Kayla Savage and I are off to Disneyland this weekend, so the podcast is a lot shorter than usual. It’s just me this week reviewing The Witch and giving you guys a quick FAQ as it relates to the site and many repeated questions you all have asked over the years.
There’s no official question of the week, but I thought it would be fun for you guys to let us know in the comments how long you’ve been listening to the podcast. We were just talking the other day about what an awesome run it’s been since we started Now Conspiring back in 2014, and we’d love to hear how long you guys have been with us.
The Witch forces those who watch it to think deeply about what it all means. And many people will bicker over which conclusion they think their fellow moviegoers should arrive at after seeing it.
Luckily, my favorite thing about The Witch is how exciting it is to talk about it, and there’s much to discuss. Set many years before the infamous Salem Witch Trials, The Witch takes place in 1600s New England, as a budding family is banished from their Puritan plantation and forced to build a farm in the wilderness from the ground up (literally).
These devout Christians, led by patriarch William (Ralph Ineson), are strictly religious with their five children, especially when one goes missing early on. Haunted by a “witch of the wood,” and perhaps each other, the dysfunctional family experiences a haunting unlike most offerings you’d expect from the horror genre.
For one thing, there’s little left to the imagination when it comes to the film’s own paranormal threats, and it crosses disturbing territory that will be hard to watch for some casual horror fans. But they’ll certainly delight in the artistically frightening ambience of the crisp pilgrim farm, a ghastly soundtrack on par with It Follows, and beautiful scenery.
What’s more interesting, however, is the film’s message, as well as all of the unique takeaways that will come from moviegoers of differing ideologies. Satanists have already praised this movie for coming across as “pro-witchcraft” due to the way the film ends, while theologists simultaneously praise the film for addressing the true dangers of said witchcraft.
For newcomer writer and director, Robert Eggers, that’s quite the achievement, as he claims in the credits to have based much of the dialogue and story on a collection of true events. And he manages to also bring out revelatory performances out of his child actors, of whom I’ll single out Anya Taylor-Joy and Harvey Scrimshaw.
Is it a cautionary tale about the demonic forces hidden from our sight? Or is it instead criticizing religious overreach, and how it can be the origin of the very darkness they fear? Some will argue it’s a little of both, and balance is truly the virtue we can derive from The Witch. I doubt there needs to be a right answer.
The Witch gets a B
It’s a good horror film with great performances and pleasant scenery. Its scariest moments will bring on disturbing nightmares and provoke the right kinds of conversations, but The Witch suffers a bit from an over-indulgence of shock value that will alienate more people than it will engage.
A lot of people will like this movie, especially hardcore horror fans. But if you don’t care much for scary movies or even this subject material (akin to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible), then The Witch probably won’t change your mind.
Hey podcast friends, I’m joined by Kayla Savage, Maria Garcia, and (eventually) Adonis Gonzalez, as we review and discuss Deadpool on this week’s Now Conspiring.We’ll give you plenty of notice for spoilers, of course.
As always, we fill your conspiracy-loving brains with the latest movie news (mostly trailers this week), our answers to your questions last week, and some other twists and turns.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What types of movies do you wish Hollywood would make again?
The makers of Deadpool had a tall order on their hands.
A beloved comic-book antihero conceived in the early 90s, Deadpool has collected a legion of fans for a list of specific, stringent reasons. Failing to capture the exact spirit of the character would land Fox in a repeat of X-Men Origins: Wolverine history, when they first tried to fit the merc on the big screen.
But Deadpool also had to be a movie. Which means Fox had to work hard for the affections of Deadpool fans…and everyone else. And in a lot of ways, Deadpool more or less pulls this off with some creative humor and storytelling.
The film stars Ryan Reynolds, again playing Wade Wilson in a new origin story for the same character he played in Origins (sort of). After finding out he has terminal cancer, Wade leaves the love of his life, Vanessa (played by Gotham‘s Morena Baccarin), and tries to find a cure.
A group of scientists, led by “Ajax” (Ed Skrein from last year’s Transporter Refueled), manage to save Wade’s life, but they give him mutant abilities in the process. The procedure viciously scars Wade in more ways than one, setting him off on a mission to track Ajax down using his new abilities as the assassin, “Deadpool.”
If this sounds like a straightforward superhero movie, then I’m doing a decent job of preserving a lot of the jokes and humor that comprise Deadpool. Going into too much detail surrounding the plot and how certain scenes are set up would probably ruin a lot of the laughs you would otherwise have in the theater.
Because as you’ll realize within the first ten seconds of the film, Deadpool is absolutely a post-modern comedy. More than that, it’s a satire of superhero movies, much like how the original comic was a satire of the macho, violent 90s comics Wade Wilson was created to mock.
This is as funny as it is poignant, considering what it took to greenlight a feature film for a character most people have never heard of. And fans of superhero movies will likely consider Deadpool to be one of the best offerings in the superhero genre in years.
But Deadpool also provides an appeal that casual fans of the genre can appreciate, thanks mostly to Reynolds’ performance. His quick delivery lands more jokes than I think anyone else in the business could pull off, and his likability keeps the plot “moving forward” as you’ll discover.
Violence is also a hallmark of the Deadpool franchise, and Fox didn’t hold back at all this time. Deadpool belongs to a small club of R-rated superhero films, and the rating is spot on. There’s plenty of gore and grisly mayhem to justify the restriction, but that’s all part of what makes the source material so endearing. While it’s not as on the nose as the comics trying to spoof the 90s, the gratuitous violence certainly feels welcome in a genre stuffed with sanitized action and fake-out deaths.
What’s more impressive than the violence, however, is how competently Deadpool is shot as an action film. While parts of the origin story drag for a bit before getting back into the action, what we do get in these scenes is typically worth the wait.
The camera cuts at just the right moments when you want to feel the pain of a character’s head getting smashed against a wall, and impressive stunt work and effects make for an immersive comic-book movie on par with some of the best ever made.
You’d have to be pretty demanding to expect anything more from a movie that is as well-made as Deadpool, but there are enough issues to remember that Fox is just getting started.
The movie is overflowing with a surprising amount of faithfulness to the source material, and it’s fairly inventive. But it’s also generic, anyway. Underneath all of the delight you’ll get from well-written, self-aware humor is masked by an origin story that feels by-the-numbers and formulaic—a stark contrast to the risky business displayed by everything else in the movie, from the side characters to the soundtrack.
Perhaps this was necessary in order for Fox to ensure that there can, in fact, be a superhero movie for people who are sick of them. But for everyone else who can’t stomach the genre, Deadpool won’t do much to entertain them.
I’m going to give Deadpool a B+
If you like superhero movies, X-Men or otherwise, you’ll find a lot to love in Deadpool. Otherwise, you may find a lot of the humor flat and uninteresting. It would be a must-see for the action and Reynolds alone if only it didn’t fall back on so many origin story cliches it could have easily sidestepped.
Did you like Deadpool? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
I’m Jon and thanks for reading this. You can subscribe to my posts by clicking “Follow” in the right sidebar. Or just say hey on Twitter! @JonNegroni
In 2009, the X-Men film franchise took a step backward in more ways than one. It stepped backward in time, literally, to explore the origins of Wolverine, played a fourth time by Hugh Jackman.
The problem? We had already experienced a Wolverine-centric trilogy. Seriously, those movies were all about Wolverine. Many people, myself included, had no idea why we needed an origin film for a character we already knew so much about .
But we were still excited going into Origins because it featured our favorite mutant, and perhaps, we thought, there was still a great story to be told. And even more new X-Men characters for Fox to show us, including Gambit, a fully realized Sabertooth, and yes, Deadpool.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine has its fans, to be sure, as it serves up at least a passable romp of an action movie (as well as a far superior video game made by Activision). But what made the origin movie unforgivable for legions of X-Men fans had a lot to do with that character I mentioned earlier: Deadpool.
The “Merc with a Mouth” made his debut on the big screen with Origins, and he was actually played by Ryan Reynolds (a hint that the casting was one of the character’s few bright spots).
What’s odd about Origins‘ take on Deadpool has a lot more to do with the Deadpool we got in the final act of the film, not his initial introduction. Early on, he was still Wade Wilson, before getting the Weapon X treatment that would transform him into the fully fleshed (depending on how you look at it) Deadpool.
The movie portrayed him as the mercenary for hire with enhanced reflexes. This, of course, was before he would undergo the nightmarish operations granting him Wolverine’s healing factor.
And this version of Deadpool was one of the highlights of what was mostly a dreary retread of the first X-Men with more montages. Just take a look at how they nailed Wilson’s ninjaesthetic in just one scene:
Reynolds’ quick wit was a welcome addition to the exposition-heavy origin story, and it set up for an even more interesting story we were getting with the character who would become Deadpool.
Then he became Deadpool. And all hell broke loose.
Spoilers for X-Men Origins: Wolverine going forward.
As I stated earlier, the final act of Origins is where the bastardization of Deadpool came into effect. Stryker unleashes “Deadpool” on Wolverine, whose mouth is sewn shut to somehow resemble the comic book character in a grittier manner. Deep sigh.
Not only that, but Stryker dumped several mutant powers upon Deadpool, rather than just the healing factor. For whatever reason, they even decided to give him Cyclops’ optic beams. The result was a pale shadow of what makes Deadpool a compelling character, complete with blades coming out of his arms to mimic Wolverine.
The message was clear. Fox was so convinced that Wolverine was their only draw for these movies, they had to manufacture more characters to emulate him. Tinkering with source material is one thing, but assuming fans only care about one character in such an expansive mythology is just idiotic.
Which is why I hesitate to lay any blame on Reynolds. True, “Deadpool” contributed heavily to why Origins was a failure, but that’s removing a decent take on the character that we can place on Reynolds. He fit the part, just not the script.
And when it comes to Origins as a whole, the problems begin long before the final act. For one thing, the movie removes a key trait of Wolverine that makes him interesting: the mystery of his origins (who’d have thought?) Taylor Kitsch as Gambit is given nothing to do, along with many of the other characters you saw in the video above. Adamantium bullets. CGI Patrick Stewart. It all adds up to something bizarrely awful.
The side characters are hard to place fault on, even Will.I.Am (yes, this was his debut on the big screen). Origins spends the majority of its time trying to get two hours out of a somewhat substantial rivalry between Wolverine and Sabertooth, played expertly by Liev Schrieber.
Granted, it’s a better set up than their conflict in the first of these movies, but it wasn’t interesting enough to sweep the film’s other side plots aside, a decision I suspect the writers were either forced to make late in production, or chose to in order to save the movie. The result ended up being all the same.
While I don’t expect the upcoming Deadpool to be a revolution in superhero cinema, there’s little doubt that Fox has learned its lesson in spades these last few years, with nary a truly terrible X-Men film to be found. Some still find all of these later entries, even First Class, mostly generic, but there’s a certain level of effort being shown every time.
And for better or worse, that hasn’t changed with Reynolds’ next foray into the X-Men universe.
My Retronalysis grade for X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a D.
Thanks for reading this! You can subscribe to my posts by clicking “Follow” in the right sidebar. Or just say hey on Twitter: @JonNegroni
This week on the podcast, we review Hugh Jackman’s latest film, Eddie the Eagle along with the Coen Brothers’ latest, Hail, Caesar!
We also cover all of this week’s biggest entertainment news, discuss directing/writing styles we can’t stand, and answer all your feedback from last week’s show.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Which directing/writing styles do you dislike the most? And how many of you have ever heard of Magic Tree House?
Making movies about making movies is a risky gambit. But directors/writers Joel and Ethan Coen are up to the challenge in Hail, Caesar!, a near-parody of 50s Hollywood complete with Josh Brolin as “fixer” Eddie Mannix.
Mannix is the “Physical Producer” at Capitol Pictures (not Records), and his job is to keep the wheels from squeaking within a morally bored Hollywood studio lot rife with kidea-pings, illegitimate pregnancies, and other scandals that could ruin Capitol’s celebrities and incoming cash flow.
But Hail, Caesar! is not as straightforward at first glance, or even viewing, with its narrative or characters. True, the film covers a 28-hour day within the life of Mannix and his celebrities, but it weaves itself through a remarkably engrossing dance number here, a hilarious artistic drama over there, and then wildly entertaining conversations elsewhere in Malibu among…well, I won’t spoil it.
Further, Caesar is quite literally a divine comedy, in that it provides a light message in what can only be perceived as anti-religion (in the organized sense) and pro-faith. An odd, yet unsurprising choice for the Coens, who have a penchant for relying on straight, middle-America characters to draw audience sympathy. Yet like Big Lebowski, it’s the small details that trump the more subtle ones that will fight to distract you from what the Coens are trying to pull off.
The film will make you feel smart for catching his den references to a literal spaghetti western or the name of a popular communist on a business card. Then you’ll fall to the charm of how it frames its religious ideology, which strikes first as a “Don’t be a Jerk” message until you stop and take the final scene in Hail, Caesar! (the movie within the movie, not the one directed by the Coens) more literally when one word forgotten by the star actor (George Clooney) happens to be faith.
For that and many other reasons, Hail, Caesar! is the first truly great wide release of 2016, in that it provides a thoroughly entertaining narrative just begging to be discoursed, rehashed, and argued among lovers of all films, not just work by the Coen brothers.
I’m going to give Hail, Caesar! an A-
To be fair, I don’t think Hail, Caesar! will sat isn’t all moviegoers (which is not a fault of the movie). Cinephiles will have the most fun with it, and I suspect it will leave a lasting impact on those who have the patience to breathe in the style, the substance, and most definitely the details.
I’m Jon and thanks for reading this. You can subscribe to my posts by clicking “Follow” in the right sidebar. Or just say hey on Twitter! @JonNegroni
