WES ANDERSON ROUNDTABLE: BOTTLE ROCKET SHORT/FEATURE

Every now and then at Screen Vistas I like to team up with Max O’Connell over at The Film Temple to tackle the work of one of our favorite directors. This time we’re looking at comedy stylist/master of whimsy Wes Anderson.

Loren Greenblatt: The thing that strikes me about Wes Anderson in comparison to the other directors we’ve talked about is that while Cameron and Del Toro are certainly very stylized, they are also among the small percentage of directors with public personas that are separate from their films. Cameron is famously prickly and arrogant, whereas Del Toro is a happy 10-year-old on a sugar binge. Anderson, on the other hand, has a sort of invisible persona. He does interviews galore but I feel the general public knows him primarily as an extension of his visual style than as his own person, and I think that’s by design. 

Max O’Connell: Well, he’s a very private person, and I think he wants to be known for his work more than his personality. And his work is well known: for a while in the early 2000s, he spawned more imitators than anyone on the art house scene since Tarantino. It also makes his work ripe for parody, both good (Wes Anderson Spider-Man) and terrible (SNL’s The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders, which makes references in place of jokes). But before Wes Anderson was the most idiosyncratic comedic director working today, he was just some kid from Austin, Texas.

LG: He went to University of Texas where he met two of his most important collaborators, Luke and Owen Wilson. Soon, they started planning a feature film called Bottle Rocket, which eventually became a delightful 13-minute short. The short is self-contained but it’s meant to be part of a larger story. The idea was that this was part one, and they’d keep making them, like installments in a serial. The story centers on Dignan and Anthony (Owen and Luke Wilson, respectively), best buddies planning a house burglary. 

MO: The short played at Sundance, where it got them noticed by a lot of people, most noticeably Polly Platt (the ex-wife of Peter Bogdanovich who had worked as a writer or production designer on most of his notable films) and one of her frequent production partners, none other than James L. Brooks.  And it’s easy to see why. Clearly Anderson and co are on a budget, and it’s much rougher and looser than we’ve come to expect from him, but I love how from the beginning of his career, he mostly knows what he’s doing. The editing is really crisp. Everything feels very exact. 

LG: It’s rough, but it derives certain energy from that roughness. His music choices are already really interesting; the use of jazz throughout almost makes it feel like a more high-energy Woody Allen movie. Also you can already see a lot of his personal quirks – there’s already his very peculiar type of close-up and insert shots and his whimsical, freewheeling characters, particularly Owen Wilson (who co-wrote the short). 

MO: You talked about his visual quirks. Obviously, he doesn’t really have the money to do those dioramas or the anamorphic widescreen he’s known for, but he’s also got a lot of throwbacks to a number of French New Wave movies he’s a fan of. I’m fond of a shot near a pinball machine that deliberately evokes The 400 Blows, which has similarly likable (if much younger) troublemakers. But there’s also nods to more peculiar influences: he uses Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating” theme from A Charlie Brown Christmas when the characters have target practice. And that’s really charming, because it gets to the heart of these characters – they’re crooks, but they’re essentially a bunch of kids. 

LG: It’s a very interesting juxtaposition: these people are setting out to do something dangerous that does have victims, but they approach it with childlike innocence. It hints at the reality/fantasy struggle that defines many of Anderson’s films. I wish that idea was fully explored in the feature, but it is clearly there in both incarnations of Bottle Rocket, like many of Anderson’s characters, everyone in here is either bigger than life, or trying to be. 

MO: To me, something that struck me in the fantasy/reality divide is how much they’re playing at bigger than life. We don’t see the bookstore robbery that’s shown in the feature version, but they’re kind of playing themselves up as cool criminals, but the movie ends with them betting on a race and Owen Wilson’s character cheating. They’re just a couple of innocent goofs at heart, really. 

LG: I really like that scene. It really encapsulates something essential about this material and I wish there were some version of it in the feature. 

MO: What are the differences between the short and the feature that strike you, aside from the fact that the former is in black-in-white and the latter is in color.  

LG: Well the most comparable section is the feature’s first act, which is more or less a remake of the material in the short. The main difference is that the feature tells that part of the story with more focus. Again, we get Luke and Owen Wilson planning the house robbery, but it’s colored by a new scene where we see Anthony leaving a mental institution. In the end Anthony is much more stable and down to earth, though melancholy, where Dignan is the goofy, wildcard dreamer who’s introduced trying to break Anthony out of the institute, hilariously not realizing that it’s a voluntary stay. Of the two, Dignan is also the ringleader who has a 50-year plan on how the two will become internationally renowned criminals.

We get a better sense of their dynamic. There’s this sense of obligation between the characters. You get the sense that Dignan is doing all this intense planning not just to satisfy his own boyish urges, but to pull Anthony out of his funk in a very misguided way that Anthony doesn’t really want or need. Likewise Anthony goes along with Dignan because he thinks it’ll be good for him, but it in the end it really serves no one and that’s the gag. This complicated tension isn’t there as much in the short, which features a long conversation where they argue over the details of a Starsky and Hutch episode which has a more aimless flavor we associate more with Linklater and Tarantino than Anderson and while it’s fine for the short, it’s ultimately one of the more fortunate casualties of the focus the team brought to the film version.

MO: Yeah. You get hints of it in the short where they start talking about the plans they’ve got, and Dignan compliments Anthony on the things he thought of that wouldn’t have come to mind for Dignan. That’s great, but here, the plan is comically exaggerated. Wes Anderson’s characters always make elaborate plans to try to get themselves out of trouble or sadness. I feel like the diorama thing that we joke about, while we don’t see it visually in Bottle Rocket – 

LG:  Which might be because he hadn’t come into that as a style. He’s become much more confident over time. And initially, he wanted Bottle Rocket to be much grittier, more like Mean Streets or Drugstore Cowboy (both of which have whimsical touches but aren’t thought of as whimsical films) but as it went along, the writing got more whimsical. 

MO: But I feel like during the writing process, he found what worked for him, and I feel like he found his voice more than you do, I think. What I was getting at with the planning was that it’s a kind of way for Wes Anderson characters to make sense of their lives that don’t necessarily make sense. It’s a way for them to try to control things that they can’t really control. Dignan’s 50-year-plan…it’s absurd that he could possibly plan that far ahead, and with purpose. 

LG: I think we can identify with that. We’ve had that, “OK, we’re gonna start lifting weights and do that thing we’ve never done,” and it’s a nice exaggeration.

MO: As with a lot of other Anderson narratives, this is to some degree a sad story, because while Dignan’s a big kid, he’s a big kid with a lot of failure and no direction. Anthony’s sister says he’s a liar and worries that if he follows Dignan, he won’t end up going anywhere. His plans don’t really work out, ever. It’s because of the playfulness of Anderson’s style that this isn’t completely downbeat throughout. That’s always been to his credit. Some of that playfulness comes through the music. The target practice scene isn’t as striking, because they don’t have “Skating” again, but some of the other songs are really delightful. They use a song called “Zorro Is Back” after they buy firecrackers after a successful robbery. There’s such life to it. They’re getting a kick of bringing themselves up. 

LG: The thing that I think doesn’t work about Bottle Rocket is that undercurrent of melancholy. There’s a little bit of it there, but it’s so much more present as a counterpoint to the whimsy in his later films, where the whimsy is about masking the melancholy, and there’s this cycle of joy and depression, and there’s some teeth to that. I don’t think they get into that enough here. A lot of the characters here are just much flatter than most Wes Anderson characters. 

MO: I don’t agree. Granted, it’s going to grow in his next films, but Dignan especially works for me. He’s always been the most loyal friend to Anthony (and vice versa), and as soon as Anthony finds more direction in his love interest Inez (Lumi Cavazos, in a very sweetly handled subplot), Dignan reacts to that very negatively. It’s not just that he’s jealous – Anthony’s the only one who’s there for him. Their other friend, Bob (Bob Musgrave), is sort of part of the gang, but he’s much less committed and much less willing to put up with Dignan’s need to control things. 

LG: Also, I get the sense that Dignan doesn’t really like him, that they’re only friends because of Anthony, and he never quite settled in. 

MO: I don’t think Dignan dislikes him; they’re just clearly not as close.  

LG: I think the trio is well developed, but when I say some of the characters are flat, I mean a lot of the tertiary characters don’t feel like they’re there at all. Every other film he’s made is so deliberately an ensemble that it’s kind of disappointing coming back to his first film and not seeing that. I feel I’m watching a film that could have been so much richer. 

MO: Okay, I see what you mean. Some of them are types, like Bob’s brother “Future Man”, who’s funny in bits but is kind of a cartoon asshole. That’s not terrible necessarily but not at the same level he’s going to operate at later. 

LG: How about in Rushmore, where we have another bully who has a humanizing moment or two. 

MO: Yeah. And here’s the thing: that bully has a similar turnaround as Future Man, but Future Man’s is off-screen and isn’t as convincing because we get less of him. 

LG: Exactly. 

MO: What do you think of James Caan’s character, Mr. Henry, the landscaper/thief who mentored Dignan once upon a time? 

LG:  He didn’t make much of an impression on me, as a character or a performance, which is a problem because he’s built up so much as this bigger-than-life father figure to Dignan that he wants to be emulate. 

MO: And for me, it’s a bit of an odd complaint, because most of these sketched characters are funny, but they’re not at the level we hold Anderson’s later works at. I do think a lot of the style is still there, though. The conversational rhythms are classic Wes. Like right before the bookstore robbery, where Dignan puts a piece of tape over his nose, and his friends look at him and ask, “Why are you putting tape over your nose?” His answer: “Exactly!” And then during the robbery, he loses patience with the bookstore owner and calls him an idiot, and when the man gets touchy over being called an idiot, he’s sincerely sorry about it. Because he really is just a big kid playing at being the tough guy. So much of it is there, he’s just growing still. 

LG: That part is fantastic and it’s important to note there were a lot of issues during filming that might have inhibited what Anderson/Wilson were trying to do. In my research I got the sense that it was a contentious production between Brooks and Anderson. For instance, Anderson wanted to shoot it in the anamorphic widescreen format that’s become his signature outside of Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom (and the upcoming The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is at least partially in Academy Ratio), but wasn’t allowed to because the process is more expensive and would have slowed down the production with the added lighting concerns. 

MO: And it’s understandable that Brooks might balk, but it is clearly something that’s missing from Bottle Rocket, and it limits what he can do, visually. 

LG: One of the things that his particular use of that aspect ratio signals is that they don’t take place in the real world, they take place in Wes Anderson Land, this magical, primary colored place, where everything is dioramas, fantasy and depression. This film, you can see bits of that style peeking out, especially in the final heist, which is the most Andersonian bit in the whole film. But it’s not all the way there. It’s on the border of Wes Anderson Land.

MO: A little bit, yeah…I think part of it is him still figuring out his style and working on a budget. But I feel like the primary characters and the relationships are there. A lot of the influences are there, too. We mentioned Truffaut, which is still there, but I also see a lot of J.D. Salinger. I see a lot of that in the more withdrawn, sad aspect of the characters, especially Anthony. He’s trying to protect his younger sister, his sister’s cynicism takes it out of him… 

LG: I do like that the little 10-year-old sister is clearly the more mature of the two. It’s a fun bit I wish there was more of. 

MO: It’s a fun bit, and it’s indicative of what Anderson’s going to be doing for a long time with these people who are stuck because of emotional trauma. With Anthony, we hear bits about a bad relationship that sent him to check into a mental hospital. It’s nice that he’s able to get taken out of that. Dignan’s version of getting out of arrested development is being able to pull off – well, not pull off, because it’s a total failure, but he tries, damn it. 

LG: I do love Kumar Pullana, the older Indian actor who Wes Anderson cast a lot before his recent death. He plays an old safecracker who can’t remember how to crack the safe. 

MO: My understanding was that he never actually knew, which to me might be even funnier. 

LG: I get the sense that he’s done it before. I do love the exchange, “I lost my touch, man! I lost my touch!” Dignan: “Did you even ever have a touch?” To me that’s one of the more interesting exchanges in the whole film. As he goes on, he gets better with subtext and dialogue. I feel in the better version of this film, “Did you ever even have the touch” would be the thesis statement for a few of Anderson’s films, including this one.

MO: Maybe, but that’s an older man’s movie, and this is a younger man’s movie, so I don’t think that really fits. I see a lot of Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson in the whole tale of upstarts trying to break in and one of them wondering if it’s even for him. It’s a nice parallel to them trying to break into Hollywood and not knowing if they’re going to make it. 

LG: Absolutely, it’s hard not to view it that way. It’s a first film about people trying to make it in something and struggling to do it. It might have not been conscious, but you can’t help but take it from there. 

MO: Are there any other things that are formally impressive to you? It is a pretty striking debut.

LG: Oh, absolutely. I don’t think it’s all there, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff in it. He’s starting to use these dolly shots, colors are a big thing, I really love how he creates insert shots. There are these themes of mental illness and arrested development that he’ll continue to develop. And outside of Martin Scorsese, there are very few filmmakers who use music as surprisingly. It’s not just that he uses a Rolling Stones song. He uses “2000 Man”, a really wonderful song from Their Satanic Majesties Request, probably one of the least regarded classic-era Stones albums. It fits so wonderfully.

MO: I love the use of “Over and Done With” by the Proclaimers when Dignan and Anthony have to leave Inez behind. That brings me up so much, to the point where it almost feels like “Judy Is a Punk” in The Royal Tenenbaums. It makes me so happy that he has such imagination on how to use songs and finds the perfect commentaries on his scenes. 

LG: The other thing I really love is Owen Wilson. That character is the most successful thing in the movie. He’s such a Wes Anderson character, right up to the animal noises he makes for signals, or the line “Let’s get lucky!” that he shouts before robberies. It’s infectiously joyous. He and Luke Wilson haven’t been served well by Hollywood as well as they should have. He’s a wonderful presence on screen. To me, there are some other things that are off. It’s a bit aimless structurally, and not in a way that really works. And you like that romance more than I do. There’s a sweetness to it, but it is a relationship where they sense each other’s innate sweetness and dignity, but because there’s a language barrier they’re doing a lot of projection onto each other. That’s something a more mature Wes Anderson might have gotten into more. 

MO: Maybe, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much. Maybe it’s because they’re less complicated characters, but it’s a simple thing of lonely souls connecting for me, I think. At any rate, Anthony’s relationship with Dignan is more important, it’s the conceit of the film. One of them has outgrown this goofball stuff, where the other knows he won’t have much left when his friend moves on. That leads to a lot of great moments. Much as I like the romance, the stuff that comes out of it is a lot more interesting. There’s a great shot where Wes plays with deep focus: Dignan is in the background playing pool while Anthony and Inez are romancing on the front porch. And then in the background, Dignan gets the shit kicked out of him, and Anthony isn’t able to protect him. And then there’s a great cut to Dignan having to put ice on a bloody lip, and there’s a growing distance between the two. I also love Dignan’s reaction of pure, tantrum anger after Anthony gives the money they stole to Inez. He throws a rock, punches a friend, and fumes. It’s understandable, more so because Anthony is moving away from his plans. 

LG: And I don’t think Anthony was ever that committed. He’s doing it for his friend. There’s a great bit in the beginning where he sneaks out of a mental hospital he voluntarily checked into, because he wants Dignan to feel like he’s helping him escape. One thing I do want to make sure we hit is that visually, it doesn’t fit into Wes Anderson Land, but conceptually, it’s one of his more archly stylized pieces. In his other films, especially his next two, his characters are living with a recognizable reality in some way. In his later films, the balance tips back the other way. They’re deep-sea divers or something dealing with real problems. Fantasy trappings for real problems, and there’s something similar going on here, we got this fantasy gang of wannabe crooks who are sorta dealing with real issues. He won’t try something this out there again until he reaches a more confident place. 

MO: Hmm. I see it being more archly stylized, maybe, because Dignan’s trying to escape the realities of his life. 

LG: But we never see those realities. 

MO: Yes we do. He has nothing else to live for. When he goes back into town after making up with Anthony and he’s planning to pull off a big job, he’s got that great yellow jumpsuit that feels like it belongs in a Wes Anderson movie. Future Man comes along and mocks him, saying he looks like a rodeo clown or a banana, which stings because Dignan actually really likes this getup. And Future Man mentions that Dignan used to mow lawns, which he doesn't anymore. Dignan couldn’t make it in the real world. This is his way of getting out of that. 

LG: Yeah, but he was mowing the lawn as a front for the robberies. He couldn’t do that right. That’s a nice bit, but I never felt enough of that simmering pain. 

MO: You talked about how Dignan’s robbery is one of the best bits. How about his sacrifice to save Anthony? 

LG: By the end, it’s become a proper Wes Anderson film, but a lot of the rest is phasing in and out. Some bits are there, some bits don’t hit like they should. 

MO: Then I’m also curious how you interpret the last shot. Anderson does that great slow-motion thing at his films’ endings or in another key moment. Here, the film ends on a slow motion shot of Dignan, in prison, being led back in after Anthony and Bob visit him. He’s looking back at his friends, and I feel like now he’s dealing with the real consequences of his fantasy, even though he did get to do something good for his friends. How do you interpret that shot? 

LG: Huh. You know what, you’re starting to change my mind on this movie as we talk about it. There is this really sad moment, I don’t know if it’s him facing the consequences, or just being sad because he’s separated from his friends. He’s doing it for them, but there’s also an interesting selfishness in his need to help his friends that I’d have liked to see more. That is an interesting moment, part of the proper Wes Anderson film it turns into at the end. 

MO: Okay. Anything else you’d like to add? 

LG: I do like it. It’s not my favorite of his works by a long shot, but it is a nice film. For me it falls squarely into the category of messy first films by great directors that show a lot of promise but are still figuring things out. 

MO: I feel like had we seen this before his later films, we would’ve been over the moon for it. He’s so confident, and so clearly on the verge of even better things. I’m more impressed with it I think in part because the Dignan character is one of my favorite Wes Anderson characters, and he’s the heart of the film. I think Wes really nails it there. 

LG: I’m watching it on mute as we talk here, I agree with you. Dignan makes the movie. The film didn’t do very well, it tested poorly, it was dumped in theaters. But I’m glad Anderson got another shot. Even in this flawed first feature, you can tell this is someone worth watching. 

MO: How do you think it compares to the short? 

LG: I kind of like the short better. Even though it’s less focused, and the feature does some things better. But I’m so surprised to see this rough style in the short, and that really floored me.

MO: I like the short for the same reasons, but the emotional content of the film does get it for me.
 
GRADES (SHORT/FEATURE)
LOREN: A-/B-  
MAX: A-/A-

Roundtable Directory:  
Bottle Rocket (short and feature)
Rushmore
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissiou
Hotel Chevalier / Darjeeling Limited
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Moonrise Kingdom
Shorts and Commercials
The Grand Budapest Hotel

TREKKIN' IT: THE FINAL FRONTIER

Fair warning: review contains spoilers.

At its best Star Trek has been a standard bearer for intelligent, mainstream science fiction. But the longer it allowed its actors creative control, the more it risked being the victim of runaway egos. The series had done fine letting Leonard Nimoy direct a couple installments, but the franchise was about to suffer it's first bona fide dud with the William Shatner helmed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

 In interviews, producer Harve Bennett, who remains enthusiastic about the finished product, calls the film “Bill's turn,” referring to a contract clause that allowed Shatner a shot at directing solely because Nimoy had had one. That he would try directing a feature isn't surprising, he'd long been looking for ways to distinguish himself beyond acting. In addition to his infamous singing carrier, he had directed a few small plays and a smattering of T.J. Hooker episodes. The same year Final Frontier was released, Shatner published TekWar, the first in a series of cyberpunk novels he co-wrote with an uncredited Ron Goulart. Shatner viewed himself a storyteller and for his feature debut, he set his sights sky high for what he hoped would be the ultimate Star Trek film, one that would simultaneously take the franchise into darker, more action oriented territory whist pumping up the broad comedy and, most staggeringly, answer the question of 'is there a God' with a very preachy 'no.'

That's quite a checklist for a first time film director, but the film cannot be called a failure of ambition because that would imply that Shanter, Bennet and screenwriter David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace, Nurse 3D) had a clear, unified idea of what they were doing. Instead the film is the definition of egotism, going off in a hundred different, conflicting directions, thinking each one will be equally fantastic and perfect, and the resulting film is a complete mess.

The film is not without its moments. The film's prologue – one of the few moments where the film rises above its generally workmanlike visual look, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the films short shooting schedule – lands us on Nimbus III and introduces us to Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), a renegade Vulcan who's brainwashing the local farmers into serving as his own personal army.

From here it gets really convoluted, really quickly. Through some awful dialogue delivered by David Warner (who seems to be in physical pain delivering it), we learn that Nimbus III is a diplomatic outpost in the Neutral Zone separating the Klingon and Romulan Empires from the Federation. The place is even refereed to as “the planet of Galactic peace.” Why then, we might ask, is the conference room where the ambassadors meet in a storage closet behind a seedy dive bar in the kind of town waiting for Clint Eastwood to ride through? It doesn't really matter. The film may go through a lot of trouble explaining Nimbus III, but it's all about to be thrown away. All that matters is that there are important people in the capital city that Sybok will use as hostages so he can steal a starship.

All this exposition is intercut with some shockingly disparate scenes where Kirk, Spock and McCoy go camping in Yosemite National Park. This 'action' climaxes with a campfire scene where the gang teaches Spock to sing “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat.” As a kid I remember kind of liking this, It's patently ridiculous, and the chemistry of the actors almost sells it, but as an adult it feels like little more than a way to fill time while scoring easy fan service.  The fact is that real fans already know that these people love each other, and if the film wanted to remind us of their bond for later in the film, there are a hundred simpler ways to do so that don't stop the action cold. It's never a good sign when the first half hour of a film feels like the first half.

Eventually, the crew is ordered to rescue Sybok's hostages and after arriving on Nimbus III we get a direct to video style action scene where Kirk and Spock ride on blue horses and charge a team of commandos into Paradise City (where the grass is not green and the girls are cats). Eventually Sybok wins and uses Kirk to takeover the understaffed and chronically malfunctioning Enterprise A. At this point we learn two unbelievably ridiculous things, 1) Sybock is really Spock's half brother and 2) The reason Sybok wants to steal the Enterprise is so he can travel to the center of the Galaxy and meet God.

The film uses the family revelation to shake up the Kirk/Spock/McCoy relationship. It's an admirable idea, but giving Spock an evil half-brother we've never heard of is such an out of nowhere Scooby Doo twist that it's a non-starter, as is the implication that the overly pragmatic Spock might betray Kirk and their multi-decade spanning friendship for an outcast half brother with whom he has an anecdotal relationship at best. Still, the film doggedly peruses the idea that the crew's loyalty is up for grabs as Sybok uses his Vulcan abilities to “remove their pain.” What that means exactly is very inconsistent. At the beginning of the film it seems like he's brainwashing people into joining him. But as the film goes on it tones down the Charles Manson vibe and it suddenly seems like his glassy eyed followers have free will, especially when it comes to characters we like.

This culminates in the film's only good scene, where Sybok attempts to take away McCoy's inner pain. He's forced to relive his father's death, for which he was responsible, while Kirk and Sybok argue as to the best way to deal with our daemons. Sybok insists that we must purge ourselves of the past in order to move forward, hence his whole “give me your pain” shtick. Where as Kirk believes that our past, especially our misfortunes define who we are and should be preserved at all costs. This is the kind of intellectual argument that Star Trek is best at, and the film would have done better to have more of this, but alas the film decides it really wants to meet God instead.

The Enterprise approaches the center of the Galaxy, passing through lots of lightning bolts, energy clouds and other special effects nonsense before arriving at a mysterious planet the crew dub Eden. Sybok and the core Trek trio set down on Eden and search while Jerry Goldsmith's score does an admirable job instilling a sense of wonder. For a moment it feels we just might have something, but then “God” shows up. We should not expect very much from a film that promises a cameo from the almighty, we have such high expectations that it's hard to impress us.

Sticking with the "big, white beard" look doesn't help.

To be fair, the being that appears isn't very well defined, it could be God, the Devil, some kind of alien, or some kind of combination of the three. I take it though that he is meant to be God in some fashion because that's what the finished film has set up, and it never really suggests otherwise. At any rate, he is revealed to be a fraud. After a shockingly short encounter, Kirk outsmarts “God” who seems to be nothing but a snake oil salesman who, like Sybok only wants to steal a starship, prompting Shatner's famous line: “What does God need with a starship?”

That's a good line, but it's the beginning of a thought not the end of one. At this point in the film it's fairly safe to assume that Shatner is an Atheist, which is fine and dandy if that's what works for you, but his film casually brushes off the idea of a God without any thought, insight, nuance or debate. The film had the wonderful opportunity to explore how faith can be corrupted and trap people or even suggest that this being only wants a starship so he too can search for his creator, which would be really interesting. But instead of doing any of those things, the film decides to half-ass the whole Atheism thing and paint Shatner's alter ego as "God's" outright superior: according to this film, God and his followers are either glassy-eyed hicks or hucksters who are easily outwitted by the glorious Captain Kirk, envy of all! That is, of course, before "God" is killed by a photon torpedo delivered by Spock (Trek's go to embodiment of all that is logical and scientific).

Final Frontier had a chance to be something interesting, but mistakes the kernels of ideas for fully formed ones. It wants to have big ideas but would rather go camping. All and all, it would have been best if Shatner had stuck to acting. Time has ensured that film isn't necessarily the lowest point in the series, but it's pretty damn close.

Grade: D

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Trekkin' It directory:
The Motion Picture
Space Seed / The Wrath of Khan
The Search for Spock
The Voyage Home
The Final Frontier
The Undiscovered Country

Generations
Best of Both Worlds / First Contact
Insurrection
Nemesis

Star Trek '09
Into Darkness (spoiler analysis) 

TREKKIN' IT: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK

The problem with franchise film making is that it seems to require a certain amount of status-quo. No matter how dramatic it would be, you can't kill Iron Man because the studio has a five picture deal. But when freed from these restraints really interesting things can happen. As it entered production, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan looked like it might be the last Trek film. Certainly, the last with Leonard Nimoy who had grown tired of his role in a franchise that frankly hadn't been serving him well. But then two things happened. Firstly, he started to enjoy making Wrath which gave him a fantastic death scene that was the whole thematic crux of the film, and secondly Wrath of Khan ended up making more money then expected. A third film was now in the cards, but Spock was dead. The franchise could have moved forward and dealt with the consequences of this major dramatic event in a thoughtful manner, but it would also mean risk losing part of what made the franchise profitable. The laws of status-quo demand Spock’s return.

As a result, we got Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Talk about putting a spoiler in the title. No money will be awarded to anyone who guesses whether or not they find him. Any film that starts from this premise is bound to disappoint. It's not a cynical film by any means, but it exists as a rote rebuke of everything the previous film was about.  Spock's self sacrifice was meant to teach Kirk that he couldn’t cheat death...except now he can, kinda sorta.

Just Kidding: The Movie starts by rewinding back to the end of Wrath, and reminding us that just before Spock died, he mind melded with Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelley). After the Enterprise returns to Earth, Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) is informed by Spock's father (the wonderful Mark Leonard) that the mind meld transferred Spock's soul into McCoy's body. If Kirk can just bring McCoy and Spock's body to Vulcan, then Spock could be revived with an ancient ritual. The Vulcan's have always had some psychic powers, but it's a bit silly when they go from being studious logicians to bringing people back from the dead with magic.

Having McCoy, all Kirk needs is Spock's body which is on the Genesis Planet created at the end of the last film. It's far too simple a goal for this film so we get a couple perfunctory roadblocks such as Starfleet brass decommissioning the Enterprise and a group of Klingon's extremist's, lead by Christopher Lloyd for some reason, who are trying to get their hands on the Genesis Device which no longer exists.

None of this works as well as it should. Having Leonard Nimoy direct the film may have been a good way to keep him around but it serves the film poorly. He would go on to direct a much better Star Trek film in the future, but his direction here aims for somber but misses the mark and becomes flat and ordinary. Ultimately he’s serving too many masters. Nimoy wants to give Spock’s death the proper weight but is also caught up in the idea of bringing him back and too distracted by exploring the further implications of the Genesis Device. Though some of the blame should fall on screenwriter/producer Harve Bennett, Nimoy’s inability to connect all these ideas coherently only exacerbates the thinness of the film.

The Genesis angle does provide the film with its best stuff. We get Savvak (recast with Robin Curtis for money reasons) and Kirk's son David (Merrit Butrick) exploring the Genesis planet. We learn that David took some unethical shortcuts in creating the device that are now causing the planet to rapidly destabilize. They also find Spock, his body reanimated by the planet's radiation or something. Not only has his body been reanimated, he's also been rejuvenated into a rapidly aging young boy who's consciousness is tied to the planet. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but at least it’s engaging.

This idea of Spock’s body being torn up by the planet mirrors the idea of McCoy's mind being overloaded by the added burden of Spock's consciousness, but neither idea really develops. The McCoy angle is particularly neglected and inconstant, basically boiling down to Kelley slipping into a spotty impression of Nimoy. It scores some laughs to be sure, but as a device, it essentially robs the film of both Spock and McCoy, making the film feeling somewhat under populated.

But we still have Kirk and the rest of the crew who do an admirable job filling in for some fluffy heist sequences where the crew plot to steal the Enterprise back. These sequences play heavily on the star power of the actors and is the first time in the franchise where all the supporting characters have something to do (except Checkov, poor guy). With these scenes we also get some of the aging theme that's been present in the previous films. We learn that the reason that reason the Enterprise has been decommissioned is to make room for a younger crew on a new, experimental ship, The Excelsior. None of this ever rises above escapist fantasy about how these borderline senior citizens are willing to sacrifice their carriers to save their friend and go on one, last adventure. It’s heartwarming but it's also tremendously easy.

The film tries to darken itself up towards the end when those pesky, shoehorned Klingons show up for one of those forgettable, climactic fist fights avoided by films with better sense. (Spoilers) As Kirk kicks the Klingon captain off a cliff he shouts out, in classic Shatner-esque fashion: "I have had enough of you," a sentiment which unfortunately sums up the entire scene. In the lead up, David sacrifices himself so the franchise can avoid dealing with Kirk having a son, and in the film's most effective moment, Kirk destroys the Enterprise. Perhaps it's personal bias, but seeing serious harm done to any incarnation of the Enterprise always seems to work dramatically, it's the only "character" in this franchise that can be killed and replaced without dedicating an entire film to it. (End Spoilers)

Search for Spock is a mixed bag of a film, but it is enjoyable. It exists primarily to retcon large parts of what is arguably the franchises best film. It’s also wafer thin, and full of easy, downright lazy choices, but it still holds together, largely due to the charisma of the cast. As cynical as it looks on paper, it does have some genuine heart to it. It’s a lesser Trek, but it’s the best of the lesser Trek’s.

Grade: C+

Trekkin' It directory:
The Motion Picture
Space Seed / The Wrath of Khan
The Search for Spock
The Voyage Home
The Final Frontier
The Undiscovered Country

Generations
First Contact
Insurrection
Nemesis

Star Trek '09
Into Darkness (spoiler analysis) 

CAMERON ROUNDTABLE: XENOGENESIS

-->Hi everyone, here at G-blatt’s Dreams summer movies and auteurs go together like peanut-butter and jelly. And chief among the action auteurs is James Cameron. When I was young, his smart, sophisticated explosion fests helped open my eyes to the power of real cinema. It’s a view also shared by my colleague Max O’Connell over at our sister site, The Film Temple. To this end, we have decided to join forces and review the complete works of Cameron to see what we could learn. Recently we got together and watched his entire filmography, including shorts, and recorded our thoughts. We begin this week with his 1978 short film, Xenogenesis.

Loren Greenblatt: When I meet James Cameron, I’m going to ask him: “In Xenogenesis, what ever happened to that guy hanging on the ledge? Did he make it?”

Max O’Connell: Yeah…it’s a bit of a clunky piece of storytelling, you might say.

LG: It’s his first time.

MO: It is his first time, but it opens up with this…it kind of reminds me of that scene in David Lynch’s Dune where Lynch throws a bunch of exposition at the audience and we’re already confused as to what’s going on.

LG: Ah yes, the “let’s explain EVERYTHING”  approach.

MO: While explaining nothing. It’s like we’re going to be tested on this.

LG: Xenogenesis, for those of you who don’t know, is basically James Cameron’s demo reel. It was supposed to be a demo for an actual film he wanted to make. It was financed for $20,000 by some dentists who wanted a tax write-off. They figured, “Oh, this is sci-fi, it’s 1978, the year after Star Wars, it’s like Star Wars, it’ll be a big hit.” They pulled out when they saw it and realized it was not like Star Wars at all, and that it was kind of…weird. It starts off with a series of matte paintings that I assume James Cameron did because he can draw like a motherfucker. There’s this narration that makes no sense.

MO: It’s very vague.

LG: It’s not like narration you would do for a movie. It’s like narration you would do for a commercial. “IN A WORLD IN THE FAR OFF DISTANCE A WOMAN RAISED BY MACHINES ONLY KNOWS LOVE!”

Also there's a Na'vi, who has nothing to do with anything.

MO: It’s a very poor B-movie type narration.

LG: I recently saw my very first Ed Wood movie. It’s kinda like that.

MO: It really is that bad. It would fit right in with Plan 9 or Glen or Glenda.

LG: Then the movie proper starts, and we see this giant room with this guy wandering around. To me it looks like this standard Star Wars-y thing where there’s a wall with lights cut out. But, hey, $20,000, it’s not gonna be Avatar yet. Then, well why don’t you explain the robot?

MO: It’s kind of interesting, though, because the robot looks almost exactly like the Hunter-Killers (or HKs) from the Terminator franchise. The world of the film is a very sleek Star Wars-ish corridor, and the doors open (it’s one of those WHOOSH doors from science-fiction) and the HK prototype comes out, and there’s a big fight where it comes after him. It’s strange, because it seems to be some sort of a maintenance robot, because it’s dusting and picking things up, and then it attacks. 

Xenogenesis vs. Terminator

LG: That said, it’s amazing stop-motion animation for $20,000 in 1978. This is good quality FX. Nobody was doing this outside of Star Wars.

MO: Then there’s a long passage where it’s going after him, and it looks like it’s about to kill him until his girlfriend enters in some sort of spider-robot that’s similar in concept to the mech-suit from Aliens. The person’s movements control where this suit goes and what it does, and then there’s a battle.

LG: AN EPIC BATTLE!

MO: Well, it’s impressive considering that it’s a 12-minute short with a low budget.

LG: We gotta talk about the guy (William Wisher).

MO: Oh, terrible actor.

LG: The short features a number of solid special effects, but every special-effects film features a turkey shot. In this one, the guy is hanging off a ledge. He hangs off this ledge, and it’s clear that the set was constructed horizontally, and they just tilted the camera.

MO: It’s not convincing in the least.

LG: It’d help if the guy was struggling a bit, but he’s just hanging there. He’s practically laying down with a pillow under his head.

MO: There’s a part where he’s resting his arms like someone would on a flat surface. It’s pretty bad. Any of the effect shots actually dealing with the humans are less convincing. When it’s just the machines, though, the film takes off.

LG: One thing I noticed in Cameron’s filmmaking is that at key moments, he goes to slow-motion. Here, when the guy falls near the ledge, it’s not super-slow-motion, but…

MO: It’s enough to let you know what you’re watching is important. It’s not amped up to ridiculous levels the way Zach Snyder might, but it works.

LG:  another thing I thought was interesting was the lasers. They didn’t have the “phew-phew” sound-effects like you might expect…they kind of sound like fax machines.

MO: It’s interesting in its own way that he’s playing with sound design this early in his career, because his later films work with it really well.

LG: The guy clearly has some idea of what to do behind the camera. Cameron is not a Film Brat like Spielberg or Lucas or Coppola, he started as a truck driver…which is interesting because you see a lot of blue-collar heroes in his films. But in high school, he drew, he read a lot of bad paperback science fiction. It’s clear in a lot of ways. That opening narration is the worst. It’s like every bad sci-fi novel from the 70s.

MO: But his sense of how the technology works is fantastic. The way the woman uses the mech suit is a bit silly looking, but you see how her movement controls the technology. When she uses the laser, it eventually goes to read “OUT OF BATTERY- RECHARGE”, which is great. It’s like a lot of Cameron films, where we learn the technology, however great, is limited.

LG: One of the things I love about a lot of Cameron films like Terminator 2 is that it’s not one of those films where the guns have infinite bullets. In any other film, it’s something to avoid, because it gets in the way of stuff. Cameron uses technology’s limits to enhance the storytelling and create suspence. He does it here for the first time and he’ll do it again in the Terminator movies.

MO: Oh yeah, it’s in The Abyss, it’s in Titanic to some degree, it’s in Aliens.

Xenogenesis is just like Avatar, but blurrier and shorter

LG: And the motions of the woman controlling the mech suit look silly, but how did it look when you first saw people using the Wii remote?

MO: There’s a very tactile sense of how it works, and that’s what’s important.

LG: It’s very important to emphasize that Cameron built these models- huge, very impressive models. Little wheels and treads, you see how it all works. Doing this today, it would all be CGI. And even if it were good CGI (and it’s hard to buy decent CGI for $20,000 unless you do it yourself), it would not be as tactile or as interesting to look at. There’s a quality to movement that you get with stop-motion.

MO: It looks too fluid, in a way.

LG: This isn’t an essential film, but you see how a lot of things he’s working with from the very beginning will occur throughout his filmography.

MO: One thing I liked in particular was…I made a joke about a “nuclear tanning light” that the HK-prototype uses to attack the people. It looks ridiculous, but in a way it’s his first exploration of the dark side of technology through nuclear weapons, which is something he’ll explore throughout his films. It’s in the Terminator movies, it’s in Aliens, it’s in The Abyss, it’s in True Lies.

LG: Are we sure that it’s nuclear?

MO: It’s glowing green and it sucks life out of people, I’m calling it nuclear.

LG: Fair enough. Oh, what about the Bernard Herrmann score?

MO: Oh, yeah, the Bernard Herrmann temp tracks are…probably effective in their original context, but it’s pretty silly here. It doesn’t help that he doesn’t really know how to direct actors yet, so when the music is providing all of the emotion it’s a bit goofy.  One other thing I’d like to say: Star Wars is a pretty big influence in the design of this thing, but something Cameron got from Lucas that you don’t see as much here is that sense of kineticism that runs throughout his films. This is a bit clunky and just a little plodding. Part of it is because he’s just starting out, but there it is.

LG: Well, there is a slightly more deliberate pacing to his films. The way he does action, it’s like- BEAT…BEAT….BEAT to a rhythm that’s slower than most action films. There’s a sense of escalation. He also slows down the action to consider the ideas behind the action scenes.

MO: Oh yeah, they certainly move moment-by-moment, but the moments are pretty fast-paced. But yeah, I see what you mean.

LG: It’s an important part to his style. When it’s bad, it comes off his clunky. When it’s good, it’s brilliant.

MO: And we see a little bit of both in Xenogenesis

Max’s Grade: B-

Loren’s Grade: B-

That's it for our discussion of Xenogenesis, if you agree or disagree, feel free to post comments below, and check out other reviews in our Cameron Roundtable serries:
Xenogenesis 
Piranha II: The Spawning 
The Terminator
Aliens (Special Edition)
Reach
The Abyss (Special Edition)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
True Lies
Titanic
Avatar (Extended Edition)
 

Xenogenesis has never been legitimately released, a bootleged version can be seen on You Tube