Moana (2016)

The Disney formula of a girl experiencing the call to adventure is usually made more interesting by a twist on the basic premise. In Mulan, Fa Mulan has to pretend to be a boy. In Tangled, Rapunzel shares protagonist duties with Flynn; in Frozen, Anna and Elsa share protagonist duties, and one has to rescue the other after she isolates herself for being too dangerous (and almost becomes the film’s antagonist), while a character who seems like the love interest turns out to be the real antagonist, and the true love story is between two sisters. A similar villainous inversion features in Beauty and the Beast, where Beast is set up as an antagonist and becomes the love interest, flipping the story from one of resistance in imprisonment to finding understanding beyond superficial barriers.

Where other Disney princess films have tried to liven up the rigid formula with twists and variations, Moana slavishly follows it to a T, presumably hoping its colourful setting will compensate for its total lack of creativity. The film is predictable from beginning to end, far more so than even other Disney princess features – it doesn’t even attempt to vary the little things. Its largest departure from the predictable is an absence – unlike previous pets/mascots which usually had some kind of personality, Moana’s pet is a chicken who is so stupid it can’t even be trusted to eat food or stay away from the ocean, constantly trying to peck at and swallow stones or walking off cliffs. Its total lack of a brain is the joke. The laziness of this detail sums up the film in microcosm.

Moana herself is charming, in a prefabricated sort of way. She is introduced as capable and determined, having already become accomplished enough to be considered a chief of the tribe at 16. While more sensible films would leave some room for development or at least introduce a flaw, Moana is perfect from the start. She just doesn’t know how to sail, and she learns that over five minutes’ screen time. It’s a testament to Auli'i Cravalho’s performance as well as proof of how starved we are for capable, independent female protagonists that she remains likeable despite being utterly-middle-of-the-road: nice enough, brave enough, kind enough, smart enough. If you mapped her traits onto a polygon of numbered lines, like an RPG character, she’d be a perfect circle: totally capable and not at all interesting.

Although Dwayne Johnson can usually be counted on for outsize charisma, his egomaniac demi-god Maui is a mixed bag, owing to the inconsistent characterisation of a script which can’t decide whether he’s an amoral antihero who’ll use Moana as monster-bait to get back his magical fishhook, or a rogue with a heart of gold who’ll go along with her on her prospective suicide mission and even teach her to sail. Adding to the way he bounces between the two extremes is a perfunctory attempt at deepening his characterisation with the sombre revelation that he was abandoned by his parents – despite being the sort of devastating fact that would require years of therapy to work through, the depression Maui falls into is cured by a spirited pep talk from Moana.

This refusal to seriously deal with anything that might be remotely negative or involve conflict is typical of Moana, which is written to have as many triumphant shots of Moana sailing forward with joyous music playing is possible, and to minimise any sign that she might have flaws or weaknesses. Once Maui obligatorily storms off and leaves Moana hopeless, and she experiences her dark night of the soul and doubts her ability to be the Chosen One and save the world, her heroic resolve is found and reaffirmed within two minutes. At a pivotal early moment in the film, a beloved family member dies, and as her spirit moves through the sea to lift Moana’s boat, not a single moment is spared on tears or a recognition of the fact that Moana’s loved one is dead: we transition instantly to the same Polynesian choir harmonies and dramatic shots of Moana sailing to her uninteresting destiny. Consider how Frozen could spend multiple songs on the conflict between Anna and Elsa; consider that “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is a whole song dedicated to their separation and loneliness. How much more emotionally earned and heartfelt is the triumphant climax for this time spent on establishing the sadness and the heartbreak? But Moana doesn’t want to do the work. The climax is presented as a meaningful moment, as if it's bring some theme to fruition about "remembering who you are" and love conquering hate and heartlessness, but the script never lays the groundwork to develop any of those themes, so it just comes off as weird and incongruous.

Lin Manuel-Miranda, evidently exhausted from Hamilton, produces an uninspiring soundtrack whose sole highlight is thankfully also the main theme, Moana’s “How Far I’ll Go” – the rest is unfunny riffs on demigod sidekick Maui’s egomania (“You’re Welcome”) that will make you nostalgic for “Gaston”, the ridiculous novelty character spotlight song “Shiny”, and admittedly-decent Polynesian vocal harmonies for the ancestral song, “We Know the Way”.

While the script may be lazy and uninspiring, and the music little better, half of Moana’s crew have clearly put in the work – the animators. Full of gorgeously detailed and beautifully-rendered undersea locations, storms, lava-monster battles, and verdant islands, Moana is a visual delight. Since acquiring Pixar, Disney can count on always impressing the viewer with the look of the film – an ideal marriage of the two companies can produce something heartfelt, with universal archetypes used in the service of a personal and moving story, like Frozen. When one half of the team slacks off, you wind up with the gorgeous-but-empty Moana.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Can you still call Doctor Strange the Marvel film with the highest potential for weirdness after they adapted Guardians of the Galaxy? The latter definitely seemed like more of a gamble when it was coming out, but the source material of GotG has always been relatively conventional compared to the cosmic psychedelia of the Doctor’s adventures. Taken at face value, Steve Ditko’s acid-trip visuals and the hokey mysticism of Strange’s spells and costume seem like a harder sell to the current generation of filmgoers. There’s no longer much tolerance for fantasy campiness; Thor was reinvented as an alien for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the more magical elements of The Dark World (elves, for god’s sake) were drowned in pseudoscientific babble to make them sound more acceptable. These days, magic in movies is presented with the veneer of science to make it go down easier; just look at Neil DeGrasse Tyson trying to pretend Interstellar’s space bookcase made scientific sense.

So, while all that comic book weirdness is crushed into a recognisable hero’s journey formula, you have to give Doctor Strange some credit for showing us levitating cloaks, mandala-type mystical shields, and wizards tearing open fiery portals in the air, even if the bulk of the magic shown looks like the city-rearrangement scene from Inception on crack. It might not be as wacky as a battle between magicians should be, but it’s spectacular viewing – Strange is easily the best-looking Marvel film, and the first to really push the envelope with special effects instead of just using them to make traditional superhero action look more real; the dizzying abstraction of its city-warping battles actually makes iMAX worth the money.

As front-loading the verdict with praise of its special effects might imply, there’s not much more to Doctor Strange than its looks. Stephen Strange is pricklier and more obviously arrogant than his narrative cousin, Tony Stark: they both had hubris, and in both cases, it was shattered by a wound which left them helpless. But while Tony is too charismatic to stay down for long or not make it a part of his big comeback story, Stephen is more fragile, more broken. Some of the best character work in a Marvel origin film comes from the genuinely upsetting scenes post-accident when Stephen frantically bankrupts himself trying to heal his now-useless surgeon’s hands, and becomes a bitter wreck, driving away his only friend – Rachel McAdams in (even for Marvel) an unusually slight love interest role. But all that drama, where Benedict Cumberbatch’s gift for picturesque brooding and sneering hatred is well-used, comes to an end once he goes on his mystical quest and finds the cure: magic.

What follows then is pretty typical. Strange proves a highly talented student after some minor struggles, is inducted into a secret society which protects the world, struggles with the choice of accepting his weighty responsibilities, is thrust into battle against the villain (who is a version of himself, in the most boring Marvel tradition, a hubristic magician), etc. The best thing to say about the second half of the film is that the fight scenes are far more interesting than usual and the expected action climax is neatly subverted. Aside from that, it’s largely just a grievous waste of Mads Mikkelsen and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One is briskly quirky in a way that works rather than being annoying, but her character could be far more intriguing than it is.

Ultimately, Doctor Strange is another competently-made Marvel product. It would be nice if they aimed higher, but it’s a well-made and passable film, which will delight a lot of niche fans even if it disappoints those looking for the more complex drama of something like Triumph and Torment. As a another Marvel installment, it’s promising: the visuals are superb and the finale is subversive and inventive, suggesting that good things are ahead.

Rogue One (2016)

Hopefully the final Star Wars film which is centred around the Death Star or its copies, Rogue One turns a tired premise into a solid sci-fi action film which improves in many ways on The Force Awakens, though it lacks the reboot's charm.

Set just days before the beginning of A New Hope, the film is the untold story of how the Rebel Alliance discovered the fatal flaw in the Death Star. What was an unexplained and convenient cliché in the original film is cleverly repurposed as the sacrifice of a rebel scientist, Galen Erso, who leaves behind his family and his ideals to work on the genocidal weapon, knowing only he will be committed enough to sabotage it and give the rebels a chance.

Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla film found a mixed reception for going easy on the monster fights and the spectacle and focusing too much on generic audience stand-ins without any unique personality or characterisation, like the protagonist played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. But it had notable strengths, including wonderful visuals – dramatic contrasts of light and dark - and an awe-inspiring sense of scale. Godzilla never looked more terrifying and elemental than when Edwards used the huge disturbances caused by his passing (the aircraft carriers overturned by waves when he swam underneath them) to suggest unfathomable power.

Edwards brings those talents to Rogue One in spectacular fashion, staging the greatest space battle ever seen in a Star Wars film as well as the greatest land-battles. The traditional three-part finale is pulled off especially well, with the Alliance fighting the Empire in orbit above an imperial planet, while rebel troops re-enact the Normandy landings against Stormtroopers on the ground, and the protagonists infiltrate the imperial complex to find the Death Star plans. The battles are thrilling and unsparingly vicious, with a rawness to the violence that Star Wars previously lacked.

Unfortunately, Rogue One also shares some flaws with Edwards’ previous film, most notably its uninteresting characterisation. Felicity Jones is steely as Jyn Erso, but flips inconsistently from an anti-hero who’s out for herself and doesn’t care about the Rebellion’s ideals to a shining-eyed Joan of Arc who makes stilted speeches about hope and fighting on, seemingly without cause. Rather than an arc, she has two points of personal development with nothing connecting them. Diego Luna is convincingly rugged as Cassian Andor, a ruthless Rebel black ops captain, but he can’t sell the shift his character makes from cold-eyed assassin to sentimentalist because there’s no explanation for it in the script.

The cast is rounded out by bit-part ensemble roles for Donnie Yen (the stereotypical Asian monk with an enigmatic attitude and a Force fixation), Riz Ahmed (as a defected Imperial pilot who spends most of the movie too shellshocked to have a personality), and Forrest Whittaker as a extremist renegade rebel cyborg, used by the script to perfunctorily imply what happens if you go too far for revenge. Ben Mendelsohn plays the villain, Director Krennic, commanding officer of the Death Star, mostly notable for being the least threatening major Star Wars villain – a careerist bureaucrat with big dreams of being noticed by the Emperor. All of these actors could – and have – anchored better films on their own, playing complex and compelling characters. Here, they are each given a quirk or two in place of backstory or independent motivation (except for Mendelsohn, whose motivation is just boring), and sent their separate ways – their performances are appropriately lackluster. Compared to the blazing charisma of Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron, the crew of Rogue One is no more eye-catching than the drab earth tones that make up half the film’s colour palette.

The film’s plot can best be summed up as competent. There are no overt contrivances and events follow in a logical chain of cause and effect, straightforwardly moving from the Rebellion’s attempts to contact Galen Erso to the Empire cleaning house once the Death Star has been completed to Rogue One’s assault on the imperial base. If this sounds like grudging praise, it’s because the film never once surprises or shocks you: it just moves linearly towards the climax. Nevertheless, since the plot isn’t copied minute-by-minute from another film (as with The Force Awakens), its predictability is not as much of a blemish. The script has little to recommend it – aside from the wonderfully sarcastic K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial enforcer droid with no tact and a lot of repressed violence, there’s little amusement to be had, and the dialogue lacks the slightly overwritten, dramatic feel that made the original trilogy so quotable.

This is a deliberate choice. The tone of Rogue One is sombre and businesslike, aiming for a war movie more than the pulpy goodness of the original Star Wars films or episode VII. Although the blaring and distracting Michael Giacchino score does its best to replicate John Williams, the film just barely feels like Star Wars – which isn’t all bad. At its best, the emphasis on sacrifice and on the value of living and dying for an ideal makes it as profound as the single strongest moment in the entire series – Luke’s affirmation at the climax of Return of the Jedi (“I am a Jedi, like my father before me”). Rogue One is the rare blockbuster which isn’t afraid to kill off its characters instead of finding contrived ways to let them survive inescapable doom, which gives it weight and a well-earned meaningfulness. Although it has a weak first half and the characters are nothing to write home about, the climax fully redeems it: it’s arguably the strongest Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back.