SUPER
2010, Rated R
Written and directed by James Gunn
Starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, and Kevin Bacon
I decided to start the new year off with a bang. Well, cinematically anyway. New Year's Eve around my house has never been much to brag about, and this one was clearly headed for the, "Wait, did we do anything that year?" file. My wife and children and I had spent the last 45 minutes of 2011 trying to decide on a movie to watch, and as usual, every suggestion was met by a roughly equal mix of exuberance, dissent, and apathy.
I'd been pushing hard for 2012 in an attempt to start a new family tradition of watching year-themed movies on New Year's. My wife wanted to watch "a disaster movie on a cruise ship" that wasn't The Poseidon Adventure, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, the remake of The Poseidon Adventure, or Boat Trip. My 3 kids were lobbying - each with equal and unwavering dedication - for X-Men, Hot Rod, and Escape From New York respectively. Not respectfully, mind you. When my kids get to arguing about movies, they're about as respectful of each others' selections as Roland Emmerich is of plausibility and historical accuracy.
When my stove timer went off, signaling the turn of the New Year, we all went out on the front porch and as my wife and I waved at our neighbors and exchanged unintelligible well wishes with them, the kids made a mess with the pathetically legal poppers and snappers we'd picked up at Wal Mart the previous evening. When the token festivities were over, my wife sent the kids to bed so they wouldn't be tired for church the next morning. Then she retired herself. She is their Sunday school teacher, after all.
The conspiracy theorists would have us believe that the end of the world is coming this year, and from the way it was going so far, it couldn't come soon enough. The year was less than an hour old and already it needed a jump start, a shot in the arm, something to - in the words of Emeril Lagasse - kick it up a notch.
My fears were not assuaged right out of the gate. Not because the movie isn't good from the word go, but because it starts with character rather than action. Instead of blasting us in the face with slick visuals and snappy dialogue, we're introduced to Frank (Rainn Wilson) as a man torn between desperate pain and childlike hope. We follow him on his journey through the dissolution of his marriage and his search for purpose as he becomes The Crimson Bolt, and the less comic-ey, more honest pacing of writer/director James Gunn's introduction of Frank's character and struggles refused to conform to my expectations. In retrospect, I've seldom been so happy to have those expectations disappointed.
I won't say much more or go into detail, but I will say this: When I turned off my TV, got up off my couch, and went to bed, I wasn't thinking about "what do we watch" arguments or lackluster celebrations or the weenie, pathetic fireworks my kids have been forced to grow up with. I was thinking about The Crimson Bolt, The Holy Avenger, and especially Boltie (What can I say? I'm a fan.). I was thinking that, despite all the regurgitated dreck Hollywood is spewing these days, if movies like this are somehow still managing to get made, maybe all hope isn't lost. Maybe 2012 will surprise us. Maybe it'll be super.
Later that day...
1988, Rated R
Written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza (Screenplay) and Roderick Thorp (Novel, Nothing Lasts Forever)
Directed by John McTiernan
Starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, and Reginald VelJohnson
My son and I have a sort of ritual when it comes to watching movies. First, I ask him if he wants to watch a particular movie. Then he explains how he'd rather watch the dog take a squat on his pillow than watch that movie. Then I tell him that, if he doesn't want to watch that movie, perhaps we could watch this other movie. Then he does his best impression of a man being disemboweled with a barbecue skewer (his impression is lousy, if you're wondering) and begs me not to make him watch that. Then I say that if he doesn't want to watch that, maybe he'd like to reconsider my first suggestion. Then he groans like he's passing a LEGO(tm) and says fine, if he has to watch one of them he guesses he'd rather watch the first one.
Now it's a new year, but you know what they say about the more things change...
Having started New Year's Day with the overwhelming boost of live-up-to-its-name awesome that was Super, I feel the need to close it on an equally excellent note. That being the case, I decide not to chance it. I opened with a gamble, but I'm going to close with a sure thing. My son will turn thirteen this year. It's time to introduce him to Die Hard.
It all begins about as you'd expect it to with a tween: Jaded chuckles at the ladies' hair, sarcastic comments about smoking in the airport, and the inevitable question as to what exactly the car's cassette player is and how it works. I chuckle right along with him and explain how it was the eighties, and that back then, hair that frizzy and voluminous was actually considered quite attractive. I play along, enduring his twelve year old cynicism with a quiet patience atypical for me. I know what's coming.
When Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and the boys show up, things take a turn for the badass, and suddenly the jaded chuckles and snarky comments from the other end of the couch fall silent. At the point during the takeover of Nakatomi Towers where John McClane (Bruce Willis) watches through the cracked door as a pair of armed thugs stalk towards him down the hall, just when the tension has nearly reached the breaking point (even for a guy like me, who's seen the movie two dozen times) I look over and see my son gripping the arm of the couch, eyes wide, gaze unwavering. I smile to myself.
Well, it sure blows me away, but I was a child of that era. The real test of any film's merit is whether it can still hold its own a generation later. Many of my favorite films from that time completely fail to impress my kids, or even my younger siblings (the youngest of whom is my son's age). This is a tough generation to wow. At a time when anything you can imagine is possible (at least onscreen) the spectacular becomes mundane. The magical becomes explicable. So the question is, does Die Hard really hold up, or is it just my middle aged nostalgia trying to convince me that I'm still cool; that I can still kick a bit of metaphorical ass?
When all the bad guys are dead and John McClane rolls off into the figurative sunset with his lady love under his battered and bloody arm and the credits roll, I stand up, take the disc out, and turn to my son.
"So, what did you think?" I say.
He sits up, drops his eyes as if embarrassed, smiles, and says with barely restrained enthusiasm, "Can we watch the next one?"
Yep. Still kickin' ass.
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