Mission Impossible: Fallout

The Mission Impossible films are to storytelling what the Slam Dunk Contest is to the NBA Playoffs. It’s all spectacle because that’s what it’s supposed to be. No one watches the dunk contest thinking they’re going to see a full game.

So it goes with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s Fallout, the sixth film in the franchise. The convoluted plot unfurls faster than even the smartypants characters can keep up with. This time Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) mission, and he chooses to accept it, involves keeping three orbs of plutonium from falling into the grasp of a terrorist syndicate of inchoate commitments. What’s really objectionable about these terrorists is that they’re beliefs are hilariously generalized.

Hunt and his homeboys, Luther and Benjy (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg), must broker a deal to obtain the weapons before the terrorists, known as The Apostles, blow up the world. These terrorists are a mountain of ideological contradictions. It seems they’re anti-… belief systems? They think the public’s faith in the law, society, and religion is misguided. Greater disaster, they insist, leads to greater peace, or some such nonsense. The one thing you can’t take away from real-world terrorists is they have their principles. Not these guys.

But Fallout isn’t interested in ideas or principles. The film could make some kind of thematic move if it made the terrorists’ beliefs something realistic, but their grievances are so generic that this might as well be an alien invasion.

How then is Fallout so delectable an experience? All spy stories, to one degree or another, are about what patriotism and sacrifice mean. Hunt has sacrificed a lot for his work. McQuarrie’s screenplay establishes that early with a dream-fantasy sequence in which Ethan’s wedding is disrupted by disaster. Ironically, the only tiresome spots in the film are these moments, when our charismatic hero ponders all he’s lost for his work.

We don’t like Ethan because he’s had his personal life wrecked by the spy trade any more than we like John McClaine because he wants to get back with his wife. What we dig about these guys is their audacity. Contrary to every screenplay writing guru’s advice, I’ve long held that in the better action films it’s the artfulness of the action, not the relationships, that actually draws us in. The fact that Ethan has loved and lost is a common experience; guys crashing helicopters and jumping off of rooftops like Spider-Man is not.

And boy does he. For most of the film’s parade of preposterous contrivances of double-crosses and aliases and daredevil close calls Cruise is joined by Henry Cavill, a younger secret agent known for his lack of a soft touch. Cavill has been assigned to work alongside Ethan. The government trusts Ethan enough to get the plutonium but not enough to do so without supervision from a less experienced spy. Together, the two impossibly handsome stars dart from fight scene to chase scene to whatever chaos is happening and leave stacks of dead bodies in their wake. The most astonishing of these set pieces involves Cavill and Cruise jumping from a plane at dusk over Paris with cinematographer Rob Hardy jumping with them — with an IMAX camera strapped to him.

This literally awesome stunt is the centerpiece of Fallout‘s action. I, however, found the car stunts and chases more impressive. Cruise races through Paris on motorcycles, fishtails four-door sedans, jumps out of planes, and flies helicopters trying to stop these utterly uninteresting villains from engaging in nuclear terrorism. Tom Cruise’s sheer zeal for the stunts combines with his awareness of his own charms in a way that’s as mesmerizing as it is distracting. With every leap from a building or sharp turn taken on a motorbike, the fifty-six-year-old seems to ask “Isn’t it something that I’m willing to do all this?”

A bathroom fight scene goes on forever and is admirable for its realism. A shootout in a sewer is that rare darkly lit action scene that looks good and pays off in an interesting fashion. McQuarrie’s direction is restrained. The action moves fast, but the editing is disciplined, with lots of medium and wide shots that allow us to see the whole performances. That, alone, makes Fallout a high-quality action film. The so-called “emotional stakes” for Ethan feel set in place as more a convention of blockbusters than as a necessity of anything the film intends to achieve.

Mission Impossible: Fallout — THREE STARS

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Rated PG-13

Paramount Pictures

Bad Robot

147 min.

 

Solo

Disney’s ongoing effort to strip mine the original Star Wars films of every bit of mystery and novelty continues with Ron Howard’s Solo. In its casting and humor, it is superior to the grim Rogue One. In it’s overly intricate storyline and not-great moments of fan service, it’s more of the same.

Alden Ehrenreich fits the profile and is competent as a young Harrison Ford, whose Han Solo character would become the template for anti-hero heroes to come. Written by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, Solo‘s sloppy first third establishes Han as a “scumrat,” a kind of second-class citizen and street hustler on the planet Corellia. The brash Han and his girlfriend, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke), long to escape the scummy shipbuilding planet and live hustling ever after exploring the galaxy. The Empire is in charge, with storm troopers enforcing order everywhere. To escape a debt, Han and Qi’ra attempt to escape, but Qi’ra is apprehended. Han vows to return for her. During a silly Ellis Island moment that recalls a young Vito Corleone, Han gets his surname. It is another needless elaboration upon a character where none was necessary.

This is all dashed off in a perfunctory, let’s-get-to-the-next-page fashion. Howard’s cinematographer, Bradford Young, drapes early scenes in a too-dark mist that renders the creatures indecipherable. It’s only when Han becomes a soldier and meets a team of other scoundrels (Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, and John Favreau) who, after some coaxing, break Han and his new best pal Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) into their life of crime. Han longs to be a pilot and gets mocked.

The dangerous heists and shenanigans cause our heroes to run afoul of a crime organization called Crimson Dawn, the face of which is the evil Dreyden Vos (Paul Bettany). For a plot that has so many contrivances and backstabbings, the pace settles into a casual stroll that persists until the end of the two-hours-and-fifteen-minutes running time. Amazingly, these spinoffs are all spawned from the original Star Wars film, which does the opposite.

At some point soon, Star Wars movies will run out of callbacks. For now, though, we’re bombarded. This can sometimes be charming, as with Donald Glover’s Lando character mispronouncing “Han” as his forebear Billy Dee Williams once did. (Glover’s performance is a kind of delightful slam dunk of subtle charm as he flawlessly mimics Williams without overdoing it.) But mostly the endless in-jokes and continuity earmarks make the viewing experience cumbersome and obnoxious, filling in gaps the diehard fans really don’t want filled in.

Will the spinoff movies ever feel like anything more than Disney On Ice for Star Wars fans — your favorite characters back, albeit in watered-down form, prancing and preening before your eyes? Unlike Rogue One, which is still the only point of comparison, Solo is not without its charms. It has solid jokes, genuinely appealing performances, and actually does back-fill the narrative in half-interesting ways (e.g., the way Han and Chewbacca meet is adorable).

The train wreck that was the film’s production to my eyes seems to have been a non-issue where the final product is concerned. Many fine films had “troubled” productions. The problem with Solo may well be the same problem the fans have always had — thinking too hard, over-complicating the fun until fun is no longer fun. Movies are art. Disney treats these spinoffs like homework assignments.

Solo: A Star Wars Story — TWO STARS

Directed by Ron Howard

Rated PG-13

Disney

LucasFilm

135 min.

Avengers: Infinity War

Are we supposed to feel badly for Thanos (Josh Brolin), the villain of the new Marvel assault on the senses Avengers: Infinity War? The intergalactic demigod certainly has enough screen time. Our usual heroes like Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), who at this point are fully developed characters, are encountered mostly in fleeting scenes of banter and wisecracks.

Infinity War is a movie about Thanos, not our Avengers. Previous films have established these characters to the point that, apparently, directors Joe and Anthony Russo see no need to even let the heroes speak much.

Thanos seeks the infinity stones, magical glowing rocks that fit into the infinity gauntlet, a magical glove that grants its wearer supreme power over the universe. Even having just one or two of the stones allows you to beat up the Hulk. Infinity War‘s irrelevant plot has to do with Thanos’ quest to take over the universe by acquiring the missing stones, which are scattered in goofy places — one is in Vision’s (Paul Bettany’s) head, another is around Benedict Cumberbatch’s neck, another is just being hoarded by some weirdo on a dank planet, etc.

Why does a being who already wields immense power want to go through all this trouble? If I’m understanding one of the exposition dumps correctly, Thanos is concerned about overpopulation. His home planet Titan got destroyed because of overpopulation, he reasons. So wiping out half of the conscious creatures in the universe is his plan. He needs all six stones to do this.

One would think that a better plan would be to simply use the stones to create new planets to which the population overflows can be relocated, but, hey, Thanos isn’t the kind of guy who takes constructive criticism well.

Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) collects a quick beatdown from Thanos in outer space and is mercifully zapped back down to Earth, landing, literally, in Doctor Strange’s (Cumberbatch’s) house. Bruce Banner becomes a kind of Paul Revere, reporting of the coming of the mighty Thanos. From there, it’s all hands on deck (except Ant-Man and Hawkeye, whose absence is explained away in a line of dialogue that exists solely to preempt nerds from complaining). In this cosmic game of keep away, every superhero on the Marvel team gets enlisted into keeping those stones away from Thanos. There are so many of them.

Infinity War is a tonal and structural catastrophe. There are a couple of dramatic beats that are genuinely stirring, such a Gamora (Zoe Saldana) attempting to kill Thanos, her father, failing, and breaking down into tears. But the bulk of the film’s two-and-a-half hour run time jumps with depraved abandon from location to location, where the rare dramatic moment that lands is summarily undercut by an ill-timed one-liner. But the comedy is funny. Actors like Chris Pratt and Downey can transform  cheesey one-liners into winners with sheer delivery.

Much has been made of Infinity War‘s bleak ending, which I found to be more obnoxious than daring. Really, it’s just plain silly. In the public screening I attended, people seemed to be moved by the killings that come late in the film.

Of course, there exists in the Avengers universe the infinity gauntlet, which gives one the ability to time travel, teleport, bend the space-time continuum, bring the dead back to life, and so on. Thus the world of the Marvel films is one in which everything done can be undone with a spell, a stone, or a sequel.

Avengers: Infinity War — TWO STARS

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

Rated PG-13

Marvel Studios

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

149 min.

Tomb Raider

There’s a bicycle chase scene early in the new Tomb Raider film that is energetic and filmed with a kind of zeal the film altogether forgets after its first twenty minutes. Video game hero Lara Croft, now played by Alicia Vikander, swishes and swerves through London streets as the camera barely keeps up. It’s a hint that perhaps the film to come might be as willing to take risks as its protagonist.

Those hopes evaporate quickly as it becomes clear that there’s nothing extraordinary about this reboot. Even its star, who is extraordinary, is here admirable only for her obvious CrossFit achievements. Vikander smiles once during a wry joke early on that’s meant to show Lara’s sense of humor, but we never see it again. The script calls for Vikander to grimace, shout, cry once, then grimace again. It’s not asking much of her. In the original adaptations of the mega-popular video game, Angelina Jolie flexed a let-us-not-forget formidable charisma more than six-pack abs. Vikander is almost too good of an actor for this sort of thing.

We’re given the sort of introduction video games don’t seem to bother with. Croft is wealthy but refuses to claim her substantial inheritance because that would mean legally acknowledging her father (Dominic West), who disappeared while traveling, is dead. So Lara works as a bike messenger. Voiceover at the start of the film is dad’s voice telling us about an ancient Japanese queen who had some sort of curse that could be unleashed if her tomb is disturbed. This information about Queen Himiko is later repeated no fewer than three times. But the movie could be about anything. Egyptian curse, Greek ruins, ancient aliens, whatever gets Lara off to find dad and do some spelunking. (She’s a tomb raider, see?)

The action beats drop right on time every ten minutes and become progressively less interesting as we press on, first to Hong Kong to charter a boat (skippered by Daniel Wu) and then to a spooky island off the coast of Japan where we meet our villain (Walton Goggins, who could’ve starred in Lost City of Z, as it turns out) and where we stay. The handsome-if-drunken Captain, Lu Ren (whose alcoholism is established but doesn’t matter ultimately), stands as a would-be love interest for Lara, even if they never flirt and his loyalty to her later in the story is somewhat puzzling. Tomb Raider is essentially a prequel more than an origin story, in that it obnoxiously presumes we’re thirsty for clues as to what’s coming in the next film.

About halfway through, Lara and the Captain must face down the evil Vogel (Goggins), a man whose ruthless expedition on behalf of a ruthless corporation is ruthlessly using slave labor to get into Himiko’s tomb. Delightfully violent for a PG-13 movie (I counted five men whom Lara kills), the gunfights with Vogel’s men are well staged and occasionally exciting, particularly when Lara wields a bow and arrow. And Goggins’ beautiful psycho eyes are enough to sell us on the central conflict — until we actually get into the cave where the tomb is.

The elongated third act is comprised of puzzles the nature of which are often unclear, double-crosses, and tiresome reveals about What’s Really Going On. Hilariously, the more the story boils to a climax, the less I cared. For long stretches of the film I forgot that Lu Ren and the now liberated laborers were even existing as they were outside the cave. Lara’s qualities are resilience, bravery, and loyalty.  But was that not already clear from the video game? Even in the hands of an actor like Vikander, Croft is paper-thin, a first-person avatar more than a person.

Tomb Raider — ONE STAR

Directed by Roar Uthaug

Rated PG-13

MGM

Warner Bros.

GK Films

Square Enix

118 min.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Crafted to stay one step ahead of the crazy fans while simultaneously supplying them black-tar one-hundred percent pure good stuff they crave, The Last Jedi (the eighth episode of the main series of Star Wars movies) is transfixing, beautiful, and wildly uneven in its consumption of time. The movie, directed by  Rian Johnson, is most eloquent when it is wordless. When people are talking, they’re talking fast, shooting information at you, information you don’t need to know to understand what’s happening — for example, at one point they’re trying to destroy a big cannon thing-y — but we get the details nonetheless because of the population of people, grown men most of them, who are going to roast Johnson for years to come if they’re not told precisely how those shield generators were disabled.

Therein lies the difficulty of making one of these movies: they’re not normal movies. As I wrote with respect to The Force Awakens, these directors are playing a perilous game of managing expectations and safeguarding what is to some a secular religion. Johnson, who also wrote the screenplay, spins the plates admirably, finding the visual poetry in images Abrams found merely cool.

Three main story threads are shuffled for most of the two-and-a-half hours of The Last Jedi, but they all revolve around the same dramatic situation: stopping the First Order, which is the latest iteration of The Empire. General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance during an opening space battle scene in which the evil General Hux (Domhall Gleeson) is attempting to block an evacuation. The battle of TIE fighters, star destroyers, and bombers is meant to wow us, but Johnson uses them in service of personal character moments. Amid the explosions, we always get a close up of someone feeling feelings. A resistance bomber pilot’s self sacrifice, Kylo Ren’s (Adam Driver) moral choice to not kill a certain someone from his fighter — these are what Johnson builds the action toward. Johnson, whose prior films include Looper and Brick, is all about the emotional payoff. In genre films, characters act out their feelings rather than discuss them. In Johnson’s genre experiments, they do both.

Of course, you’re wondering what of Rey and Luke Skywalker? When last we left our heroes, Rey (Daisy Ridley) was presenting Master Skywalker (Mark Hamill) with his light saber. At every turn, Johnson sees it as his duty to outsmart the fans who are trying to outsmart his film. The moment of Luke’s reaction to Rey has been built up, the tone even having been established by the solemn ending of the prior movie. Johnson immediately undercuts it. (To his credit, the humor in the film, which is ample, doesn’t feel like a string of punch-up jokes but rather arise organically from the scenes.) The Empire Strikes Back storyline lives — as the good guys attempt to defeat the dark force in the galaxy, a powerful but untrained young Force user seeks the help of a legendary old Jedi. Johnson doesn’t make as much use of Rey and Luke’s time together on Ahch-To (that’s the island). If anything, their time together suggests she didn’t really need to seek out Luke as much as she thought.

What Johnson has wrought is a complicated movie cluttered with dangling threads and new bright-eyed characters. Things get a bit crowded in the middle of the picture, when Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) report to a Las Vegas-type planet to find a code-breaker who can disable the First Order’s tracking systems. We cut back and forth from there to Poe (Oscar Isaac) attempting to wrest control of the Resistance strategy from Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) to Rey and Luke’s bickering. This all happens while through a Force-powered Jedi mind meld, Rey and Kylo Ren are able to communicate telepathically. It’s a lot to take in. Johnson’s dialogue moves fast, contains lots of details, and knows you can’t keep up. You don’t need to. The nuts and bolts of what people are discussing is never as important as what people are doing (a stark contrast to George Lucas’ prequel trilogy).

The film is at its best when everyone shuts up and Johnson and cinematographer Steve Yedlin mine the territory of the Star Wars universe for beauty. Ships traveling at light speed is not just a gimmick here — it’s a single image that elicits oohs and aahs. Likewise, Supreme Leader Snoke’s (Andy Serkis) throne room is one of the most arresting feats of production design I’ve seen this year. The red guards, who in the original trilogy might as well have been mannequins, are now militarized and imposing; they seem to glare even as their faces are hidden. Johnson borrows from both Kurosawa and Irvin Kershner to create the effect. A final showdown between heroes lands as satisfying and surprising, with Johnson pulling out one more bit of plot trickery to fool the experts coming to the theater dressed as Sith Lords.

What will go under-discussed as The Last Jedi is digested by the masses is the extent to which Johnson has managed to coax intimate and relatively restrained performances from his leads. Daisy Ridley, who in the prior film must’ve felt the weight of the world on her shoulders, here seems more relaxed, poised. Adam Driver, an ungainly leading man if ever there was one, is likewise more comfortable — and more believable as a murderous villain who is conflicted about being conflicted. And as for Mark Hamill, Johnson gets the most out of the sixty-six year-old by using him sparingly, understanding that it’s Hamill’s mere presence in the film that has the desired effect, not what he does. (Hamill has always been a good sport; he is more charismatic when playing “Mark Hamill” than he ever was as an actor.) Carrie Fisher’s character, Leia, unconscious, flying through open space, will have a similar effect on audiences.

The jumble of delights and thrills that is The Last Jedi ends up being memorable in an almost predictable way — as in, here’s what happens when you let a young hotshot auteur have his way with a Disney film. And Johnson does have his way. There is a light saber battle in the film that is so handsome looking it transcends the genre of “light saber battle.” One wishes Johnson’s flair for the letting an arresting image speak for itself were conjoined with a skill for being less wordy in dialogue, but then again enjoying these films requires trade-offs, both on the part of the filmmaker and on the part of his audience. We trade a plot contrivance for a little dopamine jolt for nostalgia here, or a light saber fight there. And these films often, at this point, don’t have themes that aren’t already inherent in earlier films in the franchise, but we go along anyway. This one has a new theme that is essentially an invitation to the fans: loosen your grip on the past.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi — FOUR STARS

Directed by Rian Johnson

Rated PG-13

LucasFilm

Disney

152 min.

Suicide Squad

The front end of “Suicide Squad,” the new overcrowded superhero romp directed by David Ayer, is a wide-eyed montage meant to introduce its copious cast of characters. Government bigshot Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sits at a table with two unnamed top-brass military types and takes them through binders full of super-villains, bad people the U.S. government thinks can do some good. The stylized, choppy sequence plays like a highlight reel of better films one would rather be watching. One has the sense of quickly thumbing through a graphic novel, stopping to read only the full-page action beats.

We’re shown and told things we should just be shown. An anthropologist, Dr. June Moon (Cara Delevingne), encounters an ancient witch while spelunking in some faraway jungle. (Though cursory, the scene of this encounter is one of the film’s few visually effective moments.) The witch possesses Dr. Moon, but Ms. Waller manages to get the witch’s heart and put it in a box, weakening the witch who, for some reason, wants to destroy human civilization. She begins by doing magical stuff in New York City, which is evacuated. In one of many needless plot contrivances, the Enchantress wants to posses as many human bodies as possible as she forms an army and tries to awaken her brother, another unnecessary and faceless villain.

As a director, Ayer has done good work (“End of Watch,” “Fury”), but “Suicide Squad” has all the hallmarks of an overly festooned Christmas tree, weighed down by its own weak story and contradictory studio notes. John Gilroy, a fine editor, can’t do much more than lay piping to direct the sewage. Often marriage of a good story and deft editing can make a convoluted script work. Here, though, it’s a poisonous coupling. Setups are setup just to be paid off later, but these payoffs don’t matter to the story. One superhero is introduced, only to be summarily killed off moments later in order to emphasize a fact the audience already knows.

The core of the squad is Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), and (maybe?) Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Of these, Harley and Deadshot are the only ones who matter. The film is a monster mash of characters who don’t matter but nonetheless have backstories. This is an exercise in sequel-setup for an initial film that barely exists itself.

Deadshot, an assassin for hire (the team actually has two assassins) seems like the de facto leader. His backstory, particularly scenes with his young daughter, is halfway interesting. Perhaps the film should’ve been from Deadshot’s point-of-view. As it stands, there is no point-of-view. Likewise, Harley Quinn’s story is juicy. She was a prison psychiatrist who fell in love with one of her patients — The Joker (Jared Leto). Her infatuation leads her to become Joker-like figure herself. These characters, and performances, are good. But, alas, the film doesn’t focus enough on them.

Leto’s Joker and Ben Affleck’s Batman are scarcely in the film. (Batman shows up once and as a plot device). The shadow of Heath Ledger’s Joker stands so tall not because the performance was so singular (though it was) but because the characterization of the clown prince of crime was so disturbing. The Joker of “The Dark Knight” was a trickster sociopath who, in the immortal words of Michael Caine, just wanted to “watch the world burn” for no particular reason other than his own psychopathology. Leto, whose obnoxious method acting has dominated the film’s press, plays Joker as more of a “Scarface”-style gangster. It’s a calculated, self-conscious performance that is never scary or disturbing or surprising. The Joker, like most of the film’s characters, has no impact on the main plot. Like Batman and The Flash, he’s there so fans can be giddy about him being there.

A final showdown is a study in aesthetic kleptomania: the Enchantress and her brother attempt to prevail as the film steals imagery and story points from “Ghostbusters” (1984) and other superior films without doing anything with the stolen property. The climax of “Suicide Squad” is simply a battle like those we’ve seen earlier in the film. No one learns anything. The heroes get ten years lopped off their prison sentences for having braved it out til the end. All the audience gets is a vacuous sighting of Ben Affleck in a post-credits scene. I’ll take prison.

“SUICIDE SQUAD” — ONE STAR

Directed by David Ayer. Rated PG-13. Warner Bros., D.C. Entertainment. 123 min.

Captain America: Civil War

The contemporary superhero movie runs on surprises that aren’t really surprises, more like plot and character elements that have been teased such that we know what’s coming. It’s the seeing it happen, the experiencing of the inevitable, that’s supposed to thrill us. To extend the familiar rollercoaster ride metaphor, we can plainly see the coaster’s twists and turns from the ground, but taking the ride still thrills. This is what Marvel Studios is banking on.

Whereas some some superhero films have drawn on genuinely interesting comic book plots (“Batman Begins,” “Watchmen”), “Civil War” wraps some thin comic plotting in deli paper to give us a to-go order of what the public wants: superheroes punching superheroes.

Continuing the recent trend of superheroes feeling crummy about all the destruction they’ve caused in the prior film, Captain America (Chris Evans) and the gang find themselves receiving public scrutiny. The Avengers, recall, are a ragtag group of superhumans who basically operate under their own authority and with the permission of their own good intentions. Cap, normally a smart fella, can’t seem to grasp why this might make folks uneasy.

But some members of the squad get it. Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) wants to sign a document that will put The Avengers under the control of the U.N. Cap says “The safest hands are still our own.” Thus two factions form. The film seems to exist in a universe where the United Nations functions as a kind of global government that speaks with one voice, immediately, and without bureaucracy.

Daniel Brühl plays the villain, Helmut Zemo, a Sokovian national who hates The Avengers because they decimated his nation. Brühl is excellent in a role that’s written to maximize his humanity (in a running motif he speaks solemnly to his wife and child on the phone). His grudge against The Avengers is understandable. The superhero crisis-of-conscience motif lends itself to a sympathetic villain who, in a sense, has a better argument than the hero.

Once sides are drawn, one realizes that it doesn’t matter who is on what side. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) sides with Iron Man, Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) with Cap. The other lesser superheroes get recruited onto their respective sides like a fourth-grade dodgeball game. Tony Stark makes a trip to Queens to recruit an underage Spider-Man (Tom Holland) under the pretense of awarding the young Peter Parker a grant. (Aunt May, played controversially by Marisa Tomei, has only a few lines, including the post-credits cookie, which reminds us that “Spider-Man will return.”) Why would the world’s foremost weapons innovator need the help of a reluctant superhero who has only been slinging webs for six months? Because everyone loves Spider-Man. Also early expositional dialogue lets us know that no one knows the whereabouts of Hulk and Thor.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo show tremendous sensitivity to character and the various personality conflicts among superheroes that makes these films funny (funnier in the hands of Joss Whedon, but the Russos prove good mimics of Whedon’s wit). The film is most like a film when it takes the time to revel in a moment of character-based humor or wit. When seated in a car, for example, the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) asks Falcon, whom he dislikes, if he could move his seat up. Falcon dryly says “Nnnope.” The brief gag underscores their distaste for one another while highlighting their established personalities. As with every such small detail, “Civil War” has the feel of a film that conducted a focus group inside the men’s room at Comic-Con.

There’s a magic ratio of fidelity to the comics against liberties taking that, when achieved, will be met with applause from comics fans. The Russos may have cracked that code better than any Marvel film to date. Which may be why “Civil War,” for all its humor and breakneck bombast, feels more pointless than its predecessors.

“Captain America: Civil War” — TWO STARS

Directed by Joe Russo and Anthony Russo. Rated PG-13. Marvel Studios. 147 min.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was written by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer. Terrio received his Oscar for the taut “Argo,” which at least presented us with fully fleshed-out characters whose actions and statements made sense. No such luck with “Batman v Superman.” The film, directed by Zach Snyder and budgeted between 250 and 300 million dollars, is both aesthetically and morally confused, a catastrophe of storytelling that amounts to a loud, obnoxious two-and-a-half hour trailer for forthcoming loud, obnoxious superhero films.

There is no plot, only information. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) wasn’t happy with Superman (Henry Cavill) creating all that destruction at the end of “Man of Steel.” He’s not alone. There’s an ambivalence in society, embodied by a prominent Senator (Holly Hunter) about the role of Superman in a society where most of us can’t shoot lasers out of our eyeballs. Many in the public are questioning whether having a vigilante god among men is a sustainable model for human flourishing. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) has some kind of problem with superheroes and wants to make mischief. His goals and intentions are confusing and arguably moot, though he would like to get his hands on kryptonite. The first hour or so if “Batman v Superman” is pure exposition, sloppy, poorly paced exposition that is excruciating to watch. Most of the information we’re given is information we do not need. (Honestly, how many more times must we see Bruce Wayne’s parents getting mugged?)

The film moves fast — too fast for anything to register — but feels slow. Snyder loves to emphasize beats with slow-motion (the aforementioned Mrs. Wayne gets her pearls torn off by the barrel of her mugger’s pistol, the pearls falling like teardrops… I guess), a gratuitous flourish. It’s just music video sound and fury.

Snyder ushers us from plot point to plot point, dwelling on seemingly random details that make little sense in the context of this movie but must be done to set up characters and situations for forthcoming movies. Bruce Wayne watches video of a mad scientist losing his mind as he creates a cyborg (Cyborg!). We encounter Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), but we never meet her. The whole thing has the feel of being at a party where you’re asked to converse with someone who has not been properly introduced to you. Wonder Woman literally comes out of nowhere in this film. Story beats bank on our knowing the importance of people and things that the movie itself never bothered to establish. “Just keep that in mind for future reference,” the film seems to say.

Hans Zimmer’s pounding-migraine score imbues the action scenes with even more confusion than the choreography itself. There’s nothing novel about the way the violence is rendered. The film gestures in the direction of finding senseless violence morally objectionable, then in the next act makes sure that the violence is as senseless and overblown as possible. The rare moments of inspired filmmaking — a montage of Superman saving people’s lives, appearing in their midst like the Holy Ghost — cause one to wonder why the rest of the film can’t get its act together. Visually, “Batman v Superman” is quite pleased with itself even as it breaks no new ground. Snyder chose to shoot on celluloid (mostly 35-millimeter, with some scenes shot on 65-millimeter Kodak IMAX film stock) but does nothing interesting with the format.

Affleck’s Bruce Wayne is a grimacing amalgamation of Michael Keaton and Christian Bale, both of whom at least took some chances with the role. Mr. Affleck’s performance is all ennui, no flair or charisma. (One imagines Heath Ledger, a man who understood better than any of us how to make a character memorable, asking “Why so serious?”). The loyal butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) and Bruce don’t interact with any sort of rapport, though their lines are written to emphasize the depth of the relationship. They merely speak their lines at one another.

Henry Cavill was always better at playing Clark than the caped man, and that hasn’t changed. Cavill has a warmth and toothy grin that seems lifted right from the comic books. In an early scene, Clark, fully clothed, hops in the bathtub with Lois (Amy Adams, bored out of her mind). The sequence of soon to be disturbed domestic tranquility seems geared to Cavill’s strengths. Cavill seems to enjoy playing Clark more than he does Superman. Clark was always a great boyfriend, even if he wasn’t always around.

Mr. Eisenberg turns Lex Luthor, who in the comics and in the hands of Gene Hackman was a snide and diabolical villain, into a spoiled brat who is more maladjusted than evil. Eisenberg fidgets and snarks through the role like someone unsure of what to do but has been encouraged to do something. Even an almost-interesting early scene with Holly Hunter is plagued not by dramatic tension, but by Eisenberg’s awkwardness. One gets the impression that the senator doesn’t leave the conversation concerned about a devious super villain so much as eager to increase funding into Asperger’s research.

The gorgeous Israeli actor Gal Gadot plays Wonder Woman, at least briefly. Most of her screen time involves sidelong glances and empty dialogue (“May I help you, Mr. Wayne?”). Wonder Woman is incognito most of the time, sometimes apparently borrowing Clark’s nerdy eyeglasses, other times trading flirty barbs with Bruce at a cocktail hour. (At this point, Snyder forces an “Eyes Wide Shut” reference into the festivities, just to muddy the waters further.) Deep into the film Bruce shoots Diana an e-mail to let her know he’s figured out that she’s Wonder Woman, though the film eschews the moniker. Yes, you read that correctly — he sends her an e-mail. (Had she blocked him on Instagram?) Gadot is a actually an effective screen presence who already moves with the poise of a movie star. She doesn’t expend that much energy. Her movie comes next year.

One wonders why these kinds of setup-for-our-franchise films can’t just be posted online, along with all the requisite origin stories, that way we can all watch them at our leisure, then go to the theater to see an actual story. Two hours into “Batman v Superman,” as our heroes attempt to dispatch the giant space monster who killed Superman in the comics,  I was wishing for exactly this kind of ability to opt-out.

The problem with BvS is not that it is bad filmmaking, but that it is lugubrious filmmaking, filmmaking that wants us to be enthralled by what we’re seeing but is born of no such zeal. All these ideas Snyder and company present — ideas about human potential, good and evil, religion, democracy — have been loaded into a hypodermic and injected into the story, as if that’s what the story is about. It’s not about anything. The purpose of this film is to get the characters on base so that the upcoming films in the franchise can bring them home. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bore. It just is.

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” — ONE STAR

Directed by Zach Snyder. Rated PG-13. Warner Bros. D.C. Comics. 153 min.

The Martian

There are lots of laughs and one-liners in “The Martian,” Ridley Scott’s new trouble-in-space film based on the novel by Andy Weir, even as the screenplay shows as much as it tells. Scott’s work of recent years has tended toward visual sensationalism and sucking all the air (and ideas) out of otherwise promising source material. At least in that respect, “The Martian” is more of the same.

Drew Goddard’s slapdash script sets forth two groups of characters, the astronauts in space and the NASA team on Earth. Some of the earthly characters have glimmers of personality. The astronauts, though, have the personalities of moon rocks and are generally indistinguishable from one another.

Fortunately Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is the most recognizably human character, though not by much. Separated from his crew of a Mars mission called ARES, Mark wakes up to find the crew has left him behind, having taken his death for granted. Mark must survive alone on Mars until a rescue mission can be mobilized and launched to recover him. That’s after he figures out how to let Earth know he’s even alive. Even the Chinese space program gets involved because “The Martian” really wants to do as well as possible in the overseas market.

“Mission to Mars,” “Gravity,” “Apollo 13,” “Interstellar,” and others all have told some version of this story before, and told it better. Although funny and well performed (cast to the nines with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, and Jessica Chastain), “The Martian”‘s story is mostly an uninspired slog from one plot beat to another.

Other than Mark’s ingenious gambits to survive in the most hostile conditions imaginable, there are several scenes that are oddly devoid of drama. Take for example the scene in which Mark’s former crew members must vote on an important an dangerous measure. No conflicts of personalty arise, not even any devil’s advocating. The scene is just the crew members agreeing, solemnly, and without much fuss.

Scott forgoes realism for shortcuts that strain credulity. In the film, NASA is concerned about public perception but allows their coms with a stranded astronaut to be broadcast live as he’s given bad news. Wiig’s character, NASA’s chief public relations person, seems only mildly miffed by the catastrophic outcome.

Andy Weir’s original and interesting character study of a man marooned on a planet gets sidestepped in favor of wry jokes and a “Guardians of the Galaxy”-style classic pop music soundtrack. “The Martian” never emphasizes the surreal loneliness of being stranded on a planet. Mark has his old TV shows on a laptop, his gardening, so, it seems, he’s all good. We’re not shown  what long-term isolation on Mars does to a person’s personality. Whether on Earth or stranded on Mars, Mark is an incorrigible wisecracker.

“The Martian” — TWO STARS

Directed by Ridley Scott. Rated PG-13. 20th Century Fox, Scott Free, Mid Atlantic Films. 141 min.

Interstellar

The brilliance of “Interstellar” resides in its ability to make us feel emotions we don’t usually feel at the movies.  Take the scene late in the film, in which a father, who has literally traversed through a black hole at such speed that he has barely aged, converses with his daughter, who is now an elderly woman on her deathbed. Their exchange is beautiful, freighted with the kind of surreal melancholy that can only be delivered by good science fiction.

This is what Christopher Nolan’s latest film does in its finest moments, overwhelm our brains with images that feel novel, even as “Interstellar” constantly apes its predecessors like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Contact.” What’s missing is the narrative simplicity of those films. As is his wont, Nolan and his screenwriting partner and brother Jonathan over-complicate the recipe.

Things begin simply enough. Cooper (Mathew McConaughey) is a farmer in a near-future where farmers are in demand. Earth is on the brink of famine. But what luck! — Cooper also happens to be a former NASA pilot. You know, back when NASA was a thing.

The widowed Cooper must leave his kids with their grandfather (John Lithgow) when he discovers NASA has actually been operating in secret, plotting an elaborate scheme to save the human species by exploring a worm hole near Saturn, which leads to other planets, which may or may not be habitable. Or so a superior alien race seems to be suggesting.

For me, the most thrilling moment in “Interstellar” is when we cut right from Cooper driving away from his farm to him already in space — no long training montages here. Which is not to say “Interstellar” isn’t interested in wasting time. It is. It just means Nolan and his editor Lee Smith are often pretty deft.

The thrills in space end up being few and far between. These include the best depiction of robots/artificial intelligence I’ve ever seen and elegantly deployed digital effects. But Nolan, as usual, doesn’t know what story he wants to tell. We have a love story of sorts with Anne Hathaway’s character, a classical “coming home” story, and a blockbuster-y save-the-planet story.

All this gets interwoven with another cleverer-than-you Nolan plot that confuses narrative trickery with narrative substance. His story about aliens helping humankind save itself becomes a story about humankind saving itself. And time travel. And love transcends all dimensions of space-time. Or something.

Nolan is an outstanding technician. His ability to combine elements and reach for a singular vision is not in question. The elements themselves are. His often heavy-handed dialogue (another character in a film quoting Dylan Thomas about death? Really? There’s other poems about death, you know…) and predictable tropes (another protagonist with angst over a dead wife, Mr. Nolan? Come on already.).

As it happens, one of the more interesting questions “Interstellar” touches upon early on — whether or not humankind is worth saving in the first place — it never fully investigates. The characters inhabit an Earth in which schoolchildren are being taught that the Apollo missions were a hoax. The Yankees have been reduced to a pathetic group of lackluster ball players playing on a high school diamond.

This is the kind of territory great science fiction has always mined, but at every turn Nolan yanks the Sentimentality lever instead.

“Interstellar” — THREE STARS

Directed by Christopher Nolan. Rated PG-13. Paramount Pictures, Legendary Pictures, and Syncopy Pictures. 169 min.