Tag: Connie Nielsen

Gladiator II (2024)

Gonzo sequel sits firmly in the shadow of the illustrious predecessor it tries to imitate time and time again

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Paul Mescal (Lucius Verus/Hanno), Pedro Pascal (Marcus Acacius), Connie Nielsen (Lucilla), Denzel Washington (Macrinus), Joseph Quinn (Emperor Geta), Fred Hechinger (Emperor Caracalla), Derek Jacobi (Gracchus), Tim McInnerny (Thraex), Alexander Karim (Ravi), Peter Mensah (Jubartha), Lior Raz (Viggo), Matt Lucas (Master of Ceremonies), Rory McGann (Tegula)

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Gladiator II. In many ways, it’s a big, silly, perfectly inoffensive swords-and-sandals flick, with the violence dialled up. But as a sequel to Gladiator – a film that married scale with a hugely relatable emotional story about one man’s quest to avenge his family and unite with them in the afterlife – it’s not even in the same league. Gladiator II’s biggest problem is that when it tries to do something different from Gladiator it usually fails and when it hues close to the original, it only reminds you what a good film that was and how you’d honestly much rather watch that again.

Gladiator II picks up 16 years after the first film. The nephew of the late Commodus, Lucius (Paul Mescal) lives with his wife in the last free city of Numidia. That ends when the city is taken by a Roman army, under the command of General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and Lucius’ wife is killed. Lucius, taken as a slave, of course arrives in Rome and becomes a gladiator in the service of the ambitious, unscrupulous wheeler-dealer Macrinus (Denzel Washington). Macrinus has schemes to exploit the fragile Empire, ruled by brothers Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger). General Acacius and his wife, Lucius’ mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), also plan to overthrow the Emperors. And Lucius also plans revenge against Acacius and all of Rome in that order.

Gladiator II is awash in echoes from the first film. It gives Lucius mostly the same motivation as Maximus. It opens with a big Roman battle. It rushes to get Lucius back into the Colosseum, via a few reluctant bouts in the provinces. He is accepted as a leader by the other gladiators, marshalling them like troops. Connie Nielsen gets the same plot and versions of the same “visiting the hero in prison” scenes. There is a lot of talk about the power of the mob. Hands are frequently rubbed in the dirt. The famous quotes (“Strength and honour!”) are paraded out. Lucius cos-plays as Maximus for the film’s big ending. The final scene shows a survivor searching in the dirt of the Colosseum. Just when you think the film has at least not shown us a shot of a hand stroking some wheat… Gladiator II even chucks that in. It’s a big bit of nostalgia IP dressed up as homage.

But Gladiator II only seems to understand the surface elements of what made the first film successful – not the heart. Gladiator was a very simple story: it was a film about a man who deeply loved his late wife and son, determined to carry on living until he avenged them. Sure there were plot mechanics about the future of the Empire and “The Dream of Rome” – but this was window dressing to a plot focused on very real emotions, about caring for your loved ones. Maximus was carefully crafted as an honourable, decent man, a reluctant warrior who fought because he must. This narrative simplicity is completely lost in Gladiator II, a film so awash with subplots, schemes and shady deals that it becomes hard to follow – and eventually to care – who is on whose side and why.

There are at least four competing schemes at play in Gladiator II, each fighting for screen time like rats in a trap. It’s at best a bloody stalemate. The character who emerges best from all this is Macrinus. Based on the first Moorish Emperor of Rome (a fascinating, if short-lived, figure) he’s played with a meme-courting bombast by a clearly having-fun Denzel Washington (his rolling pronunciation of the word “Pol-leetic-sah!” designed to launch a thousand GIFs). A flamboyant figure, he effectively mixes elements of both Proximo and Commodus from the first film with the larger-than-life amorality of Washington’s Alonzo Harris (if Harris was a slightly camp Roman aristocrat). Most of the film’s enjoyable moments revolve around his increasingly brazen manipulations, first of a corrupt senator (an enjoyably sleazy Tim McInnerny) then the two deranged and incompetent Emperors. Every other plotline eventually falls into the shadow of Washington’s scenery-chewing excess (by the time Macrinus is using a character’s severed head as a prop to intimidate the Senate, you realise you just have to go with it).

Gladiator II though needs to split its focus between these multitudinal plot lines, to the detriment of all of them. The emperors fiddle and feud while Rome burns. Various soldiers and senators line-up familiar plots to restore the republic. Lucius, the character we are supposed to relate to the most, is the one who starts to lose our interest. Paul Mescal does an effective job as this growling, surly figure, even if he doesn’t quite have the force to pull off his final late-act speeches. But the film rushes his elevation to leader among the gladiators so quickly it feels unearned – as well as stuffing the film with a multitude of sidekicks so anonymous they blur into one, so much so you won’t even notice (or care) when they start to bite the big one.

On top of which, Lucius zigs-zags through motivations with all the logic of a charging rhino. He goes from wishing he was dead, to fighting desperately for life, to vowing revenge on one man to suddenly changing his mind, to leading a proto-Spartacus inspired revolt to ditching the idea, to denouncing his mother and birth-right until suddenly he doesn’t, to half-heartedly resenting Macrinus to announcing he only lives to see him die, from rejecting Maximus to cos-playing him – how are we supposed to keep up with this? The fact he’s a man of very little words doesn’t help.

When he does speak it’s never particularly punchy. Scarpia’s workman-like dialogue gives him a clumsy rallying cry – “Where we are not where death is. Where death is, we are not” – which manages to be both leaden word-soup and spectacularly unrallying. The film recognises this by having Lucius ditch it late on for a rousing cry of – what else? – “Strength and honour”. Scarpia’s script, along with its muddy plotting, is full of deathly, forgettable pap; as well as riffing so determinedly on Gladiator that you’d think not a day went by in the bowels of the Colosseum without a wistful discussion about Maximus. Gladiator II also manages to pee across several ideas at the heart of Gladiator, from the potential implication that Maximus may have cheated on his wife to father Lucius (even Russell Crowe questioned that one) to the idea that at the end of the film they buried him in the Colosseum, which seems like the last thing they’d do.

In fact, I started to think that Ridley Scott’s main motivation for doing Gladiator II was to chuck in all the gonzo ideas he couldn’t make work (or find the budget for) in the first film. A fight with a mad rhino. A flooded arena full of ships (with added sharks – how these were caught and conveyed in-land to the arena just doesn’t even bear thinking about). Lucius and his fellow prisoners take on man-eating poorly-CGI’d baboons (Lucius’ position as leader largely stems from him biting one of these beasts before strangling it to death). Outside the arena, heads, hands and arms are hacked off and Scott effectively opens the film with a re-stage of the battle of Jerusalem from Kingdom of Heaven – only the siege towers this time are on ships charging the sea walls.

All of this is pretty well done, don’t get me wrong. Scott can do historical epic on screen like few others. But Gladiator II actually suggests that where he lucked out on Gladiator was keeping it simple with a strong story. Gladiator II feels something where attention has been lavished on the scale and the bombast, but that plot and character have been rushed. The film is about 15 minutes shorter than Gladiator while telling a story twice as complex, a mixture that doesn’t work well. In fact, the main feeling I had coming out from it was that I didn’t need to see it again and if I could re-watch Gladiator and pretend this didn’t exist at all, I might be a happier man. Gladiator II lives so absolutely in the shadow of its predecessor, that its flaws become more apparent through the constant invitation the viewer is made to compare and contrast them. This one won’t echo to 2030 let alone eternity.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Gal Gadot is delightful again in superior sequel Wonder Woman 1984

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Kristen Wiig (Dr Barbara Minerva), Pedro Pascal (Maxwell Lord), Robin Wright (Antiope), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), Kristogger Polaha (Handsome man), Lucian Perez (Alistair), Ravi Patel (Baba Jide), Oliver Cotton (Simon Stagg), Stuart Milligan (President of the United States)

Wonder Woman in 2017 received the sort of rave reviews superhero films dream of. It was refreshing to have an action flick with a woman as the driving force. But Wonder Woman was, aside from that, very much a conventional superhero origins movie, with little truly original about it. Perhaps memories of it as being more revolutionary than it in fact was, lie behind the more hesitant critical reaction to Wonder Woman 1984, in many ways a more entertaining and smarter film.

In 1984, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) works at the Smithsonian, and fights for justice in her spare time as Wonder Woman (it’s not clear how she this striking woman manages to keep her identity secret bar smashing a few CCTV cameras). However, she leads a private and lonely life, still mourning the death of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) during the First World War. Her confidence is admired by her ditzy and nervous (and clearly smitten!) colleague Dr Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who longs to be like her. An exhibit arrives at the Smithsonian – a mysterious stone that legend has it will grant any wish that the person holding it asks. Diana, in a whimsical moment, wishes for the return of Steve – and is shocked when a man claiming to be Steve appears in her life. Dr Minerva meanwhile wishes to be like Diana in every way – little knowing her secret powers. But the stone has other people interested in it: it could be just the tool that ambitious, but failed, entrepreneur Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) needs to turn his life around. But is there a cost for all this gift giving? What will the stone take in return – and can humanity survive a world where the slightest wish could come true?

Wonder Woman 1984 has a clear theme: taking the easy path might help you to get what you want, but an unearned victory is never a true one. It’s a concept introduced from the start, in an opening flashback section where a child Diana takes a shortcut in an Olympics race, and is denied victory by her mentor Antiope (Robin Wright in a welcome cameo). Antiope, in the way of all mentors, reminds her we learn lessons from loss and defeat, and short-cutting around failure never pays off in the end. It’s a clear message that being granted your wishes without working for them is empty.

And of course there is a cost! The stone takes from you the thing you value most, in exchange for what you want the most. In Diana’s case – having made her wish unknowingly, in a single moment of whimsy – what she loses is her strength, the thing that makes possible the thing she values most: her ability to change the world for the better. In turn, when Barbara wishes to be like Diana, the stone takes from her the very humanity that made her such an endearing and sweet person.

These sort of exchanges are not new to anyone who has ever read a fairy tale. But they are told here with refreshing honesty, not to mention a certain level of charm. Above all, this simple morality tale works because we are invested in the characters. Even without the memory of their relationship from the first film, Gadot and Pine are so likeable and charming in this film (Pine in particular is a delight, his eyes filling with wonder at the modern era – from a childish glee at escalators to tear-filled awe at the space programme) that, even though you know from the start what they are doing is “wrong” (after all Steve is inhabiting another man’s body, and every audience eventually the hero needs to do the right thing and give that body back), you still feel their joy at being together and Diana’s anguish at the thought of giving up the only (selfish) thing she’s ever wanted.

The same is true for the other two characters affected by the stone. Although nominally villains, both Wiig and Pascal play characters who, if anything, are deeply-flawed anti-heroes. Wiig is absolutely endearing as the gentle and shy Barbara, so much so it’s heartbreaking to see her freeze up as the film progresses. Pascal is hilariously overblown as a wannabe Gordon Gekko, but his relationship with his son is nicely drawn and his character is tinged with an underlying insecurity. Wonder Woman 1984 is refreshing in that it doesn’t present heroes and villains, but ordinary people needing to find the courage to reject their dreams for reality. Some do, others don’t.

It’s not a perfect film by a long stretch. As with the previous film, a final act fight scene lacks humanity and is dull. The film is probably fifteen minutes overlong. The various action scenes are well staged, but lack freshness. Some of the humour doesn’t always land. It’s hard not to snigger at a late act revelation of a new power for Wonder Woman. And while the film thankfully avoids the crassness of the first and its trenches setting, a photo of Wonder Woman helping to liberate concentration camps feels horrendously out of place (it’s meant to show her goodness, but I just wondered why on earth did she wait so long to do anything about the Holocaust?).

But the bad is outweighed by the good in a genuinely entertaining and charming movie whose freshness and lightness exceeds the original. Gal Gadot is still wonderful in the lead role – determined but sweet – Chris Pine does some of his best work and Wiig and Pascal are very good. I’d confidently say this is a better film than the first, a richer character study inspired by fairy tales, that really gets to the emotional heart of its lead character. I may be alone in that, but that’s what I think.

Gladiator (2000)

Russell Crowe dominates in Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Russell Crowe (Maximus Decimus Meridius), Joaquin Phoenix (Emperor Commodus), Connie Nielsen (Lucilla), Richard Harris (Emperor Marcus Aurelius), Oliver Reed (Proximo), Derek Jacobi (Senator Gracchus), Djimon Hounsou (Juba), Tomas Arana (General Quintus), Spencer Treat Clark (Lucius Verus), David Schofield (Senator Falco), John Shrapnel (Senator Gaius), Rolf Moller (Hagen), Tommy Flanagan (Cicero), David Hemmings (Cassius)

When Gladiator hit the big-screen the swords-and-sandals epic genre was dead. A relic of the early days of technicolour Hollywood, where the widest possible screens were designed to tempt audiences away from the television and into the movie theatre, Roman epics were often seen as stodgy things, usually carrying heavy-handed Christian themes while gleefully throwing as much of the decadence of the empire on the screen as possible. Gladiator changed all that, bringing an emotional and psychological complexity to the genre, as well as a rollicking good story and some brilliant film-making. An Oscar for Best Picture confirmed the genre was back.

In 180 AD General Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) commands the final battle of the Roman forces to conquer the German tribes and bring them under the control of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). The humble, dutiful and principled Maximus is a natural leader and the son Marcus Aurelius wishes he had, rather than the son he has the insecure and ambitious Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). When the Emperor decides that Maximus not Commodus will succeed him – with the brief to restore the Roman republic – Commodus murders the Emperor. When Maximus refuses to give Commodus his loyalty, the new Emperor sentences him and his family to death. Maximus escapes, although he is badly injured, but arrives too late at his home to save his wife and son from death. Collapsing, the General is taken by slavers, healed by fellow slave Juba (Djimon Hounsou) and sold to the North African Gladiator school of Proximo (Oliver Reed). Maximus will play the Gladiator game – because he longs to have his revenge on Commodus.

Gladiator is superbly directed by Ridley Scott, who perfectly mixes the epic scale of the drama with the intimate, human story at its heart. The film looks absolutely fantastic from start to finish, with the superb visuals backed by a breathtakingly beautiful score by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard that skilfully uses refrains and themes to instantly identify the core emotions in the audiences mind. These themes are associated with emotional beats that immediately plug us into the interior thoughts and emotions of the characters.

It works because of the emotional truth at its heart. Basically it’s a love story between a man and his dead wife, and isn’t afraid to explore the depths of love that we feel for those closest to us and our pain of their loss. Maximus’ wife and child are represented in silent flashbacks and by two small icons Maximus carries with him on campaign. When, late in the film, he is reunited with these items his raw, tearfully quiet joy carry as much force as any real reunion would do. What drives the film is less a drive for revenge – although there is no doubt this is a motivator for Maximus – but of a continued sense that he must fulfil all his duties (in this case restore the Republic as his surrogate father wished) before he can return to his wife and son (i.e. die).

It’s that which makes the film so easy to invest in emotionally, and which makes Maximus (a hardened killer) so easy to relate to. If he was just a raging man out for revenge, the film would carry a leaner harsher look. But he is instead a man motivated by love, who yearns to be with his family again. Mortality hangs over the entire film – the first shot of the film, famously of the hands in the wheat, have buried themselves in the consciousness because we can all relate to a man who longs to lay down his labours and be with the people he loves. Christianity doesn’t appear too much in Gladiator (unlike older Hollywood Roman epics) but faith is there in spades. And Maximus will do nothing that will jeopardise a reunion with his family in heaven.

This deeply involving story of a man who remains faithful to the memory of his wife – and Scott wisely removed any love plot with Lucilla, which would have felt like cheatingso strongly does the film build Maximus’ love for his wife – that audiences are happy to go with the film through all the violence that follows. Gladiator hit the sweetspot of having something for everyone, from emotion to action. And the action is brilliant. The opening battles is hugely impressive, from its scale to the imaginative interpretation of Roman tactics. It’s trumped by the more raw and ragged action that comes in the Gladiatorial ring, as Maximus transfers his brutal efficiency at war into the ring for the amusement of the crowd.

Like all Gladiator films and series the film successfully has its cake and eats it – so we get a sense of the horror of people fighting to the death for our entertainment, while also heartily enjoying watching our heroes kick ass. The sequence that uses this most effectively, as Proximo’s outmatched Gladiators follow Maximus’ strategic experience and military training to defeat a group of deadly chariot fighters, would-be a stand out in any movie.

The film further works due to the assured brilliance of the Oscar-winning Russell Crowe in the lead role. Crowe exudes natural authority as a general – he genuinely feels like the sort of man that first his soldiers and then his fellow Gladiators will follow to the bitter end. Crowe also dives deep into the soulful sadness at the heart of Maximus, the romantic longing and the searing pain of the betrayal and murder of his family. It’s a performance of immense, small-scale intimacy that also never once gets over-shadowed by the huge spectacle around him. I’m not sure many other actors could have pulled it off.

But the whole cast is extremely strong, Scott encouraging great work across the board. Joaquin Phoenix in particular takes the villain role to a bravely unusual place. His Commodus, far from a sneering Caligula, is in fact a weak, anxious, jealous even strangely pitiable man, so insecure and riven with envy for others that he becomes twisted by it. But we never lose a sense of the humanity at his heart, the sense of a little boy lost, scared by the world around him. It makes sense the Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla – walking a difficult line as a character who has to play both sides – could both fear and hate him but still love the fragile little brother she still senses in him.

Scott’s trusting of experienced pros – many you feel hungry for an opportunity like this – is clear throughout the whole cast. Richard Harris was pulled out of a career slump and reinvented here as an elder statesman, with a wry, playful and eventually moving performance as Marcus Aurelius. Scott’s biggest risk was pulling Oliver Reed from a life better known for drinking bouts to play Proximo. Playing his best role for almost thirty years, Reed reminded us all for one last time that as well as a chat-show joke he was also a powerful and dominant performer, his Proximo a snarling scene stealer. Reed’s death – his final scenes completed with special effects – made this a better tribute than he could have ever imagined.

There are few feet placed wrong in Gladiator. As an action spectacular it’s faultless, but this works because of the truth and love at its heart. It creates an epic that is emotionally involving as it is exciting to watch. The reconstruction of Rome is hugely impressive and Scott paces the film perfectly, letting its force grow along. You never once feel thrown by its scope, and so completely does it wrap you up that, as it becomes more operatic in the final act, the film is never at risk of losing you. It deserves to be remembered with the best of the Hollywood epics.

Wonder Woman (2017)

Gal Gadot prepares to save the world as Wonder Woman

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Gal Gadot (Diana), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Robin Wright (Antiope), Danny Huston (General Erich Ludendorff), David Thewlis (Sir Patrick Morgan), Connie Nielsen (Hippolyta), Elena Anaya (Isabel Maru), Lucy Davis (Etta Candy), Saïd Taghmaouri (Sameer), Ewen Bremner (Charlie), Eugene Brave Rock (Chief Napi)

The DC universe has largely been a feeble attempt to parrot the success of Marvel, but without the latter’s charm or sense of fun. Each film has been a crushingly, overwhelmingly, teenage-boy focused series of grim super-bashing. So it’s a refreshing change that for their fourth film we get something different: lighter, funnier, warmer and focused on women rather than men.

On a hidden island, the Amazons live in hiding, waiting for the day they will return to save humanity from the villainous fallen god Ares. Diana (Gal Gadot) is the daughter of Hippolyta (Connie Nielson) queen of the Amazons, trained by Antiope (Robin Wright) into becoming their greatest warrior. Their timeless world is shattered in 1918, when American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashlands his plane on the island – and explains the world is torn apart by war. Convinced this is Ares’ influence, Diana leaves the island with Steve – and finds herself thrown into a world she scarcely understands, with only her faith in the goodness of mankind to sustain her.

Wonder Woman is a change of pace from previous DC filmes – largely because it is pretty good. For the first time in this struggling universe, we have a bit of lightness and humour, and some engaging central characters. Which, considering the dark grimness of the previous entries is saying something. It’s bright, feels like a comic book (in a good way), has a decent story arc and, most importantly, you care. Is it the best comic book movie ever made? Of course not, but it’s a damn solid effort.

A lot of this is due to Gal Gadot being such an endearing lead. She gives Diana a perfect blend of serene, super-powered action goddess and naïve, charming lost-out-of-time sweetness. So one minute she can cooing over the first baby she’s ever seen, the next she can be laying out baddies in a scuffle. Her unquestioning faith in the fundamental goodness of people makes her innocence very winning. In fact, her secret weapon is empathy, a quality the film really embraces. Gadot’s skill is in keeping such unremitting goodness and positivity hugely loveable. She is terrific.

The film deals with her head-turning beauty with a witty affection (“You put specs on her and she’s suddenly not the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?” Etta comments on one particularly feeble disguise option Steve suggests). In fact, the romance between Diana and Steve (Chris Pine similarly engaging as an “above average” man head over heels in love) is really well drawn – he clearly adores her, while she has a shy, almost teenage crush which blossoms over time into a genuine affection. It’s a very innocent and heart-warming romance, that plays out extremely well.

Needless to say as well, the film makes a fine counter-balance to the leering cameras you see in other films. Diana’s unmatchable competence is immediately recognised by Steve: while Steve understands the world, Diana is very much the hero, for all her fish-out-of-water naïveté. The film holds off a reveal of the costume for a long time – but when it is, it’s not a sexualised moment, but one of awe. The opening section of the movie, with its Amazonian islanders, also allows plenty of ass-kicking to be given to the women (Robin Wright is especially terrific as an Amazonian general – she should get her own Taken style action series).

Wonder Woman is not perfect. Structurally it’s pretty similar to other origin stories. Much of the backstory makes little sense, while the powers (or not) of the Amazonians in comparison with Diana are poorly explained. Away from the charm of the lead characters, nothing feels particularly new – none of the action sequences feel unique, and are shot with competence rather than inspiration. The final battle briefly looks like it might do something different, before it becomes an all too familiar CGI bashing.

I’m also not sure about setting the film in the First World War. Seeing Diana lead a successful charge through the trenches where real people died in their thousands, somehow doesn’t sit quite right. It’s uncomfortable to watch a cartoon hero walking across no man’s land into gunfire, just as thousands of real people had to, but without super-powers to make it a moment of awesome cool. They just died; it wasn’t the setting for an action sequence, oh a moment of “wow she’s cool”.

I’m not sure about the film’s use of the grim trenches of the First World War for kick-ass action

Unlike the Second World War (where at least we know the SS were completely despicable) its portrayal of German soldiers as mostly faceless villains feels unjust – these were largely just ordinary people in a horrendous situation. Making Luddendorf a psychotic, lunatic also feels uncomfortable – he was real. Would it have been so difficult to make up a General von Baddie? (It doesn’t help that Danny Huston gives a truly abysmal performance of over-the-top hamminess). This is an area where Captain America handled its setting much better – the film may have been set in a real war, but the villains are specifically Hydra soldiers, a made-up army of made-up people who had consciously sworn allegiance to Evil. The First World War was a complex tragedy in shades of grey – presenting it as a good vs evil, with the Germans eager to embrace a horrifying nerve gas, just doesn’t feel right.

The strengths of the film are away from the action, and I think that’s why it has formed a bond with people. You genuinely care and root for Diana and Steve. It’s got wit and humour and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. When the action really kicks off the film isn’t anything special, but before then it has its moments: a charming sequence where Diana tries on (and breaks with various fighting moves) female costumes of the 1910s; a beautiful Renaissance-painting style flashback to the backstory of how the gods fell; the early fumbling scenes of romantic interest between Diana and Steve. It’s where the heart of the film is.

In fact that’s what the film is really about (and what really makes it work) – the heart at the centre. It gets a little bit lost in all the booms and bombast of the second half, but there is more than enough of it in the first half to carry it through. When the film is tightly focused you can really feel it coming to life. The more of that the better. It’s also a breath of fresh air for presenting such a strong female lead, whom the men are defined by their relationship to (rather than vice versa). It’s fun and it’s heart-warming. Its old ideas presented from a fresh perspective