There are certain things about my personal tastes in movies that means no one will ever take me seriously. For instance, I enjoyed "Tron: Ares" way more than "Predator: Badlands," even though I know full well that the "Predator" movie is better than the "Tron" movie. Aside from Jared Leto, everything about the aesthetics and sensibilities of "Tron: Ares" appeals to me, and I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things I don't like. "Predator: Badlands," despite some very creative and daring choices, fundamentally rubbed me the wrong way. And I think it's worth spending a post looking into this in more detail.
First, "Predator: Badlands" represents a big step forward in Dan Trachtenberg's further rehabilitation of the "Predator" franchise. Now we have a movie where a Predator, or more accurately an alien Yautja, is the protagonist. Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), the runt of his clan, goes to the hostile planet Genna in order to hunt a legendary beast called the Kalisk. He meets a damaged synthetic being named Thia (Elle Fanning) with a bubbly personality, who convinces him that working together will help him accomplish his goals more quickly. They also pick up a native Genna creature, eventually named Bud (Rohinal Narayan), who helps them survive the difficult environment. However, the biggest threat they'll face turns out to be from a completely unexpected source.
Trachtenberg does a lot of important worldbuilding in "Badlands," and the most notable decision was taking advantage of the franchise's connections to the "Alien" universe to borrow a few concepts like synthetics and evil megacorporations. The plotting, however, strikes me as out of character for "Predator." This is the first PG-13 "Predator" film after all the previous ones were rated R, including "Prey." The carnage is all alien on alien, or alien on synthetic, which ultimately means that it's all CGI beasties doing the fighting. The action's not very intense in any case, with little blood or guts to speak of, and the found family storyline is downright cutesy at times. This is all executed very well, with a lot of strong storytelling choices and nice character moments, but I had a tough time staying invested in what was going on. Dek was a little too generic as a hero, and I never felt like he was in much danger. Thia is already missing her legs from the outset, so no real stakes there either.
I expect that mismatched expectations were a major reason for my disinterest. I went into "Predator: Badlands" expecting a much grittier action film than what I got, which is essentially a family-friendly adventure movie more in line with the recent "Godzilla" and "Jurassic World" sequels. This isn't a bad thing, and I think the franchise shows a ton of promise, especially since Trachtenberg has shaken up the status quo and introduced all these new variables to the old "Predator" formula. However, for the first film where the formidable alien killer is supposed to be the one at a disadvantage in the deadly hunt, I can't help but feel disappointed at the violence and mayhem have been recalibrated a few notches lower than I was led to believe.
Expectations are also probably why "Tron: Ares" managed to surprise me. The buzz around this movie has been terrible, largely due to known creep Jared Leto having landed the lead role and reportedly being instrumental in why the movie exists in the first place. Directed by Joachim Rønning, "Ares" skips ahead many years after "Tron: Legacy" to a future where Kevin Flynn's company ENCOM is now run by Eve Kim (Greta Lee), and its rival Dillinger Systems is headed by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), the grandson of Flynn's old rival. Technology has been developed to materialize anything from the Grid into the real world, but only for twenty-nine minutes until disintegration. A race is on to find the secret "permanence code" that will remove this time limit. Dillinger has created several programs, including Ares (Leto) and Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) to act as his agents against ENCOM, in both the real and digital worlds.
The trouble with "Tron" has always been that it's a fantasy of how computers might function if they worked by child logic, with anthropomorphized programs as major characters, and neon-lit cyberpunk environments representing the digital world. The 80s gaming-influenced aesthetics and design are so cool to look at, but there's no rhyme or reason as to how the physics of the impossible characters and weaponry behave. So, you seriously have to suspend disbelief to enjoy what it's doing. "Tron: Ares" decides to create its setpieces around what would happen if you brought the old lightcycles, recognizers, and other game creations from the original "Tron" into the real world, and let them wreak havoc on a major city. And to the filmmakers' credit these sequences look fantastic, making great use of the familiar imagery, and coming up with new variations on classic concepts. There's also none of the dodgy digital de-aging that plagued "Tron: Legacy," and all the effects work looks gorgeous.
When it comes to the story and characters, however, it's all terribly flimsy stuff. There's a lot of rushing around, chasing Macguffins, and typically terrible Hollywood depictions of hacking. Leto's Ares is a boring self-insert, but inoffensive, and I found it easy to ignore him. Since the rest of the cast includes Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Even Peters as the villain, and Gillian Anderson as his Thatcher-esque mother, this wasn't difficult at all. Okay, so Greta Lee having to do a lot of running around and screaming is obviously not a great use of her talents, but I actually buy her as a tech giant CEO. I also like Peters and Anderson as the Dillingers with their toxic family dynamic. When Jeff Bridges inevitably shows up for his cameo, it's handled very well. The movie gets a lot of the little stuff right, and deploys some good fixes, despite getting so much big stuff wrong.
As is traditional, the best part of "Tron: Ares" is the score, provided by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as Nine Inch Nails, their first official project in a long while. As a formerly edgy child of the '90s, Nine Inch Nails remains pure sonic catnip for me, and I'll appreciate the movie forever just for being the reason that this soundtrack happened. And I know that's terrible, and I really can't bring myself to care.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment