Viewing entries tagged
James Mangold
Like Star Wars before it, the Indiana Jones franchise has escaped the hands of its original creators. What makes this fact notable is how aggressively this first – and perhaps last? – installment in the Indy saga without Steven Spielberg and George Lucas at the helm looks back to the franchise’s past. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny walks a fine line between honoring what’s come before it while forging a path ahead.
For the most part, it works.
James Mangold’s very manly and patriotic sportscar racing movie Ford v Ferrari is about as slick as big Hollywood blockbusters come. The director with credits as varied as 2001’s Kate & Leopold, the 2007 remake of the classic western 3:10 to Yuma, and not one, but two comic book franchise films about the X-Men’s Wolverine character has turned his craftsperson’s talents to the sports biopic. Ford v Ferrari feels like a movie we might have gotten 20, maybe even 30 years ago. And I mean that in a good, throwback sort of way.
The script – originally penned by Jason Keller and rewritten by screenwriting brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth – features, if memory serves, exactly one female speaking part. At one point, that character is reduced to sitting in a lawn chair as she watches our two manly-men heroes resolve their differences with an old-fashioned American fist fight. The rah-rah patriotism of the picture – which only ever flirts with outright jingoism – brings to mind something like Top Gun, but with race cars instead of fighter jets.
All that aside, Ford v Ferrari is also a damn good time at the movies. It’s a crowd-pleaser that offers unadulterated movie spectacle.
Since the beginning of the comic book movie’s modern era, arguably starting with Richard Donner’s Superman in 1978, the genre has fought for legitimacy. Critics and audiences alike would dismiss the majority of them as kid’s stuff – they’re fun and entertaining, sure, but not to be taken too seriously. The makers of these movies started challenging that philosophy in earnest when the number of comic book movies released per year ramped up, starting with Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was one major step forward. The superhero’s capacity for emotional and moral complexity got deeper even as the body count and onscreen carnage got bloodier and more overwhelming.
Director James Mangold’s Logan feels like a leap forward. There is an emotional resonance here that’s more profound than any comic book movie I’ve ever seen. It’s made more affecting because there are real stakes in Logan. Mangold – who co-wrote as well as directed – breaks through the usual pitfall of these sorts of movies by having his characters change in ways that can’t easily be reset for a next installment. Logan is a brilliant example of the heights that comic book movies are capable.
