Superman: The Vendetta Begins

Look Ma, no wires

Superheroes all have origins and so have to have origin stories.  The trauma of betrayal that awoke crime fighting desire or the bestowal of cosmic gifts need to be explained in order for the audience to buy into the hero and his code of ethics.  Now Superman is arguably the purest of all superheroes, the embodiment of hope, morality and humanitarianism: the very best of mankind. But he's an alien.  How can you reconcile his stellar immigration and emergence as the World's Boy Scout?

Easy.  Give him two ridiculously iconic fathers and get Mario Puzo to write the screenplay.  OK, so maybe most of Puzo's story was ditched by Donner and Mankiewisz but he's still got the writing credit.  It helps that it's 1977 and Kubrick has long opened up special effects use and George Lucas is making space age fairytales popular.  Warner Bros and Richard Donner set out to film Superman and Superman II at the same time.  Quite a show of confidence seeing that this is the first of the blockbuster superhero films; a bold gamble on an unknown quantity as the superhero genre didn't even exist.  It seems production was far from plain sailing from the script rewrite to Brando's diva turn and demands, not to mention having to actually cast Superman at three different ages.  Was Christopher Walken really offered the role? Burt Reynolds too?  Nowadays it's hard to see anyone other than Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel.

It all comes together and becomes the perfect introduction.  We begin on Krypton, the deep space leg of Bowie's Isolar tour.  Krypton is a barren place and essentially a background space for Brando to fill.  Brando's Jor-El is a scientist, a leader and a genius.  Jor-El's hubris is displayed in his dispute

Do not put that up your bum. A & E will bever believe you.

with Krypton's ruling council and not the fact he pops his infant son into a crystal soap dish without as much as a jumper to keep him warm.  Krypton's doom confirms Jor-El's theories yet doesn't explain how he had time to record the history of Earth on crystal sex aids and use them to build his son, Kal-El's, escape pod.

Kal-El hurtles through space and absorbs history, a subtle nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey and a slight confirmation of L Ron Hubbard's belief in engrams.  Not much happens in Smallville till Kal-El crashes at the feet of father number two: Glenn Ford.

Best. Dad. Ever.

Fate may have worked differently and Clark Gable may have been cast as Jonathan Kent and whilst that would have had a cute symmetry for Superman it would have robbed us of Ford's magical turn.  In just one scene Ford shows us effortlessly how a young Clark Kent has been instilled with decency and a very 1950s style of American goodness.  There are few sadder scenes in cinema than Jonathan Kent realising his heart is failing him.  The movie feels like it has barely started and we've so far been introduced to almost everyone important to Superman's development and future including the fleeting appearance of Lois Lane and the reverence for the old Superman TV series.  It's not just Hitchcock who did cameos.

It's about time we saw some scenes of mild peril.  Supes has gotten into his red pants and Clark Kent has become a klutz and inexplicably landed a job in New York Metropolis at The Daily Planet.  He's also developed the rather odd habit of having conversations with a crystal DVD of his father.  Don't worry, Air Force One has engine trouble.  The aching politeness of Superman in his interview with hardnosed reporter Lois Lane is juxtaposed with the introduction of second hand car salesman Lex Luthor.  It seems all that soft focus goes to Lois Lane's head as she swoons and falls in love with the red cape and exposed pants.  It's going to be a while before we find out exactly what Luthor is up to so we'll have to sit back and endure the flirting.  What could have been a His Girl Friday kind of courtship in reverse is disemboweled by a softcentre voiceover and a flying trip.  It's now that we need our villain to come to the fore.

To the fore Luthor duly emerges.  With a plan that wouldn't have been out of place in a 70s Bond film Luthor wants to make a killing on Californian real estate with the handy use of a nuclear missile.  It's a scheme Max Zorin would be proud of but there's just one problem: Superman.  And so comes the cinematic establishment of a classic superhero subplot: Kill The Bat.  For any super-villains scheme to succeed he must first kill the superhero of the piece.  Sure, we've seen Bond strapped to laser targeted tables and penned in with alligators but a superhero has to have one specific weakness that can be exposed.  The Martian Manhunter isn't too keen on fire and The Green Lantern is famously adverse to yellow (yes, the colour) but Superman is OK as his weakness blew up in space.  Kryptonite is gone.  Or is it? Of course it isn't and Luthor has got some.

Events are coming to a head, Lois is bombing along a California road, Superman is having a bath and Luthor's plan is getting close.  All the while The Liability Formerly Known As Jimmy Olsen is having a walk by a dam.  If Gene Hackman hadn't have been cast as Lex Luthor none of this would've worked as it is we can suspend our disbelief right up until the cheat.

Yep, Superman, the walking, talking pillar of truth, justice and the American Way cheats.  Faced with an impossible choice we are asked to accept the greatest example of deus ex machina ever.  The system restore approach to this story's end sticks in your throat and actually goes some way to lessening our hero.  Shouldn't a real hero be prepared to make sacrifice for the greater good?

Despite the fractured production and the unsatisfactory ending Superman is wonderful.  The introduction of our hero and his backstory, love interest and main antagonist are concise and brilliantly efficient.  The decision to simultaneously film the sequel means a franchise's worth of characters are established along with their motives.  This is an absolute masterstroke and so much better than Marvel's Easter Egg approach in recent years.  Warner Bros took a gamble and their decision to go big and bold paid off.

Dust yourself down as it only gets better.  Better on Planet Houston.

You took your time

We all know it's named after Ian Fleming's old house. We all know it's the first film not to take anything from the books. We all know it might be a little too slick for our liking but none of that matters. We've been waiting.

We've been waiting. Since 1989.

We've been waiting for what seems like an eternity, but now we have GoldenEye.

Legal wrangles produced the longest gaps between Bond films so far. Understandably Mr Dalton got a bit bored waiting and so gave up the role and nearly ten years too late the producers got Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan with his improbably coiffured hair and impressive jawline in the role he was born to play. In the time since License To Kill the Berlin Wall has fallen and Communism with it. Bond has lost his old enemy so we wait with baited breath to see who will replace the Russians and their KGB.

 That hair will NOT move

This was the first Bond film I was old enough to see at the cinema. There is something quite magical about seeing the gun barrel intro on the big screen but something less wonderful about the cinema goers who mockingly applauded Bond's mastery of the small plane after blowing up the chemical plant.  GoldenEye's best feature is the way it draws on previous Bond films. Brosnan is the suavest Bond since Connery, he still pitches the odd one liner a la Moore (thankfully not as cringeworthy) and retains a little of Dalton's grit.  Balanced against the traditions of Moneypenny flirting and the comic asides of Q are some new elements. First and most obvious is the new M, Judi Dench is perfectly cast and perfectly reminiscent of Bernard Lee's M. It's good to see Bond getting the telling off he deserves every now and then.  Try and ignore the fact Bond has a BMW now, add in some relatively unknown actresses as Bond girls Simonova and Onatopp and some exotic locations and we're all set.

GoldenEye is essentially a revenge tale with a twist. An old MI6 colleague, Trevelyan, returns from the dead in an attempt to use a nuclear powered satellite (what else?) to initiate global financial meltdown and destroy the UK to avenge his parents.  Conveniently, Trevelyan will also get revenge on Bond who he blames for his facial disfigurement caused in the pre-credit sequence.  Ah yes, the credits.  The very credits which feature a girl who can deep throat a pistol.  In what I assume was a measure not to be too old fashioned the powers that be drafted in Tina Turner instead of Dame Shirley Bassey to belt out a Bono penned song. There are two things wrong with this. Firstly, it's a Bono song, it's a wonder his ego allowed him involvement. Secondly, I can't listen to any Tina Turner song without thinking of her 'dancing'.

Tina Turner should've taught Bono how to do this

Trevelyan is using renegade Soviet miltia to help him use the GoldenEye satellite to set off an EMP (remember Moore's explanation in A View to a Kill) to wipe out his emtying of every bank account he can lay his virtual hands on. He chooses Cuba as his base and so the hunt is on. After an altercation in a junkyard Brosnan finds himself bombing around St Petersburg in a tank to hunt Treveyan and save Simonova.

 Smashing up St Petersburg makes you thirsty

Despite an odd turn of events with a horse statue this is a very entertaining chase sequence (please ignore blatant product placement). It's no Bullitt but it's 100 times better than Connery in a car park in Diamonds are Forever. So we're off around the world again, destroying trains and squishing people with helicopters before a heavily choreographed fight inside Trevelyan's satellite's gearbox.

Sean Bean vs Pierce Brosnan in a good old fashioned fist fight is quite a good way for the villain to get his comeuppance. It's understated, no compressed air pellets, air locks or golden gunned duels.

Brosnan's debut was slick, entertaining and just the right thing to restart the Bond series after hiatus, let's hope it doesn't get silly in the future.

Bond has been substantially modernised.  GoldenEye was the first film in the series to use CGI. The franchise has been invigorated and hasn't gone too 'Hollywood' just yet, a good job then that John Woo turned down directing duties and the guest star roles haven't quite begun in earnest.

James Bond will return. Tomorrow or Today. Well, in the future and he'll have that bloody BMW too.



P.S.

GoldenEye was supposed to have been filmed at Pinewood but production clashed with Connery's First Knight. Instead production was moved to Leavesden, near Watford, now the home of Harry Potter World. So, basically, Harry Potter in Watford is your fault Sean Connery. I'll forgive GoldenEye that due to the fact it spawned the best computer game EVER and the only reason anyone bought a Nintendo 64.

Time to retire Roger

A View To A Kill was the first Bond film I can remember seeing. I was born smack in the middle of the Moore era and didn't really know what Bank Holidays were about until I was about seven. A View To A Kill remains arguably my favourite Bond film and this is mainly down to Christopher Walken.

The story goes that David Bowie turned down the Zorin part. Walken was ace but you still have a little feeling of 'what if....' with Bowie's snub.  Walken has said he based his performance on Robert Shaw's Red Grant. Fair play to an American caring about a movie legacy. Walken is understated and menacing as the genetically engineered genius. You just wish he was in the movie a bit more.

OK, so A View To A Kill has it's bad points. The sodding Beach Boys and the iceberg submarine. Roger Moore spending a fair amount of time looking for his pension book on screen and the God awful fire engine sequence. Chuck in the fact that you can have a very easy game of 'Spot The Stunt Double' when Bond is engaged in mild action and you should have a Bond film that is worse than Moonraker (if possible)  But you don't, thanks to a reasonably sensible plot compared to other Moore jaunts, Patrick Macnee and some great set pieces on the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Oh, and Duran Duran with the best Bond theme since Goldfinger.

That's not Roger

So we go from retrieving a microchip in Siberia and a well utilised smoke flare to San Francisco via an odd horse doping set up in France and a detective named after a vegetable.  I, for one, was quite relieved Detective Aubergine was a very bit part.  Chuck in a solid job by David Yip as a helping CIA agent and a bizarre turn from Willoughby Gray as Hans Glaub and you can forgive them for casting Tanya Roberts and her throaty screaming in the lift shaft.  If only those petrol filled Bacardi bottles had hit her on the head.

Then there's Grace Jones.  Most people are still scared of Jones but Moore, well, ahem, Rogered her and did his standard sucky face kiss thing.  Hard to work out who was on more drugs, Pegasus the horse or Grace Jones. Mind you I'd run faster than Pegasus in that mine shaft if she was after me and I certainly wouldn't want Little Roger anywhere near me.

Why haven't they invented Viagra yet?

A View To A Kill is a fitting send off for Roger Moore, after the piss poor Octopussy the game had to be raised for fear of mortally wounding the franchise but it's almost a movie or two too late. the fight scene with Grandpa's ashes was almost exclusively carried out by Moore's stunt double. Roger probably had the day off for a prostate exam and a couple of big cigars. A bit worrying then that the tagline for this was 'Smooth Operator' describing a man seemingly crying out for a hip replacement.

The final scenes high up on the Golden Gate Bridge see the more youthful Walken fighting on a level of OAP. No punches but a bit of pushing and shoving with an axe. Zorin gives Bond a chance and pays for it by transforming into a shop mannequin as he plummets to the ocean. You don't technically see him die, in a Mr Big/Scaramanga kind of way, so maybe he was due to pop up again for revenge. We'll probably never know.

What we do know is that James Bond will return.

And this time he'll be Welsh.