I've Seen The Losers and Wanna TALK (SPOILERS!!!!!)

[dodger_winslow]

Okay, y'all. Let's talk!

Dodger

[Caren]

good idea d

[Caren]

I just got home.....WOW! They nailed it and then some. I actually loved what they did with Max...and freaking Jason Patric was AWESOME and I've never been a fan of his but Holy shift!....the man painted a nice picture capturing the escence that was Max in the books but taking him up 2 notches with the humorous insanity!!!

Chris Evans was the PERFECT Jensen. Laughed my ass off a few times.

Jeff.....really.....REALLY?
SO GOOD. SO CLAY. The PERFECT balance of pain and strength. I'm not as eloquent as Dodger but YES......just YES. He freaking NAILED IT. ANyone who knows the books KNOWS he did. It was picture perfect.

Idris was great and he and jeff had the right amount of tension between them that carred the feel of the book characters onto the screen. Rogue being the hot headed emotional one and Clay being the intellegent strong controlled Leader.

Oscar as Cougar.....Outstanding and he hit all the right notes to be the favorite of the 12 and 13 year old boys I took to see it. He was just super cool and that is all you can say about him. Delivered so much with very few words. Outstanding.

yeah Zoe was good too although....for me. meh. I suppose she rocked the tough chick deal and yes the super hot scenes with Jeff....but all in all.....her character compared to the books......she might have been the weakest one. (again....I've read the books twice so.....JMO)

so yeah....I want to see it again, maybe tomorrow. Awesome movie and there better be a sequel because there is SO much more to the story.

[Laura]

I actually saw it twice today, well more like 1 1/2 times!!! I was there to record the trailers for another movie so I did actually have to do that job!!!

I think I enjoyed it more the second time than the first. To me Clay had a lot of Rambo in him, only in a suit!!! Clay was the strong somewhat reserved type. He DOES have a bad track record with women, perhaps chooses them for the WRONG reasons!!! He has a softer side when he is with and relating to Aiesha, but he is still a very guarded man.

I thought Jensen was hysterical, the Journey song that was done in the movie is STILL in my head!!! Some of my FAVORITE scenes were with Jensen, he is a goofy geeky guy who has NO idea how to smooze a woman!!!! A VERY enduring trait, and he was pretty easy on the eyes too!!!

Max was your classic bad guy, put on a extremely superior attitude which made me feel a bit sorry for Wade. I LOVED how Max ended up at the end, serves him right!!!!

There was just the right mix of action and romance, made sense in the story so you knew it was NOT being done for effect. The fights in the Hotel rooms were very well done, Zoe impressed me with how well she could do the stunts!!! She portrays a very strong woman, which is VERY nice to see for a change. She could and did hold her own VERY well!!!!

I will see the movie again, probably next Friday!!!!

Until then "Don't stop believing, hold onto that feeling"!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dodger_winslow]

In regards to what you said on the other thread, Caren, that made me feel a need to dump out to a spoiler thread in defense of those who've not yet seen the movie ...

Idris was great and he and jeff had the right amount of tension between them that carred the feel of the book characters onto the screen. Rogue being the hot headed emotional one and Clay being the intellegent strong controlled Leader.

The balance in the relationship between Roque and Clay was one of the strongest points of the whole movie for me. There's a dynamic between the leader and the alpha enforcer in any team like this that's a very hard balance to strike realistically when they are not one and the same character. If the leader is also the baddest ass in the group? You're fine. But when the leader is not the baddest ass in the group? Or at least, not the one who THINKS he's the baddest ass in the group? Then you've got a relational dissonance that creates all sorts of problems in terms of an accurate portrayal of military authority.

You've either got the baddest ass in the group being willing to play second fiddle to let the leader lead (which alpha badasses don't tend to do voluntarily), or you've got the leader leading despite the fact that he is not the group's alpha. And the pickle is, neither of those choices works well when portraying a unit that works effectively together as a long term team. The former? Makes the badass seem like a blowhard since obviously, he thinks the leader is more badass than he or he wouldn't step off the confrontation for leadership. And the latter? Plays the leader as a figurehead of military rank who is "allowed" to lead by the badass who is badder that he.

And that's where one of my greatest joys in the movie. How Jeff and Idris played off one another is one of the few times I've seen this dynamic played in a way I BELIEVE, both in terms of Roque being the more dangerous of the two on most level playing fields (and certainly being perceived as so by the vast majority, if not all, of the team ... not better, but more dangerous, particularly in terms of pack dynamics) and in terms of Clay being the absolute and unchallenged leader of the group DESPITE what might otherwise read as Roque's usurpation of his alpha role.

Because how Jeff and Idris played this dynamic? Didn't rely on the one tried-and-true way this dynamic is almost always successfully played: the leader is the brains and the badass is the brawn. A good example of that is Firefly: Mal is the brains who is also physically capable, while Jayne is the badass who must resort to physical solutions not by choice, but rather by virtue of being somewhat intellectually shortsheeted ... a shortfall on his part that allows them to work together effectively in the long term because Jayne lacks the intellectual wherewithal to challenge Mal's alpha status as group leader.

But Clay? While indisputably the brains, is also a full-on equal in terms of physicality. And Roque? While indisputably the enforcer, is also portrayed as just about a full-on equal in terms of intelligence (particularly of the militaristic strategic variety). They are near perfect mirrors of one another, which qualifies both of them to a near-enough-equal shot at the leadership role of the team to make their long-term prospects nearly unworkable with one of them named leader and the other named subordinate. Or if not unworkable, VERY hard to pull off without adding some other kind of extenuating circumstance to explain Roque's lack of ambition to TAKE his own way when he perceives himself an equal to the man whose orders he is taking even when those orders are antithetical to his own survival instincts.

But as difficult to pull off as this dynamic is without resorting to the dumb-brawn card, Jeff and Idris pull it off. And they do so by perfectly balancing themselves as both partners/best friends and enemies. And that's a TOUGH relationship to pull off. That this man, who is actually your best friend at least in part because he is the only man you consider your true equal, is also someone who serves as your primary rival and a potential threat to your position as alpha. And that while the challenge is never overtly made, it is always there subtextually, as much a part of the relationship as the friendship is.

And that's one of the things that most fascinated me about how they played the inter-team dynamics here. Jeff and Idris were both so spot-on in playing these two characters as men who really MIGHT kill each other in a conflict over authority, particularly if the catalyst to that conflict is a woman. Two men like this, both pulling the same direction? Create an unstoppable special ops team. Baddest of the badasses, led by a one-two punch of near-partners who respect and obey the near-equality of their respective positions of authority because they are more effective together than either would be on his own. But two men like this, both pulling in opposite directions? Oh, that's a totally different thing. That's gonna create one spectacular tug-of-rope that is going to amp the pre-existing competition for authority between them to a dangerous, and potentially lethal, degree. And sexual politics being what they are? Even if the woman coming between them is not an object of competition between them -- which is to say they aren't fighting OVER her, but rather are fighting ABOUT her -- the fact that it is WOMAN and not a man who has created the schism is going to play simply because whichever one is NOT being influenced to her way of doing things is going to attribute the other's motivations to be sexual in nature.

And that dynamic ... wow, was that dynamic perfectly played out in all the non-dialog interactions between Jeff and Idris. They established the PERFECT balance of rival and partner; created the PERFECT push-pull between the application of authority and the acceptance of that authority. And most important of all, created two men who, in observing the interactions between them, you could 1000% believe would be capable of risking their lives for one another one day and fighting to the death over who's the alpha the next. And THAT is a fucking HARD dynamic to pull off, at least in part because it is almost always something that must be played predominantly, if not solely, by means of creating an observable subtext between the characters that runs antithetical to the relationship as it is developed by the scripted interactions and dialog.

So for me? The fact that they could reveal Roque's betrayal of the team and that betrayal could read so completely true to Roque's character in it being all about Clay and their friendship/rivalry rather than reading as a betrayal of Roque's character inthat he's been portrayed as Clay's best friend and someone who truly cares about his team so he wouldn't actually do that except for the scriptwriter making him do it? Is pure testament to what an exceptional job both Jeff and Idris did not only in portraying their own characters, but also in serving the needs of a very complex dynamic between two near-equals who are as much rivals as they are friends. And equally, a testament to what an exceptional job they both did in how true that line about them both always kind of wanting to find out which of them would come out on top in a fight to the death played. Because that played as an "of course!" reveal of the true driving motivations behind the actions of two alpha dogs who very much WERE friends instead of the "yeah, right" it could have so easily been in coming off as some kind of cop-out scripted explanation for why they went from best friends to mortal enemies in the space of five minutes screen time because the script writer needed them to, rather than because the characters they were actually would.

Yeah. I may have mentioned that I was REALLY jazzed by this movie, right? Because I was. BIG time. And I have similarly "I fucking LOVED this!" kind of thoughts on most of the relationships between most of the characters in the team, but I'm going to have to save them for some later date.

Dodger

[Caren]

The fact that they could reveal Roque's betrayal of the team and that betrayal could read so completely true to Roque's character in it being all about Clay and their friendship/rivalry rather than reading as a betrayal of Roque's character inthat he's been portrayed as Clay's best friend and someone who truly cares about his team so he wouldn't actually do that except for the scriptwriter making him do it? Is pure testament to what an exceptional job both Jeff and Idris did not only in portraying their own characters, but also in serving the needs of a very complex dynamic between two near-equals who are as much rivals as they are friends. And equally, a testament to what an exceptional job they both did in how true that line about them both always kind of wanting to find out which of them would come out on top in a fight to the death played. Because that played as an "of course!" reveal of the true driving motivations behind the actions of two alpha dogs who very much WERE friends instead of the "yeah, right" it could have so easily been in coming off as some kind of cop-out scripted explanation for why they went from best friends to mortal enemies in the space of five minutes screen time because the script writer needed them to, rather than because the characters they were actually would.

I SO enjoy you coming in here and putting appropriate words to my scrambled thoughs....lol By the way....Andy Diggle baby. He WROTE this dynamic into the Comics. And I was trying to say exactly this when I said how well Idris and Jeff translated it to screen. I mean it was PERFECT. If I hadn't known it was coming based on already knowing the books I would have been blown away with how they pulled off that reveal of betrayal. The build up was SO well done and like you said how Jeff and Idris had that push pull in diffrent directions....well it did the graphic novels proud!

[Caren]

Oh and Dodger, don't be thinkin I missed that Firefly reference either.

[dodger_winslow]

Oh and Dodger, don't be thinkin I missed that Firefly reference either.

Heh. I was trying to think of an example of how that dynamic is usually played that is mainstream enough for most to know who I'm talking about when I realized the obvious choice was staring me right in the face. And, of course, anytime you can use a Joss example to illustrate any part of your point, you're already ahead in the game before you even start. ;)

d

[dodger_winslow]

If I hadn't known it was coming based on already knowing the books I would have been blown away with how they pulled off that reveal of betrayal.

And see, that's exactly why I steered clear of the books once I found out Jeff was taking on the role. Because with Watchmen? I didn't have any opportunity to view that movie without a pre-existing expectation of where they were going to go and who was going to turn out to be the baddie. And that's a bit of an issue for me ... one of the reasons I am so unforgiving of people who spoil me on TV shows or movies I'm really excited to see. Because it's the writer's job to play with both what he reveals to the viewer and what he hides from the viewer to create the right balance of expectations to either play to or against for maximum effect. So if you go into a movie knowing all the reveals at the get-go, it never allows the writer a true opportunity to play his reveals the way they should be played.

And because clearly, you can't be tied into pop culture the way I am without already knowing where any adaptation of a sacred cow like Watchmen is going to go before the opening credits ever hit the screen, there was never any chance for me to see the movie Zack Snyder wanted to show me. I could never experience a movie without expectations and fore knowledge that disallows the possibility of Zack successfully playing Ozy as anything but what I already know him to be. So all the subtleties a good script builds into a well done escalation to the holy FUCK reveal on which most movies hang their hat? That was already off the table for me as an experience with Watchmen because Alan had already popped that cherry decades earlier. So the best Zack could hope for was to show me the best possible interpretation of what I already knew were the dynamics in play for every character he put to screen. And he did. But even in doing so, I was somehow subtly cheated of the experience I should (optimally speaking) have had with the movie because that experience was already, by definition, a comparative experience to my original experience of the same material in another medium of expression.

All of which is to say, while I'd not give back my Watchmen GN experience to buy it, I do feel a wee bit jealous of all those movie goers who got to watch the Watchmen movie without realizing who was going to do what, and without already knowing the kind of reveal that is defined profound by it's capacity to leave you gaping at the screen muttering, "holy fuck, they actually did it!" when every ounce of that reveal's power is encapsulated by how the writers go about playing your experiential assumptions that the good guys will stop the bad guys from perpetrating mass destruction on the world in general against you.

So with The Losers? Since it was just one book amongst many (as compared to the holy grail of GNs), and not a book I'd already read or was more than just peripherally aware, when I found out Jeff was going to play Clay, I steered as clear of the books as I could just to make sure that whatever reveals the books might have up their sneaky little sleeves, I'd not go into the movies already immunized against whatever strategies the screenwriters might put in play to leverage my own assumptions against me to a more effective "holy FUCK" moment than they could possibly achieve if I know who's doing what to whom and why before the movie even starts.

And boy, am I glad I did. Because the whole Roque thing? Caught me completely flat-footed. I mean, so flat-footed I actually thought Clay and Roque were playing a gambit at first. When Roque said "So you're Max?" my internal buzzer went off like a fire alarm with a "Oh, Roque is just PLAYING that he's betraying the team so they can positively identify Max for the take down." All of which made Clay's "Roque" to Pooch and Cougar and Jensen as he was being led off in cuffs, and their response to that reveal, all that much more powerful for realizing no, it is NOT a gambit, Roque really did betray them this way.

And that realization? Immediately snapped my brain back to Roque telling Pooch "Go see your baby born. You don't have to die on this one. Clay and I can handle this alone," completely re-defining that whole scene as Roque actually trying to protect the part of his team he didn't want to betray in finding an arguable justification for why Pooch and Jensen shouldn't walk into this trap: because Pooch and Jensen have family. And it also defined Cougar as acceptable collateral damage to Roque ... somebody he'd exclude from the "Clay and I'll do this alone" statement, but that he'd not go so far as to actually give an excuse for why he shouldn't come along. And that view of Cougar, in the back look off the reveal, is re-enforced as justifiable by the idea that, being the kind of man Roque is, he very likely saw Cougar as much more equal to himself and Clay. Someone strong enough and dangerous enough and lethally trained enough to be viewed as a potential rival and someone who might well come after him for betraying the team. Where, on the other hand, he viewed Jensen and Pooch as both low enough in the pack hierarchy to invoke his instinct, as an alpha and a leader, to protect them and flexible enough in nature to allow emotions like affection and empathy to mitigate their response to his impending betrayal off such a strict black-and-white interpretation as might motivate them to hunt him down and punish him for what he's already done in the name of survival.

And all that pop-pop-pop-pop flash sequence of reveal and re-define off that reveal? Would have been lost had I know they were walking into a trap of Roque's making, which I would have known if I'd read the books before seeing the movie.

All of which is to say (in case you wondered why I would go to all that verbiage to say it) that, while it's awesome that this dynamic between Roque and Clay was written into the comics? It didn't need the back story of the comics to play on the screen in all its glory. Because without knowing any of that stuff up front? It was all there on the screen in Jeff and Idris's performances, as well as very artfully implied by character choices made by the script ... choices like Clay's aggression toward Roque in their conflict being non-lethal by instinct (him resorting to fists as he did) while Roque's was "gonna cut your head off" lethal by instinct. But also in how, non-lethal though it may have been, Clay actually DID aggress with his fists where Roque only THREATENED to aggress with his knife. And when it came time to resolve the conflict, again, it was Clay who acted to heal the rift by being the one to apologize, while Roque only reacted to Clay's move by mirror in it with his own apology ... both of those being sublimely subtle ways to identify why, despite Roque appearing the badder ass of the two asses, it is Clay who is the leader. Because it is Clay who ACTS and Roque who REacts. And it is Clay who seeks non-lethal resolution to their internal conflicts while Roque defaults to lethal ones ... those instances and a number of others being some of the many flat-out awesome examples of the kind of character push-pull that illustrated how Clay and Roque's relationship worked long term despite the fact that it was predominantly built on a foundation of thinly-veiled aggression and oft displayed rivalry that, when exposed to the wrong catalyst, would inevitably ignite to a confrontation of, if not lethal, then at least team-destroying, end.

Dodger

[dodger_winslow]

Okay. Have a few less nuclear explosions going on inside my skull today than I did yesterday (although fucking weather is still killing me, just killing me more softly I guess ... must be a song in there somewhere, no?), so I'll try to put a few more thoughts to post.

Being responsive off your comments, Caren:

I thought Jason was great as Max, too, although again, and as proved out a trend throughout the movie, the real power of that characterization is in how it plays off another characterization to a seriously kick-ass dynamic. So for me? Much of what worked about Max worked because it played so well off Wade, and Holt did an equally excellent job of playing Wade. So between them, they almost satirized, while also mirroring, the Clay-Roque relationship. And by that, I mean Max worked as a caricature of Roque, particularly in his capacity to be brutally lethal without blinking and while also quipping, while Wade played as an anti-caricature of Clay, particularly in his solid, grounded military-based attitude combined with a loyalty-to-a-point attitude toward his own men.

But just as Max caricaturized Roque in being ten times more brutal and gleefully indifferent to the collateral damage of his "because I want to" mayhem (a fully evolved supervillain to Roque's supervillain-in-the-making, with both of them also carrying the traditional villain scars in like ratio to one another, Max's being an entire hand maimed beyond all but the most basic aspects of both use and recognizably because he's full-on meglomaniacal sociopath while Roque's is limited to a simple scar cutting down across his eye, indicating his still-evolving-to-my-evil-potential state ... something that, in retrospect, probably should have clued me in that Roque was gonna go bad in the end but didn't, mostly likely because it read as such a believable "I'm the baddest badass of a black ops team" war wound rather than a foreshadowing disfigurement of his humanity), so also did Wade anti-caricaturize Clay --- and by anti-caricaturize, I mean he minimized for effect one of Clay's most defining traits rather than exaggerating it --- in how he possessed Clay's devotion to his "team", as demonstrated by his reluctance to kill the mercs he gathered together off Max's order to do so, while also possessing Clay's capacity to be willing to sacrifice those same men if push came to shove on something more important to him than his men ... that being staying alive himself for Wade and it being getting vengeance on Max for Clay.

So while yeah, I'd agree that Jason did a great job of playing Max's psychopathic/sociopathic/narcissistic personality traits to a very entertaining personification of a kick-ass and entertaining supervillain (even so much as he mirrored Clay's black suit with a white suit in a very witty switchback on the traditional white-hat/black-hat good-guy/bad-guy visual identification gambit), for me, it was more interesting to consider how Max and Wade worked together as a team, and how they played off one another in a dynamic that mirrored Clay and Roque's dynamic to such a degree that even the hierarchy of authority is reverse-writing in the glass of their warped fun-house mirror reflection.

On Jensen, however, I found the exact opposite true. Jensen, as a character, was fun and entertaining and interesting. But the real power of that character isn't in the design of the character or the design of his relationship with others, but rather in how Chris Evans played him. Which was, in a word: fuckingperfect. There were SO many lines and SO many set-ups that were funny and very "he's the the comic relief character" in design in a way that would have worked fine in serving the purpose they were created to serve. It was all action flick standard fare --- until Chris Evans (not under-estimating how much influence Sylvain might have had on Chris's choice here, but without knowing that for sure, I feel safer attributing them to the actor's innate intelligence/instincts than to the director's overall vision) got hold of them and evolved them into something else altogether.

Because those moments? Weren't standard fare action flick humor at ALL. The whole "lie down or I'll stop your heart with my mind" schtick? Very funny in the writing. Great lines. Great set-up. But it is Chris's outlandish choices of voice and expression and attitude in how he played those moments that made them the bust-up moments of the flick.

And the same with his response to the female medic at the chopperjacking. You could literally SEE Chris lose Jensen's ability to focus and turn from "I'm spinal injury Jensen acting my role" to "How YOU doin?" Jensen; and he did it in a way that didn't read jaded or inappropriate or like he was a hound dog who couldn't control his hormonal urges at all; but rather in a way that was utterly charming and hilarious and borderline innocent in a way that completely re-enforces Jensen's role as "the kid" in the team dynamic.

And a third moment of that same instinct in play to the change of a moment from standard comic fare to somethin special? The whole "her gun is pointed at my dick" spiel. How he played the "as much as it doesn't make sense, yes, I would" response to Clay's "would you rather have it pointed at your face?" inquiry? Completely deFINED that character as who Jensen is. That could have been such a yucka-yucka guy humor kind of thing, but Chris played it with the kind of childish vulnerability that made you see how much this guy is a teenager who has his priorities utterly fucked up in the way teenage boys always have their priorities utterly fucked up. And that play was SO strong that, by the time he actually took his focus off Aisha to address Pooch directly, thus giving Aisha the distraction she needed to make her break for it, you completely believed that this bad-ass, highly trained special ops guy would actually DO that ... and Chris integrated that child-like characterization seemlessly and believably with the kind of soldier who jump over the barbed wire he got his wrist caught on later and scales that ladder like he's Spiderman or something.

So for me? Jensen's appeal was all in how Chris chose to play him. Because as much as the lines and the character and the setup were there for him to exploit to humor effect? What Chris managed to do with them was far-and-away above what was scripted the same way an oak tree is far-and-away above a blade of grass. Would that the Fantastic 4 movies have been able to pull some of that out of him, given how huge a crush I had on Johnny Storm as a kid, and how much I damned near fell asleep in those movies but for not being lucky enough to have done so.

I'll catch Oscar, Zoe, Columbus and more on Jeff a little later, but short form as a foreshadowing? Oscar blew me away, Columbus was perfect, I don't agree at all that Zoe was anything short of awesome, and Jeff was ... well ... hell. You can't actually think I'd compare Clay to John Winchester amped by a factor of Jeffrey Dean Morgan and think I'd rate Clay as anything less than da bomb over which I must wax-on, wax-off about for years, right?

Cause yeah. I got me some thoughts on Clay. And on Jeff. But those will have to wait a bit because I wouldn't want to give anyone reader's cramp in their Loser's muscles. And because the dog thinks this is Frisbee time, not JDM board time, and much as I hate to admit it, I cannot fault her on her logic.

Dodger