When it comes to work, the sky’s the limit these days. The rocket growth of the internet has removed many of the decades-old barriers that once stood in the way of you achieving your dreams. If you can muster up enough determination, will power and focus it feels like you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. At least, that’s what we’re told. On the surface, it looks like we live in the most opportunity-laden generation ever - but maybe it’s just the most frustrating. Open up any device and the potential for success  is dangled so close we can almost touch it. All the puzzle pieces are there, if we can just figure out what order they go in…

Any yet despite this fluidity, there still appears to be a glass ceiling when it comes to career growth. Obviously each field of work is different and comes with its own specific opportunities and limitations - however when it comes to film journalism, location still seems to dictate how far you can push your professional prowess. I can only relate to this issue through the experiences I’ve encountered first hand - and while I’ve certainly been able to achieve a lot more than I ever thought would be possible without caving in and moving from Manchester to London - I still feel the limitations of my surroundings impacting my career potential every day, working as part of an industry that rarely looks further afoot than Leicester Square. 

Seriously. If I had a quid for every commission or great gig I’ve had to miss purely because I’m not based down South or I can’t swing the £60+ train fare to see the necessary film screening before a PR team will let me near an interviewee - my freelance career would be booming. It’s as if those in charge are aware of the necessity for regional coverage but unable or unwilling to enable its growth. It’s not just missed opportunities either - the real kicker (and the one that goes largely ignored) is just how much harder the people who want a pop-culture oriented career, who are based outside of London, have to work. Over the years, I’ve had to do countless full time day-jobs alongside the often 24/7 task of trying to pursue my creative passion, against the odds. 

‘If you’re so bothered, just move’, most of you will no doubt think - but that’s not the point - and If anything relocating would only reinforce the vicious cycle of geographical restrictions. Instead, I’ve quietly decided to wear my Northern proximity as a badge of defiance. One that says, ‘No - you don’t need to pick up and move or choose between leaving family and friends or dipping into your personal savings - if you want a shot at achieving your dreams.’ Even if it means working a side-job or watching those who happen to be in the right place quickly rise up the ranks ahead of you or missing out on the occasional amazing opportunity. I’ve learned to love my Northern heritage and position, despite its mild drawbacks and periodic frustrations. I’ve worked it into my writing style and editorial tone of voice. It helps make me unique. Should I really have to abandon that in order to succeed? I don’t think so - so I won’t. 

Remember the saying ‘too much of anything is bad for you’? Apparently no one told pop-culture. When it comes to our collective love of movies and TV, literally anything goes. Need proof? Just look online. Audience appetites can’t seem to be quenched, forcing the already prevalent reboot and sequelisation culture to evolve yet again, this time to include a brand new format: the long-dormant continuation. Just recently word broke that The Wachowski Sisters are planning to jack back into The Matrix to further a franchise that was neatly wrapped up over 15 years ago. Not only that - but we also learned a Breaking Bad movie is on its way with the secretly-filmed El Camino - meaning we’ll get even more life from a series that was instrumental in paving the way for a new golden age of telly. Good? Maybe. But perhaps the risk outweighs the reward. After all, their very existence will render all those think-pieces, out-there fan theories and, dare we say it - content feelings - associated with these finale, irrevocably mute. When it comes to more, too much never seems to be quite enough. 

Perhaps that final point is the real kicker. What happens when too much messing with the formula ruins our cherished memories of the original product? It’s happened before. Crafting a worthy follow-up to something millions hold dear and strongly identity with is a mercurial science with no guarantees - and sometimes it’s not even worth it. By serving up more, creators effectively un-write the carefully crafted endings they spent so long perfecting. Ricky Gervais transporting his pompous alter-ego David Brent to the big screen is the perfect case in point. Sure, 2016’s Life on the Road has its moments - and it certainly has its fans - but it hardly packs the same emotional punch and funny-bone tickle of the all-but perfect final moments of 2003’s Christmas special. That tender (and surprisingly noble) small-screen conclusion for Brent? Poof! Gone in an instant as soon as the opening crawl of Life on the Road appeared. Bye bye, lasting memory. Hello, more story! 

It’s not just TV that’s at risk either. This same greed almost split the Star Wars franchise in two with Rian Johnson’s sandwich-filler trilogy instalment The Last Jedi in 2017. Johnson’s bold strokes and gleeful abandon during his time spent in a Galaxy Far, Far Away were praised by many - but it’s hard to ignore the rift they caused among die hard fans who were less than pleased with the direction he took their beloved characters. Heck - they even set up a petition to remove the film from official Star Wars canon. Whatever your thoughts on Johnson’s work, or continuations in general, our feverish need for more from our pop-culture cornerstones undeniably changes our relationship with the very thing that made them special in the first place. To paraphrase Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcom, Hollywood seems so preoccupied with whether or not they could - they didn’t stop to think if they should. Good quote, that. Here’s hoping we don’t come to hate Malcolm in Jurassic World III, due June 11 2020. 

Reader beware: The long-awaited conclusion to Marvel’s sprawling cinematic universe arrives this week with heroic hype-machine Avengers: Endgame - and spoilers are everywhere. Of course, having your viewing experience tarnished by an overly-blabby punter is nothing new - but in today’s chatter-obsessed digital world it’s become something that requires staggering amounts of vigilance to shield yourself from. Social media sites have even started using bespoke filters to help protect your peepers from potential plot points - and yet with the pure excess of information gushing through our newsstreams, it’s still possible to encounter a spoiler before you even realise you’ve seen it. First world problem? Sure. Annoying? Definitely. 

It makes you nostalgic for the days where movie cliffhangers really carried some weight. However Cap and co counteract that infamous Thanos click, it’s hard to ignore the countless ads, teases and announcements we’ve already had for future instalments of Marvel’s supposedly dusted heroes. Our insatiable need for literally any shred of movie information or newsworthy nuggets has all but sapped any of the peril Infinity Game’s open-ended climax had - and in turn, it’s robbed us of the full potency of the Russo Brothers’ master plan. Undoubtedly the internet and all of its connectivity, opportunity, cat gifs and fail videos has done a lot of good - but for movie-fans, it’s irrevocably changed the viewing experience. 

In a pre-web world, this wasn’t the case. It may seem like an eon ago - but cast your mind back and imagine what it must have been like to watch a movie cliffhanger when there was nothing - literally nothing - you could do but wait for the ending of the story to materialise. No shoddy set pictures shot on camera phones from street corners, no accidental plot leaks from sweaty-palmed crew members rolled out for interviews whenever the stars were unavailable - not even any unsubstantiated think-pieces or geeky ‘things you didn’t notice’ scene analyses on YouTube to dissect. All you had was time. Plenty of time. It’s a hard scenario to picture these days but it definitely existed.

Now put yourself in the cinema seat of a moviegoer watching The Empire Strikes Back for the very first time in 1980. Imagine seeing it come to a close: Luke bested by Vader and missing a hand, mysterious rumours of another Skywalker hiding somewhere in the galaxy, Han imprisoned in carbonite and sold off to a bounty hunter - and then: credits. What would you have thought as you stared at the screen, mouth agape, pondering the pure WTF-ness of it all whilst knowing that you wouldn’t get any answers or closure at all until Episode VI arrived in three years time? It goes without saying that the internet has given us a wealth of information right at our fingertips - spoilers and all - but sometimes, ignorance is bliss. 

Do you think decent movie cliffhangers are gone for good? Let me know in the comment section below!

With telly mega-hit Game of Thrones returning for its final slew of episodes, I thought I'd republish an old Q&A I did with Jon Snow's real-life counterpart Kit Harington. This interview was done back in 2012 shortly before the debut of the show's second season. It was for one of my FRONT magazine film sections but I only had space to run a small segment of it - which felt like a crime. So here it is: the full chat with a pre-battle weary, pre-knowing nothing, pre-dead (erm, spoilers) Jon Snow - back when winter was still coming but it wasn't, you know, like, a dead urgent thing. Enjoy!

Hey Kit - so tell me about how you landed the role of Jon Snow…
It was two and half years ago that I got the pilot. It’s weird now thinking about reading it because I know what happens in the story and I know Jon’s story - but when I originally read it, it was quite a bizarre script to get and it took some getting your head around. Initially the character was all there and I was just attracted to it from the word go. It was just one of those scripts where you go ‘I can do this and I want to do this’.

Did knowing Jon’s character arc help to play him? 
Yeah. I love how we have source materials to work from and the fact there’s these books behind the series. Some people don’t want to know where there character goes or anything about the original source material but I loved it. I had it all there in front of me so I poured over the book for a long time trying to figure him out - but you’re right, there’s a point when you can rely on the original material too much and you have to look at the script more and just try to focus on where he is in the first series at the start of the story. It had its issues but at the same time I think it was useful to refer back to George’s books and try to get an interpretation that’s good for TV  and an interpretation that’s for the book and they can be slightly different at times - but if you put the two together you come up with your own take on him. 

How much of yourself is in Jon?
When David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss) auditioned me the reports I got back were ‘He’s our Jon, he seems like the kind of guy we want playing him’ but I think there’s quite a lot of me that’s him. I share a certain outlook on the world that’s similar to Jon’s. I think we’re similar but you have to find differences and similarities so you’re totally separated too. I think they thought I was Jon and I kind of feel like Jon to an extent.

You get the impression Jon is destined for big things. No pressure, then? 
I think it’s more exciting than anything else. Again, when I read that first pilot, even having not read the books, you could see he has that mystery about him. There’s the question of his Mother and he was singled out from his family as the Bastard child and he finds this white wolf as opposed to all these other wolves so there’s that thing about him that sets him apart. Of course, as the series goes on he goes off and has his own story arc and it does feel like there’s bigger things to come from him and I think there is. He has a great story but as far as the pressure goes, I dunno - I just like it - I like that there’s a lot riding on him but there is pressure in that there are fans out there who know who he is and have a big idea about what he is and what he should be so it’s about trying to live up to those expectations and also maintain a mystery and an excitement about him at the start but not get too far ahead of yourself. Not a whole load of pressure - I just enjoy it. 

It’s quite a physical role. Did you have to brush up on your archery/sword skills?
Yeah it is but I love the physical aspect involved with the show and the character. I always really enjoyed sword fighting at drama school and I love stage fighting and if I can do a stunt in the show I want to do it myself. I’d never ridden a horse before, so that was a new thing for me but I love it because when you’re in a dialogue scene, like most of the scenes, you have to immerse yourself in what’s happening and what your aim is but with sword fighting it’s just there already. You know what you have to pull off during this fight sequence. I find with the physical work you lose yourself far easier because you’re not thinking as much. You just go with it. I love that side of it and there’s a whole load of that in season two, probably more so.

Everyone’s fighting on-screen - any off-screen bust ups?
Everyone got on - I didn't hear of many on set bust-ups. There were times when people actually got bruised and hurt. I remember John Bradley who plays Samwell - when he gets beaten at the start when I have to step in and defend him; poor guy had loads of padding on and he’s just getting smacked with the sword again and again. He didn't complain at all but afterwards he had some serious bruises, he really took it. I got my finger sliced open - there were times when it got painful but everyone got on so well there wasn’t any bad feeling or any proper fighting that went on. 

How loyal is season two to George’s second book?
The original idea was: the first book is the first series, the second book is the second series and so on. That’s still the case but it’s always going to be an adaptation, so the writers are making clear that, whereas the first book is the first series, it does drift. There are blurred lines between the books and the TV series and that will continue to happen, so bits of the third book will bleed into the second and so on and it may get more adaptive as it goes on but that’s how you have to do it if you want to make a thrilling TV series as well as staying true to the books. You really have to make sure people know it’s an adaptation rather than a strict re-telling. There’s more added scenes that weren’t in the books and there’s more scenes and characters that have been taken away. It goes through George and everything gets thumbs up or thumbs down from him and we hopefully come out with a nice middle ground.

What does Jon get up to in season 2?
At the end of season one we see that he’s definitely not going to join the fray down with his brother and down South where all the political turmoil is going on and the war is happening - initially anyway. He’s heading out North beyond The Wall so his story gets more and more isolated from the rest of the story. Whereas in the first season we saw him interact with his family, now he’s further away from that. It was stranger this season because it was almost like we were doing this separate TV series. It’s a bit like Viserys storyline across the Narrow Sea, where two very separate stories go on. 

Season one was packed with violence & sex scenes. Does season two up the ante?
Yeah, it does. It gets really dark. Of course it was dark before but now we’re going into war and what war and battle means in this world and that’s a whole new thing. Before you had battles and incest and some really graphic sex scenes - anyone who was offended by the first season really isn’t going to enjoy the second. I’m not sure if it gets worse, it just carries on very much in the same vein. It’s a very graphic world. It’s a graphic novel that George has written and we wanted to be true to that and make this world as vivid and as shocking as we could. It carries on. There’s more sex, more violence, more blood. 

Anything we should keep an eye out for in season 2?
Without spoiling any particular scene, because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read the books, essentially all of my stuff was filmed in Iceland and we were filming in such stunning locations. Whereas before things were shot in Belfast and any snowy area we had was CGI, this is all real and that’s why I’m really excited about my part of the storyline. We were on location the whole time - there was no studio stuff. The things you can look forward to are: Jon finally gets to meet a girl and she’s an actress called Rose Leslie and she’s fantastic. There’s a whole host of new actors - while you lost Sean Bean you’ve now got Stephen Dillane. It’s a new story from the start, it asks you to invest in a whole host of new characters but from what I’ve heard and what I know, they do a terrific job. It’s going to be very exciting. 

Read more of my work for FRONT Magazine here.

The run up the Academy Awards is always a hectic time for cinemas. As Oscar bait floods their screens movie fans flock to catch as many critically praised films as they possibly can before the big day arrives. It’s also peak season for another industry - one that arrives with none of the glitz and glamour of a movie premiere or after-show party - but one that hits its stride as awards chatter heats up. Movie piracy, from leaked awards screeners right down to shoddy filmed-in-the-cinema camera footage, very much still exist and is often just a quick Google search away. Its presence is nothing new. Piracy has been lurking in the background of cinema since the days of VHS - but with this new-found ease of access it’s worth wondering why there’s a ready audience for illegal pirated movies in the first place.

It feels like an odd juxtaposition. Despite the presentation of digital media taking leaps and bounds towards high definition and specifically tailored viewing experiences, there still seems to be viewers willing to watch a brand new release interrupted mid-way through by a punter with a weak bladder. Even more shocking is the fact that footage like this still exists and manages to make it online in the first place. Call us old fashioned but the idea of rocking up to a multiplex with a camcorder in-hand, hitting record and lasting the full runtime without getting caught feels not only dated but surely painfully obvious to detect. Reassuringly however, only around 24% of people admit to being open to pirating a movie while it’s still in the cinemas - but maybe the comfort afforded by home-viewing platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime will soon skew that data. 

Alfonso Cuarón’s recent awards-hog Roma could be an interesting case-in-point. As a monotone foreign language drama, Cuarón’s personal tale of his Mexican upbringing is far from the most accessible movie for mainstream audiences more accustomed to superheroes and wars in the stars. However despite these populist hurdles Roma has quickly developed a word-of-mouth audience to match the critical praise its received. Could its Netflix accessibility have encouraged unlikely, on-the-fence viewers to take a punt on it when whipping out their wallets may have seemed too hard a bargain? With this in mind, maybe fans’ urge to watch even the dodgiest quality pirate movie comes from an odd place of support. When times are tough, disposable income is scarce and your enjoyment of an awards contender is far-from guaranteed - are viewers turning to piracy as a way to widen their cinematic tastes without the financial risk? 

It’s a scenario that’s far from ideal - and one that’s unlikely to end anytime soon. As long as there are new releases, there will likely be illegal streamed copies of them available online. The reason why people pirate movies may remain unclear but the ultimate resolution of this enduring dilemma seems to lie more with people’s morals than their wallets. Fans wanting to support cinema and the colourful voices its showcases will undoubtedly pay for the pleasure of being whisked away to a new on-screen world. There may even be a glimmer of hope on the flip side of the coin, too. While those pirating their movies lose out on the experience of seeing a zeitgeisty new release with a group of like-minded individuals, if their sofa-stint with a screener strikes a chord, it could transform them into a lifelong (and with any luck, paying) fan of left-field cinema. Here's hoping. 

Would you consider watching a pirated movie? Let me know in the comments below!

It may have been touted as a film sixty-five million years in the making but a further twenty-five have passed since we were first introduced to Steven Spielberg’s dino-shaped landmark Jurassic Park. Its arrival in ‘93 marked more than just another popcorn blockbuster. This adaption of Michael Crichton’s high-concept novel signalled the birth of a CGI filmmaking era that’s arguably just as important as sound or colour. With this in mind, here’s 25 reasons (one for every year of Jurassic Park’s existence) as to why you’re probably long overdue a trip to Isla Nublar...

Jurassic Park will forever be known for introducing audiences to picture perfect CG but it also remains a prime example of the seamless coexistence of animation and practical puppetry. Thanks to the incredible handy-work of artist Stan Winston, the park’s threats felt tangible and we all emphasised with a sick triceratops. Talk about suspension of disbelief. 

“We’re out of a job,” mumbles Alan Grant after seeing the wonders of Jurassic Park. Ian Malcolm quickly interjects: “Don’t you mean extinct?” This exchange was reportedly taken straight from stop-motion master Phil Tippett after he saw the film’s groundbreaking visual effects and animation for the first time, knowing immediately that his hand-animated profession may be under threat.

It’s not until the island’s power goes down that we get our first full glimpse at Jurassic Park’s primary villain, unlikely hero and biggest star - and with it, our first look at the raw potential of CGI. As the Rex breaks free from its paddock never to return, so does a filmmaking game-changer. Both cinema - and Isla Nublar - will never be the same again.

Warning: scenes in this film may be more memorable than they first appear - Like the super-tense T-Rex chase that tail-ends the film’s initial bout with chaos. Toy Story 2 successfully spoofed the moment where Hammond’s star attraction gets a little too cosy in the wing-mirror of Muldoon’s Land Rover. Surely that’s when you know you’ve made it into the pop-culture zeitgeist. 

As things heat up and the threat level rises, the deaths come thick and fast as Elle, Grant and the kids try to escape the island with their lives intact. There’s plenty of splatter moments to be found but none so sinister than Muldoon’s grim realisation that he’s been outsmarted by a creature from another age. Clever girl indeed. 

It sounds funny relating a feeling of nostalgia to a film that was only released in the early nineties but for a certain generation Jurassic Park will forever be associated with a key moment in their childhoods, perhaps in some case signifying their route into the wider world of cinema. 

Jurassic Park may not feel twenty-five years old but it certainly doesn’t look it. Revisit it on its 25th birthday and you may pleased to discover its storytelling and visual effects not only hold up but rival those in movies released in recent years. Impressive stuff. 

​Remember when Alan Grant viscerally described disemboweling a chubby child who questioned his dino-logic? How could you forget! Dr Alan Grant is so stuck in the prehistoric past that he has absolutely zero time for the future - and that’s no bad thing. To him, teeth and claws weren’t the only thing worth avoiding in Jurassic Park - Lex and Tim can do-one too. 

Jurassic Park has a rare power: No matter how far fetched new instalment storylines are, die-hard fans will go see them regardless, such is their love of part-one. Spielberg stuck around for Ian Malcolm's '97 sequel The Lost World but he was right to duck out before talking dream raptors appeared in Joe Johnston’s third instalment.

“That doesn’t look very scary…” “Spared no expense!” “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if the SHOULD” “Dino, ah, dro-droppings?” “Life finds a way…” “Mr Hammond, the phones are working” “Ian, FREEZE!” “Clever girl…” “You have a T Rex?!” “Dodgson, we got Dodgson here!” “Hold onto your butts!”  “Welcome, to Jurassic Park!”  - You get the point.

While subsequent Jurassic Park sequels never quite manage to recapture the magic of 1993’s original, that hasn’t stopped Universal from developing a franchise around Spielberg’s film. It’s no surprise, though. One look at Crichton’s original text reveals a wealth of rich story ideas that - if nothing else - provide a lucrative jumping off point for future feature ideas. Get comfortable, Jurassic Park shows no signs of closing its doors...

​To single out just one of John Williams’ tracks seems silly. After all, the 86-year-old composer and regular Spielberg collaborator has single-handedly scored the childhoods of an entire generation. That said, the elegantly animalistic theme he dreamed up for Jurassic Park emerges as a gem in his illustrious back catalogue. Who else could have summed up the film’s themes of big ideas and good intentions turned rabid with such hum-ability? Spotify, anyone?

Spielberg’s mate George Lucas cites Jurassic Park as the film that convinced him cinema had finally reached a place where it could accommodate the high-concept aesthetics of the Star Wars saga. The result was 1999’s The Phantom Menace, a film that took Jurassic Park’s burgeoning computer animation and used it to bring an entire leading character to life. It was an experiment that paid off (sort of) and by the end of the 90s, these two features had bridged the gap for blockbuster movies to enter a whole new world of possibilities. 

Is Die Hard really a Christmas film? I guess we’ll never know for sure. Jurassic Park on the other hand sure as heck isn’t - and yet it’s hard not to get a festive feeling when watching it. Maybe it’s the constant Christmas Day reruns that’re to blame. After all, John Hammond’s big idea gone bad has been helping us digest Christmas dinner for almost three decades and as a result, it’s hard not to think of Jurassic Park as an unlikely Christmas film staple. 

Thanos may have wiped out most of cinema's heroes in part one of Infinity War (spoilers) but odds are they won’t be gone for long. With this in mind, it’s refreshing to reflect on a time where super-suits and double-identities weren’t such a common sight in multiplexes. Sure, the Jurassic Park series shows no sign of slowing but it adds a welcome variation to a popcorn cinema landscape that can so often be dominated by comic book adaptations.

Samuel L. Jackson appeared in Jurassic Park in 1993. A year later his starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and cemented his place as a cinematic treasure with mainstream audiences. These days you’re just as likely to find Jackson in bargain bin fodder as you are in prestige Oscar contenders - making his early turn as Jurassic Park’s I.T. guy John Arnold a rare example of the actor at his understated best.

​Few filmmakers deal in such high-impact nostalgia than Steven Spielberg. While he’s tried hard over the years to distance himself from the saccharine sweet world of wholesome storytelling, it still remains his greatest trademark - and for good reason. The guy’s unbelievably good at hitting us right in the feels with films, stories and characters that arrive at just the right point of our collective development and Jurassic Park is no exception to the rule.

It wasn’t until half way through shooting that Spielberg realised that Jurassic Park’s T-Rex wasn’t the villain of the piece and was instead its hero. After a quick switch around, the filmmaker ultimately decided to end his story of the chaotic unpredictability of life and nature with another random moment - the T Rex saving the day. 

It wasn’t until 2016’s Jurassic World that we got a proper look at the park in full working order - and even that didn’t last long. Ever since Grant’s chopper skipped off into the sunset at the end of part one, all we’ve glimpsed is shards of a shattered dream - with The Lost World skipping the original location entirely and setting up shop on Isla Sorna’s Site B. 

Maybe it’s the computer animation, maybe it’s the performances - but Jurassic Park is one of the few films of the 90s that doesn’t seem to age. Seriously. It doesn’t take long after hitting play for you to be whisked away into a prehistoric world of peril that’s hard to resist - even on your ump-teenth viewing. It’s a task that most modern day movies struggle to replicate. 

​“How do you know they’re all female - Does somebody go into the park and uh, pull up the dinosaur’s skirts?” Jeff Goldblum’s perpetually smirking Chaos theorist Dr Ian Malcolm not only comes away from Jurassic Park with his life intact (just), he also gets to deliver some of the movie’s most memorable lines. Cut to 2018 and it’s no wonder his character has um-ed and ah-ed his way into meme pop-culture.

The truth is: You don’t need any reason to revisit Jurassic Park - the film’s good enough to reward repeat viewings all on its own merit. So go on, you know what to do.

Did I miss any? Why do you think it's always a good idea to revisit Jurassic Park? Let me know in the comments section below!

Well, it happened again. Last week saw the release of Sony’s fast-tracked Venom movie and the immediate overall consensus was well, a bit soggy. The Guardian labelled it ‘poisonously dull’, Rolling Stone referred to it as a ‘mess’ and Variety went the whole hog by rounding-up the most biting hot-takes on Director Ruben Fleischer’s hot-mess in a specifically dedicated blog post. Needless to say people weren’t too fond of Tom Hardy’s slimey alter-ego. Unsurprisingly though this reaction wasn’t entirely unexpected. When details of Sony’s first media screening was revealed to be taking place just one day before the film’s official release (complete with an embargo that lifted in the wee hours) - it wasn’t the most promising of signs that the studio had high hopes for its latest cinematic universe catalyst.

It wasn’t all bad news though. Almost all write-ups cited Tom Hardy’s delightfully weird turn as investigative journalist-turned snarlying symbiote-powered antihero Eddie Brock as one of the film’s few positives. That said, these were quickly overshadowed by an inconsistent tone and frequent odd (and unintentionally humorous) moments. Clearly it seems like there are more than a few reasons why Venom hasn’t sat well with audiences. However, it’s hard not to think the root of its flaws could be boiled down to a single major issue that appears to be becoming more and more common with non-Marvel superhero stories: an obsession with preemptive world building. 

Venom’s far from the first film to be guilty of this. Marvel has achieved lots in its impressive first decade and its success has given other rights-holders a serious case of FOMO when it comes to cashing-in on their assets. Probably the most notable culprit of this effect is rival company DC Studios who have tried and failed (and then tried and failed again and again) to find a short-cut to the type of character-rich expanded universe its main comics competitor has all-but perfected. Sony has also been guilty of coveting a quick-win. Remember Marc Webb’s short lived The Amazing Spider-Man double-punch and its even shorter-lived plans for a Sinister Six spin-off? If you do, you surely won’t remember them fondly. As these two examples have shown, when studios try to rush their shared universes to life at best they can be flawed misfires and at worst, downright confusing in their poorly thought out allusions. Either way, they’re cryptonite for both studios and audiences alike.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from their efforts its that there’s no reward in trying to run before you can walk. There’s no point raising your audiences' expectations with a Justice League film when only one of your heroes has had a properly thought out big-screen adventure. Marvel’s system worked so well because they gave their characters and storylines the breathing room needed to succeed and in turn, audiences willingly went along for the ride. Try and plan four or five movies ahead of yourself and you may encounter a case of too many cooks spoiling the symbiote. Patience is a virtue and while it may not be the hero comic book franchises want right now,  it’s definitely the one they’re in dire need of. 

Why do you think Venom got shabby reviews? Let me know in the comments section below!

Having debuted at Venice Film Festival just over a month ago, Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born has been fast-tracked to cinemas with its star-turned-director poised for Academy gold. Such a quick turn around is usually a big giveaway that the powers-that-be are pretty confident about their film’s chances come awards season - and in this case, they’re probably right on the money. This rags-to-riches tale of a up-and-coming songstress hitting the big time while her once-great mentor exits the spotlight has all the qualities Hollywood likes in an award winner - success, redemption and the mastabutory back-slapping of an industry celebrating its own successes.

The title itself has a history of Hollywood love. William Wellman’s 1937 original gathered seven Academy Award nominations while 1954’s Judy Garland-fronted remake clocked up a further six. Cut to 1976 and A Star Was Born was at it again, with Barbra Streisand’s revisit grabbing four more nods and once again taking centre stage during awards season. With such a strong legacy of industry recognition, it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine 2018’s edition working out pretty nicely for actor/director Cooper and star Lady Ga Ga. That said, it does bring to the forefront a trend that’s keeps reappearing: Why does Hollywood seem to be overly impressed by its own reflection?

Is it because this very industry-specific sub-genre is as engaging and worthy of adulation as Hollywood would have us believe or are those who make these stories (and more importantly, vote on their worth) as vain as bored budgies in a cage? You only have to look back as far as Damien Chazelle’s ode to the musicals of old La La Land in 2017 to see Hollywood once again celebrating its all-singing, all-dancing industry bread and butter. Before that, there was Michel Hazanavicius’s highly lauded flash-in-the-pan feature The Artist getting Movie Land’s tastemakers all hot and bothered with a nostalgia hit. Both were critically praised upon release and both went on to secure not just the approval of their peers but also of audiences and the academy. 

However is all this self congratulatory back-slapping healthy for a sustainable industry? Features like La La Land, The Artist and A Star Is Born undoubtedly serve a purpose to some - reinstating those core values that we as audiences inherently seek out from big screen stories. Underdog endurance, hard work rewarded, challenges giving way to glory - they’re all present - however their continued success (actual or implied by critics) surely stifles the types of stories that get produced and ultimately digested by the very people the industry aims to serve. Is the message of A Star Is Born so compelling that we really need to be served it three separate times? Why be like yesterday when you can be like today? Or better yet - tomorrow.

Do you think Hollywood needs to celebrate something other than itself? Let me know in the comments section below...