Review: Avatar Aang

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is an animated film that’s arguably more known for the drama it’s accrued en route to release than anything else. Originally intended for cinemas, it was instead slated to be dropped on streaming platform Paramount+, much to the vocal annoyance of no few people. It was then reportedly leaked online, in its entirety. Last but not least, a photo of a slide in a presentation about the film at San Diego Comic Con pointed to the usage of AI by at least one person during pre-production, for cultural research, which has drawn another strong negative reaction. In short, the film itself has been pretty thoroughly overshadowed, at this point. It has now released to Paramount+, so a friend and I sat down to watch it. I have a lot of thoughts about it, and they’re mostly not positive ones, so time for a blog. As always, these are just the thoughts and opinions of one person, and there will be spoilers.

Some personal context, to start. As much as I like the original Avatar animated series, considering it a thorougly enjoyable, often quite impressive series, I don’t love it. I do, however, love the sequel series, The Legend of Korra. I think it better than the original on pretty much every level. Korra, to me, is a much more interesting, engaging and compelling lead character than Aang, though part of that is down to me being drawn to female leads a lot more than male ones. Plucky young boy leads, in particular, for me a seriously overdone trope, will struggle to secure my interest unless a novel enough spin is put on it. I think the supporting cast is a lot richer, with several real standouts, like Tenzin, Jenora, Asami and Lin Beifong. The world, now bustling with technology in a distinctly steampunk fashion, is fantastic. The first series was a relatively standard fantasy world with magical powers, but Korra evolves it in ways that are original and engaging, takes those foundations and builds something pretty spectacular.

All that in mind, a return to the time of Aang doesn’t appeal to me as much as it does to, seemingly, most people. The original creators and some of the original writers were involved in the film, though, so surely it’s got to be good? Well, no. Right from the start, it felt a little perfunctory, like it wasn’t really building up to things, earning its plot and character moments. They almost just…happened. A brief recap of Aang’s origins and the loss of the Air Benders, to start – I don’t recall him running away in the original series, but my memories of it are vague – followed by him collecting Air Bender artefacts, with focus on a particularly old and rare one. It’s setting up the main thrust of the story, but in a pretty simplistic way, not doing much more than the basic beats.

Aang is then attacked, by a group of non-benders calling themselves The Denied, and what do they want? The artefact he just found, obviously, as it hides a map to a powerful secret. Not only does this group never really develop into anything beyond an antagonistic threat that must be beaten to the secret, but they’re also the first instance of another big issue with the film, familiarity. To me, they just felt like a thin variation on Amon and his followers from Korra, just reheating that concept. To be fair, they may have been intended as a precursor to Amon, the first stirrings of the unrest that would lead to his rise, but I don’t recall any real evidence of that. Aang does save one from the destruction they’re causing, which makes them start to doubt, but I don’t remember that leading to anything, unless I blinked and missed it.

The sense of familiarity ramps up considerably when Aang’s investigations lead him to a lofty peak, and a wall of ice with a man frozen inside it. Obvious parallels to Aang himself, but also, it feels pretty clear from the outset this guy isn’t going to be an ally. After Aang frees Tagah, and the latter reveals himself as someone given air bending powers by an Avatar, I immediately think of Zaheer, the main antagonist of Korra‘s third season. The impression of reheated Zaheer only deepens as the film goes on, through Tagah’s manner, appearance, voice, and obvious-to-everyone-not-called-Aang zealotry. All this is part of another big issue with the film: it’s predictable. It’s very clear what’s going to happen, that betrayal is coming, unless, again, you’re called Aang. There’s also the detail that the Avatar writers clearly love zealots, as it’s a well they keep going back to. All four of Korra‘s main villains, after all, are zealots of one kind or another. Doing another one was very unlikely to work for me, especially one reheating the weakest of Korra‘s villains, Zaheer, only deepening the poor comparisons to the triumph of the archetype that was Kuvira, Korra‘s final and greatest villain.

Avatar Aang isn’t just reheating Korra, though. A zealot fixated on bringing his people back, at any cost, that draws the hero into his quest, is basically the plot of Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time. The difference is that Alister Azimuth is a far more compelling character than Tagah, the weight of the guilt consuming him, driving him, palpable. You feel where Azimuth’s coming from, feel the tragedy of him, not least thanks to a stellar vocal performance by Joey D’Auria, and you fully believe that he could sweep Ratchet up in his efforts. As hard as Dave Bautista tries, Tagah never does much more than exist, there’s little weight or emotion to him, and it’s never believeable that Aang would be so taken in by him. He and that storyline, in this film, are pale echoes of much better things.

Then there’s the secret. A race to an all-powerful secret is one of the oldest narratives going. In this case, it’s a staff wielded by the Avatar that gave Tagah his powers, a staff that can channel the power of the spirit world. That’s formulaic enough, but it being hidden in a mystical land in the eye of a vast, seemingly impenetrable storm feels lifted straight from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. These are the moments Avatar Aang slews dangerously close to derivative.

Thin. Familiar. Perfunctory. Predictable. Derivative. Not words I’d ever thought I’d be using in relation to a film written by storytellers I consider to be quite brilliant, but they’re words I’d use for Avatar Aang, nonetheless. Even the visuals, as slick and often impressive as they are, are less the distinctive, inspired by anime style of the original Avatar and Korra, more a generic anime style, especially in the fight scenes. If the original creators hadn’t been involved, I’d have thought this film a thin excuse for nostalgia bait. If the original creators hadn’t been involved, I’d almost think someone just prompted an AI to write an Avatar story, as it feels close to the kind of stitched-together rehash of random things AI would generate. But, they were, so I’m left wondering how the result was so underwhelming.

Regarding Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is, and I doubt this comes as a surprise, a huge personal favourite film. It soars on every level, technical, acting, music, narratively, emotionally, all of it. It’s a triumph. It’s also likely not a surprise that I’ve long wanted to read the book the film is very loosely based on, Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K Wolf. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I’ve now been able to, and oh my, do I have some thoughts and feelings about it, hence this blog. As always, just the opinions of one person, and be aware my love for the film is undoubtedly colouring my reactions to the book, and that there will be spoilers.

Let’s start with the positives. The basic conceit is great, and the execution is largely great, too. The contrast between the almost stereotypically rough-hewn and cynical gumshoe Eddie Valiant and his goofball toon client Roger is a lot of fun. Most of the logic of the toons works well, not least the speaking in word balloons, which enables a lot of entertaining little bits throughout. The idea of them being photographed to create strips is a clever and interesting one, as is their ability to generate short-lived clones of themselves, doppelgangers, both helping to build a drolly absurd world that’s pretty engaging.

The only issue for a fair stretch of the book is the plotting, which is pretty convoluted and confusing, not least in how things tend not to be explained or evolved, more shifted to a different configuration of confusing, but as it’s clearly largely a parody of hard-boiled detective tropes, easy to roll with. The longer the book goes on, though, the more of an issue it becomes, as you realise the odds of it all resolving satisfactorily are shrinking. This impression is deepened by the characters, only one of which, Roger, is consistently likeable, the rest either being unpleasant from the start, or proving to be so as the plot wears on.

The two female characters are the best examples of both. Carol Masters at first seems like a potential ally, only to devolve into a pretty one-note antagonistic presence, who literally walks out of the story after her role in a fraud and theft scheme is revealed; plot purpose served, off she goes. Jessica Rabbit is a long, long way from the film version, vain, self-serving, capricious, and by the end of the story, little more than a sexed-up plot device who’s simply forgotten. Only Baby Herman is arguably treated worse, because he seems like he’ll be important at the start, but then just vanishes, barely even mentioned for most of the book.

There is a sense of an arc for Eddie, though, the same as in the film, of Roger wearing away his cynicism as they bond in spite of everything. The murder of the title character is a twist with a lot of potential, not least in the reveal of his apparent doppelganger, as it could either lead to a bittersweet ending, or another fun twist reveal of it being the real Roger, while the doppel took the fatal shot. Unfortunately, Wolf opted for neither, and the choice he did make is frankly baffling.

It starts with a teakettle, the one thing taken from Roger’s home after the latter is ransacked in the wake of his murder. Jessica wants it. The surviving DeGreasy brother – the owners of the strip business that employed Roger – wants it. Gotta be important. At first, it seems it’s actually a lot more valuable than it looks, the grey coating hiding pure gold dotted with jewels, so the motives are good-old fashioned greed. But nope, it’s a whole lot wilder than that. Turns out, it’s really a magic lantern, with a genie that can grant toon wishes inside it.

The moment I realised this was where the story was genuinely going, I started to disconnect. On a basic, tonal level, it doesn’t work. It’s too different in tone to the rest of the world, too big a jump. You’ve gone from silly but grounded, a nice balance of daft and deadpan, to suddenly there’s magic and wishes. A droll noir parody quite abruptly goes full Arabian Nights, the rules of the world shift hugely, and it inevitably derails pretty much everything. A lot of character actions are revealed not to have been by their own choice, but courtesy of inadvertent wishes, which is pretty discomfiting in the case of Jessica being married for a year because of it. All the DeGreasy Brothers’ success wasn’t hard graft, but a wish, and oh yes, they also wished to be turned from toons to humans. It hollows out so much.

The logic of the genie doesn’t even track. He got fed up, understandably, of endlessly granting wishes, so turned djinn and began souring them, putting unpleasant twists on them, usually time limits of a year or two. Hence, Roger got married to the girl he loved, but only for a year, and it was all fake anyway. Hence, the success of the DeGreasy brothers’ company running out, and the surviving one wanting the lantern to stop that, and himself from reverting to a toon. Time’s almost up. But then, if the wishes only last a year or two, how do we explain the murdered brother having an adult son? Was he a wish, too?

And that’s not even the peak of the muddle the ending collapses into. It also turns out the genie had escalated even further, from twisted wishes to straight-up murder, using a gun he’d snatched to shoot anyone who summoned him. Roger was the first. The second DeGreasy brother was next, but for some reason, rather than just shoot Eddie after the latter bursts in, he decides to lay out exposition, instead, the classic villain monologue that buys time for the hero to figure out how to kill them. The whole genie reveal reminds me of Murder By Death, a delightful mystery spoof that takes real pleasure in lampooning the apparent gumshoe habit of solving the murder by introducing a completely new character to be the killer at the end, as that’s exactly what the genie feels like, except it doesn’t work as a spoof, either. It doesn’t work or satisfy on any level, for me.

But, for all that pain, at least we still have Eddie and Roger, right? Wrong. The last reveal is that the killer of the first DeGreasy brother was Roger. You know, the lovable toon whose presumed innocence, and need to prove that innocence, drove pretty much the whole book? Yeah, he was secretly evil the whole time. The doppel was created to be an alibi, the intent was to pin the killing on Eddie, it was all a cold ruse from the start. Valiant twigged to it, and for much of the book was just playing along, humouring Roger’s doppel until he had the proof. In just a couple of pages, the best aspect of the book is completely undermined, leaving a very sour taste in the mouth. That the explanation for the doppel lasting two full days, far longer than the usual hour or two, is basically that Roger concentrated really hard when creating them, just underlines the disappointment. There’s something quite cynical, maybe even mean-spirited, about how this book ends.

Two thirds of Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is really enjoyable, with no small potential, but the last third throws every last drop of it away, through choices that I can’t begin to understand. As a writer, the waste really gets to me. Fortunately, the potential was realised by the film, which took just the core concept, and the basics of Eddie and Roger and Jessica, and wove a far superior tale from them. It gave Eddie a potent reason for his dislike of toons, built an arc from it, built up a richly engrossing world and stuck to the rules of it, and reaped the rewards. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is everything the book could have been, and so much more.

The upshot of all this is an even deeper appreciation for the film. Seeing an idea I like, but not enjoying the execution, and then thinking about how I’d handle it, is a recurrent theme for me. That the creators of the film seem to have done the same with the book resonates profoundly. Next time I watch it, and I suspect it’ll be soon, it’ll be with a quite different pair of eyes.

Looking at Lego City Undercover

Continuing my run through a few Lego games with an absolute chonker. Lego City Undercover is gargantuan, both in terms of the scale of its open world and the intimidating quantities of collectibles to amass. Completing it to 100%, with all achievements, as I did, is a huge sink of time and effort. It needs to be good to justify the commitment, and thankfully, for the most part, it really is. In fact, I’d put it with LOTR as one of the very best Lego games to date.

The story is great fun, a delightful pastiche of cop action flicks, resulting in one the very silliest Lego games. The disguise mechanic means the freeplay mode is one of the cleanest and most enjoyable, and there are no difficult collectibles in the levels. The voice acting is wonderful throughout, with Peter Serafinowicz again a highlight. The open world is mostly fantastic, full of character and interest, not least in the audio atmospherics that a lack of music gives free rein to, making for a great place to exist in, and one that’s actually given me ideas for a story setting.

The one district of it that doesn’t work is Festival Square, a pretty generic urban open green space with fairground paraphenalia scattered about, and a constant patter of drums that wears thin quite quicky. Very hard to pick a best district, as there are multiple candidates. Easily the best open world of any Lego game I’ve played so far. I have to note the game did crash twice while I was exploring it, though, so maybe a little much for the engine, at times.

The jumping and free running can on occasion be a little woolly and messy, but are mostly very solid. The driving controls are better than any of the Lego Marvel games, but don’t fully escape the response issues that seem to be a persistent Lego game niggle, sometimes not responding quite enough, others a little too much. The aircraft controls are also solid, though I didn’t fly much at all as the Helipads could be buggy, either not letting me select a helicopter or quit out, so I had to restart the game, or not being accessible at all.

I’ve yet to find a Lego game that gets races right, and this one, sadly, doesn’t break that streak. The best driving challenges are the car thefts, as in steal a car and drive it to a lockup while the cops try to stop you, mostly because they’re the simplest, just follow the stud trail and dodge police cars, and when you’ve got certain red bricks, they become an absolute breeze. The inverse challenges, catching and stopping a car thief, are mostly annoying, as they invariably steal a lead on you, and can be a pain to catch regardless of what they’re driving even with nitrous boosts; balance off just a bit there, I think. The time trials vary quite a bit, from decent to pretty annoying, partly thanks to awkward layouts that sometimes take you through really tricky spots, but mostly thanks to the gates, cones of light with arrows floating in them that all too often are misleading, not actually pointing where you need to go; I swear on a couple of occasions they were pointing completely the wrong way. These were definitely becoming a bit of a chore by the end.

The open world tasks are, inevitably, a little repetitive, but not as much so as other Lego games, and for the most part gave me little trouble. The paint a number of items challenges could be a touch frustrating, as they’d sometimes be scattered over the entire district, and were often fairly inconspicuous. One of them involved tiny little bollards I’d likely never have found without the scanner. The one challenge that really got a rise out of me was in Festival Square, another reason it’s my least favourite district. It involved jumping and rope-sliding along a chain of huge animal balloons, to reach a disguise token and a listening point. There’s one jump toward the end of the chain that’s stupidly hard to make, to the point I wonder if there wasn’t supposed to be a handle on the balloon you’re jumping to. The worst bit is that when you miss, and you will miss, multiple times, you have to go through a quite long free run sequence and a chicken flight to get back to the balloons. A serious test of patience and temper.

The long trip to get back to where you were is a recurrent problem in the open world. A long climb to a rooftop, where you find multiple things to do, but if two or more of those things require a return to the ground, then you face repeating the long climb, possibly several times, to do them all. The worst example is in Paradise Sands, where just one building is your access point to the roofs of all the others, so you’re climbing it over, and over, and over, and over again and rapidly getting fed up of it. Why, oh why, aren’t there unlockable shortcuts, like teleporters you can activate, or ladders you can extend downwards, to save you all that pain? For all the game gets right, this is a pretty baffling, and aggravating, oversight.

The other open world problem is the camera. The free camera is good until you go near anything, like a wall, or a lamp post, or a tree, at which point it will bounce, or judder, or spin awkwardly. You go into a tight space, chances are high it’ll flip out completely. At one point, it somehow ended up under the ground, looking up at my character’s feet. The collision is basically on par with early 3D games, which is probably why LCU takes every chance it can to lock the camera in place. Every climb, every free run, almost every time you’re on a roof, the camera is fixed, and always at an angle that hinders more than it helps. You’re often struggling to angle your jumps, and ceiling hangs are usually really hard to judge. And there’s how often there are cuts to count down to an event start, then when you get control, the camera’s facing the wrong way. If there’s one area of the game that could really have done with more refinement, it’s the camera.

The last issue is more subjective. The disguise roster is huge, 305 of them, but the variety, for me, is lacking more than a little. There are nowhere near enough female disguises, a few categories with none at all, a few with just one. I think between two thirds and three quarters are male, which is a really poor ratio. Forty-odd criminals, and none of them female? Really? Then again, there are only two female characters in the story, and neither is treated that well or gets a great deal to do. A parodic game that doesn’t subvert one of the most tiresome cop film tropes feels like a missed opportunity.

None of these issues – balloons aside – are as bad as those of the Lego Marvel games. This feels like a distinct improvement and refinement, like it not being a big IP meant they had more time and freedom to polish. There are still niggles and rough edges, though, which is undoubtedly down to its sheer size. LCU may have been a little too ambitious for its own good. This doesn’t stop it being a lot of fun, enough so it’s the one of the four I’ve played so far in this run i’m most likely to revisit. A really good, if flawed, game.

Looking at Lego Marvel Games

I recently decided to revisit a few Lego games, among them the three Marvel titles. Having completed the latter all to 100%, & unlocked all the achievements, you’d better believe I have a few thoughts about them, so why not blurt said thoughts into a blog? As always, just the opinions of one person.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes

The first of the trilogy, and for me the weakest. All of the games were clearly tie-ins, made to order for release at the same time as an MCU entry, but this one feels the most like it. There’s just something empty, and flat, about it, a real sense of going through the motions. For one, three quarters of the story levels are the same routine, chasing a bad guy through a series of obstacles they throw in your way, until you finally fight them, and it wears thin pretty quickly. For two, despite having a surfeit of top-tier voice-acting talent, the performances are a little lacking, like they weren’t given quite enough time to really do their thing. For three, the abundant copy and paste, especially felt in the open world Manhattan, where you’re basically repeating the same handful of missions over and over. It’s a solid, fairly enjoyable game, but there’s definitely a spark missing. And then we come to the issues, of which there are quite a few.

Driving Controls: Erratic, in a word. Sometimes don’t respond enough, other times respond too much, with little ground in between, so you can go from struggling to turn a corner, to twisting violently into a wall. It makes the races more frustrating than they should be. Poor, but can be lived with, just about.

Flying Controls: Hoo, boy. The same issues as the driving controls, but more so, meaning you’re likely to spend more time flailing through the air than actually going where you want to. This is exacerbated by a bizarre choice. In every other Lego game with flying characters, the main controls are the two sticks, with supplementary buttons to rise and descend. In this one, you only have one stick, so you have to use the buttons more, and given the response issues, that means flying in this game is a persistently exasperating experience, especially in the races, some of which are so bad they get their own entries.

Helicarrier Air Race: A race that starts close to the helicarrier, curves down to Manhattan, then sweeps along a railway line. Unfortunately, said line has bridges and other things crossing over it, including the arches of a station at race end, and between the bad controls, the poor collision detection that feels like your minifig has the collision box of a big fig, and that when you get as close to the ground as this race requires you to you will land, it’s a hot mess. You will smack into things, you will be deflected away from the course, you will stop dead, you will have to take off again several times, you will need a lot of attempts and likely have steam pluming from your ears by the time you finally, barely finish it. For me the second-worst race in this game, and all three games.

Maria Hill/Silver Surfer: The logic of races against NPCs in Lego Marvel games seems to be that they take off at pace, but if you are close enough to them at a certain point in the race, they will slow down, so you can pass and win. A triggered event. In the case of the Silver Surfer, I think it’s just a case of the flying controls being so bad it’s tough to stay close enough to trigger the slowdown. I managed it on my second attempt, but I’d been flying enough by then to have gotten something of a grip on the controls. In Maria Hill’s case, the go-karts are easily the worst-handling road vehicles in the game, as in you will oversteer wildly, slam into the edge of the holotrack, and then struggle to get going again, usually multiple times. Fortunately, you can cheese things a bit, by shifting her cart to angle toward the track side before you start the race, so she can’t launch away, and you can get a head start. That you need to basically cheat to win says a lot.

Ghost Rider: There are three races against Ol’ Flamehead. The first is pretty easy. The second is a sharp step up in difficulty, because the course is tight and sharply twisting, and there’s a lot of traffic. Chances of not crashing into another vehicle are slim, and you only need do it once or twice to stand no chance of winning, because there’s no quick way of getting going again. The third race wouldn’t be as hard, if not for one really janky moment. At one point, you come to a ramp, at right angles to a railway line, and given every other ramp in these games is a jump, you expect this one to be the same. So, when you inevitably fail to make the jump, you think the race lost, and go back to the start. The second time I did that, though, it didn’t reset, GR wasn’t in place. There was a green marker, though, and on tracking it down I found GR stuck between the ramp and the rocks beside it. I also noticed the next race gate…along the railway, the finish gate at the station beyond it, and I practically face-palmed. There is no indicator you’re supposed to make a sharp right to follow the line, nothing’s visible during the race to show you where to go, almost like there’s a gate missing. One of a few examples of particularly poor race layouts in these games.

The RC Car Race: This one is truly infamous. For the longest time, I simply thought the controls were botched almost beyond use, that you’d need to be insanely skilled, or just insane, to complete the race. Now, though, thanks to a Youtube video, I know there actually is a control system, it’s just stupid and counter-intuitive. The direction you push the left stick in is the direction the RC car goes, as in you don’t turn, just point, which is both simple, and really dumb, as it both contradicts how every other vehicle in the game controls, including the RC cars in the other two events with them, and your own instincts and impulses. You basically have to fight the latter the entire way to beat the race, and believe me, it’s a chore and a half.

Squirrel Girl: SG is not just my favourite Marvel super hero, but my favourite super hero full stop, so of course I’m going to take notes on how she’s presented. Here, she’s a token unlockable via a puzzle in Manhattan, with no voice lines, and a fairly basic set of abilities, only two of which are really useful for puzzles. The squirrel swarm special attack, though, is invaluable for clearing out enemies, especially in the next game. A solid start.

Lego Marvel’s Avengers

This is an odd one, in that it feels, in no small part, like a redux of LMSH1. The helicarrier reappears, looking identical. Same goes for the Manhattan hub. Even some of the puzzles feel reused from the first game. Fortunately, the controls are the most sorted and sharp of any of the three games, and the races are easy to breeze through as you can use a flying character for the air ones, and a speed character for the ground ones, avoiding the still-clunky vehicle controls. In fact, vehicles are effectively redundant in this game, except for a few missions in Manhattan, and I can’t say I mind that. My issues with LMA are mostly subjective, as in I’ve never been a huge fan of the MCU, and in fact my disinterest is only deepening with time, so playing through some of the films isn’t terribly engaging for me. Most of the dialogue in the story seems to be clips from the films, which both creates a strange little disconnect, and reinforces my belief MCU dialogue isn’t the best. The several smaller hubs feel a little pointless, presaging how much of an issue multiple hubs would prove to be in Lego Batman 3, and that the huge Manhattan one doesn’t have a map is a bewildering choice, though thanks to the various detectors, not as annoying as it might have been. Freeplay missions are particularly repetitive, and thus the many Manhattan ones are a drudge to get through. This game has the least gameplay issues, but there are still a couple.

Cutscenes: You expect a lot of them in a Lego Game. You expect to fairly frequently have control yanked away from you so the camera can show you what to do. You even expect one or two instances of being given control, if to only take a couple of steps before it’s yanked away, again. LMA, however, takes it to extremes. There are times it feels like you’re watching more than playing, so often is control wrenched away. The scenes frequently linger longer than needed, too, the camera moves taking too long, and usually there’s a pause of a few seconds even after they seem to have ended before you can actually move again. The most egregious I encountered was during a free play of a level, when my attempts to use a rope pull handle were interrupted twice in rapid succession by dramatic shots of Thor. Pretty maddening.

Minions: Obviously, a supervillian is gonna have minions, underlings, disposable bodies to use and abuse as they see fit. Unfortunately, the game abuses them, by almost constantly throwing them at you during the story levels. It’s so bad that those rare moments without them feel like a blessed relief. You can finally breathe a bit, and actually do other things than fight. It’s most annoying in the free play, because they just will not stop interrupting what you’re doing. Press B to interact with a puzzle? Nope, you’re gonna special attack a goon, instead. Or they’ll kill you. Or just keep getting in the way of your heat beam, prolonging the statue-melting in a succession of agonised death screams. This is where SG’s special is priceless, as it can give you moments to get the collectibles, but only brief ones.

Chore Collectibles: It seems to be a Lego Game tradition at this point that there are one or two collectibles in the free play levels that are way harder, and much more of a chore, to get than they should be. LMA has a moderate one early in the Anger Management level. After Scarlet Witch bursts out of a room in Klaue’s boat for a confrontation, you’re able to fly into it to find a character token. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to see the very tight gap, partly thanks to how it’s rendered, partly thanks to how far back the fixed camera is. Oh, and SW is constantly shooting you. So, expect it to take a lot of effort, and deaths, before you finally blunder in. The final level, Ultron Undone, has a bit of a doozy. The last section sees you fighting off waves of Ultron drones while Scarlet Witch charges attacks. When she’s ready, you’re prompted to switch to her and loose the attack, which gives you the means to move to the next part of the room. You’re in control, so getting the collectibles in the first two room parts isn’t too bad. In the third, though, when SW has charged up her last attack, it automatically triggers a cutscene, then throws you into the brace of quicktime events that end the level and game. Basically, you have a time limit, and it’s tight, so tight you can barely manage one of the collectibles in that area, let alone both, not least thanks to the Ultron drones, so you have to replay it, likely multiple times. The one saving grace is that the levels are split into parts that can be loaded seperately, as having to replay the whole level multiple times would bring back bad memories of early Lego Games.

Squirrel Girl: More accurately, Squirrel Girls, or is it Girls Squirrel, because both the Classic and Unbeatable versions are unlockable, the latter via a mission from USG herself. She has a solid range of abilities, including that of climbing buildings, which I stumbled across late game, but can’t blow up silver objects, unlike in the other two games, so still not the most useful version. She has a Hulkbuster variant she can summon, that looks really cool, but doesn’t do very much. The Squirrel-A-Gig mini-copter is one of the unlockable vehicles, but handles badly. There are references aplenty, mostly in her dialogue, including nods to the Unbeatable comic run, her time as nanny to the child of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones in the New Avengers, and even her time with the Great Lakes Avengers, a bit of a deep cut. A marked step up from LMSH1, but held back from being the best version by one thing: her voice. It’s the same voice she had in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series, kinda high, kinda squeaky, bubbly, giggly, almost an airhead stereotype, and it really doesn’t suit her. Those references coming from that voice just jars so badly for me.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2

This game is huge. I think it remains one of the biggest Lego Games to date. Twenty story levels, massive multi-area open world, endurance-testing quantity of collectibles, it’s a real long-haul, and feels it. Fortunately, it has the best story, and comfortably the best voice performances, 95% of which sound great, from accents to emotions to fitting the characters really well. Top of the pile is Peter Serafinowicz, delivering acres of unctuous self-importance as big bad Kang; he was clearly having a lot of fun. Only a couple of weaker perfornances, and the voice for Red Hulk/General Ross being too youthful to really work for him, fall a little short. Neither this game or LMA could secure the rights to the Fantastic Four, X-Men, or mutants in general, but this one handles it the best, with a slew of interesting and engaging lesser-known characters filling in. The missions for and with them, several of which are charmingly wholesome, are some of the best bits of the game, for me. Most of the hub areas are fairly bland, among them generic Egypt, Old West, and Medieval England ones, generic futuristic ones for Xandar, Nueva York and Hala, and yet another modern Manhattan. The Manhattan Noir one is decent, mostly thanks to the monochrome filter and the smooth lounge jazz, and the only one that I really liked was, oddly enough, the Hydra Empire, as it actually had character and distinction, though that may just be the cyberpunk fan in me. A small niggle was the races requiring particular character or vehicle types. A bigger niggle was one of those types being a van, when there’s only one van in the game, and it’s the hardest vehicle to get, as you have to beat the open world bosses, and those only unlock after you’ve cleared all the puzzles and missions in a given area, and my is it a slow, awkward let down. And then there are the serious issues.

Bosses: As much as LMA loved minions, this game loves bosses. LMA had bosses, including open world bosses, but though the execution of the latter was clunky, not least when the locked-onto-the-boss-camera is barely showing you and the minions you’re trying to defeat, it was still better than this. For one, there’s the quantity, most story levels having two, or three, or four of them, sub-bosses then the main boss. For two, there’s how formulaic they are, most of them having lunge attacks, most having shockwave attacks that send you reeling back, most having periods of invincibilty. A fair few seem to be invincible most of the time, with only fleeting openings for attacks. This leaves them feeling repetitive, drawn-out, a bit of a samey slog, and they just keep coming, including, as mentioned, in the open world. This is especially annoying in free play.

Jump Controls and Acrobatic Races: This game has a lot of platforming, a lot of precision jumping and movement, as all Lego Games do. However, it also has a distinct lag in the jump control, a pause between you hitting the button and your character actually jumping. It’s not much, but still enough to make movement-based challenges in general pretty frustrating. A prime example is the race that starts underwater, meaning you have to deal with the sluggish but not intolerable swimming controls, then has you surfacing to bumble over the jaggedly torn up bits of Xandar, then just seems to stop, with no end gate; took me multiple attempts to realise you had to go back into the water, as there’s nothing to point you to it. On top of all that, every one of the handful of acrobatic races – running your character through jumps, pole swings, rope climbs, rail climbs and shimmies, and the like – are some degree of broken. The least so is clunky and awkward, almost a rough sketch of a course that barely fits together, with fixed camera angles that hinder far more than they help. The most broken, in the Hydra Empire, is so bugged out it’s tough to even start it, so clunky you can’t make jumps because you’re banging your head on bits of the building you’re climbing, and if you couldn’t cheese it with a flying character, like I did, would very likely be impossible to complete. Right down there with the most scuffed Lego Game elements I’ve so far encountered.

Challenges: Challenges were a new open world element for this game, a list of things to find and do. Problem is, it’s a long list, around twenty, and they’re all basically variants on the same challenge. Find ten of these items. Find ten of these items and destroy them. Find ten and interact with them. Find seven places. It’s an attempt to reward exploration, but done in about the most basic, copy and paste way possible, and given the rewards are vehicles, which past the races you’re very unlikely to use, the challenges end up being grindy chores that don’t really seem worth the effort. To be blunt, they feel like padding.

Chore Collectibles: LMSH2 has a couple of moderately frustrating ones. One level ends with you in a plane chasing Baron Zemo’s plane, able to switch between the character flying the craft, and the one on the guns. The former seems kinda pointless, as you’re efffectively on rails, following a fixed and long looping course, only really able to wobble around a bit. The entire reason seems to be collectibles, minikits, one of which requires shooting ten balloons, which isn’t too bad, though a couple are only briefly visible and targetable. More annoying, I found, was the floating minikit you can barely see, which took multiple circuits for me to finally collect. Another level ends with a fight against wannabe Dictator of the Inhumans Maximus, the last stage of which sees him deactivating gravity so you float up, then drawing you towards him through a field of deadly lasers. Among those lasers is a minikit, and given the fixed camera and the limited movement, getting it is a proper pain. That although the game has checkpoints, they don’t work in free play, meaning it only saves what collectibles you’ve found, not where you are in the level, so you have to play the whole thing again for another chance at the minikit, only adds to it.

Squirrel Girl: Just the one incarnation, this time, but it’s a good one. You unlock her via a mission with her, which unlocks a mission with her buddies Koi Boy and Chipmunk Hunk, which in turn unlocks a Gwenpool mission centred around them that I found to be the most enjoyable of all the GP stuff, so she has a pretty decent presence. She also has the most abilities, here, enough that when I paired her with Ravager Rocket they could handle a lot of the mechanics between them, which did help the prolonged grind through the open world. And, thank goodness, she has a fantastic, really fitting voice, bright and energetic but not even a tiny bit squeaky. The best take on her in these games.

Conclusions

I’d rank these games, funnily enough, in the order they were released, with LMSH1 third, LMA second, and LMSH2 in first, though it’s pretty tight, especially between second and first. The overarching impression of these games is they range from decent to good, but only fitfully are they ever more, held back by being tie-ins chained to a hard release date. They’re all repetitive, especially in the open world missions. None of them really manage to make the races flow properly, or feel like more than just something to do, to tick off the list. The vehicles range from having not much point to having no real point at all. Only LMSH1 makes a half-decent fist of the achievements, the other two just repeating the same “play as these characters” ones over and over, LMSH2 to an almost comical degree. These games underline for me that the more action-focused Lego Games aren’t my favourites, not least as that action tends to really highlight all the copy and paste. I’m most likely to return to LMSH2, though even there not very likely, and if a new Lego Marvel game is ever released, I’ll approach it with caution. There’s potential, but I’m unconvinced Traveller’s Tales will ever be able, or perhaps more accurately be given the real chance, to realise it.

Considering Creepypastas

Creepypastas, somewhat of an electronic equivalent to folklore, scary little stories purpose-constructed for digital distribution, hopefully don’t need much of an introduction. They’re widespread enough, and some have attained fame or notoriety enough, to be pretty well-known and understood. The Slenderman universe is the obvious high point of visibility and popularity, but the likes of Jeff the Killer, Ben Drowned, Sonic.exe and Abandoned by Disney have no small fame of their own, for a variety of reasons.

I’ve known of creepypastas for much of their roughly two-decade existence, and my interest in them has waxed and waned, though never gone beyond thinking them solid things to have playing in the background. I’m doing that as I type this, an 11-and-a-half-hour reading of the “lost episode” subgenre, and not for the first time I’ve found myself idly wondering how I’d write one. This time, though, that’s evolved a bit, and I actually have a rough sketch of the start of one. It’s also been a nice excuse to muse on the structures, styles, habits and tropes of creepypastas, indulging the nerdy part of me that enjoys the more technical aspects of telling a story. Now, obviously, I’m going to ramble about it in a blog. As always, just the opinions of one person.

The obvious core trait of all creepypastas, besides the copy-paste aspect, is the narrated style they all have, as of a real person relating real events, hence the strong folkloric echoes. I also see no small ties to classic literature, especially in the Victorian and Georgian eras, as first person narration was by far the commonest approach, from Dr Watson’s journals of his adventures with Holmes, through Dracula being a mosiac of journals, letters and newspaper articles, to the ghost stories of M R James. The roots of creepypastas arguably run deep, one of the most recent evolutions of our basic need to simply tell stories to each other, however we can. Campfire tales for the internet age.

Another commonality is they’re usually graphic, dripping with blood and gore, and children are frequently the subjects of that violence. They often seem more interested in trying to out-shock each other, to see who can generate the strongest reaction, playing into the stereotype of adolescents straining to be edgy, and I wonder how much of the roots of that lie in Jeff the Killer, a fairly early creepypasta whose “scary” reputation seems to have a lot more to do with the image connected to it than the actual, pretty poor story.

An accompanying or cover image, it seems, can make a real difference to the impact of a creepypasta. Other examples would be Slenderman and Smile Dog, though the effectiveness obviously varies. Get something arresting, distinctive, that sends an involuntary shiver down the spine, like the Jeff image does, and you’ve gone a long way to capturing attention. Get a good image, and people will tend to want to know the story behind it. Of course, said story then has expectations to live up to, and that’s never going to be easy. JtK’s clunky, messy narrative and cheap gore is highly unlikely to match anything your own imagination will conjure on seeing the image.

There are two other issues with a gory approach that I can see. One, the law of diminishing returns, meaning the more you do it, the less effect it has, so the further you have to go, something clearly seen in current horror films (as an aside, can’t help noting correlations with creepypastas, not least the increasing focus on extreme violence involving and against children). Two, something highlighted by the video I’m watching, is it can make the stories feel repetitive, an impression heightened when they even reuse the same gore, the same graphic imagery. They start to blur together, seeming more like minor variations on the same story than distinct tales in their own right. For me, you have to do more than just reheat the “cutesy kids show had a weird, banned or forgotten or never released episode filled with distorted audio and visuals and dead, mutilated kids and it was so bad it made me vomit” formula to stand out.

Something else the video has highlighted for me is the importance of length. Given that creepypastas are meant to be shared, to be copy and pasted around, it makes sense to keep them brief, short stories rather than novels. Happy Appy is by far the longest creepypasta I’ve yet encountered, and its extreme length – it took more than two hours for the narrator to read – was a major issue, given how one-note and repetitive it was, the usual splatter tropes drawn out to a ridiculous degree; I’d also note that if said narrator splutters with laughter multiple times, and pauses more than once to wonder “what?!”, you have a problem. In my opinion, Happy Appy is an object lesson in how not to write a creepypasta, among the worst I’ve encountered.

That extends to the last aspect that seems key to me: believability. A good creepypasta has to seem plausible, like it might just actually have happened, be real. That’s why they all have a narrated approach, that’s why the “mysterious object I stumbled across causes things to get ever weirder and more dangerous” structure is far and away the most popular. Countless creepypastas start with the protagonist finding an SD card, a memory stick, a DVD, a CD, a photo, a book, a creepy doll, some odd, out-of-place MacGuffin to kickstart the plot. Happy Appy obliterates any believability with its wild escalation, a mountain of murders, multiple burned-down buildings, and so much more. There’s no way something of that scope wouldn’t be known about. Being believable comes hand-in-hand with being believably overlooked, forgotten, unknown.

So, with all that in mind, how would I write a creepypasta? Well, for a start, I’d commit to keeping it short, not least since I enjoy short fiction, and it tends to bring the best out of me; three or four instalments of two to three thousand words each feels right. Also, in my usual fashion, I don’t want to ignore the tropes, not when they’re so key to the genre, but I do want to subvert them, play with them, put my own spin on them. The obvious first change is to remove the overt blood and gore, and play things much more subtly; it’s my preferred style, and I believe it would work really well with the creepypasta format. It also needs to maintain a small, quite tight focus and scale.

I think it has to start in the classic creepypasta fashion, with the protagonist finding something, but pared down to its essence, as simple and direct as can be. Having just bought some DVD boxsets from eBay, a thing I’ve done many times before, it seems to me an ideal starting point. The main character finds a boxset of a childhood favourite sitcom on eBay for a good price, almost too good, and buys it. It arrives a few days later, solidly packaged, and on opening the box or bag, they find what they ordered, and something else besides.

There are many ways this could be played. A booklike set, with the DVDs held in plastic leaves bound in cardboard, and flicking through them reveals the second disc of series four has been replaced with another one. Or, a fully cardboard, fanfold sleeve, the DVDs tucked into pockets, an extra disc hidden behind one of them. Or, an extra disc tucked between the inner and outer boxes, or the boxset and the bubble wrap, or an SD card or thumb drive that falls out the moment the packaging is opened. If you wanted a surreal touch, the booklike box could have one more leaf than it should, with the extra disc set in it. The subtle but important detail to bear in mind is that an extra leaf, a replaced disc, a hidden disc, would all denote intentionality, that it was done on purpose, while the disc or other item just being loose in the boxset or the bag would indicate it was accidental. I lean toward the latter, a disc found between cases or the boxset and the envelope, like it just slipped in without the seller noticing. Simple and subtle.

Another small but important detail: what does the disc look like? In a classic creepypasta, it would be the same smiling group shot of the sitcom’s core cast, except their eyes are hollow and bleeding, or it’d be a graphic image of a corpse, most likely a child. It’d have an impact, yes, but also threaten believability a bit, given the protagonist wouldn’t just throw it away, or call the police to hand it over, but instead be compelled to watch it. A subtler approach would be a blank label, or one with a title handwritten or printed on it. You could have the protagonist’s name on it, for a more direct approach, an immediate sense of threat, but again, I’m staying restrained. This disc will have a plain white printed label, with the title “BALLET SHOES”. Again, maintaining the idea of its inclusion being an accident, and suggesting it could be a copy of a digital film, or home video footage.

That would then lend justification to the protagonist’s response of simply contacting the seller, telling them of the disc, and asking if they want it back. The seller having vanished already feels too much too soon. The main character getting no response is more viable, but I prefer the seller answering with a simple “no, it’s fine, I don’t need it, do what you want with it, i suggest throwing it away, sorry for any trouble”. The “throw it away” could lend a faint shiver of “something’s not right”, but we all know, after a day or two maybe, the protagonist’s curiosity will get the better of them, and they’ll play the disc, in a DVD player, or on a computer.

Keeping to the somewhat minimalist, steady build style, there’d be just one file, and obviously, it won’t be a barrage of white noise, screaming, crying, distortions, audio spikes and shredded bodies. It also won’t have hidden messages woven into it, but there will be very subtle details. For some reason, this scenario came to me very clearly: a dance studio, a wall of full-length mirrors, a barre, shiny wooden slat floor, open and airy. There’d be a row of tall windows to one side, through which broad, slightly hazy bars of light would slant, the room’s only real illumination. One’s slightly open, causing the flanking, light curtains to flex gently. The wall opposite the mirrors wouldn’t be directly visible, just reflected in them, a closed door set in the middle of it. Keeping to the theme of children, the room’s only occupant would be a girl, nine or ten years old, clad in pastel-hued leotard, leggings and pointe shoes. She’d stretch with the aid of the barre, work through warm-up exercises, practice some poses and moves, and flow through short routines. She’d be accompanied by quiet, lilting, lyrical piano music. Nothing would be obviously strange or awry.

But then our protagonist realises that, as much as the music sounds like it’s playing in the room, there’s no sign of how. With the aid of the mirrors, the whole room is visible, but there’s no piano, no player of any kind, no speakers, nothing the music could be coming from. They also think they see hints of someone or something standing outside the windows, but the traces are too faint to be sure, so it could just be pareidolia, or artefacts of the fairly low quality, grainy footage. It ends after a few minutes, with the music fading, and the girl leaving through the door, into darkness. She never once looks at the camera, or the possible figure outside the windows, and remains calmly focused throughout. There’s a symbol on the front of her leotard; design to be decided.

If a more supernatural slant was sought, after a couple more days, another video file could appear on the disc, but I’m leaning away from that, so instead, the protagonist is going to order another boxset from the same seller for a similarly almost-too-good price, since the first, random disc aside, went so well. When it arrives, a BALLET SHOES II disc comes with it. Contacting the seller again, they get a response of “I have lots of random discs knocking around, and I obviously need to tidy them up, sorry again”. Loading the disc, it again has just one video file, which again is of the same room, and the same girl, in the same clothes, but there are differences. The light through the window is fainter, the shadows in the corners deeper, the wind stronger, the curtains rustling more. There’s more clearly a shape outside the windows, but it still can’t be recognised; it’s just a subtle impression. The girl’s movements are slightly less fluid, just a trace of hesitance and awkwardness in them, flickers of quiet discomfort showing on her face. She pauses more than once to tug at her shoes. When the music ends, and she heads for the door, she has to knock on it, and wait for it to be unlocked and opened before she can leave. There’s no-one beyond the door, just the same pitch darkness.

My thoughts are vaguer and patchier after this. It makes sense for the protagonist to contact the seller again, but I can’t decide if they’ll get a vague, almost cryptic response, or nothing. I know they’ll buy a third boxset from the same seller, as it’s a rarer one they really want, overriding their misgivings, and it will inevitably come with BALLET SHOES III. The light is fainter, the room darker, to the point the girl’s a little hard to distinguish at times, but the window shape is clear enough to recognise as a humanoid figure, and enough light glints off something attached to the door to see that it’s a padlock. The girl is visibly uncomfortable, wincing and grimacing, repeatedly tugging at her shoes, stumbling several times. Her leotard is gone, her bare upper torso faintly sheened with sweat, and seeming to carry marks, possibly dirt, possibly bruises, The leotard’s symbol is painted sloppily on her chest. Her short hair is unkempt. She finally stumbles so badly she falls, in the brightest shaft of light, just bright enough to see what look like stains on the points of her shoes as she tugs at them one last time, then slumps, starting to weep. The video ends with her sitting there, the music still playing.

The protagonist is definitely going to be worried at this point, this is potential child abuse, but isn’t convinced the police will take it seriously, as there’s only the clips to go on, which could be a short film or an art piece. They contact the seller again, but get no reply. They also notice the seller has listed nothing else after the boxset BALLET SHOES III came in. They think anxiously about it for a few days, then decide to try contacting the seller again, only to discover the latter has vanished from the site, no listings, no profile, nothing. They decide it was just a creepy art project, or sick prank, and try to forget about it, but can’t quite bring themselves to discard the discs. They almost succeed, but then a printed envelope arrives, and all it contains is a disc labelled BALLET SHOES IV.

Obviously, the protagonist is reluctant to watch the video file on it, but eventually succumbs to an almost morbid curiosity. It starts with the room so dark little of it can be discerned, a single, faint beam of yellow-orange light crossing it from a window at the end, a streetlight at night. The wind is so loud it almost drowns the music out, the curtains are flapping around the fully open window, but there’s no sign of a figure. The girl is barely visible, practically staggering across the room. She again trips and falls in the light, and it’s enough to see her tear-matted cheeks, the clearer marks on her bare upper torso, the marks on her leggings, the smeared symbol on her chest, her ragged hair, and the larger, darker stains on the points of her shoes. After just over a minute, for the first time, she looks right at the camera, a hand resting on the chest symbol, a second before the figure appears in the wide open window, a stark silhouette, then the camera cuts out. A few seconds of flickering and white noise, then it returns, the room now bathed in the bright, warm light of morning, the wind faded completely, the curtains perfectly still. The door reflected in the mirrors stands open, just a plain, equally well-lit corridor beyond. The girl is gone, a trail of faint blood specks leading to the open window, in front of which her bloodstained pointe shoes lie discarded. The music is still playing.

So. Follows the formula pretty closely. Includes a serious threat to a child. Not graphic at all, but hopefully still pretty creepy and unsettling. Hopefully at least in the vicinity of believability. A good, strong start, I think. I have no clue how to conclude it, how to ramp up the personal stakes for the protagonist to an ending, just that simply leaving it hanging won’t do. If I ever come up with something, I’ll see about fully writing this out. If I complete it, it will be published here, as that makes the most sense, fits the creepypasta style and vibe the best. Striking the balance of giving satisfying closure while not neatly tying everything up feels like an interesting challenge.

If nothing else, at least I’ve satisfied myself that there is value in creepypastas, even if many of them are of questionable quality. It’s a valid genre, with real potential, and maybe, sooner or later, I’ll add my own small contribution to the field.

Comedy Connections

A random one, born of the kind of freshly-woken tangent my brain loves to go on. I found myself wondering, how did we get from the great entertainers, and the early pioneers of stand-up comedy, to the current day likes of Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais? The disconnect seems immense, almost incomprehensible, but then it dawned on me I was looking at it wrong, and that there is a connection, there is a traceable shift. Allow me to explain. As always, just the thoughts and opinions of one person.

To start with, when I talk about “the great entertainers”, I mean the likes of Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Tommy Cooper, Bruce Forsyth, Bob Monkhouse, Les Dawson, Ken Dodd and Des O’Connor. True, I’m undoubtedly a little biased, as these were the joy-bringers of my early childhood, but they are still regarded highly, even beloved, decades on. They have a staying power I’m not sure the likes of Gervais and Carr ever will.

A big reason for that was their versatility, from Dawson’s monologues and piano tinklings, to O’Connor’s song and dance, to the almost ridiculous range of Dodd, and that comes from a background in working men’s clubs, and especially music hall. The latter was all about variety, and the big guns of 60s and 70s TV entertainment largely transferred that energy to a studio with a camera pointed at them. They had a quite formidable range of skills, honed by years of effort and experience, delivered with a twinkle-eyed warmth and mischief that drew you in seemingly effortlessly.

But, when I was falling in love with these all-rounders, they were already starting to fade, and stand-up comedy, simply standing and slinging gags, was becoming an entertainment staple in its own right. It also pretty quickly gained an edge, even a coarseness, far beyond variety and music hall, which is the first interesting point to consider. How much of stand-up was an evolution from variety, and how much a reaction to it? Memory suggests there was an element, especially near the end of the 80s, of disdain toward the older stars, comparing them unfavourably to the new stand-up favourites. Why give Monkhouse and his game shows any time when you had Ben Elton, or Billy Connolly, or Alexei Sayle?

Alternative comedy certainly seemed at least partially a reaction to and rejection of the variety style, but was also a reaction to and rejection of, at least in the UK, the contemporary political situation, and the latter feels key. Elton and Sayle took aim at the governments and politicians of the time, they punched upwards, often viciously, whereas many comedians of today largely punch down, just as if not more viciously. Quite the inversion. I wasn’t entirely sure how that dramatic a shift happened, but then I remembered the other comic strain of the 80s, blue comedy.

True, blue comedy had been around for a long time before then, but in that decade, it went from ribald to flat-out crude, and the roots of that shift, in the UK, seem to rest more on the shoulders of Bernard Manning than anyone else. He was pretty popular for a time in the 70s, making TV appearances, but his coarse style quickly fell out of favour, not least thanks to the bigotry that persistently featured in his routines. True, off-colour gags could even be found in the likes of The Two Ronnies in the 70s, but compared to Manning, they were almost subtle. While they mostly alluded, he practically punched you in the face with it. Manning was, quite possibly, the UK’s first black or shock comic, setting a template that would be expanded on, in the 80s and through to the nineties, by the likes of Jim Davidson and Roy “Chubby” Brown, whose entire identities were being crass and outrageous, out to shock. Sound familiar?

The other, more important factor is the shift in comedy in the second half of the 90s, and into the early 2000s. While, on one hand, the music hall spirit persisted in the character skits and musical bits of Lenny Henry, and the sublime comic songs and character routines of Victoria Wood, on the other, especially on TV, it became a little mean-spirited, a little cruel, and started punching down instead of up. One clear example of this is David Baddiel, whose aggressive targeting of a footballer actively contributed to the end of that player’s career. Another would be the shows of David Walliams and Matt Lucas, particularly Little Britain, not least because they used the same toxic old blackface trope that Baddiel did, one that should have died off decades ago, but this nasty time somehow made somewhat acceptable again. This is the rise of what I will term the establishment comedian.

Establishment comedians are, in many ways, the polar opposite of the variety stars of old. Instead of years of graft in music halls and clubs, working their way up, these comics seem to have almost had success dropped on them. In other words, rather than getting a TV show because they’d made a name for themselves on touring circuits, they simply had the right connections. Privilege handed them a serious shortcut. Both Carr and Gervais certainly got onto TV far quicker than the likes of Dawson ever did, and they’ve hardly left screens since.

How many shows has Gervais had, now? The Office, Extras, An Idiot Abroad, Derek, and more, and other than The Office, none seem to have lasted much at all, and I wonder if the successes had more to do with Stephen Merchant than Gervais. It’s a rare comic Channel 4 show that isn’t fronted by Carr, as he’s become their default go-to. They are ubiquitous, nearing saturation levels, and I suspect that is a bigger reason for them seemingly leaping straight to arena tours than anything else. They’re not packing arenas and getting Netflix specials because they’re all that funny, or clever, or original, or insightful, but because they’re known names. Brands, almost.

That brand is basically recycling the old Manning formula, filtered through the cynical TV lens of the late 90s and early 2000s, and coated in the smugness of privilege, the self-satisfaction of knowing that no matter what you say or do, whether it’s relentlessly targeting trans people, or making Holocaust “jokes”, there will be no consequences. Success, for them, is pretty much guaranteed, because it was from the start. Whereas the variety legends had to get good, because dying on their feet live on stage was an experience to go through as little as possible, establishment comedians have a built-in safety net, so they’re complacent, even lazy. Fear of failure isn’t a thing for them, and it shows.

There’s one last factor, directly related to privilege: disconnect. The likes of Dodd and Cooper connected to people because of their relentless touring, taking them from town to city to town, from one community to another; they saw and experienced them, and could react and adapt as a result. Carr and Gervais, in contrast, seem to live in bubbles, entirely disconnected from people, and even reality. I mean, can you imagine either of them touring regional theatres, let alone the kind of tour of really out-of-the-way places Bill Bailey embarked on? I certainly can’t.

Speaking of Bailey, I do have to note that there are still good UK comics, from his musical irreverence, to the cheerful surrealism of Harry Hill, to the wry observations of Omid Djalili. There’s also the anomaly that is Frankie Boyle, who at first just seemed to be all about the “I can’t believe he just said that” factor, but in recent years has shown himself to be socially aware and active; there may actually have been a social point to his blunt approach, though its effectiveness is debatable. The only point, that I can see, to Gervais and Carr’s black comedy is that they can get away with it, and they can’t resist smugly rubbing our collective faces in it.

It’s a little romanticised, no doubt, but it does seem that success has gone from the smiles of the audience at the end of the show, to the size of the entourage you waft from arena to TV studio in, and the size of the pay packets, at least for Carr and Gervais, and I for one can’t wait until their twin bubbles finally burst.

Carry On Chattering

Since I just spent three blogs blathering about one of the filmic fixtures of my childhood, might as well use another blog to chatter about the other fixture. It really wasn’t a bank holiday in the 1980s if there wasn’t a Bond film on the telly, or a Carry On movie. Preferably both. Also, while staying at a brother’s house for a few weeks to look after his cats while he was away, I had occasion to rewatch and refine my opinions on the series. As always, these are just the thoughts and opinions of one person.

The Carry On movies are pretty much part of the cultural fabric of the UK, at this point. Nothing else encapsulated the British sense of innocently naughty, nudge-nudge wink-wink, seaside postcard humour like they did. They’re certainly part of my childhood fabric, and informed a lot of my own comic sensibilites. The thing is, they didn’t start out in that vein. The very first in the series, Carry on Sargeant (1958), is a pretty classic knockabout scenario of a veteran authority figure beset by a squad of misfits who pull together for him in the end, a scenario writer Norman Hudis was clearly fond of, as all his six Carry Ons are variations on that theme, Regardless being the loosest, and also the weakest, a shoestring plot linking fitfully amusing sketches.

Several of the future series stalwarts are there at the beginning – Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques, and Terry Scott – though the latter only fleetingly. Bob Monkhouse is the first in a series of quirky lead actor choices, and sets a template of charmingly gormless romantic lead that is one of the few elements to persist right the way through the films. It’s breezy fun, as are the next four – Nurse (1959), Teacher (1959), Constable (1960) and Regardless (1961) – though none are particularly memorable. They are important, though, for introducing more stalwarts – Joan Sims in Teacher, and the legendary Sid James in Constable – and building the slickly efficient repertory company the films would become. Constable is also notable for being the first Carry On with nudity, though since it was male bottoms being flashed at the camera, it wasn’t the point of contention the later female nudity would become.

The first real evidence of how well cast and crew were coming together, and what the Carry Ons were truly capable of, is the last film Hudis scripted, and the first in colour, Cruising (1962). This is where Gerald Thomas’ elegantly simple directorial style comes into its own, where the cast feel like an ensemble of quirky characters, not just a group of misfits, and the true Carry On spirit starts to surface. The staging is so crisp, including a sequence where more and more people come to the Captain’s office, and rather then cut it to pieces, Thomas just does it in one shot, the camera subtly zooming out and panning to accomodate the growing crowd, while the actors move from tableau to tableau with delightful precision. Williams, Connor and James are clearly starting to hit their grooves, Lance Percival does a sterling job filling in for an absent Charles Hawtrey, and Esme Cannon delivers the best of her seemingly endless variations on the theme of dotty old dears. Variation, by the way, is a core Carry On trait I’ll be returning to. This is the crystallisation moment for the series.

The next film, 1963’s Cabby, is a slight dip, but still notable for being the first film for the longest-serving writer, Talbot Rothwell, the first of many appearances by the Carry Ons’ favourite supporting heavy, Peter Gilmore, and the introduction of another Carry On legend, Jim Dale. It’s also the first to play with sexual and gender politics and roles in a way that might surprise those with only a cursory knowledge of the films. Women in Carry On films aren’t just there to be ogled; they can and often do have agency.

Film eight, Jack (1964), is pivotal. It’s the first true costume historical in the series, and kicks off a real purple patch. The ever-delightful Bernard Cribbins anchors with a prime example of hapless lead, while Percy Herbert acts like he’s in a much more serious film, providing delightful comic contrast, while also delivering some quality slapstick when required. This is also where the films start to play with your expectations for where the regulars are going to appear; all the build-up to Captain Fearless, and when you finally meet him, it’s a seasick Kenneth Williams vomiting out of a window. This is what I mean by variation being a core trait. You know what you’ll be getting from Williams, but not how, and what flavour, and so much comedy is mined from that. The value of a versatile comic character actor, not just a funny person, and that’s true for every member of the ensemble.

The run of films from here is pretty special. Spying (1964), the last in black and white, is a delightful spy spoof that gives Dale a chance to show some real range, in one moment going from debonair super-spy moving in for the kill to knockabout clown, and introduces one of the best-loved faces of the films, Barbara Windsor. It also, arguably, has a trans character. All right, they’re the villain of the piece, but a capable one, and a gender-bending character in the mid-sixties is something of note. Cleo (1964) is widely regarded as one of the best of the series, utilising left over costumes and sets from the Taylor/Burton/Harrison epic to poke affectionate fun at that film, historical epics in general, and give Kenneth Williams one of his finest hours as a particularly hapless Caesar. “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”

As an aside, there’s a couple of charming details about Cleo that give the lie to some assumptions about the films and the cast. Given Sid James played so many lecherous characters, it was widely believed he was the same in real life, but that’s not true. It wasn’t him you had to watch out for on set, it was inveterate prankster Williams. A prime example of that is a moment that happened to the title role’s actor, Amanda Barrie. Between takes of the bathing scenes, she’d be handed a robe to wear. On one occasion, it was snatched away before she could take it, by Williams, with a cry of “Mine!” A moment later, another robe was draped over her shoulders, by James. Also, if you watch the final moment, of Mark Anthony leaping into the bath, while “THE END” is on screen, you can see behind it James and Barrie hugging and laughing.

Cowboy (1965) is often cited as the one time Sid James played the out-and-out villain of the piece, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true. He certainly played other grey and/or antagonistic roles later in the series. Peter Butterworth and Bernard Bresslaw both make their Carry On debuts, though unfortunately, the latter’s is the first example of the racial stereotyping that would be an issue for a period in the films, though not the worst. It’s also Joan Sims’ finest hour. Given the chance to play the sexy, gunslinging madam of the town inn, she absolutely owns it. Another notable detail is that Dale’s Marshall Knutt is so hapless he literally can’t hit the broad side of a barn, and has to be taught how to shoot straight by the film’s female lead. Lastly, this is the best of the three scene-stealing cameos by beloved third Doctor Jon Pertwee.

Other commitments prevented Sid James from appearing in film twelve, Screaming (1966), so up stepped Harry H Corbett, who fills in brilliantly. Add in Fenella Fielding vamping it up with gusto, and Kenneth Williams channeling Vincent Price – “Frying tonight!” – with even more gusto, and you have one potent comedy-horror brew, lovingly (the Carry Ons seemed to fully subscribe to Mel Brooks’ assertion you can only really parody something if you love it) ribbing the Hammer films. The only fly in the ointment is Joan Sims being reduced to the first of a few hectoring housewife roles, because Corbett’s stock-in-trade was comedy of conflict, and someone had to be his foil, even if she visibly wasn’t enjoying it.

This is the point the Rank Organisation took control of the series, and they decided there wasn’t much cachet in the Carry On prefix, so they dropped it, and thus the next film was just known as Don’t Lose Your Head (1967). A pastiche of The Scarlet Pimpernel, it’s a delight, Sid James and Jim Dale teaming up beautifully, Peter Gilmore getting his biggest role in the films, and climaxing with a really well staged sword fight that lays waste to so many valuables, and all of Citizen Camembert’s pretensions with it. Costumes always seemed to bring the best out of the Carry Ons.

By this point, the seaside postcard humour was well in evidence, and the films were settling fully into their rhythm. This meant slotting new actors in could be a bit of a lottery, especially if they were a big name with a known and expected style; would they click to the vibe, or not? For some time, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Follow That Camel (1967), feeling they’d done little more than shoehorn Bilko in, but recently, my opinion has shifted. I now feel Phil Silvers does a wonderful job of slotting into the ensemble while retaining his signature Bilko energy; the man clearly knew how to play every facet needed, to support or to lead as required, and was highly skilled at it. This was also Bresslaw’s one time as the big bad, and he gives it his all, even though it’s undercut by it being another example of racial stereotyping.

The Carry On prefix then returned, with 1967’s Doctor, for me a bit of a dip after that amazing run, but I’ve never especially enjoyed the medical films, with one exception. This is the first of two appearances by Frankie Howerd, and definitely the better one, though he still doesn’t fit into the ensemble as well as Silvers or other actors would; his style isn’t flexible enough, and he’s clearly too used to being the star.

Film sixteen, in contrast, would soar to what many consider the highest point the Carry Ons ever reached. Up the Khyber (1968) may have more Bresslaw-as-racial-stereotype, and kids TV favourite Roy Castle maybe isn’t given quite enough to do, but it also has a series of brilliant moments, all building to The Dining Scene. The concept of a mannered, upper-class English meal while cannonfire disintegrates the room around the diners is a brilliantly daft idea in and of itself, but whoever decided Peter Butterworth should be the only one to acknowledge how ridiculous it all is needs so much praise, as his fidgety disintegration pushes the scene over the edge and into legend. “Of course, they’re all completely mad, you know!” Butterworth was arguably the MVP of the whole film.

Things become markedly more inconsistent after this. Camping (1969) brings back Babs Windsor, and ups the naughtiness, complete with the aforementioned, divisive nudity. I, personally, have no issue with it, as it’s invariably treated with the same lightness of touch and knowing humour as everything else. I’d also note there can be nuance to it. In the case of this film, Windsor actually covers herself when her bikini top flies off; it’s only when Hattie Jacques’ huffing matron grabs her arm to drag her away a breast is briefly exposed; a subtle subversion through a situation made worse by those most offended by it. You probably wouldn’t expect subtlety from a Carry On, but it did happen.

Again Doctor (1969) is one of the weakest Carry Ons, for me, a fairly muddled attempt to repeat the success of Doctor, with the least likeable character Sid James played in the films, mostly because he was a rare lecherous one who wasn’t also a huge idiot. It was the last film to star Jim Dale, as he really didn’t like the role he was offered in the next one, Up The Jungle (1970), and honestly, I really don’t blame him. Terry Scott does the best he can, but the Tarzan pastiche is strained and simplistic. Add in the worst racial stereotyping by far, a messy, unengaging plot, and the lesser of Frankie Howerd’s two turns, and you have what’s now possibly my least favourite Carry On. There’s just so much wrong with it.

Loving (1970) rounds off this tepid trilogy. It feels somewhat like a rehash of Regardless, in being almost more a series of sketches than a full story, and Richard O’Callaghan acts like he’s in a different, lighter movie, probably with Cliff Richard and lots of dancing teens, but it does have Bresslaw as a raging wrestler, among other things, so still fun to be had. Fortunately, things improve with the return of the costume Carry On in Henry (1971), because it’s hard to imagine how Sid James as the lecherous tyrant king could ever fail, and he is a tyrant, to the point Cromwell and Wolsey would rather have their heads chopped off than deal with any more of it. “Carry on, executioner! Carry on!” This was also Peter Gilmore’s last appearance in the original run, sporting a decent Gallic accent as the King of France.

At Your Convenience (1971) is an interesting one, as it’s a little different from the usual formula, with arguably the best character work in the series. It does a great job of creating its own little world, and while many believe it to be anti-union, I disagree; the bosses of the company are all pretty inept in their own ways, causing as many problems as the union boss, and the latter was simply the means by which a bitter, posturing little idiot found and exploited the power he completely lacked in his home life, thanks to his overbearing mother. It’s a testament to just how good Kenneth Cope is that the character not only works, but you smile when he finally starts to change and grow. Cope arguably makes this film.

He also arguably makes the twenty-third Carry On, Matron (1972), my favourite medical instalment, this time playing and owning the classic put-upon dope role at the core of a lovely knockabout farce. This is another instance of Sid James arguably playing the villain, it’s a very rare instance of Barbara Windsor getting to be more than a loveable ditz, cottoning on to Cope’s disguise very quickly, and is one of the clearest examples of a lech getting his comeuppance, complete with more gender subversion. Jack Douglas debuts here, and would be a fixture through to the end of the original series, though personally, his shtick of exaggerated spasms with accompanying extravagant noises wears fairly thin fairly quickly. This is the last really good Carry On, but it’s certainly not the last good one.

Abroad (1972) is not one of the good ones. It’s the only Carry On to be filmed on location overseas, but that’s wasted on a thin plot that’s basically just an excuse for uninvolving romantic shenanigans, a whole lot of partner swapping, including a gay couple. Peter Butterworth does the best he can, but he’s fighting a losing battle, while poor Hattie Jacques is stuck with the kind of angry housewife role that annoyed Joan Sims so much, and is visibly hating it. This was also Charles Hawtrey’s last film, as by this point, he’d in essence gone from an actor with a fondness for alcohol to an alcoholic with a fondness for acting. Definitely among the worst of the series. Girls (1973) is also fairly underwhelming, never really making the most of its beauty contest premise, and doing little that’s memorable. Dick (1974), the last costume Carry On, the last for Sid James, Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor, and the last scripted by Talbot Rothwell, is a little too on the nose with the innuendo, but does manage to showcase James’ range, with the distinct difference between his genteel clergyman and rascally highwayman personas. It’s an agreeable romp.

Behind (1975) is one I’ve come to regard with some affection. It’s not peak Carry On, but Dave Freeman does a good job of capturing the spirit, and spins a fun variant on Camping, while the addition of an actor who just seemed made for the series, Windsor Davies, is a definite boost. England (1976) is likewise one I regard warmly. Davies and Connor are a fun double-act, David Pursall and Jack Seddon again manage to capture the Carry On spirit well, and there’s a certain pleasing symmetry in what I consider the last true Carry On going back to the first, with military camp shenanigans.

This is also another good point to talk about the nudity, given the scene of five female recruits standing in parade line topless. From a story standpoint, it’s prompted by Connor’s officious demand everyone wears “trousers, and nothing else”, and gives the women power over the men, as Connor and Davies are left flustered and incapable of dealing with the situation. Again, there’s nuance. From a behind the scenes standpoint, there’s the detail that the lead female actor was meant to be part of the line-up, and initially agreed, only to change her mind later, so they simply wrote her out. My main source for these tidbits is the commentaries on the DVD set I own, in which Carry On historian (what a job!) Robert Ross often asks the actors and crew commentating with him, many of the former female, if they were troubled by the nudity, and the only person to express any discomfort was Jim Dale. The tone, innocently naughty, clearly made a difference, and the women were apparently never forced into such moments if they didn’t want to do them.

The steam was clearly running out at this point, though, as the next film, That’s Carry On (1977) is a clip show, enlivened by the banter between hosts Windsor and Williams. It died completely with Emmanuelle (1978), a film I resisted watching for the longest time, and sorely wish I’d continued to. It’s terrible, a ham-fisted, completely misjudged attempt to ape the racier likes of the Confessions films, made all the more painful by the humiliation it puts Kenneth Connor, and especially Kenneth Williams through. To me, it’s a sleazy, feeble, witless attempt at a sex comedy that staples the Carry On name to the front in a cynical attempt to exploit what value it had left. I honestly wish I could expunge it from my memory.

That was it for the Carry Ons, until an equally misguided attempt at a revival in the nineties, Columbus (1992). As noted earlier, a big secret to the Carry On success was a crew of capable character actors who happened to be funny. Columbus, a tired Jim Dale aside, swaps them out for contemporary comedians who may be funny, but mostly can’t act, and as a result falls flat on its face. Not one, but two ignominious ends to the series, as subsequent attempts at revivals have all failed, and maybe that’s for the best. I’m not sure it’s a magic that can be recaptured.

The Carry On films were successful for a number of reasons, mainly brilliant ensemble casts, Gerald Thomas’ direction, and strong writing from Norman Hudis and especially Talbot Rothwell. There were subtler reasons, too. The seaside postcard humour was, even at the end, just one facet of the Carry On recipe. There was also parody and pastiche, wit and wordplay, and plain silly slapstick, as well as heart and pathos. There was a lot more to the Carry Ons than the obvious. I’d even go so far as to suggest that, considering all the gender subversion, and how often the female characters would be more competent than the male ones, and how often the lecherous males got comeuppance, or were generally depicted as generators of conflict, or just plain randy idiots, and the many chaste core romances, that maybe, just maybe, there was an even subtler thread of satire running through them, a satire of sexual attitudes themselves.

But, maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see. Regardless, I firmly believe the Carry On films deserve to be remembered and loved, for the joy they bring, and how well made, and clever, and funny they were capable of being. They should, indeed, Carry On.

Bond Blatherings: Brosnan & Craig

Part 3, the last part, of my blatherings, with a bravura Bond for the 90s, and a grittier one for the new millennium. Results for both varied. As always, these are just the thoughts and opinions of one person.

After a few years break, and a change in production team, Bond returned with renewed vigour and style, and I think two people deserve much of the credit. Martin Campbell may be a somewhat uneven director – he also helmed the infamously bad Green Lantern film – but Bond seems to consistently bring the best out in him; he clearly gets and loves the character, and has served up two really strong introductions for new Bonds.

The other person is the fifth 007 himself. From the moment we first see Pierce Brosnan, in Goldeneye, popping his head down into a toilet cubicle with a breezy “Sorry; forgot to knock”, then punching out the occupant, he is Bond. He’s the perfect balance of Connery edge and Moore smooth, and owns the role from the very first beat. The film maintains that balance really well, too, delivering the classic 007 one-two punch of action and humour with 90s slickness and sharpness. The henchpeople are great, especially Famke Janssen’s gleefully sadistic Xenia Onatopp, and Alan Cumming’s wonderfully punchable smug nerd Boris Grishenko. The big bad is one of the best, thanks to a well-realised personal connection to Bond, and Sean Bean doing what Sean Bean does, committing and delivering. I struggle to think of a weakness; it just delivers on pretty much every level, and is, objectively, the best of the Brosnan Bonds.

And yet, it’s not my favourite. That honour goes to the second film, Tomorrow Never Dies, because it is just an unrelenting blast of a movie, the last great adventure Bond. All right, Stamper is a fairly standard 007 heavy, Gupta a plot device, and Teri Hatcher gets little to do as Paris Carver, but Michelle Yeoh is a truly formidable female lead, David Arnold’s score is an irresistible blend of Barry-esque sweep and 90s techno-punch, the action is uniformly fantastic, from Yeoh beating ten shades out of a bevy of mooks to the remote-controlled BMW to a prolonged bike chase to all-out war on a stealth boat, and Roger Spottiswoode directs the hell out of all of it. And then there’s the big bad, Elliot Carver. A media mogul manipulating world events to boost his news empire is a brilliant idea that only grows more prescient with time, and they gave this ripe character to Jonathan Pryce. You can feel, palpably feel, how much Pryce is relishing the role, and he makes every last moment count, serving up, for me, one of the very best Bond baddies, a preening, malicious, ruthless megalomaniac finding such glee in the havoc he wreaks it’s hard not to pump a fist when he finally gets the business end of his own drill. “You forgot the first rule of mass media, Elliot: give the people what they want!” This film, for me, really, really does.

The third Brosnan film, however, stumbles, and quite badly. The World is Not Enough starts strongly, with a great boat chase along the Thames and a pitch-perfect Bond Moment ™ of him straightening his tie underwater. After that, though, it rather loses its way. One big reason is one of the weaker Bond girls, but the other, bigger one is the second attempt at a villain bait-and-switch that doesn’t work. The idea of a Bond girl turning out to be the big bad is great, so much potential, but the execution here is poor. Electra King never really comes to life, and neither does the fakeout big bad, Renard, and honestly, wasting Robert Carlyle, a master of the art of psychotic bad guys, feels like a crime. It’s also tonally off, has a slightly underwhelming theme song, and one of the most underwhelming action sequences in all of Bond; the paragliders sequence, like the bait-and-switch plot, has real promise, but is mishandled so much it feels sluggish, awkward and almost pointless. This is also the first dubious use of CGI in a Bond film, with the pipe sequence looking a little too like the green screen work it is. I’m not sure what this film was trying to be, and I wonder if the director knew, either.

It’s still better, however, than Die Another Day. There are some solid elements, like a Bond recovering from capture and torture and dealing with mistrust from MI6, and a duel of Aston Martin and Jaguar, but they are few and far between. Mostly, this film is a noisy mess. Nothing Madonna was involved in works, not the theme or the cameo. The speed ramping is a pointless, distracting gimmick. The plot’s a muddle in possibly questionable taste. Henchman and main villain are equally poor. And of course there’s the infamous CGI wave-riding scene. Very little about this movie truly succeeds, and the result is, for me, a prime contender for Worst Bond Film Ever.

Unsurprisingly, another hiatus followed, and another retooling, this time taking inspiration from the big spy franchise of the early 200os, the Bourne films. Thus, in Casino Royale, we get Daniel Craig as a rough-edged Bond, being honed and refined over the course of the film into the polished 007 we know and love, and with Martin Campbell at the helm, it really, really works. For me, this is the best Craig movie, setting out a formula that adroitly balanced grittier, more grounded elements with the classic Bond glamour, and no small amount of humour. By the time Craig is prowling across a casino floor in a dinner suit, giving echoes of Connery, he’s starting to really feel like Bond, and come the end, when he’s insouciantly standing over the guy he’s just kneecapped, decked out in a pin sharp three piece outfit, a rifle over his shoulder, he is unquestionably Bond, James Bond. We seemed primed for another golden age of 007.

But then we got Quantum of Solace. The first Bond film to follow directly on from a prior one, it wasn’t only saddled with one of the most awkward titles Fleming ever came up with, but also a listless plot, a dull villain, and action sequences that seemed to believe having close-ups of every single gear change was more important than coherence or legibility. Easily the weakest Craig film, and for me, among the worst of the Bonds. I honestly struggle to understand how they could drop the ball this badly. Fortunately, they recovered it with the third Craig film. Mostly.

Skyfall was the first, and so far only, billion-dollar Bond. It was huge, and is widely regarded as the high point of the Craig era. Me, though, I think it has issues, and thus rate it as the second-best Craig Bond, behind Casino Royale. While Silva is a strong villain, because you wouldn’t get anything else from Javier Bardem, his high point a superb one-long-shot monologue, he’s also yet another disfigured Bond baddie, in an era when they finally seemed to have left the trope behind. The film’s plot and tone and pacing are all a little uneven, and there are times the visual style seems to override most everything else. This in particular foreshadows what would happen next.

After such unprecedented success, of course director Sam Mendes would be brought back, which was exciting enough. Then the film was revealed to be called Spectre, about as charged a title as you could possibly have for a Bond film. Expectations were high, not least since we all knew, as much as the production team insisted otherwise, there was no way a film with that title wouldn’t feature the grand return of legendary Bond baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Unfortunately, the final product made it pretty clear that Mendes wasn’t really invested, stunning opening long shot aside, and neither was an increasingly burnt-out Craig. This was Bond going through the motions, 007 by numbers, pretty but hollow. The biggest failing, though, was Blofeld. You finally regain the rights to one of cinema’s most iconic villains, get Cristoph Waltz to play him, and then make him so…ordinary? Blofeld, the megalomaniac’s megalomaniac, he of volcano bases and grandiose plans of global domination, is suddenly so small and underplayed he barely registers. He’s an echo of himself, a shadow. True, this is clearly an attempt at “Blofeld Begins”, clicking his pieces together like they did Bond’s in Casino Royale, but it feels so half-hearted it falls flat. Ernst Stavro Blofeld does not do small or personal, so taking that route with him, especially so clumsily, was a major mistake.

Despite his fatigue, Craig did come back for one more film, No Time To Die, which is a pretty weird creature. A very Fleming title, numerous callbacks to the 60s films, mostly visually, and yet, none of the spirit. It never justifies its two hour, forty-three minute run time. It has a villain with an awkward, kind of silly name – Lyutsifer Safin – yet despite being played by Rami Malek, hardly any presence at all. He’s a cipher, completely uncompelling. This honestly feels like a pretty standard slick modern thriller that just happens to feature a guy called James Bond. The essence of 007, for me, just was not there. That Blofeld returns, purely as a source of exposition and plot device, and once he stops being useful is killed, only heightens that impression, and underlines how badly they botched the character. An uneven, not very satisfying end to a particularly uneven tenure.

Craig’s era is, for me, the weakest Bond era so far, and the main reason for that is why I put such emphasis on the self-awareness of the Connery and Moore eras: Bond started taking himself too seriously. Aping Bourne doesn’t work for Bond because 007 is an inherently ridiculous character, the least secret “secret agent” ever. Grounding him robs him of much of his appeal, which is why the Craig films were so inconsistent. Take out a key ingredient of the formula, you’re gonna struggle to recapture the magic.

Can the next era recapture it? Given Bond is now entirely the property of Amazon, a company who made a Lord of the Rings series that seems memorable only for how obscenely expensive it was, I’m not hopeful. Bond getting his sense of humour back looks unlikely. Bond being exploited ruthlessly through spin-off films and shows to burn-out saturation, like Disney did with Star Wars and Marvel, looks a lot more likely. If there’s any truth to the rumours that, despite having Denis Villeneuve attached as director, they can’t figure out what to do with 007, too hung up on him dying in NTTD, I’m even less confident of good things. This is a golden opportunity to start with a clean slate, free of baggage, freedom to reinvent the character, and if they can’t see that, it doesn’t bode well.

James Bond will return, but I’m far from convinced it’ll be in good form. Only time will tell.

Bond Blatherings: Moore & Dalton

Part two, in which the 70s delivers a different flavour of Bond, and a whole new scale of spy thrills. As always, these are just the thoughts and opinions of one person.

Roger Moore is my Bond. He was the first 007 I saw, closely followed by Sean Connery, and his films, along with Connery classics like Goldfinger and Thunderball, set the template for what I seek out and enjoy in a Bond movie: a fun, thrilling, twinkle-eyed blend of adventure, thriller, travelogue and action. Escapism, in a nutshell.

Moore’s first outing, Live and Let Die, sets that formula out well, with a kicker theme song, great music, a charismatic baddie, multiple interesting locales, some superb action beats, and a delicous seasoning of the supernatural. Yes, it doesn’t entirely avert Fleming’s racism, and the boat chase might be a tad overlong, and Solitaire’s another interesting female character who loses substance as the film goes on, and Rosie never really has any, and Kananga’s death is just daft, and we can never escape the sheer pain of JAY DUBYAH PEPPAH, but still, a collection of minor things that detracts little from, in my opinion, a pretty heady brew. Personally, the closing image of Baron Samedi (a luminous Geoffrey Holder) sitting on the front of the speeding train Bond and Solitaire are in, somehow not dead despite falling into a box of venomous snakes, tipping his hat and laughing at the camera as it zooms in, then transitioning in a flash of fire to a flaming skull to start the credits, will probably stay with me forever. It took the heightened feel of peak Connery, heightened it some more, and the result is one of my favourite Bond films, and likely a big reason for my enduring love of supernatural imagery and overtones. Not least, it established Moore as a worthy inheritor of the 007 number.

Unfortunately, the next film, something that would repeat with a later Bond, fumbled the ball a bit. The Man With the Golden Gun isn’t bad, but it is a little thin, and betrays a producer relationship that was about to end. The plot is the main issue, for me, not connecting things strongly enough, and the Solex Agitator isn’t a terribly compelling MacGuffin. There’s also the slide whistle undercutting an otherwise stunning stunt, and the even more painful and contrived return of PEPPAH to contend with. And the cardboard cutout plot device that is Hi Fat. And another Bond girl whose abilities magically evaporate the moment the baddies capture her. And a harder-edged, Connery-esque Bond that doesn’t suit Moore. On the positive side, however, we have some great locales, a really clever set, a fun theme song Lulu belts the life out of, and most of all, the aforementioned baddies. Christopher Lee served up compelling evil even in the otherwise atrocious Castle of Fu Manchu, so there was no way we weren’t getting a gold standard Bond villain out of him. Pairing him with Hervé Villechaise as the diminutive, impishly vicious and deceptively dangerous Nick Nack was a stroke of genius. A relishable double-act who deserved a better film.

The 007 ship would be righted, and in truly spectacular fashion, by The Spy Who Loved Me, for my money the greatest adventure Bond ever, a glorious rush of a film laden with brilliant set pieces, stunning gadgetry, a properly capable female lead who doesn’t entirely lose her agency come the end, incredible scenery, amazing model work, more Ken Adam megasets, and the best henchman in the entire series. You think Bond henchman, you think Jaws, towering, metal-toothed, seemingly unstoppable, almost a precursor to the Terminator in a pretty slick suit; even the grandiose sea base exploding on him doesn’t stop him. The only flaw is a slightly undercooked big bad, Curd Jürgens getting not much more to do than brood, grandstand, monologue and push buttons.

Obviously, the Bond team wanted to repeat this success, and equally obviously, seeing how well a little film called Star Wars did, they decided that, hey, sci-fi elements were the way to go, and so we got the immense Moonraker. Now, up front, there are undoubtedly missteps. It gets too silly at times, with the double-taking pigeons and the Bondola. The subplot of Jaws finding love and turning good was misjudged and mishandled. The other main henchman is fairly monotone. And yes, much of the plot is a redo of SWLM‘s, just IN SPAAAAAACE. However, I still maintain it does a heck of a lot right, and is a great slice of grand-scale 007 escapism in its own right. There are wonderful sets and stunning visuals, especially in space, my favourite, quite gorgeous John Barry Bond score and Shirley Bassey theme, some brilliant set pieces, a surprisingly haunting death scene, and a delectably droll big bad. Michael Lonsdale’s deadpan, pithy delivery of zingers like “Look after Mr Bond; see that some harm comes to him” is a big reason Drax is more effective, for me, than Stromberg. There’s something quietly malicious about him, something truly dark lurking in those watchful gimlet eyes, but then, Lonsdale always was great at giving characters internal life.

Equally obviously, after such a vast outing (and vastly successful; I believe it was the highest-grossing Bond film until Goldeneye topped it) it was time to pare things back to basics, which For Your Eyes Only duly did, but, for me, with quite mixed results. It’s an odd film, tonally, an uneasy mix of edgier Bond – 007 kicking Locque’s car off the cliff would’ve worked for Connery, but not Moore, and isn’t properly built up to, emotionally or narratively – and lighter sequences, like the 2CV chase, and outright silly stuff like the NotBlofeld opener and the closing conversation with the PM. It feels like a film that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, a stripped-back, more Fleming-adjacent thirller, or a lighter adventure in the spirit of the prior two films, and never really reconciles that dichotomy. It’s also the first to attempt a villain bait-and-switch, that doesn’t really work, mostly because Julian Glover is almost entirely wasted as Kristatos, undermining the big reveal. Melina’s revenge arc also doesn’t really click, because stopping her from killing after she already has doesn’t ring true, for me. Fortunately, the film does have Chaim Topol in typically charismatic form, echoing Pedro Armendáriz’s equally warm and charming turn as Kerim Bay in From Russia With Love, a good score and song, and some striking stunts.

The next film, Moore’s penultimate one, is also a little uneven, and Roger’s age is starting to show, but it still manages to be a lot of fun. Octopussy may have a dubious title, and Steven Berkoff’s intense, wring-out-every-last-drop acting style will always be divisive, and the twin knife-throwing henchmen are a little one-note, and Vijay Amritraj’s casting is little more than a stunt, and the plot might be a touch convoluted, and it again gets too silly at one point – “Si-hit!” – but I believe the positives outweigh the issues. Maud Adams’ title character is one of the best Bond girls, it has one of the best theme songs, and a slew of quality set pieces, culminating in an escalating series of chases by car, then train, then plane that surely cements John Glen as a superb action director. It also has the effortlessly suave Louis Jourdan tossing out lines like “You have a bad habit…of surviving” which will never not be entertaining. It ain’t perfect, but it puts a big old smile on my face, and it should have been a solid closer to the Moore era. But it wasn’t.

A View to a Kill has a great theme, a fun supporting turn from Patrick “Steed” Macnee, a fun henchwoman turn from Grace Jones, a delightfully unhinged baddie courtesy of Christopher Walken, and some solid set pieces, but mostly…you can feel the strain. Moore is clearly too old, now, it has one of the weakest Bond girls ever, and it just feels tired. This was the product of playing it far too safe, and it’s a weak end to the era of a Bond actor who deserves more credit for keeping the films relevant, popular and successful.

Timothy Dalton was Bond number four. He made just two films, and in my opinion, wasn’t done justice by either. The first, The Living Daylights, while a fun if maybe politically dubious in hindsight Moore-esque adventure, was a poor fit for him, and you can see his discomfort throughout. The other, Licence to Kill, was right in going for a harder-edged Bond, something Dalton was very suited to, but went too far, especially in the violence. There’s some truly gruesome moments in the film – the pressure chamber, the pulveriser – that really don’t feel right for Bond, any Bond. It almost seems like the Bond team saw the grittier turn action films took at the end of the 80s, with Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, and decided to ape them, which proved to be to the series detriment.

It was a few years before the next film, and the next 007 actor, but the wait was definitely worth it.

James Bond will return.

Bond Blatherings: Connery & Lazenby

Partly in an effort to not completely forget about this blog, and just because I want to ramble, this is the 1st in a short series of blogs that will, as the title says, blather about Bond. I’ve been a fan of the Bond films since first seeing them on TV as a kid, and remain one in spite of having much more mixed feelings about the most recent run than I’d have liked. These will be general musings, with more detailed looks at certain films of a given era. As always, these are just the thoughts and opinions of one person.

When you think Bond, chances are, you still think Sean Connery. He was the first, for many still the best, establishing the image and the iconography, and was core to the success of the character and the franchise. From the very first film, Dr No, so much of the 007 formula was present and correct, including the heightened, almost fantastical aspects. I mean, the big villain has super-strong prosthetic hands, and there’s a tank cosplaying as a dragon. Bond lived in his own, bigger-than-life world right from the outset, and I feel that’s kinda overlooked.

From Russia With Love refines the formula, a really slick and entertaining thriller, which I actually enjoy more than the book – more on those later – and Goldfinger nails it. The girls, the guns, the gadgets, the music, the pre-title action sequence, the megalomaniacal villains, it’s all here, & it remains one of the finest realisations of the Bond Film as a package. That includes a definite, playful self-awareness, best encapsulated by the first time you see 007, rising from the water with a seagull-come-snorkel on his head, to slough his wetsuit and reveal a pristine, perfectly cut dinner suit underneath. It’s an adroit balance of silly and cool that really tells you what to expect, and not to take things too seriously, because the film certainly isn’t. I’m keen to stress Bond having his tongue wedged in his cheek from the start, for reasons that are probably easy to guess, and will be detailed in the next blog.

Thunderball escalates things, at least in scale, if not quite in quality, and You Only Live Twice takes it quite literally stratospheric, with Ken Adam at the height of his power delivering sets of jaw-dropping size and detail, world-threatening stakes, and Blofeld himself realised as only Donald Pleasence could. This is Bond as bombastic spectacle, and also one of the best of that variant, if not without issues. This is also Bond in “yellowface”, a disconcerting detail that echoes the deep bigotry that persistently undermined Fleming’s otherwise high-quality storytelling in the books. Connery’s 007 was closest to Fleming in this attitude, in the racism and casual, bottom-smacking sexism, and I wonder if that was a factor in the partial shift in tone of the next film.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the first film I want to examine in more detail. I have never particularly enjoyed it, but only fairly recently have I been able to properly grasp and articulate the full reasons why. This was the first example of a quieter, smaller, more contained Bond after a big, loud entry, and also the first to take itself more seriously, which is why the many issues it has grate as much as they do for me. For a start, Bond number two, George Lazenby, may look the part, but he doesn’t really feel it. That he’s at his most engaging when being dubbed by someone else says a lot, for me.

The narrative and the pacing are intertwined issues. The first stretch of the film puts a lot of effort into establishing the deep connection between Bond and Tracy – a character only made interesting, for me, because she’s played by Diana Rigg, one of those actors good enough to elevate pretty much any role they’re given – but then she just…disappears. Bond and the film almost entirely forget she exists in a sagging, drawn-out middle stretch that is probably the main reason this was the longest Bond film until pretty recently. There’s a definite sense of trying to have your cake and eat it, in wanting to have a properly romantic Bond, and yet also a playboy Bond sleeping with every single girl in Blofeld’s lab, and it, at least in my opinion, makes for some distinct tonal unease. Then, as a rumbled 007 makes his escape, the film suddenly remembers Tracy exists, and he bumps into her looking for him. It’s like, the basic framework of the plot is there, but there’s little effort to flesh it out, give it emotional and character weight, and in an attempt at a more serious, emotional Bond, that clunks.

And that’s not even the biggest plot problem. Oh, no. That’s to do with Blofeld, and no, I don’t mean how he somehow doesn’t immediately recognise the guy who blew up his volcano lair. That’s the kind of inter-film disconnect we’ve come to expect from 007. It’s just part of the package at this point. No, I mean what happens to Blofeld at the climax of the film. After the lab is exploded, Bond chases him to a bobsled track, and a prolonged chase and fight down it ensues. It all ends when Blofeld is smashed from the sled by an overhanging branch, and is left dangling limply from it. The key word here is “left”. True, there may be some small detail I’ve missed or can’t remember, but as far as I can recall, he is literally just left there. Bond forgets him, no-one goes to make sure this incredibly dangerous and undoubtedly now vengeful man is dead, and if he’s not, secure him. The film forgets him, another character just dropped the instant they stop being useful to the plot, It’s therefore pretty hard for me not to roll my eyes when a newly-wed Bond and Tracy stop their car for a moment, and lo and behold, Blofeld reappears, driving past in a neck brace, while Irma Bunt, suddenly remembered to exist after she vanishes in the big lab fight, sprays the couple with bullets. Yes, Tracy’s death is emotional, not least thanks to what’s easily the best acting Lazenby manages, but not nearly as affecting as it could have been had the film bothered with more than the basic beats of the plot.

When you add on top of that the messy, choppy editing and overly-shaky camera, a presage of the fixation on such things that would grip Hollywood in the early 2000s, and it still hasn’t fully shaken off, you end up with, in my opinion, one of the weakest Bond films. It’s not without positives, like Telly Savalas delivering an entertaining urbane gangster Blofeld, in spite of having little to do outside of the action scenes beyond monologues, but mostly, it’s uneven and unsatisfying, and a clear reflection of the troubles behind the scenes, not least between the two producers.

The thing is, the same could be said of the next film I want to talk about in more detail, Connery’s actual final turn as 007, and another shift in tone: Diamonds Are Forever. This film also has issues, like an arguably overstuffed and messy plot, moments that veer too far into silliness – looking at you, moon buggy – and as much as I love Charles Gray, he’s not given nearly enough to work with as Blofeld. It also undeniably falls apart a bit at the end, with one of the most underwhelming final battles, the first example of a smart, capable Bond girl suddenly becoming an idiot, and the most ignominious treatment Blofeld ever got, flung around in a minisub; yes, even the pointless drag moment isn’t that bad, because at least that one’s brief.

For all of that, though, I still enjoy Diamonds more than OHMSS, quite a bit more in fact, and the reason is simple: the tone. Diamonds ups the self-awareness to a degree that paves the way for Roger Moore, verging on camp, and while that’s obviously not to everyone’s taste, I love it. Writer Tom Mankiewicz, in the DVD commentary of the film, notes that he finds Bond an inherently ridiculous character, an opinion I agree with – I mean, a “secret” agent who swans around exclusive casinos swathed in Savile Row or Brioni, sipping champagne and martinis, seducing deeply glamorous women, and known by name by almost every baddie he goes up against, is a concept hard to describe with any other word – and decided to have fun with him. Thus Diamonds drops this incredibly cultured and refined individual into sleazy, seedy 70s Las Vegas and watches him struggle, in a manner that feels, at least to me, almost like affectionate parody.

In that vein, the film provides a lot of enjoyment, from a sparky and capable Bond girl – before her brain goes on vacation, of course – to a slew of supporting colour – grizzled gangsters, a kindly old teacher with a curious side-hustle, acrobatic female heavies, a properly grumpy and sardonic Vegas comic – and two of the best henchmen the series ever had, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd. In the book, them being a couple is little more than Fleming’s bigotry taking charge – “gay people are creepy, so making these two a couple makes them inherently creepy, the end” – but the subtler way the film plays it – just a holding of hands, and a couple of amusingly jealous reactions from Kidd – gives it more dimension. Their relationship, that depth of understanding, is just a facet of what makes them such a capable killing team. It also feeds into the ease with which they wax lyrical about their job, taking such pithy verbal satisfaction in doing what they do so well.

Mankiewicz’s great ear for dialogue helps there, too. So does the fact that Connery, at least to me, seems fully in on the joke, playing everything with a wonderful, wry lightness of touch. He was pretty sour on Bond by then, so I can easily imagine him wanting to poke some fun at the character. Fun is the operative word, for me, as that’s what this film mostly delivers, even if it does falter in the last act, and that’s what I mostly want from Bond, largely thanks to the next person to strap on the codename, my first Bond, and still the one I have the most affection for, and he’ll be the star of the next blog.

James Bond will return.