Tag: Alan Tudyk

Aladdin (2019)

Will Smith and Mena Massoud restage Disney’s Aladdin beat for beat. Why?

Director: Guy Ritchie

Cast: Will Smith (Genie), Mena Massoud (Aladdin), Naomi Scott (Princess Jasmine), Marwan Kenzari (Jafar), Navid Negahban (The Sultan), Nasim Pedrad (Dalia), Billy Magnussen (Prince Anders), Numan Acar (Hakim), Alan Tudyk (Iago)

Disney’s passion for converting their vast animation back catalogue into life-action cash registers continues with Aladdin. And it won’t stop after this film blockbustered its way to a huge international cash haul. Why did it do so well? Probably because it reassuringly offers you exactly the same film as the animated original, bar a few extra sub plots to beef up the runtime. I mean this. This is the same film almost completely as the first one, but without Robin Williams. Which is a bit like saying it’s a Shakespeare remake without the language.

Anyway, everyone knows the story. Evil Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) wants the powerful lamp, it’s trapped in the Cave of Wonders and only “a diamond in the rough” can get it out. Aladdin (Mena Massoud) is that diamond, and wouldn’t you know he’s in prison after sneaking into the palace to meet Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) with whom he has unknowingly fallen in love during her visit incognito onto the streets of Agrabah. Aladdin gets the lamp, but events mean he’s the guy who rubs it and gets the three wishes (and the friendship) of the Genie (Will Smith, using every inch of his personality to replace Robin Williams). 

Do people only see these films because they know exactly what they are going to get? Do the directors only make these films under tight instruction to deviate as little as possible from the animated original? What is there creatively in this sort of karaoke, where the biggest praise seems to be “it’s just like the cartoon”? I mean why not just watch the cartoon? As is invariably the case, it’s got far more wit, invention and energy. And it’s half an hour shorter.

This is one of the biggest photocopies I think they’ve done so far. I sat in the cinema genuinely puzzled and dumbfounded as to why this film exists. For much of the first hour, all the lines, the beats, the songs, some of the shots, much of the physical business – it was all the same. All of it.

It does have some new bits and pieces. Jasmine has been given a decent plotline about her dream of becoming the new Sultan being constantly restricted by her father not being able to imagine a girl ruling (she even gets a couple of new songs, which are decent in themselves but so tonally different to the rest of the film they feel crow-barred in). Jasmine also has a new handmaid who can serve as a love interest of the Genie. Iago the parrot has much of his scheming moved over to Jafar (who is made an expert pickpocket), while the film walks a confusing line between making Iago more sentient than a normal parrot, but less so than a human being. The ending has been tweaked into a chase around the streets of Agrabah to grab the lamp. But otherwise it’s basically all the same.

Guy Ritchie stamps no personality on it at all, but then that’s not what he’s been hired for. Instead he mounts the whole thing with a brash Broadway confidence. In fact that’s what the whole film feels like, a massive Broadway extravaganza that plays off the nostalgia felt towards the original by parents of the kids seeing this film. Perhaps that’s why so much is shot-for-shot the same, but at least I guess you can commend his attention to detail.

Casting wise, Naomi Scott is good as Jasmine (given by far and away the most new stuff to do compared to anyone else) and Mena Massoud does a decent job as Aladdin, although the character is as much of a bland pretty boy as he was in the original. Nasim Pedred has some very entertaining moments as the handmaid who attracts the Genie’s eye and supplies some good additional comic relief.

The real thing you want to know though is whether Will Smith is any good as the Genie. The part has been remixed for Will Smith’s skills and style as an actor (the songs have a notable different beat to them), and Smith plays it with a sense of comfy street cool, the fresh prince of the lamp. He does his absolute best here, and his charm and comic timing work as well as ever. But you watch him carefully recreate moments from the original that were flashes of Robin Williams improvisational brilliance, and your heart sinks. He never escapes from the shadow of that master of improvisation. And little moments here and there don’t stop you thinking “I bet if they could have digitally recreated Robin Williams they would have put him in here as well”. 

That’s the whole film though. Never quite enough to justify its existence. Its big, it’s pretty, it’s got some lovely song and dance bits in it, it’s all jolly good fun, there is nothing wrong with it – but it’s never, ever, ever anything more than a straight remake of a tighter, funnier, smarter film. Why does it exist? To make Disney money. And on that score it’s a huge success. And it means this is never, ever, ever going to stop.

Trumbo (2015)

Bryan Cranston is the put-upon idealist Trumbo under the scornful eye of Helen Mirren

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Bryan Cranston (Dalton Trumbo), Diane Lane (Cleo Trumbo), Helen Mirren (Hedda Hopper), Louis CK (Arlen Hird), Elle Fanning (Nikola Trumbo), John Goodman (Frank King), Michael Stuhlbarg (Edward G Robinson), Alan Tudyk (Ian McLellan Hunter), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Virgil Brooks), Dean O’Gorman (Kirk Douglas), Stephen Root (Hymie King), Roger Bart (Buddy Ross), David James Elliott (John Wayne), Christian Berkel (Otto Preminger)

Hollywood loves to make movies about itself. It particularly loves to make movies where Hollywood is seen to be working on a higher moral plane. Trumbo is a film about the Hollywood Ten – the ten major screenwriters, directors and actors in Hollywood whom the industry blacklisted in the 1940s because of their sympathy for communism. Their leading light was Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), a rich screenwriter who finds himself imprisoned and unemployable. Trumbo encourages the writers to group together and write under pseudonyms for cheap film studios – although the right-wing in Hollywood continues to persecute them. Trumbo cannot reveal his identity as a writer – even after winning two Oscars – until 1960 when Kirk Douglas gives him a credit for Spartacus.

Trumbo is a very earnest, straightforward and rather bland re-tread of a key moment in Hollywood. It’s made with very little imagination, and remixes the world of 1940s politics into something that bears more resemblance to the political situation now than it does to the time. That’s not to defend the House Committee on Un American Activities (HUAC), the Congress Committee that led the campaign against communist subversion in Hollywood. Their persecution of communists flew in the face of American ideals of free speech, and their ruin of the lives of innumerable actors, writers and directors not found to be ideological pure is appalling.

But this is a film that simplifies its politics into a world of good and bad. It also works hard to try and whitewash Hollywood. Watch this film and you would believe it was Congress that had worked overtime in order to ban certain Hollywood creatives from working. Not so: the black list was put forward by the movie studios themselves and endorsed by the various guilds. Famous actors and directors, such as Humphrey Bogart and John Huston, furiously dropped their support for the Hollywood Ten after feeling they had been deceived by the Ten about their Communist associations. The film mentions none of this of course, running with a Hollywood-vs-Congress story line and crowbarring in people like McCarthy and Nixon who had very little to do with HUAC.

The main Hollywood figures campaigning against the Black List are either faceless Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals types, or lip-smacking, practically mustachio-twirling gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (played with ludicrous OTT camp wickedness by Helen Mirren). John Wayne is the only recognisable Hollywood “legend” shown on the side of these guys – and, while he does get mocked for his non-war-record early on by Trumbo, he is quickly shown to be a moderate pushing for forgiveness for those who repent (and is noticeably absent from the villainy of the organisation later in the film) – Hollywood doesn’t want to be too harsh on one of its own.

Roach’s political simplicity also affects the actors who found themselves in an impossible position. As Michael Stuhlbarg’s Edward G Robinson points out, writers can work under a pseudonym, actors can’t. I was reminded of when Elia Kazan won an honorary Oscar and several famous Hollywood actors refused to applaud him, as Kazan had “named names” (or rather confirmed names HUAC already knew) when pulled before the committee. Robinson here is rammed into the same position, denounced as a snitch and a traitor for confirming the names of the Hollywood Ten when many of them are already in prison. As at the Oscars, I’m not sure it’s our place to judge. It’s cosy to assume “I would have told them no” but who can say if we would have or not? And can we really judge those who decided they didn’t want to go to the wall for a communist cause they didn’t believe in (as Kazan and Robinson didn’t, being more left-wing sympathisers than Stalinists like Trumbo)?

It’s another part of the film’s simplicity that Communism is not of course interrogated any further. Watch this film and the political views of Trumbo and his colleagues come across as nothing more than a more idealistic version of Obama-ism. In reality, Trumbo was a Stalinist who pushed for non-intervention in World War II until Russia was attacked by Hitler. This is not mentioned or explored in the film at all. In fact, the complexity of these idealists climbing into bed with a regime soaked red with blood that was suppressing freedom across large chunks of the globe isn’t even raised. Roach wants to tell a story about good-old-fashioned-Hollywood-democrats being persecuted by nasty right-wingers.

Away from the film’s simplicity it’s nothing special. Roach does competent work and there is the odd good scene. Trumbo himself is basically a rather selfish arsehole, who judges everyone around him and frequently ignores his put-upon family. Cranston does a decent job as Trumbo – but you can’t help but feel his generous Oscar nomination was in part a recognition for his work on Breaking Bad. Dean O’Gorman and Christian Berkel get some of the best scenes as Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger working with Trumbo on Spartacus and Exodus. Bizarrely, the film totally avoids diving into the themes of Spartacus– or exploring what Trumbo was thinking about when he wrote “I’m Spartacus”, that paen to unity from the pen of a man abandoned by everyone, surely a hugely personal line not in the original source material – and instead skirts only on the surface, ticking off events. It kinda sums the film up: a solid enough to watch, but basically forgettable, that never engages with the inner lives of the men it claims to understand.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)


The characters of Rogue One. I struggle to remember their Dingly-Dang sci-fi names.

Director: Gareth Edwards (Tony Gilroy)

Cast: Felicity Jones (Jyn Erso), Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Ben Mendelsohn (Director Krennic), Donnie Yen (Chirrut Imwe), Mads Mikkelsen (Galen Erso), Alan Tudyk (K-2SO), Riz Ahmed (Bohdi Rook), Jiang Wen (Baze Malbus), Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera), Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa), Guy Henry (Grand Moff Tarkin), Alistair Petrie (General Draven)

When Disney got hold of the complete rights for Star Wars, they were motivated by one thing above all: making a shitload of cash. In that goal, they’ve been very, very successful. Rogue One fills out (pads out) the story of how the Rebels got hold of the Death Star plans, something the original film (correctly?) reckoned could be covered in a few lines of dialogue. Anyway, for complex, muddily explained reasons, the rebels needs Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of chief designer on the Death Star Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), to rescue a pilot from a rogue general to get a message from her father. Or something. Anyway, things eventually lead to a major space battle as our heroes try to steal the plans from a giant computer database.

Rogue One is hugely popular. You’ll go a long way before you meet someone willing to say a bad word about it. It’s been hailed as a far superior dip into the franchise ocean than JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens. This is inexplicable to me. I genuinely can’t understand it. As far as I can tell, Rogue One is little more than a fair to middling action film, hugely reliant on ramming in as many references and easter eggs from previous films as it can, rather than actually doing anything new or unique with the franchise. 

For me it’s a sprawling, rather dull film with no depth or patience. The first hour is genuinely quite boring, with each over-designed location blending into the next. The whole film seems designed to require as little attention as possible: short scenes, planet to planet, each having little real impact on the next emotionally. The battles are designed and shot like things intended to be cut up into YouTube clips. No-one talks during the fights, we rarely learn anything about characters during the prolonged action – instead it’s a series of moments, straining at the leash to be cool, with personal sacrifices determined by plot requirements rather than by natural character growth. 

Watching parts of it you can enjoy the moments: a blind man taking out Stormtroopers, or Darth Vader cutting down rebels. But there is little to tie these moments together. Plot and characterisation are treated in the same chunked way – events grind to a halt so Mads Mikkelson can tell us what happens next, or Cassian can bluntly talk about how being a rebel is tough on the nerves. In the original Star Wars, plot, character and action were woven together so we learned about all three together. Here they are silos, with action the focus. It feels like a film made for YouTube, more interested in pop culture references with only the flimsiest story propping it up, designed to be spliced up online.

Darth Vader lets rip in a section that seems designed as a YouTube moment of the future

Now the lead character, Jyn Erso. I don’t understand this character. Who is she? What is it she actually wants? For the first hour or so of the film she makes no decisions at all, but does what a series of older male characters tell her to do. There is nothing in the film that allows us to get to know her. Her actions aren’t dictated by character, or even logic, she simply shuttles around the carousel of ever-changing planets whenever the plot needs her to, mouthing whatever sentiments the film needs in order to move on. The film needs her to be a disaffected criminal? She is. The film needs her to be a distraught daddy’s girl? There we go. The film needs her conversion into a rebel freedom fighter? Boom. What does she feel about this? What awakes her idealism, and converts her from criminal to self-sacrificing hero? Nobody knows, the film doesn’t care. It doesn’t help that Felicity Jones’ headgirlish primness is a total mismatch for a gritty, tough-as-nails fighter from the wrong-end-of-the-tracks.

There are many people in this film, but precious few characters. It’s quite damning that the person who makes the biggest impact isn’t a person at all but a robot – and K-2SO is basically a walking cynical punchline, a battle-ready C3PO. Diego Luna’s Cassian is so thinly sketched it’s hard to invest in him at all: the film has no interest in character development so we are bluntly told his characteristics in ham-fisted dialogue. He has a vague speech about how he’s Seen Bad Things, and that’s deemed sufficient to explain all his actions. The worst is Riz Ahmed’s pilot, whose motivations are so unaddressed he spits out some final words to supply his motivation just as he snuffs it. Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen are little more than a collection of cool sounding quirks – Blind One, and Blind One’s Friend. Can you even remember their names? 

On the plus side, Ben Mendelsohn is pretty good as an ambitious Imperial officer edging his way up the greasy pole – most of the more interesting dialogue scenes feature Death Star office politics. Mads Mikkelson mines every inch of humanity and compassion from his role. At the other end of the spectrum, an unrestrained Forest Whitaker lets rip as a plot mouthpiece, delivered in his most overripe manner. (There’s some kind of backstory to his relationship with Jyn, but the film never bothers to go into this, because that time is better spent with Whitaker spouting bland, faux-epic, lines like “Save the rebellion. Save the dream”, round mouthfuls of scenery.)

There has been a lot of discussion of the digital recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin – I’ve no real moral problem with it (lord knows, a glance at his CV tells you Cushing would probably have loved to have been in this film), and Guy Henry does a pretty good vocal recreation of Cushing. It looks a little odd the more you watch it – it’s probably going to date the film quite badly in ten years time – with more than a hint of the “uncanny valley” in Tarkin’s face. It makes sense, though, including the character in the film – and at least we get some characterisation and motivation.

Edward’s visual ability allows him to film his toy collection in a way that at least feels a bit fresh, but it’s a film made by a fanboy, more interested in getting as many references from the past in than creating something new. Edwards rams in everything from Blue Milk to AT-ATs. Now there is a certain pleasure in spotting this stuff, don’t get me wrong. But will it reward future viewing? The final space battle sequence might as well be a child filming smashing his toys together.

My point is, remove all the vast amount of Star Wars ephemera from this, and what do you have left? Once you’ve exhausted the pleasure of seeing that bloke Obi-Wan cuts the arm off in the bar in the first film, or you’re no longer excited by admiring the recreation of the Rebels’ base, what is there left in the film for you to enjoy? Imagine this was a stand-alone story – what would really make you come back? It’s so shrunken and dependent on Star Wars that it stops almost exactly 5 minutes before Star Wars starts – and, I would argue, means the start of that film makes much less sense.

That’s the final problem – for all the talk of Star Wars being a huge universe, this film only stresses how small it is, how reliant it is on events that have already happened or spinning its plotlines off from references in other films. No matter where we go, the same people keep popping up, the same beats keep getting hit. The film is daring, I suppose, in killing off nearly the entire cast over the course of the film – but these characters have been so poorly developed that their deaths lack any impact. It’s a film overwhelmingly fascinated by surface and fan-wanking over the old films, than showing anything new. 

Now I know you could level some of these charges against The Force Awakens – but that was a film with engaging characters and fresh, enjoyable dialogue that introduced a few new concepts for the films to go forward with. Within moments of their first appearances, you knew what kind of person Rey was (bold, determined, wistful, searching) or Finn (conscience-stricken, inventive, desperate) – hell the dinky robot had more character than the cardboard cutouts here. The internet obsession with shipping Finn & Po shows how much these characters came alive. Can you imagine anyone spinning out theories of backstory or subtext about any of the people here? No, because they’re not people, they’re plot devices. 

If a truly inventive director had got hold of this material, we could have ended up with something that felt really fresh. Instead we have something that is basically juvenile and dim: front row seats at a child’s game that jumps from set-piece to set-piece with no interest in weaving them together. Possibly only the 6th best Star Wars film.