moments.  It isn’t a movie for me, but it’s probably a movie for some.  There were two teenagers sitting behind me who seemed really into it.  They’ve probably seen a lot fewer war movies than I have.  Ironically, this movie about people who use fantastically precise weapons is a dull, blunt, instrument.

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