Retrospective: Left Behind – Rise of the Antichrist (2023)

Welcome back to the Left Behind retrospective! We have finally reached the most recent entry in the franchise, Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist. After the critical and financial failure of the Left Behind reboot and the embarrassing, putrid mess that was Vanished, surely Left Behind couldn’t get any worse, right? Well… Kevin Sorbo’s here and he’s gonna do his damnest to make sure this Retrospective ends with a long, wet fart sound. Will I be able to keep my sanity if I watch one more Left Behind movie? Read on to find out…

Side-note: I would find it funny if some evangelical boomer tried to watch this movie and accidentally exposed themselves to Lars von Trier’s Antichrist instead. If anyone has any stories about this happening, please share in the comments.

Once again we have another “trendy for its release date, but extremely-overdone” kind of poster. Not awful, but extremely boring. (Although, that said, what the fuck is wrong with Chloe’s hair/head…?)

Production

Despite the financial failure of the Left Behind reboot, Cloud Ten were undaunted in wanting to move forward with a sequel. However, due to not making back their money on that movie when it was in theaters, they had to resort to an Indiegogo campaign to try to raise funds. The goal for this campaign was set at $500,000, but they only ended up raising $80,699… however, because this campaign was set with a flexible funding goal, they ended up keeping all the money anyway! Backers were then left with a very, very long wait for any news on the movie. After nearly three years of nothing, they surely must have felt that they had gotten swindled.

However, the silence would eventually be broken in 2017 when Paul Lalonde announced that he had officially acquired the rights to adapt all the Left Behind books – as mentioned previously, until now they had only had the rights to the first two books. This would now mean that they could adapt the entire series going forward, and planned to do so over the course of at least five more movies. During this time, a script for a sequel to Left Behind had been written, once again by Paul Lalonde and John Patus (although this time they would also share writing credits with newcomer Jessica Parker). Kevin Sorbo was approached for a role in the movie at this time. Given this information, it seems likely that, even at this time, Nicolas Cage was out of the movie. Either Cloud Ten had not secured his commitment to potential sequels, or they could no longer afford him (reportedly, his salary for Left Behind was $3.5 million, which would end up being the entire budget for this second film). According to Kevin Sorbo, due to the close proximity of Left Behind and God’s Not Dead, Cloud Ten became inundated with questions about why Nic Cage was cast a Rayford Steele rather than Kevin Sorbo, which may have also contributed to the attempt to recast. Whatever the case may be, Sorbo actually passed on the sequel initially, leaving the film without a lead.

Despite having a script ready to go in 2017, Rise of the Antichrist wouldn’t actually enter production for several more years. I wasn’t able to find confirmation about why exactly it took so long to actually enter the pipeline (I searched through years of Facebook updates from the official page and the sort of shit they were posting there not only didn’t clarify things, it actively made my brain want to melt out of my ears), but if I have to speculate, I would imagine that they had difficulty finding funding. However, this may have been a blessing in disguise for Cloud Ten, because 2020 brought with it the COVID-19 pandemic and a massive wave of conservatives rallying against public safety measures. In the midst of this environment, Paul Lalonde and John Patus updated their script to better reflect “current events” and, as the film finally went into full production, Kevin Sorbo accepted roles as the star and director of Rise of the Antichrist.

If you are unfamiliar with him, Sorbo is definitely worth exploring a bit to understand what sort of energy he was bringing to Left Behind. The man was in a career resurgence (of sorts) off the back of God’s Not Dead, which had type-cast him as the “recognizable has-been who will star in any Capital-C Christian movie” guy. He would soon appear regularly in these sorts of films, including Joseph & Mary, Let There Be Light, and The Girl Who Believes in Miracles. Sorbo would claim that Hollywood “blacklisted” him for being a Christian, but it seems like he was getting steady work, just no “massive” roles. That said, we’d be remiss to not mention the real reason he wasn’t getting big roles starting in the early 2010s, and that is because he is a massive, outspoken, conservative dickhead. Like, don’t take that wrong – I don’t mean that people hated him because he was conservative, but more the way which social conservative beliefs made him into an insufferable prick and social media troll (with such highlights as saying that The Passion of the Christ wasn’t anti-Semitic, because the Jews did kill Jesus, or calling black people “animals” during the Ferguson riots).

Sorbo’s entry into the Christian media landscape marked a change in how these movies tend to be made. As I mentioned in my reviews of the God’s Not Dead movies, God is almost entirely absent in these movies – their actual focus is clearly on conservative politics and culture war bullshit. They aren’t trying to change minds, they’re made to rile up a conservative audience and disparage their ideological enemies. That’s why I expressed surprise in my reviews of Left Behind and Vanished that these two movies weren’t leaning into these contemporary trends, but instead were focused on a more traditional Christian movie approach of trying to actually appeal to non-Christian audiences. Sorbo’s post-God’s Not Dead films tend to be moreso conservative than they are Christian, so his involvement in this film definitely painted the picture that this new Left Behind might hew more in that direction for the first time in the franchise’s history.

Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson and Nicky Whelen were originally contracted to reprise their roles as Buck, Chloe, and Hattie, respectively, but given how much time had passed since the last film, they were unable to fit the film into their schedules. As a result, Rise of the Antichrist had to be fully-recast (like some other crowd-funded sequels I can think of). Sorbo aside, the new cast included Greg Parrow (of… nothing fame) as Buck Williams, Sarah Fisher (of Degrassi: The Next Generation fame) as Chloe Steele, Sam Sorbo (Kevin’s wife) as Amanda White, Charles Andrew Payne (also not particularly famous despite being in lots of small roles over the years) as Bruce Barnes, Corbin Bernsen (known for lots of things, among them the Major League movies) as Steve Plank, and Bailey Chase (who has an extensive history of pretty prominent TV credits) as Nicolae Carpathia. The other big name in the cast was Neal McDonough. It’s worth noting that, by this time, Neal McDonough has kind of earned a reputation for being the best, lowest-rent villain actor available, after turns in garbage such as Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. I definitely thought that he was going to be cast as Nicolae Carpathia, which would have legitimately been pretty spot-on casting, but instead they cast him as… Jonathan Stonagal!? This is baffling enough, but it makes me realize that they absolutely missed an opportunity by casting Nicolas Cage as Rayford Steele – can you imagine if they had cast him as Nicolae Carpathia instead!? That sort of move could single-handedly buoy any Left Behind movie to greatness if they had the balls to do it.

Filming would get underway in Calgary in late 2021 and wrap up after 19 days of shooting. Kevin Sorbo and Paul Lalonde would go on press tours to promote the film, which only furthered my concerns about a potential new direction for Left Behind. Sorbo and Lalonde both said in interviews that they truly believed that the Rapture is imminent (funny side-note: in the aforementioned Facebook page posts, Lalonde would get very angry at people who suggested that the Rapture might occur after the Tribulation; for the record, this is the same sort of nerd energy you’d get watching someone getting frothing mad about a fanfic shipping two characters they don’t like). Lalonde would confirm that the 2014 Left Behind reboot was top-down intended to preach to a broad audience, whereas this film was intended to “wake up” Christians about the state of the world. He also added that “I think it may be our last real opportunity to ride a wave before [end times prophecy] all comes to pass”. On a completely unrelated note, those people who were saying the same thing in the midst of truly apocalyptic events like World War II, World War I, and the Black Death must have been a bunch of self-centered losers, eh?

Anyway… Rise of the Antichrist would release in theaters January 26, 2023 and grossed at least $3.6 million. It was successful enough that Kevin Sorbo has confirmed that a sequel has been greenlit and that he will be returning to direct it. He had claimed that it was going to start filming by the end of 2023, but I have seen no updates since then, so we’ll see when, and if, that happens…

Plot Synopsis

Rise of the Antichrist picks up six months after Left Behind. Buck is skeptical about the “official” stats about the vanishings and causes a stir at GWN when he grills a UN representative who suggests that a second wave of vanishings is imminent. When this predicted event does occur, Buck becomes suspicious that this latest event is being faked in order to keep people scared and compliant, since no one seems to actually know anyone who has disappeared this time. Despite threats from his boss, Steve Plank, Buck begins looking into this theory with his hacker friend, Dirk Burton.

Meanwhile, the Steele household is still reeling from the events of the vanishings. Chloe is traumatized about her mother and brother’s disappearance, is lacking direction, and is unconvinced that the Rapture was the cause of the disappearances. Rayford, on the other hand, is seeking answers, which brings him to the vandalized remnants of New Hope Village Church, where he finds Bruce Barnes. Rayford’s earnest searching is enough to pull Bruce out of his depression and they endeavour to begin preaching the word to the lost.

Jonathan Stonagal announces that the world financial system is on the brink of collapse in the face of the most recent wave of vanishings, and moves to complete the consolidation of all currencies into a single, unified currency through his social media platform, Eden. In response to this, an anonymous contact provides Dirk Burton with access to Eden’s servers, where he discovers that Stonagal is going to use Eden to enforce unprecedented control over all people and all nations. He informs Buck about this and the pair begin preparing to gather more evidence to expose the truth. Steve gets wind of this and fires Buck on the spot. However, Buck still has some access to the building and tries to make one last broadcast with Dirk, but before he can, Dirk is killed in a car bombing. Buck manages to escape and then sneaks into Dirk’s apartment to steal his laptop, and the evidence on it, before the assassins can discover its location.

While this has been happening, Rayford and Bruce manage to convince Chloe that the Rapture is the cause of the vanishings. She tries to share this with Buck and warn him about prophecies associated with the Antichrist, but Buck is dismissive. He needs to get the evidence to Nicolae Carpathia, the UN Secretary General, to help him Stonagal before it’s too late. When he gets there, he hears about plans which line up with the prophecies Chloe had just been telling him and realizes that she was right. He converts right before the UN delegates meet with Nicolae, Stonagal, and Todd-Cothran. Nicolae shoots Stonagal and Todd-Cothran to usurp their power and then mind-controls everyone (except for Buck) into believing that the pair were killed by assassins instead. However, Buck leaves the room and immediately hacks into GWN’s broadcast to declare that Nicolae is a liar and that Jesus is Lord. He is pursued by the assassins, but manages to escape on a private plane with Rayford, Chloe, and Bruce, and they fly over the city to drop leaflets about the Rapture.

Review

I really hoped that I’d get to use the Kevin Sorbo “DIS-AP-POINTED!” meme in this review… but, honestly, I can’t really justify it being used organically. I watched a Kevin Sorbo Left Behind movie, and I got a Kevin Sorbo Left Behind movie. Don’t take that as me going into this biased and looking for reasons to hate it. I had heard that this movie actually wasn’t bad, so I was legitimately going into this with an open mind to see if that was true. Plus, I had just watched Vanished, so I was absolutely primed to be far nicer to this movie than I might otherwise have been. However, after years of dealing with culture war bullshit on social media, I’m just so exhausted when I encounter that kind of content. That’s what the experience of watching Rise of the Antichrist is like – like reading some fuckin’ conservative grifter’s post on X and just feeling all the energy drain out of you at the thought of having to make a response to this shit yet again. Rise of the Antichrist makes me want to not waste time thinking or writing about it, but… well, here we are. I did this to myself, after all…

We’ll get the good stuff out of the way first: Rise of the Antichrist is easily the second-best looking Left Behind movie, second only to the 2014 reboot. However, that movie also had a budget that was almost five times greater than this one, so the fact that it looks comparable is pretty impressive. It also absolutely puts the reported budgets of Left Behind: The Movie and Tribulation Force to shame (again, if you assume that those reported budgets were accurate, which I absolutely do not). Sorbo’s direction is very workman-like, but it’s still miles ahead of what we’ve seen from most movies in this series. In fact, after this entry I’d be willing to bestow upon the Left Behind franchise the prestigious distinction that they have now achieved the quality level of “theatrically-released evangelical movie”. That doesn’t sound impressive, but hey, it took them 22 years to get to that point.

And, uh, that’s about the nicest thing I can say about this movie. Suit up, we’re about to wade into the sewage…

Predictably, the big differentiation between Rise of the Antichrist and all the Left Behind projects that came before it is that this movie’s political message is overwhelming. If you agree with the fundamentally American, Republican party politics that this movie presents, then you’re probably going to have an easier time enjoying it, as it incessantly jerks you off from start to finish. If you do not agree with these politics, then they’re going to be a constant annoyance that makes engaging with the film on any other level an exhausting affair. This becomes apparent right off the bat, as the film opens with Buck interviewing a psychologist from the UN who claims that there is data to suggest that another wave of vanishings are coming. Buck spends this whole scene incredulous, asking her where she got her data from, and then where the people who got her the data got it from. Like, I get that he’s a reporter doing an interview, but what is he actually doing here? Dunking on this woman for not being able to personally verify the source of the information she has on live TV? She’s reporting the data that experts have apparently vetted. He has no actual reason to be skeptical of this data, he just is immediately hostile to the whole thing. It’s clearly intended to be a dig at “Trust the science” types, but there’s a certain point where you kind of have to accept what the majority of accredited experts are saying. You simply can’t look into everything yourself and can’t be educated enough for every important topic, so at a certain point you have to put trust in the community or you’ll drive yourself nuts. I’m not even saying to just blindly accept everything, or even to kowtow to what news media says. If there’s legitimate dissent, then there will be a sizeable counter-narrative which can be examined to see if it is accurate. However, if the vast majority of the people with knowledge on a subject are saying one thing, then there’s a pretty good chance that they’re right. Goddammit, the movie’s barely started and I’m already getting exhausted.

Anyway, this scene ends with Buck telling the audience “Don’t accept what the so-called experts tell you” and “Don’t sign up for a vanishings vaccine”…

Of course, we soon find that, “Oh my God!”, there has indeed been a second wave of vanishings! People’s phones start alerting them and they all head home in a panic. However, Buck soon discovers that this “second wave” was entirely fabricated and all of the people who were reported to have vanished never existed. I don’t even need to state explicitly that there’s a COVID-19 allegory here, do I? Hell, I have personally met people who believed that the pandemic was “fake”. Again, this is exhausting to even talk about – what good even is it for me to say that I personally knew a guy who died from the disease, that a lady at my church died of it, that several public figures were confirmed to have died of it, that the OG Rayford Steele freaking died of it? They can just go “Oh, those ones may or may not be legitimate, but the numbers are exaggerated.” Or they can pivot to the direction this film goes, that they’re manipulating the stats to control the public. Todd-Cothran’s role in this film is to manipulate the UN’s data to say whatever they want it to. Stonagal, on the other hand, has bought up media conglomerates and social media to push whatever narrative he wants, which will be backed up by Todd-Cothran’s data to seem convincing. Steve Plank, as head of GWN, goes along with this, saying that scared people will stay in their homes and be easier to control as a result. Hell, they call out “The Great Reset” in the movie by name multiple times as this sinister initiative to allow Stonagal to control the world. The funniest part about all of this is that Stonagal’s closest analogue in real life, the richest man alive who bought up a social media app with the intent of making an “everything app”, is goddamn Elon Musk – a man whose dick could not be further down Kevin Sorbo’s throat. Of course, this is because there is no principled stand going on here, it’s just Kevin’s political grift in action. Who would have thought that the man famous for celebrating January 6 while it was happening and then immediately saying that Antifa did it when it failed would be a man who just kowtows to whatever the popular conservative narrative is right now?

As you can expect, Rise of the Antichrist continues like this throughout its entire runtime. I don’t have the energy to try to address every single point, nor would it really be worth anyone’s time for me to do so. The important thing to note is that this movie does to Left Behind exactly what you’d fear a Kevin Sorbo Left Behind movie would do. Gone are the sincere attempts to change hearts and minds, instead replaced with masturbatory screeds of “Wow, can you believe how stupid those other people are?!”

In a lot of ways, the religious aspects of Rise of the Antichrist are comparable to previous Left Behind films – there’s still lots of altar calls, attempts to convince people that this was actually the Rapture and Jesus loves them, etc. For most of these prior films, it’s an element I barely feel the need to address (unless there’s some particular noteworthy fuck-up, like Ray Comfort’s awful evangelism tactics in Tribulation Force); usually, you either agree with what they’re saying, or you don’t and it completely falls flat. However, the confrontational tone that Rise of the Antichrist takes riles me up enough that it compels me to be more critical of the religious aspects than I otherwise would be: both for this film, and for Left Behind as a media franchise.

We’ll start with this film’s not-so-subtle message that real, true Christians (and the conservative Republican sorts who fall into that category) are the moral fabric of society. Buck’s opening monologue goes on about how, six months after the Rapture, the rates of murder, suicide, rape, robbery, vandalism, etc have skyrocketed by hundreds of percent each. This is supplemented by the assertion that America’s law enforcement and military have been “decimated” due to the Rapture (sorry, I can hear the intended audience making that wanking sound again). Nevermind that civilian vanishings should proportionately lessen the number of people to deal with for the police and military left behind – realistic speculation isn’t the point. The point, obviously, is to assert the common belief amongst fundamentalist types that you can’t be moral without being religious, a belief which has (unsurprisingly) been found to be false. When you remember that this film is intended to be turning its attention inward to preach to Christians, it’s really hard to deny that this film is doing anything other than fellating its audience. Like, I know I keep repeating this in such graphic terms, but it’s so annoying to me how, since God’s Not Dead, we’ve gotten this same routine over and over again, where so-called “faith-based” movies reinforce Christian prejudices in such a fawning, ham-fisted manner and encourage scorn of non-Christians.

So what is the actual sermon that this particular Left Behind movie is preaching to its audience? Basically, it boils down to “You can’t trust science and government to be arbiters of the truth. You can only trust The Bible for truth.” Kind of a standard evangelical sermon, but it’s particularly sinister in Rise of the Antichrist. Why, you may ask? Because this movie inadvertently shows the flaws in this lesson through the very premise they’re preaching. Let me explain: there are multiple scenes in this movie where some character will say “Oh yeah these events are terrible, but they were predicted right here in the Bible. And here’s what’s going to happen next, the Bible laid it all out for us!”

Here’s the thing: the Rapture isn’t real. The “Biblical prophecy” that these people claim is “right there in The Bible” is cobbled together from hundreds of verses across dozens of books of the Bible, stripped of their context and recontextualized into a new, unified narrative. Like, at one point in Rise of the Antichrist, Bruce Barnes saysThe Bible told us a one-world currency and government were coming.” Okay, but did it though? The “one world currency” idea comes from Revelation 13:16-17, where the Mark of the Beast is described: “It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” That’s it, that’s the entire basis of this inevitable one-world currency that they say is clearly stated in The Bible. As for the one-world government, there are lots of verses about figures who will conquer the world, but Daniel 7 is one of the main ones. Go ahead, read it and then tell me how clearly it is telling you about a coming one-world government. Now, tell me which of these readings makes more sense:

  • That the Book of Daniel is intended to be a story to the Jewish people, who had been conquered and subjugated by multiple empires at the time, and remind them that, in the end, God would deliver them to freedom.
  • That the Book of Daniel is of no value to the places and times in which it was written. It’s actually a story for future people about the end of the world, an event so well-laid out by God that we didn’t even interpret it this way until the 1800s.

Shit like this is prevalent through Rise of the Antichrist. At one point, Rayford is trying to search his Bible app for information about “The Rapture” and “vanishings” and gets frustrated because they’ve been censored so he can’t find this information! How awful! Oh, what’s this? The Rapture isn’t even in The Bible, so he wouldn’t have been able to find it anyway? The movie even directly addresses this, when Chloe asks Bruce “What about all the people who claim the Rapture isn’t even in the Bible. Can you show me where it is?” Bruce responds with 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Again, this is ignoring the context around the verses – this is describing the final return of Christ, not some event where the unrighteous get left behind. It’s not the irrefutable “proof” of the Rapture that they seem to think it is and it only really exists so Chloe and Buck can go dig up grandma to find that her corpse also got Raptured, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?!!!?! I actually find this theologically offensive – are you telling me that her corpse is the vessel for her soul and she couldn’t go to heaven until Jesus took her body? Has grandma’s soul just been chilling down here all this time waiting for Jesus to get his ass in gear and return? I’m serious, this scene legitimately offended me and it’s about as Biblical as any other shit they spew in this movie.

This brings us to my issues with Left Behind and the prophecy industry as a whole. It’s founded upon beliefs which didn’t even exist until a couple hundred years ago. Hell, most denominations and sects of Christianity don’t even believe in The Rapture or the codified end-times theology Left Behind spews. However, because evangelicals have a virtual monopoly on the popular Christian media industry, it has become something which simply gets described as “Biblical prophecy” with zero pushback. Let me be clear – Left Behind is no more Biblical than Dante’s Inferno. You know what this sort of attitude actually is? Trusting the opinions of “experts”. End-times theology as we know it isn’t “right there” in the Bible for us all to see, we only believe it because people who subscribe to it have been preaching it for decades, to the point where evangelicals just kind of assume that it’s true now by default.

Furthermore, every single one of these movies has a big “She was right!” revelation, which causes the characters to turn to God. However, these moments always ring hollow for me. Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins, Peter & Paul Lalonde, etc act like “She was right!” proves God’s love for the characters, to the point where they are always left crying at the revelation. Simply put: it doesn’t. I’ve said plenty of times throughout this Retrospective that, in the face of the Rapture, you could quickly accept that this was God’s doing. People aren’t so stubborn that seeing literal, unexplainable miracles wouldn’t cause them to second-guess their position as an atheist. I just went on a tirade against end-times theology, but if the Rapture happened tomorrow and I got left behind, I’d reconsider my position on these beliefs and try to convince others to do the same. However, I wouldn’t be trying to save people because I’ve been convinced of God’s love and mercy. I’d be doing it because I now know that He’s real and that He’s about to go on a seven-year tantrum where He’s going to send people to hell for eternity. Legitimately, the world of Left Behind paints a reality where I am more righteous than God and His followers are a bunch of cultists suckered into believing He is good, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And people wonder why some people absolutely hate Left Behind

Also, there’s a scene in this movie with white boy dream-Jesus where it looks like he’s about to announce that “IT’S MORBIN’ TIME!”

That’s a whole lot of words dedicated to politics and theology in this movie. You could look at all that and go “Oh, you didn’t like this movie because you’re biased against it!”, but I wrote all of that because the politics and theology are easily the most interesting aspects of the movie to dig into. For the most part, Rise of the Antichrist is a rather dull movie where little of consequence actually happens. The cast are mostly wasted here. Kevin Sorbo himself could maybe be an alright Rayford Steele, but he’s sleepwalking through this movie, even moreso than Nic Cage was. Neal McDonough could make for an entertaining villain, if he had more than like two minutes of screentime. His higher-profile within the cast is not even an effective red-herring either, since Nicolae is such an iconic villain in his own right, and because Nicolae’s presence in the narrative is completely superfluous unless he is the “twist” villain. For that matter, Bailey Chase gets barely any time to make an impression as Nicolae, isn’t even trying to sound Romanian, and is very dry in the role. Worst of all though is Greg Parrow’s Buck Williams. It’s not a bad performance per se, but it is insufferable. Parrow plays Buck as relentlessly smug, constantly talking down to people, combative, and dismissive of those he disagrees with. He comes across less like a relentless truth-seeker and more as a massive, know-it-all tool.

While Sorbo’s direction here is fairly competent for the most part, there are still some weird and downright bad decisions which drag the film down. First of all, why the hell is this movie two hours long!? This movie is the exact same content which formed the last hour of Left Behind: The Movie, which means that they’ve effectively stretched it out to double the runtime. Remember how I said that Left Behind: The Movie largely succeeded because it was really well-paced, which kept the conspiracy plotline interesting? Well, now imagine what happens to that pacing when you double the time in which it has to be told. Suffice to say, Rise of the Antichrist absolutely drags and is a far more boring adaptation for it. The most illustrative comparison would be the titular “rise of the Antichrist” scene, where Nicolae reveals his powers to the UN. In Left Behind: The Movie, this scene was easily the best in the entire movie: it was tense, surprising, and it effectively established just how sinister and threatening Nicolae was. In Rise of the Antichrist, we’ve barely even seen Nicolae before. There is no threat to his words or actions. I don’t give a shit about Buck, because he’s a tool. There is no sense that he’s in any danger. It is such a limp version of this scene that it single-handedly begs the question of why we even got this movie to begin with when it is so inferior to what came before.

In terms of bad filmmaking choices though, there is absolutely nothing that holds a candle to this film’s goddamn voiceover. For some ungodly reason, they decided that this movie needed to have Bruce Barnes narrating everything. On the one hand, they probably felt like they needed to find an efficient way to get the audience up to speed, since it had been seven years since the last movie was released and they had recast everyone. On the other hand, does it make any sense for the narrator to introduce us to Jonathan Stonagal and describe his motivations and character in the opening speech of the movie? Every time a major new character gets introduced, Bruce has to give us some sort of description of them. It also intrudes into scenes that should be tense and completely ruins them. The most egregious example would be when Buck is trying to sneak into Dirk’s apartment to get his laptop. For some reason Bruce has to chime in about how Buck couldn’t mourn his friend’s death. WHY THE HELL DO WE NEED YOUR OPINION ON THIS, BRUCE?! It’s the very definition of the unwritten rule that you’re supposed to avoid in film: “tell, don’t show”.

This movie also has a funny hallmark of any bad movie, and that’s that no one knows how to pronounce the name “Stonagal”. I’m not kidding in the slightest, Bruce’s opening narration pronounces it like “Stona-gall”, and then, not even five seconds later, Todd-Cothran calls him “Ston-a-gal”. And then Buck, Haim, and several other characters call him “Stone-a-gal”… and then, at the end, Nicolae starts calling him “Stone-a-gall”! It’s kind of hilarious that no one had any fucking clue how to pronounce this guy’s name and the director didn’t even seem to care either, because if he did he would have made sure everyone was on the same page.

In addition, there are some narrative choices which are pretty questionable. For one thing, this movie (conveniently) forgets that Rayford, Buck, Chloe, and Bruce had all ended the first Left Behind movie accepting that the Rapture had occurred. Here, they’re having to completely relearn this, which adds probably an hour of bloat to the runtime. Another choice which really rubs me the wrong way is that Kevin Sorbo has made his own character, Rayford Steele, more “important”. In the books and all the other adaptations, Bruce Barnes immediately realizes what happened when he was left behind and immediately sets about preaching the gospel. He’s the spiritual center and leader of the Tribulation Force, which makes his death in Tribulation Force so impactful. However, in Rise of the Antichrist, he has apparently just been fucking around for six months, until Rayford Steele comes around and, in Bruce’s own words, saves him. Like, you could argue that he’s depressed about losing his whole congregation and being wrong for not believing, but having Rayford be the one to motivate and lead Bruce back to Christ fundamentally alters these two characters. This feeling really got cemented for me towards the end of the film. When the group are speculating that Jonathan Stonagal could be the Antichrist, Rayford pipes up “What about Nicolae?” Despite having absolutely no reason to even suggest Nicolae as an option, of course you’re going to make your character be the one who was right, Kevin. Bloody hell…

All this said, there is one really big narrative change which is… bold, to say the least. As we saw in Left Behind: The Movie, when Nicolae reveals himself as the Antichrist, Buck keeps his head down out of fear that Nicolae might realize that he was unaffected by his mind-control and therefore knows that Nicolae is the Antichrist. In subsequent books, he then takes advantage of his relationship to Nicolae to gather intelligence and undermine the Antichrist’s efforts against Christians. In Rise of the Antichrist, Buck immediately makes a broadcast announcing to the world that Nicolae is a liar and the Antichrist. I’m of two minds about this. On the plus side, making this announcement actually makes Buck look like a better journalist since his response to this event is to make the most important breaking news story of all time. On the more mixed side of things, this completely fucks up the narrative trajectory of the next several Left Behind books. Considering how bad these books can be, this may not be that bad of a thing, but I’m also not convinced that Cloud Ten will do them any better either. On the more negative side of things though, this change just isn’t worth it in my opinion. For one thing, I prefer the more subtle, intrigue-filled storyline where Buck has to be careful not to blow his cover while getting close to the Antichrist, while also constantly wondering whether Nicolae has any suspicions about Buck. It’s a much richer narrative territory than immediately having him be on the run and pursued by Nicolae’s forces. Secondly, this undermines everything they had tried to establish with Nicolae, immediately clowning on him the moment he’s introduced. He’s a lot less sinister and terrifying if you can just openly defy him without facing any consequences. Thirdly, it’s not like Buck keeps this information to himself, it gets spread throughout the Christian community and becomes common knowledge pretty quickly.

I complained a lot about the politics of this movie, but ultimately Rise of the Antichrist isn’t very good, whether you agree with the politics or not. Very little of interest actually happens in it across its painfully-long runtime. You are far better off just watching Left Behind: The Movie, which is a considerably more watchable and better-executed version of this story overall.

3/10

So what’s next for Left Behind? Well, like I said, Kevin Sorbo has threatened to direct another sequel, so if that is on-schedule we should be hearing about that any time now. Given how demoralizing this movie was for me, I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, and it just makes me even sadder that the Kirk Cameron movies didn’t get the opportunity to continue. Like, as bad as those movies could be, there was at least an earnestness to them which shines through when you compare them to the last three “efforts” we’ve gotten.

Here’s how I’d rank the series overall:

  1. Left Behind: The Movie – 5/10
  2. Left Behind (2014) – 3.5/10
  3. Left Behind III: World at War – 3/10
  4. Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist – 3/10
  5. Left Behind II: Tribulation Force – 2.5/10
  6. Vanished: Left Behind – The Next Generation – 2/10

Thanks for sticking with me for another Retrospective! This was a lot of work for the past month, taking up a lot of my free time during the week. I’m not sure when/if I’ll do another one of these, but I am intending on starting a new Love/Hate series and resuming the looks at the Resident Evil games soon. Stay tuned for these in the near future!

Retrospective: Vanished: Left Behind – The Next Generation (2016)

Welcome back to the Left Behind retrospective! In this entry we’ll be going over the fifth film in the franchise, Vanished: Left Behind – The Next Generation… and, guys, I’ve been stoked for this one. Storytime: I was already interested in reviving the Retrospectives series here for Left Behind and thought I already knew of every movie in the franchise, but when I was looking up information about these movies, I stumbled across this off-beat entry that I had never heard of. Is this… Left Behind meets The Hunger Games!? My mind raced with the possibilities that this bizarre entry could be holding and that was the point that I decided that I was definitely going to do this Retrospective.

A bit more background here is also worth mentioning: Left Behind: The Kids was (for better or worse) my introduction to Left Behind as a franchise. As a kid, I would peruse my church’s children’s library and check out the edgier, more exciting stuff, so there was no way I was going to miss this series about mass death and the end of the world. I got hooked on The Kids books and eventually moved up to the full Left Behind novels from there. It’s been more than twenty years since I last read them, but I recall them being far more exciting, well-paced, and well-written than the main series (although Jerry B. Jenkins was hammering several The Kids books out per year, alongside full Left Behind novels, so there are apparently major continuity issues in these books that I didn’t notice as an 11 year old). As I alluded to in the World at War retrospective, the main Left Behind novels make the somewhat bone-headed decision of having its two principle expies, er, I mean characters be incredibly important figures (one, a world-renowned journalist personally working under Nicolae, and the other, Carpathia’s personal pilot). As a result, they’re rarely caught up in any of the major disasters and these events kind of just pass us by. However, the Left Behind: The Kids books are what they say on the tin – it’s a bunch of normal kids and teens just trying to survive and who absolutely get swept up trying to survive in whatever massive disaster is afflicting the world this week. Look, I don’t recommend reading Left Behind, but if you really want to experience it yourself, The Kids books might be the most palatable way to do it.

Anyways, all that said, I’ve been itching to get to this entry ever since we started. What could a young adult Left Behind movie do to stand out from its various failed predecessors? Read on to find out…

Oh great, another really boring poster that communicates absolutely nothing about what this movie is about… that said, it absolutely nails the YA aesthetic, so it’s doing something correctly. The second I saw this I knew exactly what this movie was trying to be, even if there’s nothing “Left Behind” about this poster.

Production

Vanished would be the first Left Behind movie to be produced without the involvement of Cloud Ten Pictures. Information about how this happened isn’t clear, but I can see two possibilities for how this happened. Remember how a big part of the Tim LaHaye v Cloud Ten Pictures lawsuit revolved around control of the rights to Left Behind: The Kids? Well, either the settlement which was reached in 2008 granted these rights to Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, or Namesake retained these rights and chose to license them to a different studio. Whatever the case, Vanished seems to have been the brainchild of Randy LaHaye, grandson of Tim LaHaye. Randy had grown up hearing his grandfather bitching about how much he hated the Cloud Ten movies (for the record, this is not a joke), and promised him that, someday, he’d make an adaptation that could make him proud. Around 2013, Randy was watching Twilight and realized that a YA film could be a great way to introduce a new generation to Left Behind. As he saw it, kids were fascinated with dystopian fiction (The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, etc), so they could slide very easily into the dystopian world of Left Behind.

Vanished would be very loosely based on the first Left Behind: The Kids book, The Vanishings – basically just adapting the premise of the Rapture and it being told from a YA perspective. Leaning into contemporary YA tropes, a love triangle was also made into a central aspect of the narrative in order to appeal more to a wide audience. Directing duties would go to Larry A. McLean, a veteran, workman TV director.

For the cast, the lead role of Gabby would go to Amber Frank, who was probably best known for The Haunted Hathaways at the time. Her hunky best friend (or maybe something more?) Josh would be played by Mason Dye, probably the most recognizable member of the cast, because he put in a fantastic performance as Jason Carver (the psycho jock) in the fourth season of Stranger Things. The other male lead, the brooding and mysterious Flynn, would be played by Dylan Sprayberry, who you might recognize from Teen Wolf or for playing young Clark Kent in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Rounding out the main cast was Keely Wilson as Gabby’s younger sister, Claire. The film would also feature Tom Everett Scott as the megalomaniacal Damon, and Randy LaHaye himself as… Nicolae Carpathia!?! Yeah, you read that right, in one of the most insane (and possibly appropriate?) casting decisions ever, Tim LaHaye’s own grandson portrays super-Hitler. Maybe it’s for the best though – he was originally going to play a race-swapped version of Bruce Barnes, which would have been weird at best… not that Bruce’s race has been written to actually matter in the slightest in these stories, so it’s not like he needs to be African-American in that regard. However, he’s also one of the few prominent black characters in the franchise, so removing that aspect of the character would not be a good look at all. Anyway, Randy LaHaye said that he wanted to give Nicolae a bit more nuance, to make him less of a cartoonish villain, someone that people could actually look at and see why people would become deceived by him. So, in the spirit of this idea, he based his character’s big speech to deceive the world on… Obama’s speech to the UN… Oh shit, nevermind, we’re back to the really unfortunate racial optics.

GOD dammit Randy!!!

As for production of the film, there are actually some pretty interesting stories to be told here. First of all, the movie has an executive producer credit for goddamn Rick Santorum. Secondly, the production companies for this movie are kind of fascinating. On the one hand, we have Triple Horse Studios, whose website boasts that they are “a Content Creation Company with extensive technical capabilities”. Wow, such an artful description of your work, I’m inspired to the core. Kidding aside, they are responsible for The Case For Christ, which is, by most estimates, one of the best “capital-C Christian” films ever made. On the other hand, we have Salt Entertainment Group, which seems to have immediately gone defunct as soon as this film was made. And then, most intriguingly, there’s Faith Capital Group. “Oh cool,” you say to yourself, “is this just a conglomerate of evangelicals pooling money together to fund Christian projects they like?” That’s what I assumed, but… okay, I can’t find a definitive confirmation, but I think they’re actually an Arab company based out of Kuwait, throwing money around at various projects. Definitely take that with a lot of salt, because I wasn’t able to get a direct confirmation that this is the same Faith Capital, but it’s such a fascinating possibility that I had to mention it.

Filming would take place in Savannah, Georgia on a budget reported to be around $2 million… by far the lowest of any film in the franchise. Tim LaHaye would manage to see a rough cut of the film and gave it his enthusiastic endorsement before his death in the summer of 2016. Randy LaHaye had hopes to adapt seven films total, with hopes of having the first sequel underway in 2017, depending on the reception of Vanished. The film would get a limited, one-day theatrical release on September 28, 2016, but it failed to make an impact and the proposed sequels fizzled away into nothingness…

Plot Synopsis

Gabby Harlow is living with her mother and younger sister, Claire, when suddenly a billion people vanish in the blink of an eye and the world is plunged into chaos. When Gabby’s mother disappears, she, along with her neighbour and best friend, Josh, try to find Claire. They find her at a local restaurant, but she is being chased for unknown reasons. The pair catch up to her and find that she’s being protected by a local homeless teen, Flynn. They take shelter from the looting going on outside at a local church, where pastor Bruce Barnes gives them USB sticks explaining what is behind the vanishings. Before they can hear more, the church literally explodes and they flee. Gabby decides that they need to find her father, who lives outside the city. She calls him and he answers, but gets into a car crash and the line goes dead. Gabby, Claire, Josh, and Flynn all decide to head out to try to find him.

They eventually make their way to Gabby’s father’s home, but find that he is not there. Instead, the house is being occupied by a trio of bandits, who attack the teens. They flee, but Claire is wounded in the process. They find a farm compound nearby called “Sanctuary” which is owned by a man named Damon and his sister, Sarah. Sarah has studied medicine, and is able to stitch up Claire’s wounds, while Damon takes the boys on a tour of his facility. He has been preparing for societal collapse his whole life and so many of the people in the surrounding area have been coming to Sanctuary for aid. However, he advises that such help does not come for free, so they will have to work to pay for his help.

With Sam’s help, Claire’s injuries are healed. Josh watches the USB video Pastor Barnes had provided, which explains that the vanishings are due to the Rapture, and Josh shares this theory with the others. While working the next morning, Gabby and Flynn sneak into the woods to try to figure out their next steps and end up making out with each other. They then accidentally stumble on a secret compound where Gabby finds that her father has been taken prisoner as retaliation for trying to escape. Damon’s armed thugs realize that she has witnessed this, and Damon confronts Gabby, Flynn, Josh, and Claire to threaten them. However, Sam intervenes and promises to punish them herself… and then immediately sets them free. Predictably, Gabby and the others then go to free her father. Damon realizes what has happened almost immediately and sends his thugs out to kill them to prevent anyone from discovering that he is basically turning Sanctuary into an organization engaged in debt slavery. In the pursuit, Gabby’s father is shot and killed.

In honour of her father’s dying wish, Gabby, Flynn, and Josh decide to try to free the people trapped in Sanctuary. They succeed in the attempt, driving Damon into a rage as he pursues them and tries to shoot them. The group flee into an abandoned factory, where Damon corners them, but then falls through an unstable floorboard and dies. The group, having come to realize that Pastor Barnes was right, then return back to the city to try to spread this message to their friends. As they arrive, they see that the chaos has subsided and people have gathered to watch a video proclamation from Nicolae Carpathia, promising a new era of peace arising from the ashes of his chaos. They watch in fear, realizing that he is not the hope that he portrays himself to be…

Review

So, how is Vanished? Well, let me put it this way: as I was watching it, I was finding myself coming up with nice things to say about Tribulation Force. Like, as bad as that movie is, at least the cast is pretty good and there’s some actual ambition on display, even if they lack the budget, script, or talent to execute it well. I’ve said it plenty of times, but if I find myself coming up with excuses about why a movie I hate isn’t as bad as the movie I’m watching, that’s when I know that I’m watching something truly awful. Vanished is easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, approaching The Room or Atlas Shrugged: Part III in terms of how poorly made it is. Maybe it’s “shame on me” for expecting this to at least be on-par with the other Left Behind movies in terms of quality, but I was honestly not expecting something this bad.

First of all, the YA elements are implemented in such a transparently cynical manner. Even at the start of the 2010s YA boom, the love triangle trope was already seen as a nothing more than a cynical marketing move to appeal to the Twilight crowd, so having a movie that’s blatantly ripping off the cynical copies makes Vanished feel even more painfully forced. First off, we have Josh, Gabby’s goody-good best friend/neighbour who clearly has been developing some simmering tension with her. They’re kind of cute, playful dorks together, setting him as the “good” option. Then we have Flynn, who is clearly the “dark”, “mysterious”, and “edgy” option. He’s literally homeless, having been abandoned by his addict parents. Despite barely knowing him, Gabby inexplicably has the most sexual tension with him, with the pair engaging in a rather passionate (for an evangelical movie) make-out session. Unfortunately, the love triangle isn’t really developed at all, it just kind of happens when it wants to and we’re left to assume that Gabby’s conflicted, when she clearly doesn’t even care outside of scenes where she’s supposed to. Like, we get a scene where Josh and Gabby have a cute dance together since the Rapture caused them to miss homecoming, and then the next day Gabby’s off in the woods making out with Flynn after zero build-up. We don’t really get any conflict or indecision from Gabby over her feelings for these boys. It’s just assumed that this is a YA movie, so she has to pick between them and boy would it be dramatic if she flip-flops in every scene! Actually, it’s even funnier than that, because the climactic scene of the movie involves the bad guy literally saying he’s going to shoot one of the boys and Gabby has to pick which one lives. Hilariously, to this she yells “I CAN’T DECIDE!”

The love triangle isn’t the only cynical trope lifted from the YA scene wholesale though, because Vanished makes the baffling decision of being a dystopian apocalypse movie. This may have been riffing on The Hunger Games, Divergent, or The Maze Runner, but it ends up making Vanished feel more like The Walking Dead than any of its YA contemporaries. I’m not even exaggerating here – in this movie, as soon as the Rapture happens, apparently society completely collapses. We’ve got people attacking cops, roving bandits, food and medical scarcity, and wannabe-kings rising out of the ashes. It’s an incredibly weird choice for the adaptation for multiple reasons. For one thing, it’s completely different than all other Left Behind media, where the Rapture causes life to get disrupted for a few days, but more-or-less keeps going as normally. Based on this expectation, it took a while to “get” that they were going for something completely different here (and even then, I really “got” it when I realized “oh, they’re just ripping off all the dystopian YA movies). Secondly, it doesn’t really make sense that society would completely fall apart in a single day due to the Rapture. Maybe this is just because we have since lived through COVID-19, but I’d expect major supply chain issues and months of collective trauma rather than the complete breakdown of society. Government and law enforcement are still going to be intact. Communication infrastructure is still functioning. There’s no reason to believe that people would start eating each other in an instant. Again, it’s clear that this was done to shove in another YA trope in hopes of appealing to “the youths“.

That said, at least Vanished took a look at the hundreds of millions Raptured estimates from the previous films and said “Those are rookie numbers”. Apparently the number of people Raptured this time is around one billion… Forgive me for going on a tangent here, but these numbers still feel insanely low. First off, there are approximately two billion Christians world-wide. Of course, we know that the authours of Left Behind definitely do not believe that this number is representative of the number of “true” Christians, which would go some way to explainly why their numbers are far lower. However, what it does not account for is the children – in Left Behind, there is explicitly an “age of accountability” where God does not consider you morally culpable to your actions, and therefore “Christian” by default as far as the Rapture is concerned. Vanished makes the incredibly bold decision of setting this cut-off at eleven (if I’m remembering correctly, I believe that this cut-off is around thirteen in the books). In 2016, approximately 25% of the world’s population were under the age of fifteen, out of a total global population of 7.5 billion… so, if we assume that the age of accountability cut-off is ten and only account for two thirds of that percentage, then we’re still looking at approximately 1.2 billion children alone, without even factoring in a single Christian. I shouldn’t be surprised that evangelicals are bad at math, but here we are.

I present this screen cap without context. Have fun speculating over what you’re looking at.

Tying into the limp and cynical usage of YA tropes, the writing in Vanished is just plain bad. I think that the cast here probably have talent, but you’d never know it with this script. Gabby is a complete personality-void, stumbling from scene to scene as the script requires her. Meanwhile, my descriptions of Josh and Flynn as the “good boy” and the “bad boy” describe their YA tropes, but are also pretty much the extent of their characterization. And Claire’s here as little more than a burden that they have to babysit. There’s no character development at all, other than the obligatory “come to Jesus” moments that every Christian movie has to have… which, honestly, is a trope unto itself, so if not for the writers being slaves to every trope possible, I doubt there’d even be that much development. Meanwhile, the villain is a complete psycho for no good reason, although at least Tom Everett Scott gets to ham it up towards the end (although he is absolutely no Gordon Currie).

Then we’ve got overly-convenient writing which is so transparent as to be absurd. For example, all the kids are assembled at Bruce Barnes’ church. How can we get them out of here quickly so they don’t know anything about the Rapture yet? Oh, I dunno, how about a gas leak that gets introduced and then happens in the span of like five seconds? It’s kind of hilarious, because if you sneezed at the wrong moment, you could literally miss the entire “gas leak and then church explosion” – it’s introduced and over that quickly. Oh, and then there’s the part where Damon’s so mad about Gabby and Flynn snooping around at his penal facility that he’s threatening to shoot them. His sister, Sarah, says she’ll deal with the kids… despite explicitly saying that she doesn’t know anything about Damon’s nefarious activities, so why would he even trust her with punishing them…? In any case, Sarah immediately lets the kids leave, causing them to immediately cause even more trouble for Damon. The movie proclaimed him as a full-on “genius” in his introduction and he doesn’t even think to follow-up with her to confirm what she did? It just makes him look like a complete idiot. It’s also pretty baffling that a movie about the Rapture spends about 80% of its runtime dealing with a completely unrelated, relatively low-stakes problem where some random asshole has taken Gabby’s father captive for… “reasons”.

Beyond all that though, Vanished‘s writing just makes absolutely no sense. For a very basic example, the Rapture happens and then a few hours later Gabby calls her dad. We find out later that this conversation happened as he was escaping from Sanctuary… so you’re telling me that, in a matter of hours, society instantly collapsed when the Rapture happened, he went to Sanctuary for help, tried to rebel against them, and escaped…? For that matter, who exactly is Damon worried will find out about Sanctuary? He seems to believe that the government has collapsed and that communication systems were wiped out world-wide by an EMP, who exactly does he think is going to stop him…? Like, literally no one would even care what he’s doing if he wasn’t beating up and trying to kill people for leaving, it’s such a brain-dead “plan”.

Going hand-in-hand with the abysmal writing, the filmmaking on display here is incredibly shoddy, on the level of a bad student film. I’ll give it this at least – the filmmakers at least have heard of lighting, so in that regard it gets a leg-up compared to the first two Left Behinds. However, in pretty much every other regard, this movie looks positively amateurish. Probably the most notable element that this movie is lacking is music. At one point, I was watching the film and was wondering why so many scenes that should be important, exciting, and intense ended up feeling “dead”, until it hit me that there is no soundtrack whatsoever. Check out this clip from the film, which is a perfect encapsulation of just how badly made this film is, and how much it suffers for having no music:

Ahh, the heroic sacrifice and emotional death scene, a classic story moment that has been captured on film tens of thousands of times over the years. However, between the awful direction, editing, and lack of music, Vanished can’t even pull this off well. The whole scene falls flat and was honestly the most I laughed in the whole movie. Vanished is amateurish to the point where we get a shot of military drones flying over a bus near the end of the film and I’m convinced that they forgot to put in any sound effects for them. For any other film, maybe I could be convinced that they just couldn’t be heard because the bus was drowning out the noise, but I give Vanished absolutely zero charity, because it does not deserve it.

All this said, I’ve got yet another hot take for this Retrospective series: Vanished has possibly the most fascinating turn of any Left Behind movie. As soon as the cast arrive at Sanctuary, the movie pivots hard from a weird, crappy, Christian version of The Walking Dead with only one zombie, to a movie about conservatives fighting each other. This isn’t a joke – Vanished‘s second and third acts become a story about conservative evangelicals pouring shit on conservative libertarians; it’s like stumbling across two baboons having a knife fight. Remember, this movie came out the same year that evangelical movies were fellating audiences by demonizing liberals and atheists, so seeing a movie where they turned inwards and had a purity war is fascinating to witness.

Damon is immediately introduced as a bit of an asshole who has been building up a life that is off-grid, self-sustaining, and away from government surveillance and who disdains certifications from formal education institutions. He also is up-front that he doesn’t “give any handouts”, so any help he offers is going to need to be paid back. He’s clearly meant to be an embodiment of libertarian ideals, but there’s a clear distaste for him in his introduction. We soon find that all of his neighbours have been coming to him for help. Since society has collapsed and he was the only one around who was prepared for this, he’s been using them to work the land to pay their debts. However, we soon discover that Damon is a hypocrite – he preaches libertarian ideals, but only because he can use them to put everyone around him into debt slavery for his own enrichment and empowerment. Everyone who pushes back and tries to leave sanctuary is beaten into submission or imprisoned, and when Gabby and her father try to escape in response to these punishments, Damon orders them all to be executed. There’s a clear undercurrent here that Damon is an evil asshole – people are coming to him for help, and he’s disproportionately exploiting that desperation instead of being a good, Christian neighbour. The climax of the film revolves around Gabby, Josh, and Flynn returning to Sanctuary to liberate the debt slaves, so it’s clearly being emphasized that this guy’s a complete piece of shit, while our Christian heroes are morally righteous. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s a shockingly based message for a Left Behind movie of all things, and the funny part is that it basically comes down to a spat between different varieties of conservatives. Unfortunately, despite having the best politics of any Left Behind movie, it’s also by far the worst one – just chalk that up as another example that my political biases don’t disproportionately affect my evaluations of these movies. Sometimes they just suck on their own merits.

Vanished is a brutally amateurish film, one that manages to make Cloud Ten Pictures look like master filmmakers… and, guys, how bad do you have to be to make me come to Peter and Paul Lalonde’s defense like this? Seriously? It doesn’t even have the courtesy of being entertainingly bad either, it’s mostly just terrible filmmaking combined with lazy, uninspired, uncreative rehashing of tropes ripped off of far superior films… and that “superior films” distinction includes every Twilight movie (yes, even New Moon and Breaking Dawn). Goddammit, you’re making me do it again, Vanished, why do you have to be so much worse than all these movies? And Rise of the Antichrist is next up for me! If you make me look at a Kevin Sorbo movie with more-lenient eyes, I’ll never forgive you…

2/10

Be sure to tune in again soon when we look at the most recent entry in this series, Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist!

Retrospective: Left Behind (2014)

Welcome back to the Left Behind retrospective! In this entry we’ll be going over the fourth film in the franchise, the Left Behind reboot. This was the last of the Left Behind films that I had seen prior to starting this retrospective series, and I remembered it having a very different feel compared to the original series. Could a bigger budget and more famous cast allow Left Behind to succeed on its second attempt? Read on to find out…

That’s about as boring a poster as you could expect from a 2014 Left Behind movie… Also, if you’ve actually seen the movie and, like me, have no idea who Jordin Sparks (the person on the left) is, then her inclusion on this poster is insane. I had to look her up after seeing this to realize that she was stunt casting.

Production

Remember that lawsuit Tim LaHaye had been harrassing Cloud Ten over since before the very first Left Behind movie even released? Well, around the time that World at War released, LaHaye managed to appeal the suit dismissal, and once again the movie series was on hold as the parties fought back-and-forth over the rights to the franchise. Well, in 2008, Namesake Entertainment, Cloud Ten Pictures, and Tim LaHaye finally reached a settlement, with LaHaye dropping all his claims in exchange for a two-year window to create his own adaptation of the books. Wow, after all that, Tim LaHaye finally got what he wanted – an opportunity to see his work brought to life the way he always wanted! What an incredible victory for him!

…in 2010, no adaptation had been made and the rights reverted back to Cloud Ten Pictures.

What. The. Fuck.

Yeah, that’s really how this legal drama we’ve been covering for four movies now ended. Tim LaHaye was either the biggest troll alive, or he was completely unable to find anyone who wanted to produce this movie to his standards. What an absolute waste of the time and money of everyone involved, holy shit.

In any case, by this time it was now five years since the last Left Behind movie had released and Peter and Paul Lalonde, presumably, felt that continuing the existing franchise was no longer viable and that it would be a good opportunity to reboot the property instead. Furthermore, Paul Lalonde would reveal years later that, despite owning the series’ film rights, they actually only had the rights to make movies based on the first two books… which is right where World at War ended, so the only way to milk the franchise further at this point without making further agreements with LaHaye would be to reboot. To further cement the fresh start, Paul Lalonde founded a new production company, Stoney Lake Entertainment, and aimed to make this reboot with a wider audience in mind, closer to LaHaye’s original vision of a blockbuster adaptation.

In line with this ambition, the Left Behind reboot landed Nicolas Cage as its Rayford Steele in late 2012. Nicolas Cage’s brother, Marc Coppola, who is a pastor, actor and DJ, was a fan of the novel and was the one who pushed him to accept the role in the film. While definitely a big “get”, it’s worth explaining some context here for those of us living in 2024 when Nicolas Cage is cool again – in 2014, Nic Cage was at the peak of his “weird guy slumming it in every role he gets offered because he can’t stop buying t-rex skeletons” phase. Sure, he’d show up in a Kick-Ass every once in a while and absolutely kill it, but these bright spots were vastly outweighed by unhinged performances in The Wicker Man, Season of the Witch, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, etc, so there was a worry (or, for some film connoisseurs, hope) that he’d be running around on a plane screaming “WHY DID THEY DISAPPEAR!?!”

After Cage, the rest of the cast fell into place. Chad Michael Murray (best known for One Tree Hill and a fuckload of Hallmark Christmas movies) would be cast as Buck Williams. Ashley Tisdale (of Disney channel fame, including The Suite Life of Zach and Cody and multiple High School Musicals) was originally cast as Chloe Steele, but would drop out due to scheduling conflicts. The producers kept the role open for her to return as long as they could, but at the last minute they had no choice but to recast her with Cassi Thomson (best known for TV series Big Love and Switched at Birth). Jordin Sparks, winner of the sixth season of American Idol, would be cast as well in a fairly minor role, but due to her fame, she ended up getting one of the top-billing roles anyway. Nicky Whelan (probably best-known for the Australian soap opera, Neighbours) was cast as Hattie Durham. Rounding out the main cast, Lea Thompson (of Back to the Future fame) was cast as Irene Steele. Also in a small role, goddamn Martin Klebba is in this movie… he doesn’t get any billing, but I guarantee you’ve seen him before – he’s the little person in all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and he also punches that piece of shit Costa in the dick in Project X. Honestly, he’s more famous than anyone else in this cast, aside from Nic Cage and Lea Thomson, why the hell is he not getting top billing, cowards?

This time, directing duties would go to Hollywood legend Vic Armstrong. Mostly known for his work as a stuntman, Vic doubled for Roger Moore in Live and Let Die, freaking Christopher Reeve in Superman, and (most famously) had doubled for Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, Blade Runner, Return of the Jedi, and Patriot Games. This is an incredible record, but in terms of directing, he had mostly done some episodes of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and a Dolph Lundgren B-movie up until this point.

The budget for this reboot was set around $16 million (somehow even lower than the budget of the original movie, assuming that that film’s numbers weren’t inflated… which, having seen this movie, I’m even more convinced that the reported $17.4 million budget for Left Behind: The Movie was complete bullshit). The script would be written by Paul Lalonde and John Patus, who had written the scripts for the previous Left Behind movies as well. Also, as a series first, filming did not take place in and around Toronto! Instead, the film was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in August of 2013. A private screening would be held for Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye and, this time, they were extremely pleased with the results (although it has been implied by family that Tim LaHaye’s endorsement was mostly done to drum up good publicity for the film).

Critics, however, would be extremely harsh. The movie has a freaking 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. And it wasn’t just the secular critics who hated it – Christian reviewers decried its production values, while… well, I’m gonna post Wikipedia’s excerpt from Christianity Today‘s review, because it is scathing:

Left Behind is not a Christian movie, whatever ‘Christian Movie’ could even possibly mean. In fact, most Christians within the world of the movie—whether the street-preacher lady at the airport or Rayford Steele’s wife—are portrayed as insistent, crazy, delusional, or at the very least just really annoying. They want churches to book whole theaters and take their congregations, want it to be a Youth Group event, want magazines like this one to publish Discussion Questions at the end of their reviews—want the system to churn away, all the while netting them cash, without ever having to have cared a shred about actual Christian belief. They want to trick you into caring about the movie. Don’t.” They also stated that they “tried to give the film zero stars, but our tech system won’t allow it.”

My God, I’ve never seen such a damning indictment of the Christian media marketing cycle, but there’s Christianity Today laying it bare and shooting it in the back of the head. Just brutal… Perhaps because of this vitriolic response, Left Behind would bomb at the box office, making just over $20 million (which, after marketing, would not have broken even). This was, by the way, occurring during a banner year for faith-based films, with such successes as Son of God, Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings (to be fair, this one was a bit of a bomb, but it was undeniably a very prominent, expensive, religious blockbuster), Heaven is For Real, and, oh I dunno, God is Not Dead.

Oh, and for the record: Stoney Lake Entertainment haven’t released another movie since Left Behind.

Plot Synopsis

Chloe Steele returns home from college to surprise her father, Rayford, for his birthday, but discovers that he won’t be home – he has unexpectedly taken a shift flying a passenger plane to London. While waiting to see him at the airport, Chloe meets television journalist Buck Williams and the pair hit it off, venting to each other their issues with hypocritical Christians after an unpleasant encounter with a woman in the airport. Chloe soon finds Rayford and realizes that he has taken this flight because he is engaging in an affair with flight attendant Hattie Durham, having grown frustrated with his wife, Irene, after she converted to Christianity. Disappointed, she returns home alone, while Buck boards Rayford’s flight to London and they depart.

Irene tries to plead to Chloe to understand her desire to see her come to Jesus, but Chloe rebuffs her and leaves to spend time with Raymie. However, while they are at the mall together, the Rapture occurs and suddenly hundreds of millions of people across the world disappear. The event causes mass panic, as in addition to several adults, every child disappears as well, including Raymie. Planes and cars crash as their drivers disappear and chaos erupts as people begin looting to take advantage of the situation. Chloe is caught up in the middle of all of this and tries desperately to find her family as the world goes to hell around her.

Meanwhile, up in the air, Rayford, Buck, and Hattie try to maintain order as several passengers are Raptured. After a near mid-air collision with a plane whose pilots were Raptured, Rayford’s plane is left crippled and leaking fuel. He turns back to New York to land and slowly comes to the realization that the Raptured passengers were Christians – his wife was right all along. Chloe comes to realize this as well as she finds that her mother has also disappeared.

As Rayford approaches New York, he is informed that there is no landing strip open for him, there are crashed planes at airports all over, so he needs to go further inland. With their fuel situation, this is impossible and Rayford tries to find an alternate solution. Buck manages to contact Chloe and he, Rayford, and Chloe concoct a plan to land the plane on an open stretch of highway under construction. Chloe manages to guide them in and Rayford barely manages to land the plane safely. As everyone looked out on the chaos which has enveloped the world, they muse that this isn’t the end of the world – it’s just the beginning of the end…

Review

Okay, so I’ve got another hot take: the Left Behind reboot isn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not good either, but it’s better and more entertaining than you’d expect considering the universal critical drubbing it got. Like, as of the time of writing this, Madame Web has a 12% Tomatometer and 57% audience score, whereas Left Behind has a 0% Tomatometer and 21% audience score. That just doesn’t feel fair to me considering the movie we actually got here. Maybe I’m being generous because I just watched two significantly worse Left Behind movies, but it’s arguably the most watchable entry in the franchise that we’ve covered so far (other than maybe the original movie). A lot of this comes down to the intent to refocus the franchise from a straight adaptation of the books and into more of a conventional disaster movie. This has its pros and cons, but it’s hard to be too harsh during the moments when you’ve got people dodging careening cars and airplanes, Nic Cage having to limp his crippled plane in for an emergency landing, or just soaking up the general chaos as the world goes to shit in an instant. Sure, these parts could be executed better, but they’re entertaining enough on a base level that you should find something to keep you interested.

That said, I had mentioned in my review of Left Behind: The Movie that that film managed to stay interesting because of its conspiracy theory plotline in the second half. This causes the Rapture to not outstay its welcome and keeps the pace snappy. However, this reboot excises the conspiracy aspects of the book entirely, meaning that the film needs to find a way to mine a lot of content out of the Rapture premise instead. Oh, and have I mentioned that this film is nearly two hours long? That’s a full ten minutes longer than the original despite featuring half as much narrative! As you might imagine, Left Behind is pretty slow and really stretches to fill that runtime. To give you an idea of how slow paced this movie is, it takes twenty minutes for the plane to even take off and the Rapture doesn’t happen until nearly forty-five minutes in. For comparison, Left Behind: The Movie gets Ray on the plane in about twenty minutes (despite also dedicating most of that opening runtime to the conspiracy plot we don’t have here), and then the Rapture happens five minutes later.

Now, to be fair, they do use this additional runtime to flesh out some aspects which are not very well established in the source material. In particular: we get a lot more insight into Chloe’s character, we get to see how Irene’s conversion has put strain on her marriage and her children, and we get insight into why exactly Chloe, Buck, and Rayford are so hostile to religion. However, this gets weighed down by several scenes with passengers who are little more than caricatures: we’ve got the quirky Alzheimer’s couple, greedy businessman, conspiracy theorist, Muslim dude (not to be crass, but that’s about the extent of his characterization), drug addict heiress, cute kid, angry little person, paranoid woman on the run from her husband, etc. Establishing the passengers is actually a pretty great idea. If we’re worried about these people being in peril, it should give the disaster sequences higher stakes. The problem is that they barely register as characters and you could easily cut out every scene they’re in and all it would do is make the pacing better.

Of course, once the Rapture does happen, a lot of that runtime is then taken up by utter chaos. I had completely forgotten that this movie makes the Rapture occur in broad daylight. I definitely prefer how, in the original movie, the Rapture happens subtly, resulting in this slow, creeping realization that something horrible and unexplainable has occurred, which soon develops into full-blown panic. That said, this change was clearly done to maximize the drama and chaos, because the second it happens, this film just explodes in a mass of screaming and running that would put a Black Friday news report to shame. It quickly gets to a point that is silly. This is best typified by Chloe’s storyline for most of this film, which can only be described as “Chloe and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. Not only did her plan to surprise her dad on his birthday get ruined by him, but then she finds out he’s cheating on her mom, she gets in a fight over religion with her mom, then her brother gets Raptured while she’s hugging him… and then she dodges a driverless car which careens through the mall doors, and then a fixed-wing airplane falls out of the sky and plows into her car, and then some hoodlums steal her brother’s backpack, and then a bus somehow nearly falls on top of her like thirty minutes after the Rapture happened, AND THEN she almost becomes collateral damage when a looter gets shot and gets a shotgun pointed in her own face, AND THEN her dad nearly lands a plane on top of her. It very quickly crosses the line from believable into ridiculous, and that’s just the shit that happens to Chloe.

Ray also has a bunch of insane things to deal with: not only does he have a bunch of passengers disappearing on his hands, but then the plane immediately hits violent turbulence (I guess they’re hitting all the souls on their way up?), his co-pilot gets Raptured while at the controls (hey, shout-out to Chris, Paul Lalonde wants to see you go to heaven more than Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins ever did!), they get into a near mid-air collision with a plane whose pilots were Raptured and damage the electronics and fuel lines in the process, the wing catches fire, they run out of fuel, and they can’t land anywhere. It gets exhausting how relentlessly they wring out every single potential bit of drama they can, but then they just keep going further and further, to the point where it’s practically comedic. I almost wonder how much of this comedy was intentional, because at the very end of Nic Cage’s makeshift runway, there’s a fuel truck that they come within inches of hitting, and it’s honestly a pretty great visual joke to punctuate how much shit they’ve been through during the film.

You may have noticed that I keep saying “dramatically”, and that’s possibly my biggest issue with this film – it is melodramatic as all hell. Your mileage will vary on how much you can stand this, but I found this incredibly grating and every time some “dramatic” moment happened I just got more and more annoyed. Like, a good chunk of those opening twenty minutes before the flight are just Chloe coming across more and more obvious evidence that her dad is cheating – seeing him flirting with Hattie, hearing his unconvincing denials, finding his wedding ring in the car, and being asked to pass him tickets for a U2 concert he’s going to see in London with Hattie (oh man, that show’s gonna have to be canceled since Bono got Raptured, right?). Oh, and we can’t just have the Rapture happen, that’s not dramatic enough – we have to make sure it happens at the very second that Chloe’s hugging her younger brother and telling him that she loves him. Or later, when she heads to the hospital, she wanders into the maternity ward for no real reason, other than to give us more melodrama when they reveal that every baby has been killed by God… er, I mean, Raptured away. Or how about how every single phone and radio call cuts out dramatically at the worst possible moment. I’m not kidding either, this happens at least five times that I counted.

However, it wouldn’t be a melodrama without a couple dramatic suicide attempts! In the one scene where she actually does anything, Jordin Sparks’ character steals a gun from a Raptured air marshal and goes into a paranoid delusion where she believes that everyone on the plane is involved in an elaborate plot to kidnap her daughter and demands that they give her back. This is ridiculous enough, but then Buck tells her to point the gun at him because he’s such a big hero, while Jordin is basically screaming “I’M NOT CRAZY, YOU’RE CRAZY!!!” And then, all that talking her down does is cause her to turn the gun on herself. They do manage to talk her out of it, but my God, this scene is kind of illustrative of why always putting the foot on the gas with the drama gets ridiculous at a certain point and robs scenes that deserve emphasis of their power. Case in point: Chloe also contemplates suicide by climbing to the top of a bridge to scream at God. It definitely seems to be implied that she’s going to end it, until Buck and dad call her at the last moment. Melodrama! Oh, also, it’s not the movie’s fault for this, but I need to mention that this scene has “Dancing in the Sky” playing in the background, so TikTok memes have turned this scene into an inadvertent joke in 2024.

You might have also noticed that I’m talking about Chloe a lot during this review and that’s because, honestly, she’s got most of the interesting material in this film. Nic Cage has top billing, but his performance is disappointingly subdued, to the point where he’s basically sleepwalking through the film. For those of us who were hoping he’d bring some entertainingly mad energy to the film, it makes his segments rather bland. And, unfortunately, Chad Michael Murray’s Buck Williams has basically nothing to do, other than help Ray and Hattie keep order on the plane and suddenly (and unconvincingly) fall in love with Chloe after only meeting once for a couple hours at the airport. He’s alright in the role, but has so little to work with that I can’t even really judge the performance. So everything kind of has to fall on Cassi Thomson’s shoulders, and thankfully she is probably the brightest spot in the film. It’s worth noting that Chloe feels like an actual important character in this iteration, not just a burden or a love interest like she is in the books or the previous movies. Hell, they even managed to give her a key role to play in saving the day, so clearly there’s been some conscious effort put in to elevate her to equal importance in the main cast.

We’ve waded through a lot of negativity through this review so far, but I want to address perhaps the most interesting aspect of Left Behind, and that’s how it portrays Christians. Upfront, this film is hostile to Christians, and I don’t mean that the characters are disparaging to them – I mean that Christians themselves are straight-up portrayed negatively. When we get introduced to Buck, he’s getting pestered by an evangelical who is trying to preach to him. Chloe intervenes to dunk on her with facts and logic, and the woman is unable to respond. This woman is clearly being portrayed as the asshole in this situation, and the crazy part is that they are right to do so. She is being an asshole, and this is probably how this situation would play out in real life. It’s a level of introspection and self-flagellation which is kind of insane, especially considering that God is Not Dead came out this same year, and… well, that film did not have anywhere near the same level of self-awareness. After this encounter with the evangelical woman, Chloe tells Buck about how her mother says that major disasters are a good thing, because they’re a sign from God, which is a nakedly ghoulish way to look at the world. Later, Chloe gets into an argument with her mother about God and how disappointed she is that her father isn’t home. Instead of trying to empathize with Chloe, Irene says that God brought her home for a purpose, to which Chloe snaps back: “God did not bring me home. […] God is the reason dad is not here right now.” This stings because it is absolutely true. Ray confides to Chloe that people change as they get older and this can cause them to grow apart, and it’s clear that Irene is the one who has put a major strain on her relationship with her family. She wants to share her new faith with her family, but however she is doing it, it is not succeeding and that is entirely on her. Looking at all this, I can see why Christianity Today had such scathing things to say about Left Behind – on its surface, this movie is absolutely shitting on Christians at every turn.

Here’s the thing though – I believe that this is entirely a ploy by Paul Lalonde and John Patus in order to draw in a secular audience. Shit on the Christians in the first act, tell the audience “Look, we agree that we suck too!”, and they’re more likely to stick around until you can get to the point where you can pull the rug out from under them. The film completely pivots once we get to the obligatory “She was right” moment of realization for Rayford and Chloe. After shitting on Christians throughout the first act, and then spending a good chunk of the second act on disaster melodrama, it suddenly drops the sermon on you without warning and starts getting far more blunt with its intent. Early in the film, Buck and Chloe are speaking about a story he had covered, where a woman had her entire family die in a tsunami, except for one child. She thanked God for saving her and her baby, but then refused to evacuate and they both died in a mudslide. It’s pretty clear from this story that that person’s outlook was, at best, incredibly strange, if not foolish – it seems perfectly justified for her to be mad at God in this situation. However, when the Rapture occurs and suddenly our characters are in their own disaster, it became pretty obvious what this film’s theme is: “People come together during a disaster and learn to trust in God”. All the stuff the film was shitting on earlier becomes vindicated, and this isn’t just subtext either: Rayford says how it was his fault that he didn’t listen to Irene. However, I disagree entirely – she is the one who changed and created the divide. Rayford didn’t have to change with her and clearly was not convinced to do so. People change and sometimes that creates an irreconcilable difference. It sucks, but it happens. Oh, also, I find it really funny how Ray starts talking about how God caused the people to disappear, which causes Hattie to say “What has happened to you? Why are you talking like this? You’ve never spoken about God before. Where’s this coming from?” I dunno bitch, maybe a little thing called THE RAPTURE happened and changed my viewpoint. Fucking hell, even the unbeliever dialogue starts getting dumb at this point…

Ultimately, I find this interesting, because we’ve seen a bunch of different approaches through these movies to try to reach people. If the intent of Left Behind is to get the message out that the Rapture is coming and non-Christians need to be warned about it, then a film that’s stripped back and focused on this event is probably the right call, as is “watering down” the preaching in favour of spectacle for a more mainstream appeal. However, it also demonstrates that you can downplay all you want, but this is still unquestionably a “Christian movie”. Poo-poo Christians all you want at the start, but when the message is delivered bluntly like this, you’re going to alienate the mainstream audience you want to court. If anything, watering down the message only serves to piss off the core Christian audience who usually can be counted on to see these kinds of films. This is kind of counter-intuitive, but also probably explains why this film bombed so hard in a year when faith-based films that feverishly jacked off the Christian audience were doing major numbers.

All-in-all, Left Behind isn’t a particularly great movie. It’s cheap, but compared to the previous Left Behind films, it’s practically a blockbuster in terms of presentation. However, once the Rapture happens it at least manages to be somewhat entertaining on a pure, dumb disaster movie level. It sorely could have done with some better pacing and maybe easing back on the melodrama, but I’ve seen much worse out of this series. Congrats, Left Behind franchise, you’ve graduated from church basement movie, to made for TV movie, to B-movie!

3.5/10

Be sure to tune in again soon when we look at the next entry in this series, Vanished: Left Behind – Next Generation!

Retrospective: Left Behind III – World at War (2005)

Welcome back to the Left Behind retrospective! In this entry we’ll be going over the third film in the franchise, Left Behind III: World at War. I had previously seen the first two Left Behind movies as a kid, but had never had a chance to see this third movie… and, honestly, I was always kinda disappointed about that. Like I said in the first entry, edgy, 11-year-old me got into this series to read about mass death in a way that would be acceptable to my evangelical parents. A Christian movie about World War III always piqued my curiosity and had a good chance of leaving me satisfied one way or another – either it’s somehow actually kinda cool and has an exciting world war, or it’s bad and I get to make fun of it. Which way would it shake out for World at War? Read on to find out…

Certainly not a good poster, but it’s miles more professional than the previous two films’ attempts.

Production

By the time that Left Behind II: Tribulation Force was released on home video, Cloud Ten were already promising that a third film was on the way and would feature that novel’s excised climax – World War III. I’ve already complained enough about the effect that this had on that previous movie, but the idea of this war getting a full movie to flesh it out was exciting enough. I have previously mentioned that Left Behind books tend to revolve around some massive disaster, but what I didn’t mention is that Jerry B. Jenkins kind of sucks at actually portraying these disasters. For example, there is a massive, global earthquake in the book Nicolae, which kills a full quarter of the world’s population in a matter of minutes. As I recall, this event gets a couple pages of reference, and it’s not even from the ground – it’s Ray flying in his plane above, watching all devastation occur. This is contrasted against the Left Behind: The Kids series, where the same event takes up about half a novella and features the point of view shots of several characters on ground-level. Anyway, point being that the Left Behind movies, once again, had a potential to greatly improve upon their source material.

With the Tim LaHaye lawsuit dismissed, Cloud Ten were able to put a lot more focus into this third Left Behind film. Cloud Ten were, obviously, keenly aware of the budgetary issues that a World War III movie presented and, perhaps because of this, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment were brought on to help produce and distribute this film. It seems that Paul & Peter Lalonde were keenly aware that their evangelizing focus in Tribulation Force (predictably) alienated the people they were trying to preach to, and so hoped that partnering with Sony could help them to reach a wider audience.

Once again, most of the original cast reprised their roles: notably, Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, Gordon Currie, Janaya Stephens, and Chelsea Noble. David Macniven also (briefly) returns as Chris after his big salvation scene in the prior movie. However, notably, Clarence Gilyard Jr. was unable to return as Bruce Barnes due to scheduling conflicts (reportedly, Gilyard Jr. is a Catholic and his priest was happy about this because Left Behind‘s theology is basically heresy to them). The role was replaced by Arnold Pinnock, an English actor who has been in tons of TV and small roles over the years. The biggest new cast member for World at War though was undoubtedly Louis Gossett Jr., who had won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for An Officer and a Gentleman. Gossett would be playing President Fitzhugh. According to Gossett, “All the predictions in the Bible seem to be coming true. I wanted to be connected to a film that was making that statement.”

Directing duties would once again be handled by a different workman director; this time Craig R. Baxley would be in the chair. Baxley was more known for his stunt work and second unit directing, having worked on The A-Team, 21 Jump Street (the TV show), and The Dukes of Hazzard. His biggest credit though would be stunts and second unit directing on goddamn Predator, so there was hope at least that his pedigree could result in a movie with some serious action chops.

As with previous Left Behind films, filming would occur in and around Toronto. After some delays, production began February 21, 2005 and would wrap nearly a month later. Budget totals are unclear, but I’ve seen estimates ranging from approximately $4.5 million to $17.5 million. Also like before, World at War skipped a full theatrical release, instead going straight-to-DVD and screening the film at over 3000 churches. Prior to the release, Peter Lalonde confidently stated: “Wait until they see it. Then people will be saying, ‘I hope there’s a Left Behind 4.'”

Spoiler alert: There would be no Left Behind 4

Plot Synopsis

World at War opens with Fitzhugh in the bombed-out remains of the White House, filming a confession as someone appears to confront him…

It then flashes back one week earlier, where the Tribulation Force are conducting a raid on a Global Community facility where confiscated Bibles are being stored. Guards interrupt the raid and Chris is killed in the escape. We then cut to President Fitzhugh and his vice president, John Mallory, who are discussing intelligence that someone is planning on using biological weapons on American soil – the three biggest factions being the Christians, the militias, or Nicolae’s Global Community. Their motorcade is then ambushed, but third-party militia interrupt the attack and save the president, although Mallory is killed in the process.

We then cut to the Tribulation Force, where a dual wedding ceremony is underway. Buck and Chloe are married, and then Ray marries Amanda, a woman we’ve never met before until this scene. Fitzhugh meets with Nicolae about the attack on his motorcade and recognizes Nicolae’s personal assistant, Carolyn Miller, as one of the militia members who rescued him in the attack. He then captures and interrogates Buck, who Fitzhugh knows is connected with the Christians and that they’ve been stockpiling vaccines. Buck tells him that they’ve been doing this because of prophesized plagues and that he believes that Nicolae will be the one behind the biological weapons.

Fitzhugh arranges a meeting with Miller and the pair infiltrate a Global Community facility. Here they discover that Buck is right and that Nicolae is poisoning Bibles with chemical agents. The manage to escape the facility and meet up with the militia, creating a coalition between America, Great Britain, and Egypt which will launch a pre-emptive attack on the Global Community. However, Fitzhugh realizes that they need to kill Nicolae in order to win, and goes to assassinate him himself. However, Nicolae is aware of Fitzhugh’s intentions and, despite landing several shots on Nicolae, he is completely unphased by the attack. Nicolae reveals that he has already commenced bombing operations and that World War III is underway, before using his powers to Force push Fitzhugh out a window. However, Fitzhugh survives the fall through divine intervention and slinks back to the militia. Unfortunately, they believe the war is going disastrously and they believe that Fitzhugh sold them out.

Meanwhile, the Tribulation Force are in disarray. Bruce and Chloe have been exposed to the biological agents and are dying after caring for the sick at the church. Rayford and Amanda rush to be with them, while Buck feels that God is calling him to be in Washington. After some soul-searching, he confronts Fitzhugh in the White House and convinces him to come to Jesus. While this is happening, Chloe realizes that communion wine can be used to neutralize the biological agent, although this is discovered too late for Bruce, who succumbs.

Fitzhugh once again confronts Nicolae at Global Community HQ, who gloats over his victory. However, Fitzhugh has activated a satellite missile, which homes in on their location and obliterates it, killing Fitzhugh in the process. Nicolae is seemingly killed as well, but emerges from the flaming wreckage completely unscathed.

Review

Right from the opening scenes, it’s apparent that World at War has a very different “feel” than its predecessors. I believe that this is down to two factors. First of all, World at War was the first proper post-9/11 Left Behind movie (Tribulation Force did come out in late 2002, but it would have been in production in the days and months following the event). The filmmakers would have been able to draw inspiration from the fallout of the disaster, the Anthrax attacks, the beginnings of the Iraq War, and the cultural paradigm shift occurring around them. Tonally, World at War feels like it has more in common with a mid-2000s, post-9/11 political thriller than it does with its two predecessors. I think the most notable factor though was Sony’s involvement. It seems that they brought guidance and a more professional atmosphere to the project, and you can clearly see this when comparing the production values of World at War to either of the previous Left Behind movies. I’ve been harping on this throughout this retrospective, but my God, it is refreshing to see a movie that’s competently lit; it makes such a massive difference at making this look like a real, professionally-made movie.

God said “Let there be light”, to which Peter and Paul Lalonde replied “Nah man, that shit’s too expensive”.

I will give some credit though to the filmmakers (and probably Craig R. Baxley in particular), because there are a couple pretty exciting moments peppered throughout the runtime. The opening sequence where the Tribulation Force break into a Global Community compound and steal confiscated Bibles is approaching legitimate action movie territory and is miles more exciting than any sequence in the prior two films. This quickly gets upstaged though by the ambush on the presidential motorcade, which opens with an incredible car explosion stunt. Seriously, this ambush sequence came out of nowhere and my jaw dropped at how spectacular the opening stunt was. It makes for an action sequence which is legitimately pulse-pounding, reminiscent of the ambush scene from Clear and Present Danger (albeit, far cheaper). Unfortunately, both of these sequences are pretty early in the movie, so it peaks very early and leaves you with some false hope that the war sequences might actually deliver.

We’ll keep the positivity going by moving onto the performances. Louis Gossett Jr. is absolutely acting his ass off in this movie, putting in by far the best performance in the entire franchise up to this point, and elevating the shlocky material he’s given far higher than it has any right to be. Arnold Pinnock also really leaves an impression as the new Bruce Barnes. Clarence Gilyard Jr. wasn’t exactly bad as Bruce, but (other than one scene in the first movie) he was given absolutely nothing to work with outside of being an exposition dump machine and his character was unable to leave any kind of impression. Here, he actually comes across as the leader of the Tribulation Force, and when he becomes sick with Nicolae’s biological agent, his acting is good enough that it could bring tears to your eyes.

I have to give one last special shout-out to Gordon Currie though, who cranks his hammy take on Nicolae Carpathia up yet another notch. He’s deliciously evil and smarmy, and has some incredible moments of villainy: disrespecting Fitzhugh by sitting in his presidential chair, tanking three shots at point blank range, using his powers to force Fitzhugh to stick a gun to his own head, and then deciding it would be funnier to make him choke himself instead, he Force pushes Fitzhugh out a window and then lampshades it when he miraculously survives the fall, and then walks off a goddamn missile strike like it was nothing. Absolute king shit. I said it before and I’ll say it again, Gordon Currie’s Nicolae is a low-key, all-timer villain, and his performance in this movie just cements that further for me.

Unfortunately, for all these good performances, there’s also some notably weak ones. Kirk Cameron has been tolerable through this series, but his constant boy scout charm isn’t really selling it for me when Buck’s going through some really emotional moments that should be leaving him far more shaken. His wife, Chelsea Noble, is also notably weaker here than in previous films, coming across like a personal screed against catty bitches moreso than an actual character performance. In some ways, this actually makes Hattie legitimately dangerous to Rayford, but it’s kind of wild how spitefully performed and written she is. Notably, Cameron and Noble were always the weakest of the original cast, but this is the first time that I feel like their performances dipped enough to actually merit some criticism… and, honestly, as far as movies like this go, it’s still not that bad overall.

As for Cloud Ten’s attempts to court a wider, more secular audience, the whole enterprise seems to be a fool’s errand. Explicitly Christian movies are kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If your entire purpose is to push a message, like Tribulation Force does, then you completely alienate the people you’re trying to preach to. If you scale it back, like World at War attempts to do, you still end up with a level of palpable preachiness which is going to alienate a wider audience and is also going to cause your core audience to believe that they’re “watering down the message to be like Hollywood”. World at War is definitely trying to entertain and is less-overtly pushing a message than the previous two films, but it’s still unmistakably preachy. For one thing, the Christian persecution complex is starting to actually show here, with Christianity outlawed, Christians getting shot, several characters likening them to terrorists, and government agents literally poisoning Bibles to kill off believers. Hell, Buck has a gun to his head and is told to renounce Jesus and refuses, a fantasy scenario which every evangelical has jerked themselves off to at least once in their life. There’s also plenty of scenes where the characters have to trust God in order to solve their problems, way to progress the plot which is basically meaningless unless you’re already convinced that Jesus is your saviour. Hell, the very idea that they could neutralize the effects of the chemical weapons attack with communion wine is absolutely insane and only makes sense if you think that communion holds some sort of special, elevated significance already.

Now, while the production value of World at War may be above its predecessors, that’s still not saying all that much. If the first movie was a glorified church basement movie, and the second was absolutely a church basement movie, this third movie has finally reached the lofty heights of a late-night, made-for-TV movie. Progress! Again, the lighting and direction really make the movie feel far better, even though World at War feels even cheaper than the previous two movies in some aspects. For one thing, there’s a lot more use of visual effects, with lots of sequences of people firing rockets, setting off massive explosions, throwing people through windows, etc. This definitely cost more than the miniscule visual effects in the previous two films, but the CGI used is so bad and so prominent that it ends up making World at War feel tackier. There’s also a lot of usage of green screen for scenes of driving, flying, window vistas, etc, and it’s usually really obvious when it’s been used, because the the matting is terrible. I’m talking visible “fuzz” around the actors where the background hasn’t been quite eliminated, the background not matching the camera movement properly, or even green light reflecting onto the actors (humourously, during one of these scenes, Nicolae asks Fitzhugh what colour the sky is, and then says that he could see it as green for all we know, while green light is literally showing on his skin). World at War is also taking place in a lot more sets than its predecessors (who at least spent a good chunk of their runtimes seemingly filming at some guy’s house as a stand-in for Rayford’s or at a literal church). In World at War, the church has been driven underground, so all the church scenes are literally in a church basement (which is like 60% of the Tribulation Force’s entire screentime), while the rest of the movie alternates between the White House, Buck’s apartment, a military bunker, a warehouse, and Nicolae’s office… and I’m pretty certain that most of these are just being borrowed from other productions (the White House set at least was apparently reused from Murder at 1600). This isn’t necessarily bad, but it does lend the film a very tacky, low-budget, TV-movie quality.

However, easily the biggest fumble for World at War and the cheapest, most made-for-TV movie aspect of it all is that World War III occurs entirely off-screen. I’m not exaggerating either – we see some brief news snippets, see some background explosions, hear the sounds of distant fighting, and the camera shakes every once in a while to simulate a nearby explosion. We don’t even get a shot like what the film’s DVD cover promises with planes doing a bombing run! A decade ago I wrote about how low budget movies will often promise some really cool, ambitious idea in order to draw you in, and then not deliver, and World at War absolutely lives up to that shameful standard. They could maybe make an excuse like “Oh, we wanted to focus on the message, not on gratuitous violence!” and to that I say bullshit. This is goddamn Left Behind, the gratuitous violence and spectacular disasters is absolutely the draw. If you make a movie about World War III and then not show that war at all, then you have absolutely failed as a filmmaker.

This brings me to the second crippling flaw of World at War, and that is the awful script. This movie is basically a messy jumble of scenes stitched together that barely make sense you actually scrutinize what is happening. When I take edibles, I hyper-fixate on the structure of a story and the filmmaking decisions involved and become really easily confused if any of this is “off”. I’m thankful that I watched this movie sober, because if I watched it high, I probably would have had a mental breakdown, it’s that all over the place from scene to scene. I’ve got countless examples of this that I need to go through:

  • Fitzhugh was just told by his vice president that Nicolae’s planning on using biological weapons to attack America. It’s pretty heavily implied that Nicolae knew that he knew this, and had the vice president assassinated to shut him up. Nicolae then meets Fitzhugh to offer his condolences for his friend’s death, and proceeds to show him biological weapons he’s developing. This is an absolutely insane scene and it makes no sense when Fitzhugh later re-confirms this information and is shocked at the revelation.
  • Fitzhugh captures and interrogates Buck Williams, but the whole scene makes no actual sense under scrutiny. First of all, Buck is Nicolae’s personal media mouthpiece. Fitzhugh seems to know that Buck is secretly a Christian, so maybe he assumes that his snooping around won’t make its way back to Nicolae, but that still means he’s basically talking to a terrorist as far as the state’s concerned. Fitzhugh asks Buck if he knows about the chemical weapons, because Christians have been stockpiling vaccines (boy, that’s rich in 2024), to which Buck says that he doesn’t know, but that he imagines that Nicolae’s the one who will unleash them. Fitzhugh then lets Buck go. I’m going to say this over and over again here, but this is the actual, goddamn President doing this interrogation, and not some lackey, so there’s no plausible deniability, no layers of insulation, nothing. Buck Williams, a globally-respected reporter now knows direct, national security information because the President directly gave it to him for no real reason and then let him walk out of there alive.
  • Fitzhugh then meets Nicolae’s personal assistant (who, like his pilot and media representative, is yet another mole in his organization) and the pair decide to infiltrate a Global Community facility. Again, not secret service, not trusted soldiers, the goddamn President grabs a gun and goes Solid Snake on this facility. He even shoots a guard and then snaps another one’s neck! I get that they’re just trying to maximize the amount of Louis Gossett Jr. that they can get in this film, but my God, the idea of the goddamn President being put in harm’s way so directly and unnecessarily is completely insane.
  • Then, as soon as he gets confirmation that Nicolae has chemical weapons and the militias are planning on launching a surprise attack on him, Fitzhugh has the bright idea to call Buck Williams on a cell phone so he can tell him that he was right about Nicolae!!!! Again, HOLY SHIT, the unprompted and unnecessary intel leak for something of this magnitude to Nicolae’s personal reporter is unbelievably stupid.
  • Then, when they decide they need to assassinate Nicolae in order to win the war, they send Fitzhugh to do it. They know that there are moles in his organization, it’s not like Fitzhugh is the only one who can get close to him.
  • Then we get to the war itself and there’s so much dumb shit here. There’s bombs going off a few blocks from the Global Community HQ and Nicolae is just sitting up in his office building watching it all… rather than, y’know, heading back to New Babylon where it’s safe (this is entirely on the movie, by the way, in the book I believe he is orchestrating the attacks from his plane the entire time). Meanwhile, characters are walking all over the country like there isn’t a war going on outside – we’ve got Fitzhugh walking from Global Community HQ, to the militia’s bunker, the White House, back to GC HQ, like it’s nothing. And at the same time, we’ve got Buck walking to the White House to meet him. There is absolutely no danger presented by these considerably-long treks, no sign of exertion or anything. It’s just more proof that the whole World War is basically an after-thought.

It’s also worth noting that the Tribulation Force, the characters we’ve been following since the first movie, are relegated to the B-plot of this movie and have shockingly little to do here that matters. Basically, Buck warns Fitzhugh about the Nicolae, converts him to Christianity, and the other characters are at ground zero for the biological weapon attacks. They are sidelined so heavily that it makes most of their screen time feel unnecessary, and if they weren’t legacy characters, then they probably would have been cut out during script rewrites.

World at War annoyed me. For the first twenty or thirty minutes, it displayed some legitimate potential and I was thinking that this could end up being my favourite Left Behind movie. Unfortunately, it falls apart quickly, absolutely fails to deliver its promise of an apocalyptic World War III, and completely collapses as soon as you start thinking about what actually happened during the course of the movie. In spite of all that, I’m kind of sad that this is where the original series ended – as poor as these films are, it would have been nice to see them get through apocalypse and show us some of the more outlandish disasters. Say what you will, but Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye are spectacularly uncreative – if the Bible says something about demon locusts with horse-like bodies, a scorpion’s tail, men’s faces, and women’s hair, then you’d best believe they are making a literal army of locusts attack humanity. If the Bible says that there’s two hundred million horsemen riding on horses with lion’s heads that can shoot fire, have snake-head tails, and will kill 1/3 of the human population, then you’d better believe that they’re literally gonna have a bunch of demonic horsemen show up. For the record, this isn’t just them “taking the Bible literally as intended”, as it all stands in contrast to the equally-specific descriptions of the various Beasts who are popularly identified as the Antichrist and False Prophet. However, since these figures are associated with human individuals, suddenly it’s fine for them to be metaphorical descriptions. It’s shit like this that made me, as a child, realize that the apocalypse portrayed in these books is pure fiction. That said, setting aside that millions of people believe this will actually happen, this kind of Christian apocalypse is metal as fuck. That is why I wish we got a continuation of this series with this cast – Cloud Ten would no doubt manage to screw it up in execution, but I would have had a lot of respect for them if they had managed to bring this vision to life.

3/10

Be sure to tune in again soon when we look at the next entry in this series, Left Behind (2014)!

Retrospective: Left Behind II – Tribulation Force (2002)

Welcome back to the Left Behind retrospective! In this entry we’ll be going over the second film in the franchise, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force. To everyone’s shock and surprise, I didn’t think that the original Left Behind was all that bad – sure, it was extremely cheap, and the source material is garbage, but the movie itself managed to mine the drama and excitement of its apocalyptic premise well enough. Could they keep this (relative) quality up going into the sequel? Read on to find out…

Okay, I had some nice things to say about the original movie’s poster, but this one’s just bad. Random, distant shot of Kirk Cameron looking moody? Really indistinct picture of Nicolae framed against flames? This poster communicates basically nothing about the movie and looks like a high school media arts project at best.

Production

In spite of the poor theatrical run of Left Behind: The Movie, DVD sales were healthy, with over three million copies sold. This reception was strong enough for Cloud Ten to greenlight a sequel, in spite of potential issues which could arise due to their ongoing legal battle with Tim LaHaye. Cloud Ten insisted that the sequel would continue regardless, to which LaHaye stated: “Whether the second movie will happen or not will be settled by the court.”

Well, turns out that Cloud Ten and Namesake pictures got the last laugh, because the courts dismissed LaHaye’s case. He would go on to appeal, but we’ll cover the results of that in later entries… For now, Tribulation Force was a go.

The second Left Behind film would be based on the second book, Tribulation Force, which continues to follow the characters from the previous book in the aftermath of the Rapture, leading into the beginning of the Tribulation. Perhaps due to budget, the movie would not include the most exciting (and expensive) part of the book – World War III, where Nicolae goes to war with all the nations that haven’t submitted entirely to him. Instead, Tribulation Force would cover the time period leading up to those events and the next movie would be dedicated entirely to WWIII.

This brings us to a character who, despite playing a very small part in the making of the film, influenced it in a way that can be felt strongly: pastor and evangelist Ray Comfort, a man so easy to make fun of that even Wikipedia pulled off a Fatality on him. You know those fake $100 bills you come across which end up having a Bible tract on the back? This guy is the sonofabitch responsible for those things. He also really hates evolution, having written a book called You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think and an abridged (and suspiciously-edited) version of “On the Origin of Species”. During my research into this movie I found that he had written a book about the making of the film, which I attempted to track down. If you followed my Twitter account in the last few weeks, you would know that this did not go well. I did eventually get the book though and read through it…

According to Miracle in the Making, Kirk Cameron had met Ray Comfort in the 90s, and instantly found his teachings to be captivating. The pair would become close friends and collaborators, and would eventually go into ministry together. During the production of Tribulation Force, Kirk confided to Ray that he and Chelsea were considering dropping out of the movie. Two weeks out from the start of shooting, the script had not been finalized, contracts had not been signed, and they didn’t even know who else was going to be in the movie at that point. However, Ray convinced him to stay on in order to champion the film’s message. Together, he and Kirk rewrote the script to include a stronger evangelistic message and, after pitching the changes to Cloud Ten, the producers agreed to incorporate them.

…that’s about all we learn from Ray Comfort about the making of the movie. Forgive me for going on a tangent away from Tribulation Force, but I need to indulge for a bit: Miracle in the Making is 100 pages long, about maybe 15 pages of which have anything to do with Tribulation Force. The rest is a meandering gaggle of Ray preaching about his doctrine (basically, keeping the Ten Commandments is the most important element of salvation), telling parables about two guys wearing parachutes on an airplane, telling stories about getting told to fuck off by Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron, debating atheists, hanging out with celebrities, and harassing restaurant-goers (and others besides) with Bible tracts. It’s also got some jaw-dropping moments, like Ray Comfort and Tim LaHaye joking about their chances of being accused of sexual harassment. He also tells a story about how he was on notice for jury duty on a case where a truck driver had been carrying unsecured boxes, which came off the truck and caused an accident with back and neck injuries. Ray bragged that he got off jury duty because he declared that he found the idea of making someone pay for an accident abhorrent and that he “wouldn’t give the guy a bean”… DUDE, assuming that the injury is indeed legitimate (which is the job of the trial to determine in any case), that guy is gonna be dealing with medical bills for life, which he’s not going to be able to afford with America’s shitty healthcare system, and this “accident” is directly due to the driver’s negligence. This is a textbook case of why suing people is so common in the States and why the system even exists in the first place.

Maybe the biggest shock though was how Ray Comfort describes how Kirk Cameron first became enamored with his preaching. Cameron describes how “I believe I was robbed of the deep pain of seeing the depth of my sinfulness, of experiencing the exceeding joy and gratitude that comes from the cross, because I was convinced of God’s love before I was convinced of my sin. […] I had never opened up the Ten Commandments and looked deep into the well of my sinful heart. I never imagined that God was actually angry with me at a certain point because of my sin.” THAT is emblematic of Comfort’s doctrine – Jesus may love you, but God hates your sin more and if you don’t do something about that then you were never “really” a Christian to begin with. Take his argument against the idea that the church is full of self-righteous hypocrites: “There are no hypocrites in the Church. Hypocrites are pretenders, masquerading as genuine Christians. God sees the pretenders and He sees the genuine, and warns that they will be sorted out on Judgement Day”. Keep all this in mind as we go into the film whose script he helped influence…

Is… is Ray Comfort responsible for making Kirk Cameron into Kirk Cameron, the guy we all know and hate now…?

Anyway, back to Tribulation Force… As I stated earlier, Kirk Cameron and Chelsea Noble both returned to reprise their roles, as did many of the cast from the original film – not just the main cast either, like Brad Johnson, Clarence Gilyard Jr, Janaya Stephens and Gordon Currie, but also smaller roles like David Macniven (who played Rayford’s co-pilot, Chris), Krista Bridges (who played Buck’s assistant, Ivy Gold), and Christie MacFadyen (who played Rayford’s Raptured wife). It’s honestly extremely impressive that they were able to get everyone together, especially considering that most of the cast wasn’t secured until the last minute.

Directing duties would go to Bill Corcoran, a long-time, workman Canadian filmmaker. Like the original, filming occurred in and around Toronto, including the scenes in Israel (I didn’t see any camels this time though, sadly). Normally I wouldn’t mention anything about the editing, but I got extremely excited when I saw that Michael Doherty edited this movie. The Michael Doherty of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Trick ‘r Treat and Krampus fame!? I was excited about this for days, but literally as I am writing this I realized that Michael Doherty is (sadly) not Michael Dougherty. Dude still edited the latter-date Romero zombie movies and several episodes of Hannibal, so that’s cool, but significantly less exciting than I had thought…

The budget of this film is estimated to have been around $3.8 million, significantly less than the original’s reported $17.4 million, although if the estimated budget for Left Behind of $4 million was accurate, then this actually wasn’t that much of a drop. Unlike the first film, Tribulation Force skipped a theatrical release entirely, only going straight-to-DVD, with some churches choosing to screen it privately.

Plot Synopsis

Tribulation Force opens with Nicolae working on establishing the UN as a one-world government, as he consolidates the major currencies into a single global currency and begins taking steps towards founding a one-world religion. He is impressed by Buck’s reporting and requests a meeting with the reporter, who is uneasy about doing so after having just witnessed him murder Stonagal and Todd-Cothran in the previous film. Buck, Rayford, Chloe, and Bruce debate about what they should do now that they know that Nicolae is the Antichrist. They hear rumours about three men burning to death at the Wailing Wall in Israel and Bruce believes that this is the doing of the “two witnesses” who are prophesied to lead thousands to Christ during the end times. However, the area has been placed off-limits and their message is being suppressed. After much deliberation, Rayford and Buck decide to get closer to Nicolae to leverage their positions to fight back against him – Buck will attempt to get the message of the witnesses out, while Rayford will become Nicolae’s pilot in order to spy on him.

During their meeting, Nicolae agrees to give Buck full UN security clearance in exchange for becoming his personal voice in the media. Meanwhile, Rayford leverages his connections with Hattie in order to get the job as Nicolae’s personal pilot. While all this is happening, Chloe grows increasingly concerned about the safety of her father and Buck, while also getting jealous and throwing a fit for a while because she mistakenly believes that Buck is cheating on her. This is because his assistant, Ivy Gold, is staying at his apartment, since she has nowhere else to stay due to the post-Rapture chaos (women, amiright?). The couple manage to make amends before Buck and Rayford travel to Israel for a press conference, where a leading religious scholar, Tsion Ben-Judah, is due to make an announcement about the identity of the Jewish Messiah.

During the flight over, Rayford discovers that Ben-Judah’s announcement will be that Nicolae is the Messiah. They decide to intercept him and try to get him to speak with the witnesses, who will be able to convince him through God’s word that Jesus is the real Messiah. Buck manages to convince Ben-Judah to confront the witnesses with the ruse of performing an interview to discredit them. Ben-Judah accepts and the pair confront the witnesses on the temple mount. The witnesses say some Bible verses, and then they shoot flames out of their mouths to burn a couple soldiers to death. Buck is distressed to discover that the UN cut off his broadcast before the witnesses could say anything, but he hopes that Ben-Judah heard enough to change his coming speech.

The next day, Ben-Judah makes his proclamation on international broadcast that the Messiah could only have been Jesus. Nicolae is enraged and tries to stop the broadcast, but Rayford sabotages his ability to do so, and the proclamation goes off unhindered. The film ends with the Tribulation Force gathering to celebrate this victory against the Antichrist as Nicolae swears vengeance against God…

Review

When I originally saw Left Behind: The Movie as a kid, I recall that I thought it wasn’t bad. I was surprised to find that I agreed with this watching it again 20+ years later. As a kid, I thought that Left Behind II: Tribulation Force SUCKED, and I am completely unsurprised to find that this has also held true. This isn’t a shock at all – the book, Tribulation Force, also sucked. Even as a kid, I found it incredibly dull, to the point where I got fed up, and skipped over like fifty pages of it just to get to the World War III section… which isn’t even in this movie, so that should give you an idea of how much this film is scraping the barrel for anything of interest. While I understand that cutting out a massive war was probably done for budget reasons, it’s kind of insane – each Left Behind book almost entirely revolves around some massive disaster or dramatic event that defines that entry: Nicolae is the earthquake book, Apollyon is the demon locust book, Assassins is the insane Nicolae murder conspiracy book, etc. The decision to excise the novel’s climax has massive repercussions on the movie, because everything that remains is so FUCKING DULL.

I’ll get the nice stuff out of the way first. The cast were easily one of the best parts of the first movie and it’s nice to see them get to reprise their roles. They still do a decent job, especially Brad Johnson (who portrays Ray as putting up a manly-man façade, but is clearly still traumatized over losing his wife and son) and Gordon Currie (who’s hamming it up more than ever), although they are really let down by the much weaker script. That said, putting aside the issues caused by removing the big climax from the book, Tribulation Force actually improves on its source material in some areas. In the book, Tsion Ben-Judah comes to the conclusion that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah on his own and, for some reason, the world is interested enough that this announcement becomes international, live broadcast news. However, the movie changes this so that the whole announcement and broadcast is orchestrated propaganda – it’s heavily implied that Ben-Judah has been intercepted by Nicolae and brainwashed into believing that he is the Messiah, all as part of Nicolae’s plan to establish his one-world religion. Thus, it becomes up to our heroes to save the day and spread the truth. This ends up being orders of magnitude more tense and interesting than what was put to page.

I also appreciate that this film seems to have more compassion for its characters than the source material. In the first book, Chris (Rayford’s co-pilot) commits suicide off-screen immediately after discovering that his entire family were Raptured. In Tribulation Force, there is an extended sequence dedicated to saving Chris – not just from suicide, but converting him so he can be with his family again someday. On the one hand, his fate in the books really underscores the devastating magnitude of the Rapture and the effects it can (and would) have on those left behind. However, step back a bit, and this is basically Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye conceptualizing a character and then condemning him to an eternity of torment while his family who love him are separated from him forever… and all this is justified because, according to their doctrine, he deserves it. Just thinking about it reminds me why, if God is truly all-loving, then universal reconciliation surely must be true doctrine, because the alternative reflects very poorly on Him and makes salvation an existential horror. Meanwhile, giving Chris the opportunity to be saved is far more in keeping with the sort of fate a Christian should want for a character and I’m kind of glad that he gets his little redemption arc in this adaptation.

Wait a minute… there’s no shadows being cast by the witnesses from the flamethrower attack.

And… uh… that’s about all the good I have to say about this movie. Everything that was a problem in the previous movie is still here: poor lighting, cheap sets, unconvincing special effects, etc. However, everything feels so much worse. If Left Behind: The Movie was, as Tim LaHaye put it, a glorified church basement movie, Tribulation Force is very much a church basement movie. The first movie at least had a pretty ambitious opening scene with lots of practical explosions and a real car bombing later, this movie has… a very brief fire stunt and that’s it. You’ve got alleyway sets where they’ve thrown trash all over the place to represent the post-Rapture lawlessness. We’ve got UN soldiers and Israeli army in what are clearly WWII-era army surplus uniforms. The Israel restaurant set looks like it was a reused Arabic bazaar. Nicolae’s plane changes models three different times depending on what location or stock footage the scene is using. Tribulation Force is operating on a much smaller scale than the previous film and when it tries to widen that scope beyond “American house/church” you can reeeeally feel how small this film’s budget was.

The direction of the film is also notably worse. This is perhaps best demonstrated recalling the scene of Nicolae murdering Stonagal and Todd-Cothran in the first movie, and then comparing it to the scene of Buck meeting Nicolae in Tribulation Force. The first movie nailed the execution of that scene, creating a very tense sequence which effectively demonstrates the character and otherworldly menace of Nicolae, visually demonstrates that Buck is immune to his charms, and communicates that he’s terrified that Nicolae might realize this. Conceptually, the rooftop meeting could manage to be comparable: Buck is voluntarily putting himself within reach of his sworn enemy, who may or may not know his secret. Plus, visually, the scene is evocative of the temptation of Christ, which seems relevant since Buck is literally making a deal with the Devil. However, in execution, this scene really fails. There’s nothing sinister about the meeting, no tension at all in the way that it’s filmed. Any tension to be had is wrought out of the dialogue, but it is utterly neutered by unimaginative direction. The fact that the meeting is occurring on a rooftop even seems to be completely irrelevant – they might as well be meeting in the street, or a café for all it’s worth. Not even a camera movement to suggest “Oh my God, is he going to throw me off the roof?” Hell, you could have an awesome character moment for Buck if he just thinks “I could push the Antichrist off this roof right now”… and all it would take is someone deciding to shoot anything other than two angles of medium close ups.

However, all of this pales in comparison to the actual problem with this movie, and that is unquestionably the script. As I’ve already said several times, cutting out the novel’s climax has huge repercussions on the movie. The entire climax has been excised and they have to compensate by spinning a lot of wheels in order to get Tribulation Force barely over a 90 minute runtime. This results in some excruciating scenes as the film grinds its pacing to a halt and wastes as much time as humanly possible. Nearly the first ten minutes of the film are just people watching TV: Nicolae watching Buck reporting the news. Bruce watching Nicolae at the UN. Buck watching the same broadcast, but from an entirely different location. Barely any of this serves anything but to dump some exposition about the state of the world and to establish why Nicolae wants to turn Buck into an ally (although given their relationship in the previous film, this probably wouldn’t even be necessary). It’s also really awkward to have the scenes constantly get inter-cut with footage of Bruce, who doesn’t react or say a damn thing the entire time, and won’t even get a line for about another five minutes. It’s like they need to remind us that he exists because he barely got to do anything in the last movie.

The absolute worst part though is the awful, awful, AWFUL attempt at romantic drama which dominates a putrid, nearly fifteen minute chunk of this film. Chloe and Buck have become an item between the end of the last film and the start of this one and Chloe wants to make things more serious with him. However, through a set of extremely contrived circumstances, she goes to his apartment and finds Ivy Gold staying there, who flashes her engagement ring and tells her to piss off. Chloe then gets pissed off at Buck, refuses to talk to him, and acts like a child, all while Ray tells her that she’s acting like an idiot. When it’s finally revealed that she’s misunderstood the whole situation, it comes across like the film’s just dropped a bucket of shit on her, because she obviously should have trusted Buck all along. How awful it is that she would not assume he was innocent! This whole storyline adds nothing to the overarching plot, is nothing but absolute bottom-barrel romantic comedy tropes, and serves nothing but to pad out the runtime.

Really, the film is just constantly shitting on Chloe during the first half – when Rayford takes down photos of his wife and son, Chloe comes across like she’s whining when she makes some very reasonable points. When Rayford and Buck decide to put themselves in harm’s way for the cause, she whines and sulks about it. She’s just such a wet blanket that it nearly gave me whiplash when, in the second half, they turn around and let her be competent at serving in the church’s makeshift hospital and she even becomes friends with Ivy Gold. Adding it all up, it just clearly shows where Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ opinions on women in the church lie: while the men are off doing big, “important things” throughout the movie, Chloe (when she’s not being an emotional burden on them) is stuck comforting the dying and getting over jealousy. She’s clearly side-lined and “lesser”, and it’s an issue which sticks with her through the entire book series (well, until her untimely demise, anyway).

On top of all this, the writing also just happens to be really stupid at times. Like, the film opens with Nicolae seeing Buck on TV and going “Wow, he’s so cool, I want him on my team!” Buck has literally just been providing a basic overview of what has happened in society since the Rapture happened. There’s nothing notable or exceptional about it or Buck’s reporting, but it gets treated like he’s an eloquent, hard-truth-speaking genius. Or how about how Rayford refuses to become Nicolae’s private pilot because it would be dangerous and then Bruce berates him for being selfish, but literally one scene later Buck says he’s going to get access to the two witnesses to spread their gospel and Bruce says “I dunno Buck, that’s dangerous, you sure?” You could miss the inconsistency entirely if they weren’t literally back-to-back scenes, but as is, it makes it seem like Bruce just really hates Ray and wants him to go get himself killed. Or how about when Nicolae is told to arrest the witnesses, he says “I do not want to put them in jail, this is not a dictatorship.” DUDE! They lit three people on fire, arrest them all you want, no one is going to complain! Or how about how Tsion Ben-Judah becomes convinced that Jesus is the real Messiah because the two witnesses literally just quote some Bible verses to him. I need to explain why this is so insane: Tsion Ben-Judah is apparently the world’s greatest religious scholar. Are you telling me he hasn’t even read the Bible or spoken with Christians before in his studies? He doesn’t even argue with the witnesses, the thing he is supposed to be meeting with them to do in the first place! Man, I sure am glad that they axed the WWIII climax in favour of this one!

In regards to the writing, one way that Tribulation Force really differentiates itself from its predecessor is by being an exponentially-preachier film. If you weren’t a Christian already, you could probably get through Left Behind: The Movie without feeling like you were being outright preached to the whole time – it feels like a narrative moreso than a sermon. In comparison, Tribulation Force spends far more time unabashedly focused on preaching to its audience. Your taste for this change will vary significantly – I’ve always been of the opinion that these movies are almost entirely made by evangelicals, for evangelicals, and so any preaching is literally being done to the choir. It’s less about changing hearts and minds, and more about pandering and reinforcing the audience’s existing beliefs. I would not say that this is necessarily a bad thing in itself; rather, that the execution is poor…

What is this, some kind of Tribulation Force?

…which, finally, brings us to good ol’ Ray Comfort’s contributions to the film. He and Kirk Cameron wanted to make this film more “evangelistic”, and boy did they take a sledge-hammer to the script (despite Ray Comfort literally saying in his book that movies that preach to the audience suck). The most blatant example of this is when Rayford is trying to convince Chris to submit to Jesus. The arguments that Rayford uses to convince Chris that Jesus is real are straight out of Ray Comfort’s mouth… and they kinda suck. Rayford has two big points he pushes to try to convince Chris not to kill himself:

  1. You’re not a good person, because if you ever committed a single sin in your life, then you’re tainted in God’s eyes. Also, the parameters of potential slip-ups are way broader than you would think, so God’s extra unfair to you (eg, if you covet then you’re a thief in God’s eyes, if you get angry then you’re a murderer, if you look lustfully then you’re having pre-marital sex, etc). Therefore you need to submit to God, or you’re gonna roast in Hell.
  2. Gun to head, all else has failed, what can Ray possibly say to convince Chris not to do it? “Hey, maybe there’s a God, or maybe there isn’t! If there isn’t, then we both end up the same. If there is, then you go to heaven if you listen to me, or hell if you don’t! Which would you prefer?” I need to iterate that THIS IS THE ARGUMENT THAT CONVINCES HIM TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN!!!

Having spent a couple years in university associated with Campus4Christ, I can attest that these sorts of crap evangelism tactics don’t really hold up to any sort of scrutiny. Like, “if you get angry, you’re a murderer in God’s eyes”. Umm, no, that’s kind of an insane difference, God. Where is the justice in the idea that God is just waiting for us to slip up even a tiny bit, just so He can punish us to the full extent? All that Ray has really done is use the movie to push his own, very narrow view of faith, and weigh down the script with poorly considered arguments that aren’t convincing to anyone outside of the target audience. Honestly, a bit of reframing could do wonders – “Umm, ackshully, the rules say that you’re a thief, murderer, and an adulterer!” is extremely unconvincing, but change that to “You may not be as bad as a full-on murderer, but in comparison to the perfection of God, you are just as much of a sinner”. There’s an actual argument here, one that actually meets them where they are and doesn’t hinge on them accepting that God views them as the most extreme kinds of sinner.

Overall, there really isn’t a whole lot to say about Tribulation Force (I say, approximately 4000+ words deep in this retrospective). It’s a movie whose greatest struggle is simply in finding ways to waste time until anything of importance has to happen. The result, predictably, is a dull and slow slog with no satisfying payoff. There is precious little plot here and it is surrounded by long stretches of wheel spinning. The movie is barely 90 minutes long and you can feel how they padded the runtime significantly to get it to “proper” movie length. Considering that approximately ten of those minutes are directly dedicated to the infuriating “romantic misunderstanding” storyline, I can pretty much guarantee that an arbitrary runtime was the entire reason the pacing is so bad in this movie. With some more judicious editing, this could easily have been a far better film at 70 minutes (or even 60)… but then they’d have to find some other way to end this story. A shame, if only there was some other ending that they could have used instead…

2.5/10

Be sure to tune in again soon when we look at the next entry in this series, Left Behind III: World at War!

Retrospective: Left Behind – The Movie (2000)

It’s been quite a while since my last retrospectives series (more than 3 years now), but that’s largely because of the sheer amount of work that goes into these things. Not only do I have to make time between work, family, and other hobbies to be able to watch 3+ movies, I also have to do research into the the production history of the franchise, and actually write out the reviews for each movie… I’m not complaining, I really enjoy doing this stuff, but I also get paid jack shit for it so it takes a lot for me to get the motivation to put one of these out (it’s also why I’ve largely pivoted to the less labour intensive Love/Hate format for most media franchise overviews these days).

Anyway, all that said, I want to make it clear that I’m fucking excited for this look at the Left Behind franchise. Growing up evangelical, I was really into the book series… because fuckloads of people die in it. I’m not even kidding, that was the entire appeal for little edgelord me at 10 years old (the massive disasters and demons running rampant were also super cool). It simultaneously managed to get me into end-times theology, and also eventually made me realize that the whole industry that built up around it was a grift. Despite having a massive grudge against this franchise and the poison it has been for Christianity as a whole, I’m going to give each film a fair shake and recount the batshit insanity that went on behind the scenes with each new film. So let’s start at the beginning, with Left Behind: The Movie, which I actually thought was pretty decent when I was a kid. Does it hold up still, now that I’m a jaded, crusty old bastard? Read on to find out…

Boy… that sure is a late 90s-era evangelical movie poster. Definitely not good, but could be worse. I also kinda like that whoever designed it at least understood colour theory and made sure to make this poster orange and blue, it gives it some visual unity and appeal, even though the poster is entirely made up of random images. Oh, and it probably doesn’t bear mentioning, but they REALLY upped the brightness on ol’ Kirk here and it doesn’t look very good.

Production

If there is one man most responsible for Left Behind, it is Tim LaHaye (take of that statement what you will). LaHaye was a pastor in the mid-1950s before becoming an instrumental force in the conservative evangelical movement in America in the 70s and 80s. He, along with Jerry Falwell, were instrumental in establishing and directing the Moral Majority, the movement which caused Ronald Reagan to be elected to office and, among other things, created the cultural environment that would allow the Satanic Panic to occur.

Basically, this motherfucker is the reason why America is so fucked up today.

Anyway, LaHaye was on a flight in 1994 and witnessed the pilot (who, apparently, was married) flirting with a flight attendant, which caused him to begin imagining how he would react if The Rapture occurred at that very moment. He quickly teamed up with Christian writer, Jerry B. Jenkins, and the pair conceptualized Left Behind, which would follow a large cast of characters trying to survive and save as many people as possible during the final seven years of Earth in the evangelical Christian apocalypse. The pair drew heavy inspiration from A Thief in the Night, a series of apocalyptic thriller films released in the 70s and 80s, which also portray a post-Rapture world. By all accounts, LaHaye provided his ideas and theology for the structure of the story, while Jenkins did all the actual writing. Notably, LaHaye’s influence can also be felt in some of the more… interesting decisions in the book. Notably, a lot of the first book’s plot is driven by shadowy “international bankers” influencing the UN, which has way more power than it does in real life… then you realize that Tim LaHaye is obsessed with the Illuminati, and this just reflects what he thinks is actually going on in the world. Similarly, LaHaye believes that Catholics are a bunch of heretics, so most Catholics are not Raptured. Oh, and as an extra “fuck you” to Catholics, the Pope gets Raptured… because he dropped his Catholic beliefs and adopted evangelical doctrine. And then, later in the series, the new pope abolishes Catholicism for a new one-world religion and, when he dies, his memorial is cancelled because no one gives a fuck about him, ouch.

Left Behind was released in 1995, and would be a run-away success, with selling millions of copies, and reigniting an evangelical obsession with eschatology as the new millennium drew nearer. A new book would follow every year (some years, 2 new books!), for a grand total of 16 main series entries by 2007, plus countless spin-offs and merchandise, not to mention a cottage industry of prophecy-based media which polluted Christian bookstores for decades.

As early as 1997, Jenkins and LaHaye began shopping the series around to movie studios interested in adapting the books to the screen. Namesake Entertainment optioned the rights from LaHaye and Jenkins, promising that they would be able to make it into a big-budget blockbuster series. Namesake seemed like a good fit for LaHaye and Jenkins, because they specialized in adapting Christian thrillers for screen. With Ralph Winter on-board to produce (known for X-Men, Fantastic Four, and… that Planet of the Apes movie), things were looking promising for Left Behind (even if its script was being written by Alan B. McElroy, the guy who wrote Halloween 4, Spawn, and the goddamn Tekken movie). Unfortunately for all involved, Namesake were unable to find a studio interested in financing the movie, so they licensed the rights to Peter & Paul Lalonde at Cloud Ten Pictures, a Canadian production studio making end-times films for the evangelical market. At this time, they had already made a micro-budget trilogy called Apocalypse (whose entries feature goddamn Mr. T, Gary Busey, Jeff Fahey, Margot Kidder, and Howie Mandell, what the actual fuck!?), so apparently they were the best people for the job. Despite being prominently credited on the film (and its sequel), Ralph Winter and McElroy didn’t have any actual role in the production, and it’s believed that their names were included because it granted the film more legitimacy.

Y’know who didn’t want their names on the film? Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. They had sold the movie rights on the promise of getting a $40 million Hollywood blockbuster that could compete with the secular market. Instead, they got a film directly marketed to the Christian community with a reported budget of $17.4 million (which, according to the producers, made the film the most ambitious Christian movie of all time), although LaHaye stated on-record that “representations about the size of the budget were not true”. It seems that this was especially contentious for LaHaye and Jenkins because they had, for whatever reason, sold the exclusive film rights to their entire franchise to Namesake in their original deal – not just the books which had been written at that point, but also future novels, and the Left Behind: The Kids young adult series, which they seemed particularly keen to reclaim the rights to. LaHaye and Jenkins had planned on making their own adaptation of Left Behind: The Kids, which was unable to proceed due to the rights agreement.

In July of 1999, before the movie even came out, LaHaye sued Cloud Ten for breach of contract, claiming $10 million in damages. He offered to drop the suit if Cloud Ten and Namesake relinquished their rights to Left Behind: The Kids and gave up their rights to any further Left Behind books. This was not going to happen though because Namesake were developing their own television series based on Left Behind: The Kids (which never came to fruition, probably due to this lawsuit) and, despite offering revenue sharing to the authours, LaHaye would not budge. This lawsuit would drag on for several more years (and movies), which we’ll cover further in their own entries…

Meanwhile, development of Left Behind: The Movie proceeded in spite of all the drama surrounding it. Vic Sarin, a Canadian, long-time, workman director and cinematographer was brought on to direct the film. Of the principle cast, the highest-profile cast member was Kirk Cameron, who was known for being on Growing Pains and then converting to evangelical Christianity and going off the deep end. He, along with wife Chelsea Noble, were very much true-believers, and actively sought to become involved in the films after reading the books. Cameron was cast as co-lead Buck Williams, a high-profile journalist, while Noble was cast as The Whore of Babylon. The other co-lead role went to manly-man Brad Johnson, who played Rayford Steele. The role of Nicolae Carpathia went to Gordon Currie, who had a small role in Jason Takes Manhattan (he’s the poor son of a bitch who gets chucked off the mast and gets impaled on the radio antenna). Rounding out the main cast were Janaya Stephens as Rayford’s daughter, Chloe Steele, and Clarence Gilyard Jr as Bruce Barnes. Fun fact, the role of Chloe Steele was originally going to go to Hallmark movie queen, Lacey Chabert, in what would have been one of her first film roles, but she ended up dropping out due to scheduling conflicts.

Filming took place in and around Toronto in May of 2000 and lasted for 31 days. For the opening sequence of the film, which takes place in Israel, the production used a quarry and made some camels walk around in the background to make it look like the Middle East. I mainly mention this because literally my first note when I was watching the movie was that the camels were extremely conspicuous and that “Israel” looked like a quarry, so it was hilarious when I found out that these observations were indeed correct.

Left Behind: The Movie would take an unconventional release strategy. It originally was released straight to DVD in 2000, with a theatrical release following in February of 2001. Its theatrical run was not particularly great, grossing only $4,224,065.

Plot Synopsis

The film opens in Israel, where GNN television reporter Buck Williams is interviewing scientist Chaim Rosenzweig, who has developed “Eden”, a formula which can allow food to grow in desert environments. This formula has poised Israel to become a global leader as they hold the key to solving a growing food scarcity crisis. However, the interview is cut short as Arab and Russian jets launch a surprise attack on Israel. The pair flee into a bunker and watch the unfolding attack. However, the attacking forces begin spontaneously exploding before Israel can scramble a response, which causes Buck to run outside to document and report on the miraculous happenings. Within moments, the entire raid is thwarted and Israel is saved by mysterious forces.

We then follow airline pilot Rayford Steele, who bails on his son’s birthday party in order to take over a flight from New York City to London, much to the distaste of his daughter, Chloe. Aboard this flight is Buck, who is looking into the attack on Israel after being tipped off by a contact of his, and Hattie Durham, a flight attendant who Rayford is having an affair with. However, she reveals to Ray that this is her last flight, she will be taking a job with the UN, in part because she feels like he has just been leading her on.

While over the Atlantic, passengers begin to realize that several people aboard have disappeared, including all of the children. Bruce, Hattie, and Buck struggle to maintain order aboard, while Rayford diverts the flight back to New York. They soon discover that these disappearances are a global phenomenon and that hundreds of millions of people have vanished without warning, causing several deaths due to vehicles having their operators disappear, amongst other things. The flight ends up diverting to Chicago. Rayford is thankful for Buck’s help during the flight and Buck convinces Rayford to link him up with a private pilot who can get him to New York City. He stays at Rayford’s home for the night.

Rayford returns home to discover that his wife and son are gone. He realizes that his wife, who he had resented for converting to Christianity, was right all along. Meanwhile, Chloe returns home, having had her vehicle stolen while trying to head to college for her exams, before being unable to continue due to all the wrecked vehicles littering the roads. Chloe takes Buck to the airport, where he links up with Ray’s contact, pilot Ken Ritz, who agrees to take him to New York. When he arrives there, he finds that his contact, Dirk Burton, has been killed for knowing too much. Buck gets his confidential files and then flees when a sniper tries to kill him as well. He discovers a plan orchestrated by international bankers, Jonathan Stonagal and Joshua Todd-Cothran, who intend to use their protégé, UN Secretary General Nicolae Carpathia, to entice Chaim Rosenzweig to hand over the Eden formula to the UN in exchange for plans to reconstruct the Jewish temple. They will then bankrupt the UN and control the world’s food supply, netting themselves untold billions in the process.

Rayford travels to new Hope Village Church and discovers that its pastor, Bruce Barnes, has been left behind. He had preached for years, but never really believed until now. The pair set about preparing for the coming tribulations.

Meanwhile, Buck returns to Chicago and meets with CIA agent Alan Thompkins to try to get information about Stonagal and Todd-Cothran’s plans. However, Thompkins is killed in a car bombing and Buck flees to Rayford’s home once again. They take Buck to New Hope Village Church in order to utilize the medical services running out of the building. Rayford and Bruce show Buck a tape that the former lead pastor had made, which predicted the disappearances, the rebuilding of the temple and the rise of the Antichrist. Buck doesn’t believe them, and leaves to go to the UN to warn Chaim about Stonagal and Todd-Cothran’s plans.

When he arrives, he soon finds that every prediction that he had been told by Rayford and Bruce were true and converts to Christianity in order to protect himself against the Antichrist’s machinations. Nicolae calls a private meeting, where he reveals his plans to consolidate power and then executes Stonagal and Todd-Cothran, before using mind-control to cause everyone (except Buck) to believe that they committed murder-suicide. Buck returns back to his new friends and they all agree to band together to fight the coming evils…

Review

So, this might be a hot take, but here goes: Left Behind: The Movie isn’t all that bad. No, I’m not kidding. I remembered thinking the movie was decent when I saw it more than 20 years ago, but my opinions on eschatology and movies have changed since then, so I was expecting to like it a whole lot less. While I definitely have my issues with it, my estimation of it hasn’t dropped that far compared to where it was. It also probably helps that I’ve made a hobby out of seeking out and writing my thoughts on shit movies, so in comparison Left Behind: The Movie doesn’t even come close.

Now, a caveat to this – if you have no interest in religion, then Left Behind will probably not do anything for you. Similarly, if you can’t set aside a distaste for the creators’ theology, then it’ll also sour your experience. If you can lay that aside though and just go with it, Left Behind: The Movie is an alright thriller, buoyed significantly by its strong premise.

I’ll keep the positives going with probably the strongest aspect of Left Behind: The Movie – its cast. Christian movies, especially in this era, were known for having amateur-level acting, but Left Behind‘s cast are fairly solid across the board (even Kirk Cameron, although he and Chelsea Noble put in the weakest performances of the main cast, in my opinion). Easily the two standouts are Brad Johnson as Rayford Steele and Gordon Currie as Nicolae Carpathia. Johnson is a consummate professional, effortlessly taking Rayford from seething and resentful of his wife, to controlling and in-charge as a pilot, to desperate and downtrodden when he discovers his family has disappeared, to truly convicted in his beliefs when he converts. The only problem is that his arc ends too early and he spends the last forty minutes of the film with nothing to do but preach at the audience (I found a contemporary review by a Christian who saw the movie who agreed that Rayford was the best character, but opined “he comes off as a Bible-thumping turnoff after he’s saved, and delivers the usual ‘there’s something bigger than all of this’ kind of talk”).

Meanwhile, Gordon Currie gets to chew the scenery as Nicolae Carpathia, going from seemingly-good natured, to slimy and sinister on a dime. The reveal that he’s the Antichrist is extremely obvious from the moment he appears in the film, but when they do reveal it, it’s really effective scene where Currie absolutely commands the room. Hearing him say “Don’t worry, this will be completely painless. After all, I’m not a monster” and then chuckling to himself is downright chilling. This might be another hot-take, but I feel like Currie’s Nicolae is, low-key, an all-timer villain. That might sound crazy considering that I’m talking about a series of micro-budget Christian films, but these novels and movies have a hold in the imaginations of the evangelical market. There are millions of people whose conception of an Antichrist figure is exactly what Currie portrays: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a leader who preaches peace, but who has sinister intentions. This portrayal is so ingrained in their thoughts that, when a figure who arguably fits the theology of who an anti-Christ figure is better, they enthusiastically vote for that guy three times.

The other main strength of Left Behind: The Movie is its overall premise and plot. It also has to be said that the movie is a whole lot better than the novel it’s based on. Where the novel can be meandering and poorly written, the movie tightens everything up into a (mostly) well-paced thriller. While the Rapture itself is a compelling enough event to mine a lot of drama, it’s over fairly quickly and the film needs more events to keep you watching. Think about it a bit: if this movie was just about The Rapture, then the natural progression for acts 2 and 3 would be a massive amount of preaching to the audience. The main reason the film is able to sustain interest after the Rapture is its B-plot, which features Buck Williams uncovering the conspiracy to take control of the world’s food supply, which eventually results in the rise of the Antichrist. While nothing particularly special or unique goes on in this B-plot that you haven’t seen in any other conspiracy narrative, this storyline stays interesting with a cavalcade of assassinations, clues, and near-misses, keeping it constantly moving forward and engaging (dare I even say “exciting”?). It all culminates in probably the best scene of the movie, where Nicolae is revealed to be The Antichrist and Buck realizes he’s trapped in the same room as him. It’s a really tense scene, with Nicolae dispatching Stonagal and Todd-Cothran in cold blood and then using his mind control super powers to tell everyone assembled what he’d like them to believe (except, Buck, who is protected by the power of God). It effectively hypes up the real danger Nicolae presents going forward and gets you properly interested to see how the characters will deal with him in future… until you read the books and find out he’s constantly getting clowned on, because they can’t just let their symbol of ultimate evil ever win.

That said, there’s one glaring issue with this film’s narrative structure and pacing, and that’s how Rayford’s arc is handled. If Buck’s journey is the B-plot, Rayford’s storyline is very much the A-plot for most of the film as he deals with the fallout of the Rapture and then tries to cope with the disappearance of his wife and son. However, after about an hour he realizes they were right, converts to Christianity, and then becomes a die-hard believer from that point onward… with about 40 minutes left to go in the movie. Like, the movie cuts back to him every once in a while, but there isn’t much for him to do, other than preach at Buck, Chloe, and the audience. I can’t help but feel that the movie would have been stronger overall if Rayford spent more time struggling, or maybe went through a period of anger at God for taking his family away. Then, maybe he could have learned about the Antichrist from Bruce Barnes at the same time as Buck.

And with that, we can dovetail into the things that Left Behind does not do so well. It really pains me to say this, but Tim LaHaye was right about something – this movie is cheap as fuck. Like, I know that people will say all sorts of things in a legal battle to try to sway the narrative, but I actually believe Tim LaHaye when he says that the film’s widely-reported $17.4 million budget is an exaggeration (and, adjusting for inflation, that would apparently be closer to $30 million today, which makes this even more insane to me). I’ve seen estimates that put the budget around $4 million, and I find that far more realistic considering what we got on-screen. Tim LaHaye has also gone on record saying that Cloud Ten’s productions look like “glorified church basement movies” and, oh my God, it’s a pretty apt description. Most of the film takes place in very simple sets – Ray’s home, a warehouse, a plane set, some office buildings, a UN set. They’re functional, but considering that we only get a very small handful of outdoor sequences, and they’re pitched as the “big” money-shot sequences (eg, air terminal chaos, Chloe coming across the car wreck, the car bombing), it underscores this film’s low production values. It also doesn’t help that the lighting in the film is absolute ass for most of the runtime, which is probably the largest contributing factor to why this movie feels so amateurish.

The absolute worst offender though is the aforementioned opening scene in “Israel”. As I said in the Production section, the second I saw that camel in the background I thought “Oh man, they clearly are NOT filming this on location, it looks like a quarry”. Then there’s the CGI of the planes and tanks during this sequence, which was poor even by year 2000 standards. I’ll give them some credit – there are some pretty good practical explosions during this sequence, almost enough to make you not realize that Buck and Chaim go into some random goat herder’s house, and suddenly are in a state-of-the-art military bunker. It’s pretty clear that most of the budget and ambition went into this opening scene, because it is miles beyond anything else in the film… but would it have taken up a good chunk of $17.4 million in the year 2000? I strongly doubt it.

Then again, I wonder how much they had to pay to borrow camels from the Toronto zoo for a day.

Left Behind is better than the book it’s based on, but there are fundamental issues which can’t really be excised in adaptation. Even as a child reading these books, one of my greatest frustrations was a deep-rooted lack of imagination on the part of the authours and the people inhabiting their world. Let’s look at an example to illustrate what I’m referring to here: as the attack on Israel gets underway, the skies suddenly darken, going from the middle of the day to black as night. In any other movie this could be construed as “passage of time”, or (potentially intentional) “continuity error”, but here it’s clearly intended to convey the intervention of God. However… no one comments on it. It’s supposed to be the middle of the day, but for whatever reason in Israel it suddenly became night time, defying meteorological explanation. And then all the planes begin exploding and everyone is just dumbfounded… and I do mean “just”, because there’s no explanation or speculation presented. Buck’s driving force for a good chunk of the movie is “Wow, I sure do wonder what happened there in Israel?”, but he seems to be the only one who cares, and the the whole question gets quietly dropped pretty soon in the movie. It’s not even like the world didn’t see this happen, it was literally being televised, but there’s zero impact beyond this scene. Like… are you telling me that there wasn’t a sizeable contingent of people going “That sure looks like it was divine intervention”?

Of course, the response to the Rapture falls into the same issue. “Huh, every non-Catholic Christian and child under thirteen in the world disappeared in a manner like the mythical rapture some evangelicals believed in. Wonder what happened, radiation maybe?” That last part isn’t even a joke either, radiation becomes the “official” explanation for what caused the disappearances, even though any moron could look at the demographics of the people who disappeared and find correlation showing that it was not random. One character believes that aliens were behind the disappearances (which, honestly, would probably be the second most obvious answer), while laughing about the idea of it being the Rapture, but that just underscores the issue – if they have information about the Rapture, it kind of defies explanation that they wouldn’t see that this miraculous event was anything other than that and instead handwave vaguely to “radiation” without any evidence. To me, this reveals a few potential insights into the authours’ opinions on the average non-Christian:

  1. Charitably, they might believe that God is “hardening their hearts” like the Pharaoh in Exodus, so that they cannot accept the obvious truth. If so, it’s kind of fucked up that God would then put them into this “final chance for redemption” and then take away their chance to see truth.
  2. They believe that the signs of God really are as obvious as they are portrayed in this movie and non-believers are just oblivious idiots. Hate to break it to them, but if we lived in a world God blew up an entire army and then caused hundreds of millions of children and Christians to disappear, there’d be a lot more converts, because then there would be some actual, concrete evidence for the supernatural.
  3. They believe that non-believers are actively looking for any excuse to defy God. Considering that “there are no real atheists” is a common belief amongst fundamentalists, this wouldn’t surprise me too much.

While I think that any (potentially even all) of these options are true, there’s also a much simpler explanation which could also be true: Jerry B. Jenkins is a hack writer who ignores any potential impact to the world because it interferes with the story he’s trying to tell… despite that story being one where the entire world’s population is undergoing countless disasters, the massive consequences of which should be being felt and responded to. There is so much impossible shit that happens in these books: in this first movie alone, completely ignoring full-on supernatural intervention, we have Israel magically developing technology to make the deserts fertile in order to become a global superpower. Kind of a weird plot point, until you realize they only did this because they believe it to have been prophesized. Our prophecies say that there will be a one-world currency? Guess we’re gonna make Korea join the EU now. Maybe this felt more realistic in the late 90s when the European Union was just taking form, but 20 years later in the wake of Brexit, this idea is laughably optimistic. And don’t even get me started on Israel rebuilding their temple, which even the movie acknowledges is impossible without the aforementioned magic and some handwaving to reveal that the temple can actually be built somewhere else… again, because their prophecy says that it has to happen, so by God they will force it to, then yada yada through the details and have everyone accept it. Oh, and this is also in a world where the UN basically rules the world already, which starts to make sense when you realize that Tim LaHaye believes in the Illuminati…

Underscoring all of this, I’ve always found it ironic that the existence of Left Behind makes the entire scenario even more impossible. Like, the premise of the books kind of works if the Rapture remains this weird thing that some evangelicals believe in, so you can see why some people wouldn’t immediately go “oh shit, the Rapture just happened!” if everyone suddenly disappeared. However, Left Behind was such a cultural juggernaut and has become so ingrained within the evangelical zeitgeist, that the idea of a Rapture occurring and not causing most people to immediately logically conclude that is laughable, let alone the idea that hundreds of millions of people would willingly go and tattoo themselves with 666 in light of all this.

Also, this scene is driving me nuts. 142,380,000 confirmed vanished? That’s got to be an interim and highly under-estimated total. There were 6 billion people in the year 2000 – we know that every child under the age of 13 was Raptured, in addition to a high number of Christians. Assuming even 10% of the world’s population was raptured (which seems like a very low estimate considering that world population demographics tends to skew young), that’s still over 600 million people.

Rounding things out here, it wouldn’t be an IC2S review if I didn’t at least mention the ladies… and they are really poorly served here. Hattie Durham is set up to be important, but she doesn’t really do anything – she ends her affair with Rayford and then goes off to the UN to work with Carpathia. Real riveting stuff… I have no idea why Chelsea Noble was so keen to play her. Then there’s Chloe Steele, whose entire character in this movie is “mad at dad” until the end when she decides that he’s right, they should convert to Christianity. As I recall from reading the books, Chloe does basically nothing important for the entire series and only really exists to be a love interest for Buck. I expect that this probably stems from LaHaye’s regressive views on women (his wife Beverly founded an anti-feminist womens’ organization, Concerned Women for America, which, among other things, advocates for the subservience of women…). As a result, Chloe isn’t allowed to do anything cool, so she just kind of exists on the sidelines.

When it comes down to it, the overarching message of Left Behind doesn’t come across as “You don’t want this to happen to you!” Rather, when Rayford came home and saw his wife’s clothes and her Bible beside the bed, the message became clear to me: “I told you so”. Perhaps it is a consequence of Cloud Ten making this film directly for the Christian market, but Left Behind feels like it’s jerking off its audience, reassuring them that their beliefs are true and, boy, those sinners sure are going to regret not listening to you when this happens to them! It’s not as nakedly spiteful as, say, the God is Not Dead movies, or is it as smugly hateful as Atlas Shrugged, but there doesn’t seem to be much of an effort made into changing hearts and minds as it is saying “Your beliefs will be vindicated, just wait”.

That is all pretty harsh, and like I said, this movie isn’t all that bad. That said, it’s also not exactly great – it is, after all, an adaptation of Left Behind, so it’s always going to be screwed to some degree. As you can see, other than the really poor production values, most of my issues with the film are related to the shitty books and theology it rests upon, which cannot be entirely ignored, but they also aren’t really issues with the film itself. However, it’s not so intrusive in this film that you can’t mostly ignore it, and I think that there is some enjoyment that can be had here with this premise if you’re able to put up with all the bullshit.

5/10 (A very generous rating, if I do say so.)

Be sure to tune in again soon when we look at the next entry in this series, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force!

Retrospective: Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Welcome back to the Jurassic Park retrospective! In today’s post we’re going to talk about the most recent entry in the franchise to date, 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom! After Jurassic World brought the franchise back to life, could Fallen Kingdom successfully keep the momentum going? Read on to find out…

On the one hand, I like that this is a different sort of poster for the Jurassic Park franchise. It’s action packed and actually shows off our characters for once. But on the other hand, I am so annoyed about the heavy blue filter and the pointless sparks in the foreground. These are such lazy poster-design tropes and already were super cliché by the time this movie released.

Production

Shortly after the huge success of Jurassic World (would anyone have predicted at the time that it would become the 3rd highest-grossing film ever?), Universal pictures announced that a sequel would be forthcoming on June 22, 2018. Colin Trevorrow originally considered coming back to direct the sequel, but Jurassic World made him an in-demand director and he was scooped up to direct Star Wars: Episode IX instead. As a result, he decided to take a step away from the franchise and move into a producer role alongside Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall.

Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly developed and wrote the script for the film, which would bring back Chris Pratt’s Owen and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire from the previous film. It was initially rumoured that Omar Sy, Ty Simpkins and Jake Johnson could be making a return as well, but this did not pan out. There were also rumours that characters from previous Jurassic Park films could return. Trevorrow and Connolly developed the story over an eight-day road trip. They were inspired by the idea of the unpredictability of humans and dinosaurs being forced into co-existing and wanted to further explore the boundaries of genetic engineering in this universe. Trevorrow has stated that he didn’t want to make Fallen Kingdom yet another movie about dinosaurs chasing people around an island and the dangers of messing with science, he wanted to do something different and explore the consequences of the mistakes which had already been made in previous Jurassic Park films, something which would broaden the scope of the franchise.

J. A. Bayona, who had been previously considered to direct Jurassic World, was the favourite to direct Fallen Kingdom, although he had agreed to direct the sequel to World War Z and wasn’t sure if he’d be able to make it work with his schedule. However, Bayona eventually dropped that project and joined onto Fallen Kingdom after reading the script.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard were already signed on at this point and the only other returning character would be B. D. Wong’s Henry Wu. The new cast were filled out by Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Ted Levine, James Cromwell and Toby Jones. Casting also went out for a nine-year-old girl, which went to Isabella Sermon as her film debut. Also worth noting was that Geraldine Chaplin, a Bayona regular, was cast in a role. Finally, it was announced that Jeff Goldblum had been secured for a role in the film, and although he was all over the marketing, it would ultimately be little more than an over-glorified cameo.

Filming began in late Febraury 2017. Befitting a film of this size, the production was massive and used several locations. Much of the film was shot in England, while most of the Isla Nublar footage was filmed in Hawaii, and there was even a scene shot in Las Vegas. Whereas Jurassic World overloaded on CGI, Bayona chose to use animatronic dinosaurs whenever possible. This also extended to the action sequences – the scene where the gyrosphere goes over the cliff and starts sinking was achieved through mostly practical effects, as Bryce Dallas Howard and Justice Smith were sent rolling down a track for the fall and then this was spiced together with sequences in a dive tank where the gyrosphere (and actors inside) were actually submerged. It’s a highlight of the film and the way it was shot no doubt contributed to the excitement.

As Universal dictated, Fallen Kingdom released June 22, 2018. Anyone who thought that Jurassic World‘s enormous success was a fluke were surely silenced as Fallen Kingdom grossed $417.7 million domestically and $890.7 million overseas for a total box office haul of $1.308 billion (just shy of it’s predecessor’s $1.67 billion total).

Plot Synopsis

Sometime after Jurassic World, a team of mercenaries infiltrate Isla Nublar to retrieve skeletal remains of the Indominous rex. A submarine crew retrieve a portion of the rib and send it to the surface, but are soon killed by the Mosasaurus. The ground crew are then attacked by the T-rex, but manage to escape only for one of their men to be killed by the Mosasaur as well before it escapes into the ocean.

The film then cuts to the present, where we discover that the volcano on Isla Nublar has become active and will soon erupt and wipe out the dinosaurs on the island. The U.S. Senate debate what to do about the situation, but Ian Malcolm tells them that they should be allowed to die. The Senate agrees and decide that they will not intervene. Meanwhile, we discover that Claire Dearing has taken command of the Dinosaur Protection Group, which seeks to secure their salvation. She is contacted by Benjamin Lockwood, John Hammond’s former partner who helped bring the dinosaurs to life. Lockwood tells Claire that he plans to relocate the dinosaurs to a new island, but he needs her help in order to reactivate the park’s systems and track them successfully. Knowing that Blue, the last velociraptor, will be impossible to track down in time, she seeks out Owen Grady to try to join her in the rescue. While hesitant, Owen agrees and the pair are flown out alongside fellow DPG employees Franklin (a computer whiz) and Zia (a paleoveteranarian). They meet the head of the rescue team, a mercenary named Ken Wheatley, who takes Claire and Franklin to get the park’s tracking back online. He then leads Owen and Zia out to capture Blue. Owen is quickly able to find her, but Wheatley’s men move in too quickly and she panics, which results in a soldier being killed and Blue being shot. Wheatley turns on Owen, tranquilizing him and forcing Zia to join him to save Blue’s life. Meanwhile, Claire and Franklin are locked inside the tracking station and left for dead as the volcano begins to erupt. They manage to escape after a close call with a Baryonyx and reunite with Owen. The trio escape in a gyrosphere with a stampede of dinosaurs as the island explodes around them, just barely making it by riding off a cliff and swimming to a secluded beach. They manage to find Wheatley’s men and discover that they are loading dinosaurs aboard their ship. The trio sneak aboard the ship as the last dinosaurs left on the island are wiped out by the eruption.

We discover that Lockwood’s aide, Eli Mills, has secretly arranged to have the dinosaurs brought to the mansion to be auctioned off to the criminal underworld. He also needs Blue because Dr. Henry Wu has been developing a new weaponized dinosaur, the Indoraptor and requires Blue’s DNA in order to create the finalized version of the creature. Lockwood’s granddaughter, Maisie, discovers this and tries to warn her grandfather. He doesn’t believe her at first, but when he presents Mills with the accusation, Mills murders him as the dinosaurs and guests begin to arrive. Seeing what is happening, Owen and Claire attempt to stop the auction, but are captured by Wheatley, while Franklin is separated from the pair.

The auction then begins and several dinosaurs are sold and transported away. Using some quick thinking, Owen tricks a stygimoloch into breaking them free and then sets it loose in the auction. During the chaos, Wheatley breaks in and accidentally sets the Indoraptor loose in the building. It kills several people before it begins hunting Owen, Claire and Maisie. They are nearly cornered, until Blue arrives and begins fighting the hybrid dinosaur. Blue ultimately prevails and the Indoraptor is impaled on a fossilized triceratops skull.

However, Claire and Owen reunite with Franklin and Zia and soon discover that a gas leak is killing the last remaining dinosaurs trapped in the basement of the mansion. Claire initially decides to let the animals die, but Maisie releases them anyway – Mills revealed that she was a clone of Lockwood’s deceased daughter, not his actual grandchild, so she believes that she has a kinship with the dinosaurs. In any case, the dinosaurs escape into the wilds of America and Mills is killed by the T-rex in the process. Our heroes escape and contend with the new reality of a Jurassic World where humans and dinosaurs are now forced to coexist.

Review

If nothing else, I love that Fallen Kingdom tries to evolve the Jurassic Park formula. I’ve criticized the previous sequels for always devolving into “running and screaming” as dinosaurs chase the protagonists around for an hour. There’s certainly some of that in Fallen Kingdom, but it shakes-up the formula far more than any previous Jurassic Park film and tries to tackle the “bigger ideas” inherent in the premise of genetically-engineered dinosaurs. J. A. Bayona’s direction is also the best we’ve seen in the franchise since Steven Spielberg left the director’s chair. The film’s opening sequence and the sinking gyrosphere aren’t on par with the legendary T-rex escape or the trailers getting knocked over the cliff in the first two films, but they’re still very well executed, exciting and above-average blockbuster action set pieces. Yeah, Fallen Kingdom shakes up the Jurassic Park franchise in some much-needed ways… but to paraphrase a certain famous mathematician: “Your [studio executives] were so preoccupied with whether they could [make a Jurassic Park franchise], they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Jurassic Park needed to change if it was going to continue, but Fallen Kingdom is evidence that it should have just stayed dead.

The main issue with Fallen Kingdom is that its story is Resident Evil-levels of stupid. Within the first few minutes, we have idiocy like no one checking to see if the Mosasaur was still alive and then it escapes because its enclosure is connected to the freaking ocean! Having Wheatley betray Owen and Zia was also super contrived… like, why did they feel the need to try to murder them in the middle of the mission? Owen’s pissed off but as far as he’s concerned they are all on the same side still (not to mention that one of Wheatley’s men just got freaking mauled to death), having Wheatley try to kill Owen just seems like they wanted to make him an evil asshole. And for that matter, are you telling me that Zia doesn’t try to get Wheatley to bring Owen, Claire and Franklin along with them…? Oh right, then we wouldn’t have a bunch of action sequences instead, silly me! Speaking of which, why the hell are the dinosaurs still trying to eat things while the island is literally blowing up around them!? The stupid baryonyx is even lighting itself on fire trying to get to Claire and Franklin, just cut your losses dude! If there was a white chocolate Reese’s within reach and all I had to do was avoid falling lava to get it, I’d peace out, especially if I already got several drops of lava on me in the process!

Imagine this exchange between Trevorrow and Connelly:

“We need an action sequence on the boat, how can we get Claire and Owen in the T-rex cage?”

“Maybe they need a blood transfusion to save Blue?”

“Perfect.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, their blood isn’t the same…”

“Whatever, just make the vet say that they’re both carnivores with two or three fingers, therefore their blood will be compatible. No one will question it.”

Look, I get it, we need an excuse to get this exciting action sequence and I’m okay with it in theory. The thing is, we don’t need an actual explanation – just imply that you don’t know for sure if it will work, take the blood and leave the exact science up to our imaginations when it turns out it’s fine! Just say that the T-rex is safest to extract from because it’s heavily tranquilized and the several other three-fingered predators aboard the boat are not! Bloody hell! Oh and all this culminates with Blue freaking crying because the filmmakers really need us to like her and can’t figure out how to do that with any subtlety.

Dr. Henry Wu: “What the fuck!?”

Then when we get to the mansion, the stupidity just keeps coming. First of all, Lockwood is apparently a complete idiot. Not only is he somehow unaware that there is live dinosaur research going on in his own home, but he confronts Eli Mills and then tells him to turn himself over to the police! Mills, predictably, goes “lol no” and then kills the old bastard. We then get introduced to the Indoraptor and… hoo boy, this thing doesn’t hold a candle to the Indominus Rex in terms of being an effective villain. For one thing, it takes the “weaponized dinosaurs” idea even further and just goes to show why this idea has always been so goddamn stupid. The Indoraptor is hardcoded to pick targets by pointing a gun with a laser sight at them and then pressing a button to issue a sonic code to attack… so in other words, instead of just shooting the gun you already have pointed at a target, you tell the nearby Indoraptor to attack them instead (and that’s the thing, the Indoraptor has to be close to you for the sonic command to work, so it’s not like you can hide a kilometer away from the target and the raptor either). It’s clearly limited in usefulness and the fact that the Indoraptor starts killing everyone as soon as it can makes this idea even more stupid. Oh, but does the Indoraptor escape through clever guile? No, it escapes through Prometheus-levels of contrived idiocy. Wheatley’s given only two character traits – he’s demanding a bonus from Mills because he’s greedy, and he collects teeth from every dinosaurs because he’s an asshole. So he waltzes into the auction after some of the dinosaurs get loose, tranquilizes the Indoraptor and then immediately walks into the cage to steal its teeth!?! Again, I get that the Indoraptor has to escape for the story to progress and that is totally fine… but holy fuck movie, this is how you unleash your big villain? It doesn’t make the Indoraptor look clever or dangerous, it makes Wheatley look like an utter moron. It is far and away the stupidest moment in any Jurassic Park film.

Oh, and the whole reason half the plot revolves around recapturing Blue is certifiably insane. First of all, the Indoraptor apparently needs a mother to pacify it and because it’s part raptor it can view Blue as that mother… but also they need Blue’s DNA because they need to add that to the Indoraptor because Blue was controllable and the Indoraptor isn’t, despite the fact that they share the same velociraptor DNA… bloody hell, it doesn’t make sense and it’s the sort of thing you can miss because the movie basically drops the whole plotline about halfway through.

Then of course the movie ends with the dinosaurs escaping. The movie directly ties this into the ethical questions that were brought up in the opening of the film, as Claire has to decide whether the dinosaurs should be allowed to die, despite beginning the film trying to save them. She decides that they should die, but then Maisie gives the entire world a middle finger and unleashes them into the wild. I’m actually fine that Maisie is a clone, it’s a sensible and inevitable development in a world where you can clone dinosaurs back to live. The idea is barely explored though and ultimately feels like it was only introduced as an excuse for someone to willingly choose to unleash the dinosaurs on humanity. Hilariously, within ten seconds of being freed the dinosaurs indiscriminately murder three people (sure, these people captured the dinosaurs in the first place, but the dinosaurs don’t know that, they’d have been just as happy to stomp on a newborn baby).

Although maybe then we’d have the Dinosaurs Attack! movie we’ve always deserved. Side-note, I had the complete Dinosaurs Attack! card collection when I was in high school and they were gnarly. I lost them sometime in the last decade, much to my sorrow.

That’s the thing about Fallen Kingdom, it has some legitimately great ideas and the plot beats make sense in isolation, but whenever the film needs to make something happen, it chooses to do so in the stupidest possible way and assumes we won’t notice or care. This even extends to the ending – oh no, dinosaurs are loose in North America! But… think about it for a few seconds and it’s not as bad as it seems. Several species, especially the particularly dangerous ones, don’t have any breeding pairs so at the very worst this problem is going to sort itself out within a decade or two (and that’s making the very huge assumption that the militias or US military aren’t going to do something about a single T-rex going around killing people and livestock; hell, even without getting into anti-material rifles, the real world already has anti-T-rex rounds… I give it a week tops before the T-rex gets mounted above a rich redneck’s mantle).

Again, this isn’t Dinosaurs Attack!, but I wish it was.

Fallen Kingdom is also not helped by its characters, all of which suck. Owen is still the same as he ever was, although they have made him a bit funnier (“If I don’t make it back, remember you’re the one who made me come here” got a legitimate laugh out of me) and toned down his alpha male bullshit somewhat (although they still reintroduce him by having him build his own cabin in the wilderness because he’s a manly man). Claire has had all the sexist overtones of her character shaved away, but she has been turned into a personality-less character. She’s capable, but she rarely does anything and she (like the other characters) has no real arc or development to speak of. Like, sure, she decides to let the dinosaurs die at the end, but it doesn’t come across like she’s learned anything or changed her mind about the dinosaurs, it’s just that the circumstances are now different (rehousing the dinosaurs onto an isolated island is way different than unleashing them into the wilds of America where they will definitely fuck people up). At least Trevorrow and Connelly don’t force in an overt rekindled love subplot, but some sort of arc for the characters would have been nice.

As for the new characters, both Franklin and Zia are insufferable. Franklin’s the obligatory computer guy, but he serves his purpose within the first half hour and then spends the rest of the movie screaming and getting shuffled around uselessly. Zia’s a different sort of annoying. They never confirm it in the film, but she’s clearly a stereotypically coded lesbian, which means the movie has to make her tough and stand-offish… but honestly, it just makes her come across as an asshole. She just feels like corporate, performative, “woke” box-ticking, especially because a deleted scene confirmed that she was indeed a lesbian. Somehow they fuck this up twice-over tough, because deleting it is cowtowing to conservative international film markets and because the scene itself is fucking stupid (nothing says “woke” like having your lesbian character mention out of nowhere that she thinks Chris Pratt is fuckable, holy shit). For further evidence of this, I’m convinced that Trevorrow and Connelly were aware of the backlash Jurassic World had about its sexism, so they made sure to pass the Bechdel test by having Zia and Claire talk to a female senator about the dinosaurs in their introductory scene. Can’t criticize us now, liberals! This is, of course, why the Bechdel test is more of a guideline about sexism in film rather than a rule, because any “wokeness” in Fallen Kingdom is performative at best.

Mills makes for a suitably slimy corporate villain. He’s nothing special, but Rafe Spall makes him eminently hateable, especially when he goes into his bullshit moral equivalency speeches (which, I’m sure, were not meant to come across as bullshit but here we are). As for Maisie… she’s fine, I guess. Again, she doesn’t get any real development and mostly just sneaks around the mansion. The fact that she’s a clone also doesn’t really seem to matter. Like… she’s a little girl either way, she’s grown up like any other child, what difference does it make? I do like the theory that the Indoraptor has human DNA and that it wants Maisie to be its mother. It’s a pretty interesting idea and there’s enough evidence in the film that I’d be willing to bet it was cut very late in post-production.

Let’s be honest, if there’s anything that sets Maisie apart as inhuman it’s that she grew up in an extravagantly wealthy household and therefore deserves the guillotine.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was a depressing experience for me. I hated it when I first saw it in theatres and rewatching it for this retrospective was just tiring. It’s made all the worse by the fact that the direction is the best since Spielberg left and that film tries to take risks and shake-up the formula, things I usually love in long-running franchises like this. Unfortunately, the writing completely tanks it, taking a film with interesting ideas and dumbing them down for the lowest possible common denominator. The longer this series goes on, the more it seems like Jurassic Park should have been a stand-alone story. At this point they’re having to contort the franchise into unrecognizable shapes in order to keep it alive when what should be done is put it out of its misery.

4/10

So where does the franchise go from here? Well, the next movie is slated for 2022 with the title Jurassic World: Dominion. After nuking his Hollywood goodwill on The Book of Henry and losing the Star Wars franchise as a result, Colin Trevorrow is back as director. It sounds like a bunch of actors from the franchise’s history are making returns, but I just can’t muster any excitement for this franchise. It’s the sort of thing I’ll probably continue to watch out of obligation but… like… we already know it’s not going to be good. Oh and Trevorrow and Universal sure suck at keeping their film crews from getting COVID-19, eh?

Retrospective: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Welcome back to the Planet of the Apes retrospective! In today’s post we’re going to be looking at the finale of the Caesar trilogy and (as of now) the latest entry in the franchise, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes! Given the top-tier quality of the previous two films, could Matt Reeves deliver another masterpiece and make the Apes reboot one of the greatest trilogies of all time? Read on to find out…

Caesar is not fucking around.

Production

Even before the release of Dawn, plans were being put in place for the third installment in the reboot trilogy. Impressed by his work on Dawn, Matt Reeves was confirmed to be directing the next film and writing it alongside Mark Bomback once more. Unlike the last two films, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver weren’t involved in the writing of the story or script and instead served as producers on the project. Reeves and Bomback were also given far more time and leeway so that they could maintain the high quality of the reboot trilogy. In fact, while they initially set the release for summer 2016, they pushed the film’s release date back a full year in order to give Reeves enough time to make the film he wanted.

There’s a post-credits stinger at the end of Dawn which implies that Koba survived his fall at the end of the film. Reeves and Bomback briefly flirted with the idea of resurrecting Koba, but thankfully they concluded that there was nothing that he could add to the story by being alive. THANK GOD. Blockbuster films always try to repeat what already worked, but Koba’s story has been told, dragging it out would be an awful idea. It would be like if Pirates of the Carribean brought back Davy Jones or if Star Wars brought back Emperor Palpatine, but what kind of idiot would do that…?

Anyway, here’s a picture of Disney’s mascot for some unspecified reason.

In May 2015 the title of the film was revealed to be “War of the Planet of the Apes“, but was changed to “War for the Planet of the Apes” by the end of the year (which might be why I kept misspelling the title of this film all through my writing of this retrospective). Andy Serkis was, of course, returning as Caesar once more, while Judy Greer, Karin Konoval and Terry Notary would reprise their roles as the apes Cornelia, Maurice and Rocket, respectively. Tony Kebbell would also return as Koba, appearing in visions to haunt Caesar. Woody Harrelson was revealed to have been cast as the film’s antagonist, while Steve Zahn was cast as an ape and Amiah Miller was cast as a young human character.

Once again, filming took place around Vancouver, British Columbia and Weta Digital provided the film’s visual effects. War grossed $146.9 million domestically and $343.8 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $490.7 million. While less than Dawn, it was once again a solid haul for the Apes franchise.

Plot Synopsis

Two years have passed since the end of Dawn. Caesar’s apes and the U.S. military have been engaged in a bloody war. After an attack on an ape outpost is repelled by the apes, the captives are brought before Caesar. Among their ranks is a gorilla named Red, an ape who was loyal to Koba. The humans derogatively refer to these traitor-apes as “donkeys” and use them to help exterminate the other apes. Caesar decides to free the human captives as an olive branch to the Colonel leading the U.S. forces. As the humans are freed, Red escapes, wounding a gorilla named Winter in the process. Shortly thereafter, Blue Eyes and Rocket return to the apes’ encampment and reveal that they have found a new home for the apes across the desert. Winter insists that they need to leave before the Colonel attacks them, but Caesar says that they need time to prepare for the journey.

During the night, the Colonel leads a squad of humans into the apes’ base and executes Cornelia and Blue Eyes, believing him to be Caesar. Caesar is thrown into a rage, but the Colonel escapes before he can be killed. It is also discovered that Winter has gone missing during the raid. Fearing further attacks, the apes begin their journey to their new home, but Caesar decides to strike his own path. He leaves his last son, Cornelius, with Blue Eyes’ wife, Lake, and goes alone to hunt down the Colonel. Rocket, Maurice and Luca follow Caesar and join him on his journey, much to Caesar’s displeasure. On their way to the humans’ camp, they encounter a lone soldier, who Caesar kills when he tries to pull a gun on them. They find the soldier’s young daughter hiding nearby and find that she is mute. They bring her along with them, reasoning that she will die on her own if they do not, and Maurice names her “Nova”.

When the group reaches the humans’ camp, they find that the soldiers are packing up to leave and that the Colonel is already gone. They encounter Winter at the base and discover that he sold them out to the Colonel and that he believes that the humans are going to meet with the rest of the U.S. military to wipe out Caesar’s apes one and for all. When Winter tries to alert the guards, Caesar kills him. The apes then follow the human convoy to try to find their base. Along the way, they find that a group of soldiers are executed and left by the road. One of these humans is still alive and the apes discover that he is mute like Nova.

As they move further north, Caesar loses track of the convoy in the snow and they climb a radio tower to try to get a better vantage point. While they do so, a mysterious figure steals one of their horses. The apes give chase and track him down to a ski resort, where they discover that he is a fellow ape called “Bad Ape”. Bad Ape is the first intelligent ape they have encountered who isn’t a part of Caesar’s group, having been mutated by viral exposure to the Simian Flu. Bad Ape reveals that he knows the location of a nearby military base and, after some convincing, agrees to take them there. Caesar and Luca attempt to scout the base, but are spotted by sentries. The sentries are killed but Luca dies in the struggle. Not wanting any more of his companions to die for his cause, Caesar moves on the base alone, but discovers that the Colonel intercepted the ape tribe as they attempted to escape the forest and has brought them all here. Caesar is captured by Red and forced to start building a wall to protect the base along with the other apes. Caesar tries to inspire an uprising, but the Colonel puts this down violently and begins torturing Caesar in punishment.

Caesar is then brought before the Colonel, who reveals that his forces aren’t joining with the rest of the U.S. military – they’re coming to destroy him. The Colonel reveals that the Simian Flu has mutated and is causing humans to regress and lose their ability to speak. In order to halt the spread, the Colonel has been executing any man who develops the mutation, including his own son. Meanwhile, Rocket, Maurice, Bad Ape and Nova discover a sewer system beneath the base and realize they can use it to enact a rescue. Freezing and dying of exposure, Caesar regains his hope and strength when Nova sneaks into the base and gives him food, water and a doll. Fearing that Nova will be found and captured, Rocket strolls into the base as a decoy and is thrown in with the other apes, who begin enacting their escape plan.

The next morning, the Colonel is surprised to find Caesar still alive. He finds Nova’s doll and takes it with him, curious where Caesar got such a thing. The apes then spend the workday figuring out which tunnels will lead into the apes’ cages. They find that they can free the adult apes through the tunnels, but the children will have to be freed above ground. That night, the apes begin their escape and, once freed, Caesar helps the children out of their cage and into the tunnel. However, Caesar once more turns away from his people and goes after the Colonel just as the U.S. military arrives and battle erupts. He finds that the Colonel has been infected with the mutated Simian Flu through Nova’s doll and, seeing the Colonel in such a pitiful state, Caesar is finally able to overcome his rage, allowing the Colonel to commit suicide rather than kill him himself.

Outside, the battle rages between the two human forces and the fleeing apes are caught in the crossfire. Caesar tries to destroy a fuel tank to clear the way for the apes, but is shot by an arrow. Red sees all of this and finally decides to do the right thing. He kills a soldier who is about to kill Caesar and is killed in retaliation. However, the act gives Caesar time to blow up the fuel tank and annihilate the last of the Colonel’s men in the process. The U.S. military then advance on the base and discover the apes. Before they can attack, an avalanche is triggered. The apes flee into the trees and ride out the avalanche, but the exposed humans are wiped out. The apes then regroup and cross the desert to their new home, a sheltered valley paradise. While the apes celebrate, Caesar reveals to Maurice that he is dying of the arrow wound he sustained. Caesar slips away, content that he has led his people to salvation.

Review

Perhaps it should be unsurprising, but War is a dark turn for the Apes reboot trilogy. There is a persistent grimness throughout the film, which extends beyond the story itself into the film’s muted colour palette. Of course, going grimdark to try to be taken seriously can make your story feel juvenile if not done right, but I’d make the argument that Matt Reeves has crafted the most mature film in the franchise with War. The darkness in this film is less about bad things happening and more about the emotional turmoil which drives Caesar throughout this film. This is somewhat at odds with this film’s marketing and even its title, which promise a climactic showdown between apes and humans similar to Battle for the Planet of the Apes. However, aside from one skirmish in the opening scene and a battle between two human armies which happens mostly off-screen in the finale, War is pointedly uninterested in portraying war as a source of thrills (which is a trap that “war is bad” movies like Saving Private Ryan and Hacksaw Ridge fall into). As fun as it would have been to see this war play out more directly, if we’re being honest what we get in War is far more interesting. Rather, the titular “war” is the one raging within Caesar to determine the course his people will take in the future.

Through Rise and Dawn, Caesar was always an idealistic figure, one who tried to forge the path that would balance what was best for human and ape alike. This outlook set him apart from other apes because he had been raised by them and knew that they weren’t an inherently evil species, whereas Koba had been traumatized by them and viewed them all as a threat. However, when the Colonel kills Caesar’s wife and son after he showed mercy to the Colonel’s men, his idealism is shattered and he is consumed with a desire to lash out in vengeance. Caesar becomes straight-up cold-blooded, gleefully massacring human and ape alike that get in the way of his path to vengeance. He kills Nova’s father in self-defence, but he doesn’t feel any remorse and doesn’t rush to try to talk it out with him. He kills Winter, nominally for trying to alert the guards in the human camp, but it’s obvious that he’s actually doing it because Winter caused his family to be killed. He even starts hallucinating Koba taunting him, reminding him that under Caesar’s own philosophy “Ape must not kill ape”. It becomes obvious that Caesar’s quest for vengeance is fruitless – killing Nova’s father just creates an orphan and his actions are alienating him from his friends and the apes who look to him for guidance. Ultimately though, his ill-guided quest is causing Caesar to lose sight of the bigger picture. This is most clearly demonstrated when a captive Caesar tries to kill the Colonel, who berates him, asking him what he thinks would happen if he succeeded. If Caesar accomplished his goal he would be killed along with all of the apes, but his rage is blinding him from what is actually important to him.

Considering that this film came out during the Trump’s turbulent first year, it’s impossible not to draw parallels between the Colonel’s philosophy and Trumpism (even if Matt Reeves insists that these parallels are unintentional). Like… the Colonel is building a useless wall with the apes as his slave labourers, caging the apes up like an ICE detention facility, and the Colonel develops a nationalistic, fascist cult of personality around his vision of human purity. The Colonel claims to hate the apes because he believes that they will inevitably conquer the world if they aren’t stopped. He also views the speech and cognition-affecting mutation of the Simian Flu to be so dangerous that he killed his own son to prevent it from spreading and “corrupting” his pure humanity. However, for all his bluster about a long-term plan to save humanity, the Colonel has the same short-sighted weakness as Caesar – he is so set in his beliefs that he’ll destroy himself, his men, the rest of the U.S. military and the apes in order to see his ideal of humanity through, expecting divine intervention to see him through in what he calls a “holy war”. Ironically, the Colonel succumbs before his holy war even begins, becoming infected with the mutated virus and is put into such a pathetic state that he has to beg Caesar to kill him. However, Caesar finally overcomes his own short-sighted desires at this moment and relents. However, the Colonel is so set in his convictions that he kills himself rather than become what he would view as “less than human”. As you can see, you could write it off War as a typical “revenge bad” narrative, but I’d argue that it is executed well and at least we get to see exactly why revenge is so destructive and what’s being missed by fixating on it.

Another fascinating aspect of War is dehumanization. The Colonel brands all his soldiers and “donkeys” like cattle, burning their flesh with an “AO” symbol for Alpha and Omega. The soldiers under his leadership are fanatical, excited go to war with the U.S. military to see the Colonel’s will through and are rudderless without his commands. They also dehumanize those infected with the mutated Simian Flu, executing their own comrades who become infected and saying that they’re just beasts. However, Nova shows that those who become infected are still human, capable of compassion, sadness, joy and more than worthy of life – just one that’s different than what the Colonel believes is fundamentally “human”.

The most interesting example of dehumanization in the film though is for characters who aren’t human at all – the “donkeys”. The derisive nickname that these apes have been given is already dehumanizing enough, but the humans treat them as little more than more useful versions of pack mules. The donkeys fear retribution for supporting Koba’s coup, or fear the Colonel so much that they turn to the humans for refuge, aiding in the murder of their fellow apes in order to stay alive. It is reiterated several times throughout the film that this survival is temporary, as the Colonel will surely purge them from his ranks once he has won his war, as there is no place for apes in his vision of the future. In case it wasn’t obvious, this brings some potential racial interpretations of the narrative into play (it is somewhat offensive to suggest that apes would be used to represent blacks, latinos or various other marginalized groups, although the original Apes films did intentionally draw parallels so it’s not without merit). Within this film, donkeys like Winter and Red are viewed as straight-up race traitors, propping up a system which seeks to destroy them (again, pretty prophetic for a film that didn’t intentionally draw parallels to Trumpism). This ties into the theme of short-sightedness that Caesar and the Colonel have, as the donkeys are effectively expediting their own demise for the people that are destroying them. That said, the film avoids the trap of portraying the donkeys as worse than the humans. Obviously the film portrays them as bad for supporting the people killing their own kind and who treat them like garbage, but you get why they do it. Red even gets a whole redemption arc and is sympathetic by the end.

Twentieth Century Fox’s “War for the Planet of the Apes.”

All that said, I don’t believe that War is intended to be a race narrative, although it does have some parallels and borrows some imagery to make its point. Rather, it is intended to be an Exodus allegory. Unlike the Trumpism parallels, this was actually intended by Reeves and Bomback and is even more overt. Caesar is overtly meant to be a Moses figure, from being raised among the humans before leading his own people out of captivity, to intervening when an ape is being whipped, to dying just before the apes reach their literal promised land. There are elements that even feel like they have a biblical grandeur to them, such as the avalanche which buries the human military at the end like it was an act of divine intervention. These biblical parallels seem appropriate for the grandiose conclusion of a trilogy like this, especially since it cements Caesar himself as a prophetic figure whose legacy will carry on through ape society going forward.

War is also buoyed by its characters. Rise and Dawn are often criticized for their boring human leads, but War does away with them almost entirely, only really giving the Colonel and Nova any real prominence. Instead, the apes who have been with Caesar since the beginning are finally given expanded roles (oh my God, you didn’t have to shove a boring human in for us to make an emotional connection!?!). I was giddy when I found out that Rocket and Maurice were going to be part of the film’s main cast, after being disappointed that they were put on the backburner during Dawn (which is particularly egregious for Rocket considering his own son is killed in that film). The ape supporting cast are great. Maurice is such a goddamn sweetheart, always there to lend a wise word and even tells Caesar that he wants to accompany him to make sure that he “makes it back” – both physically and spiritually. Rocket, meanwhile, has grown from the arrogant bully we saw in Rise into Caesar’s most dependable friend, someone who is courageous and defends others selflessly. Of Caesar’s companions, Luca is the most underserved (and hell, was in Dawn but I couldn’t tell you where or when), but at least he gets to display a softer side during a moment of beauty and compassion with Nova before dying moments later. As for the other apes, Bad Ape is certainly the most prominent and adds several moments of much-needed levity to keep things from getting to morose. He also presents some fascinating new developments, being the first intelligent ape to be discovered from outside of Caesar’s group. Apparently the Simian Flu could be transmitted from humans to apes, which caused them to become more intelligent. Inevitably, this means that there are colonies of apes elsewhere in the world just waiting to be discovered. Even beyond the implications of Bad Ape’s existence, the character is a real joy. Steve Zahn is perfect for the role, giving him a strong mischievous personality, but slowly revealing a kind-hearted and truly sad side to the character. Lastly there is Lake, Blue Eyes’ mate who steps up and becomes a leader among the apes when Caesar is on his quest for vengeance. She even saves Caesar’s life with some quick thinking and watches out for Cornelius during the film. I’d say that she is unfortunately undercooked in this film, but there’s enough groundwork laid that I think she’d have a lot of potential in any sequels.

I feel like I’ve said plenty about the Colonel (although I’ll reiterate that Woody Harrelson makes for a great villain, by far the best human antagonist in the reboot trilogy), but I haven’t said much about Nova. For a good chunk of the film, Nova comes across as a burden, a character whose existence only symbolizes how far Caesar has fallen from his ideals. However, as the film goes on she comes to sympathize with her companions and shows that the mutated virus doesn’t make someone less human. When she sneaks into the Colonel’s base and gives Caesar food and water, she takes on an angelic role, restoring a bit of Caesar’s own idealism about peaceful coexistence between humans and apes in the process. She even does an “Apes together strong!” motion, reiterating what I said in Dawn, that the real ideal is “Everyone stronger together!” She’s great, a ray of sunshine in a very dark film.

I also want to note some more elements to this film which are at the top of their game. Andy Serkis puts in the best performance of his career here as Caesar and it’s criminal that he was snubbed during awards season. Reeves’ direction is great once again, ensuring that he will be a sought-after blockbuster director for years to come. Finally, the special effects in this movie are flawless. Dawn had a few shaky moments, but I was actively looking for bad effects in this movie and couldn’t find any. This is likely due to the longer post-production this film was afforded, but the apes look incredible and photo-realistic. Weta really outdid themselves on this film.

All that said, there are a few really annoying issues that I have with War. First of all… goddammit, are we seriously hinging this entire plot on fridging Caesar’s wife and kid? This is especially egregious because Cornelia has been with us since Rise and has done absolutely jack shit (and despite being played by freaking Judy Greer). Similarly, Blue Eyes’ Dawn arc poised him to be a future leader for the apes, so killing him off so early just feels like the character is left underserved. It also makes it really obvious that all of the films in this trilogy were thought up independently, with sequel hooks being used instead of any actual pre-planning. It isn’t a major issue, but fridging is such a lazy, overdone and even offensive trope that it’s disappointing that it was utilized here.

My second issue is that War brings back the overt references to the franchise’s past. It’s not nearly as bad as Rise was, but in Dawn it was a breath of fresh air that they allowed the references to be subtle and organic. On the lighter side of things, we have the Colonel’s “Alpha and Omega” cult of personality, a reference to the Alpha and Omega bomb from the original series films Beneath and Battle. It’s a bit of a strained reference, but at least this one’s a bit creative – instead of just recreating the bomb, this is a more symbolic reference, alluding to the Colonel’s holy war and implying that his movement is destructive enough to doom the entire world. But then on the other side of things… fucking hell, Caesar named his second son Cornelius? Cornelia was already an overt reference to Cornelius, but you had to go and double-down on that exact same reference again? Why? And for that matter why did we have to spend two separate scenes to justify why Maurice would call his human companion “Nova” in reference to Linda Harrison’s character? Does Maurice even know what a nova is, or does he just name people after random car ornaments he is given…? To make matters worse, all these references to Nova and Cornelius have caused confusion amongst some fans who believe that they’re younger versions of their namesakes from the original Planet of the Apes. Well, unless this reboot trilogy is planning on remaking the original film again and moving its timeline up significantly, that is impossible considering that the original film takes place in 3978 (…or possibly 3955). Just… goddammit, give your new characters original names, stop referencing the past for pointless nostalgia!

The final thing which annoys me about War is that the plot begins to strain credulity towards the end. It’s bad enough when Nova just strolls into the military base (which, may I remind you, is preparing for an attack coming any day now) and gives Caesar food and water without anyone noticing. The only way I can justify this is that the Colonel implies that the soldiers may have their children with them and so it wouldn’t be weird to see a random child wandering the base, but we never actually see any so they may not even be at the base at all. On top of that, the avalanche wiping out the entire U.S. military is pretty hard to swallow. Like, sure, it feels like divine intervention, but the fact that the entire military advanced on the base and then managed to get themselves killed to a man in the process is excessively convenient. Even if you could ignore all that, having Caesar dying from a wound he sustained in battle for what must have been a week’s journey across the desert at least, only to have no one notice is ridiculous. Even worse, if they had noticed, someone surely would have been able to treat it and maybe even help him survive, right!? Again, it fits the biblical feel of the story, but it’s overly convenient and feels like it could have been justified better.

Those quibbles aside, I love War. It is definitely my favourite entry in the Apes reboot trilogy and easily cements this as one of the greatest trilogies of all time. For all its darkness, War doesn’t forget to have fun, nor does it revel in nihilism. It ultimately is about hope for a future where people of all kinds can live in harmony together, as Caesar would have wanted.

9/10

So, where does Planet of the Apes go from here? Well, before I get into any official news, I’d just like to give my own ideas for where it could/should go. If there was a direct sequel, I’d like to see Lake’s role expanded, maybe even making her the protagonist. However, I feel like a sequel should be set a hundred or more years in the future, when Caesar’s ideals have already been twisted and humans are being vilified. It’s about time for Apes films to go back to having human characters as the real focal point, especially if the series is aiming to go back to the original. And speaking of which, my ideal, long-term vision for the franchise would be to make an alternate timeline following from the original Planet of the Apes. Back when I was a kid, I imagined that the Apes sequels would deal with Taylor and Nova’s children establishing a new human society and eventually taking back the planet for humanity. I’d like to see this idea play out for real, giving us an alternate timeline where Earth is not destroyed and instead the humans slowly regain their power and fight back against the apes. Given the way that this reboot trilogy has gone, I’d want one sequel where this colony is established and is violently fighting against the apes, only to be driven out in desperation. Then at the end, in a huge twist, have the humans encounter cross the forbidden zone and discover the descendants of Caesar’s ape colony who live side-by-side with humans in peace. After all, Caesar’s living on the west coast, whereas the original Apes is on the east coast, so it would make sense if they are different societies. This would lead to conflict in a sequel since the humans don’t trust the apes and would need time to come to their side, while the apes would struggle to come to the conclusion that they need to come into conflict with other apes due to their divergent ideologies. It would also mean that this trilogy’s message of “Everyone stronger together” would get a chance to actually play out and we could even get a happy ending when this is all said and done.

So those are my pie-in-the-sky ideas for an Apes continuation, but what news have we actually heard so far? Well… remember how I criticized Disney for being a bunch of limp-dick hacks with their franchises earlier? Well… they bought 20th Century Fox and the Apes franchise along with it and have already announced that there are more films on the way which would be set in the same timeline as the reboot trilogy. It has been announced that a new Apes film is in production, directed by Wes Ball of… oh fucking hell, the Maze Runner guy? Well, at least Ball’s film will be following “Caesar’s legacy”, implying that it is indeed going to be set decades after War and will deal with the corruption of Caesar’s ideals. Fingers crossed that he can pull it off and that Disney give this venerable franchise the respect it deserves.

Retrospective: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Welcome back to the Planet of the Apes retrospective! In today’s post we’re going to be looking at 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second entry in the reboot trilogy! Rise provided a fantastic set-up for the Apes franchise to move forward into the future. Would Dawn make good on that promise and deliver a sequel worthy of the series’ venerable legacy? Read on to find out…

Hot damn that is a gorgeous poster. We don’t get nearly enough painted blockbuster posters these days, especially if they aren’t emulating the Drew Struzan style.

Production

One of the many things that Rise did well was provide fertile narrative ground from which sequels could flourish. Director Rupert Wyatt stated his excitement over the directions potential sequels could take, specifically that the relationship between Caesar and Koba would be a natural focus. He stated his desire to have the next film take place around eight years after Rise, giving time for another generation of apes to have been born and raised. Further sequels would then continue the narrative until they could circle back to the original Planet of the Apes. Andy Serkis was secured very early on into production, while Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver returned to work on the screenplay and Wyatt was once again set to direct.

However, by September of 2012 Rupert Wyatt was having doubts about directing the film, feeling that the studio-mandated May 2014 release date wouldn’t give him enough time to create a movie he was happy with. Whatever the case, two weeks later it was announced that Matt Reeves would be taking over the director’s chair. I remember when this was announced being sad that Wyatt was leaving, but being very excited because Reeves had already proven himself as an exciting and competent director with Cloverfield, so I was certain he would be able to deliver a great movie. Reeves brought with him Mark Bomback (one of the writers of Live Free or Die Hard), who did a re-write of Jaffa and Silver’s script.

With Wyatt’s departure, James Franco and Freida Pinto’s characters were written out of the sequel, implied to have died during the apocalyptic simian flu outbreak at the end of Rise. In their place, the main human characters were filled out by Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Gary Oldman was also secured as the leader of the human encampment in a semi-antagonistic role. As for the apes, Terry Notary and Karin Konoval reprised their roles as Rocket and Maurice, respectively. Meanwhile, Koba was recast with Tony Kebbell taking over for Christopher Gordon, and Judy Greer took over for Devyn Dalton as Caesar’s mate, Cornelia. Finally, Nick Thurston was cast as Blue Eyes, Caesar and Cornelia’s son.

Filming began in April 2013 in British Columbia, using locations such as Campbell River and Vancouver Island to simulate the San Francisco redwoods. The next month, production moved to New Orleans for various urban environments used in the film. Like Rise, Dawn depended on computer-generated effects to bring its apes to life. In addition, several other animals in the film were created digitally, including elk, a bear and several horses. Also worth noting is that the film’s soundtrack was composed by Michael Giacchino (composer of several amazing scores, including The Incredibles, Up, Rogue One and Jurassic World) and features several terrible and awesome ape puns in the track titles. In spite of Wyatt’s worries about the film’s scheduling, Dawn‘s release date was changed a few times, eventually settling on July 11, 2014. The film was a huge success, grossing $208.5 million domestically and over $708 million worldwide, making it by far the most successful Apes movie ever.

Plot Synopsis

Ten years have passed since the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The ALZ-113 virus, dubbed the “Simian Flu” has wiped out 99.8% of the global human population. In the meantime, Caesar has established a commune where hundreds of apes live together in harmony. This peace is shattered when one of the apes, Ash, is shot by a human named Carver. Caesar finds Carver’s expedition, led by a man named Malcolm, and orders them to leave. The apes then follow the humans back to their colony in the ruins of San Francisco and warn them not to enter ape territory again or face retribution. However, Malcolm soon returns to ape territory with his expedition team to explain what they want. It turns out that there is a hydroelectric dam within the apes’ territory which Malcolm needs to restart, because the human colony is running dangerously low on fuel. Caesar agrees to let them work, on the condition that the humans’ guns be taken away, reasoning that they are desperate enough that they will fight the apes for access to the dam. Koba, one of Caesar’s trusted lieutenants, is infuriated at this concession and seeks to find evidence of human treachery so that Caesar will go to war. Caesar’s son, Blue Eyes, does not trust the humans either and openly disapproves of his father’s concessions.

The humans and apes begin to grow an uneasy respect for one another, sharing knowledge and helping one another. However, this respect is nearly shattered when it is revealed that Carver has smuggled a gun along with him and threatens Caesar’s sons with it. Malcolm barely manages to be allowed to continue working, having to throw Carver out of the group and have his wife treat Caesar’s wife’s illness in order to stay. However, Koba discovers that the humans in San Francisco have a stockpile of weapons and are preparing for war if Malcolm fails to get the power running soon. When he discovers that Caesar has allowed the humans to stay after they threatened his sons, Koba confronts Caesar and the pair fight. Caesar overcomes his lieutenant, but shows him mercy despite knowing that he has lost Koba’s trust.

Planning treachery, Koba sneaks back into the weapons stockpile, steals a gun, kills two guards and then kills Carver. While he’s doing this, the humans finally repair the dam and get the power running. They celebrate the accomplishment with Caesar and the other apes, but the moment is broken when Koba shoots Caesar and his body tumbles off a ledge into the river. Koba starts a fire and frames Carver for the shooting, rallying the apes to attack the human colony. Malcolm and his family flee and hide from the apes as Koba’s army attack the weapons stockpile. The humans are warned of the attack and a battle ensues, with several apes and humans being killed. However, the apes breach the gates and begin rounding up every human they can find. Blue Eyes and Ash object to Koba’s brutal treatment of the humans, but Koba kills Ash and says that he leads the apes now.

Meanwhile, Malcolm and his family find Caesar alive and head into the city to find shelter. Caesar leads them back to his old home and they take shelter here while Malcolm heads back to the colony to get medicine. He encounters a disillusioned Blue Eyes, who he tells that Caesar is still alive. Realizing that Koba is to blame for the shooting, Blue Eyes begins to lead a rebellion against the apes’ new leader, freeing the humans and apes still loyal to Caesar. Despite his wounds, Caesar goes to confront Koba at the half-built tower where the human colony is. Meanwhile, Malcolm encounters a group of human survivors beneath the tower who reveal that they have established radio contact with soldiers to the north who are on their way to help. They also reveal that they have set C4 around the base of the tower. Malcolm holds them at gunpoint, telling them that Caesar is battling Koba and that he can bring peace again. The survivors don’t listen and instead set off the C4, killing themselves and causing the tower to begin to hobble. Caesar and Koba do battle again, but when the tower begins to collapse Caesar focuses on rescuing wounded apes while Koba pushes them aside to get to Caesar. However, Caesar tackles his former lieutenant and Koba nearly falls off a ledge. He asks Caesar for mercy, but Caesar pushes him off the tower, sending him falling to his death. In the aftermath, Caesar regains control of the apes, but Malcolm warns him that soldiers are on their way to retaliate against them. The pair mourn that their bid for peace has failed and Malcolm escapes with his family while Caesar regretfully prepares his people for war.

Review

Rise was a great way to reboot the Apes franchise, but Dawn takes the ideas from that film and pushes them to a whole new level. It’s been a few years since I last saw this movie and revisiting it in 2020 was a refreshing experience. First of all, seeing the collapse of humanity to the Simian Flu hit extra hard in the middle of the second wave of COVID-19 and made it easier to empathize with the humans. Obviously there was no way they could have known this while making the movie (there are references to H1N1 and bird flu, the closest analogues we had experienced up to that point), but it makes for a far more interesting and relevant reason for society to collapse compared to the implication that nuclear war did it in the original films. Given the rise of populist fascist movements in the past four years, it was also extra-tragic seeing the apes go from a peaceful commune trying to make a better future for humans and apes, to falling under the sway of a vengeful dictator who spoils any chance for peace. The Apes franchise is inherently tragic so this is to be expected, but it makes for an affecting narrative seeing how things could have gone in a far more positive direction, especially since we get about an hour of build-up before all hell breaks loose.

That’s really the main strength of Dawn – it’s writing is superb. On Resident Evil: The Final Chapter was was taking lots of notes, making fun of dumb things and commenting on narrative developments. Dawn‘s notes were comparatively sparse, I made notes about the things I liked and things which caught my attention, but for the most part I just sat back and enjoyed the story. The relationship between Caesar and Koba which Rise hinted at is the beating heart of the film. Best of all, Koba is a legitimate friend and supporter of Caesar at the outset and you can understand the choices and motivations which cause him to turn on his old friend. He views Caesar as a figure of strength who will always put apes first, so when that perception gets questioned he turns on Caesar and lets his hatred drive him mad. His warnings to Caesar are legitimate too – the humans are a threat and it’s almost inevitable that they will come into conflict with the apes eventually. However, Caesar and Malcolm’s idealism and desire for peace manages to win out and makes possible a future where humans and apes are able to live together, not only in peace, but strengthening one another in the process. It shows that the mantra “Apes together strong!” is a limited philosophy, the best outcome is “Everyone stronger together!” It’s a very positive message, especially in 2020, and can be applied to politics, race, sexuality and a variety of other causes. It also shows that intolerance is a cancer which keeps us back from a better future for us all.

The other main relationship in the film is between Caesar and Malcolm. While Malcolm is a bit of a generic, idealistic character whose only personality trait is that he always does the right thing, he ultimately works because of the conflict he inspires within Caesar. Caesar makes shows of strength on several occasions which he undermines almost immediately every time due to Malcolm’s idealism and desperation for a better future. It’s obvious that Caesar is causing his leadership to be called into question from these choices, but Malcolm’s hope is so infectious that he can’t help but give into it. Later on in the film it is implied that this desire to help Malcolm is because Caesar sees the same sort of drive in him that he saw in his father figure, Will Rodman.

I also want to point out the understated, but compelling arc that Blue Eyes goes on throughout Dawn. Early on he finds himself struggling to match up to his father, but having never met humans before, he doesn’t understand why Caesar shows them mercy after so many incidents. As a result, he draws away from his father and starts listening to Koba’s incendiary rhetoric and joins him in the attack on the humans. However, in this battle he watches in horror as apes and humans are slaughtered and begins to realize that his father was right all along. By the end of the film he is poised as a character who has gained a lot of wisdom through hardship and has perhaps the most compelling arc of the whole film. This is particularly impressive when you consider that he barely says (or signs) a word in the film, most of this is conveyed through physical acting and emotional cues.

Unfortunately, the human characters aren’t very compelling in this film. Like I said, Malcolm is a good guy and you definitely like him, but he’s not particularly interesting, nor does he have any real conflict to deal with. He’s by far the best human character, but he’s nowhere near as compelling as Will Rodman or his father from the previous film. His family, played by the talented Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee, are wasted on nobody characters who get very little to do and are effectively written out of the movie in the third act. Gary Oldman’s Dreyfus is similarly wasted on a character who is so unimportant that I didn’t even bother to include him in my plot synopsis. Worst of all though is Carver, who is a complete moron and a writing crutch whenever they want to wring out some conflict. Unlike Rise, at least he’s the only one-dimensional asshole we get in the film, but I will say that they do a good job of justifying why he has to stay in the mix (he’s the only survivor who used to work at the dam and knows how it works). In addition, the film stalls a bit in the third act when Caesar is injured and the plot effectively spins its wheels with Malcolm until Caesar is well enough to fight Koba.

While I’m sad that Ruper Wyatt couldn’t return to follow-up Rise, I’m more than happy with Matt Reeves’ direction in Dawn. In fact, his direction is much more interesting and dynamic than Wyatt’s was. I’m really impressed that Reeves managed to get 20th Century Fox to allow the apes to continue communicating using signing, saving speech for the big emotional moments. This lack of speech also means that Reeves has to use visual language very well in order to get across the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Also, thank God Reeves and Bomback refrain from including any overt references to the original Apes films in Dawn. Sure, Dawn is a very loose remake of Conquest and War and shares some elements with them, but none of it feels forced or unsubtle. I still cringe at the in-your-face references in Rise, so seeing the restraint here was much appreciated.

As one might expect, the CGI apes in this film are once again fantastic. The apes look flawless for most of the film; there are a handful of shots that look a bit uncanny, but it’s not enough to put a blemish on this film’s effects. Unfortunately, the film’s bad special effects are frontloaded during the opening action sequence, when the apes hunt a group of deer and are ambushed by a bear. The deer and bear are all CGI creations and they all look subpar (like, I remember seeing this in theaters and thinking they looked bad at the time). It sets a bad impression but thankfully the effects from there are great.

I loved Rise, but I think that Dawn is even better. It takes the foundation set by its predecessor and capitalizes on it to the fullest, escalating the stakes and exploring the limits of its characters in the process. Blockbuster films rarely even bother to attempt this level of quality, especially when big budget films are often dumbed down as much as possible for international appeal. It stumbles slightly in its third act, but it is yet another fantastic entry in this venerable franchise.

8.5/10

Retrospective: Resident Evil – The Final Chapter (2016)

Welcome back to the Resident Evil retrospective!

…yes, you read that correctly. It’s been more than seven years now since I did my retrospective of the live-action Resident Evil film franchise. However, at that time the final film in the franchise, the aptly-named Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, had not come out yet and so it wasn’t included in the retrospective. I’ve mulled over the idea of doing a “Retrospectives Round-up” for a long time, covering the newest films in franchises that I’ve covered in the past and as we close in on our 300th blog post on IC2S we’re finally getting around to doing it. We’re going to start with Resident Evil today and then over the course of the week we’ll catch up on the new entries in the other retrospective series. Got it? Alright, let’s dive in and see if the Resident Evil franchise could go out on a high note…

This is… actually a pretty cool poster. Colour me surprised, good job Resident Evil marketing team.

Production

After the financial success of Resident Evil: Retribution, it was inevitable that the Resident Evil franchise would continue to shamble on. Early on the producers bandied the idea that there could be two more films in the franchise before it would be rebooted, but by December of 2012 Paul WS Anderson confirmed that the sixth film would be the final one in this continuity. Anderson signed on to direct, committing to the project after he was done work on his historical disaster-epic, Pompeii… and, well, we know how that turned out. Production was continually delayed on this film. Even when it looked like filming was about to begin in August 2014, they had to delay again for another year when it was announced that Milla Jovovich was pregnant with her second daughter.

For the cast, obviously Milla Jovovich returned once again to give Alice her last hurrah. For the other returning cast, Ali Larter reprised her role as Claire Redfield once more, while Shawn Roberts returned as Albert Wesker. Iain Glen was also announced to be returning as Dr. Isaacs, despite being killed off in Extinction. Disappointingly, these are the only characters who make their return. Despite being the grand finale, major characters like Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong and even freaking Becky (the surrogate daughter Alice was shoe-horned into adopting in the previous film) don’t return and are killed unceremoniously off-screen. I’d say it’s a middle-finger to the fans, but then again it would almost be weird if Resident Evil started caring about narrative continuity at this point. In their place, several new characters were introduced, played by Ruby Rose, Eoin Macken, William Levy, Fraser James, Rola and Lee Joon-gi.

Production was finally able to get underway in earnest in July 2015, with filming beginning in South Africa sometime in August or September. Unlike the previous two films, The Final Chapter was shot in 2D and then converted to 3D in post-production. Filming lasted just over three months and was wracked with disaster. Four crew members were injured during filming, the first being Jovovich’s stunt double, Olivia Jackson, who collided with a camera crane that failed to move during a motorcycle stunt. The accident crushed her face and caused half of it to be torn off, severed an artery in her neck, paralyzed her arm, broke several bones and tore five nerves out of her spinal cord (among many other injuries)! It was so bad that they had to put her into a medically-induced coma for two weeks and amputate her paralyzed arm. Then, near the end of filming, crewmember Ricardo Cornelius was freaking crushed to death by a Hummer, holy shit! Anderson, what the fuck is going on on your set!? Even worse, when Jackson sued the production in 2019 it came out that the producers’ insurance for stunt performers was wholly inadequate, not even providing coverage for medical care! Suffice to say, Jackson accused the producers of “elevating financial considerations over safety” and won the lawsuit. Apparently this isn’t new for the Resident Evil franchise, which has seen the hospitalizations of at least fifteen crew members over the years, a shocking number considering that most major franchises are able to get by with zero injuries, let alone fatalities.

If finances were all the producers cared about though, then The Final Chapter did not disappoint. While it grossed only $26.8 million domestically (significantly less than any previous Resident Evil film), its international haul was much higher, resulting in a worldwide total of $312.2 million, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise. Of this total, more than half ($160 million) came from the Chinese box office. Also worth noting is that the film’s budget was only $40 million – adjusting for inflation, this is by far the lowest budget for any live-action Resident Evil film.

Plot Synopsis

Like most of these films, The Final Chapter opens with a voice-over exposition dump by Alice, who reveals that the founder of Umbrella had a daughter named Alicia who was dying of progeria, a disease which caused her to age rapidly. He developed the T-virus to try to save her, but it is soon discovered that it has the unexpected side-effect of creating zombies. When the founder tried to shut down production of the virus, he was stopped by Dr. Isaacs, who had Albert Wesker assassinate the founder and performed a hostile takeover of the company.

Cutting back to the present, we find Alice in the ruins of Washington D.C. The heroes were betrayed by Albert Wesker at the end of Retribution (who saw that coming) and everyone except for Alice was killed. She encounters the Red Queen, who tells Alice that she wants to stop Umbrella but her programming prevents her from doing so directly. Therefore, she needs Alice to act on her behalf, as she estimates that there are only 48 hours left until the last pockets of human resistance are wiped out by the zombie hordes. She tells Alice that the only way to do so is to travel back to the Umbrella Hive in the ruins of Racoon City, where an airborne anti-virus has been developed.

Alice fights her way across the country, killing monsters and Umbrella soldiers on the way, until she is captured by Dr. Isaacs and his convoy of Umbrella tanks which are leading the zombies back to Raccoon City. Alice escapes on an Umbrella motorcycle and then makes it back to Racoon City first, where she encounters Claire Redfield and a band of survivors, including Claire’s new boyfriend, Doc. The group defend against the zombie onslaught, burning the zombie hordes and killing most of the Umbrella soldiers (although a wounded Isaacs manages to escape). The group then decide to break into the Hive to save humanity, dealing with more zombies and defenses as they go.

When they finally make it into the Hive, the Red Queen reveals that Isaacs has been planning on using the T-virus to cleanse humanity and create a new world on Umbrella’s own terms. To that end, the airborne anti-virus will be released once the rest of the human resistance is wiped out and the rich and powerful being kept in cryogenic storage in the Hive will be revived to inherit the Earth. She also warns Alice that Umbrella has an agent among the ranks of her companions.

After losing several team members to traps, Alice sets bombs throughout the facility and confronts the real Dr. Isaacs. It is revealed that the other two Isaacs we have encountered so far (as well as basically every other character who has been miraculously resurrected to this point) were actually clones who thought they were the real thing. It is also revealed that Doc is the traitor as Claire and Alice are captured by Wesker. Isaacs then revives Alicia and reveals that Alice is actually her clone (shocker). Before Isaacs can eliminate them, Alicia fires Wesker, which allows the Red Queen to attack and fatally wound him. Claire executes Doc and Alice chases after Isaacs, stealing the anti-virus from him and seemingly killing him by detonating a grenade in his pocket.

Alice escapes from the Hive and tries to release the anti-virus as the clock ticks down, but Isaacs appears out of nowhere and stops her. However, then the clone Isaacs Alice had fought earlier arrives and, believing himself to be the real Isaacs, kills him before being killed by the zombie hoards. In the confusion, Alice unleashes the anti-virus, which immediately spreads out in a cloud and kills all of the zombies. The bombs in the Hive detonate and kill Wesker, Alicia and the rest of Umbrella. Claire wakes Alice sometime later, who is thanked by the Red Queen by uploading Alicia’s childhood memories into Alice’s brain. She then rides out into the wilds, searching for any remaining pockets of survivors or T-virus holdouts.

Review

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting from The Final Chapter. It’s by far the highest-reviewed entry in the franchise, up there with the original (which is still, somehow, considered one of the best video game movies of all-time despite being crap). I guess I was hoping that it would be a fun but dumb experience, akin to Extinction or Afterlife, moreso than a mind-numbing ordeal like Retribution. Unfortunately, The Final Chapter is much closer to the mold of Retribution than anything else, providing a particularly loud, dumb and unsatisfying conclusion to the franchise.

The first big issue is that The Final Chapter is what it says – it’s the big finale and therefore it needs to feel suitably climactic. Unfortunately, its obvious that the plots of every single Resident Evil movie were made up on the fly, cockteasing us with amazing cliffhangers at the end of each movie, only to completely retcon everything by the time the next one rolls around. The Final Chapter is pretty bad for this. Oh wow, Retribution ends with a huge siege at the White House with a bunch of iconic Resident Evil characters, good and evil, in the mix? Well I hope you didn’t want to see how that goes, because everyone dies off-screen except for Alice (yes, even Becky, whose shoehorned surrogate daughter storyline was the entire point of Retribution, she gets dropped without a single reference to her). With the slate wiped clean again, Anderson sets about making up entirely new plot developments to bring this whole series to a close. Wow, Game of Thrones really took off, let’s make Dr. Isaacs secretly the main villain all along, even though he died! Oh, and let’s reveal this during a big exposition dump at the start of the film, perfect! Can’t forget to make it so that Alice was actually a clone of the Umbrella founders’ daughter… because reasons! Oh and we’ll bring back Claire Redfield as well, but we can’t let her actually do anything, because then Alice won’t be as special!

The Final Chapter also has the unenviable task of trying to plug holes that the previous’ films created (and even this film in some cases). Foremost amongst this is why the hell Umbrella are so stupid that they managed to wipe out their entire consumer base and yet are still operating all this time. The Final Chapter reveals that this was actually always intended, Umbrella has been trying to wipe out humanity so that their chosen few can repopulate the world and have all the resources to themselves. It’s idiotic, but it almost works… until you remember that the first film is all about Umbrella soldiers trying to contain the outbreak and subsequent sequels have Umbrella still trying to create bio-weapons for use in war (not to mention injecting themselves with the T-virus they’re going to wipe out soon), so it’s obvious that they’re just pulling this out of their ass at the last minute. The Final Chapter also reveals that everyone who has died and been resurrected at this point in the story? Secret clones! Considering what has been established in the franchise to this point, it kind of makes sense, but it just feels so much dumber. Around the mid-point of the film Alice tells Claire that Isaacs is alive, to which Claire says “I thought you killed him?” Alice just replies “I thought so too” and the scene moves on. It made me laugh, but that really should have been as far as they went with it, it’s the only explanation that is needed. Revealing that there are clones means that they actually put a bit of thought into this, but it just begs the question of why they would have a bunch of clones running around in the first place. Just go the route of The Fast & The Furious – with dumb fun you don’t have to dwell on the hows and whys.

Iain Glen stars as Dr. Alexander Isaacs in Screen Gems’ RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER.

Like most Resident Evil movies, the characters are also a big Achilles heel for this film. Alice is… Alice. Whatever you thought about her before, you’ll still feel it after this is over. I don’t care about her character at all, and it’s infuriating how everyone else gets kneecapped to make her seem cool, but six movies in it’s undeniable that Milla Jovovich has mastered the art of playing a badass woman, so it’s nice to see her get to ride into the sunset with her signature character. And as much as I love Ali Larter’s Claire Redfield, she gets nothing to work with here, to the point where she could have easily been written out entirely. Iain Glen’s Dr. Isaacs is also completely different in this film, to the point where I’m convinced they only brought him back because of his newfound popularity in Game of Thrones. He is now suddenly a religious fanatic, a trait which this film clubs us over the head every chance they get. He’s an okay villain I guess, but considering that he was a low-key, one-and-done villain in Extinction, he feels far less impactful than if, say, they had made the more over-the-top and slimy Albert Wesker the villain for this finale. As for the rest of the survivors… meh? They’re a bunch of personality-less nobodies. Hell, I was expecting Ruby Rose to get more of a role so when she gets minced early on in the Hive that was one of the few real surprises in the film, but that wasn’t because I had any sort of attachment to her character.

Being a Resident Evil retrospective, I feel duty-bound to point out some of the most ridiculous parts of this movie’s plot that I haven’t gone over already. First of all, the film’s literal ticking clock is ridiculous. The Red Queen tells Alice that she estimates that the last pockets of humanity will be wiped out in 48 hours by the zombies unless the T-virus can be stopped. So Alice releases the anti-virus but it’s at the last second… sooooo, umm, did the Red Queen get it wrong and everyone had died early? Even if she didn’t, that anti-virus is going to take ages to actually reach any of the disparate bastions of humanity, so odds are that it did jack-shit to save anyone outside of Raccoon City. Oh and what few humans we know for sure were alive died infiltrating the Hive and/or got blown up with the Umbrella executives. Good job, Alice! There’s also a whole action sequence which revolves around Umbrella having GI Joe tanks – Alice punches open an easily-reached emergency hatch on the exterior of the tank, which deploys a motorcycle she uses to outrun the Umbrella forces. Then there’s the scene where Ruby Rose gets sucked into a giant fan blade. This is hilarious because we literally just saw that the fan blades have no suction to them, but Wesker reverses their direction and suddenly they’re sucking harder than Superhead? The funniest sequence though is when Alicia and Dr. Isaacs start debating about who owns Umbrella… like, in this case I get that it’s to establish the twist that Alicia can fire Wesker (which begs its own questions about labour laws, but whatever), but it’s the freaking apocalypse, nearly every human has been wiped out, money doesn’t matter anymore, who cares who owns the damn company!? Seriously, it’s another moment which highlights the stupidity of Umbrella more than anything. And lastly, the movie makes a big deal out of including yet another laser hall sequence. This might have been a cool callback to the original film, especially since this takes place in the same location… if we hadn’t had laser hall call-backs in all but one of the subsequent sequels. Here I just sighed and said “Oh my fucking God, another one?”

Okay fine, the story sucks and I don’t care about the characters. That’s to be expected with a Resident Evil film, I’m just here for the action. Unfortunately, that brings me to the next issue with The Final Chapter, for a film which is almost non-stop action sequences, the action is really underwhelming. This is because the way the action is shot and edited is the worst we’ve seen in the franchise since Apocalypse. As much as I hated it, at least Retribution tried to replicate the gorgeous slow-motion action scenes from Afterlife. The Final Chapter instead feels like it’s trying to emulate freakin’ A Good Day to Die Hard of all things, with constant, rapid-fire editing which makes every action sequence incomprehensible, disorienting, annoying garbage. Seriously, I was watching for this and the average shot length in this film can’t be more than a second at most – the action sequences barely hold for half a second and even dialogue scenes cut constantly. It’s supposed to be exciting and fast-paced, but it’s just exhausting. The action is also let down by the fact that the film does nothing to establish geography and therefore you can’t build up any sort of tension (think Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is fighting his way up the convoy – we know where everyone in the convoy is and where the objectives are, so we can build up tension as Indy fights his way through to the Ark). The Cerberus chase is a good example of this – the heroes try to escape into the Hive while being pursued by zombie dogs. This could have been exciting if we knew how far away from the entrance they were, or what their escape corridor looked like, but instead were get a solid minute of incoherent running and shooting as people we don’t give a shit about die unceremoniously.

The only time that the action feels fine in this movie is during the big siege in the second act (yes, The Final Chapter features yet another skyscraper being overrun by zombies). The Final Chapter fires on all cylinders here, managing to get around several of its other missteps and it’s obvious that a hefty chunk of the budget went towards this one action sequence. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but Anderson does a good job of finding ways to add new dangers to the siege which need to be dealt with so that it’s not just a bunch of mindless bam bam pew pews. It probably would have meant more if we gave a shit about any of the survivors, but it’s cool seeing thousands of zombies get immolated at least.

What else can I say? The Final Chapter is yet another dose of Resident Evil, but it is loooong past the series’ stupid-fun days. Like Retribution before it, The Final Chapter is just loud and dull in addition to being stupid. I kept telling myself the whole time “Well… it’s better than Retribution at least… maybe?”, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that The Final Chapter really is the worst Resident Evil movie. It takes everything that makes these movies suck and dials it up, while simultaneously knee-capping the action sequences so that you can’t find anything to enjoy. The fact that someone died and another person was maimed to bring this movie to life just makes it even more sickening to me. Resident Evil is finally dead and thank God for that.

3/10

So… where does the series go from here? Well, a more faithful reboot of the series is already well underway and it was recently announced that the cast include such great young actors as Kaya Scodelario and Robbie Amell, which gives me a lot of hope for this attempt. Hopefully they take a cue from the recent Resident Evil video games and make this film less action more horror. I may cover this film sometime in the future and add it to the retrospective, but we will have to see. Right now I’m just burnt out on this franchise and the prospect of even more zombies is depressing, even if I am cautiously optimistic about this reboot.

Retrospective BONUS: Hannibal (2013-2015)

Welcome back to a very special bonus entry in the Hannibal Lecter retrospective! In today’s post we’re going to be looking at the three seasons of the the TV series Hannibal! I set a precedent way back with The Planet of the Apes franchise that TV series weren’t on the table when I do retrospectives since they add a ton of extra work hours on top of having to watch, research and review however many movies are in that franchise already and, like I’ve said, I don’t get paid for this so I don’t really feel the need to go to that extra effort. However, binging Hannibal on Netflix was the catalyst that led to me doing this retrospective series in the first place, so it felt appropriate to cover it this time.

Also, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to the TV series simply as Hannibal in this article. For the novel or the Ridley Scott film of the same name that we’ve already covered in this retrospective series, I will refer to those as “the novel Hannibal” and Hannibal (2001) respectively as needed.

Here, enjoy some classy promotional art for all three seasons!

PRODUCTION
After Hannibal Rising‘s poor showing at the box office, it was obvious that interest in the character had waned and the franchise went into dormancy. On November 10, 2010, long-time rights-holder of the Hannibal Lecter character Dino de Laurentiis died and the rights passed to his estate and wife, Martha. Meanwhile, Universal had a stake in the character as well, while MGM still retained the rights to the characters in The Silence of the Lambs (specifically Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill). With de Laurentiis’ death, it seems like the franchise began to make some new moves. Katie O’Connell began developing a Hannibal Lecter TV series at NBC (a television subsidiary of the same corporation that owns Universal) in 2011. Bryan Fuller, who was coming off of creating the critically acclaimed series Pushing Daisies was asked to helm the show and produce a pilot script. However, the script was so good that the show was financed and put into full production of a 13-episode season without requiring a pilot episode. Fuller based the series around the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, while he planned to spend the first two or three seasons on the backstory prior to the novels, before moving into the ground covered by the novels and then ending after one more original season.

Perhaps sensing the excitement growing for Fuller’s take on Hannibal Lecter, only a couple months after Hannibal went into production, Lifetime announced that they were going to produce their own series revolving around Clarice Starling (MGM was producing this series). However, the show never entered full production and was shelved. Fuller had hoped to secure the rights to The Silence of the Lambs characters if they ever reached that point in the show, so it’s probably for the best that it didn’t move forward.

Hugh Dancy was the first actor cast, playing Will Graham. Mads Mikkelsen (probably best known at the time as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) was cast next as Hannibal Lecter. Rounding out the main cast was Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford. Fishburne was just coming off of a tenure on CSI, where he had replaced Manhunter-lead William Petersen’s character. Several other supporting characters were cast thereafter, including Caroline Dhavernas as Alana Bloom, Hettienne Park as Beverly Katz, Lara Jean Chorostecki as Freddie Lounds, Kacey Rohl as Abigail Hobbs, Raúl Esparza as Frederick Chilton and Gillian Anderson as Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal’s therapist. Anderson, you may remember, was one of the actresses on the shortlist to play the recast Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), so it was exciting to finally see her get a role in this franchise.

The first season was critically acclaimed and was nominated for several awards, winning (among others) Best Network Television Series and Best Actor on Television at the Saturn Awards in 2014. However, it didn’t do very well in its viewer ratings, likely due to the fact that NBC kept putting it in terrible time slots that kept it from growing an audience. After some apprehension, especially given the show’s considerable budget, NBC reviewed the series for another 13-episode season. For the second season, the supporting cast was expanded by the likes of Cynthia Nixon (of Sex and the City fame) as Kade Prurnell, Katharine Isabelle (the lovely Canadian scream queen of Ginger Snaps fame) as Margot Verger and Michael Pitt as Mason Verger. In addition, Fuller tried to secure freaking David Bowie to play Hannibal’s uncle Robert, but Bowie was unavailable and so the part was scrapped from the story. Unfortunately, similar viewer ratings-issues plagued the second season of Hannibal – the poor ratings and gore meant that they wouldn’t give it a prime time slot, but the time slot that they put it into guaranteed that it wouldn’t foster a wide enough audience. Furthermore, the fact that it was a network TV show ran counter to the series’ insanely violent content and some even speculated that the show would fare better on a cable network where such extreme content was expected. That said, the show’s critical reception was even greater than it had been previously and the show was nominated for even more awards, once again winning Best Network Television Series and Best Actor on Television at the Saturn Awards in 2015, as well as winning Best Supporting Actor on Television this time. This might be why NBC once again renewed the series for a third season.

For the third season of the show, Bryan Fuller dived right into adapting and remixing the books for television. The first half of the season adapts the novel Hannibal, while also mixing in elements from Hannibal Rising. The second half then adapts the events of Red Dragon. Michael Pitt suddenly decided to leave the cast and was replaced by Joe Anderson. Several new supporting cast members were added, including Fortunato Cerlino as Rinaldo Pazzi, Tao Okamoto as Chiyoh (a handmaid of Lady Murasaki), Richard Armatage (Thorin Oakenshield himself!) as Francis Dolarhyde, Rutina Wesley as Reba McClane and Nina Arianda as Molly Graham. However, the ratings still didn’t pick up and even before season three had finished airing, NBC announced that they were cancelling the series. Despite this sad news, the third season was just as acclaimed as ever, being nominated for (and winning) several more awards as fans mourned its cancellation. Since then, there were talks that Amazon or Netflix may pick up the series for renewal, but nothing has materialized…

PLOT SYNOPSIS
In the first season of the show, Will Graham is teaching at the FBI when Jack Crawford convinces him to come back into the field to help lend his talents to the hunt for the serial killer known as the Minnesota Shrike. We discover that Graham has a talent for empathy, being able to look at a crime scene and intuit the killer’s motivations and design. This takes a toll on him mentally though and Crawford asks Hannibal Lecter to monitor Will to ensure that he doesn’t harm himself. During the hunt for the Shrike, Lecter deduces the identity of the killer, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and warns him that the FBI are coming. When they arrive, Graham is forced to kill Hobbs when he tries to cut his daughter Abigail’s throat. Graham and Lecter begin to care for Abigail while continuing to solve crimes for the FBI. During the course of the season, a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper begins killing again and the hunt for this killer gets underway. At one point, it is believed that a former surgeon and psychiatric patient named Abel Gideon is the Chesapeake Ripper, but it is discovered that this is a delusion implanted by Frederick Chilton in an attempt to gain notoriety. In retribution, Gideon escapes, goes on a murder spree and mutilates Chilton, removing several of his internal organs before he is apprehended by Graham. During this time, Abigail is induced to murder a man who had been harassing her, which Hannibal helps her to cover-up. Graham’s mental state deteriorates more and more as the season progresses and eventually we come to discover that Hannibal has been accelerating this decline, subjecting him to experimental treatments and lying about his diagnoses. However, Graham begins to realize that there is a greater design at work and that several of the recent murders they’ve been tracking have had a pattern to them. Graham has a hallucination and believes that he has killed Abigail, when in reality Hannibal corners her and whisks her away. Graham is arrested for Abigail’s murder, but escapes. Realizing that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper and has been manipulating him all this time, Graham tries to kill him but is shot and put into psychiatric care by Jack Crawford.

In the second season, Kade Prurnell is investigating Jack Crawford for misconduct in allowing Will Graham to have a mental breakdown on his watch. Meanwhile, Hannibal begins taking Graham’s place as an FBI profiler in the field, but uses it as an opportunity to commit more murders. Graham’s case goes to trial, but someone begins murdering the bailiff and the judge in a style similar to the murders Will is accused of, in order to try to save Graham from trial. Fellow FBI agent Beverly Katz begins going to Graham for insight into the murders and decides to investigate Hannibal. This ends in her death as Beverly’s evicerated body is found on display afterwards. Seeking revenge, Graham learns that an orderly at the psychiatric hospital is responsible for the death of the bailiff. The orderly believes that Graham is responsible for the crimes he is accused of and considers himself a big fan. Will uses his devotion to try to get him to kill Hannibal, but the attempt is foiled by Jack Crawford. Soon after, Jack Crawford traces clues from the Chesapeake Ripper and finds a trainee of his who had gone missing years before, Miriam Lass, still alive and held captive by the Ripper. With no evidence held against him, Will Graham is released from custody and attempts to find a way to prove his allegations about Hannibal. However, due to hypnotherapy, Miriam Lass believes that Frederick Chilton is the Chesapeake Ripper and, in a fit of panic, shoots him in the face. He survives, but is arrested for the Ripper’s crimes.

Following this, Graham goes back to work at the FBI and decides to become Hannibal’s patient again, although now Hannibal nudges Graham towards committing murder with him. Hannibal sends one of his former patients to kill Will in retribution for Graham’s earlier attempted murder, but Graham kills and mutilates him, saying that they’re even now and showing that he is willing to play Hannibal’s game now. Shortly thereafter, Freddie Lounds is investigating Will Graham when she is discovered and then her flaming body is found afterwards, presumably murdered by Graham. Meanwhile, Hannibal is trying to get one of his other patients, Margot Verger, to kill her abusive brother, Mason. Instead, she sleeps with Will Graham in order to get pregnant and be able to birth an heir to the Verger family fortune. When Hannibal informs Mason of this, he has his sister’s baby aborted and sterilizes her. Will flies into a rage and is tempted to kill Mason, but instead warns him that Hannibal is playing them all in an attempt to get Verger to kill Hannibal. We then discover that Will has been working with Jack Crawford all along, that Freddie Lounds faked her death to provide cover and that they have secured testimony from Hannibal’s therapist, Bedelia Du Maurier – all they need now is to get concrete evidence of Hannibal attempting to commit murder, since thus far he has only been caught using manipulation. Verger kidnaps Hannibal and attempts to feed him to his pigs. Will hopes that this will be his chance to get evidence, but when he frees Hannibal he gets knocked out by Verger’s men and Hannibal escapes with Mason. He drugs Mason and convinces him to cut off his own face and feed it to Will’s dogs before breaking his neck. Sensing the FBI closing in, Hannibal suggests that it’s time for he and Graham to run away together. They plan to murder Jack Crawford and then run, while Will simultaneously plans with Crawford to use the opportunity to arrest Hannibal. The sting moves forward sooner than planned though, as Prurnell becomes aware of the plan and tries to stop it and Graham warns Lecter in advance. Jack confronts Hannibal and is nearly killed when Alana Bloom arrives and draws Hannibal’s attention away. She is shocked to find Abigail Hobbs upstairs, who then pushes Alana out the window onto the concrete below. Will then arrives and is stabbed and nearly gutted by a wounded and betrayed Hannibal, who then cuts Abigail’s throat. The entire main cast lies bleeding out as the episode ends with Hannibal escaping to Europe with Bedelia Du Maurier.

The third season picks up with Hannibal and Bedelia living together in Italy. Hannibal has assumed the identity of a Dr. Fell and is attempting to become a curator at a local museum, murdering his way up to promotion as Bedelia grows increasingly erratic with his brazenness. We soon discover that Will, Jack and Alana all survived their encounter with Hannibal at the end of the last season and are all hunting down Hannibal with a vengeance (Abigail succumbed to her throat slash and bled out). In Will and Jack’s case, both are following clues which lead them to Italy directly, whereas Alana joins forces with Mason Verger and helps him to put out a bounty to capture Lecter. An Italian detective, Rinaldo Pazzi, is on Hannibal’s trail as well. Will travels to Hannibal’s childhood home and meets Chiyo, a handmaiden of Hannibal’s aunt. For years she has been keeping a man prisoner in the basement for Hannibal, who he claims ate his sister Mischa. She refuses to kill him, believing it better to keep him alive. Will frees the man and Chiyo kills him in self-defense. Realizing that he was kept prisoner all along because Hannibal wanted to test if she was capable of killing him, Chiyo agrees to help Will find Hannibal, but soon doubts his intentions and throws him from a train on the way to Italy. Meanwhile, Pazzi contacts Verger and decides to collect the bounty on Hannibal’s head, but he is killed by Hannibal when he attempts to confront him. Jack and Will close in on the rogue Hannibal, apprehending Bedelia, who attempts to convince them that she has had a mental breakdown and no longer knows her true identity. When Will finally finds Hannibal, he tries to kill him but is shot by Chiyo instead. Will and Jack are then tied up by Hannibal, who attempts to cut open Will’s skull with a saw, but is thwarted when Verger’s men find the group and whisk Will and Hannibal away to his estate. Verger reveals that he plans to eat Hannibal and transplant Will’s face onto his in retribution for his own mutilation. However, Mason’s plan begins to unravel as Alana and Margot begin to make their own plans with Will and Hannibal, arranging for Hannibal to escape and take the blame for Verger’s murder. Hannibal then kills all Verger’s men, frees Will, and secures a sample of Mason’s semen for Margot so that Alana can serve as a surrogate mother, thereby allowing Margot to have a “suitable male heir” who can inherit the family fortune. Their plan complete, Margot and Alana are then able to kill the helpless Mason. Meanwhile, Hannibal takes Will back to his home and they agree to part ways. However, when the FBI arrives, they are shocked when Hannibal surrenders to them so that Graham will always know where to find Hannibal if he needs him.

The second half of the season then time skips three years. Jack Crawford once again recruits Will Graham, who has since married, to help him find the serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy. Graham is reluctant to get sucked back in once more but agrees to help. During the investigation, he finds that he needs to speak with Hannibal once more to get further insight into the case. Sometime later, Hannibal is contacted by the Tooth Fairy (Francis Dolarhyde), who is a big fan of Hannibal’s, and who tells him that he is becoming the “great red dragon” with his killing. Dolarhyde strikes up a relationship with blind co-worker Reba McClane, but when the relationship turns physical his hallucinations tell him that she is to be his next victim. In desperation, he eats the original copy of William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun but is nearly captured by Graham who had gone to view the painting as well. When the voices aren’t silenced, Hannibal suggests to Dolarhyde that he kill Will Graham’s family instead. Dolarhyde agrees and breaks into their home, nearly Molly Graham and her son, but they barely manage to escape the killer and get into FBI custody. Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom realize that Hannibal has been corresponding with Dolarhyde and try to get him to get information on the killer the next time he calls Hannibal, but during their next conversation Lecter warns Dolarhyde that they are being eavesdropped on and their conversation ends. With this avenue cut off, Will and Crawford attempt to draw out Dolarhyde by staging an unflattering interview about him with Frederick Chilton. This works, but instead of going after Graham, Dolarhyde captures Chilton and explains his motives to him before biting off his lips and then immolating Chilton. Chilton miraculously survives and accuses Graham of setting him up intentionally. Knowing that the dragon will come for Reba soon, Dolarhyde reveals his alter ego to her and then stages suicide in order to escape. He uses this opportunity to confront Graham and demands that he be able to see Hannibal. The FBI realizes that the body they have isn’t Dolarhyde and once again tries to figure out a way to draw him out. Graham suggests that they stage Hannibal’s escape in order to accomplish this. However, the attempt is thwarted when Dolarhyde attacks their convoy and Hannibal and Graham escape for real. They flee to a cliff-side house where Hannibal had previously held victims captive and are confronted by Dolarhyde. Dolarhyde severely wounds the pair, but they manage to overpower him and stab him to death. Hannibal and Graham embrace and then fall over the cliff-side together.


REVIEW
There are a lot of things to talk about with Hannibal, so we’ll start with the first thing that really struck me about this series: holy shit it is gory! It’s wild just how much Bryan Fuller was able to get away with for a network TV series, because the level of gore is beyond anything in the movies and even gets close to The Walking Dead levels of violence. Like, we’re talking a totem pole made of dead, dismembered bodies, a pair of bodies whose back skin has been cut off and turned into wings, a guy being given a Glasgow smile, a guy having his tongue pulled through his neck, disembowelling… and that’s just the first season! Subsequent seasons have such highlights as Mason Verger cutting his face off and feeding it to Will’s dogs (something so fucked up that even the notoriously twisted Hannibal (2001) shied away from showing it), a guy’s dismembered body being broken to fit onto the skeleton of a cave bear, and a guy having his lips bit off and body immolated. God forbid they show a nipple though! Seriously though, the only reason I think that they managed to get away with any of this is because they rarely show the act itself, just the aftermath, and a judicious amount of creative lightning. Hannibal really likes to revel in its gore so you should be aware of that going in – it’s not for the squeamish.

The next thing that will really strike you about Hannibal is the production quality and cinematography. Nearly every shot in Hannibal is beautiful, easily outstripping all previous Hannibal Lecter films in terms of pure aesthetic appeal. It’s not just for the sake of style though, the abstract and symbolic imagery is often used as a way to show us a characters’ psychoses. The most obvious example of this is Will Graham’s frequent hallucinations of a pitch-black man with antlers, representing his minds-eye view of the killer who is trying to elude him. Similarly, Francis Dolarhyde’s hallucinations are is also literally portrayed, showing him painfully growing a tail or literally becoming the Great Red Dragon of Blake’s painting as his delusion grips him more and more. While some may decry the lack of subtlety, portraying the characters’ minds in such a direct way on screen is not only effective, but it helps make for some compelling and unforgettable imagery as well.

Of course, we wouldn’t get nearly as much of this on-screen psychosis if Will Graham wasn’t our lead character. Luckily, Hugh Dancy’s portrayal of the character is by far the most interesting one we’ve gotten yet. In previous incarnations of the character, it didn’t feel like there was all that much to his empathetic talent – he was apparently able to get into the mind of a killer to solve their crimes, but ultimately it just felt like he was smart and noticed a little clue which led to the breakthrough to solve the case; empathy had very little to do with it. In Hannibal though, Will Graham’s empathy is practically a super power. We get a cool sequence every time he does it where he looks at the clues at the crime scene and then lives out what happens. Through this you actually get a sense that he’s doing something no one else could do, while simultaneously being able to understand why it would take such a hefty mental toll on him to do so. Will looks like he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown for half the series, even before Hannibal starts actively manipulating and accelerating that breakdown. Manhunter and Red Dragon talked big about how being able to think like a killer was treated like some sort of moral equivalence, but I never understood this argument – isn’t acting it out the issue, rather than being able to conceive of it? Hannibal, however, does a better job of showing that Will Graham is on the verge of going off the deep end and then some. No one knows how far Will will go over the line or where his allegiances lie, not even Will himself, so in the second half of season two you seriously believe that he would start indulging in his murderous side with Hannibal.

I’ve seen many people declare that Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter is the best portrayal of the character and… well, if we ignored Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon then Hopkins might be close, but taking those two moustache-twirling portrayals into account I’m inclined to agree. Bryan Fuller and Mads Mikkelsen have described this incarnation of Hannibal as him being a personification of Lucifer, and it’s such a perfect way to describe this character. This version of Hannibal is still the refined, smart, high-class figure we know, but his evil is far more hands-off – he prefers to toy with his victims without them even knowing it, getting into their heads, tempting them, creating chaos when it interests him just to see what will happen. Since most of the characters don’t even realize that Hannibal is a serial killer for half of the series, this just makes him even more sinister and straight-up evil compared to previous incarnations. Hopkins’ Lecter was evil, sure, but they always tried to portray him as a killer with a moral compass. Mikkelsen’s Lecter is just pure evil though, treating everyone around him like playthings and holding their lives in his hands. Perhaps my favourite example is when he presides over Jack Crawford’s wife, Phyllis, as she attempts to commit suicide. After she has gone unconscious, he flips a coin to decide whether to save her life or not. It’s such a cold and emotionless response to such a charged action that it’s truly chilling that he doesn’t care about what he’s doing. Throughout the entire first season, Hannibal breaks Will’s mind, making him believe that he’s gone insane and murdered people, and when Hannibal is found out he only says that he was “curious about what would happen”. Hannibal then holds a lopsided amount of power and influence over Will for the rest of the series, causing Will to have a twisted sort of dependency on Hannibal. It makes for a super toxic relationship, one that is very uncomfortable to watch unfold (which infuriates me that so many people ship them and ignore Hannibal’s wildly abusive behaviour).

Really, most of the characters in Hannibal are portrayed at their best in this franchise, thanks largely due to the writing, the stellar cast and by virtue of being in a TV series which means more time for character growth. Laurence Fishburne is a great Jack Crawford. Fishburne could just coast by on his standard authority figure shtick (a la Mission: Impossible III, CSI, etc), but he imbues Crawford with additional depth and emotion. We actually get to really like and understand the character as we see him grapple with his wife’s imminent death, his guilt over pushing Will Graham to his limits and his sense of doom as he realizes that his close friend Hannibal has been betraying him all this time. I really like Scott Glenn’s portrayal of the character in The Silence of the Lambs, but Fishburne gets a lot more to work with in the show and makes for a much more interesting character. Mason Verger is also a bit more interesting in the show than he is in Hannibal (2001), since the show includes his abusive relationship with his sister, Margot, and expounds on the character’s obsession with eugenics and passing on his seed. He makes for a truly despicable villain, although I found Michael Pitt’s performance in season two far more interesting than Joe Anderson’s in season three. Pitt’s Mason is sinister, eccentric and arrogant, akin to a more expanded-upon version of Gary Oldman’s Mason, whereas Anderson’s Mason comes across more like a full-on angry bad guy the whole time. Perhaps my favourite performance in the entire show though is Raúl Esparza’s Frederick Chilton. Initially he just comes across as he does in the previous films – an arrogant, amoral, greasy asshole who gets what’s coming to him. However, as the show goes on you feel more and more sorry for him, in part due to Raúl Esparza’s fantastic performance. Like, maybe he deserved to get disembowelled for screwing with his patient’s mind, but I felt so sorry for him when Hannibal frames him for murder and then gets him shot in the face (which, we later find out, leaves him disfigured and blinded). As if that wasn’t bad enough, in season three he puts in a hell of a performance when Dolarhyde captures him – the terror that Esparza conveys during this scene makes it perhaps my favourite scene in the entire series. As if that wasn’t enough, he then gets his lips bit off and set on fire, leaving him horribly mutilated – plus it’s implied that Will set him up for this. Goddamn, I kind of just wish that they’d let him die, or at least make him the next season’s villain to let him get some revenge or something. Even smaller roles, like Freddie Lounds, get more depth to them in this show. Whereas previous incarnations just had Lounds as a sleazy, one-note journalist, this incarnation gives her a bit more depth. She’s ultimately concerned about getting the truth out there at all costs, even if it crosses ethical boundaries, which is far more intriguing than “wants money”.

The writing on the show tends to be strong as well, making for really engaging television. While most of the first season starts out as a CSI-style crime-of-the-week format, it really starts to hit its stride when the plot begins to revolve around the twisted relationship between Hannibal and Will Graham. Even these crime-of-the-week style episodes tend to have some great writing and themes that help justify their existence – for example, revelations during an episode revolving around a killer who is afraid of dying of cancer helps Jack Crawford to realize that his wife has cancer as well, while a later episode revolving around a killer who euthanizes victims as a “mercy” ties into Phyllis’ attempted suicide in the face of a drawn-out death. The second season doesn’t just rehash the first season’s formula, rather it turns it on its head and then goes completely in another direction. Season two starts with Will institutionalized and while I expected that it would be more of the same, but with Hannibal taking Will’s role in the FBI, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Season two instead focuses on Will’s (mis)trial before eventually bringing his murderous tutelage and attempt to entrap Hannibal to the forefront, making for some really gripping drama before ending in a Shakespearean-style bloodbath. The finale of season two has to be one of the most intense cliffhangers I’ve ever seen for a show and thank God they got the chance to follow it up or there would have been riots from fans. Season three continues to shake up the status quo, transplanting the series to Italy for several episodes, scattering its cast to the wind and adapting Hannibal and Red Dragon too for good measure. I definitely prefer the slow-building tension of Pazzi’s downfall in Hannibal (2001), but otherwise Hannibal‘s adaptation of the story cuts out a lot of the fat and boils down the story to its core – Hannibal’s on the run in Italy and Mason Verger’s trying to have him killed. It’s also rather interesting that they adapted this story out of continuity with the novel timeline, but that’s fine by me, I don’t understand why Mason Verger would wait decades to get his revenge on Hannibal Lecter anyway.

As for the Red Dragon half of season three… holy crap, it is the best (although not the most faithful) adaptation of the novel we’ve gotten by far. Richard Armitage is incredible as Francis Dolarhyde, effectively demonstrating this character’s overwhelming menace and making him a legitimately scary antagonist. He’s still sympathetic, like Ralph Fiennes’ rendition, but comes across as far more dangerous. His love interest, Rutina Welsey’s Reba McClane, is also really solid. While I don’t think she makes quite as much of an impression as Emily Watson’s adorably horny take on the character, Rutina is still fantastic in the role and is a big reason why we feel as much sympathy for Dolarhyde as we do. Dolarhyde and McClane dominate a good chunk of season three, but of course Will and Hannibal both get their own unique twists on the story, given that this is both an adaptation and a pseudo-sequel at the same time. In Manhunter (especially) and Red Dragon, Will is very much a family man at heart. Here, Will’s marriage is clearly an escape for him, a way to ignore his trauma, murderous temptations and his fascination with Hannibal Lecter. Meanwhile, Hannibal’s role gets beefed up, naturally. However, it is far better integrated into the plot than it was in Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon. Here, one can understand why Dolarhyde would be fanboying over Hannibal and, given all we know on this take of Lecter, we can understand why he would be toying with the killer and trying to drive Will over the edge. This all culminates in a totally original conclusion where Hannibal is used to draw out Dolarhyde, which results in he and Will escaping together and taking down Dolarhyde together. While a part of me wishes that they could have just stuck with the book’s ending, since this is a semi-sequel as well as an adaptation it makes sense that they would have to make the ending a bit more momentous, and in that regard they succeed.

As much as I like basically everything on this show, there are some aspects of the writing that bother me. First of all, maybe it’s due to the nature of being a TV serial, but the plot can get really ridiculous and contrived at times. Like, in the first season alone you’ve got like a dozen serial killers all operating in the vicinity of Baltimore at once? I get that it’s a TV show about cops and serial killers and therefore you need some killers for them to hunt, but the sheer volume of them that happen to be in each others’ circles just becomes silly upon reflection as the show goes on. There’s also the fact that Will straight-up admits to hiring a guy to get Hannibal killed, but then a couple episodes later he’s released from custody because they can’t find any evidence that he was involved in a different set of murders. Like… can’t they just keep him imprisoned for the attempted murder they know he committed? Or how about when Will dismembers and displays a body in public, ostensibly to maintain his cover as a burgeoning killer with Hannibal? You’re telling me that the FBI are okay with this, that they can just ignore that kind of action? Or how about Hannibal sawing Will’s head open, which gets interrupted by Verger’s men and then immediately forgotten and forgiven? As the series goes on, all these little things just add up and make nearly every single character on the show seem terrible at their jobs.

My other issue with the writing is that the female characters are almost entirely shafted by the show. Dr. Alana Bloom is by far the worst victim of this. In season one she is effectively Will’s love interest, guardian angel and moral compass, but doesn’t get a lot to do. In the second season, she then shifts to being Hannibal’s love interest, in part because she’s so distressed about what happened to Will, until she gets pushed out a window and left for dead. In season three she just goes off the rails, joining Mason Verger for revenge against Hannibal before falling in love with Margot Verger with zero set-up, then presiding over the institution that Hannibal is being kept in before just petering out of the story. For one of the headline characters on the show, the writers clearly have no idea what to do with Alana Bloom, just forcing her into where ever the plot can use her at any given time. It’s so bad that I effectively excised her role from my plot synopsis – she’s that inconsequential to the plot that she could be cut entirely. I also felt like Margot Verger wasn’t nearly as compelling as she should have been. She’s introduced as an abuse victim and then very suddenly becomes a love interest for Will, blatantly using him to get herself pregnant. When Mason finds out, she gets subjected to one of the most awful sequences in the show, where Mason has her child aborted and womb removed to prevent her from being able to conceive another. It’s fucking awful and while Margot does ultimately get her revenge, she spends the rest of season two and half of season three just operating as Mason’s lackey while she occasionally plots how to defeat him. She’s got some potentially strong material to work with but I feel like the show just doesn’t pay Margot her due in order to make it land. Beverly Katz also gets shafted in the second season. I really liked her character, easily being the most interesting member of the FBI support team and forming a close friendship with Will. However, she is captured and killed by Hannibal early in the second season… and then is basically forgotten after that. As Will’s complicated relationship with Hannibal deepens throughout the second and third season, it’s like the fact that he murdered her, mutilated her body, and then put it on display is completely forgotten and forgiven. Bedelia Du Maurier also gets screwed by the end of the third season. Her character is electrifying, managing to stay toe-to-toe with Hannibal in the first couple seasons, but by the third she has become increasingly erratic from their time spent together, to the point that she loses her mind and literally serves herself up to Hannibal. It’s an unfortunate fate for a character who had been so cunning and insightful up to that point. And what of Abigail Hobbs? She’s a major player in the first season, becoming Hannibal and Will’s surrogate daughter, but she gets whisked away by Hannibal and disappears for nearly the entirety of the second season, as everyone believes she is dead. Then, when she does show up, she’s lost her mind and is quickly killed by Hannibal in a jealous rage… like, why even bother to bring her back if you’re just going to kill her again for real? It’s such a shitty fate for another legitimately interesting character. These aren’t even all of the examples of treating female characters as afterthoughts in the show, just the most prominent, but they irk me all the same.

Nitpicks aside, Hannibal makes for great television. Everyone is giving it their all and they managed to put out a fantastic series that never really got the success it was due. I’d like to see what Bryan Fuller and company could have done with The Silence of the Lambs and onward, but if the series never gets picked up again, I can say confidently that it ended on a high note.

8/10

AFTERTHOUGHTS
So where does the franchise go from here? Unlike some retrospectives I’ve done, the path seems pretty clear in this case. For one thing, CBS has finally announced that they’re moving forward with Clarice, which is supposed to follow Clarice Starling a year after the events of The Silence of the Lambs play out. Given that MGM only owns the rights to that story and not Hannibal Lecter, I don’t really understand how they’re going to make it enticing for audiences, but Clarice Starling is a compelling enough character that I’m not willing to write it off yet. As for Hannibal, rumours of a fourth season have been persisting since even before the show’s cancellation. In fact, during the writing of this retrospectives series, more news came out that an announcement regarding the fourth season could be imminent. With the sudden surge in popularity that the series has found since coming to Netflix, the audience is finally there and I wouldn’t be surprised if we finally know the future of the series soon. Unfortunately, with Clarice underway, that makes an adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs incredibly unlikely. That’s the small screen covered, but what about the big screen? Bryan Fuller has expressed interest in making a film about this rendition of Hannibal Lecter and I would think it unlikely that we’ll see any other take on the character for quite some time, given how much Mads Mikkelsen’s rendition has captured the popular consciousness. With Thomas Harris having apparently moved on from the character (his most recent novel was 2019’s Cari Mora, a completely original tale divorced from Hannibal Lecter), it’s unlikely that we’ll be getting any more books to be adapted any time soon, meaning that the rights holders might finally have to start getting creative.

This is how I’d rank the series from worst to best:
1) The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – 9/10
2) Hannibal (2013-2015) – 8/10
3) Hannibal (2001) – 6.5/10 (again, I know a lot of people think this movie sucks, but give it another chance and just go with the campiness)
4) Manhunter (1986) – 6/10 (come at me, nerds)
5) Red Dragon (2002) – 6/10
6) Hannibal Rising (2007) – 4.5/10

Thanks for going through another retrospectives series with me. I always enjoy writing these things, even if the time commitment they require makes them difficult to put out more than once or twice a year. I can’t be certain when I will come out with a new blog post, but be sure to follow me on Twitter where I will keep you updated. ‘Til next time, bon appetit!

Retrospective: Hannibal Rising (2007)

Welcome back to the Hannibal Lecter retrospective! In today’s entry we’re going to be looking back at 2007’s Hannibal Rising, the Anthony Hopkins-less prequel which goes back to Lecter’s origins. Could the film succeed without the star which had propelled it for the past 15 years? Read on to find out…

I’m “meh” on this poster. The eye makes for a nice callback to the much better The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal posters and the samurai mask is a clever way to play with series iconography, but there isn’t enough here to get me particularly excited. The mere presence of Hannibal Lecter would have to be enough for you to swoon for this to be truly effective.

PRODUCTION
Even prior to the release of Red Dragon, the producers were giving thought on how best to continue their franchise. During interviews to promote Red Dragon, Anthony Hopkins revealed that he had written his own screenplay for a sequel to Hannibal which would have wrapped up the series with Clarice shooting Lecter, but it was never picked up. The future of the franchise was uncertain for many years with the producers going quiet about their plans. Behind the scenes though, Dino de Laurentiis was eager to move forward with a prequel detailing Hannibal’s origins. He met with Thomas Harris and threatened to make a prequel without Harris’ involvement unless Harris would come up with a story in a timely manner. It is almost certain then that the notoriously slow Thomas Harris rushed out his next novel, Hannibal Rising, in record time to retain creative control, while also writing the accompanying screenplay for the movie adaptation. I was able to find shockingly little information about this film’s production history online, even less than Red Dragon, and this seems to be partially by design – the movie was kept a secret until only a few months before release. It seems that this was done in order to use the release of the novel as a springboard to generate hype for the film and prolong the book’s own popularity by extension. Even then, very little details were known about the film ahead of time – various incorrect rumours less than 5 months before the film’s release touted that the title would be Young Hannibal: Behind the Mask (perhaps changed because of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon?), that Anthony Hopkins would narrate the film, and that its final act would detail the time between Lecter’s arrival in America and his capture by Will Graham.

Hannibal Rising would be directed by British director Peter Webber. While not a well-known director, he was coming off of a huge critical success with his debut film Girl With a Pearl Earring and so was an interesting choice. The role of a young Hannibal Lecter would go to French actor Gaspard Ulliel, while the supporting cast would be filled out by Gong Li and such prestigious character actors as Rhys Ifans and Dominic West. After the smaller box office take by Red Dragon, the budget was also scaled back from $78 million to just $50 million.

The first trailer wouldn’t drop until mid-December 2006, just a month after the novel’s release, with the movie itself set to release less than two months later. Universal passed on distribution of the film this time around and instead it was picked up by The Weinstein Company, hoping to score themselves a hit. It wasn’t to be though because critical response to Hannibal Rising was scathing and the film opened to a modest box office take which quickly tapered off, bringing in on $82.2 million at the end of its worldwide gross… but honestly anything that makes Harvey Weinstein unhappy is a win for me.

PLOT SYNOPSIS
The film opens in 1944 with an eight-year-old Hannibal Lecter having to flee his family’s castle with his parents and little sister Mischa to avoid clashes between the Germans and Soviet Union. They retreat to a secluded cabin, but the war makes its way to the cabin and the parents are both killed during a skirmish. Hannibal and Mischa hide in the cabin until a group of five Axis deserters, led by the vicious Vladis Grutas, take shelter in the cabin. Low on food, the men decide to kill and eat Mischa in order to survive.

The film then moves forward eight years, with Hannibal back in Lecter Castle, which has been converted into an orphanage. Hannibal is still traumatized by his sister’s deaths and lashes out violently at everyone around him until he escapes to Paris. Here he finds his newly-windowed aunt, Lady Murasaki. She teaches Hannibal about the culture of the samurai. Hannibal takes one of her family swords and uses it to kill a local butcher who had insulted Lady Murasaki and who was a well-known Nazi collaborator during the war. A French detective named Pascal Popil, who hunts down war criminals, suspects Hannibal of the killing but is unable to pin the crime on him definitively.

Soon after, Hannibal enters medical school, when he finally resolves to hunt down the men who killed his sister. He is unable to recall their names, but when he witnesses a criminal being injected with sodium thiopental he steals some for himself to remember the details of what happened in the cabin. When he does so, he remembers that a bag containing the killers’ dog tags was left behind in the cabin when a bomber destroyed the building, which caused the deserters to flee and allowed Hannibal himself to avoid being eaten. Armed with this knowledge, he returns to Lithuania and finds the dog tags. However, one of the killers sees Lecter enter the country and follows him here, but Hannibal overpowers him and ties him to a tree. He tortures the man to find out where his compatriots are and then kills him when he finds out that one of the men, Kolnas, is in Paris and has been meeting with Grutas there.

Lecter goes with Lady Murasaki to a restaurant owned by Kolnas and slips Kolnas’ dog tag to his daughter as a warning. Kolnas meets with Grutas and the other deserters to warn them about Hannibal. Grutas sends one of the deserters to kill Hannibal, but Lecter is waiting for him and drowns him in his laboratory. Hannibal attacks Grutas in his home shortly thereafter, but his bodyguards break in and save him before Hannibal can get the killing blow, forcing him to escape. In retribution, Grutas kidnaps Lady Murasaki and calls Lecter to draw him out before taking her to his houseboat. Hannibal goes to Kolnas’ restaurant to find Murasaki and finds Kolnas there. He gets Kolnas to tell him where Grutas’ houseboat is before killing Kolnas. Hannibal makes his way aboard and kills everyone to get to Grutas. Before killing him, Grutas reveals that the final deserter is hiding out in Canada and tells Hannibal that he too consumed his sister. This infuriates Hannibal and he carves up Grutas in brutal fashion before escaping the boat and blowing it up to fake his death. He then heads to Canada and kills the last deserter.

REVIEW
Hannibal Rising reminds me of Leatherface, in that it’s a prequel that nobody asked for, turns the series’ main psycho into a teen heartthrob, and which puts in way more effort than you would expect from a straight-forward origin story. I imagine that this is because Thomas Harris wrote the plot for this film instead of de Laurentiis handing it off to someone else. You can tell that Harris was legitimately trying to tell a fresh story and tread new ground with this character, rather than just make a bunch of references to things that will define the character in later movies (for contrast, see Solo: A Star Wars Story). In the “Making Of” documentary, Peter Webber himself acknowledges that they were trying to reinvent the franchise and I have to give them some acknowledgement for making an actual effort… unfortunately, Hannibal Rising is a mess that squanders this admirable attempt at ambition.

While the story of Hannibal Rising is a fairly standard revenge plot and it demystifies Lecter as a character, there’s nothing inherently with it that would make for a fundamentally flawed film. Instead, it’s the way that the story is told that cripples this film. One issue is that there are various disparate plot threads which never come together in a satisfying manner. Take the fact that a big deal is made of Hannibal Lecter, Lady Murasaki and Inspector Popil all having lost their families in the war. This feels like it’s ripe for a thematic payoff, but it doesn’t actually matter in the end that all of these people share a common thread, it’s just something they mention from time to time. For that matter, Popil is supposed to be one of the main characters but he could easily be cut from the film and there’d be no difference made. It feels like he was added because there has to be an obligatory inspector character in a Hannibal Lecter movie, but he’s so useless – he immediately knows that Hannibal is a murderer but does nothing about it, provides absolutely no barrier to Hannibal achieving his goals and then shrugs his shoulders and assumes Hannibal’s dead at the end of the movie. Or what about the fact that the movie shows the bad guys burning photos of Hannibal’s family for warmth? Oh no, they’re symbolically tearing away the last connections he has to his family before they take Mischa away from him too! But no, like 15 minutes later we find out that Lady Murasaki has a bunch of photos of his family so it’s another missed opportunity to tell a deeper story. There’s so many little missed opportunities like these and when you think back on the film afterwards it makes the experience feel deflating.

There’s also the first hour of the film, which is overstuffed to the point that it gets rushed through in order to get to the generic revenge plot. The first 20 minutes deal with Hannibal’s childhood and rush through his parents’ death (a Russian tank shows up in the middle of an open clearing and then within seconds a squad of Stukas pass by and kill the parents) before the bad guys show up. Then we get the revelation that Hannibal’s been kept in an orphanage which used to be his parents’ castle and is bullied by everyone there, especially a cruel overseer. That doesn’t really matter though because less than 5 minutes later he’s already escaped the orphanage and makes his way to Paris. Then we get Hannibal training in the traditions of the samurai, which gets boiled down to one training montage before he’s out murdering dudes, heads off to medical school and decides that he wants to kill some Nazis. This break-neck pace means that characters have to be cartoonishly stereotypical. Need Hannibal to kill the butcher and make it feel justified? Quick, make him a two-dimensional racist, misogynist, Vichy asshole who’s just begging to get sliced up! Need to make us feel bad about Hannibal going on a murder spree? Quick, make one of the deserters a father! On a related note, it’s implied that Hannibal is so traumatized by his sister’s death that he won’t speak, but then he kills the butcher and is suddenly chatty as all hell with everyone. I believe that we’re supposed to infer that confronting his trauma is therapeutic for him, but him going from silent to chatty happens so suddenly and unceremoniously in the film that I can’t tell if we’re just missing story beats or if having him be silent that long was a mistake. Perhaps the best analogy to describe the first half of this movie is that it feels like one of those crappy musician biopics where they just string together a bunch of important sequences from the person’s life, but then don’t bother to make them build upon one another to make a satisfying story. I feel like this half of the film has some of the most interesting ideas, but the rushed nature means that we don’t get to enjoy it before we’ve gone and moved onto something else.

The rushed first half of the movie might get a pass if the second half made up for it, but unfortunately the bulk of this movie is just a dull revenge story that tries to turn Hannibal Lecter into a more violent cross between Batman and James Bond (oh hey, Batman Begins and Casino Royale came out a couple years before this movie, imagine that). If there is a theme in this movie it is “revenge makes you a monster”, but that is such bog-standard, well-worn ground for this kind of story. I know that some people considered Hannibal an anti-hero in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, but he was still murdering people there whose worst act was that they were either in his way or kind of rude. In Hannibal Rising they have to make the people he kills unrepentant, cartoonish monsters. I’ve already covered Hannibal’s first kill, the butcher, and how much of an asshole he is, but the film even has Inspector Popil straight-up tell us that it’s basically fine that Hannibal murdered him. As for the deserters, not only did they all kill and eat Hannibal’s sister, but they’re also Nazi war criminals for good measure. Grutas is even worse, also being a sex trafficker and attempted rapist on top of everything else. With bad guys this shitty, it’s hard to care when the film pulls a “ahh but Hannibal enjoys killing people, he’s also a monster!”-style “twist” near the end. Sure, Hannibal’s a bad guy too but everyone he kills in this movie deserves what they get and then some. If they had only eaten Hannibal’s sister and nothing else then that might have put in some level of ambiguity, between being faced with a desperate survival situation and the revelation that Hannibal also partook of the soup made from Mischa’s body. However, considering everything else these guys did, it’s hard to feel bad for any of them as he tortures them all to death.

As for Hannibal himself, he’s… fine, I guess. Gaspard Ulliel had impossibly big shoes to fill and I don’t think that he quite managed to do it, although I feel like this is more down to the material rather than any failing on his part. Due to how strung together the plot feels at times, Hannibal’s character varies wildly. At times he feels like a spoiled brat (such as, funnily enough, when he’s at the orphanage in his family’s former castle, it feels like he’s just mad that it’s not his anymore), at times he feels playfully evil (think Ramsay Bolton), other times he’s just a rage-filled psycho, and sometimes he’s just vampiric. I also find it kind of funny that the whole samurai angle means that you can accuse him of being a cultural appropriator and a weeb as well.

Fuckin’ nerrrrd!

Meanwhile, Lady Murasaki is another missed opportunity. Early on it seems like she’s going to be the one who turns Hannibal into the man we know, training him in the samurai arts to kill and giving him a code of honour to guide his morals. It even seems like this was the filmmakers intent, as in the making of documentary they state that she is supposed to be Hannibal’s Aristotle, imparting her dark side upon the young man. However, this gets largely set-aside in the second half of the film as she suddenly gets cold feet about murdering the rest of the deserters when she finds out one of them has kids. Even worse, she gets turned into a goddamn damsel in distress in the final act, with Grutas constantly trying to rape her when she’s in captivity. Oh… and then there’s the weird romance between her and Hannibal which comes out of nowhere. Honestly, I had been thinking “damn, Hannibal and Murasaki are hot, pretty close in age and get along together, they’d probably make a good couple if they weren’t related through marriage”, but then I was caught completely off guard when the makeout session started. It’s not even the first time I’ve seen this movie, but I had completely forgotten that that happened.

Anyway, I can definitely tell that my thoughts on Hannibal Rising are jumbled, but that’s reflective of this movie’s messy plot. While watching it I kept thinking that it was messy, but fine, but the more that I thought about it afterwards the less I liked it. I do feel like they put in a lot more effort to try to make the movie good than I would have expected, but the execution just isn’t there. I can’t imagine anyone seriously wanting to know how Hannibal Lecter became a monster and, despite some strong talent and decent direction, Hannibal Rising just doesn’t justify the telling of this story.

4.5/10

…but the feast is not over yet. Be sure to tune in again soon for a very special bonus Retrospective finale to this series!

Retrospective: Red Dragon (2002)

Welcome back to the Hannibal Lecter retrospective! In today’s post we’ll be looking at 2002’s prequel/remake/cash-in, Red Dragon! After the negative reception of Hannibal, would a more back-to-basics prequel be able to reel in audiences? Read on to find out…

I’m not sure if you could make a more boring poster than this. Oh look, it’s Hannibal Lecter! You all love him, right? We’ll make sure he takes up 60% of the poster!

PRODUCTION
Frustratingly enough, there’s no production history about this movie on Wikipedia or the Hannibal Lecter wiki and I couldn’t find a making of featurette with any worthwhile information so I had to get creative and look up production information from way back in 2001 and 2002. Even before the release of Hannibal, Dino and Martha de Laurentiis announced that they were going to remake Red Dragon, emphasizing that Lecter’s role in the story would be expanded and there were rumours that Ridley Scott would be back to direct it. Manhunter‘s critical reevaluation had surged by this point, with even more popularity coming its way with the premiere of CSI and there was some discontent at the idea of remaking the film less than 20 years later. However, given the more than 10 year gap between the publication of The Silence of the Lambs and Manhunter, it was obvious that no new Hannibal Lecter material was going to be produced any time soon so they needed to cash in somehow.

Hannibal‘s tepid response had soured many critics on the prospect of another outing though, with some saying that he had become a joke and moved into the realm of camp. Perhaps because of this, Ridley Scott didn’t return for Red Dragon and the project pivoted in a more serious direction, more akin to The Silence of the Lambs‘ tone. As if to confirm this direction, Ted Tally returned to write the script after skipping Hannibal due to his objections to the novel’s story. It was even rumoured that Jodie Foster may make a cameo appearance, despite the fact that Red Dragon was supposed to take place ten years prior to The Silence of the Lambs and everyone involved had noticeably aged in the interim (an obvious issue which the de Laurentiis brushed off casually). An issue which may have scuppered this idea was that MGM still held the rights to characters exclusive to The Silence of the Lambs, while Red Dragon was exclusively being distributed by Universal.

By the fall of 2001, human garbage pile Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame) had signed on to direct the film and a plethora of talent flocked to Tally’s script, including Edward Norton as Will Graham, Emily Watson as Reba McClane, Harvey Keitel as Jack Crawford and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Lounds. Hopkins, of course, would return as Hannibal Lecter, having secured himself an $8 million payday plus 7.5% of the film’s profits for a role that is essentially an extended cameo. That just left the role of Francis Dolarhyde in the air. While Sean Penn was in early talks to play the role, Ratner wanted Ralph Fiennes, known at the time for dramatic roles in The English Patient and The End of the Affair, as well as being the antagonist in Schindler’s List. In December of 2001, Fiennes won the role and started a hardcore workout regimen to try to get himself into shape – Dolarhyde was supposed to be an intimidating bodybuilder-type and Fiennes (who describes his body shape as “slight”) had only a month until shooting began to bulk up, especially because he is completely nude for several of his scenes.

Ladies and gentlemen, you get to see Ralph Fiennes’ great red dragon in this movie.

Also worth noting was the return of Manhunter cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who Ratner wanted so badly that he delayed production of the film in order to wait for Spinotti’s schedule to open up. While some people questioned by Spinotti would try to shoot the exact same story again, he clarified that he felt like Ted Tally’s script changed the feel of the movie; it was more faithful to the book and had a more realistic, grounded style. Faithfulness to the book also extended to the shooting, with Ratner filming on location in the book’s environs as much as possible. Production designer Kristi Zea, who had worked on The Silence of the Lambs, was also brought back to try to give Red Dragon a similar feel.

The film released on October 4, 2001 and, while it did fairly well and received mostly positive reviews, it ended up grossing only $209.1 million, a little more than half the numbers Hannibal raked in. It seemed like Lecter fatigue had well and truly set in…

PLOT SYNOPSIS
…I’m actually at a bit of a loss trying to figure out how I’m going to do this, because the overarching plot of Red Dragon is nearly identical to Manhunter. I’ve done remakes on the Retrospectives series, sure, but they always had big deviations and were distinctly different. Red Dragon doesn’t do that – it has its own distinct tone and style, but that doesn’t come across in a plot synopsis when 95% of the plot beats are the same. I was tempted to just copy + paste my plot synopsis from that film and then insert a couple sentences to show where this movie deviates, but that’s literally wasting my readers’ time. So, I’m just going to summarize the differences between this movie and Manhunter:

  • The movie opens with Hannibal Lecter at the opera and it is heavily implied that he kills the flute player for being bad at his job and then serves him to the orchestra’s board of directors. Shortly thereafter, he meets with Will Graham to discuss a case that Graham is stumped on. During their conversation, Will suddenly realizes that Hannibal Lecter fits the profile he’s been working on and Lecter ambushes him, nearly getting him. Before Lecter can land the killing blow though, Will stabs him with three arrows and then shoots him repeatedly, incapacitating the doctor and arresting him. Over the opening credits, it is revealed that Will has a psychological breakdown and retires.
  •  The film then plays out largely the same for a long time. The main differences are that Will meets Hannibal now because he thinks best when he’s able to bounce ideas off of the doctor and many of the revelations that he comes to himself in Manhunter now come after visiting Lecter for clues. In addition, Dolarhyde appears earlier in this film, meaning that his romance with Reba is given more time to breathe.
  • The next big deviation is that Dolarhyde hears voices telling him to kill Reba after they have sex. Dolarhyde tries to defy them, even threatening to commit suicide in order to save her, but he is unable to silence them. In a desperate attempt to save her, he goes to the Brooklyn Museum and eats William Blake’s original painting of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, hoping that this will break its control over him.
  • From there, the film plays out the same until the ending of Manhunter. Instead of taking Dolarhyde down in a shootout at his home, Dolarhyde can’t bring himself to kill Reba. Instead, he burns his house down and then stages a fake suicide, substituting co-worker Ralph Mandy’s body for his own as Reba escapes to the police. Some time later, Will Graham has returned to his family when he receives a call from Jack Crawford warning him that Dolarhyde is still on the loose. He finds Dolarhyde with Will’s son and a shootout ensues in which Will and Dolarhyde are shot several times each. Will’s wife, Molly, takes his gun and gets the final shot in on the killer, ending the reign of terror of the Red Dragon once and for all.

REVIEW
Red Dragon feels like a back-to-basics effort, trying to appease the fans after the backlash Hannibal received by making something that was safe and familiar. While the plot structure is a bit different than The Silence of the Lambs, you can see that the filmmakers were trying to harken back to it. These callbacks are met with mixed results, but the most obvious and important example of this is how Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter’s relationship has been changed in Red Dragon. In Manhunter, Will visits Lecter once in order to get back into the mindset he needs to hunt the Red Dragon. In Red Dragon, Lecter and Will are effectively a dysfunctional team, with Will bouncing ideas off of Lecter and Lecter pushing Will in the right direction. I was actually surprised at how well this change works in the opening scene, it makes the relationship between Will and Lecter more interesting, helps lay out why Will is so hesitant to return to the FBI and goes a long way to justifying why Will would keep going back to Lecter several times (and therefore give Hopkins more screentime). That said, eventually it starts to get insane that Will would keep talking to Lecter. Like, are you telling me that Will would continue to see Lecter after the bastard tried to have his family killed in retribution for Will capturing him!? I get that another family could die if you don’t catch the Red Dragon soon, but continuing to bring someone who is openly antagonistic to you into the investigation just seems counter-intuitive. There’s also the issue that this change in their relationship makes Red Dragon‘s Will Graham seem less competent than he was in Manhunter, where Graham had to figure out everything on his own. Will Graham didn’t really come across as someone with a sick mind in Manhunter, but in Red Dragon it comes across even weaker since Hannibal ends up doing all the profiling and Will just puts the pieces together.

On the shittier end of the Silence callbacks is the constant, in-your-face references to The Silence of the Lambs. I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I hate this kind of hamfisted nostalgia that exists for no other reason than for you to go “Oh hey I remember that!” The entire sequence where Will meets the imprisoned Lecter for the first time is a perfect example, it rips off the opening of The Silence of the Lambs entirely nearly shot-for-shot. Oh look, it’s Dr. Chilton, remember how much you hate him? Oh hey, it’s the same dungeon where Lecter is kept, remember that? This is, of course, undermined by the fact that everyone is noticeably a decade older than they were in the previous film and no amount of half-assed makeup and hair-dye can disguise that fact. Even worse, while I was impressed at how well they justified expanding Lecter’s role early on, the more the film drags on the more contrived, disruptive and tiring it gets. The further in the film gets, the less relevant to the plot Lecter is and his constant shoehorning in gets infuriating. Like, after it’s discovered that Hannibal sent Dolarhyde Will’s family address, we get a short scene where Chilton takes away all of Hannibals books… did we really need this scene? It literally feels like a DVD deleted scene, especially because Will visits Hannibal later and we’d get this same information anyway. And then, during one of the climactic moments of the film when Dolarhyde sneaks into the museum to eat the Blake painting, we keep cutting back to Hannibal eating a meal… why!? It literally just disrupts the tension of the scene. Probably worst of all though is that as the film is ending Dr. Chilton says that a female FBI agent is going to meet Hannibal… hey, you like The Silence of the Lambs, don’t you? You know who that female agent is! It’s things that you like, therefore you like this too! It doesn’t close this story, it doesn’t add anything to this movie, it just panders to what we’re familiar with.

As I’ve alluded to already, Hopkins’ Hannibal is just tiring in this film. It’s obvious that they’ve tried to tone him down after the backlash Hannibal received, but Hopkins is still hamming it up, it’s just more restrained than it was in the past… which, honestly, is a shame. If audiences don’t find your serial killer scary anymore, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle without a complete overhaul and Red Dragon doesn’t go far enough in that direction. Hopkins just doesn’t seem to have as much energy as he used to and the fact that the movie wants to shove him in our face constantly doesn’t do him any favours. As for Will Graham, Edward Norton is just fine. He portrays Will’s concerns as a family man more compellingly than William Peterson did in my opinion, but in basically every other way he’s not as strong of a protagonist (which is in part because, again, Lecter steals most of his thunder and makes him look less competent). Will Graham is just not a very compelling character for me in Red Dragon or Manhunter, he’s just your archetypal hero cop. Most of the supporting cast seem to phone in their roles as well. Harvey Keitel’s Jack Crawford is literally the exact performance you would expect from “Harvey Keitel as a boss cop”. Philip Seymour Hoffman is also just giving as baseline a performance as you could imagine an actor of his caliber to give, although in his case it works really well for Freddie Lounds, makes the character feel less cartoonishly sleazy and more interested in money to the point that he’ll do anything without remorse.

Luckily for Red Dragon, Ralph Fiennes’ Francis Dolarhyde and Emily Watson’s Reba McClane are easily the two best performances in the film and form its emotional core. I know that Tom Noonan’s performance in Manhunter has lots of fans for how imposing and weird he is, but in my opinion Fiennes makes for a much more interesting antagonist. For one thing, he is finally revealed only 40 minutes in instead of a full hour, meaning that we get significantly more time to develop his relationship with Reba. Furthermore, we get a much greater sense of Dolarhyde’s psychosis and how it creates conflict inside of him as his relationship with Reba deepens. The relationship itself is tragic, aided greatly by Emily Watson’s adorable performance as Reba. Her performance as Reba is super horny, with her trying to get Mr. D out of his awkward shell so she can get some of that Mr. D. The fact that she’s unaware of Dolarhyde’s psychopathy makes for a storyline that’s far more compelling than Will Graham’s A-plot and you’re left wondering if the Red Dragon can be defeated by love. That said, the very Psycho-esque voice-over from Dolarhyde’s grandmother which dominates his on-screen introduction is a very hamfisted way to get across his backstory. I understand that they had to get this across somehow in order for Will Graham’s taunting of the villain to work in the finale, but there had to have been a more elegant way to do so. Also, unlike Manhunter, we understand Dolarhyde’s psychology far better in Red Dragon but we don’t get a sense of why exactly he is killing families. In Manhunter it was because he wanted to possess what he couldn’t have because he was an incel loser. In Red Dragon he kills entire families because… he wants witnesses to his transformation into the Great Red Dragon? Because the voice tells him to? It’s weird that we get much more information about who Dolarhyde is but somehow understand why he kills less than we did in the comparatively sparse Manhunter.

I know that Red Dragon has a lot of fans, especially compared to Hannibal, but I personally just find it uninteresting. Whereas Hannibal went off in its own direction and wasn’t trying to be safe, Red Dragon seems terrified to try anything new. It takes a solid, well-liked story and then filters it through the lens of The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, making for a very indistinct, also-ran kind of film. Manhunter is, overall, a more interesting film, but I do really like how Dolarhyde and Reba are handled by this film and prefer the ending of Red Dragon, so it’s a bit of a wash for me. The overall storyline is very solid and so it’s hard to really screw that up (even if you’re Brett Ratner; I find it hilarious that his Wikipedia page even goes out of its way to say that his movies suck), so Red Dragon is enjoyable even if it feels like it could have been conveyed better.

6/10

Be sure to tune in again soon as we take a look at the next entry in the franchise, Hannibal Rising!

Retrospective: Hannibal (2001)

Welcome back to the Hannibal Lecter retrospective! In today’s post we’ll be looking at the follow-up to the iconic The Silence of the Lambs, 2001’s Hannibal! As you may be aware, this film has a… reputation to say the least. Could it live up to its predecessor’s legacy? Read on to find out…

I goddamn love this poster. I remember as a kid seeing this in a movie theatre and having my imagination filled with possibilities about what this movie could be about. It’s so grimy and creepy, leaving much to the viewer to intuit for themselves and hinting that this is going to be a darker film than its predecessor. It’s also nice that it does its own thing while hinting at The Silence of the Lambs‘ iconic poster design.

PRODUCTION
Even before The Silence of the Lambs was published, Thomas Harris began conceptualizing a sequel where Hannibal was loose in the streets of Europe. However, after the surprise success of the film adaptation, demand for a sequel hit a fever pitch, especially from the owner of the film rights to Hannibal Lecter, producer Dino de Laurentiis. De Laurentiis regretted lending the rights to the character for free for The Silence of the Lambs, but planned on capitalizing on the newfound popularity of the character. He wasn’t the only one looking to make bank though and there was soon a mad scramble to get in on the follow-up (better strap in because the production of this movie was fascinating and a good example of why I include production history in these retrospectives in the first place).

First of all Orion Pictures, which had produced The Silence of the Lambs, had been having financial issues for years and filed for bankruptcy in 1991, even before they could celebrate The Silence of the Lambs‘ history-making Oscar run. This would ultimately result in the studio becoming a subsidiary of MGM, selling all their rights to them in the process, including the rights to the character of Clarice Starling. However, Universal studios chairman Tom Pollock tried to convince de Laurentiis to make the sequel with them instead, with de Laurentiis alleging that they were strong arming him by putting other pictures they were partnered on on the line. This would ultimately be taken to court and when it was settled it was agreed that Universal and MGM would co-distribute the forthcoming sequel.

Of course, this all still up in the air because, despite coming to an agreement, Harris was still working on his follow-up and it would be years before it would be complete. This was back during an era when studios would actually wait for a novelist to write a sequel instead of just forging ahead on their own, as demonstrated with The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Director Jonathan Demme, Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and screenwriter Ted Tally were all interested in returning for a sequel, with it being rumoured that Hopkins and Foster would each receive a cool $15 million to reprise their Oscar-winning roles. Finally, in 1999, the next novel in the series was published, titled Hannibal. The novel was met with mixed reception, with the main complaints revolving around its twisted violence and the ending, which sees Clarice Starling being drugged by Hannibal, engaging in cannibalism and then running off together in love.

When the details of the story came out, key members of the original film began to drop out. Ted Tally was disappointed with the novel and declined to write the script. Jonathan Demme passed on directing, citing his distaste over how violent it was and his disappointment about how Clarice Starling was handled (reportedly, upon hearing this, de Laurentiis said “when the Pope-a die, we create a new Pope-a. Good luck to Jonathan Demme. Good-bye.”). Jodie Foster’s refusal to return as Clarice Starling was particularly contentious, with her putting out several excuses talking around why she wasn’t reprising her role in the film, from concerns about the story quality, to Demme not returning, to financial concerns (according to de Laurentiis, Foster’s agent demanded $20 million and 15% of the gross, which he says caused him to reject her outright). Based on what was said at the time and since, I’d be willing to bet that the main issue was that Foster didn’t like how Clarice Starling was being portrayed in Hannibal, with a secondary concern being and that de Laurentiis was going to lowball her pay. Luckily for de Laurentiis, Hopkins was viewed as the crux of the entire project and agreed to return as Hannibal Lecter, otherwise the film probably would have never been made.

With nearly all of the key figures involved in The Silence of the Lambs gone, work began on hiring the new production team. Ridley Scott was approached during the filming of Gladiator and agreed to take over the director’s chair. This was exciting news since, while he has gained a reputation for being inconsistent in the last decade, his filmography consisted of landmark film after landmark film at the time (and later in the same year of Hannibal‘s release he would put out one of the greatest and most influential modern war movies, Black Hawk Down). The script was written by David Mamet (who wrote, among other things, The Untouchables and Wag the Dog), but this draft was then rewritten by Schindler’s List screenwriter Steven Zaillian after a grueling brainstorming session between Zaillian and Scott to change the ending of the novel for the adaptation.

As for who would play Clarice Starling, several high-profile actresses were considered, including Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Gillian Anderson (remember this one, it’ll be important in the future), Hilary Swank, Ashley Judd and Helen Hunt. However, Hopkins suggested to de Laurentiis that Retrospectives veteran Julianne Moore be considered for the role, as he had worked with her a few years earlier and thought that she would be great for the role. While I can’t confirm whether Hopkins’ endorsement ultimately won her the part (Ridley Scott also said that she was his top choice), Julianne Moore was chosen to play Clarice… and I’ll bet that de Laurentiis was happy about this because she was paid a reported $3 million!!! This legitimately infuriates me. Like I said earlier, Foster and Hopkins were both expected to collect around $15 million for their roles in this movie (I couldn’t find an exact number, but it is believed that Hopkins was paid more than $10 million for this film), which reflects the fact that both characters and their performers are crucial to the film’s success. The fact that de Laurentiis was just so flippant about casting Foster aside is more blindingly obvious proof of the Hollywood wage gap. Won’t take a pay cut, little lady? That’s all right, we’ll replace you with one of the other actresses starving for a meaty female role. Also consider the fact that Foster was considered expendable whereas Hopkins exiting the project would tank the entire production. I do get that Hopkins’ Lecter was the main draw for audiences and so I wouldn’t say that he doesn’t deserve a decent payday, but Clarice Starling was the real main character of The Silence of the Lambs and the beating, emotional heart which made it all work and that should be reflected. Also consider that Julianne Moore herself is getting lowballed at $3 million – she was coming off of such box office and critical successes as The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Boogie Nights (which she would get a Best Supporting Actress nomination for), The Big Lebowski and Magnolia, and you’re telling me that she was worth less than a third of what her male co-star was getting (and that’s assuming that conservative $10 million number is correct)? Bull-fucking-shit.

For the other major roles, motherfuckin’ Christopher Reeve was offered the role of Mason Verger, but turned the role down when he actually read the script and realized that they were asking him to play a psychotic, disfigured, wheelchair-bound pedophile. The role went to their next choice, Gary Oldman. Ray Liotta was cast to play Paul Krendler, a Justice Department official who had previously appeared in The Silence of the Lambs played by Ron Vawter, but Vawter had died in 1994 and so had to be recast. Giancarlo Giannini (probably most famous internationally for playing Mathis in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) was cast as the shady detective Rinaldo Pazzi. Also noteworthy is the fact that the only other actor to reprise his role from The Silence of the Lambs was Frankie Faison as the asylum orderly Barney. Faison had also played a different, minor role in Manhunter, making him the only actor to stay a consistent part of the franchise thus far.

Filming lasted 16 weeks, with the production going on location in Florence and various locales across the US, which is probably part of the reason that the budget ended up going over $80 million, which is high for a hard R-rated film of this nature. Luckily for all the film’s financial backers, Hannibal opened February 9, 2001 to a $58 million opening weekend, the third largest debut ever at the time, and would gross $351.6 million. However, the critical and audience reception of the film was lukewarm and many people felt that it didn’t live up to the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs.

PLOT SYNOPSIS
Ten years after the events of the previous film, Hannibal Lecter is still on the loose and is one of the FBI’s most wanted. Clarice Starling is leading a drug bust which goes awry when one of her agents disobeys an order to stand down. As a result, several people are killed and a PR nightmare ensues, with Starling taking the blame. After pulling some strings with corrupt Justice Department official Paul Krendler, Mason Verger (a grievously wounded survivor of Lecter) has Clarice Starling assigned to hunt down Lecter, believing that Lecter has a special relationship with her and that her involvement will draw him out into the open. This seems to work because shortly after being reassigned, Clarice finds a letter from Hannibal. After performing an analysis on the letter, it is discovered that it contains trace elements of a skin cream that is only legally available in certain parts of the world. Clarice requests police departments around the world to send security footage from potential shops, including in Florence. The chief inspector Rinaldo Pazzi, who has been investigating the disappearance of a library curator, recognizes someone in one of these security tapes, a man who he had interviewed about the disappearance named Dr. Fell. Putting two and two together, Pazzi investigates the FBI’s database and realizes that Dr. Fell is actually Hannibal Lecter. He soon discovers that someone has put a $3 million bounty on Lecter’s head and tries to collect it. He is told that he will require a fingerprint to positively ID Lecter before he can be apprehended. Pazzi recruits a pickpocket to get the fingerprint and, while he is successful, the pickpocket is stabbed to death by Lecter in the process. Despite this incident, Pazzi ignores ominous warnings from Lecter and a plea from Clarice to stand down and sends the fingerprint off for confirmation. He discovers that the bounty has been issued by Mason Verger and, despite being told that his own men will apprehend Lecter, Pazzi chooses to joins Verger’s crew to apprehend the serial killer. However, when he attempts to draw Lecter out into an ambush, Lecter ties up the inspector and then disembowels and hangs him from the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio in retribution. He then murders one of Verger’s men in retribution before slipping away.

Frustrated that Hannibal slipped from his grasp, Verger bribes Paul Krendler again to put Clarice Starling in harm’s way. Verger fabricates a letter which makes it seem like Starling is aiding Lecter’s continued freedom, causing her to be suspended from the FBI. Hearing about this, Lecter calls Clarice and lures her out for a confrontation. However, Verger’s men are following her and apprehend Lecter. Clarice witnesses this and tries to get the police to inspect Verger’s estate, but they aren’t able to find anything incriminating. Clarice then decides to go on her own, finding Lecter tied up and about to be fed to Verger’s pack of carnivorous pigs. Clarice frees Lecter and kills two thugs but is shot and wounded herself. Lecter rescues her as the pigs break in and devour two of the guards after ignoring Hannibal. Lecter then convinces Verger’s physician to drop his boss into the pig pen, saying that he can blame Lecter. The physician complies and Verger is eaten alive.

Clarice wakes up sometime later at Krendler’s lakehouse, heavily drugged. She calls the police and then makes her way downstairs, where she finds Lecter preparing dinner with an even more heavily-drugged Krendler. Lecter reveals that he has sawed open the top of Krendler’s head, which he removes to expose his brain. Lecter cuts out a piece of the still-living Krendler’s brain and then sautés it and feeds it to him. Clarice then tries to stab Lecter, but he locks her ponytail in a fridge door and holds her down as she handcuffs him to her. With the police almost upon them, Lecter takes a cleaver and threatens to cut her hand off if she doesn’t release him. When she refuses to budge, he brings the cleaver down and she screams. Shortly thereafter the police find Clarice and it is implied that Hannibal chose to cut his own hand off to escape. He is seen in the ending on a plane, arm bandaged, sharing cooked brains with a child curious about his meal.

REVIEW
I think that the thing that I appreciate the most about Hannibal is that it aims to be very different from its predecessor. Too often sequels, especially sequels to a pop culture icon, end up just repeating the same bits, returning to a formula and become self-referential. The Hannibal Lecter franchise was ripe for this – hell, The Silence of the Lambs itself nearly falls into this trap since it could basically be boiled down to “Hannibal Lecter helps solve another murder case”. Hannibal is a different sort of beast though, by necessity. With Lecter on the run and ten years having passed, it would be very difficult to just do the same thing again without it feeling contrived. As a result, we get to see all sorts of fresh ideas play out. We get to spend the film’s entire second act in beautiful Florence, a breath of fresh air compared to all the comparatively boring American vistas that make up this series’ settings. We get to see a psychopath actively wanting revenge on Lecter, putting our main characters directly in danger. We get to see Lecter living out among the people and outsmarting everyone who tries to catch him. There’s some give-and-take to this approach, as the film is certainly slower and the tension is less consistent, but I do appreciate the attempt to inject fresh ideas into the formula.

There is so much to love in Hannibal. First off, the acting is great across the board. While Lecter doesn’t have quite the same spark that he did in The Silence of the Lambs, in part because he spends most of his screen time separated from Clarice, Hopkins seems to be having the time of his life and he’s always enjoyable to watch. As for Julianne Moore, she brings her own take of Clarice Starling to the film, one that is more experienced and disillusioned with the bureaucracy of the FBI. She’s much more defiant, she doesn’t take any shit from people who are still talking down to her. I’d have to say that Jodie Foster’s take was far more compelling, but Moore brings her own spin on the material that she’s given. The two best performances in the film have to be Gary Oldman’s Mason Verger and Giancarlo Giannini’s Rinaldo Pazzi. Starting with Verger, Oldman plays him like a rich, polite old man, despite the fact that his character is a self-professed pedophile who’s obsessed with the idea of torturing and killing the man who ruined his life. He’s so sinister and darkly funny at times, making for a more than worthy opponent to Lecter. I also love his obsession with feeding Hannibal alive to a pack of man-eating pigs, since that means that we get one of the most brutal and amazing set-pieces in the film which culminates in Verger’s own ironic death by pigs (a change which was made for the movie, thank God). I have to give a particular shout-out here to makeup artist Greg Cannom, whose prosthetics work makes Gary Oldman unrecognizable and so disturbing to look at. As for Rinaldo Pazzi, his story plays out over the course of the film’s second act and is easily the most compelling part of the film. It’s fascinating to watch Pazzi go from a disinterested cop to a man just barely holding onto his composure, blinded by greed to the obvious dangers he’s walking into.

Ridley Scott’s direction is also fairly solid throughout the film. I feel like Jonathan Demme’s direction favoured the characters more, but Scott brings his own take to the material. As one would expect of him, the production design is spot on (particularly aided by the fact that much of it was shot on location in some gorgeous locales) and the visuals are all top-notch. There are some moments when I feel like he has trouble keeping the audience oriented though, particularly during the chaotic opening shootout sequence (which looks cool at least, there’s so much blown up debris and sparks from ricocheting bullets) and when Hannibal draws out Clarice into a crowded station. I’m not sure if these issues come down to direction or editing, but they are two notable examples of when Hannibal‘s direction stumbles.

With all that said, let’s get to Hannibal‘s crippling flaw – the script. Damn near every aspect of this movie is firing on all cylinders and if not for the inconsistent quality of the script this could have been a very worthy successor to The Silence of the Lambs. We’ll start with what I think is the most damning flaw in the film, the treatment of Clarice Starling. Clarice is the film’s focus in the first thirty minutes: she’s devastated for having to shoot a woman holding a baby during the botched drug bust, she gets suspended unjustly, is reassigned to Lecter’s case and then starts following clues. Cool, that means she should find a clue to lead her to Lecter in time for the second act, right? Nooooope… for whatever reason, Clarice doesn’t do anything in the second act – aside from a few short and unimportant scenes, she effectively disappears for a whole fifty freaking minutes. The only things of note that she does in the third act is fail to find Hannibal when he’s right behind her, go rogue to rescue him and then basically lets Hannibal get away again. She’s a far-cry from the Clarice of The Silence of the Lambs who is the film’s emotional core and the one who’s driving the plot forward, here Clarice takes a back seat right as the plot is getting underway and gets pushed around where the story demands she go. The film also brings back hints of the sexism that Clarice faced back in The Silence of the Lambs, but it’s done to much lesser effect. Instead of being objectified and belittled by men in all areas of her life, the only person being sexist to her is her boss, Paul Krendler, who’s just a total sleaze. There’s a shot of him staring up Clarice’s legs and at one point he gets caught staring at a drawing of Clarice’s breasts that Hannibal sent her. We later discover that he’s doing this because Clarice wouldn’t have an affair with him, so he’s been making her career hell because he’s an abusive piece of shit. It’s nice at least that they acknowledge that this sort of power abuse happens, but it makes it feel like this is just the sort of thing that bad people like Krendler do instead of being a systemic issue that women routinely have to deal with. It’s such a shame that Clarice was done so dirty by this film, even with the ending being changed to be less controversial. With some more deviation from the book to make her a more active character she could have been at least on-par with Hannibal Lecter once again.

While I have complained that the second act totally shafts Clarice Starling, effectively excising her from the story for fifty minutes, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this was by far the best part of the movie. After a half hour of build-up we finally get to see Hannibal on the loose in Florence, working his way up into a curator’s position at a museum. Watching Pazzi come to the slow realization that Dr. Fell is Hannibal Lector and then trying to collect the bounty on him is fascinating. The film is at its absolute most tense and exciting during these sequences, since we know that Pazzi is no match for Lecter and we’re left waiting on the edge of our seat to see what the good doctor is going to do to this would-be hunter. And, like any good story, just when you think that Lecter is going to pounce, he relents until the tension has hit an absolute peak. This all culminates in the brilliant “bowels in or bowels out?” sequence, one of the most memorable in the entire film. And then… it just kind of ends on an inconsequential note. Hannibal escapes his pursuers and nothing comes of it. It’s ridiculous how much the air gets sucked out of the room once the second act is over. The only consequence is that Verger sees video footage of the killing where Hannibal waves, which he takes to mean that he’s waving to Clarice Starling… but, like, Verger already knew that she was Hannibal’s weak point from the very start of the movie. Hell, he already put pressure on her to lure Hannibal out once, having to do it again after this is just redundant and doesn’t flow with the story as it has been told up to this point. And to make matters worse, having Hannibal escape was pointless too because he gets captured like ten minutes later anyway. There were only really two ways to move the movie out of Florence and back to the States in a way that makes sense and doesn’t render the entire second act pointless: either have Hannibal get captured in Florence by Verger’s men after killing Pazzi, or have Hannibal realize that Verger’s onto him and that his only course of action now is to actively take on Verger (for example, think of how The Bourne Ultimatum brings Jason Bourne back to the US).

While I have my issues with how the first two acts play out, I still quite like the movie up to this point. However, the third act is a total mess. First of all, the sequence where Hannibal phones Clarice and lures her out to union station while he stalks her (complete with him brushing her hair when he goes past on a carousel) is just so silly and out of place. You’re telling me that Clarice isn’t hearing the musicians playing just beside Hannibal and trying to use that to pinpoint his location? She’s not hearing him speaking right behind her as he touches her hair? Then Hannibal gets captured by Verger’s men – I had thought that he was using Clarice to lure them out so he could pick them off one-by-one, but no, it seems like he was just a dumb-dumb all of a sudden so they could get ahold of him. Clarice just happens to see this too, so she calls the police who investigate Verger’s mansion and then leave again. You’re telling me that they’re just going to take his word that there’s no captured serial killers on my property, no sir-ee-bob!? They don’t leave any sort of surveillance, just in case he’s having him held elsewhere? Apparently not, because how else are we going to make Clarice decide to go rogue and break into the mansion to save Hannibal’s ass? I kinda love this sequence because it does result in several people being eaten to death by pigs, but feels very rushed in order to resolve the Verger plot and then get us into the finale… and hoo boy, what a finale it is. I’ve never been able to take the ending sequence of this movie seriously, which sees a drugged up Clarice watching as Hannibal peels Krendler’s skull open and feeds him parts of his own brain. It’s just too funny to be horrifying, in part because of Ray Liotta’s drugged-up acting and in part because the whole premise of feeding someone his own brain is just pure schlock comedy. Then, after that’s done, we get Clarice and Hannibal’s final confrontation, which ends with him chopping his own hand off to escape rather than harming Clarice. It’s an interesting moment, but it leaves us with no resolution for Clarice’s storyline. It’s definitely better than the book’s ending, but it’s still unsatisfying. This third act (which plays out over the last thirty minutes of the film) really sours me on Hannibal. After the first two acts move at a slow and measured pace, it suddenly feels like they had to cram too much story into the last thirty minutes and everything suffers as a result.

On a related note, this film could have been improved with some better editing and writing. The first couple acts are slow, but they could have been tightened up with more judicial cuts and better scripting. Like, did we really need two sequences where Verger realizes that Clarice is Hannibal’s weakness, where men are sent to capture Hannibal, and where Clarice gets dicked over by Krendler unjustly? There’s also moments that I don’t even understand why they made it into the film. There’s a sequence where we see Lecter scoping out Krendler’s apartment and then breaking into a hospital to steal medical tools so that he can later cut open Krendler’s head. Did we really need to spend several minutes belabouring this detail? I mean… in a post-Cinema Sins world some dickhead would probably nitpick “Oh where did Hannibal get these tools? Why did he know where Krendler lived?”, but we don’t really need to be shown this. Despite being roughly the same run time as The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal feels much flabbier and could have done with another pass on the script to tighten things up. Like I’ve said, there are elements about this movie and the story that I really like (such as the fantastic opening title sequence), but they’re bogged down with too much excess.

I’m well aware than Hannibal has a bad reputation, that it’s considered responsible for killing a lot of peoples’ interest in Hannibal Lecter with its pivot into campy, dark humour. However, I’ve always had a soft spot for it in my heart, just due to how much it deviates from the established formula and how sick and twisted it can be. That said, upon rewatching it my enthusiasm for the film has definitely dulled somewhat. There are still plenty of parts that I enjoy, but I have a hard time looking past how unsatisfying the last act is and how badly they treated Clarice Starling. Still, there’s enough here that I like that I can’t call it a complete disaster but I am disappointed that Hannibal didn’t live up to the potential it had.

6.5/10