Tom Cruise – Bitch Flicks

The Women of the ‘Mission Impossible’ Franchise

‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’ is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism by looking back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" — Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in *Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation*

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism.

Rogue Nation has a great central female character in Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. The Daily Beast calls Ferguson “The Second Coming of Lauren Bacall” and, astonishingly, that passes the smell test. Ilsa is the kind of gal who can run at breakneck speed in heels but is also practical enough to take them off before jumping off a roof: the perfect spy movie fantasy of a woman. And Ferguson plays her with enough mystique we spend the whole movie never quite sure which side of the Bond Girl Axis (good girl who is actually bad vs. bad girl who is actually good) she’ll land on. Ilsa is so captivating that I didn’t even notice until I got home that she was the only named female character in the movie. The only other woman with any dialogue, “Shop Girl,” is killed off within a minute or so. Rogue Nation is the perfect example of a movie that fails the Bechdel Test BADLY, while patting itself on the back for presenting a “strong female character.”

I decided to look back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Emmanuelle Béart in 'Mission Impossible' — Emmanuelle Béart in *Mission Impossible*

Mission Impossible (1996)

Number of named female characters: 4
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (not main female character)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: Good girl is actually bad.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (second prong)

Thandie Newton in 'Mission Impossible II" — Thandie Newton in *Mission Impossible II*

Mission Impossible II (2000)

Number of named female characters: 1 (seriously, just one)
Named female characters who survive the film: 1
Women of color: 1 (main female character, obviously)
Bond Girl Axis: Bad girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Maggie Q in 'Mission Impossible III' — Maggie Q in *Mission Impossible III*

Mission Impossible III (2006)

Number of named female characters: 3
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (all three good).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (third prong)

Paula Patton in 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' — Paula Patton in *Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol*

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Number of named female characters: 3 (one a cameo, without dialogue)
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1 (main female character)
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (two good, one bad).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Only in cameo
Bechdel Test: Near-pass (do grunts during a fight count as a conversation?)

Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation' — Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

Number of named female characters: 1
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (2 unnamed characters die)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: [Spoiler] Morally ambiguous girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: No
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Some obvious themes emerge: There are shockingly few women in the Mission Impossible movies, they generally don’t interact, and a lot of them die.

Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of 'Mission Impossible III' — Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of *Mission Impossible III*

What is worse is that even when female characters survive to the credits, they generally don’t appear in the following sequels (with no explanation of where they’ve gone). Thandie Newton’s Nyah, the only woman in Mission Impossible II, ends the film as the ally and lover of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. She’s never spoken of again. Maggie Q’s Zhen in Mission Impossible III and Paula Patton’s Jane in Ghost Protocol were both women of color working alongside Ethan; they’re not secretly evil, they don’t die, they aren’t his love interest (maybe Nyah disappeared because it was a bad breakup?). But when the next movie comes around, they’re not on his team anymore. Sure, we never see the character Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays in Mission Impossible III again, either, but he is one of countless white dudes in the franchise. As you can see above, women in the franchise are so countable that a two-year-old would be like, “I got this.”

Michele Monaghan as Julia in 'Mission Impossible III', at gunpoint. — Michele Monaghan as Julia in *Mission Impossible III*, at gunpoint.

The only woman who appears in more than one Mission Impossible movie is Michelle Monaghan’s Julia, who marries Ethan in Mission Impossible: III and promptly becomes a damsel in distress. Bad Guy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first words to Ethan are, “Do you have a wife or a girlfriend? Because if you do, I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her.” So even though Mission Impossible: III arguably does the best by women, it leans heavily on the trope of women in refrigerators (Ethan is also tormented by failing to save his protégé Lindsey Farris, played by Keri Russell). At the start of Ghost Protocol we’re led to believe Julia was killed off-screen between movies, but she is revealed to be secretly alive in the final scene. Not alive enough to have any dialogue, though. Which means surviving to make a silent cameo is the best any woman in five Mission Impossible movies has done.

Which doesn’t make me optimistic for Rebecca Ferguson’s future with the franchise. Even if she does show up in the next Mission Impossible movie (they are planning a sixth), it will be frustrating that a white woman is the first to manage that. Or maybe Jane and Zhen will team up with Ilsa and Nyah in the next movie to save Ethan from mortal peril? There’s still time to write that movie, Hollywood.

All You Need is White People: Whitewashing in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Learning that ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98% of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Tom Cruise is White Dude in 'Edge of Tomorrow' — Tom Cruise is A White Dude in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

I watched Edge of Tomorrow without knowing it was an adaptation. It seems like a movie without source material, because the plot depends on you not thinking too critically about any of the details. (How does this time loop work? Why does it also involve psychic visions? Why are these alien invaders called “mimics” when the only thing they mimic is the Sentinels from The Matrix?)

Edge of Tomorrow is in fact based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, which was also adapted into a manga of the same name by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata. Edge of Tomorrow is SWIMMING in source material.

Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel 'All You Need Is Kill' — Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel *All You Need Is Kill.*

I have read neither the novel nor the manga, but learning that Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98 percent of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the most interesting character.

Sure, there are no Japanese actors as big as Tom Cruise. There are few actors, period, who are as big as Tom Cruise. That didn’t stop Edge of Tomorrow from pretty much tanking at the box office, though. And they could cast their precious white Name Actor as the female lead Rita Vrataski, who is a white American in the book and a white Brit (Emily Blunt) in the film. She’s a more interesting character anyway, and the film would probably benefit from re-centering on her. And maybe a sci-fi movie headlined by a woman and a Japanese man would have gotten more notice from audiences who dismissed Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow as generic enough to wait for home video?

And why change the setting to Europe? What makes that more interesting or dramatic a setting, other than racism? I was reminded of this summer’s Godzilla, which used “increasing whiteness of populations at risk” as its form of raising the dramatic stakes as the monsters trekked across the Pacific Ocean.

Wait... why are we in Europe? — Oh man, that is pretty racist.

I need Hollywood to figure out that white people’s lives are not intrinsically more valuable. And that white movies stars are often not as valuable as they’re supposed to be. “Bankability” is not a justification for whitewashing. I’d like to think the weak performance of Edge of Tomorrow might clue Hollywood in on this. Especially because Edge of Tomorrow was saved from being a total bomb by the foreign grosses from the very countries deemed not interesting enough to be the setting of the adaptation (although, notably, there was tepid reception in Japan).

In Edge of Tomorrow, every time Tom Cruise’s character dies he learns from his mistakes. But when a movie like it dies at the box office, Hollywood just shrugs and says “it probably needed more white people.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town.

‘Edge of Tomorrow’: Yesterday’s Tom Cruise

Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., ‘RoboCop’ (2014), ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014), and ‘X-men: Days of Future Past’ (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch ‘Edge’ without comparing it to its contemporaries.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Edge of Tomorrow stars Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise as near-future warriors battling alien invaders. It was directed by Doug Liman.

There is something perverse about attacking a film for its lack of originality when the central conceit is that the main character repeats the same day over and over again. So, in an effort to preserve my purity, now for something completely different. You remember Groundhog Day (1993), yes? It had plenty of Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, but it was lacking… sci-fi. Specifically, it needed some quantum pseudoscience and a horde of generic squido-mechanical pod people.

Anyway, Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Released this weekend (June 6), it stars Tom Cruise as military PR weasel Major William Cage. We meet him after a trite news reel intro composed of an anthology of worldwide unrest footage (most, it seems, from the last century for some reason). He has been summoned by a large man who commands the world’s unified armed forces. Instead of spinning war from afar, Cage will be imbedded with the troops during the imminent (second) landing at Normandy. This time, humanity is attempting to take back continental Europe from an alien aggressor, so far only vaguely referenced as the “Mimics.” Cage is a coward, and clumsily threatens blackmail in an attempt to avoid combat. It doesn’t work. Instead, Cage is arrested and sent to a forward base to meet his fate as a deserter conscript. Behold, the premise.

Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., RoboCop (2014), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and X-men: Days of Future Past (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch Edge without comparing it to its contemporaries.

Like the films mentioned above, Edge features frenetic action sequences and trailer-worthy tech pieces. Most notable are the exo-suits (“jackets”) employed by the Earthican forces. Exoskeletons are having something of a moment recently; see RoboCop (2014), The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014), the Iron Man franchise, and others. So, who wore it better? My sense of aesthetics favors Murphy in RoboCop. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison, as RoboCop was much more concerned with the ethics and practical reality of cyborgism. Still, the exosuits in Edge, which are really the film’s party piece, were just so mundane compared to those envisioned in RoboCop. Instead of a fresh vision of technological advancement, they seemed like a regression from the Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader in Aliens (1986). In fact, they seem like tech that might really only be a few years away, much to the detriment of their wow factor.

The Mimics too, are unremarkable. Spastic glowing balls of slashing alien death have been done better by the Matrix films, and, even, by Battleship (2012). It’s explained that the mimics have a hierarchal structure composed of a legion of small fiery footsoliders, rare blue “alphas,” and a central “server” being (I was reminded of the brain bugs in Starship Troopers). During the first iteration of the beach landing Cage is, of course, killed. On his way out, he kills an alpha and the alien’s blood mingles with Cage’s. The brain mimic has the power to TURN BACK TIME, and does so whenever an alpha is killed. However, while the head mimic can list time travel, telepathy, organo-metallic bioengineering, and interstellar travel as hard skills, it is unable to discern that Cage is actually a human. Time is reversed, and Cage awakens to face battle once again.

And again.

Yeah, I am down on this movie. I can forgive a lack of originality if the other elements of a story shine, but we don’t even find out why the aliens are called mimics! What do they mimic? Aliens from other movies? What the hell, man?

The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Cage’s fellow soldiers are a rag tag crew in the vein of every war movie ever. There is a mean southern (y’all can tell by the accent, y’all) drill sergeant, a fat guy, a “crazy” guy, a black guy, a foreign guy, and a woman. It can be refreshing to see women depicted in combat roles, but Edge, like so many other films before, falls into tropes in its depiction. The female solider is shown as less clean, less sensible, and gratuitously gruff, as if she has to curse and posture constantly to defend her presence in the unit.

Blunt’s character, Rita Vrataski, is something different. She is a battle-hardened soldier that Cage has set up as a figurehead for the military to rally around. She wears practical armor (except for a helmet – no one has time for hat hair on the battlefield), and dispatches her foes with a badass Final Fantasy sword. To his credit, Liman avoided eroticizing her combat moves and generally stayed away from FFD clichés, save for a few superfluous yoga poses. A superior warrior, she teaches Cage in anti-chrome-cephalopod techniques in a training montage filled with hilarious homicide sight gags.

It is great to see a feature with a woman warrior who is not also a sex object, but there are a few problems. The other soldiers in the film refer to Rita as the “Full Metal Bitch,” a term she clearly does not care for. And while she initially trains Cage, he soon takes over a protector role, and attempts to use time travel trickery to seduce her. This scene is kinda creepy, and it does not help that Blunt and Cruise lack chemistry.

Rita does make it to the climax without getting well and truly fridged, and joins Cage in making a heroic sacrifice. Unfortunately, the script fails both the spirit and the letter of the Bechdel test. I did not note any female characters talking to each other, and the several women in the film were always either talking to Cage or talking about Cage.

Edge of Tomorrow is not a repugnant film – its treatment of women is uneven, but trending towards positive. But neither is it a great film (despite what the interwebs may tell you). For example, the dialogue was hokey in a way befitting it’s genre. Midway through the film a wild-haired-scientist tells us that the aliens’ “only vulnerability is…humanity.”

Post climax, a feel-good ending closes with a slapsticky shot of Cruise laughing to camera right. As the credits start to roll, the viewer is left with a quickly fading memory of an unremarkable vision of the future. The film does borrow heavily from the other movies mentioned above, as well as from previous Cruise vehicles like Minority Report (2002) and Oblivion (2013). In fact, Rachel Redfern was on point in her review of Oblivion: “Tom Cruise’s latest movie…is exactly that, a movie about Tom Cruise.”

I agree. Likewise, it’s best not to evaluate Edge as an original film, a science fiction film, or a feminist film – it’s a Tom Cruise film.

Note: For more information on things like “why are they called mimics,” and “what the hell is this movie supposed to be about,” here’s the source material: All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Oblivion:’ A Response to Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s Review on RogerEbert.com

Oblivion (2013)
Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) stands on the landing pad to his home.

This is a guest post written by Gabrielle Gopie-Tree.

I’m not a Tom Cruise fan and I usually don’t watch his films, but I quite like Oblivion. To be fair, I am partial to post-apocalyptic productions but often the action is overdone and the plot underdeveloped; this is certainly not the case with Oblivion, which is a film about monoculture. Monoculture lacks the essential elements for life: diversity, complexity, and struggle.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky sees it differently. While he offers a humorous critique of patriarchy and a welcome, albeit limited, view of misogyny from his perspective as a White male of eastern origins, his superficial review of Oblivion ignores the soulful theme of the film: self-recovery. This idea is central to every aspect of the movie and is quite an unusual perspective in a Hollywood film, particularly in a genre that is typically focused on stereotypical masculinity. While discussion of sex-inequality in film is an encouraging development, there are serious flaws in this element of Vishnevetsky’s criticism. Here is my point of view from my perspective as a Black female of western origins.

Vishnevetsky starts with a spirited description of the colour (white) and shape of Jack’s ship, the docking station, and the interior of the central command’s arrival chamber as all being symbolic of female genitalia which he views as encapsulating a violent sexism. I disagree. Instead I see the distilled and contrived soul-lessness of these elements as juxtaposition against the reality of Jack’s former life; a life that keeps calling to Jack in the shape of his attachment to a very green getaway spot on Earth and romantic memories of a woman in pre-apocalyptic New York City. Jack projects an air of perpetual disorientation as his longing for a satisfying existence contrasts with his daily life.

Jack works with Vica (Andrea Riseborough) character to ensure the logistical resource extraction process on a devastated Earth in the year 2077. Vica and Jack are colleagues as well as lovers. They both represent a futuristic version of the patriarchal family: Jack goes out to work each day returning to prepared meals and perfunctory intimacy. Vica is the classic Stepford Wife in both appearance and behaviour: her sheer plasticity and vacuity are her essence. Jack is depicted as having a ‘ruggedly capable masculinity:’ he fixes, fights, and fucks. Despite the mental manipulation of his masters, Jack has a heart. We see this via his expressions of service to others: his successful fight to save a lone dog as well as the woman who turns out to be his wife, Julia (Olga Kurylenko), from death by drone, and his communication of loyalty to the human resistance who awaken him from his alien-induced programming. These are traits typically associated with the feminine, making this a rather feminist/womanist element of Jack’s character and the film itself.

Jack struggles with Drone 166 to get the machine to stand up.

While Vishnevetsky compliments the storytelling method used in Oblivion, he simultaneously lambastes the film as being “derivative” of “several science-fiction movies at once.” I see this critique as plausible in light of the theme of the film itself – self-recovery. However, it seems that while Vishnevetsky is comfortable advancing some semblance of a gender critique, he is much less comfortable discussing the racial element of Oblivion, although he does mention the colour of the pseudo-feminine monoculture that amuses him so greatly as “white.” For example, who could miss the racial dynamics in the fact that there is (as far as I can tell) only one non-white man, Beech (Morgan Freeman), and one non-white woman, Julia–or, that Beech has a similar wake-up talk with Jack as did Morpheus (Laurence Fishbourne) with Neo (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix. Vishnevetsky’s failure to talk race brings the sincerity of his limited discussion of gender into question.

Morgan Freeman as Beech, the resistance leader who helps Jack recover his identity.

Furthermore, Vishnevetsky’s claim that: Oblivion is about a “lowly technician sending unmanned drones to hunt and kill a demonized, alien Other — until it forgets that it ever was” is overly simplistic. He ignores the element of struggle in the film which is necessary for life and Oblivion is most certainly about the life/death struggle; from the start of the film with Jack and Vica’s life-parody to the story’s culmination in Jack and Julia’s life-reality on a lush green patch of earth, complete with offspring.

Julia (Olga Kurylenko) and Jack recall a pre-apocalypse moment.

While Vishnevetsky sees Oblivion as “a wannabe mindbender that raises questions about its lead character’s identity — except that the lead character is too sketchy to make these questions compelling,” I see it as an exploration of a man’s struggle to recover himself from monoculture programming which in itself requires interactions with others for one’s self-development to occur. Curiously, Vishnevetsky condemns Jack using the archetype of the self-sufficient masculinised rugged individual but mislabels it as “creation myth.” Thereafter, he bemoans what he sees as none of the many women in the film being “able to do anything without Harper’s help.” This is a very strange critique and smacks of a highly neoliberal notion of sameness as the benchmark for sex-equality. Also, it does not hold up in light of the fact that Vica administers both the home and the office each day while Jack fulfills his duties outside on the ground and she engages in almost all communications with Sally (Melissa Leo) at central control, including the authority to terminate her working relationship with Jack by simply saying they are no longer an “effective team.” Additionally, toward the end of the film Jack and Julia collaborate to challenge the authority of the alien masters including Julia’s decision to undergo cryosleep as the best option for facilitating Jack’s assault on the alien’s central command.

Do not be fooled by Vishnevetsky’s use of terms such as “uterus,” “vulva,” “mother figure,” “creation myth,” and “misogyny” which suggest a feminist critique of Oblivion that just is not there.

Gabrielle Gopie-Tree has a background in law, politics, psychology and spirituality. She is a nomadic social theorist trying to be the change she wants to see in the world; a believer in the lessons of the guide Qadhafi; and valiantly trying to allow the universe to unfold as it should.

Oblivious Hollywood and Its New Movie ‘Oblivion’

Written by Rachel Redfern

Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Oblivion, is exactly that, a movie about Tom Cruise; upon watching, it felt as though any other character had been thrown in as an after-thought, which obviously denied them of any personality or importance to the plot. This of course leaves one with the odd idea that had they just nixed everyone else from the film and had Cruise be the only actor, it might actually have been a better movie.

Oblivion is the latest Sci-fi action movie blockbuster from Hollywood, directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring (the somehow never aging) Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (hello, Jamie Lannister!). The plot: Jack (Cruise) and his partner Victoria (Riseborough) are clean-up and maintenance crews for the energy-creating and defense units that are left on Earth after everyone moves to Mars (basically like Wall-E except not as good). Of course, Jack is a curious sort of fellow, and mystery abounds when a spaceship crashes on Earth with a curiously familiar woman inside and the sudden reveal of Morgan Freeman (who, sadly, has basically 10 lines for the whole movie).

Tom Cruise saving the day in Oblivion

While some of the ideas could have been unique regarding the mystery and eventual climax of the film, for the most part it all feels very stock and trade. The whole movie is just watching Cruise go from one location to the next, kick someone’s ass, save someone, and have an inordinately pretty woman make love eyes at him. (Seriously, Cruise has to fly the jet, destroy the evil machines following them with his amazing skills, and shoot one-handed to pop off the ones that get too close, all while the female lead sits in the passenger seat looking scared and confused?) It feels flat and familiar and lacking in any kind of interaction with the other actors or scenery; it’s really a very static film with only one dynamic actor and everything else a fancy prop.

It’s a shame that the rest of the characters weren’t interesting, unique, or even had many lines. There were some great male actors in the film, specifically Coster-Waldau and Freeman who were sorely underused. Beyond that, their plot lines were unexplained and vague, lacking in development, explanation or screen time.

That’s not even the worst though; let’s consider the women of the film. The female characters were a type that I haven’t seen in a while, being so wholly lacking in personality that it was like watching a 70’s action movie. They were fairly helpless, dashingly clueless, often naked for no reason, and sent longing looks in Jack’s direction a lot—with ever-so-slightly-parted, lingerie model lips. Really, is it impossible to close your mouth when you’re in love?

Olga Kurylenko looks longingly at Tom Cruise in Oblivion

I was actually surprised at how lackluster and generic the women were; lately it seems that Hollywood is at least trying to have one interesting woman in a film, but the lack of effort here was laughable. Again, EVE, the female robot in Wall-E was a thousand times more interesting and developed with a far more fascinating and distinct personality.

The effects and the landscape were, as in most big Hollywood blockbusters, impeccable. As is the lead actresses clothes, hair, make-up. But that’s the problem; it’s all so soulless. The technology has a lot of rounded corners and blue, floating touch screens and it’s all very pretty and it’s all very unoriginal. The lead actress is tall and thin, has the ends of her long hair curled and wears a nice 4-inch high heel shoe—the poster child for how to dress for a job interview.

Andrea Riseborough looking impeccably dull in Oblivion

I just want to see something new: a less-sterile spaceship, some messed-up hair, maybe a square corner on a computer screen, hell I’d settle for a power cord. It’s just monotonous. Where is the vibrancy, the life, the touch of grit? Could there at least be one pair of ill-fitting jeans? How about some sense of relatable emotion like embarrassment, rejection, disappointment? What if the technology malfunctioned? Or the Macgyver-ing of the wires just didn’t work?

I don’t know, Hollywood; what if something new happened? Do what you haven’t done in a while and surprise me.

———-

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection; however, she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘Rock of Ages’ Warms Your 80s-Loving Little Heart With a Cheesy Two-Hour Music Video

This review by Candice Frederick previously appeared at Reel Talk and is cross-posted with permission.

Continuing Hollywood’s long and steady trip down memory lane comes the nostalgia-soaked adaptation of the smash hit Broadway show, Rock of Ages.

And at this leg of the expedition, we arrive at the year 1987. In the era of big dreams and bigger hair, director/choreographer Adam Shankman (of So You Think You Can Dance fame) introduces us to two young star-crossed lovers Drew (Diego Boneta) and Sherrie (Julianne Hough), struggling bartenders at The Bourbon Room from Anytown U.S.A. who hope to make it big on the Hollywood stage one day. But first, they’ve got a series of karaoke mash-ups to get through.

With carefully choreographed and meticulously lip synced song and dance numbers in the streets, at the bar, on a bus, and anywhere they can grab a hairbrush and pretend it’s a mic, the two declare their love for each other and rock and roll by performing monster ballads from the greatest hair bands, including Journey, White Snake and Night Ranger.

While they’re off singing for their supper, strapped Bourbon Room bar owner Dennis Dupree (a long-tressed Alec Baldwin) is desperately trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, while downing his sorrows in a bottle of scotch. To make matters worse, goody goody First Lady of Tinseltown, Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), is threatening to shut the fledgling bar down for good, citing “sacrilegious” acts like lewd dancing, alcohol-guzzling and loud music. Dennis’ hand man, Lonny (snugly played by Russell Brand), tries to lighten the mood by offering witty quips in his perpetual drunken stupor, which actually does work a few times. This is all done in a few more awesomely contrived power ballads that will effectively make you want to belt out a few tunes along with them, of course.

In the midst of Dennis’ woes, and after a few more musical mash-ups chronicling the story of our two lovers, Tom Cruise shakes things up when he enters the scene as rock god Stacee Jaxx in full-on rock star garb: guyliner, mullet, stank attitude, booze breath, and cradling a scantily-clad groupie. That’s around the time when things are kicked into high gear.

With one show-stopping performance of the classic Def Leppard song “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” Cruise grabs the reigns of the movie and never lets it go. He, along with the equally transformed Malin Akerman (who plays smitten rock journalist Constance Sack), steals the show with a bitchin’ rock romance made in heaven.

But, with the exception of Cruise and Akerman, the acting overall left much to be desired. Hough’s impossibly wide-eyed Sherrie is annoyingly charming, but annoying nonetheless. However, that’s soothed a bit when she shares scenes with Boneta, who is remarkably charismatic onscreen. He brings the right amount of chutzpah and balls to play a rock prince who could share a stage with the larger than life Jaxx.

R&B singer Mary J. Blige brings some legitimacy to the film as strip club owner Justice Charlier, performing hits like Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night” with ease, but with the spoken line delivery of someone who’s still trying to find her footing as an actress. Meanwhile, Zeta-Jones is still reminding people that what she really wants to do is sing. Her performance in the movie is puzzling not because it good (it’s decent), but you just don’t imagine her in this kind of role.

Not like you picture someone like, say, Brand in a role as a coked out sidekick. You really never know where Lonny ends and where Brand begins … but his scenes with the almost unrecognizable Baldwin are certainly memorable, if anything.

Probably the most perfect casting is that of Paul Giamatti, who plays Jaxx’s slimy manager Paul Gill. Giamatti’s weasly voice alone may prohibit him from playing any other type of character than one who always has an agenda, and it ain’t ever yours.

Even though its finest moments all boil down to well-intentioned, high energy karaoke numbers, and its script (co-written by Justin Theroux) left more cheese in the recipe than what was called for, Rock of Ages is still great fun. Really, it’s like a longer, louder version of Glee or American Idol, but with actors who can’t sing rather than singers who can’t act. Plus, it rocks you like a hurricane.

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Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning journalist and film blogger for Reel Talk. She’s also written for Essence Magazine and The Urban Daily. Follow her on twitter.