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The Emperor (played by Ian McDiarmid) acts all surprised to become chancellor when he sets up this whole situation to be chancellor.

Dangerous cinema: When bad films turn good

  Jan 13, 2022

Some good parts of bad films just want to be in a better movie. 

Even when a film is an overall failure, it can still have things in it that work on their own. 

The first example is the birth of the SandMan in Spider-Man 3 (2007).

Spider-Man 3 as a film is a mess, with it being a clear example of too many things being packed into one film, instead of being spread out into multiple films. With three main villains, who range from OK to cartoonish, the film is all over the place.

However the birth of Sandman is a great example of visual storytelling.

In the scene Flint Marko (AKA the Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church) is trying to literally reform himself back together after falling into a particle accelerator while running from the cops. The ensuing transformation means his body is now completely made out of sand. But when he first starts to reconstitute himself, he can’t keep himself together, and just falls apart.

However when he notices the locket of his sick daughter, who’s dying (that somehow also didn’t turn into sand unlike everything else), he starts to be able to keep himself together enough to grab it, then after grabbing it and getting a good look, it pushes himself to completely reconstitute himself and keep going.

The scene is not only great because of the sand CGI that still looks pretty good, and gets across what the character is thinking, but the score by Christopher Young shows what the character is feeling in the moment, and it does all of this with zero dialogue.

Keeping it Spider Man-centric for now, let’s move on to the next set of films created for the character, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Both films suffer from a full web of problems, including weak villains, poorly written stories, and a mystery that makes no sense once everything is revealed.

With that being said, the romance between Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is, for the most part, actually pretty well handled. In fact it’s handled better in these films than in the original trilogy.

It helps that both actors were apparently dating at the time of filming, adding to a sense of authenticity to their relationship. It also helps that Gwen wasn’t being kidnapped all the time, like Mary Jane was in the previous films.

Leaving our friendly neighborhood webhead behind, we move on to the far future of space, to a new generation, the next generation as it were.

Star Trek: Generations (1994,) as a film is over the place, in more ways than one. The tone, acting, and the writing quality fluctuated wildly between scene to scene leading to a very disjointed viewing experience.

While the film isn’t necessarily bad, it’s still not very good either.

The scenes with Kirk (played by a returning Willaim Shatner) are a highlight when it comes to writing and acting. The film does a great job of continuing with Kirk’s characterization in the original trilogy films.

At the beginning of the film when a retired Kirk is temporarily put into command of the new 

Enterprise-B, the film does a great job of showing how the captain’s chair is like a drug for Kirk, once he sits down it’s hard for him to get out of it.

It’s great character continuity. A lot of the original set of films was about Kirk allowing another generation to sit in the captain’s chair and take the reins of the ship. 

Another part that honestly works in this mess of a film, is how well Captain Kirk and Captain Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) work off each other. Which is good seeing how the entire film’s selling pitch is that for the first time ever, these two captains, generations apart, are going to meet. 

They do well showing how different the two captains are and how both are still great captains in their own right. Kirk likes to do diplomacy from the hip, going with the flow, likely to get himself in trouble but smart and capable enough to get him and his crew out of any trouble they find themselves in. While Picard is the diplomat, willing to sit down, talk things out, and will think things through before committing to any actions. 

But despite their opposite personalities, both men have a strong moral compass and willingness to do what’s right, and have the intelligence and skill to get the job done. And the film shows it. Despite their differences, Picard convinces Kirk to leave his perfect world, not only because the perfect world he’s living in is fake, but because millions of people’s lives are on the line.

Moving from the final frontier to a galaxy far away set a long time ago, the Star Wars prequel films are rife with many moments of bad writing and flat performances from good actors. Despite this, two actors come out relatively unscathed and give very good performances, those being Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor Palpatine.

Ewan McGregor as a young Obi-Wan is pitch perfect casting. Expertly performs the character through the different stages of his life, from a young, inexperienced Padawan in Phantom Menace to wise but still a bit headstrong in Revenge of the Sith. McGregor does a great job harnessing the wisdom that Alec Guiness brought to the character in the first film.

The Emperor is even better in these films than in the original films. In the original films he just sat around, looking menacing, and spouted off cliche evil dialogue. 

The prequels showed more personality on the character. They show how Palpatine became the emperor and his masterly manipulative skills. The audience totally buys how a man this clever and charming could manipulate a republic into becoming the galactic empire first seen in A New Hope.

Whether he was being quiet and subtle or loud and boisterous, the emperor always stole the show whenever he was on screen.
Patrick hopes someday to star in his own film, The Revenge of the Reviewer.

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