Category: Movies

“Skyscraper” — Inspiration Porn?

I rented and watched Skyscraper starring Dwayne Johnson and Neve Campbell. It’s another film that is in the theme of The Towering Inferno, but in this case they decided it needed an active human villain rather than simple hubris. The film has some good moments of VFX, and the concept itself of a mostly self-sufficient skyscraper as a vertical community is a long-held one in science fiction. All in all, not bad for some action entertainment.

So what is with the title, you are likely wondering. Dwayne Johnson’s character is an amputee: his left leg is missing below the knee. To his credit, Dwayne Johnson worked with an amputee to develop the characterization of acting a prosthetic leg. He and the director wanted to respect amputees with a faithful performance.

Here’s my problem. There is a special feature entry called “Inspiration”. In it, Dwayne Johnson discusses his process of researching and preparing for the role, including talking about the man who helped him. They also talked about how they really wanted to portray an amputee action hero. Representation is important.  But Dwayne Johnson also took time to build up the man he used as a reference and a coach on how to act like an amputee. Why not just use this man who was an athlete in his own right? It would have saved a lot on CGI for not having to remove the actor’s leg in the shots the prosthesis is visible or disconnected from the leg. Maybe the amputation decision was only made after Dwayne Johnson was hired for the role. Maybe they offered the role to an amputee actor and they didn’t want the part.

Inspiration porn is any situation in which able-bodied people recognize the struggle or at least existence of people with various disabilities to make the able-bodied people feel like good people. So in this case, the key question is who is being honored: amputees and wounded warriors for their sacrifice and to give them a reminder that they can be badasses; or Dwayne Johnson and the crew of Skyscraper for making the action hero an amputee and going to great lengths to get Dwayne Johnson to act like someone who had a leg severed?

New Star Trek

Starting in 2009, the Star Trek franchise was rebooted with a new movie that created an alternate timeline. This was first referred to as the J-J-verse, both with derision and not, then recently made officially the Kelvin-timeline in reference to the USS Kelvin that was destroyed at the beginning of the movie.

The first one was good. It was fun, and had new spin on the franchise. Sure it had plenty of plot holes. The biggest one for me that pushed me out of the movie was the construction of the starship on the ground. True, there were no real deep issues involved but rather an exercise in melding the science and drama of Star Trek and the action of Star Wars.

The second one, Star Trek Into Darkness, was good at parts, too. There were some interesting character and political moments and exciting bits of action. But then the whole John-Harrison-is-Khan thing could have even been good. Except for when it started being an almost scene for scene homage/remake of Wrath of Khan.

Now there is the latest in the Kelvin timeline, Star Trek Beyond. I saw this over the weekend, and I thought it was great. It still had the action of a modern movie (helped by the director Justin Lin who also directed three of the Fast and the Furious movies) but also had some good thought provoking moments. Questions on why we do what we do, questions on the wisdom of pushing boundaries and the risks we take when we do. The old line of “just because we can do a thing, should we do that thing.” And each of the main characters has a chance to shine. I highly recommend it.

Here’s what I don’t understand. Why are so many people hating on the new Star Trek movies so much? Is it just because they are action movies? Each of the movies from TWOK on have had action, each more than the one before. Chris Pine said that a thoughtful movie can’t be made today, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, he’s right. People like to complain about dumb movies full of explosions, but they keep going to Transformers movies. I’m not sure even Donnie Darko could be created this year. I think you can have both. I think you can have a thought-provoking movie with production value.

I think it’s better to trust movie makers we know. And give things a chance. How many times do we have to experience how completely different from the tone of a movie the trailer is to start not trusting them? People could at least wait until the thing comes out and make up their own mind. Or at least find a reviewer they tend to agree with and go with them. But just don’t hate something because it’s cool to hate it or you think too many people like it.