Mr. Wong, No. 6 - Phantom of Chinatown (1940)

Losing the lead actor isn’t necessarily the death knell for a franchise. But with Boris Karloff’s departure from the Mr. Wong series, there was no more need for Wongs – not that Karloff particularly brought anything to the series, except his mere presence. Oddly, Karloff proved the universe wrong and found a role he could be boring in, but that name on the marquee was enough to fuel five movies entirely on its own. With Karloff off, there is now no reason for Monogram to wring Wongs for long – to say nothing that the Wong “creative” team (director: William Nigh, writer: some guys). So, freed from the expectation that the final Wong is anything but a one-off, new director Phil Rosen (familiar from many an East Side Kids film, notably Spooks Run Wild) does something wholly unprecedented for a series about an Asian detective:

He hires an Asian actor!

Between the sixty-one shared films of Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong (the curiously prolific “Chinese detective” sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenre of mystery movies), only one film goes beyond the white race when casting its hero, and that’d be this movie, the final Wong – Phantom of Chinatown. Amazing to think that there was a time in Hollywood when slapping some yellowface and falsely slanty eyes on a Caucasian was the preferable alternative to providing minority actors with employment…which goes to show how progressive the overall Mr. Wong series has been to simply respect its Mr. Wong character, and not characterize him as an archaic and unsubtle stereotype. And when you’re casting a legitimate Asian lead in 1940 Hollywood, there is literally only one name on that list: Keye Luke


Keye Luke kicks ass! (Ignore the white guy on the right.) Luke was America’s sole Asian leading man of his generation – arguably, things wouldn’t evolve beyond that until Bruce Lee crossed over in Enter the Dragon. (Luke anticipated Lee even by playing Cato, the Green Hornet’s inarguably more competent sidekick.) Hell, by 1961, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hollywood was still allowing its noble Caucasians run condescending rampage over a whole continent’s people!

Anyway, Keye Luke is awesome, and totally comfortable in the Asian mystery format, having long played Charlie Chan’s “Number One Son” Lee. It is an example of Luke’s never-tested acting skill that his one-film interpretation of Wong is nothing like his more naïve, enthusiastic Lee. In Phantom of Chinatown, Luke channels some degree of Karloff’s flat, almost nonexistent performance, but makes it interesting. Consider it: Karloff’s seeming intent with Wong was to be inoffensive – a damned hard thing to do when the costumer has given you prosthetic buckteeth. Karloff’s solution was to make Wong completely without personality – unless the world’s blandest stoicism counts – as an effort to avoid anything which might be construed as anti-Asian. This was his defining trait, to be not stereotypical, and yet Wong remained defined by his Asianness – a thankless paradox, in light of Karloff’s unmistakable English background.

Luke avoids the pitfalls of Karloff’s interpretation by being Asian. Thus he needn’t worry about demeaning an “other,” and must only be concerned with not appearing like the Chinese equivalent of Stepin Fetchit – a role which series regular (or as he’d say, “legural”) Lee Tung Foo has inhabited ever since Mr. Wong, Detective. Instead, Luke plays Wong as a normal person – a completely radical interpretation of race circa 1940, to be sure! To maintain continuity, Luke channels Karloff’s uncharacteristic blandness, but turns it into a straight-faced, deadpan irony. Actually, there’s a bit more to Luke’s surprisingly subtle, varied Wong, which leads to another way in which Phantom of Chinatown is a shockingly atypical movie:

It is a prequel!


Prequels weren’t yet common in the film franchise vernacular by 1940, and Phantom of Chinatown doesn’t advertise this fact, but it remains evident that Luke’s Wong is a younger, less experienced version who would eventually morph into Karloff – race-bending and all!

To prove this is a prequel, and not just typical 1940 half-assed discontinuity (a commonplace occurrence among Poverty Row franchises), Luke’s Wong has only just arrived in San Francisco. He lives out of a hotel with Foo. He first meets Police Captain Street (Grant Withers, officially becoming the sole actor to weather the entire six-film series...eh, he and Foo), and solves his first murder mystery – drawn into it because of a coincidental Oriental connection (and no accidental Occidental!). There are even subtler details, such as the presence of a cop named Grady, whose unseen murder would eventually fuel Part Four, The Fatal Hour.

Sadly, this unofficial prequel status negates the possibility of Marjorie Reynolds’ fantastic Bobbie Logan returning, but Luke more than makes up for that deficiency.

So…prequel when they weren’t made, starring a Chinese actor in a leading role…it’s as though Rosen & Co. knew there was no need to perpetuate the series, and were simply shattering some well-shattered taboos. The result is, to be contrarian with average internet opinion (which holds, predicably, that Part One is always the best), I think the very best film in the Wong throng, made that way by the freedom of being the last.


Hell, even the desultory murder mystery angle is a little fresher this time around! Luke aside, the movie as a whole is a damn lot clearer under Rosen than any of Nigh’s efforts. (Because complex mysteries were never the Wong forte.) Recall, the cases formerly have involved such scintillating non-issues as check fraud, bank statements, multiple unofficial drafts of wills, radio contracts, shipping manifests, and other such effluvia I’ve struggled to give half a shit about. Phantom of Chinatown is instead about archeology! This is awesome!

The opening seems hardly to belong in the Wong swan song. Stock footage unspools about an archeological expedition into Darkest Mongolia, but here it’s legitimately presented as footage – that is, part of a post-trek lecture, so we needn’t play the game of pretending it fits in with Monogram’s rather less grainy original film stock. And in an era where newsreels were one’s window into the world, showing genuine footage of Mongolia has worth. Then, in the midst of this, we randomly flashback to a portion of the archeologists’ journey, simply because Monogram had a temple set lying around.


Cutting to the chase, lecturer Dr. Benton (Charles F. Miller) dies in full audience view when he sips some poisoned water. The suspect roster is comprised of his expedition partners, filling the usual roles – including Lover Couple and Random Crusty Old Dude. As Street and Wong separately look into the matter, for their separate reasons, the motive underlying all this becomes welcomely clear: The killer seeks a scroll. A scroll detailing the whereabouts of the Temple of Eternal Fire (!), and its treasure – which isn’t ancient relics, but oil deposits. Ooh, timely!

You know, phrasing a murder mystery in the genre trappings of an old Republic serial – i.e. if Indiana Jones did more detection, and less Nazi-punching – makes things so much easier to follow. Simply as a common movie motif, pulpy tomb raiding carries rules and connotations, whereas check fraud does not. What follows, for the rest of the film, is remarkably clear, all because “wants a scroll” is as simple as “wants the Ark,” or “the Maltese Falcon,” or “the microfilm.”


Such simplicity is in keeping with Phantom’s prequel status, since Luke’s Wong is just getting a feel for this whole gumshoe thing. He teams up quickly enough with Street. As an example of Phantom’s unique take on the mystery genre, Street and Wong even acknowledge how formulaic the story they’ve found themselves in appears. Each admits – this is the first time an old mystery film has copped to this standard – that the most obvious suspect is never the killer, at least in fiction. This attitude never gets too smarmily “meta,” partly because that wasn’t really an option circa 1940, but it shows Rosen approached Wong more critically than Nigh ever did.

The entire Wong series has distinguished itself by being racially progressive, at least for its time, underplaying or thumbing its nose at then-common notions of “Oriental exoticism.” Phantom of Chinatown takes this idea the furthest, beyond its casting of Luke, by populating a massive amount of the supporting cast with other Asians. The tradeoff of this spontaneous affirmative action is that there were hardly any other Asian actors then available. Lotus Long, long-time (heh?) regular series victim, is promoted to leading lady status, which seems a little beyond her acting abilities, though I’m glad they gave her the chance. Most other Asian actors appear to be complete amateurs. Overall, however, this is a minor problem.


Keye Luke is really the lucky key to Phantom of Chinatown – the mystery, though clear, is mostly disposable, and many other elements on hand aren’t distinct enough from the regular Wong throng (or any Monogram effort, for that matter). Wong is clearly learning his chops (suey – sorry, that’s a joke these films would make), like an incredibly minor variation on Casino Royale’s chief pleasures. That self-aware attitude serves Wong through the end, since he’s not a master detective, not in this version, but just a guy copying what the movies show him. So to finally catch the killer, Wong uses a Charlie Chan Special™ - without actual knowledge or clues, instead he fakes the appearance of such, and instead lays an ambush. The crook(s) is/are arrested, and Wong doesn’t even deign to conclude with a know-it-all expository lecture to fill us all it. That isn’t needed, for things are clear enough already. Events are fast paced, which more than offsets the procedural structure. The characters, especially Wong, are more engaging than usual, proving that is a mystery film’s true bread and butter.

Keye Luke never enjoyed another role nearly as prominent as this one, though he worked prolifically for the rest of a fruitful career, well into the 1980s. Most of Luke’s credits remain in the B-movie miasma of Monogram and their competitors, which is no slight to what he might’ve achieved in a later generation. Phantom of Chinatown, though generic, stands as an example of what might’ve been, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

X-Men, No. 4 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Following a Part Three that was then the most expensive film ever made, overstuffed with characters and complications and grotesquely dangling plot threads, Part Four was conceived as a pared down simplification, ditching ongoing escalation for a contained story focusing more wholly on the breakout character, in hope of recapturing part of the original’s charm.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides thus makes Wolverine front and center, ditching the rest of the mutant cast that – My mistake, this movie is actually called X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

To Fox’s credit, they realized that what X-Men: The Last Stand did couldn’t be sustained further. To their fault, they insisted upon continuing this cinematic X-Men tradition nonetheless – not that the “X-Men” cannot yield assorted worthwhile adventures borrowed from their storied comic run, but the motion picture universe is more specifically Bryan Singer’s. Asking a newbie director to continue on in that style, minus legitimate passion for the endeavor (or possibly even the larger genre), hinders much of what could otherwise be done. No longer, by 2009, was the X-Men franchise predicting the path of future superhero movies. Now, with Batman Begins having legitimized the idea of multiple filmic incarnations of one hero, maintaining fidelity to the trumped-up continuity Brett Ratner largely queefed out seems a self-defeating act.


In concept (cooked up by producers, then tossed over to creative types to make something – anything – of it), X-Men Origins was to be a new pseudo-series spun-off from the “central” X-Men backbone. Thus X4 might still come to be, if executives meet Halle Berry’s latest unrealistic requests for a satin-lined castle of gold filled with acolytes. Rather than weather that storm, the Origins label would cut through the chaff of inflating X-Men rosters by focusing solely upon individual mutants, whomever deserves a solo outing as a proper, name-recognition superhero.

Really, this is a roundabout way of admitting that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was undoubtedly the fan favorite, so why limit him to a single scene of animalistic slashing? Plus, with reputable storylines like Wolverine in Japan – No, wait, they’re just making it a prequel. How…redundant. It’s all there in the Origins label – The one thing that the X-Men movies didn’t do, among the clichés of the 21st century superhero movie, was tell an origin story. And all the better for those movies! As the nominal lead of three movies, Wolverine’s past is sufficiently filled in – his creation as Weapon X under William Stryker, and subsequent amnesia. That amnesia really seals the deal, since this new Wolverine – directed as if at gunpoint by Gavin Hood – is contractually fated to lead in to 2000’s X-Men. Prequels are challenging enough, when filmmakers fail to advantage of prior knowledge about inevitabilities. Making an entire movie of introductory character development, only to reset it at the very end – this is contemptible, the clearest sign that there was no point in making this beyond the financial.

Still, a prequel has the potential (one I’ve rarely seen acted upon) to use inevitability in the form of a Greek tragedy, maybe highlighting the pointlessness of Wolverine’s pre-Weapon X-istence to fashion an X-istentialist X-amination. Nolan could do it! If Hood could, Fox doesn’t want to know, because they’d rather willingly antagonize their new director – Wolverine has so many willfully perverse X-amples of X-ecutive meddling (when it works in other movies, we don’t even notice it), one truly gets a sense that the old ‘90s fashion of comics contempt has returned. Treading lightly for now, there’s no reason to introduce brand new beloved mutants, then completely misrepresent them all simultaneously.

With so many handicaps against Wolverine from the get go, it can only manage to entertain on the most superficial of levels, as an actioner. With a whole film to bask in, it’s a shame Wolverine isn’t allowed to rampage anywhere near X2’s glorious army assault, still the character’s grandest moment in film. The PG-13 rating is partly to blame, as is Wolverine’s inclination to be as generic an action movie as possible, serving up CGI-assisted throw downs with little sense of character. It even has Wolverine walk casually away from an explosion, done with a sense of obligation, not playfulness. Sorry, but though I do love that action cliché, it isn’t an end in itself.


So for the second time, there is an X-Men movie with many glaring fundamental issues, yet made (by certain team members, at least) as if at least trying to be good. Hood is a big question mark, who perhaps meant well enough, though his utter apathy towards superhero stories prior cannot be to Wolverine’s benefit. The MVP is, with a complete lack of surprise, Hugh Jackman himself, even if – with completely no justification – Wolverine is less ferocious than ever in this, his creation myth, where ferocity is to be most expected. Even so, Jackman knows the character almost too well, and brings in just the slightest hint of a young Clint Eastwood in his performance. Honestly, if someone were to pointlessly remake Dirty Harry, or any early Clint, Jackman would be perfect for it.

Jackman is equaled by Liev Schreiber, bulking up to play Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth (the mutant names are, fittingly, not the focus in this prequel). This character is needed; Sabretooth is another of the supersoldiers turned out by the Weapon X program, and Wolverine’s longtime comics nemesis. He represents what Wolverine could be: his purely animal side…conceptually, at least. It’s a little lost in film, as though they were afraid to commit to these concepts. And for as well as Schreiber counters Jackman, the fact remains that he’s being asked to play the earlier version of pro-wrestler Tyler Mane. Asking De Niro to channel Brando in The Godfather: Part II was a meaty challenge; asking a studied thespian to mimic the future Michael Myers is not.


The half-brother duo hales from the 1840s, with mutation so assumed now in Part Four that their incredibly early emergence isn’t even commented upon. It barely matters anyway, because it takes X-Men Origins: Wolverine all of eight minutes to gloss over more than a century of storyline. So desperate to get right to Weapon X, are we? The credits chronicle this passage of time, rushing Wolverine and Sabretooth (or, I should say, Logan and Creed) though every major war. This is the best part of the movie, taking advantage of the canvas it’s given, even if it accidentally recalls something Zack Snyder had already done better with Watchmen (d’oh!).

The movie is indeed impatient to get to Weapon X, so we can all act surprised when Wolverine (er, Logan) volunteers for Stryker’s (Danny Huston, no Brian Cox) adamantium skeletal graft. This creates a weird structural dilemma, because logic dictates that Wolverine’s present story ends when he becomes Weapon X, simultaneously gets amnesia, then runs off only to eventually discover Rogue, and we’re back at Part One. There’s one problem: No one cares about that Wolverine.


I don’t mean just that this story is thankless (it is), but that fans want berserker Wolverine, gifted with his iconic adamantium claws, and otherwise exuding all those powers of omnipotence and immortality which make for such compelling drama (sarcasm). There isn’t enough material in a pre-clawed Wolverine to sustain an entire movie.

The movie “resolves” this problem in a couple of ways. First of all, Logan, on top of being a super-healer (recall, his only original God-given strength), already possesses retractable bone claws. This is asinine on the surface of it, and embarrassing to boot. No such thing happens in the comics, to my knowledge, and altering a character’s biology is a pretty fundamental change. I suspect Spider-Man’s switch to organic web-slingers goes a way towards legitimizing this move, in Fox’s collective hive mind; it’s hard to argue for what’s wrong with claw-bones, though there is something wrong with it. Forced decisions like this should be the first sign that this isn’t a story worth telling.

But claw-bones must’ve seemed pretty stupid even to those who invented them, because they’re traded out with all due haste for the classic adamantium deal. Actually, the movie’s barely half over by the time Wolverine as we know him emerges indestructibly from Stryker’s sci-fi glass coffin – and escapes. No amnesia, though, not yet, though Stryker already promises such things in Logan’s (er, Wolverine’s, now) future.


The rest of the movie is living on borrowed time, squeezing in a few mediocre fight scenes until inevitable amnesia – courtesy, incongruously, of an adamantium bullet. (In a deleted scene, Stryker wipes away C3P0’s memory.) And the movie takes on a strange metamorphosis. Previously, Logan sought Stryker’s experiment on the promise it would help him overcome Creed – because Logan seeks revenge (how novel!) over the murder of a loved one (Lynn Collins). (The quarter hour devoted to this chintzily lovey-dovey romance is time wasted, because it highlights most egregiously the tragedy that might have been made of Wolverine’s past, here rendered generic instead.)

So, Wolverine wants to kill Sabretooth…until Stryker gives him the means to do so, then promptly (and with an utter lack of foresight) betrays Wolverine. Now Stryker is the designated bad guy, and Wolverine’s new target. Even when half-brothers meet up again in the interim for more fights (where one grows truly tired of their unvaried scrapping tactics), it feels desultory, as though Wolverine has forgotten all about his revenge ahead of schedule. Could be brotherly love – that could be another promising emotional avenue, so naturally it’s addressed in the broadest possible terms. And regardless of whatever conflict the movie is concerned with now, it’s inevitable (by continuity) that Wolverine, Sabretooth and Stryker all must survive. Because Wolverine’s functional immortality doesn’t already put the stakes precipitously low, there’s that narrative immortality to go with it.


The climax attempts to reconcile these disparate threads – Logans’ dead love, Sabretooth, Weapon X, assorted things I haven’t mentioned – into a satisfying whole. It does nothing for the bipolar film so far, and I feel bad for those tasked with trying to make something of this. Stryker thus becomes a standard supervillain, with a Weapon XI and an evil lair and whatnot. That lair is Three Mile Island, meaning…

Oh right, as a prequel this is a period piece, isn’t it?! Yeah, the 1979 core meltdown was actually caused by dueling mutants, didn’t ya know. That’s cheeky enough, no more than an udating on the old time travel joke where someone knocks off the Sphinx’s nose. Too bad period is never otherwise addressed. It’s as though, with all the claw-bones and odd characterizations and plot holes, the filmmakers were embarrassed of the past itself! Stryker’s computer technology, for instance, is made to look roughly modern, and a complete disregard for the greater historical context doesn’t help matters. That’s because X-Men Origins: Wolverine has zero, zilch, nada, bupkis to do with the “mutants-as-minorities” metaphor which Singer made his own. Boy, what could’ve been done with historical civil rights movements explored alongside mutant parallels. What says “we didn’t really care about this project” more than that? Wolverine is only a delivery system for juvenile action (and distractingly CGI metal claws, a problem even the 2000 version didn’t contend with – why?!).

Oh man, the things they focus their hard work on. Computer-rendered metal, when prosthetics worked just fine. And all these cutesy little prequel hints, not even remotely to do with Wolverine himself, just to remind everyone that, yes, this is a part of those movies you loved so much (also The Last Stand). A young Cyclops appears to get smacked around (his only movie function, seemingly), and the Three Mile Island nonsense concludes with Professor X recruiting a motley crew of anonymous mutants filling out space. This being days of 1970s yore, X possesses the undeniably creepy hovering de-aged face of Patrick Stewart – that they actually considered this technique for an entire movie is laughable. It looks worse than the CGI Arnold in Terminator Salvation!


As for that paring down which seems to be the Origins modus operandi? The piles of sideline mutants here say otherwise. Gambit, The Blob, Silverfox, John Wraith…Deadpool. At times the movie becomes a travelogue, sending Wolverine to fight/chat each new mutant, tossed in just in case someone, anyone without interest in Wolverine might spend money to see Gambit instead. After a while, this X-Men compulsion to wedge in as many extra cameos as possible just becomes tiring, and it no doubt hinders potential future continuity to some extent.

The truth is that they’re sowing the seeds for future Origins past, spinoffs of this spinoff. In that interest, any X-man or otherwise unaffiliated mutant from throughout the series is eligible for a one-off. Quick, who wants a Blob movie? Okay, more pertinently, who wants a Deadpool movie? Ah hah! And that one wouldn’t even need to be under the X-Men label! Surely, back in the enlightened days of 2003, when X2 was doing the series proud, it was Ryan Reynolds’ proud honor to headline this would-be movie (good casting). Then…nothing came of it, and I dunno why, leaving a dangling Deadpool retooled by uncool fools. Yup, Deadpool is in Wolverine, even serving as the “last boss,” in perhaps the juiciest example of producer perversity. The Merc With the Mouth, far from a motor-mouthed destroyer of fourth walls, is made wordless, and otherwise nothing like his inspiration. (Makes ya wonder why they did it at all.) It doesn’t help that Deadpool, mouth sewn shut, lumpy and bald, perfectly resembles the big bad in Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead.


They knew this one was a mistake immediately after fans proved surprisingly hostile towards the wholesale misappropriation of a beloved icon. Therefore, Reynolds is still onboard for a proper Deadpool movie (Dead Pool, that’s another Dirty Harry movie!) – it won’t be for a while, though, because against all odds DC got its shit together and put Reynolds in Green Lantern first!

As for other Origins? Merely two years later, it’s hard to pronounce this intended label dead, though the release of X-Men: First Class (being neither an X4 nor a proper Origins, but something indefinably other) suggests the idea has been abandoned. There had been talk of an X-Men Origins: Magneto, a notion with some potential, because of Magneto’s pertinent history (no amnesia for that magnetic personality). This project is now inarguably forsaken, reportedly with much of its material going towards First Class.

Boy, there are a lot of so-far nonexistent movies somehow tied in with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The brand is schisming without clear guidance. Though with multiple projects in the works, splitting apart like an inverse of the Avengers situation, there are nuggets of hope. Such as the eventual Deadpool simply ignoring this movie’s missteps altogether. Or like The Wolverine, the movie the original Origins ought to have been – Logan in Japan! Development seems pretty well along by now, with Darren Aronofsky directing. All involved, including Jackman, seem politely inclined to move as far from Origins as possible. So perhaps this seemingly purposeless movie did what it needed to – kept the franchise active. Enough that decent things may come yet – and I’m moments away from discovering what is largely reputed: That First Class is indeed the salve this franchise so desperately needs.

X-Men, No. 5 - X-Men: First Class (2011)

Director Matthew Vaughn was at one point to be Bryan Singer’s replacement for X-Men: The Last Stand. Then he became absolutely fed up with the asinine producers behind it, and abandoned the project to the demented grasp of…uh, whatsisface (Brett Ratner). We know how that turned out: a mediocre movie at best by its own terms, and a complete travesty to the X-Men series. Vaughn has gone on record to say, in no uncertain terms, that he (Vaughn) could have injected ten times the emotional gravity in what ought to have been the definitive X-Men.

Now Vaughn has his second chance, with X-Men: First Class, and that’s ceased to be hot air! He’s inherited the increasingly dire prospects of the cinematic “X-Men,” and created something which doesn’t’ simply meet Singer’s initial high plateau – Vaughn’s entry arguably exceeds it, nearing Iron Man and The Dark Knight in the superhero pantheon, while splitting their tonal difference.


Conceptually, First Class isn’t necessarily such a promising prospect. It is another godforsaken X-Men prequel, after X-Men Origins: Wolverine demonstrated the complete uselessness of that notion. In fact, First Class shares many of the same likely difficulties of Wolverine: as a prequel, events and arcs are preordained. Furthermore, there’s a notoriously complex cinematic continuity to pay lip service to, for as much as First Class has every right to do like the eventual Amazing Spider-Man and reboot, it’s still of a piece with X-Men, X2, and all the rest…mostly. Amongst nerd arguments, there are certainly timeline discrepancies, though mostly with the latter, Singerless X-Men – and First Class gets the benefit of the doubt for disregarding The Last Stand, frankly.

Again, conceptually, First Class potentially shares some of The Last Stand’s problems too. Basically, it is as overstuffed as an “X-Men” movie could wish to be, not merely trumpeting a ridiculous panoply of supporting mutant characters, but featuring mostly new mutants on top of that, with an unwieldy mess of subplots and motivations to keep straight and make clear. In fact, First Class is by a significant degree the most out-of-control X-Men, featuring not just a new location, but a new continent for damn well every scene of its first half.


Against all these odds, these hindrances barely register – I only pick up on them for having recently re-endured the lesser entries. It is to Vaughn’s inestimable credit, a youthful vigor and energy, that First Class’s hyperactivity is exciting and not tiring. I cannot fully identify just what Vaughn does differently to accomplish this, though no doubt he has a greater genuine enthusiasm for the “X-Man” brand than Ratner or Gavin Hood ever did. It helps to take advantage of the preordained facts of First Class as schemed up by Fox: a period piece detailing how Magneto and Professor X begin the X-Men, in light of mankind’s upcoming struggles against mutanthood. For one thing, First Class isn’t merely set in the 1960s, it embraces this era in precisely the way Wolverine totally refused to. It helps that the ‘60s are infinitely cooler than the ‘70s, especially when filtered through the James Bond, “Mad Men” vibe.

Combine with that the freedom to play up the outdated Stan Lee, Jack Kirby feel of actual period “X-Men” comics – not that I have even a remote knowledge of them, but First Class feels as one pictures Silver Age comics. This is kind of a turning point with superhero movies, I’d wager! Singer’s X-Men is notable for seriously engaging the potentially sillier aspects of the comic medium. For all that, it still pragmatically redesigned the X-Men’s costumes from bright blue-and-yellow to black leather – as was the style at the time – alongside other such half-measures. First Class uses the ‘60s milieu to its advantage, giving us the original costumes in all their cheesy, two-tone glory – unashamedly too! What is silly in initial concept remains so, without apologies, but also without that toxic Batman & Robin above-it-all parody. In fact, Vaughn embraces the very comic-ness of his film so much, he actually gives us the first successful use of in-film panels, as seen in Ang Lee’s Hulk. We’re one step not only from a return to on-screen visual KAPOWS, ala “Batman,” but to the point where they’d actually work.


This is sort of the Iron Man half of First Class’s blood-soaked Nazi coin. As for The Dark Knight, well, First Class isn’t even remotely that dark (far from it – it’s maybe even frothier than Iron Man), but there’s the same degree of wonderful subtext. This is true to the Singer line, and the comics too (naturally). Mutants remain forever a metaphor for “otherness,” a neato sci-fi tool to examine ideas of ethics, segregation, discrimination, and (more usefully) philosophies regarding those issues. The ‘60s offer up a heady deal of loaded topics – civil rights, gender inequality (leading to the film’s one truly awkward moment), the Cold War. Elements like the Cold War are exploited openly to fuel the action plot, while others are mostly just alluded to – but it is the strength of a period piece that filmmakers gain efficient visual shorthand, for subtle hints to old cultural touchstones carry a great deal of weight. Plus, ‘60s fashion is just groovy.


X-Men: First Class is an origin story…kind of. Most origin movies are saddled with the handicap of delaying genuine superheroics – though, flipside, there’s that emotional elation when a hero discovers newfound powers. The X-Men, as a team, carry a different dynamic, letting some powers coming into play right off the bat (for all your Nazi-murdering goodness), while other characters can simultaneously occupy different points of the origin continuum – we get all the advantages at once.

Central to First Class are Magneto and Professor X – though for now we must think of them as Eric (Michael Fassbender, of Inglourious Basterds) and Charles (James McAvoy, of Wanted). Much of Eric’s magnetic emergence is even lifted from the never-to-be X-Men Origins: Magneto, pragmatically reworking Eric’s Holocaust childhood in a new light. But the focus isn’t upon him alone, but on Eric’s new alliance with Charles Xavier, a friendship destined to turn antagonistic. There are a lot of checklist points, prequel Stations of the Cross, to run through – we know Eric and Charles will have a falling out, and not to belabor that inevitability, First Class takes us all the way there. In the meantime, distinguishing icons shall arise – Magneto’s helmet, X’s wheelchair (and throwaway jokes about baldness), their mutual accumulation of mutant recruits. Because again we know a particular clunky helmet has future importance, its introduction in the villain’s possession carries a weight beyond immediate text – and Vaughn doesn’t belabor the point, letting his audience connect the dots as they wish.


It helps First Class that it is not bogged down with casting strictures, as was The Last Stand. No need to lose sight of the fundamental emotional story (which is moved along by a more surface-level tale of villainous Bond-style megalomania). No need to wedge in studio-demanded Wolverine antics, or time-hungry scenes of Storm doing nothing of any value whatsoever. None of that! Vaughn avoids the multitudinous issues with bringing back former actors in known roles – Magneto, X, Mystique, Beast, Emma Frost – especially sparing us the creepy CGI youthenizing of Patrick Stewart yet again. Subtly, this turns old characters into new discoveries, especially with Eric – Fassbender merges his own approach with Ian McKellan’s, doing what MacGregor ought to have accomplished with his Obi Wan. This, as much as anything, gives First Class its bounce, though direct sequels won’t have this advantage.

Charles Xavier is as much of a revelation as Eric Lehnsherr. Eric isn’t a “bad guy,” and his eventual embrace of mutant militantism is intellectually defensible, even if we know it leads to potential omnicide. Charles is likewise not a “good guy,” and far less ascetic then Stewart’s bald monk. With McAvoy, the young Charles is brash – not simply sexually opportunistic, but selfish in his apparent mutant cohabitation idealism. Most damningly, Charles is privileged as mutants go, invisible, wealthy, and dangerously quick to “out” fellow mutants. Neither Charles nor Eric is faultless in the mutant “issue,” which muddies the film’s moral waters considerably – to its benefit. The mutant scenario proposes at best an end result of peaceful human extinction, and asks the ethical question of how this is best handled. It allows for greater conversations post screening, the sign of a thoughtfully constructed popcorn flick – that, or you can just gush over how awesome the climactic naval battle is, which is equally valid.


Acting as lynchpin to the central duo is Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), someday to become Mystique. She grew up with Charles, but is destined to side with Eric. This, along with Raven’s shape-shifting lack of identity, ground the emotional trauma as successfully as Singer’s Rogue. With inevitability, her scenes of soul-searching carry the air of prequel tragedy, accomplishing the emotion Vaughn so desired of The Last Stand.

Emotion goes double for the quieter scenes between Charles and Eric, where First Stand truly earns its keep. There is a moment where Charles, attempting to mentor Eric’s magnetism, leads him to embrace the place between – if I can remember this correctly – rage and serenity. In other words, to temper Eric’s vengeful myopia. Huge kudos to Fassbender in particular! This is the most profound moment in the franchise, for how it underscores Magneto’s humanity, etc. – it’s also simultaneously corny as hell, a part of that wonderful comic booky line First Class treads.

Let me pause to run through some more characters – especially since an X-Men X-cells (er, excels) by its mutants, and so it is here…

Eric, Charles, Raven, we know. They’re all fine. Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) carries whatever tragedy Raven cannot, as the man doomed to become Beast – in a surprisingly efficient homage to Robert Lewis Stevenson, which never gets bogged down in what could well be its own movie. As the genocidal Sebastian Shaw, Kevin Bacon is present and functional – because a villain is needed, to fuel immediate (lesser) plot, and to suggest what Eric might become. Though Shaw has little value on his own. Emma Frost (January Jones) is perhaps the weak link, though it’s hard to fault Frost for appearing an ice queen.

Others include Havok (power: fires off energy whatnots), Banshee (he screams), Angel (has bug wings – I suspect there’s some comic discrepancy here), Darwin (evolves, naturally), Azazel (teleporting demon, nicely recalls Russian propaganda with his red skin and Soviet uniform), and Riptide (Storm the Lesser). Plus a generous helping of actual, honest-to-Lee humans, giving the other side a face, best represented by mutant sympathizer Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne).


I am surprised by how much X-Men: First Class does right, given a franchise predicament where one might expect nothing at all. Surely with the latter X-Men atrocities a recent memory, it’s all the more substantial for its effectiveness. Whatever could have been a hindrance becomes a benefit – First Class fulfills the oft-ignored dramatic function of a prequel, such a rarity that many even doubt it possible. It build upon the work of its formers, understanding this universe’s mutation enough to couch the needed X-position (er, exposition) in Charles’ professing, and not directly to the audience. It respects its comic origins, compounding the goodwill of a decade’s superhero movies to combine heroes, themes, a cool setting, and further details one wouldn’t have even once thought necessary for this genre. Now more than ever I yearn to know what a Vaughn-helmed Last Stand might’ve looked like, though I’m also quite satisfied with First Class as its first class (ahem!) substitute.


The only concern is talk that First Class might lead to a potential Third Class (or whatever), lunatic Fox X-ecutives famished for a goddamn trilogy. This in addition to Aronofsky’s proposed The Wolverine, which looks to more fully embrace discontinuity – i.e. rebooting, or flat out ignoring. Eh, plus a likely X-Men Origins: Deadpool (look, just drop the “X-Men” title thing already!), and even (shudder!) X4, Berry be blessed. Yeesh, are cinematic Marvel movies becoming so like the comics that innumerable spin-offs are that acceptable?! Is a ridiculous DC/Marvel intercompany crossover an inevitability in our distant future now?!

The issue is, for First Class as another X-Men sub-franchise, the ever-diminishing dramatic gap between First Class and X-Men. I don’t mean chronologically (X-Men is in “the near future,” leaving things nicely wide open), but…well, the tale of Charles’ and Eric’s friendship is mostly a done deal now. Stretching this out in sequels, with continued reverence for Singer’s original continuity, can only diminish artistic returns on Vaughn’s unlikely success. This suggests a future of dramatic trivialities to rival Origins: Wolverine, and while I presently trust Vaughn and crew, it seems a road fraught with peril. But First Class proves it can be done.

The Fast and the Furious, No. 4 - Fast & Furious (2009)

[The Fast and the Furious franchise was the first one I visited on this blog. In anxious anticipation for Fast Five, those posts reappear now only slightly reedited, and now also with links and pics.]

Vin Diesel’s cameo at the end of Tokyo Drift suggested better things for the Fast and the Furious franchise than what it had become. Indeed, the fourth film, Fast & Furious, is the first true sequel. This movie effectively continues the story told in The Fast and the Furious, which it can afford to do by reuniting pretty much the entire cast from that film. This means we see a return of Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, and most importantly Vin Diesel. Given this advantage, Fast & Furious does not have to piddle around with all-new characters in the context of an ostensible sequel the way Tokyo Drift did. Even though most of the crew from Tokyo Drift has returned, most notably director Justin Lin, the sense of continuity most people will get is with the Rob Cohen’s first movie.

So what kind of heavenly convergence had to take place to get everyone back? The answer appears to lie in how their careers were doing. Vin Diesel is the best example of this, and I suspect without his involvement, this movie wouldn’t have come together in any form. Thinking back to the early 2000s, Vin Diesel’s star was on the rise. Many had pegged him as this generation’s true action superstar, an heir to the sweaty, vaguely homoerotic throne left by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Indeed, in a world where somehow Orlando Bloom and Shia LeBlllerrrpphhf are somehow action head-liners, a muscular, bald man like Diesel seems like a sane alternative. Between The Fast and the Furious’ Dom and Pitch Black’s Riddick, Diesel attemptws farming the Riddick character into a franchise, resulting in the epic, universe-spanning, lame The Chronicles of Riddick. This did not prove successful, and no sequels would be forthcoming. Nothing much came of xXx either. Despite no massive Terminator-like successes, Diesel’s career did come to resemble Scharzenegger’s in one important way: they each quickly resorted to awful tough-guy -behaves-effeminate comedies, with Diesel’s The Pacifier in 2005..Then there was the Riddick-lite Babylon A.D.

So in 2009 Diesel was in a position to reconsider his Fast and the Furious franchise, something he was no longer above. An actor in need of a hit, returning to a successful, beloved character – this is quite common. His co-stars would follow suit because – Look, do I really have to explain this one? Quick! Name a Paul Walker film that’s not a part of this franchise! Hell, I can’t do that, and I’ve been actively researching the guy.


So, Fast & Furious...I kind of love that title. I love all the titles for this series, as they refuse to make any kind of consistent sense. This entry realizes audiences today are too busy with their [insert cliché complaint about the younger generation], and so wisely eliminates the article “the” – which goes on loan to The Final Destination.

Consciously echoing Part One, this film opens with a high-speed big rig heist involving Dom and his gang. And in true sequel fashion, it is played bigger. Tonight’s big rig drives through the DOMinican Republic towing six gasoline tankers – this is called a land-train! Up comes a convoy of tricked out trucks, led by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel, again), along with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez, again), Han Lue (Sung Kang, again), and Don Omar (as himself, and for the first time, since Don Omar is this entry’s traditional “rapper in a cameo role”). Han’s presence indicates that this is technically a prequel to Tokyo Drift, for what little it’s worth. The only problem this presents is trying to work out dates – either Tokyo Drift takes place in the future (it is set in Tokyo), or this one takes place in the past. A dusty, rather caveman-like past, it seems. It’s not worth thinking too hard about.

In general, reusing characters from before is a nice audience shorthand. An ideal viewer already knows Dom’s various relationships, and so feels what happens more strongly. In a sense I am that ideal viewer, since this whole series is fresh in my memory. Though some backstory from 2001 is assumed, and while it isn’t complicated, that’s still a potential hurdle.

As for the content of this big rig heist, well...it’s my favorite thing in this entire series, partly because it echoes old westerns. Letty (Dom’s girlfriend, lest we forgot) climbs onto the speeding gas tankers, releasing them as the stunt trucks tow them away. Again, one should never question the logic behind this series. Ultimately Letty is in trouble, as the big rig speeds out of control down a harsh downgrade towards a huge cliff! It’s up to Dom to rescue his beloved. Letty surfs the hood of his car like Zoe Bell, and – in a wildly unlikely stunt they spoiled in the trailer – Dom speeds underneath a bouncing, flaming tanker. Though such a shot could never be achieved without special effects, the individual visual elements at play remain practical, so that’s a nice way to avoid dodgy CGI. I like that.


The crew goes their separate ways during a beach party. Dom bids Han farewell to “go do his own thing,” namely steal from the yakuza and die violently. Dom and Letty have a crucial romantic one-to-one, Dom temporarily going his own way for Letty’s safety.

One more crucial character to establish, this one being (yawn) Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker, again for the third damn time). Though they siphoned most of the material from Point Break in the original, the foot chase through the backyards was left more or less alone, so Brian goes ahead and recreates that one here in the streets of Los Angeles. This being post-Casino Royale’s parkour, mainstream audiences cannot help but be underwhelmed, especially after the land-train sequence. In the end Brian obtains a name from his perp (that name being David Park), which he reports back to his FBI superiors in their stark, movie-tech offices. So Brian has been reinstated back into the police force, and is hot on the tail of the Braga drug cartel.


Down in Panama City, Dom gets a phone call from his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster, again), learning that Letty has been murdered. Now that kinda came out of left field, but it goes a long way to explaining the lengthy scenes with Dom and Letty earlier. (It also satisfies the “Michelle Rodriguez always dies” clause.) And now the central plot becomes instantly clear – Revenge! After the vague what-have-you of Tokyo Drift, this is most welcome. To me, at least, if not Dom.

Shortly following Letty’s funeral, Dom and Mia observe the site of Letty’s fatal auto accident. Director Lin employs a stylistic trick that should really irritate me, where Letty’s murder flashback plays directly alongside Dom’s introspection. Vin Diesel makes this work, as he always makes the emotional stuff with Dom work. Ever the gearhead, Dom discovers an obvious clue in the road that of course no investigators could find – trace amounts of nitrometh, and the start of Dom’s journey.

Naturally Brian is also on the trail of Letty’s murderer, mostly because she was an operative working with him on the Braga case. Brian’s story is not nearly as emotional, serving mostly as a plot device to bring law enforcement issues to the story, which is just as it should be. So, while Brian is tracking down this “David Park” – via mostly legal means – Dom is getting his information by beating up low-level goon types. This series of plot threads connects when Dom and Brian both happen upon David Park at once, and both learn that Braga will be hiring drug mule drivers in a downtown street race. And with all the fisticuff gruntwork Dom has employed, and Brian’s earlier foot chase, this film is shaping up to be a more traditional action flick than any of its predecessors, with situations that can be resolved by non-car means And after 2 Fast 2 Furious, a police procedural where car racing was the only solution, this seems a bit saner. Is it the right move for this series...?

No matter. A montage depicts both Dom and Brian preparing for the race, Dom with his black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS and Brian modifying an impounded Nissan Skyline GT-R R34.


We’re nearing the climax of Act One, so it’s street race time! As in the first, this takes place in downtown L.A., so the filmmakers will have to work harder than usual to keep these things from blurring together in my mind. It turns out this race is a tryout for the final spot in Braga’s mule team, between Dom, Brian, and two other anonymous racers who are not going to win. Braga’s number two man Ramon Campos (John Ortiz) briefs the drivers, alongside token hot chick Gisele (Gal Gadot, 2004's Miss Israel). The race starts with this film’s most irritating use of CGI, and at least it’s diegetic: a CGI HOD GPS. This GPS feature literally equates this action sequence with a video game, but that was obviously the point, so I cannot complain. So soon enough the most anonymous driver of all crashes violently, definitely killing him and almost certainly killing countless innocent drivers involved – You know, in films like this there are not people in cars. Cars are simply moving obstacles that look pretty when they crash. It’s impossible to enjoy most action movies when attempting a moral critique.

And speaking of questionable actions, Brian is soon speeding recklessly down the alleyways, narrowly missing that most elusive and fabled of creatures, the L.A. pedestrian. In the end it all comes down to Brian versus Dom, in a final quarter mile straightaway that clearly recalls the first film, CGI engine tours and all. Dom wins, gaining the spot on Braga’s crew, but he has to “cheat” for once to beat Brian.

But let’s not worry about bland Brian. He secures his spot on the mule team by promptly arresting one of the pre-selected drivers, a hateful, even-worse version of Kid Rock.


Campos welcomes both Dom and Brian to the team. They celebrate in a warehouse rave which gives my opportunity to mention one series trademark I have neglected so far. In every movie, we will see girls kissing each other. Of course us guys love this sort of thing, but it’s impossible to bring it up without seeming crass. And Brian continues his FBI investigation, discovering fingerprints, while Dom has the grander task of rejecting a budding romance with Gisele in favor of mourning his departed Letty.

Let’s move on to the mule work – in silent Brian’s case, a mute mule mole. A big rig transports the four mules just past the Mexican border, where Gisele (who reminds me of Mirage from The Incredibles) loads their four various cars with enough heroin to sustain Tony Montoya for half an hour. In other words, about $80 million worth. Their mission involves speeding this shipment over the border, past a U.S. border patrol agency that is competent, well-financed, technologically equipped, and obviously fictional. The mules race a vaguely defined window of time, speeding through secret tunnels underneath a mountain. Whether or not these tunnels are mostly practical effects I cannot say. They’re a bit too claustrophobic for a good car chase, however.


Okay, powering through...Braga’s men have a double cross planned on the U.S. side, resulting in a shoot out action sequence (seeing as Dom has already used his beloved NOS to explode the Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 and black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS). Dom and Brian escape in a Hummer filled with all the heroin, which they then go and hide in an impound lot – which will make a fine setting for a later action sequence. Then they hide out with Mia, and various callbacks are made to Part One. Sequels in general often rely on callbacks. Used well, this can be rewarding to series fans while flying over the heads of newcomers. Used poorly, the entire sequel relies upon the work someone else had already done. This film uses its callbacks fairly lightly (there isn’t much from The Fast and the Furious to call back to), so it fares pretty well.

Brian has standard conflicts with both Dom and his FBI superiors. In the end he is able to set up a meeting with Braga at the impound lot, to exchange the heroin. Sigh! I complained about Part Two's standard “bring down the drug kingpin” storyline, and when this movie loses sight of its equally boilerplate revenge story, it is reduced to this. And it’s all rather too talkative. Consider the matter of revenge. Even Tarantino, that most talkative of filmmakers, made his Kill Bill epic a bit of hokum with minimal (for him) dialogue. And Fast & Furious does not have the weight of that thing. So all I’ll say about the plot now is this – it’s revealed Campos is really Braga, and as such his personality changes completely, and I liked him better as Campos. Braga qua Braga lacks all bravado.

A quick thought, giving this movie altogether too much due: per the title, Fast & Furious, perhaps Brian is mean to be “Fast,” while Dom is “Furious.” Eh?...Sweet Jebus, I’ve been thinking about these movies too long!


When things are all said and done, our heroes head alone to a dusty, dusty Mexican pueblo (a welcome far cry from the neon and chrome of Tokyo) to capture Braga (née Campos) and bring him across the border. (Gisele offers a little aid in setting this up.) Braga in tow, they lead his goon army on a desert car chase, Dom in his iconic black 1972 Ford Torino and Brian in his less-than-iconic something else. Of course this damn chase has to make use of those border tunnels from earlier, and there is little new going on here, except this scene is a “chase” rather than a “race.” And here’s something I love – just before the chase, Braga actually has a “We’re not so different, you and I” moment with Dom. That’s pretty hard to take seriously.

Brian is the first to burst from the tunnels on the U.S. side, and this time the border patrol, so ridiculously omnipresent before, is completely out to lunch. They don’t even make a token presence, because that would lessen the threat from Braga’s automotive Stormtroopers. And then Brian crashes his something else just like Letty’s car I have not mentioned before back when she was murdered. And Letty’s murderer Fenix (Laz Alonso) is about to shoot Brian dead when Dom just up and smashes his black 1972 Ford Torino into him (Fenix). Action sequence complete, the U.S. border patrol helicopters feel safe to appear in the distance. Dom makes two decisions here that would seem out of character had he not been given nominal character development – he chooses to let Braga live, and he chooses to give himself up.


In an epilogue, Judge Ito (well, it looked like him, as out-of-date as that reference is) sentences Dom to 25 years to life, despite his recent heroism. Later on, a prison bus transfers Dom across the fields when three black cars surround it, driven by Brian, Mia and Gisele. [New commentary.] This is an obvious setup for Part Five, and I dearly look forward to the payoff.

Though this is easily the most justified of all the sequels, the franchise as a whole remains hopelessly addicted to melodrama in addition to its automotive antics. Given the budgets, this is probably the maximum amount of action we can expect per film, and yet it always seems like the bare minimum needed. Decent plotting and writing can serve to improve the straight-aways between action sequences, but there’s no call for such niceties in this middle-of-the-road series. Whatever good writers remain in Hollywood are certainly more valuable elsewhere. And as plots go, Fast & Furious actually has, I think, the strongest of the bunch. The Fast and the Furious is close to it, though. But really, my assessment of The Fast and the Furious could double as my assessment of Fast & Furious (titles confusing you yet?). It’s all rather...okay. Vin Diesel remains the one element truly making things interesting.

Fast & Furious, for its confidence in a reunited cast and returning crew, easily grossed more than any of its predecessors. In its opening weekend alone, Fast & Furious made more than Tokyo Drift did in its entire U.S. run, namely around $70 million (also making it nearly as valuable as Braga’s stolen heroin). The movie was put out in what is still ostensibly spring, though in content and performance it really seems like a mini summer movie slightly ahead of schedule. History is repeating itself with Fast Five, now heralded as the surprisingly-early official start to Summer 2011. And at this stage, I am strangely, unironically excited about that entry. It marks the return of director Justin Lin, whose action chops have improved tremendously in his time with this franchise. It’s taken a while, but it seems the Fast and the Furious franchise has marked out its niche: Blatantly standard action boilerplate stories, combined with ridiculous yet practical car action sequences. With action cinema being what it is today, I’m happy for that.


RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 The Fast and the Furious (2001)
• No. 2 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
• No. 3 The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
• No. 5 Fast Five (2011)

The Exorcist, No. 5 - Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

The Exorcist prequel project pooped out prematurely, provided the paltry profit presented by the premiere presentation, Exorcist: The Beginning. Recall this was a vulgar bit of hackery from Renny Harlin, the second prequel made, in response to Paul Schrader’s more thoughtful original being labeled not “scary” enough. (Or not having enough goddamn gore.) Well, Harlin’s effort wasn’t scary either, but in a specific overwrought way which was apparently satisfactory. But whatever, the Great Hack Hope couldn’t turn a profit on this over-spent expenditure. What’s a producer to do? Well, fortunately there’s that other movie, that one you hated in the first place. What the hell, maybe that’ll turn a profit!

And no matter how angry one might’ve been at The Beginning, it’s surely the height of shoddy producing to toss out an alternate prequel a mere year later, with nothing but “$” in one’s eyes. The title finally glommed onto Schrader’s effort (Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist) is itself a naked and shameless admission to idiocy and mismanagement, for how many other films admit so openly to being prequels (most just revert to “The Beginning,” which…wasn’t available!)? (The only similarly-titled film I can conceive of is Airplane II: The Sequel, which is a joke.)

Now, Schrader’s movie wasn’t wholly complete once The Beginning nearly became the franchise’s end. For they’d scrapped it in post-production. Well, toss old Schrader a whopping $35,000 to complete it (I’m dead serious!), and there ya go. Even now, it seems the Morgan Creek shysters were as faithless in Dominion as Harlin seemingly is in regards to religion itself – Dominion’s theatrical release was a desultory affair, almost as if done to satisfy a contract. Its total gross ($250,000), a full 0.32% of what Harlin’s made, surely isn’t the miraculous windfall that’d rescue this misbegotten franchise.


Dominion uses the same basic filmic framework as The Beginning, much of the same cast, and some repeated scenes. Hell, Dominion’s beginning was in The Beginning. To repeat myself, this recounts the travails of Father Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skarsgård again) in Nazi-held Holland circa WWII. But even with the same footage, it’s astounding what a difference a filmmaker can make. Here the scene is allowed to play out in full, at the start – thus Merrin’s self-doubt stemming from the forced execution of several innocent villagers gains dramatic heft. In The Beginning, Merrin’s crisis of faith was simply a decorative character trapping, revealed in incontinent spurts as Harlin’s editor saw fit. But in Dominion we know and understand Merrin’s trauma from the start, giving his crisis heft.

It is true of Dominion as a whole that things are much more readily understood, not that The Beginning was confusing, merely convoluted. Here, the fact of a Christian Byzantine church where it oughtn’t to be in East Africa, 1500 years old, is treated as a starting point, not some mid-plot twist to titillate impatient and purely hypothetical gorehounds. All the facts surrounding it are similar – we learn early how this church was built to house an ancient evil, presumably the fallen Lucifer (you know…Satan?). Even the geography makes sense, as only now is it clear how there is both a British army outpost and a local tribe. Amazing how this plays out when the movie’s not aiming for misguided fist-pumping at all times.

Consider the eager-to-impress imagery of The Beginning, followed by its counterpart in Dominion…



It’s not that Dominion is 100% superior to The Beginning, as it is perfectly clear why producers thought this underdelivered on the scares. It does. Schrader is not as technically proficient as Harlin, and not up for the pyrotechnics even the most understated Exorcist movie needs. (Of course, that could’ve been salvaged from this effort without the need for a completely new movie!) And Schrader’s images are a bit flat, never wholly atmospheric. Rather, Dominion is still about something, a functional (if not great) drama and meditation on evil, both human and supernatural. The Beginning just wanted to be X-treme.

With much more of the film’s pieces having purposes now, beyond individual undercooked fright sequences, a thought process becomes evident. Merrin is still aided in his archeological investigation by Father Francis (now Gabriel Mann). For The Beginning, a faithless and cynical movie, this priest was here simply because it’s standard for the genre; it had no use for Father Francis, rather than to be eeeeeerie for being a Catholic, and to be one corpse more. In Dominion, Francis appears as a believable religious idealist, a reminder of Merrin’s former feelings (now Merrin’s arc is immediately understood). Mann’s performance is a little bland (sadly, only Skarsgård is ever exceptional in either version), the result not all it could be, but at least now we see what that could be. I swear, Dominion plays better as a riposte to The Beginning than as a film on its own!


Other characters, or character analogues, appear more intentional in this effort. In opposition to Francis is British Army Major Granville (still Julian Wadham), here an important enough figure to warrant mention (my Beginning write-up merely referred to him sans name as a gore effect). For Granville is the perfectly worldly figure, and a militarist, the other spectrum tempting Merrin. Embedded in his character is an implicit criticism of British colonialism. In fact, Granville appears (like all the figures) as a challenged and human figure, which makes his eventual suicide much more than the shallow isolated scene of lepidopterous spookery The Beginning boasted.

(Yes, many of the same basic shock moments remain, including the stillborn baby – somehow less offensive yet more disturbing here as it seems a commentary on evil rather than a simply opportunity for the director to waggle a dead baby at us.)

Some more…similar characters: There is still a female nurse on hand, only now Rachel instead of Sarah, and Clara Bellar instead of a Bond girl. Her relationship with Merrin isn’t necessarily a misplaced romance (misplaced when your central arc concerns reaccepting priesthood), but a connection between two souls battered by the war. She is also no longer the eye candy, or the Horror 101 blonde showering would-be victim Sarah was. She is pretty inconsequential, though.

And Rachel/Sarah is not the eventual demon host this time; nor is the young boy Joseph (more on him later). Rather Dominion fulfills that role with Cheche (pop musician Billy Crawford), a crippled village outlier, feared by the natives precisely because he might be possessed. Merrin pities the lad, giving no weight to these superstitions in his recent worldly outlook. Cheche becomes a permanent fixture at Rachel’s field hospital, where a speedy regeneration of his amputated arm spurs Francis to suspect the work of angels rather than demons. Once again, a visual comparison between this approach and The Beginning’s is telling:



There is not much surrounding Cheche’s growing signs of possession, surely nothing to rival Reagan’s transformation in The Exorcist, but that is not Dominion’s concern. It is more preoccupied with examining evil as a human fact.

Over fear of looting and a native uprising, Granville’s army unit arrives at the dig site, where bad blood rises almost instantly with the locals. It is suggested some evil spirit has emerged from the church’s dark heart, though it’s never as stupidly overt as The Beginning’s pointless, one-scene boy-rending CGI hyenas. Rather, the two soldiers stationed to guard the church are found slaughtered the following morning – after they attempt to rob the site’s precious stones. What was before a cheap shock here has further meaning, as their deaths are directly connected to St. Peter and St. John the Baptist (compare that to The Beginning’s apparent ignorance of the mere existence of St. Peter).

Granville suspects a murderer in the tribe, and forcibly drags the entire village to the outpost to flush the murderer out (this is over other theories the men killed themselves, under demonic influences). Here’s where it makes sense to know of Merrin’s past a priori: Granville threatens mass execution, just as the Nazi officer once did. Against Merrin’s protestations, Granville indeed murders one young girl before the situation can dissolve. (See, human evil? Many conversations even insist upon this reading, intolerance presented as the greatest terror.)

This act has repercussions…entirely non-supernatural repercussions. First, young Joseph is joined by many other children at Father Francis’ school mission. The misunderstanding leading to this is the natives’ fear of Christ Himself. As they see it, it was Christ who wished dead the girl Granville killed; hence they are here as a preventative measure.

Well, that’s one native theory. A more extreme view is that the recent evil (which includes cows eating NON-CGI hyenas, and that stillborn baby – which surely the British aren’t to blame for) is the fault of Francis, of his faith. Hence witchdoctor Jomo arrives to do Francis in, in full view of the children, “to keep the Christian evil from spreading.” A few screams later, all off screen (we share Merrin’s perspective), and Jomo has wantonly speared an inestimable number of the classroom’s children – amazingly, Dominion depicts far more child death than The Beginning, yet is infinitely more tasteful about it (‘cause it has a purpose here). Also, Granville has killed Jomo. Joseph’s older brother James is among the dead, and…that’s the last we’ll see of Joseph. I wouldn’t even latch onto that character, but for the narrative promotion he received in The Beginning (as a red herring potential possessee).

Francis has survived this recent slaughter. Rather than waver in his faith as Merrin has, it merely presses Francis further into unblinking mysticism. He grows obsessed with Cheche’s healing, and in saving his soul. Left alone with Cheche, Francis prays for him – in a moment, as much as it’s 1/1000th as powerful as anything in The Exorcist, is still in its subtlety endlessly more frightening than the ostensibly “scary” The Beginning. Cheche shows his first overt signs of evil, as he lashes briefly at Francis, looking all demonic-like – the possession design here is pretty weak sauce, honestly.


Now with the climax approaching, Dominion takes up two threads we also saw in The Beginning, to much different effect. The British soldiers are prepping to do battle with the natives, to eradicate every last one of them in retaliation for their recent uppitiness. The natives, meanwhile, are bloodthirsty almost entirely for the blood of Cheche, the demonic source of their woes. Now, in The Beginning this inevitable battle was simply a source for exploitation, more waggled body parts against all narrative comprehensibility. In Dominion, there is a moral component, as this battle must be stopped. For frankly, it makes more sense for Merrin to eventually prevent evil from happening. Without his Dominion diplomacy, The Beginning wallows in the pits of amorality – no wonder Blatty hated it!

The other thread is the exorcism. In both versions, it occurs as it must in the ancient church. The Beginning justified this with the sudden slathering of a CGI sandstorm, plus many other plot complications. In Dominion, it all starts as an attempted baptism for Cheche, Francis in his zealotry convinced of the church’s utility. (Cheche himself also requests transport there, but really because it’s the seed of his evil.)


Threatened contact with holy water sends Cheche into unmistakable demonic fits, hurtling Francis against an archaic statue. Francis, true to his character, is instantly keen on performing an exorcism, in a way that dramatically justifies dodging the chain-of-command The Exorcist, in its realism, insisted upon. He races outside to collect the Roman Rituals – as an earthquake up and seals Rachel and Cheche inside the church, in one of Dominion’s more strange unique miscalculations (it just ain’t believable, even in a film about Satan). Francis won’t make it back, as he falls victim (off screen) to the natives’ poison arrows. Still, he has time to impress upon Merrin the situation.

It becomes Merrin’s onus to take up the exorcist’s mantle, even as he fears himself too faithless to do so. But it is essential, for Cheche’s salvation is the capstone to curtail war. Aided immensely by Skarsgård’s performance, Merrin rediscovers his faith at the outpost, fully alone in every sense. Merrin’s conversion is a major point of distinction between Dominion and The Beginning. There, an over-insistent choral soundtrack crowed it to the heavens, like a suiting-up montage in a Rambo movie. Here, it is a genuinely quiet moment of solitary prayer, and Dominion at its strongest (just before it becomes at its weakest). Again, for visual comparison:



The quake’s rocks receding just as instantly (and stupidly) as they rose, Merrin alone granted access to the church (as Rachel escapes, heading into a very bizarre climactic subplot full of suicidal contemplation – I’m not touching that!). Now, it’s just Merrin against a fully possessed Cheche, the grand battle these prequels are predicated upon.

Here, Dominion falters most fully. When I say Schrader was given $35,000 to complete his film, I mean he was given that much to throw in lame, unfinished CGI special effects – Asylum-level stuff, really, enough to make it meagerly comprehensible what is happening, and no more. (Part of me suspects the myopic producers wanted Schrader’s version to look cheap, to protect their darling, vulgar Beginning. Asses.) So, there’s CGI here which wouldn’t pass muster in that ‘90s “Hercules” show. Most notable is a thoroughly out-of-place aurora borealis effect in the African night skies (not depicted here) – Schrader’s inabilities to deliver a technically capable Exorcist film become a major deficit, even as his deeper dramatic aims have kept this effort afloat previously.


Anyway, the exorcism itself is pretty underwhelming. Unlike Harlin’s, Cheche never attempts a physical attack upon Merrin, relying on a more subtle psychological attack – again, here it helps that Merrin’s personal demons re: WWII are entirely clear. “You’re a weak vessel.” Like a Satanic Ghost of Christmas Past, Cheche grants Merrin insight into what might have been that eve in Holland, had Merrin acted differently. Basically, without Merrin’s selection of those to be executed, all would have been. Maybe…it could be a demonic lie. This is somehow Cheche’s ploy to keep Merrin secular. It is unsuccessful, as are the sudden CGI locusts Cheche chooses to puke up (appropriate, the lone reference to Exorcist II: The Heretic is vomit). Merrin recites the rites with extreme ease, demon exorcised, and…That was easy!


Like all good prequels (which this arguably isn’t), Dominion ends with a tag promising the “sequel” to come which we’ve all already seen – The Exorcist. It’s more effective than The Beginning’s ending, with its promise of the demon’s unrighteous fury: “The demon is your enemy now, and he will pursue you.” That banks a bit much on reserve nostalgia for the original, but what else is new in the sequel/prequel game? And because it’s a Paul Schrader film, it has to conclude with an overt visual reference to The Searchers (not pictured).

Let’s not split hairs – or spin heads – here. Dominion is just too flat and toneless to achieve its dramatic goals. But it has clear ambitions, something Exorcist: The Beginning completely eschewed – except for monetary ambitions. Even then, Dominion doesn’t work as well as I’d like. There are strange dead ends, like a recurring dream of under-baked nightmarish imagery for Merrin, which just don’t belong. (And what was with the Northern Lights in Kenya?!) In fact, like Exorcist III, the parts of Dominion which work the worst are those parts which try the hardest to mimic The Exorcist.

Those intents for which I respect Dominion (its devotion to considering evil, playing Merrin’s faith with utter seriousness) are enough to call this the better of the two prequel attempts. There remains that niggling sense that The Exorcist never needed a prequel – let alone a remake of that prequel! Damn it, The Exorcist didn’t need any sequels! They mostly trade in watered-down imagery from the first, as not a one has had the balls to go as extreme as The Exorcist did – Is that film really so beyond decorum?! Of all the follow-ups, the likely best one – from hints I’ve seen, without actual knowledge – appears to be William Peter Blatty’s own “Legion” novel. There’s just too much cinematic baggage, with an utterly stagnant production pattern, for movie sequels to succeed.

At this point, the Exorcist property has been reworked cinematically as many ways as it can be – sequels, prequels. There’s no interquel yet, but let’s not give ‘em ideas. All that’s left is the disgusting notion of a remake (or “reboot,” if you really must) – and we got the 2000 rerelease instead, so count this universe lucky. So that would seem to be it for this property, as a franchise…though The Exorcist’s own reputation remains unsullied, earning far greater salvation and immortality as its own classic than as a mere sequel machine. “The scariest movie of all time”…that’s gotta be worth something.


Related posts:
• No. 1 The Exorcist (1973)
• No. 2 Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
• No. 3 Exorcist III (1990)
• No. 4 Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)