Chaos Theories

“During the first decade of the 21st century, film style changed profoundly… Contemporary blockbusters, particularly action movies, trade visual intelligibility for sensory overload, and the result is a film style marked by excess, exaggeration and overindulgence: chaos cinema.” –Matthias Stork, Press Play

It is possible that no filmmaking technique is more controversial than the combination of quick cutting and handheld camerawork, the technique known (among other terms) as Shaky/Queasy-Cam, Run and Gun, Snatch and Grab, and Intensified Continuity (the indispensable term from David Bordwell). A recent video essay by film scholar Matthias Stork has introduced another term to the conversation: Chaos Cinema. The quote above essentially sums up Stork’s argument (but don’t let that summary stop you from watching the video): the modern trend toward fast editing and handheld cinematography makes action sequences unintelligible and has led to a decline in action filmmaking.

Predictably, this has stirred up a lot of discussion on the Internet. The best responses I’ve read so far have been from Jim Emerson at Scanners and Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com. What is a little odd is that the discussion about the shakycam style is not anything new. I would say that the debate started becoming more heated in 2007 with the release of Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum, but recent discussion of audience and critical discomfort with handheld camerawork dates back at least to The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and probably to Natural Born Killers in 1994. Earlier this year, Matt Zoller Seitz declared war on the shakycam, and Stork might just be answering his call. But perhaps no one has summed up the common arguments against the shakycam technique quite as succinctly and angrily as Stork.

I have been hesitant to join either side of the debate in either heaping praise on Stork or vehemently condemning his argument. In general, I agree with him in lamenting the current state of action pictures and the wild overuse of the shakycam. I particularly agree with his criticism of the opening car chase in Quantum of Solace, which may have been the first time that I decided that a movie was going to be awful within the first thirty seconds of its running time (and having stayed to the end, I can say that my early judgment was correct).

But there are some holes in the essay that bother me. First of all, I don’t think that Stork provides particularly good analysis of the images that he is showing. The exception is the part about Quantum of Solace where Stork makes a brilliant observation about the increasingly intricate sound designs of action movies (“What we hear is definitely a car chase…but what we see is a ‘car chase’”). But I think some of his other examples don’t work so well. It’s not that I always disagree with them. I just don’t think his analysis is very good. He shows clips and describes them with various adjectives: “coherent”, “comprehensible”, “riveting” (for good examples), and “overstuffed”, “hyperactive”, “sloppy”, “blurry” and “shallow” (for bad examples). He cites cinematic techniques that are a general part of this chaos cinema (“rapid editing, close framings, bipolar lens lengths and promiscuous camera movement”), but he rarely draws attention to specific examples of them. Instead, Stork’s strategy is to juxtapose action sequences that he thinks are effective with examples from the chaos tradition so that we will see the difference.

And this leads me to my second problem with Stork’s essay: I’m not entirely sure what he means when he uses certain clips. He uses scenes from The Dark Knight to begin both parts of his essay, specifically scenes involving the Joker: “Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order and everything becomes chaos” (hence the title of the essay). Stork also uses action clips from The Dark Knight in the introduction, but he never uses or refers to them again in the body of his essay. Isn’t it a little strange that Stork would use a particular movie as the basis of his argument, but never specifically refer to it? It’s especially strange because The Dark Knight is such a fascinating jumping-off point for a discussion of this chaos cinema. By having the Joker shoot videos with a handheld camera (that he shakes around a lot), Christopher Nolan deliberately associates the Joker with the shakycam. This creates all of sorts of interesting implications about the Joker as a movie director: think of the way Heath Ledger acts during the hospital demolition scene and the way that the Joker essentially hijacks the pacing of the movie in the third act. But aside from the introductory passages, Stork never refers to The Dark Knight.

I assume that Stork does not care much for Nolan’s direction of action sequences (though he responded positively to the film) because he uses a clip of the Mombasa chase scene from Inception in his negative examples of chaos cinema. But for me, this just leads to more confusion because Stork does not really explain what is wrong with this scene. A common reaction from detractors of this essay is to say: “I didn’t think those scenes were incomprehensible.” Since this reaction is entirely based on subjectivity and personal taste, it is not very helpful, but Stork does not do much to prevent this reaction, and honestly, I couldn’t help from thinking it several times during the essay. I found the Inception clip particularly lacking in purpose because it was so brief. Stork excludes Nolan’s use of overhead shots that establish the locations of the pursuers and the pursued (in addition to bringing in some wonderful maze-like images). And frankly, I just don’t understand what specifically Stork finds wrong here. Again, the point is not that I disagree with Stork’s argument. My problem is with his method of argument. A quick glance through the (admittedly brief) archive of this blog will let you know that I am a huge fan of director Christopher Nolan. Yet, I found Jim Emerson’s shot-by-shot criticism of the truck chase in The Dark Knight fascinating and thought-provoking. Emerson uses various elements of film grammar and composition to explain in great detail why he finds this sequence confusing and poorly-made. I’m not suggesting that Stork should have gone into this level of detail, but some more in-depth analysis would have made his argument much more effective.

Stork’s examples of classical action filmmaking should have offset my confusion, but in actuality, they just deepened it. I understand his inclusion of the iconic chase scenes from Bullitt and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I think the reference to John Woo’s Hard Boiled is out of place because shooting most of an action sequence in one long take is not necessarily a staple of classical filmmaking. But the source of my greatest confusion is with his inclusion of the final shootout in Sam Peckinpah’s Western masterpiece The Wild Bunch, one of the most beautiful and visually poetic examples of pure cinematic chaos that I have ever seen. Yet, Stork considers this an example of classical filmmaking.

And this leads to my final objection. Film scholar David Bordwell characterizes the modern trend toward faster cutting and moving cameras as “intensified continuity.” But Stork believes that “Bordwell’s phrase may not go far enough. In many post-millennial releases, we’re seeing not just an intensification of classical technique, but a perversion.”

I think Bordwell is closer to the mark. In the 2002 Film Quarterly essay that Stork cites, Bordwell describes the trends of increasing camera movement and decreasing average shot lengths throughout film history, noting that cutting started becoming a great deal more rapid during the 1960s. Certainly intensified continuity has grown more intense in recent years, but my point is that this technique did not suddenly come out of nowhere. In tracing the origins of chaos cinema, Stork blames the usual suspects: music videos, television, shortened attention spans, CGI. But he ignores the many films that have been pointing the way toward the modern trend. The Wild Bunch’s average shot length of 3.2 seconds might seem a little tame now, but I doubt that anyone thought so in 1969. Perhaps the biggest flaw in Stork’s argument is that he ignores what may be the single most influential action scene in any film: the Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight from 1965. Surely influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (itself perhaps the most influential of all action pictures), Welles cuts rapidly between handheld shots placed amongst groups of men and horses. The two sides are seen separately as they charge through mist, but when they clash, all order disappears. The men slash and bludgeon each other, and by the end, they are all writhing around in a pile of mud and blood. Welles said that this sequence (along with the death of Harry Hotspur later in the sequence) is supposed to represent the end of chivalry. These are no knights in shining armor fighting a glorious battle for honor. These are common men in a struggle of life and death for no clear purpose. We cannot even tell who belongs to which side. Though not widely seen, this sequence has had an enormous influence on action pictures, particular medieval epics like Braveheart and war films like Saving Private Ryan. Anyone who has seen a modern action movie will recognize the cinematic techniques here.

And there is no denying it: Welles’ Battle of Shrewsbury is chaos cinema. It is marked by rapid cutting and handheld camerawork. It is loud, intense and disorienting. Aside from being shot in black and white, it would not be at all out of place in a modern action movie. And it was made in 1965 by one of the great visual stylists of the cinema.

To be clear, I am very much in sympathy in Matthias Stork’s complaints about modern action cinema. Nearly every Michael Bay film gives me a splitting headache. (Why, oh why, did I pay to see that last Transformers movie? I should have at least brought some aspirin.) Aside from his work in Deathly Hallows Part Two, I think that David Yates’ shakycam action sequences have been the weakest parts of his Harry Potter films (the forest chase scene near the end of Deathly Hallows Part One is an embarrassment in an otherwise glorious entertainment). I guess I’m not quite as quick to vehemently condemn or passionately support this not-really-so-new chaos cinema as others clearly are. Personally, I would rather that we all join forces to slay the monster known as 3D or form a task force advocating for the tasteful use of CGI (critics won’t have to fear much opposition from Nolan fans on either of those fronts). Yes, I have grown more than a little tired with the shakycam, and I agree with Matt Zoller Seitz that it is time for filmmakers to “get a new fad.” Maybe directors should take a sabbatical from intensified continuity and explore other methods of filmmaking. Perhaps they will find new and better ways of visualizing action. If not, the handheld camera is always waiting for them when they return.

“A Glance From Your Eyes”: Drawing Into the Universe of Terence Malick

Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life is probably the must-see movie of the year. Forget the new Transformers, Hangover or Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This is an event movie. Simply put, if you are passionate about cinema, you have to see this movie. Does this you mean you have to like it? No, in fact, it’s probably going to be the most divisive movie of the year. No one can quite agree on what this movie is about. You’re bound to find hundreds of different interpretations of it on the Internet. This will not be one of them.

Yes, you read that right; this will not be an interpretation. I’m still not entirely sure what to think about the film. Once I see it again, I’m sure I will write an interpretation, but for now, I’m primarily concerned with the film as cinema. How can a movie address the entirety of existence and the history of the universe in less than three hours and still be watchable? Essentially, why is The Tree of Life a good movie?

Terence Malick may be an iconoclast director who does not care for conventional filmmaking, but he knows that his ideas will not matter if people fall asleep or walk out of the theater (many moviegoers have already done this during The Tree of Life, but I can’t speak for them). He will not pander to audiences, but he does want them to come along. His first masterstroke in creating an interesting movie for his ideas to inhabit comes with how he handles the voiceovers. Malick has used voiceovers in every movie he has made, but in The Tree of Life, they sound quieter and more indistinct, less like narration and more like prayers or whispers. We can hear them, but just barely. This is a brilliant way to draw viewers into his film because our first instinct when we hear a whisper is to lean forward and try to make it out more clearly. Kelly Reichardt uses a similar technique in her brilliant Meek’s Cutoff by having the women on the wagon train listen from far away as their husbands discuss plans. The overheard dialogue in that film is even harder to make out, but it feels just out of reach as if we can almost grasp it. What a wonderful way to draw us into the story. Instead of bombarding us with noise, Malick and Reichardt use quiet and near silences to have us grasping out into the story, wanting to know what the characters are saying, wanting to know what’s ahead. Of course, Malick has never been afraid to crank the volume up to 11 (see The Thin Red Line, with its DVD instructions to “play the movie loud”).

Terence Malick is such a legendary filmmaker that he always attracts talented people to his movies, both in front and behind the camera. For the second time (the first being the beautiful The New World), Malick works with the brilliant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski, most famous for his work with director Alfonso Cuarón on films such as Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men. In Cuarón’s films, Lubeski’s visuals are usually dominated by handheld shots following characters through extended takes (think of the final battle scene in Children of Men). Although Malick tends not to use longer takes in The Tree of Life, the approach is very similar. Many of the shots involve following behind characters as they walk around houses, buildings and streets. The very first shot of the film is from behind Jessica Chastain as she looks out of a window. The dominance of shots from behind the characters, especially as they walk, creates a sense of being lead into another world. These characters would still live their lives if the cameras were off. We’re just following along with them. There may be more shots from in front of the characters, but I can only remember one: after Jack has shot his brother’s finger with a BB-Gun, he walks through a forest, then stops, turns around and starts walking back toward the camera. I need to revisit the film and see if there are more tracking shots like that, but it’s such a powerful image that I can imagine Malick wanting to single it out.

The other major visual talent that Terence Malick employs behind the camera is production designer Jack Fisk, who has worked with Malick on all of his films. Fisk’s greatest accomplishment in The Tree of Life is to create an entire world for these characters to inhabit. This is the key to why the movie works. It attempts no less than to encompass everything in life. It visualizes the birth and destruction of the Universe. It even has dinosaurs. And yet, the film balances this epic scope with a fully grounded depiction of a small town in Texas. The treatment of the family drama is philosophical and unconventional enough to make sure that this blend is not incongruous. The movie doesn’t suddenly become “normal” when Brad Pitt shows up. But the entire environment of the family’s house and the small town around it is so fully realized that it becomes a distinct place. Malick explores the characters going about their daily routines at school, at work, in the garden and at the dinner table. He focuses in on some details and lets others go right on by (I loved the DDT truck spraying gas all over the kids as they play in the street). Again, Lubeski’s camerawork is key here because he keeps the camera on the ground level, following the characters around as they explore their world. By making the environment complete, Malick creates the sense that we’ve just picked one ordinary family and we’re following along with them as they go about their lives.

I know that I need to see The Tree of Life again before I can get a better grasp on it, and I’ll certainly need to see it many more times to fully understand it (maybe I never will). But even though I don’t understand all of the themes, it’s an extraordinary piece of cinema by one of our greatest living filmmakers. One of the most exciting times for film lovers is when they can analyze a new movie from a great master. We may not have new films by Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Fellini, Bergman and many of the other legendary auteurs, but we do have a new Terence Malick. The Tree of Life is a cinematic gift. Let’s unwrap it and see what we can find.

Thinking of Winter in the Middle of Summer

Spoilers for Game of Thrones ahead (but I think I’ve kept out spoilers for the next book).

When viewing an adaptation of a book, I always try to keep the source material out of my mind, but damn that can be hard sometimes. It was especially hard when watching HBO’s Game of Thrones, the first adaptation of a series that I am currently engrossed in (deep into the third volume, A Storm of Swords, at this point). This is not a preferable method for reviewing an adaptation, but since I can’t get the book out of my mind, I’ll use it. Don’t worry. I work at a higher level of criticism than this old staple of disappointed (usually Harry Potter) fans: “They cut out my favorite part!”

In fact, my biggest criticism of the adaptation has little to do with the book. I’ve previously written about the importance of tone and mood when it comes to fantasy, but I have to harp on it again. The adaptation of Game of Thrones does a terrific job with characterization, but it’s not always successful at creating a sense of time and place, one of the most important tasks to accomplish when dealing with fantasy. A fantasy world does not have to be realistic, but it has to feel like a distinct place that exists in the mind. Peter Jackson did this incredibly well in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the current high point for cinematic fantasy, as did Alfonso Cuarón in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the best of the Harry Potter films.

HBO’s Game of Thrones only occasionally accomplishes this. I appreciate that it slows down for dialogue scenes instead of rushing through the plot, but I wish that it wouldn’t skip creating a sense of atmosphere. A lot of the dialogue works, especially the scenes between King Robert and Ned Stark. They help to provide the series with a sense of history as the characters reminisce over the rebellion that they led several years before. However, we never really get a sense of King’s Landing as a place. I’m not even sure we get an establishing shot of the city. The show almost approaches Attack of the Clones territory as an epic fantasy dominated by scenes of people talking in offices. I’m not saying that it should have fewer dialogue scenes, but that the dialogue scenes should help to establish the location. There should be more scenes like the one where Littlefinger walks with Ned through his courtyard and points out all of the spies working there. One of the masterstrokes of storytelling in the book was to have Arya wander through the poorer streets of King’s Landing late in the story. This does a brilliant job of making the city feel like a real place, and it sets up the terrific dual-layered story structure of A Clash of Kings. In the show, this sequence is truncated to about 30 seconds. It’s not a flaw because it deviates from the book, but it wastes a good opportunity to create some atmosphere. Of course, at that point in the story, there isn’t much time for creating atmosphere.

But creating a better sense of atmosphere and mood doesn’t have to take time. Lighting alone can radically alter the mood of a scene. Far too many of the sets in Game of Thrones feel like, well, sets, particularly the Frey’s Castle and the streets of King’s Landing. Think of how effective the scenes at the Wall are, especially the scene in the last episode when Jon’s friends catch him in the woods as he tries to desert. Look at the way the scene seems to only be lit by the torches, creating a nice interplay of light and shadow that heightens the tension. That’s atmosphere. That’s mood. The show also makes very good use of setting for the scenes in the Eyrie (well set up by a nice establishing shot form the valley below). The throne room provides the location for one of the weirdest character entrances I’ve seen (isn’t that boy a bit old for that milk?) and a duel around a large hole in the floor. The set piece conclusion of the penultimate episode also has a great deal of suspense, and the last episode winds up with a lot of tension as we see various characters moving off to their storylines in the next season (I loved seeing the Night’s Watch riding out under the Wall at the end).

But unfortunately, the show suffers from the same flaw as the book: the story spends far too much time spinning its wheels. There isn’t enough of a driving story engine. The central mystery behind Jon Arryn’s death and the attempt on Bran’s life is compelling, but the story doesn’t spend enough time propelling that thread. There are a few too many dialogue scenes that don’t really add much to story, particularly the ones that set up characters for the next book. Yes, I know that Lancel Lannister and Theon Greyjoy become important in Clash of Kings, but they’re not terribly important in Game of Thrones. They should spend a little more time with Robb Stark because he is much more important for this story than Theon. As in the book, there isn’t quite enough momentum as the story moves toward the conclusion, and the war begins. The show actually improves on this a little by making the Lannister plans (the scene between Tywin and Jaime is terrific, not least because of the symbolism involved with Tywin gutting a stag) and the Stark plans a little clearer. I assume that budgetary constraints are the reason why we’re robbed (no pun intended) of any battle scenes (which makes me a little worried for the Battle of Blackwater in Clash of Kings). And although the Daenerys storyline has a great payoff, it proceeds in fits and starts and mostly just meanders around, just like in the book.

There’s a lot to like in Game of Thrones. I love the opening title sequence, and I can’t decide whether I want the creators to keep it for next season or see what they can come up with next. Peter Dinklage is terrific as Tyrion, and young Maisie Williams makes for a great Arya. Her storyline is the best part (with competition from Jon and Tyrion) of Clash of Kings, and I’m really looking forward to how the next season handles it (this season already makes an enormous improvement over the rather cruel way the book leaves off with Arya’s story). Sean Bean is so good as Ned Stark that he provides HBO with an interesting problem. The center of the show’s marketing was based around Sean Bean and he was the main reason why a lot of people tuned in. Just like in the book, we like him so much that we can’t believe it when he dies in the penultimate episode. I hope Tyrion, Arya and Jon will be enough to make people watch the next season, but maybe HBO will use the casting of Stannis and maybe Ser Davos as a way of bringing in some big names. As if marketing has any effect on the quality of the show.

I’m not entirely sure I trust my reaction to Game of Thrones. I read the book much too recently, and I’m still reading the others in the series. Maybe I’ll feel better about it if I revisit the series after the books have faded a little from my mind (hopefully this happens before next season). I will say that there aren’t many TV shows that I watch regularly, but with Game of Thrones, I watched, enjoyed and highly anticipated each episode. This doesn’t happen often, so consider yourself lucky, HBO. And did I mention that I’m hooked for next season? How could I not be?

“Even Children Get Older”: Are Those Bastards Killing South Park?

Wait, what? Is that…? Are they…? What?!

This pretty much sums up my reaction to “South Park’s” mid-season finale “You’re Getting Older.” I imagine that many people had the same reaction. Oh yes, this string of mostly incomprehensible words could describe many an episode of that show (remember the airplanes at the end of the Jersey episode?), but this was different. This was not shock at something that happened, but shock at something that might happen, shock at a foreshadowed end to the series. (spoiler alert)

You don’t expect an animated TV show to really deal with the prospect of aging and growing old, especially a show that has kept its characters in Fourth Grade for 15 years. Like always, Trey Parker and Matt Stone sneak this theme in as something that seems ridiculous at first, but slowly starts to make sense. The story revolves around the new music that the kids love and that their parents think sounds like shit. This being “South Park”, the music literally sounds like shit. Parker and Stone use an almost Shakespearean dual-level story structure (yes, I used the word Shakespearean to describe “South Park”; the problem is figuring out which is the high comedy and which is the low comedy) to follow Randy Marsh as he tries to deny his age by claiming that he likes the shitty music and Stan Marsh as he grows older and finds that not only does everything he used to like seem like shit, but in fact everything seems like shit (a condition his doctor calls “being a cynical asshole”). Stan grows distant from his friends, and Sharon Marsh gets increasingly angry with Randy. We’ve seen stuff like this before, and we wait for the resolution.

But it doesn’t come.

Stan still thinks everything’s shit and winds up completely alone (were Kyle and Cartman smiling at each other?), while Sharon and Randy drift apart. They both share their frustrations with how everything in their lives keeps repeating. Weekly cartoons have always done things like this, but we slowly begin to realize that this might not be a joke. Is this how Parker and Stone feel about the show? The episode ends with a montage set to Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide”: “And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills, ‘til the landslide brought me down”.

“South Park” is so risky and irreverent that it has always seemed like the creators were reckless youngsters, and while that may have been true when it began, the series has lasted for 15 years and Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in their 40’s now. Do they see “South Park” as something from their youths, something childish that they should put away? They’ve found new success outside of the show. Maybe it’s become too much of a chore or a burden. As we see Stan growing older, it’s interesting to note that Trey Parker’s parents are named Randy and Sharon.

It actually makes a lot of sense that a show where children are the main characters would deal with what it means to grow older. And using adults as a counterpoint helps to highlight what both the adults and children are feeling. There’s always something poignant about the ending of childhood because it always seems like it lasts forever (this episode might make a good double feature with Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life and maybe Super 8 will fit this weekend). When it ends, there’s always nostalgia and a desire to reclaim it. It’s only when Stan starts to realize that he’s getting older that Randy begins to recognize it. Stan’s never going to be 9 nine years old again, and neither is Randy. “Even children get older, and I’m getting older, too.”

It’s a funny thing that I never really considered that “South Park” might end. I sort of assumed that it would continue forever. It’s a little hard for me to comprehend what life will be like without it, just like I can’t really comprehend not being able to see a new episode of “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report”, or not being able to read Roger Ebert’s review of a new movie. But of course, all of these things must happen. “Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?”

When you really love someone else’s created work (be it movie, book, TV show, whatever), you develop a personal relationship with it and start to think that it mainly exists for you. But we forget about how the creator feels about it. I recently revisited the Star Wars movies, and I’m reminded of Alec Guinness’ response to a fan who claimed to have watched it over a hundred times: “Promise me you’ll never see it again.” The opinion of the creator shouldn’t really matter with a completed work, but a TV show is different because you expect the creator to create new things for you. The creator might not want to. “Well, I’ve been afraid of changing cause I’ve built my life around you.” I don’t really follow a lot of TV shows because it can be hard watch something regularly, to schedule things around a specific time every week. There have been occasional exceptions, and “South Park” is one of them. There is something comforting about familiarity, about something that happens regularly and frequently. Changing this can be a big deal. What Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to be saying is that this isn’t a big deal. This happens. If we can’t handle saying goodbye to Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Butters (no, I can’t say goodbye to Butters!), Randy, and Mr. Mackey, how can we do it in real life? Because even though Stan will never see his childhood again, we can revisit it any time we like. That is, if the website stays open.

Slow Down If You Want the Tone to Last

At the dawn of the modern comic book movie craze, Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie announced the direction that superhero movies would take by opening with a Holocaust scene. After Spider-Man 2, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, it’s no longer as surprising when superhero movies tackle serious subject matter, but the idea of a Holocaust scene in a comic book movie must have raised more than a few eyebrows in 2000. The placement of this scene in the film is integral to movie’s themes about what happens when people declare entire groups to be unfit for society, and it warns the viewer that comic book movies won’t be kid’s stuff anymore. Most importantly, it establishes that the key to a successful fantasy movie is mastery of tone.

It’s a little ironic that the movie that makes this principle most apparent is X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn’s recent entry into the series. The movie has some major flaws (a character in this movie actually says these words: “We have to sacrifice liberty for security”; wow, that’s really subtle), and it doesn’t reach the heights of The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2 or X2 (the best X-Men film), but it’s very enjoyable and exciting. The difference between what’s good and bad about the movie is tone. Simply put, the good scenes take time to establish tone, mood, character and atmosphere. The bad scenes don’t.

X-Men: First Class draws a direct connection with the first film in the series because it opens with the exact same scene. Well, not exactly, and that’s the problem. The events in the scene are exactly the same. A boy and his parents are being forced into a concentration camp in Poland. The boy is separated from his parents, and when he tries to run back to them, a group of Nazi soldiers restrain him and a gate closes in front of him. As the boy reaches out his hands toward his parents, the metal in the gate starts to creak and pull back toward him. The scene ends when a soldier knocks the boy out with the butt of a rifle, and a wider shot reveals the tangled mess of metal that remains of the gate.

This describes the opening scenes of both X-Men and X-Men: First Class. First Class takes the same footage (and some footage that looks like it was reshot) and makes the scene shorter, most likely in an attempt to avoid repeating the same scene. It probably didn’t help Matthew Vaughn’s job that Bryan Singer did such a memorable job with the scene the first time. The key difference between the two scenes is that Singer spends more time developing the scene and establishing a realistic tone so that there is more weight given to the family separation and more context and surprise to the revelation of the young Magneto’s superpowers. The reveal happens slowly in the first film, as if the boy is just discovering these powers for the first time, giving the sense that the powers are growing naturally out of the emotion of the situation. It also helps that the scene demonstrates the powers in a small, low-key way that is still visually powerful. Singer has spent enough time with this scene to ensure that the introduction of Magneto’s superpowers is not a non sequitur.

The same scene in X-Men: First Class goes by too quickly to establish any tone. This could be because I already knew what would happen having seen the first film, but the scene seems to rush to revealing the superpower, instead of waiting as Singer did to give the introduction more weight.

Maybe this is not entirely fair. Perhaps the scene simply suffers by comparison to the original. The problem is that this scene is not the only example from First Class of scenes that happen too quickly to establish tone. In fact, the entire pre-titles sequence feels incredibly rushed. After the opening Magneto origin, we move across the Atlantic to Charles Xavier’s childhood home. Hearing a noise in the night, young Xavier leaves his bedroom with a baseball bat and walks down to the kitchen. He finds his mother there, but her behavior seems strange to him. If that’s not his mother, we know that there’s really only person that she could be (here’s a hint: she’s feeling a little blue). Unfortunately, like the first scene, this scene rushes very quickly to introducing the powers: Xavier speaks telepathically to the intruder who then transforms into a young Mystique. Although the transformation has the appropriate sense of magic, the demonstration of Xavier’s telepathic ability just doesn’t feel right. It happens a bit too quickly and is accompanied by some awkward digitally assisted camera moves. The biggest problem with the scene comes when Xavier expresses his joy at “finding someone like me.” Somehow, this just doesn’t feel genuine.

The problem with these first two scenes is that Vaughn has not taken enough time to establish the real world before bringing in the elements of fantasy. One way to accomplish this would be to focus on the real-world emotions that the characters must be feeling such as the agony of the family separation in Magneto’s scene or the fear of hearing an intruder in the house. Xavier gets to the kitchen so quickly that we don’t get the sense that he’s worried or anxious as he makes his way there. Even though Xavier’s emotions in this scene are not necessary to the plot, taking some time to build suspense would place the audience more surely in this world before the movie changes things around on us. Establishing the real world emphasizes the contrast with the fantasy elements and gives them more weight.

But these first two scenes are nothing compared to what comes next: a scene that has incredibly little control of tone and just screams, WRONG! Young Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) has been brought into the office of an evil Nazi scientist named Sebastian Shaw. Shaw knows about Erik’s powers and wants him to use them to move a coin. As an incentive, Shaw brings Erik’s mother into the room and threatens to shoot her if Erik doesn’t perform. This scene should be filled with enormous tension and power. This is getting close to Schindler’s List territory. But it’s handled completely wrong. The first problem is Kevin Bacon as Shaw. Actually, the first two problems because the first problem is his mustache. I defy any audience to keep a straight face when Bacon appears onscreen. The second problem is the performance. Bacon is clearly having fun playing Shaw as an over-the-top dastardly villain. But here’s the problem with that: Nazis in concentration camps are not dastardly villains. They’re not Dr. No and Goldfinger. They’re truly evil. I’m not saying Bacon needs to be Amon Goeth in this scene, but something closer to Christian Szell from Marathon Man might be better than Bacon’s wacky scientist. This scene needs to be dark, tense and terrifying, not campy and over the top. The other problem with this scene goes back to movie’s approach to demonstrating the mutant powers. As Erik reaches toward the coin, we don’t get the sense of someone straining to do the impossible. It just looks silly, but of course, the movie could have used that to add to the tension. What is the mother feeling as she knows that she is going to die because her son can’t accomplish a seemingly impossible task? This scene demonstrates very well that subject matter has little to do with the ultimate effect of a movie. On paper, the scene sounds terrifying. On screen, it ends up being strangely devoid of the emotion it should have.

The title of the movie had not even shown up on screen, and the movie had already started going downhill.

Thank goodness the movie decides to slow down about a third of the way through and focus itself. Throughout the first act, I constantly felt that the movie was rushed without the excitement that fast pacing can create (see The Seven Samurai, Star Wars). There are several action sequences, but no memorable set pieces. Far too many scenes happen quickly without establishing tone, mood and atmosphere (the introduction of Shaw’s powers, Erik’s attack on Shaw’s boat).

But the movie starts to settle down when Erik and Xavier finally meet. This is not only exciting for fans of the series, but works as great drama because Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are such good actors that they make their characters feel real. At this point, the movie begins to feel more like a movie and less like a trailer. It really starts to take off when Xavier and Erik start recruiting mutants for the CIA using a prototype for Cerebro. It’s a fairly standard recruiting-the-team montage, but it uses fast pacing that gives the movie a sense of rhythm and excitement rather than rushing.

The moment when I decided that I actually liked this movie comes when the mutant recruits sit around in their CIA living room and talk about the nicknames they want while listening to “Green Onions” (bringing memories of those headlights emerging from the predawn gloom in American Graffiti). Now this is what I’m talking about: a scene when the movie just slows down for a moment to let the characters talk (and this being 1962, it lets the kids be kids and listen to some rock’n’roll). Light comedy scenes like this are incredibly valuable to an action movie like First Class. It’s an easy way to develop characters by having them do funny things with each other. Once we’ve seen the characters having fun and heard them genuinely laugh, they seem more real and more human. We grow to like the characters and care more about them, which makes the dramatic scenes much more emotional and exciting. This is something that the best of the Harry Potter movies have done incredibly well (the Gryffindor boys’ late night antics in Azkaban, the Yule Ball and associated events in Goblet of Fire, the romantic comedy elements in Half-Blood Prince, the Harry-Hermione dance scene in Deathly Hallows 1).

When the movie finally slows down, it devotes more attention to the superpowers and gives them more weight. Michael Fassbender in particular brings a great deal of gravitas to his performance as Magneto, especially during a scene when he strains to turn an enormous radio dish (can someone more familiar with comics tell me whether or not Magneto’s Patronus is an invention for the movie?). And it’s a shame that the trailers give away the image of Magneto lifting the submarine out of the water because it’s really a terrific moment. In fact, the final action sequence (which the ads have considerably over-exposed) is very exciting and does what the X-Men franchise has usually done very well: attempt to lift its comic book material to the level of Shakespearean tragedy. Of course it’s a little silly and Christopher Nolan has done it much better with his Batman films, but I still have a lot of admiration for the emotional level that this movie reaches.

The key issue here is one that has plagued fantasy movies recently: a failure to master tone, mainly from a desire to rush into fantastical spectacles and sacrifice the time it takes to develop tone and mood. It’s one of the biggest problems with the Chris Columbus Potter films (the first shot of Sorcerer’s Stone does a brilliant job of setting up everything that’s wrong with the first two entries in the series). Thankfully, Columbus let Alfonso Cuarón take the reins with Prisoner of Azkaban, which is really a masterpiece of tone, shifting effortlessly from scenes of joy and hilarity to scenes of real terror and exhilaration. Problems with tone also befell the Narnia series with Prince Caspian, which spends less than ten minutes in the real world before returning to Narnia ensuring that there’s no real sense of relief and excitement when this happens. If you show Dumbledore before you show Privet Drive, if you don’t give the Pevensies enough time in England, you arrive quickly at the fantastical scenes that people want to see, but you sacrifice a sense of anticipation. Have directors learned nothing from Spielberg and Jaws? The audience has come to see something that you’ve got to show them. Of course, you don’t want to wait too long, but if you wait just long enough, you’ve got the audience in your grasp. Why let them go so soon?

Tone is important for every movie, but it is especially important for fantasy. Fantasy films visualize images that cannot exist and could either be awe-inspiring or silly. X-Men: First Class may be a very important film because it demonstrates both outcomes: scenes of incredible visual power and scenes that just don’t work. Everyone who believes that fantasy is a valuable art form cringes whenever fantasy is done poorly and cheers whenever it’s done well (Lord of the Rings, Pan’s Labyrinth, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). The material for fantasy movies is usually very similar. The difference is in how the material is handled. The best fantasy films are conscious of the tone that they are using. What does the storyteller think about the story? How will it be presented? When is it serious? When is it funny? What is the context? A film director always has to know the answers to these questions, but it is especially important for fantasy directors to know them because fantasy can very easily get out of control. It is possible to create a tone with fast pacing, but filmmakers must be able to establish it. Fantasy usually works better when it slows down and creates context, mood, and a sense of place, atmosphere and anticipation. Take some time. Set the stage. Don’t rush things. The outcome can be bad, but it can also be extraordinary.