Ramble Review: Iron Man 3

I had originally planned to do ramble reviews of all the Iron Man films because they're all pretty good and it'd be an excuse to watch them. But I don't need a reason to watch good movies and the only one I really want to talk about is Iron Man 3, so here we go, ramble review of Iron Man 3.



Iron Man 3 is a 2013 sci-fi superhero film directed by Shane Black. It stars Robert Downey Jr as the titular hero Iron Man, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, and Ben Kingsley co-star. It's based on the comic book hero of the same name from Marvel Comics.

This is my preferred poster

Iron Man 3 follows on from the events of the Avengers film and sees Tony Stark, the superhero known as Iron Man, suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after nearly dying in the climax of that film. He's dealing with the associated anxiety and insomnia by building new suit after new suit.

Meanwhile, a new terrorist calling himself The Mandarin has claimed responsibility for a series of explosive attacks across the US. After Tony's friend Happy Hogan is injured in one such attack, Tony publicly challenges the Mandarin. The ensuing conflict at first sees Iron Man defeated and stranded in Tennesee, presumed dead, and with a non-functioning suit. But with some help from a local boy, he's able to repair his suit, track down the Mandarin and face his own demons.

Robert Downy Jr continues to be the perfect Tony Stark - eccentric, supremely charismatic, manic even in his expression of anxiety, and charming even in his most obnoxiously narcissistic moments. Gwyneth Paltrow's sassy, self-assured, and much put-upon portrayal of Pepper Potts is still the best version of that character we've ever seen. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce both play villains and both do great jobs, but Ben Kingsley steals the show and plays into the dramatic reveal of his character perfectly.

As an action movie, Iron Man 3 is easily the greatest in the series. The action beats are creative and varied, Robert Downy Jr is given the occasional opportunity to show off his actual skills as a martial artist, and the climax in particular takes the possibilities of Iron Man and his super suits to their full potential. Even Gwenyth Paltrow gets in on the action and it's great to see Pepper finally let loose.

Okay, that's all that surface level, standard movie review praise done. The movie is six years old and its part of one of the biggest media franchise ever; everybody should have seen it by now. You already know it's good and if the fact that it's well acted, well directed, well choreographed, well written, and just all around a technically proficient entry into the MCU hasn't convinced you it's a good movie worth your time, I don't know what to tell you. But if you're on board with me so far, let's get into the meat of Iron Man 3.

Because Iron Man 3 isn't just a good action movie and an enjoyable super hero film, it's a legitimately great movie. Iron Man 3 is the kind of film that justifies the entire genre. And not just that, Iron Man 3 is culturally significant in the same way Black Panther and Wonder Woman are culturally significant.

But let's begin the proper rambling with the Mandarin, because this is - or at least was when it came out - somehow controversial. If you're not familiar with the Mandarin as a comic book character, all you need to know is he's Fu Manchu with super science rings. He's a racist caricature that has no place in modern pop culture. Iron Man 3's decision to divorce him of that origin and instead re-imagine him as a kind of global villain was nothing short of genius. He's a cyber terrorist able to hack national broadcasts, his name, lair and clothing evoke a vague Orientalism, but his tactics and his video messages are distinctly Al Qaeda. He is an amalgam of various foreigner nightmares the US media has conjured up in the last fifty years. There's even a touch of the domestic: he sermonises like an extremist southern preacher, speaking with an un-placeable drawl. Oh, and he's also genuinely terrifying as a villain. Seriously, Ben Kingsley is amazing.

Not Featured: A Racist Caricature

But it's all fake. Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is an act, a character he puts on to cover for the real mastermind, Aldrich Killian (Pearce) and the terrorist attacks aren't attacks at all, they're accidents caused by Killian's research. The Mandarin is non-specific foreign fear, but is all American made. And while that's a great twist in the narrative, it's entirely consistent with the world of the Iron Man films.

Let's look back: The first Iron Man film begins with the Ten Rings as a pretty generic terrorist group in the Middle East kidnapping Tony Stark so he can build them a weapon, but we find out that it was American Obadiah Stane who hired them to kill Tony, and who has been selling them weapons.

Iron Man 2's villain Ivan Vanko is motivated by the wrongs committed against his father by Tony's father, but he's quickly defeated and imprisoned by Iron Man. He only becomes a real threat once the American villain Justin Hammer recruits him and puts him to work in his own vendetta against Tony Stark.

In every Iron Man movie, the villain is a foreigner or foreign organisation that on the surface reflects America's anxieties, they are the enemies created by a historically militant foreign policy, they are the ghosts of its global conflicts (IVan Vanko is the ghost of the cold war, in case you missed it) but in reality they are all backed by corporate America.

And this is especially true in Iron Man 3 where it plays into the central theme of the movie.

A good story will, in general, establish everything from the main characters to the main conflict to the central themes in the early parts of the story. Iron Man 3 establishes its core theme in the opening moments of the film, via monologue. "We create our own demons." The threats to America in the Iron Man films are made by America. They are its home grown demons.

And the threats to Tony Stark are made by Tony Stark. The major villains in Iron Man 3 exist because of Tony Stark's mistreatment of people in his earlier life. That much is clear in the text. But there's another demon Tony Stark has to confront in Iron Man 3 and that's Iron Man.

Nothing demonic about this imagery

No sir, no symbolism here.

Tony Stark projects all his anxiety and his trauma onto the Iron Man suits. He sees them as his protection, and his salvation, but they are at best a dependency and at worst a literal dead weight. Despite the Iron Man being a literal part of him (by way of the arc reactor and magnet in his chest), Tony Stark is so out of sync with the suits (and thus himself) that at one point his latest suit attacks Pepper in her sleep. The Iron Man suits are a false salvation, and at Tony Stark's lowest point, the film provides us with a beautiful visual metaphor of a cold and isolated Tony Stark literally dragging his Iron Man suit through the snow and darkness. This is the perfect synthesis of narrative, sound, visuals, and subtext that makes film such a unique art form.

This right here, this is art.

And the resolution of all this is just as great. If you scroll up to my synopsis, you might notice that I don't at any point mention Iron Man saves the world or saves anybody specific. He doesn't. The climax of Iron Man 3 sees Tony Stark and all his new suits fighting to beat Killian, save Pepper (who Killian has captured) and save the President. But it's Rhodey (Cheadle) who saves the president, and Pepper saves herself. It's also Pepper who defeats Killian and saves Tony. She saves him physically, and she becomes his emotional salvation, doing what the Iron Man suits could not, and on realising this, Tony destroys all his new suits, letting go of that false security.

It's nothing new or revolutionary for a woman, particularly a love interest, to help the manly hero of a story with the power of love and emotional support. But how often do you see that play out on screen as the female lead being the actual physical hero of the story's climax? How often does the superhero's girlfriend get to be that awesome in general, whether or not its a visual action packed metaphor for the development of the relationship between her and the main character? Why aren't we talking about this more? Why hasn't Gwyneth Paltrow got her own MCU film yet? Where's my Rescue* film, Marvel? Huh? Where's my Rescue film? (I believe the answer to this is in part because she doesn't want her own solo film, and the world is worse off for it.)

Action Hero Pepper needs to be a thing!

Iron Man 3's thematic depth isn't anything hard to uncover, but it plays out magnificently as a visual subtext running through the film that blends with the action and physical drama as well as the inter-character drama across the length of the film. The central theme is established in the opening and it underpins everything that happens until the closing moments of the film. This is just incredible story telling. This is what movies should be.

Way back there near the top, I said that Iron Man 3 is significant in the way that Black Panther and Wonder Woman are significant and now that I've talked at length about how well written and how well made Iron Man is, let's look at that old hobby horse of mine: diverse representation in fiction.

Iron Man 3 is the best portrayal of mental illness in a super hero film. Ever.

Okay, so, there's nothing new in pairing super heroes and mental illness. That's basically the 80 year story of Batman. That's basically the story of every modern incarnation of Batman's super villains. It's the largely unspoken defining trait of every character in Watchmen. But Iron Man 3 is different.

Tony Stark isn't Iron Man because of some unresolved mental illness or emotional turmoil. I mean, arguably that's still part of his origin, but he works through it pretty quick and while it might still be part of him, it doesn't define him. He's comfortable working off the sins of his past as a super hero, and he clearly enjoys it most of the time. No, the mental illness that eventually afflicts Tony Stark is a result of being Iron Man. And it's a problem.

And let's be clear: without any disrespect to people who live with mental illness, mental illness is a problem. That's kind of what defines it. And for many people, it will always be a part of who they are and how they live, and it's important to be sensitive to that and realise those people can live with it and have full, productive, even happy lives. But mental illness is a problem that a lot of people must manage every day.

And that's where we come into Tony Stark's life in Iron Man 3. He's suffering a mental illness: PTSD. And it is a problem, and he's managing it poorly, and not only does it guide many of his bad or misguided decisions, it actively manifests as panic attacks through the film, as insomnia, as a compulsion to build. There's some argument to be made about how realistic this portrayal is relative to the lived experience of real people in the real world, but I don't see that as significant to this discussion. What's important is that it is internally consistent with the world and the character of Tony Stark.

And Iron Man 3 doesn't glorify it like we so often see with Batman's trauma, nor does it demonise it as we often see with comic book villains written as mentally ill. And perhaps most importantly: it doesn't stop Tony Stark being a hero who fights badguys and is, with a lot of help, ultimately victorious in broad terms. And when we leave Iron Man 3 and go into the later MCU films where he appears, his PTSD is down played but it is clear he's not suddenly "cured" at the end of Iron Man 3, he's just managing it a lot better now that he has faced it, owned it, and found salvation in his relationships instead of his machines.

Diversity and representation of more people with more life experiences is important. I'm not going to say that seeing a mentally ill hero is as important or significant as seeing people of colour, LGBTQI+ people, or women in those roles and being welcome into a space they have traditionally been excluded from or marginalised within. That is not for me to decide and I'm not interested in deciding it.

But what I can say without hesitation is that people with mental illness have existed in a similar place and far too often mental illness is presented as being the reason for villainy in the worst forms. To see a hero suffer but still live as themself, still be a hero, and not find a magical cure like "Hey, you should just decide to be better and get over it," is incredibly meaningful.

There's a lot that goes into making a film, and a lot of ways to measure its quality. Iron Man 3's plot has a few twists, but it's nothing special. But as I've said, it's not about being something we've never seen before, it's about doing something unique and special with what you've got. It's the difference between a jacket off the rack and a tailor made jacket. They're both just jackets, the same general shape and purpose, but one is made with a lot more skill, care and purpose. That's Iron Man 3. In my opinion, there hasn't been a film as good as Iron Man 3 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since. And maybe you won't feel so strongly about it, but it's kind of weird how often it gets overlooked when it's genuinely fantastic.

If nothing else, it's a fun, exciting, technically proficient film with some outstanding action scenes and almost perfect casting. It's also saddled with the task of being the end of a trilogy, the halfway point of a character arc (Tony continues to develop right up until Endgame), and the sequel to two different movies. The fact that it accomplishes all that without being a total mess is kind of amazing in itself. There's no argument it's one of the greats in the ever expanding and ever improving super hero film genre.

But it's also a damned fine film in its own right, apart from what it accomplishes in the wider view of the MCU. It is what super hero movies as a whole should aspire to be in quality and significance. I suspect it is overlooked because sequels, as a rule, are considered inherently lesser, and the super hero genre has saturated the cinema landscape for over a decade now and most of them are enjoyable but unremarkable, middle of the road films.

But Iron Man 3 deserves a whole lot more because it is a whole lot more.

Grab a buddy and go watch it again!

*Rescue is the name Pepper uses in the comics when she gets her own super suit and becomes a hero.

Ramble Review: Shazam

If you're reading this on my Good Reads page, the format will probably be screwed and the text and pictures won't align properly. Follow the links to my blog to read it there.

Possibly unnecessarily long preamble

So, more than a decade ago when I was an active member of DeviantArt, I regularly wrote movie reviews. If you haven't noticed in the times I've talked about movies on this blog, I really like talking about movies, often at great length, often in minute detail, and movie reviews is a decent way to do that in a format that is recognisable and easily accessible to an audience and easy to keep focused for a writer, and focus is important because even when I am focused on a particular point I... ramble. I'm doing it right now. But, you know, I own that. That's how I do.

And right now I'm inclined to talk (or ramble) about movies again. That's where my head space is. As far as media goes, Cinema was my first love. I have always watched movies and I have always loved movies and I have always sat and picked apart why I love those movies and when I've done that, I enjoy talking to other film nerds about it and hoping that they saw something I didn't, that they picked up on details I missed. It's a great pleasure. So, for at least a couple of blogs, we're going to talk about movies and I'm going to write some reviews so that my rambling is somewhat focused and somewhat accessible.

And if you're along for the ride, great, let me sat a couple of other things up front: No numeric scores. I don't believe numeric scores at all helpful in conveying a complex opinion or distilling a core argument.  No standard length, no standard structure. I'm calling these ramble reviews because I'm not going to impose a lot of limits on how long I talk about a movie or how I go about talking about it. I don't do that anywhere else in my blog, why start now. If I don't mention an aspect of a film, assume it is at least adequate but not remarkable. I can't talk about every working part of a movie and often every working part doesn't need addressing. If I don't say it's good or bad, it's probably fine. Movies can be judged on objective metrics but conclusions are always subjective. At least, there is a commonly accepted canon of film criticism that is functionally objective, but how anybody weights those metrics is up to them. I give a lot of credit to movies for depth of theme and strong subtext and will often overlook more generic structure or plot in a script. I think these are more important in distinguishing a film, but you may disagree. That's fine. Quality is not the same as enjoyment, and it's okay to love bad movies. I firmly believe that the most important thing a film can be is enjoyable and the worst crime of a movie is being boring. 'Hawk The Slayer' is an objectively bad film but it is supremely enjoyable. There's no shame or contradiction in that statement. Difference from source material does not make a film bad. Since I'll probably end up talking a lot about films that are adaptations of other media - because even if I didn't spend a lot of time watching comic super hero films, a big chunk of all films are adaptations - let's be clear: "it's different to the thing" is not a valid criticism. It might be true, but it does not inherently make the adaptation good or bad. In a similar vein, the source material cannot fix an adaptation by filling in blanks or explaining away problems. If it's important, it should be in the adaptation.

Okay, enough rambling about rambling, let's talk movie. I'm starting with the most recent film I saw at the cinema. I actually saw it 3 times, so, you know, spoiler alert, I liked it.

Shazam! (2019)

Shazam! is a superhero action-comedy film directed by David Sandberg, released by Warner Bros. Pictures, and based on the character of Captain Marvel created by C.C. Beck and Bill Parker in 1939 for Fawcett Comics. At one point, the character was the most popular super hero comic in publication and then for complicated historical and legal reasons, he disappeared from print, the rights were eventually bought by DC Comics, but DC couldn't print comics with the name Captain Marvel, so they leaned heavily on the Shazam brand and in 2012 the character was re-imagined as part of DC Comics' company wide comics relaunch and the Captain Marvel name was basically abandoned in favour of Shazam as the character's name, but I'm a grumpy old man stuck in his ways and still like calling him Captain Marvel, so I may use them interchangeably in this review and the film only kind of suggests that the character is named Shazam, anyway. It'd kind of a running joke. This film takes most of its characterisation and plot from the 2012 re-imagined origin story of the character.

This is what Captain Marvel thinks of complicated legal histories!

Shazam! stars Asher Angel as Billy Batson, an orphan who has run away from his latest foster home in search of his birth mother who he believes is out there somewhere waiting for him to come home. He's adopted by a new family made up entirely of fostered children, but before he can run away again, he's chosen by the wizard Shazam to become his champion and protect the world from evil demonic entities known as the Seven Deadly Sins, which are possessing and empowering a man named Dr Sivanna (Mark Strong). The power Shazam gives Billy is the power to transform into an adult super hero (played by Zachary Levi) and with this new power and responsibility thrust upon him, Billy turns to his super hero obsessed foster brother, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer), to help him navigate and discover his new powers.

Billy and Freddy doing what any child would do with new powers: goof around with them.

The two bond over the process of testing Billy's powers and form a friendship both of them were sorely lacking, but the fun and games are interrupted when Dr Sivanna tracks Billy down and demands he hand over the powers of Shazam. At first Dr Sivanna is able to best Billy by being cruel, ruthless, arguably more powerful, and, unlike Billy, being driven by more than self-indulgence and the desire for super powered shenanigans. But Billy is able to turn things around after finding a reason to fight in his new family, and eventually conquers Dr Sivanna. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that a super hero film concludes with a good guy and a bad guy have a big fight and the good guy wins and also learns an important moral lesson about friends and family. If you consider that a twist or a secret, I can only assume you've never watched a super hero or children's cartoon ever.

But things are going to get more spoilerific from here on out so reader beware.

Super hero films are always pretty tightly constrained by the expectations and demands of their genre and they live or die on the details, in how they do the same thing different to how everyone else does the same thing and Shazam! is no exception. 

One of the biggest ways it differs is in how it challenges, even subverts, the superhero mythology of a lone powerful individual saving the world. Superheroes have always been, at their core, a Nietzchean/Randian power fantasy about exceptional individuals who treat what makes them special as a means to become masters unto themselves, unconstrained by social, cultural, or legal expectations. Super heroes are above the law, above social norms, above day-to-day problems because they're so damned impressive and so aware of their specialness that they don't need to be beholden to the things weaker people like you and me are. But Billy doesn't just learn that family is important and that's why he needs to be a better, stronger hero, Billy discovers that he literally needs his family to defeat Dr Sivanna and that one champion isn't enough. The moral lesson at the end of Billy Batson's arc isn't just empowering for him, it is a power in itself. Without getting into the details, the climax of Shazam! is not only exciting, satisfying and spectacular, it sets it apart from basically everything else in the genre and it perfectly ties together the threads of the main plot with Billy's character arc into one conclusion.

If I can take a moment to talk to the bigger picture of DC's cinematic universe and its rocky, uneven history, Shazam! is the film that feels like Warner Bros. is finally finding their groove and figuring out what they want to do that is different from the competition without being so caught up in being different that quality is sacrificed. It gives us all hope that more people than Patty Jenkins know what they're doing. It's not that Marvel has never been about family or the need for more than a single hero. That's obviously not true. Guardians of The Galaxy couldn't be more explicitly about family if it tried, and the whole franchise has been riding hard on similar ideas of friendship, family, and camaraderie since the first Avengers film, but none of them have gone to lengths like Shazam to make it a core part of any character in a way that, as I said, challenges an idea at the core of the modern superhero as we understand them.

"Your franchise is recharged."

Not only that, but Shazam! is a dark film. Not in the edgy, everybody is constantly brooding and frowning, Superman kills people and Batman uses guns way that DC's previous film efforts have been childishly masquerading as dark, but dark in the sense that some scenes from Shazam! would be at home in a horror movie. Dark in the same way that Wonder Woman presented the blood and mud soaked horrors of war to establish a world that is dark, mean, and slightly cynical. That's the kind of dark that defines much of Shazam!'s world building and more serious moments. In fact, the world feels entirely tonally consistent with the world of Wonder Woman.

And that makes sense. Shazam! exists in the world of a sad and angry child with serious abandonment issues. 

Side-tracking (side-rambling) again for a second: it's no surprise that Shazam is a popular character. The idea of a child who says a magic word and becomes a fully grown super hero is a power fantasy that sells itself and is loaded with potential for interesting stories no matter how you want to spin it. But on another level, the character also works (especially in Shazam! and the 2012 comic that is its basis) as a metaphor for crossing from adolescence into adulthood and how frightening and challenging that is. Shazam! the film understands both those aspects of the character and uses them.

Anyway, back on being dark, it's not a stretch to say that the true villains of the film - the Seven Deadly Sins - are in every way a child's understanding of evil. You could change the story to being Shazam about fighting monsters under his bed or in his closet and you wouldn't need to redesign them at all. Not only that, but basically every adult in the film is awful. They're abusive, neglectful, suspicious of children, or patronising towards them, or cowards. And honestly, the children aren't much better. 

"I know I've got super powers, but I'll hide behind you!"

You quickly get the sense that even though the family that adopts Billy and adopted Freddy and all their other siblings are wonderful people, and the parents are really the only likeable adult characters, Freddy still feels alone in the world in spite of them, and meeting Billy is the best thing to happen to him with or without super powers. Freddy's day to day life includes being bullied by the local archetypal bullies, and ignored or scorned by almost every one of his peers, and all of that is routine. And whether or not these tropes read as true to life, they read as true to the exaggerated hyper-emotional life experience of children and teenagers. And Billy himself, hero of the film, is acknowledged as being kind of a jerk for most of the movie. A sympathetic jerk that you can like despite his flaws, but still a jerk.

So it's a cynical movie full of horrific moments and awful people. And this bleak tone is aided by the use of a lot of run down, decript, abandoned filming locations that are used for the scenes when things are at their best for the characters. The happiest moments are set against a backdrop of intense urban decay. Even Billy and Freddy's home is a cluttered, ageing, working class home that looks like it's barely holding together. Then the climax of the film - when events have reached their dramatic high point and life is at its absolute worst for Billy and his Family - takes place at a Christmas carnival, what should be a place of excitement and joy. If they could have somehow set the scene at Disneyland and undercut both the happiest time of the year and the happiest place on earth, I'm sure they would have.

In short, this world sucks for kids, and suddenly being an adult, at least in appearance, doesn't solve anything for Billy. He can choose to avoid all his childhood problems and at first finds liberation in ditching his school and his peers and his family, but those problems are replaced with new dilemmas of super powered adulthood and having nobody but himself to blame for and deal with the consequences of his actions. There's no easy solution for Billy and - as one character states very early on in the film, establishing a core theme - he can't take care of himself. Not even when he's physically invulnerable.

And all of this - this awful world where it sucks being a child and even the symbols of joy an innocence are victim to it - extends to Dr Sivanna's story. Despite being an actual adult when he steals the power of the Seven Deadly Sins, the character is portrayed as somebody who never truly grew up. The opening scenes of the film show us how Dr Sivanna came to be driven by an obsession with power, and by hate and anger at those around him, and eventually jealousy of Billy's powers. The defining moment of his life happens when he is a child and in the 40 years between that scene and the time the film takes place, Dr Sivanna has never moved on from that childhood moment. Age and super powers have not liberated him from his childhood troubles any more than they have for Billy Batson. Both Mark Strong and Zachary Levi do superb jobs playing up their characters as feeling emotions in the raw, heightened, and uncontrollable way that children feel emotions. Their actions and expressions are over stated, yeah, but that's the point. They're both big children throwing tantrums for one reason or another.

You're just a frightened and angry kid in a man's body like me!

And despite all this, the film is never dreary or overly sombre. Rather the film is ultimately hopeful and sincere in its statement that what Billy needed all along was to move on from his grief and not just accept, but actively invite other people into his life. It's an emotional arc that is triumphant against a world that is grim and terrifying.

The film is also hilarious. Comedy is always hard to judge because it's so personal and subjective, but for me, when the film was revelling in its lighter and comic moments (which is most of the time Shazam is on screen) I couldn't stop laughing. And what's most impressive about this is that the film moves easily from horror movie to comedy to super hero action and never feels tonally confused. Each shift has enough well paced build up to their tonal heights that it reads as entirely natural and consistent with the rest of the film.

To make one more Wonder Woman comparison, while Wonder Woman was a film about soldiers in a world that is terrible for soldiers, but where you can still find hope and light in the most hopeless and darkest places, Shazam! is about children in a world that is terrible for children, but where you can still find warmth and joy in the most cold and joyless places. 

In its own way, Shazam! is both a great example of the genre and a film that is deliberately subversive of the modern super hero blockbuster and it knows it. Not in the sense that it's trying to be a Watchmen style deconstruction, because it's not that in in way, shape, or form. The subversive elements are mostly done to further heighten and highlight the themes, tone, and world of the film. But it also strikes me that the film makers were aware of the omnipresent shadow of Marvel's dominance in this genre and they went to lengths to separate Shazam! from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in as many ways as they could. This is through challenging (and subverting) the superhero myth, as I said above, the choice of villains - they're probably the most horrific and inhuman villains we've seen in a super hero film since Blade -  through highlighting the world as noticeably dark and unfriendly, and through playing with and undermining tropes of the genre. The film has a strong metatextual awareness of where it exists and where it wants to exist in relation to both the rest of the DC film universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And so finally, the DC film universe is having its cake and eating it too. It has established a superhero world that is darker and more mature than the majority of the MCU, that has its own style and tone and sensibilities, but is no less fun because of it.

So while we can say it's true that the story is nothing all that new and the themes aren't exactly unique for this genre, the script is outstanding and the delivery is equally outstanding; rich with layered subtext, thematic depth, and world building that rewards observation for anybody new to the character and the story as much as it does those who are already familiar with it. There are Easter eggs and references that comic fans will get, but there's also just excellent film making and subtlety that anybody can appreciate.

Of course none of this world work as well if it wasn't carried by some practically flawless performances. Mark Strong's Dr Sivanna stands out in particular to me. He has shades of his similarly larger-than-life comic-book-esque villain in 'Sherlock Holmes', but stripped of all that Victorian sophistication and restraint. As mentioned, the character is essentially a giant child throwing a tantrum for the whole film, and Mark Strong plays it with a low boil constant intensity that is even more frightening than the Seven Deadly Sins he's carrying around. It's like he's a man who has already been pushed over the edge and snapped, but at any second he could snap more. 

Zachary Levi can barely contain the joy he's having being Shazam and that carries to his character, a 14 year old who can barely contain his joy at suddenly being grown up and super powered and revelling in it. 

Jack Dylan Grazer probably had the easiest job playing Freddy, because all he had to do is act like he was super excited to be in a super hero film and I'd be surprised if Grazer wasn't already feeling that every moment of the shoot. But I don't mean disrespect to him by saying it was an easy role, rather I want to highlight that it's particularly impressive then in the dramatic scenes where he has to be decidedly unhappy about being in a super hero film and he carries it without a problem. Also, as he demonstrated in 2017's 'IT', the guy has phenomenal comic timing.

Asher Angel does a fantastic job walking the line between the brooding loner and a kid who is consumed with sadness for how his life has turned out and trying to make it better in the only way he sees how. It's not the sadness, regret, or even frustration that drives Billy but clutching to hope that he can make it better, and that makes all the difference, and so when he goes from sulking to revelling, when he somehow weathers the biggest hurt that any child could suffer, it's entirely consistent with the characters in how Billy is written and how Angel portrays him.

They are all joined by a wide cast of supporting characters who are worthy of praise both for how they're written and portrayed as immediately distinct so when, near the end, when they become all but unrecognisable, they're no less identifiable. But I do have to end this blog eventually and can't go through and praise each one individually, much as I think they might deserve it.

What I'm saying is Shazam isn't the only strong cast member

Where the film is at its weakest is its visual style, primarily in that it doesn't really have one. For better or worse, the DC film universe up until now have looked entirely distinct and vivid in one way or another, and Shazam! is the odd one out. It doesn't look bad, there's just not a lot about the colour or framing of any part of the film that stands out. This also extends to and is probably no more noticeable than in the design of the Seven Deadly Sins which could have used a bit more distinction between them.

Does it need to be visually stylistic and distinct? Absolutely not. The film does more than enough well that it can be excusably tame in this area, but I guess I'd come to expect something more by this point. But even in Wonder Woman, a lot of that visual style had Snyder's name written all over it and now he has departed, I suspect the style will continue to be downplayed. And it's not like no thought has been given to it or that visuals don't match or don't reinforce the tone and themes of the film, so they haven't done anything wrong, and I'll gladly trade Snyder's visual aesthetic for the rest of the film being as high quality as it is, but I'll still remember that style fondly.

And maybe it's not gone forever. James Wan, director of Aquaman, similarly infused that film with a distinct style, but it was definitely Wan's style and not Snyder's style, so hopefully the future DC Comics films will see more reliably competent auteur filmmakers lend their aesthetic vision to the franchise.

Getting back to Shazam! there's also a few moments when I wish the drama had more time to breathe and develop, rather than keep moving with the rapid pace of the film (and despite its run time of 2 hours, the film is always moving quickly) but again that doesn't do much to harm the film because the actors are good enough and the script is good enough to use all that time efficiently. Basically, at this point, I'm nit picking because it's a review and I feel the need to at least try and be fair and holistic in my commentary and point out that it's not perfect.

But it doesn't need to be perfect. No movie is perfect. But some movies are great, and Shazam! is one of them.

It's not great for a super hero movie, it's not great fun but a just okay as a piece of cinema art, there's no qualifiers here. Shazam! is an objectively great film. It's the kind of film that proves what a joke the Oscars are for turning their nose up at action block busters every year.

It's just a great movie.

And has dethroned Die Hard as my favourite Christmas movie. Don't @ me.

Captain Marvel and Freddy enjoy a customary "Better Than Die Hard" Victory Drink

What Makes A Scene Perfect?

Introduction
Way back in October, 2014 I wrote a blog called "5 Perfect Moments In Modern Cinema" in which I talked about five scenes that, regardless of the quality of the rest of the movie, could not be improved on. As far as film analysis and criticism goes, it was pretty shallow. I don't mean that it was wrong or that I don't stand by that blog, but it was more about indulging my desire to rave about things I love in movies and didn't go far to explain why those scenes were perfect. Mostly, I let the scenes speak for themselves. But what makes a scene perfect is worth exploring in detail. Perfect is a big claim and like it or not, film criticism is at least partly subjective, so proving anything is perfect is, on the face of it, impossible, but that's not going to stop me from trying. To be clear: I'm going to keep the same definition of perfect that I used in 2014. A perfect moment in cinema is one in which everything happening on screen works, every choice is made purposefully, and you couldn't noticeably significantly improve on the elements.

And that definition kind of answers the title question. What makes a movie scene perfect? When you cannot significantly improve on it.

Obviously we're not stopping there. Now that definitions and simple answers are out of the way, let's take a specific scene and break down the ways in which it is so good it can't be made better. The perfect scene I've chosen comes from 2017's Wonder Woman. This is the scene when she leaves the trenches and rushes across No Man's Land.

I've chosen this scene because While superhero films are big money and popular with basically everyone, they're still largely overlooked as low art; popular with people who don't know better or without a refined taste in art. But to do so is a disservice to the artists who make them, and to deprive yourself of truly enjoying something. I want to outline how a single scene can be perfect, but also demonstrate just how good, and how intelligently made super hero films can be. And Party Jenkins proves what a great film maker cam bring to even so-called low art.

Also, I've been wanting an excuse to talk about how good this movie is for a while now. Okay, now we know why we're here and what we're doing, let's get to it. I'm going to divide my analysis of this film into 4 parts: narrative, colour and imagery, characterisation, and visual motif.

Ready? Here we go.

Wonder Woman on seeing the length of this blog.

The Self-Evident Actually, before I get into it, there's one more qualifier on this endeavour. The four elements of the scene I'm examining are not exhaustive. But it doesn't need to be because some details are self evident. You're an intelligent person who watched the scene in question. You don't need me to tell you that the sound mix is clear, the set and costuming are high quality, the dialogue is believable, well delivered, that the actors are all great, that the staging makes for clear presentation, and that Gal Gadot's performance as Wonder Woman is basically flawless. And I don't need to tell you why all those details being high quality is important and a requisite to the scene being perfect.

Like I said, you're intelligent enough on your own to understand that and to see that everything here is fine. Thus, this study is more about the fine details of a selection of elements that work largely as subtext, and how they function together in this scene and with the rest of the film to do and say more than what's on the surface. They are greater as a whole and the scene is greater because of them. They build to something.

We're looking at how attention to detail in in the film making process leads to a more detailed, interesting, and meaningful scene beyond immediate, obvious, technical accomplishment. Okay, for real this time, let's go. Narrative Just so were absolutely on the same page, we'll start with brief rundown of what happens in this scene, beat-by-beat. This is the film's surface. Everything about this film builds upwards from the narrative flow of this scene. While trekking through the trenches of the western front, somewhere in Belgium, a crying woman grabs Wonder Woman (aka Diana) and pleads for her help to save her village from invading Germans. Wonder Woman insists to Steve and her companions that they need to do something, but Steve explains it's not possible. The trench warfare here has been going on for almost a year in a stalemate because, well, that's mostly how trench warfare worked. Steve tells her that the only thing they can do is continue with their mission, which means leaving the battle to play out as it has while they focus on the big picture. But Wonder Woman ignores Steve's protests and does what she thinks is right, what she feels she has to do.

Diana doesn't need your negativity, Steve

She throws off her cloak, climbs a ladder out of the trenches, and charges across no man's land to face the mortars and machine guns of the German army, single handed if she has to. It works and her companions quickly join her, eventually followed by the English soldiers. They take the trenches and Wonder Woman continues to lead the assault into the captured village. And what could just be a mandatory action beat in a super hero film is in reality a major turning point for the characters and their relationships, and a defining moment for Wonder Woman as we understand the character, and how she relates to the people and world around her. It makes it clear that she's a Big Damn Hero.

A Big Damn Hero

The dialogue between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor is of particular importance here. Steve Trevor acts as exposition so that, if you somehow went through life not learning what a disaster the first World War was and how awful everything about it was for everybody involved, you get the idea. This is not a battle anybody can just win, and this is not a situation you can just fight your way out of. They're seeing the truly terrible face of the war and nobody can do a damned thing about it.

Wonder Woman's response is not just heroism, it is defiance. It is defiance of Steve and his big picture view of their mission, it is defiance of the way the war is fought, and it is a defiance of any attempt to constrain her through argument or material conditions. We'll come back to this some more, later, but for now just recognise that the dialogue and the events unfolding are our foundation. What comes next is built on top of this. It's not exposition for exposition sake, it's set up, set up for what we'll talk about in characterisation in particular, but set up for, well everything I'm about to say. And it's not just the dialogue, either, even though I've focused on it. Everything from the beginning of the scene is important. Nothing is wasted. Colour and Imagery In order to understand the way this scene works, we need to go back to some earlier parts of the film, and we need to understand how Wonder Woman uses colour. Watching the film, it's immediately obvious that Wonder Woman uses a washed out colour palette even in its brightest locations. This is a consistent stylistic choice that helps set the sombre and grim tone of the film. This is true even in the most bright and colourful part of the film: the scenes on Themyscira. This part of the film uses primarily green, gold, white, and bronze. Even though things aren't especially grim here, to be too vibrant or pastel would be distracting when we move into Act 2's colour palette.

That's as colourful as it gets.

The movement into the second act of the film, when Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor leave Themyscira and arrive in London, sees the colours shift to relying more heavily on blacks and greys, with some brown, and when we do get green, it's the dirty olive green of military uniforms. This continues into the scenes on the front line and establishes a strong contrast between Themyscira and the modern world of men, one as sunny and colourful and livley, the other as dark and dirty and cold. Even Wonder Woman spends this time dressed in her dark suit or wrapped in her black cloak.

Things not pictured: the sun

And then comes our perfect scene and in an act of defiance against the modern world of men and the war around her, she dons her gold tiara. Immediately we have colour again, colour we haven't really seen since Themyscira. And it doesn't stop there. Wonder Woman throws off her cloak and reveals her classic colourful costume. Dressed in red, blue, and gold, Wonder Woman couldn't look more out of place, more different to her surroundings. She brings that contrast of Themyscira and the modern world into the moment.

A Big Damn Hero, colourised

And it's not the whole colour scheme of the movie changing, here. Everything else is still muddy and grey and terrible, but Wonder Woman is a shining beacon in all that. She is more than her surroundings, different, a literal piece of another world marching through no man's land. But the film doesn't stop at just using colour to set Wonder Woman apart, as she climbs the ladder out of the trenches - literally transcending the confines of the war that Steve Trevor just established for us - we get a close up of her shield and its sunburst design. The world of men has, until now, been entirely overcast. The skies in London and the front lines are all grey, and here comes Wonder Woman carrying a sun as she rises over the trenches and the battlefield. Wonder Woman is a new dawn for the war, a clean, colourful, transcendent dawn. The film is showing us not just through the narrative, but the visuals, that she is different, that she is more, that if she is not literally divine, she is like the divine. And from there, we can get more specific. Characterisation I've already gone over how Wonder Woman charging into no man's land is not merely heroism in the classic courageous comic book super hero sense, but defiance. Wonder Woman knows what she's about. She's a Big Damn hero and she's not going to be held back by small problems like "it's impossible" or "this isn't why we're here", she's going to go and do what a warrior does and fight, and do what Big Damn Heroes do and save the civilians. This is consistent with what we've seen earlier in the film. Wonder Woman wasn't going to be persuaded to stay home just because her mother and Queen told her to. She's not fussed that she stealing sacred and important relics of her people before she leaves. It all serves her moral compass and that sits fine with her. Defiance is nothing new, but in all the ways Wonder Woman has gone into battle before, she's never faced anything like a trench full of machine guns and mortars, a battle that has been going on almost a year with no end in sight. This is new. And what does Wonder Woman take as her weapon into this impossible to cross battle field called no man's land?

Nothing.

Just your average rising sun symbolism casually climbing unarmed onto the worst place on Earth.

She goes in empty handed. Even when she does draw something, it's not her magic rope or her god slaying sword, it's her shield, a piece of equipment designed to defend, not attack or kill. We know she has a sword, we know she can kick all kinds of arse with her magic rope, but against rifles she chooses her bare hands, against mortars and machine guns, she chooses her shield. This speaks volumes about who Wonder Woman is. She is a warrior who chooses protection before assault, whose default is non-lethal options. And why does she go into battle? It's not because she sees that the English soldiers around here are somehow on the right side of battle. In fact, she's largely silent on their role in the war or the politics of the war at all. What motivates her into defiance and Big Damn Heroics in this scene, in this moment in the film's narrative, is a civilian crying out for help from anybody who comes by, and of all the people who walk by, Wonder Woman is the only one who acts. This, again, makes her distinct from everybody around her, and it ensures that we understand her motivation. This isn't a war with an unambiguous villain like the NAZIs to punch in the face, but it is a war where innocent non-combatants are suffering, and that, not the morality of war or choosing sides, is what pushes Diana into action. And while there is brief dialogue in which she makes it clear that she needs to do something to help the people of the village, largely everything we learn about Wonder Woman in this scene is through her actions. There's no explicit dialogue where she explains "My sword is only for true villains like Ares." The film doesn't feel the need to spell that out for us because it's a visual medium and the action speaks for itself. When I say this scene is a defining moment, I mean that it reveals significant aspects of the character and sets in stone aspects that had been shown or hinted at before. A lot about this scene requires some knowledge of the rest of the film to truly appreciate, but even if this scene was all you had, you would get an immediate understanding of who Wonder Woman is what she's all about.

This is part of the different the colours and imagery were highlighting how she is special and different, this is the part of her that is different. Even her companions charging in after her come in guns blazing, weapons in hand. They are heroes, but they are not Big Damn Heroes. Visual Motif We need to go back to the start of the film again, to the story of the Amazons. Queen Hypolita tells a younger Wonder Woman about the history of the Amazons. While she narrates the story, the events play out on screen in scenes that look like slow moving, animated paintings. The aesthetic here resembles Renaissance paintings of scenes and characters from Greek myth. The Amazons rising from the water resemble Raphael's Triumph of Galatea, when Ares falls it harkens to Cossiers' 'Prometheus Carrying Fire'.

Triumph of Galatea, Raphael

Prometheus Steals Fire, Cossiers

Even before this scene, our first slow motions shots occur while Diana is watching the Amazons practice their various arts of war. Then we see slow motion used again in the battle on the beach of Themyscira. Slow motion is used in both these scenes in combination with the elaborate and impressive fight choreography and stunt work to frame the Amazons in the same mythic way. On the beach, they're almost frozen into those same Renaissance paintings of mythical creatures, as almost frozen as the scenes from the prologue.

Hmm, where have we seen staging like that before?

It'd be all to easy to write off the use of slow motion as a stylistic choice, because Snyder was still producer of the DCEU at this point and Snyder loves slow motion and has often used it as a purely stylistic choice. But the slow motion is being used deliberately here. The slow motion is almost exclusively associated with the action of Amazons and their mythic nature. They are inexorably connected. Although there are fight scenes between the beach and our perfect scene, and Wonder Woman is at the centre of them all, none of them include slow motion. But as soon as she's climbing the ladder, transcending the war, rising like a sun over man's dirty, dark, and grim world, she's moving in slow motion. She is not just a warrior, not just a hero, she is an Amazon, a living myth marching into battle. Wonder Woman is not a super soldier, not a genius billionaire philanthropist playboy, not an above average man, not a well trained human in a costume, she is more than human, she is a Big Damn Legendary Hero.

I will use this image as many times as I can

Even to this day, it is a reoccurring idea in the DC film universe that the heroes are truly super human, they are more than mere mortals can be. But rather than the obnoxious and misguided Christ symbolism we saw through Man of Steel, Wonder Woman uses a running visual motif to link Wonder Woman to her mythical origins and that is more important here, in this scene, than in any moment before it because this scene is largely about contrasting the war and the world of men with everything that Wonder Woman is.

How is she different?

She's a living myth.

You could not layer this idea in this way, through these choices, in anything but the medium of film. Oh yeah, the music. Look, I'm not at all qualified to speak about music but it needs to be said that the music does a lot to carry the emotional weight of this scene. Of course it does. A good score carries a lot of the emotional weight in any film. But what's striking about the score here and that I want to mention briefly before I go back to not talking about things I have very little business pretending I'm an expert on is that the score's pace here matches the scene with incredible precision.

It begins small and low, letting the visuals and dialogue carry the scene at first, and then as Wonder Woman rises from the trench, the music rises with her in tempo and volume. That rise continues but at a crawling pace as the visuals do the heavy lifting during those first slow motion shots, merely keeping pace with the speed of the cinematography and of Diana's movement. Even when the machine guns force her to stop running, she leans forward into the attack and the music moves with her. Then when the film has made the points it wants to make - all the stuff I've said above - and Wonder Woman charges forward full force, the music swells at last, letting out all that building tension to join Wonder Woman in her bombastic, beautiful assault on the Germans.

Diana getting impatient for a conclusion

In Conclusion In May 2015, I wrote a blog called 'Action Speaks Louder Than Action' in which I said that the best scenes do multiple things. They move the A plot forward, but also develop characters and their relationships, and build on what we know about established characters and the world. This scene is absolutely doing more than one thing. The scene does exist because this is an action movie and we should have action scenes in an action movie, but good action scenes are more than spectacle. While the actual plot is advanced only a little, it advances Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor's relationship, reveals a whole lot about the character of Wonder Woman as a person, and even more about how she relates to her environment by way of contrast. That's not just a contrast of character and world, but of the two worlds in the film, the world of men and the world of myth. And as a film, it uses all of the tools available to it: music, acting, dialogue, visual effects, colour and lighting, a range of camera angles and shots. Nothing is spared. The level of consideration is staggering. The film makers knew this was going to be a big moment, a defining moment, and they poured every drop of intelligence and creativity and artistic skill into it. It's so good, it even withstands the greater flaws of the film as a whole, it's so good that you can pull a lot of important information from it without even seeing the rest of the film. I defined a perfect scene as one that can't be significantly improved. Is there room for significant improvement here? How could there be? They've covered all their bases, used every tool, filled every moment, every lighting and costuming choice, every action, every shot with purpose, and they've done it all brilliantly. This is smart film making. Beyond that self-evident, outstanding technical proficiency of making a coherent, engaging, pleasant-to-look-at piece of cinema, they have woven a subtextual tapestry that gives more meaning to what we are seeing than "Wonder Woman does a cool exciting thing" while also still being "Wonder Woman does a cool and exciting thing." Can it be made significantly better?

No way, friend.

This scene is perfect.

One more time for good measure