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Deadpool

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Movie Reviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ant-Man, Batman, Big Hero 6, Cinema, Colossus, Deadpool, Ed Skrein, Film, Gotham, Green Lantern, Guardians of the Galaxy, Homeland, Marvel, Morena Baccarin, Movie Review, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Ryan Reynolds, Silicon Valley, Spiderman, Superhero Movie, Superheroes, T. J. Miller, The Joker, V, Valentines Day, Violence, Wade Wilson, Wolverine, X-Men, X-Men Origins

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You’re probably thinking ‘this is a superhero movie, but that guy in the suit just turned that other guy into a fucking kebab’. Well, I may be super, but I’m no hero.

Deadpool isn’t your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman; he’s rude, crude, and excessively violent – he’s more like The Joker than Batman, with the sense of humour to match. A mercenary turned masked vigilante out for revenge, Pool enjoys hacking down bad guys in broad daylight and he does it with style, front-flipping and dick-punching his way to many a fanboy’s heart. If you thought that “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Ant-Man” were risky properties to bring to the big screen then you’ll probably want to have your eyes tested after seeing this film – it’s like nothing you’ve seen before – but “Deadpool” is actually really damn good, mainly because it unflinchingly sticks to the nature of the character in the comics.

“Deadpool” is a superhero movie, even though the titular character doesn’t have much of an affinity for being heroic, so the story is quite formulaic in nature. It chronicles the way that Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) goes from being a cancer-riddled fist-for-hire to a crime-fighting superhuman, with all the bells and whistles you’d expect in between. There’s the comic relief, the villain inexplicably tied up in the hero’s backstory, and the sidekicks taken from another property to suggest a potential movie tie-in… so what separates “Deadpool” from every other film of this ilk?

Well, for a start, “Deadpool” isn’t trying to change the world with its plot; of all the films you’ll see this year this one is probably the most self-aware – the writers know full well that they’re telling an origin story and that’s very intentional. They want the plot to mirror the stereotypical superhero flick that you see two or three versions of each year, because in doing so they can highlight the eccentricity of their main character. Furthermore, the origin story is cleverly interwoven with action sequences and told in a disjointed stop-start manner, which means that the movie doesn’t feel as though it’s taking you on a linear journey from man to hero.

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via hellogiggles.com

By taking the audience on a journey through a typical superhero story the writers are able to propel Deadpool’s unique properties forward, most significantly the way in which he breaks the fourth-wall to self-deprecate and crack wise. This is an avenue which is exploited regularly and to great effect, as there are a plethora of recent superhero movies to scrutinise, some of which are on Ryan Reynolds’ filmography.

“X-Men Origins : Wolverine” and “Green Lantern” are debatably two of the worst superhero movies of all time, so it’s very easy for Reynolds to pick holes in them as Deadpool whilst simultaneously gaining respectability as a man who is aware of his mistakes and able to see the funny side of them. In “Origins” Reynolds actually plays a bastardised version of this film’s titular character, which makes some of the meta-humour in this script all the more endearing – at one point Wade Wilson is seen holding a miniature figurine of the “Origins” Deadpool, and at another he jokes about having his mouth sewn shut, something which genuinely happened in the aforementioned movie.

The sticking point for many critics will inevitably be the gratuitous violence and vulgar sense of humour which “Deadpool” proudly shoves into the audience’s face, like a slice of toast covered in marmite. The writers and the director know that not everyone is going to like it, but they’d rather you hate the film than leave their target demographic with the sour taste of dry bread in their mouths. Is the humour in “Deadpool” occasionally juvenile? Yes. Is the violence excessive and constant? You’d better bloody believe it! But do I think that’s a problem? Hell no.

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via youtube.com

In my opinion it would be a complete disservice not only to the character but to the fans if this film had been anything other than it is – the people who were excited to see this movie in the first place wanted to do so because they love the character just the way he is, and they wanted to see him doing what he does best; for better or worse that’s exactly what they got. If certain critics don’t enjoy this movie then that is their right – it definitely isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea – but I think that there’s a lot to be said for a film that takes no prisoners and attempts to adapt material in a faithful way. I’d rather filmmakers alienate millions of potential passive cinemagoers for the sake of a hardcore existing fan base than serve the former by toning down their material, because at the end of the day it’s that fan base that made the movie a possibility to begin with!

Having warned at length that this movie isn’t for everyone, I should probably stress that there is actually a lot to like about it that doesn’t depend on a prior knowledge of the character or an appreciation of the superhero genre. Nobody can deny that the action in this film is well choreographed and visually impressive, as time is slowed down and sped up to highlight the fact that Deadpool really can kick ass. There’s a lot of gunplay and swordplay on show, as well as some pretty cool acrobatic stunts to vary things up, so if you’re a lover of action movies this might appeal to you despite its superhero premise.

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via foxmovies.com

Additionally, all the performances are spot on, and it’s great to see actors like T. J. Miller (“Silicon Valley” & “Big Hero 6”) and Morena Baccarin (“V”, “Homeland” & “Gotham”) on the big screen. Ryan Reynolds shows that he’s still a hilarious comedic actor, if last year’s “The Voices” didn’t already convince you of that; his timing is perfect and his understanding of the character is clear for all to see – you can really tell that he’s having fun with his lines and this translates to the audience, making every joke that bit more effective. This, along with his previously mentioned filmography, makes him an impeccable choice to play Deadpool.

My only qualm with the movie is the villain, Francis/Ajax (Ed Skrein), because despite the fact that he had a fair amount of screen time and was integral to Deadpool’s backstory, he never felt fully-realised. He was hateable enough, but I feel that this was mainly due to the fact that he was doing bad things to a character that is inherently likeable – say what you want about Deadpool, but Wade Wilson is a man desperately trying to survive terminal cancer in order to spend more time with his fiancé; it’s hard to dislike a guy like that. Nevertheless, I don’t feel that this is a massive issue with the film, because having villains which aren’t particularly memorable is a common problem for this type of movie, and in this case it was probably beneficial to put the focus squarely on Deadpool given that he is such an enigmatic character.

On the whole “Deadpool” is a fantastic film with a lot of character; it’s funny, a little bit crazy, and utterly entertaining. Deadpool as a character is as well-realised as you could possibly hope for in today’s movie landscape, and his backstory is interesting if not a little bit familiar, so I have very little to complain about.

9.5/10

Interstellar

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Movie Reviews

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Anne Hathaway, Batman, Batman Begins, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Cinema, Dallas Buyers Club, Film, Following, Gotham, Gravity, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hans Zimmer, Inception, Insomnia, Interstellar, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Man Of Steel, Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Memento, Michael Caine, Movie Review, Space, Star Trek, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, The Illusionist, The Prestige, True Detective

Interstellar

“Interstellar” is quite possibly Christopher Nolan’s worst movie, and yet within its three hour long run time it has some of the best moments of cinema I have ever seen. I’d been looking forward to this film for over a year, because like most people I’ve loved every Christopher Nolan movie I’ve seen (excluding “Man of Steel” because Nolan wasn’t directing, and “Following” because sadly I haven’t seen that movie).

For the first two and a half hours I was like a child staring in awe at the beautiful recreation of space Nolan had created, and preparing myself for a very positive review. “Interstellar” was a visual feast attacking my senses and filling my mind with ideas of time relativity and intergalactic travel, and I loved the moments which felt as though they were grounded in some form of reality, or based upon a strong scientific world-view. However, the ending completely ruined “Interstellar” for me, and has left me with an extremely bitter taste in my mouth.

I’m still disappointed that Nolan didn’t just cut the ending out, because to me it took the emotion from the rest of the film and threw it out of the window, with a laughable take on humanity’s place in this vast and powerful universe. There was a far better, more well-suited ending for the film, an ending which was in fact found within the movie itself. I believe that the last 20-30 minutes of this film could’ve easily been omitted, and there would’ve been a believable and worthy ending right there. If I ever watch “Interstellar” again I will know when to change the channel.

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via indiewire.com

The story in “Interstellar” is a bit wacky from the start, with no real explanation for why the earth has suddenly become inhabitable, and no background information on the characters. Nevertheless, the audience can buy into the world and support the premise, because on screen you have a blockbuster powerhouse known as Matthew McConaughey, who right now is one of the most popular and best actors around. You also have one of the most revered filmmakers in the world masterminding the film’s direction, and an all-star supporting cast including Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine, so it’s very easy to relax at the start when you have niggling suspicions that things aren’t going to be quite as amazing as you’d want them to be.

“Interstellar” revolves around Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a wise-cracking farmer who has become dissatisfied with his mundane existence, attempting to survive in a world of dwindling resources and dying crops. His stock is slowly depleting due to the state of the world he finds himself in, and dust is infecting the lungs of the next generation, so that his children could be a part of the last generation on Earth. It isn’t the ideal existence, and it’s understandable that Cooper doesn’t feel that he has much purpose on Earth, because although his job is an important one given the dying planet, it is one which is ultimately futile. He has an obligation to his children to keep them safe, and clearly there is purpose there, but that overlaps with his goals for going into space to save humanity!

By staying with his children he would provide them with valuable emotional support, but by saving the planet he can give them a real future, a continued life on Earth or another viable planet. So you can understand why Cooper eventually goes into space. When he does, the film becomes incredibly interesting and entertaining, as Cooper and his companions travel through a wormhole in order to find a planet which could be congenial to human survival. They must make difficult decisions in order to save as much time as they can in space (given ideas of time presented in the film, which suggest that time can differ greatly in different regions of space – the group can spend one hour of their time on a certain planet, but this will cost them nine years back on Earth), so that Cooper can see his children again, and Amelia (Anne Hathaway) can see her father one more time before he dies.

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via images.everyeye.it

Parts of the movie were fascinating and warranted further explanation. (SPOILER ALERT) For example, a crucial plot point in the film is that there are twelve explorers who have ventured through the wormhole, potentially giving their lives, to find a planet which could facilitate human life. This drives the film, as Cooper and his crew attempt to follow the remaining signals which are still being sent by the explorers, in order to discover the best possible world and begin work on a colony on that planet.

The exploits of these explorers are potentially more exciting than Cooper’s struggle to save his children, and could provide just as much of an emotional punch, as each of these brave astronauts presumably gave up their futures to save the rest of the world, leaving their families and friends behind. The moments when the group explore these planets are where this movie really shines, and more time should’ve been spent on developing the planets and the characters on them. I would’ve liked to know more of Miller, who was never found on the first planet visited, and even Mann (Matt Damon) could’ve done with a bit more time being developed as a real person, rather than just a character who was convenient for moving the plot forward.

The quiet moments in which the human passengers are at the mercy of space are thrilling, and they force you to think of the universe which is moving along right beside you, a world which you are in fact a part of. Watching how beautiful Nolan’s vision of space is really makes you think about how you view the real world, because we do forget that we are a part of such an amazing universe. Talk of wormholes, black holes and even other planets belong to science fiction, they are often used to tell stories of a grand nature like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Star Trek”, but they exist. They are here hurtling around the vast emptiness of space and so are we.

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via dneg.com

The realism Nolan brings with the special effects in this movie, and the emotional connection he creates between the characters, keep you grounded in the real world, but the story still feels as though it is as far from genuine possibility as anything could possibly be. You really feel that these people are at the mercy of something far greater than themselves, and you understand our own insignificance and lack of control over the larger forces in the universe. It is these moments where “Interstellar” is as beautiful and glorious a piece of cinema as anything I have ever seen.

The graphics in this movie were immaculate, and they added to a sense of realism which the emotion of the leading actors had already brought. It’s amazing to think that people actually created the world you were seeing around Cooper and Amelia. These character’s lives and the whole universe on display comes directly from the mind of Christopher Nolan, and that is truly incredible. Nolan can go from creating a bleak and sinister Gotham grounded in reality, and then take his audience into a fantastical dream world in “Inception”, or into space for “Insterstellar”. He deserves praise for both his ambition and his creativity, even though this film wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped.

There were some incredibly interesting and moving pieces of dialogue, for example, when Cooper explained to Murph (Mackenzie Foy) that when people become parents they become memories for their children, and his explanation that he couldn’t be that, that he was still his own man. It was a solemn way of declaring that he was effectively abandoning his child, but also a stunning way to explain that he knew his decision was at least in some sense wrong. Moments like this are when this movie is genuinely brilliant, and they reel the audience in at just the right time, as Cooper is about to venture into the unknown and risk his life for humanity. You become incredibly invested in the story and the characters, and this keeps you interested during scenes which could’ve seemed slightly ridiculous.

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via media.tenor.com

The performances were fantastic for the most part, and as usual McConaughey was brilliant. He portrayed a magnificent emotional performance, bringing some members of the audience to tears (including the person I went to the cinema with). He had great chemistry with Mackenzie Foy, and I really bought into their relationship in the early parts of the movie. Their last interaction was genuinely moving, even if it was seen on the trailer. McConaughey really showed the inner struggle of a character leaving his family behind, knowing he may never see them again, and his sacrifice for the good of humanity was utterly heroic. He brought a sense of understanding and understated sorrow to the role, and I am probably his biggest fan right now.

The supporting cast were impressive, but that was to be expected due to the calibre of actors in the roles. Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon stole a couple of scenes from McConaughey, and I enjoyed the movie the most when Damon was on screen. I am aware that his performance has been slightly polarising, but I really liked it. He showed some of the stupidity and insanity you’d expect from a man who had been alone on an alien planet, not knowing whether or not he would see another person ever again, and he was extremely weird at certain points, which I found quite entertaining.

Hans Zimmer’s score was tremendous as always, and it fit the film perfectly. It set the tempo for exciting scenes as the team explored the vastness of space, but the movie still knew when silence was key, for example, as doors opened to reveal the empty vacuum of space, and the sound emptied into that vacuum along with everything else. I’ve actually seen people say that the score was distracting or frustrating, but I just think those people weren’t buying into the wonder and beauty of it all, because the score fit that fantastically.

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via dneg.com

I’ve also seen reviews that said that the film was too complicated, or that they didn’t understand some of the dialogue, but there isn’t a lot going on at all. You don’t have to be some sort of astrophysicist to understand the movie, you don’t even need a science GCSE, it’s all pretty simple. The only bits that don’t make sense are the parts towards the end which genuinely don’t have a place in the movie, and those scenes are needed for those people out there who are desperate for resolution in their films. It’s those kinds of people that force great directors like Nolan to make a conclusive ending to a film which never needed one, so if you are on that level please don’t complain about how complicated the story was (especially because it just wasn’t), because you ruin movies for the rest of us. I felt that things were actually over-explained to pander towards a larger audience; the concepts at play weren’t overly important, and everything the audience needed to know was repeated multiple times to reinforce the key ideas.

For a long period of the movie I thought that Nolan had pulled it off again, after blowing all other “Batman” films out of the water with his “Dark Knight Series”, he outdid “The Illusionist” with “The Prestige”, which was fantastic, and he made the amnesia storyline interesting with “Memento”. He’s a brilliant director and an all round genius, but he really jumped the shark with this one. He still destroyed “Gravity”, creating a greater spectacle and utilising a more ambitious story, but much like that film, its ending let it down. His vision was commendable for the majority of the movie, and I accept that he was trying to give a conclusion to a wacky and extremely challenging story, offering closure and performing a fan service. However, the ending was a catastrophe.

When the whole audience bursts into laughter towards the end of the movie you know that something has gone array, and I have to step in and say ‘why?’ Why would you shoot yourself in the foot by ending a three hour long, epic piece of cinema, with what was complete and utter garbage? Perhaps Nolan would say that we just don’t know what would happen in the scenario, and his interpretation of events is therefore as credible as anyone else’s, but I won’t buy that.

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via blenderartists.org

(SPOILER ALERT) The movie should’ve ended when Cooper went through the black hole, once more into the unknown, facing death with power and glory as Professor Brand (Michael Caine) kept telling us from the start! Instead Nolan attempted to explain what would happen if a person ventured into the darkness, into a place where no man has gone before, and it just didn’t work. I appreciate that he tried it, but you can’t just say ‘I want my story to have a happy ending, so I’m going to send my leading man to a place which no one knows anything about and let him sort things out. No one can tell me I’m wrong because no one knows what would happen’. That’s just a complete and utter cop-out!

SPOILER ALERT – The remainder of this review contains spoilers for key scenes in “Interstellar”.

The ending wasn’t just ridiculous, far-fetched and downright stupid, but it was also extremely strange. I could’ve just about accepted that Cooper could alter the past through a tesseract (a four-dimensional analogue of a cube) found in the centre of a black hole, solving all the world’s problems through the transcendent nature of gravity and love crossing all dimensions (yes that is the plot when you break it down!), if Cooper had then died. However, the fact that he survived that was a disgrace! As I’ve said many times about many different films, there are certain things you just can’t live through and carry on as normal, and this is definitely one of them!

This idiocy was then followed by a final reunion between Murph and Cooper. In this scene Murph was about to die at a very old age, and Cooper arrived just in time to say his goodbyes. But that was just cringe-worthy to the extreme, and both character’s reactions were completely out of step with their personalities as established in the rest of the movie. Neither character seemed to care all that much about their reunion, even though the whole film had played on the relationship between these two people, and we had seen on numerous occasions that the most important thing in Cooper’s life was Murph. This scene ruined the film for me even more so than the scene in which Cooper made his way into the black hole, because it destroyed the memory of the emotional scenes in the rest of the movie.

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via dneg.com

The biggest problem with the ending of “Interstellar” was that nothing was explained. I’m still unclear about how Murph realised that the fact that her watch was broken meant that her father was sending her a message in Morse code from another dimension; are we seriously supposed to lay back and take it as Christopher Nolan attempts to force that down our throats? Sit down and ask yourself how this sounds now that I’ve articulated it properly, and ask if you can take yourself seriously if you actually enjoyed the last third of the movie.

The ending of a film is, in my opinion, the most important part, it validates the rest of the movie and is supposed to provide some sort of interesting closure to a story you have been emotionally invested in, not tarnish everything which comes before it. If you’re making a nice dinner for two hours, making sure that the flavours are balanced and each new ingredient works with the rest of the dish, but then spend the next hour slowly pouring an obscene amount of salt into the pot, it won’t be a nice dinner by the end of the three hours! So why doesn’t the same apply to a movie?

Once you’ve seen the ending of this film, you’ve pushed the detonator, and you begin to think of all the other plot holes the movie has. Each scene topples down from top to bottom, and suddenly you’re left with the memory of a far from perfect experience. The character behaviour in the movie is downright weird at times, and you start to question whether or not these characters are in any way believable. Professor Brand offers Cooper the chance to fly a spacecraft which he has been working on for a very long time, for a mission which will determine the future of the human race, even though he had no intention of offering the position to Cooper just hours before. This crucial mission was going to take place anyway without Cooper! Would a man put his life’s work in jeapordy like this because he knows what Cooper has done in the past? Wouldn’t he want to check that Cooper could still do the job?

Brand also sends his daughter (Amelia) into space, having lied to her about his life’s work, and withholding the fact that she will never see him again!

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via threerowsback.files.wordpress.com

Cooper accepts the chance of going into space on a life-threatening journey, at the expense of a life with his children, even though he knows that his place on the shuttle isn’t integral to the mission, and he has a fine life back home. Yes the soil is becoming infertile and the world is dying, but he has a family that love him, and there’s every chance that the mission could succeed without him. I know he wants to explore and believes that the human race wasn’t meant to die on earth, but it’s clear that Cooper loves his family more than anything, and that is integral to the emotion which lies behind the scenes in space, so I don’t believe for a second that he would abandon them even if he did think he could save them.

Murph’s behaviour was also extremely odd, because although she would resent her dad for leaving her, of course she would, she had no right to hold it against him for decades! When Cooper is leaving she tries to reconcile with him unsuccessfully, just as he drives away into the dust-filled distance (which I will admit was heart-breaking). This suggests that she understood what her father was doing, so if I understand human behaviour in even the loosest of ways, I would expect that she would want to tell him this at the first given opportunity. Yet she refuses to communicate with her father when given the opportunity, she gives him the cold shoulder for trying to save the planet on which she still lives! I respect her frustration but that’s just downright irrational!

“Interstellar” is like a dysfunctional firework. It flies into the air with beauty and promise, exciting its audience with wonder and awe, and then at the last moment it crashes back down to earth in a blaze of shame and disillusion, exploding on impact, destroying the anticipation it had built and replacing it with anger and confusion. This film promises to be so much more than it actually is, but it never delivers. For a considerable chunk of its run time “Interstellar” deceives the audience with fantastic special effects and an ambitious story, but as the ending leaves you baffled and bemused, the dominoes start to fall. The characters don’t respond to their situations in believable and organic ways, and the story takes you to a ridiculous and nonsensical place. Overall this film is a mess trying to be an abstract work of art, and I will not buy into it.

5.5/10

Gotham: Season One Premiere

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Television Reviews

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Anne Hathaway, Bane, Barbara Kean, Batman, Ben McKenzie, Brette Taylor, Bruce Wayne, Camren Bicondova, Catwoman, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Crime, David Mazouz, Donal Logue, Erin Richards, Gary Oldman, Gotham, Grayson McCouch, Harvey Bullock, Harvey Dent, Inspector Gordon, Martha Wayne, Netflix, Oswald Cobblepot, Robin Lord Taylor, Selina Kyle, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, The Joker, The Leftovers, The Penguin, The Riddler, Thomas Wayne, Tom Hardy, True Blood

Gotham

Drawing by Samuel Whittaker

When I first heard that there was going to be a television show about Gotham, in which there would be no Batman, I was very intrigued. The recent Christopher Nolan films have demonstrated that this world can be gritty and realistic, even when it’s villains seem intent on wearing costumes (never bringing a change of clothes along for the ride). Nolan’s films felt more like crime thrillers than traditional superhero movies, so it makes sense that someone would try to capitalise on the success that those films had, whilst also trying to do something interesting with well-known and beloved characters.

The difficulty for this show will be whether or not it can generate enough interest to keep the audience on board, because we already know a lot about these characters and where they come from, and without Batman “Gotham” could end up feeling like a Sunday roast without the meat. Personally I love the idea, and I hope that this show will be able to offer further insight into the iconic city, whilst also providing a different take on some of its most famous inhabitants. My biggest concern at this point is whether or not the actors will be able to provide performances of the calibre that I’m expecting, because I want the actors playing returning characters to match the performances we have seen in previous films, but it seems hard to believe that anyone could be as good at playing Inspector Gordon as Gary Oldman was, or that we could see a more voluptuous Catwoman than one played by Anne Hathaway.

The first episode of the series offers some indication for what we can expect to see from the season. It attempted to portray Gotham as a city filled with lowlifes and scum, including those sitting in positions of authority. Gotham is a place consumed by moral indecency and corruption, which will be something of a problem for the main character in this episode, James Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

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via youtube.com

The episode was intended to establish the nature of the show and introduce some of the characters we can expect to see a lot of in the future, but while doing this it also demonstrated the fact that the level of writing and acting we can expect to see from “Gotham” is pretty substandard and very frustrating. However, as this episode is a pilot, it may be that it doesn’t truly capture the calibre of the show, because this is simply a first look at what “Gotham” may have to offer, and there is a lot more that can be done with the premise, so I don’t think that the success of the series will depend upon this episode alone (which is probably for the best).

The first scene was pretty awful, which I believe is a cardinal sin when making a television programme. If “Gotham” ends up being a hit with audiences watching it upon release, it is likely that people will be influenced to watch it after the fact. If this happens then potential viewers will need to be sufficiently immersed immediately, given the access to great television many people have now on Netflix and other similar television apps. But if a new viewer tries to get into “Gotham” in a year’s time they will have to sit through this garbage, and it will be their first experience of the show, which I believe will lead many potential audience members to give up right then and there. It’s a real shame that the show opened with such a lacklustre and trivial scene, and one which I believe the writers may come to regret.

The acting in the opening scene was absolutely terrible from everyone involved, especially David Mazouz, the young child actor playing Bruce Wayne. (SPOILER ALERT) The scene in question begins with a shot of Gotham’s skyline, much like that seen on some of the artwork for the show. We then see Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) doing what she does best, as she traverses the rooftops of Gotham with ease and steals whatever she can along the way. As she decides to stop to offer milk to a stray cat (which I thought was a ridiculous addition to the scene), we see a young Bruce Wayne walking into a dark alleyway, accompanied by his parents, Thomas (Grayson McCouch) and Martha (Brette Taylor).

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via screenertv.com

No prizes for guessing what happens next! A mugger attempts to take what he can from the unsuspecting family, and after he is suitably compensated for not blowing the trio away into oblivion… he decides to shoot Thomas and Martha anyway. Now, this could’ve been entertaining if it had been executed in the right way, because there is an interesting reason for why the mugger proceeded to kill Bruce’s parents despite getting what he wanted, but perhaps there could’ve been some sort of struggle, or at least a moment of awkward silence as the Wayne’s realised their fate, so that the scene didn’t feel quite so rushed.

The scene made no sense at the time, and even though it was explained to the audience why the murders happened as they did, it was still a stupid way to start the show. Attempting to confuse your audience from the get-go isn’t the right way to open a generic television programme, and focusing on the murder of the Wayne’s is a really dull focus for the opening episode; it’s something we’ve seen enough times before. It was a poorly performed scene, which culminated in a pathetic scream of despair from the woeful child actor, and from this point onwards I was extremely worried about the quality of what was to follow.

This episode is anything but original. It uses tired old clichés, which in other genres have been made into parodies, such as montages to show the passage of time, in which Gordon and his partner interrogate a few criminal stereotypes. The dialogue isn’t much better, as we hear our characters bicker between one another, delivering such gems as ‘stay frosty’. I don’t understand how the writers can take themselves seriously when this is the kind of interaction they believe will capture an audience, it makes me angry to think that they were actually paid for working on this episode. There is nothing fresh about it, not even the setting, and it was painful to watch for the majority of the run time.

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via comicsalliance.com

The performances were atrocious, particularly from McKenzie (Gordon), who has a cocky demeanour which is totally unjustified, and lacks any sort of charm. I am aware that he is supposed to be a bit out of his depth and unaware of the real scope of his task, but he isn’t likeable in any way, and his facial expressions alone are enough to make me want to smash my television screen. He delivers his lines extremely rigidly with absolutely no passion, and he is by far the most annoying character on the show, which is a massive issue when you consider that he will occupy the screen for most of the time that “Gotham” is on air.

The first line that Robin Lord Taylor delivered as Oswald Cobblepot (the Penguin), an impetuous ‘I don’t like to be called that’, was so artificial and feeble that I couldn’t help but laugh, and the fact that the writers felt the need to introduce his character in such an unsubtle way so early on was very disappointing. Everything about the performances on this show so far are over the top and not particularly believable.

So, after sufficiently criticising the show, let me try to make some predictions (because there certainly aren’t any positives to speak of). Firstly, I think that the show might shake things up a little bit, so I’m going to predict that Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) will get killed off at some point. (SPOILER ALERT) At the end of the episode Gordon pretended that he had killed Oswald, when in fact he hadn’t, and his partner (Harvey Bullock, played by Donal Logue) had warned him that if he didn’t kill Oswald he and those closest to him would be in danger. Therefore, it seems pretty reasonable to suggest that there will be some significant collateral damage as a result of Gordon’s actions, or lack thereof. If this doesn’t happen then I expect to see Kean have some sort of secret which tears the two apart, as I’m sure that this show will have its fair share of melodrama in the future.

Gotham-Cast.jpg

via craveonline.com

I also think that Gordon will struggle with his morality quite a lot in the series, because he clearly doesn’t want to use force when it isn’t necessary, and he wants to believe that he is better than the men he is chasing, so there’s bound to plenty of moments in which he faces an internal struggle when dealing with the villains of “Gotham”. I feel that eventually there will be something which triggers a change in Gordon, and I don’t think it will be too long before we see him kill one of the villainous characters on the show (maybe my first prediction will link to this one?).

I don’t think that there’s much point in wasting time elaborating on the specific aspects of this episode; I feel that it’s enough to say that as a whole it was incredibly disappointing and that this could be a pretty terrible television show. However, as I mentioned previously, a pilot isn’t always a definitive indication of how good or bad a programme will actually be, so there is a chance that “Gotham” will improve and become at least slightly more credible. There are plenty of origin stories to be told and a host of new characters to be introduced, so if these characters are performed by actors with some skill and understanding of what their role requires, “Gotham” could potentially improve. Still, this episode was one of the worst pieces of television I’ve seen all year, rivalled only by the dreadfulness of the season opener for “The Leftovers” and the season finale of “True Blood”.

3/10

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