Self/less (2015) 63/100

Posted on July 20, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 63/100 117 Min

An odd film from director Tarsem Singh (‘The Cell’ 2000, ‘The Fall’ 06, ‘Immortals’ 11, ‘Mirror Mirror’ 12) and writers David and Alex Pastor, concerning the invention of a method by which one person’s consciousness can be transferred from their body into that of another. The film opens with Damian Hayes (Ben Kingsley) thinking about undergoing the expensive and highly secret procedure; the cancer that his body is riddled with having metastasised and left him with mere months to live. Deciding he’d rather not die, his soul and mind are plonked into a much younger, fitter body (that of Ryan Reynolds), a body he has been told was built in a lab with no prior mind of its own. Afterward, Damian finds if he doesn’t take his regular medication, given to him by the set-up’s organiser Prof. Albright (Matthew Goode), strange and compelling visions begin to dance before him, although he is told it’s nothing to worry about …

The potential for discussion on life, death and the morals of humanity falls completely flat here, so in a sense the central story doesn’t deliver where it should, and indeed there is an awful lot of slow padding before what we know must eventually happen does – but at this point Singh begins to put together some really well-staged action sequences and the film picks up considerably. Ultimately, Reynolds and Goode manage to anchor what evolves into a fairly enjoyable action film, although further mishaps do arise surrounding the writing of the main female character and alas also her portrayal by Natalie Martinez. A film whose secondary aspects deliver enough to save it from complete annihilation, but don’t expect anything approaching the complete package here.

A brief interview with Singh on what he has learned about the art of directing over the years:

Ant-Man (2015) 56/100

Posted on July 19, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 56/100 117 Min

Marvel Studios’ worst release since ‘The Incredible Hulk’ (08) and presumably directly suffering from the project’s departure of the person who founded it, Edgar Wright, shortly before production began in earnest. Wright had been working on an Ant-Man screenplay for many, many years (along with his writing partner Joe Cornish) and had finally been given the go-ahead from Marvel but, citing creative differences, he left the project (although given they both worked on the screenplay for ‘Tintin‘ I’m not wholly convinced this was a bad thing). Taking his place to alter and finish the script were Adam McKay (‘Step Brothers’ 08, ‘The Other Guys’ 10) and Paul Rudd, the latter of whom plays the titular superhero himself, and it is the story that really lets the film down. Peyton Reed (‘Yes Man’ 08, ‘The Break-Up’ 06) also filled Wright’s shoes as director.

We can predict exactly what will happen, how it will happen, when it will happen, and what all of the details concerned will be. Even for a superhero film this is remarkably two dimensional, and again for the genre it’s also really difficult to suspend our disbelief enough to get behind it fully. Rudd plays ex-con Scott Lang who is just out of jail and determined to help support his young daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), whose stepfather is a cop of course, but finds getting a normal job with his record next to impossible. Opting to do another heist with his mates, played by Michael Peña, T.I. and David Dastmalchian (who seems to have gone to great lengths to disguise his identity as the Joker’s patsy in ‘The Dark Knight’ 08), he enters into the world of tech genius Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly – almost unrecognisable with a new bobbed jet black hair style); all of which sees him don a suit which can shrink a human to the size of an ant and back again at will, but he must use it to steal a competitor’s prototype before they can use it for nefarious purpose (there’s a very dubious ownership element regarding the powers, much like the screenplay, which is part of the movie’s problem).

As such, it is pretty much the same story as ‘Iron Man’ (08) with two pillars of the same company fighting each other for control of the same invention, leading to the inevitable punch-up at the end. An attempt at comedy has been made but it’s all far too simple and usually revolves around the same constantly regurgitated joke. The effects and the acting are fine but it just gets really, really dull, although it should certainly keep a younger audience fully entertained. There is both a mid-credits scene and a post credits one as well, the latter apparently taken from the next Captain America film no less (‘Ant-Man’ marks the end of ‘Phase Two’ in Marvel’s cinematic universe – ‘Captain America : Civil War’ will start ‘Phase Three’ sometime next year). Also with Corey Stoll as the villain (also bald like in Iron Man, coincidence?) as well as Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale in support.

Terminator Genisys (2015) 70/100

Posted on July 3, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 126 Min

Surprisingly good. I say surprisingly as I don’t think anyone seriously believed this was going to be anything other than terrible, in part due to the continual decline of the franchise beginning with ‘Terminator 3’ in 2003 but also thanks to an atrocious trailer for this instalment, one which did have the boon of lowering expectations but also critically blows several key moments in the film so I would strongly advise against viewing it if possible, though this may indeed be difficult given its appearance on multitudes of high profile websites right now. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to create an exciting teaser for what is not only the return of one of the most famous franchises of all time but also a film that reunites it with its principal star – Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s face made a digital appearance in ‘Terminator : Salvation’ (09) but who was otherwise absent from the film which he himself describes with: ‘It sucked!’. An accurate, if somewhat succinct, critique.

It’s very apparent here that director Alan Taylor (‘Thor : The Dark World‘) and writers Laeta Kalogridis (‘Shutter Island’ 10, ‘Night Watch’ 04) and Patrick Lussier (long term horror editor, on the ‘Scream’ franchise amongst others) have a lot of reverence for ‘The Terminator’ (84) and ‘Terminator 2 : Judgement Day’ (91) and I think fans of those two pretty fantastic films are going to appreciate the constant one eye kept on the roots of the story. Indeed, hopes were raised for Genisys by none other than the series founder and director of the first two films – James Cameron, who enjoyed this interpretation and has said he regards it as good enough to stand as the legitimate next part in the story following on from T2 (and thus annihilating everything between then and now, presumably including the TV series ‘The Sarah Conner Chronicles’ 08-09).

The story … actually, I shan’t say anything about the story as most of it is meant to be a surprise and I assume everyone knows the basic premise from the others, wherein machines take over in the near future (originally in 1997) and nuke the Earth (despite being great films, in terms of sci-fi there are obvious weaknesses – they take out humans and then … what? The machines have no real purpose when you think about it, they can produce more of themselves but with no discernible emotions or pleasurable senses or threats of any kind by that point, including that of ageing, why bother?), but humanity persists and both sides send warriors back in time to variously slay/protect the mother of the future resistance leader and perhaps prevent him from ever being born.

The core concept doesn’t exactly speak very highly of humanity given it seems people are not only stupid enough to let the world’s first AI play around with nuclear toys but there too only exists one mortal capable of adequately fighting back, never mind the multi-faceted space-time conflicts which immediately arise, but none of that gets in the way of a fun story and, following in the modern blockbuster tradition, this is very much the focus here. Indeed, you can well imagine the writers thinking ‘hmm, does that make sense? What about this, and that, and … O let’s just get on with it. Actually, let’s throw this in as well, why not’.

In this central aspect the film is a hit and, although there are probably a few too many one-liners, the cast, comprised of Arnie, Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney and J.K. Simmons, all carry the film really well – in particular Emilia Clarke who is nothing short of fantastic as Sarah Conner (possibly getting tips from her ‘Game of Thrones’ co-star Lena Headey who played Sarah in the TV series). This focus on the ride, though, does mean opportunities for more atmospheric tension and scenes with a heavier sense of build-up have been missed and it is a shame a blend of the two approaches wasn’t attempted. However, given the dreary duds that fans have been greeted with over the last twenty years this is a deserving shot in the arm for the series – there’s a brief post credits scene too after the iconic music, from composer Brad Fiedel, finishes playing.

Some of the better marketing for the film at Madame Tussauds …

Jurassic World (2015) 58/100

Posted on June 11, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 58/100 124 Min

Daring to hope for some originality in the script for this, the fourth film in the series after ‘Jurassic Park’ (93), ‘The Lost World’ (97) and the less imaginatively titled ‘Jurassic Park 3’ (01), was perhaps asking for too much really, as the exact same storyline from the previous films is played out once again. Taking place twenty years after the events of the original, which was one of the most successful films of all time, we are back on the same island just off Costa Rica, which has long since put tragedy behind it and become the thriving titular theme park attraction of Jurassic World, where young and old alike can enjoy the thrill of watching real life dinosaurs tear chunks of flesh apart in a feeding frenzy, safe in the knowledge that Plexiglas and the best and brightest of human engineering and ordinance will protect them from the little beasties, or will it ….

Bryce Dallas Howard plays head park manager Claire Dearing with Chris Pratt as rugged animal trainer Owen Grady, who must save the day together but to be honest they seem more akin to a sixties version of Tarzan and Jane than believable characters in their environment (there is an obligatory potential budding romance between them). The impetus behind everything is super-dino Indominus Rex, which has been genetically modified and spliced with pretty much everything from an amoeba to a budgie to make it super intelligent and super scary, in fact it’s easily smarter than all of the humans in charge, but the story never properly gets past the fact that it’s still just one solitary and fairly sizeable creature (a T-Rex was in the mix, naturally) that ought to be pretty easy to sort out with all the hardware at the island’s disposal. The rest of the story is one massive fudge just to keep the decidedly carnivorous ball rolling, including a smaller and also not great arc involving Owen’s imprinting on a Velociraptor pack as its alpha. Difficult sell that one really, though it’s still a massive improvement on the bit in ‘The Lost World’ where the little girl drop-kicks a raptor in the face resulting in its complete annihilation, if memory serves.

The central characters are further rounded out by two kids Zach (Nick Robinson) and Grey (Ty Simpkins) who are even more two dimensional than the adults and seem to exist purely to be put in not very believable peril. They are, of course, the nieces of Ms Dearing and as such she wilfully abandons her duty to try and protect the many thousands of other people on the island to go chasing after them in the hope of avoiding many awkward Thanksgiving moments in the future, in fact nobody seems terribly concerned with the masses of visitors – not even the tourists themselves. Indeed, there’s no real bite, ahaha, to any of the suspense and too many parts of the story simply don’t add up. Films one and two were directed by Steven Spielberg, who was a producer for this one, but here relative newcomer Colin Trevorrow (‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ 2012) takes the helm and shares writing credits with Derek Connolly, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, although the four worked on multiple drafts over the years. The actors do the best they can with what they’re given (though I fear they didn’t exactly make the most of Irish hottie Katie McGrath’s talents) and although it’s largely disappointing, it still delivers on the spectacle front and the effects are worthy of the film. The best part is the theme tune from the first one.

The film’s release coincides with the announcement of a new dinosaur species found in Wales which is quite excitng, though they have yet to find any dragon fossils, largely because we are simply hiding amongst you all. Like in ‘Highlander’ (86), but with dragons. Our eyes are everywhere …

Tomorrowland : A World Beyond (2015) 71/100

Posted on June 6, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 71/100 130 Min

There really is a lot wrong with this film, and yet it somehow manages to deliver its upbeat message of ‘the world needs dreamers’ in a really effective manner and coupled with a brilliantly precocious performance from twelve year old Raffey Cassidy (who plays Athena) the overall effect convinces you to overlook its many faults. It’s a live action Disney film based on a story from Brad Bird, Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen with Bird directing the project too – you can see Lindelof’s imprint throughout as he has a penchant for putting the focus on the spectacle rather than the details (his past credits include the ‘Lost’ TV series, ‘Prometheus’ (12), ‘Star Trek Into Darkness‘ and ‘World War Z‘) and there’s a definite loose feeling permeating the structure of the film.

The beginning shows us what would appear to be a countdown – toward what, we can only guess as George Clooney and Britt Robertson (who play Frank Walker and Casey Newton respectively) provide voiceover letting us know they are about to regale us with their story that will eventually explain the clock. What unfolds is a sci-fi adventure that crosses time and space to the mysterious ‘Tomorrowland’ with strong warnings about our effect on the Earth’s environment as well as deeper, and yet often overt, philosophy on the nature of man, such as the metaphor that we are beset by two wolves, one representing fear, hatred, despair, anger and jealousy and the other hope, forgiveness, love and compassion and we decide which wolf wins by electing which one to feed, this is not an original concept but I quite liked seeing it in there nonetheless. Indeed, in terms of philosophy the film has its origins in what Walt Disney was working on at the time of his death, a new age cityscape teeming with innovation that was meant to create a real world Tomorrowland and inspire the world to solve its many problems of pollution and overcrowding, alas nobody really continued with his vision and the area of land he bought for the project in Florida was turned into just another part of Disney World, Tomorrowland demoted to a mere attraction at the company’s parks.

Detracting heavily from the merit worthy foundation of the film is its execution, over the top product placement for the likes of Disney’s recently acquired Star Wars franchise begins to grind and there are simply too many moments of silliness, such as characters enduring accidents that ought to leave their limbs dangling in tatters but they emerge with tiny cuts, and then watching them make decisions that are incredibly stupid given the information they have and yet they seem somehow surprised by the inevitable consequences. Much of this is by way of a failed attempt at comedy but it would be a much better film with it all removed, and it’s also true to say there is an equally unnecessary level of brutality involved with many of the fight scenes as well, commonly feeling very out of place for a Disney film. There is one amusing scene, possibly unintentional, which riffs off the Terminator franchise, you’ll know it when you see it …

Performances vary, but Cassidy is really the star of the show and easily the best thing in the film – you can absolutely expect to see a lot more from her in the future, although sadly one of the film’s key moments with her character seems a little hurried and ought to have more oomph than it does in the end. It’s in many ways amazing that the film carries its own weight at all, but ultimately it manages to prove a fairly memorable and worthwhile adventure, although by no means expect anything consistent or approaching perfect.

Mad Max : Fury Road (2015) 65/100

Posted on May 25, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 65/100 120 Min

Relentless, sometimes drearily so, but ultimately impressively spectacular. I wouldn’t recommend watching this in 3D as it turns the beginning into a huge mess – what’s meant to be a frantic and high octane intro to the film just looks like it’s playing in fast forward with overly jerky camera action despite the impressive stunts on display, as we are introduced to main character Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) just as he is being introduced to his captors for the immediate future.

This is the fourth time director and writer George Miller (he was joined by Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris for the screenplay) has brought Max to life onscreen, the previous three ventures being with Mel Gibson in ‘Mad Max’ (79), ‘Mad Max 2 : The Road Warrior’ (81) and ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome’ (85), and it’s a series that not only made historic returns at the box office and became a cornerstone of the Australian cinematic boom at the time, but also one that begins in a future dystopia that isn’t visually too removed from our own modern experience and then it heads steadily downward into increasingly archaic and savage distortions of humanity, with disparate tribes living rough in the remaining desert lands of civilisation: all scarce essentials tightly controlled and contested for by gasoline craving heavily armed tribes. This latest instalment continues that downward trajectory and takes it to the nth level with a production scale that is simply mammoth and a central character who’s sanity is constantly prayed upon by his own haunted memories, standing very much as the metaphysical portal to the living hell that surrounds him.

The personal element with Max’s backstory is overplayed and it kind of drags, especially since many will already know what happened from the original film, and although it could anchor a degree of canonical lineage the Max onscreen here is very much a rejuvenation of the character rather than the original a little further down the line from ‘Beyond Thunderdome’. Similarly, it’s the simpler things that detract from the film – the writing in non-action scenarios often feels weak, such as central characters trusting one another too quickly for example, and so too with the direction in these quieter, relatively speaking, moments. The vast majority of the film focuses on a road chase and here the scale of the production is immediately apparent, and indeed it must have been a complete nightmare to film but these sections have been pulled off extremely well, to the extent that they must be a shoe-in for the Oscars, but again it becomes difficult to engage with the same thing happening repeatedly and there is no real grounding for the audience with the characters, as Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa and Nicholas Hoult as Nux join the central fray along with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as The Splendid Angharad in her second role since ‘Transformers : Dark of the Moon’ (11).

All the actors very much look the part and Hoult and Hardy do really well, although there remains something a little too refined and soft about Theron for the setting, but where the film shines is when Max hatches his plan for the finale. You very much share in the other characters’ initial reaction to the idea as although in theory it sounds fine, the execution they have planned sounds more than a little foolhardy – but my goodness do they make a proper go of displaying it on film, and it’s this that really lifts the movie back out of the humdrum desolation it was heading into.

As a bit of an aside, at one point in the film they come across a lone tree in the wilderness, the first they’ve seen, and they end up using it as a harness and uprooting the thing – it’s possible, albeit extremely unlikely, that this could be a nod in the direction of the Arbre du Tenere, a tree which was thought to be one of the most isolated living things on Earth standing in the middle of the desert in Niger as the only one for hundreds of miles in any direction and as such it was used by nomads as a waymarker for centuries. Standing, that is, until a reputedly drunk Libyan truck driver accidentally ploughed it over one day. It must be quite an impressive claim to fame to hit the only obstacle that exists within a several hundred mile radius. It’s in a museum now.

Jupiter Ascending (2015) 55/100

Posted on March 5, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 55/100 127 Min

Hmm. If you have seen the Wachowski brother’s (sorry, that should be sibling’s – one of them has had a sex change) last outing ‘Cloud Atlas‘ then whatever you felt watching that is almost certainly going to be replicated by this over the top sci-fi blunder/extravaganza, which this time around is both written and directed by them. It often looks quite impressive, and there is action galore, but it encapsulates the very definition of ‘popcorn entertainment’ and there’s a bountiful smorgasbord of cheese dripping and then exploding from start to finish. The opening section is easily the worst, with poor performances and a bad delivery of what’s already a ropey premise – that one Earth woman, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is the reincarnation of the mother of the Abrasax triumvirate, the Princess and Princes who rule our section of the universe, and as such she is hot property to be contested for by all, queue lots of men fighting over the pretty girl and rubbish wedding attempts and the inevitable falling for the rugged bounty hunter with a heart who’s the first to reach her – Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) who is also part canine. Yes. It must have taken them a while to think of the character name.

With the added element that the Abrasax family process human beings into chemical compounds that produce a life extending elixir, the story appears to be a simple splicing of ‘Flash Gordon’ (80) and ‘Dune’ (84) and it rarely proves interesting, though things do start to pick up once Sean Bean enters the fray (as ‘Stinger’, he is part honeybee), a past master at making rubbish plots sound feasible. With support from Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth and Tuppence Middleton. If you are just in the mood for watching something flashy that doesn’t engage your mind in any way at all then this does tick a lot of the right boxes, but if we compare this to Marvel’s similar space adventure mash-up ‘Guardians of the Galaxy‘ it becomes clear that the Wachowskis have yet to really learn from their multitudinous and oft times glaring mistakes of the past.

Big Hero 6 (2014) 70/100

Posted on February 22, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 102 Min

The latest Disney animated feature film is set in the near future in the fictional San Fransokyo, an impression of what San Francisco might be like if it were in Japan (unless they have gone all ‘Watchmen’ on the story and Japan won World War II, this is not elaborated on) which has allowed the illustrators to tinker with a more Japanese style of animation for various elements in the film (alas, no easily discernible hentai on display). It’s based on the little known Marvel comic of the same name, which Disney is at liberty to adapt having bought over Marvel some years ago now and in fact there are a number of elements similar to the character of Iron Man which are a little distracting, but again they don’t have to worry about encroaching on copyright. It’s a bit of a departure for Disney in many ways as their productions are often marked by their originality, whereas here it is a fairly familiar superhero set-up, admittedly with extremely finessed graphical work.

Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a young tech aficionado whose parents passed away in a tragic accident. His brother creates a medical robot, Baymax (Scott Adsit), who becomes Hiro’s closest friend and adventuring companion when a mysterious fire not only destroys his world changing microbots he had been working on, but also sadly claims the life of his brother as well. Baymax has a bulky frame but one created largely via an inflatable exterior, thus differing from all other big-screen mechanoids, and he brings much needed light relief to the film as the duo are accidentally flung into investigating what really happened on that fateful day.

On his journey of self discovery Hiro will have to question his own feelings of rage, as well as what role other people should play in his life – the other engineers from his brother’s lab are concerned about his welfare but he initially keeps them at a distance, for example. All of these elements are resolved and delivered in a fairly two dimensional way, but there is action aplenty and it all looks and feels fresh enough to entertain even if it is going to appeal in a grander way to a younger demographic rather than adults. Maya Rudolph, Jamie Chung, Alan Tudyk and James Cromwell (as Professor Callaghan – a reference to Harry Callaghan, aka ‘Dirty’ Harry, San Francisco’s very own urban diplomacy expert) are the most recognisable names in the supporting line-up and, as you might imagine, there are Easter eggs galore to spot throughout the film.

Ex Machina (2015) 73/100

Posted on February 10, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 73/100 108 Min

A close quarters sci-fi mystery that locks three characters – an A.I. Machine Ava (Alicia Vikander), her/its creator Nathan (Oscar Isaac) and a nerd Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson), all in an isolated modern and luxurious complex in Norway for one week (at least, that is where the location shots were filmed at any rate), where the visiting competition winner Caleb will administer the Turing test in order to determine whether or not Nathan has successfully created an android convincing enough to pass for human (for more on Turing, see ‘The Imitation Game‘). It is slow and some of the delivery is equally drawn out and annoying (mainly from Gleeson) and it does meander for a long time but ultimately the plot delivers a satisfying conclusion via smart mechanics with a few nuggets of intellectual fodder strewn around to chew on (like the brief mention of the theory that we don’t really learn language, we already ‘know’ it and just learn to map words around it, interesting) and insights into the conditions of life and survival which are both understated and yet ubiquitous, rounding off the film nicely.

There’s no real action here, which caused a palpable sense of restlessness in the audience who I think may have been expecting something more akin to the explosions and effects of the likes of ‘I, Robot’ (04) – there were lots of gingerly delves into bags of popcorn throughout the predominantly conversational structure of the film. The acting is good from all three leads, perhaps most of all from Vikander who has less lines than the other two but who never flinches in her ethereal portrayal of Ava, and the screenplay is itself constantly aware of what the audience is likely to guess is going on, immediately introducing that concept in the next conversation and dashing it as a conclusion. A sense of claustrophobia and menace is created in the complex, especially under the frequent power outages, and there was a lot of potential to really turn the screw on that which may have delivered some much needed punch at various points, but nevertheless author (‘The Beach’ 96), screenwriter (’28 Days Later’ 02, ‘Sunshine’ 07, ‘Never Let Me Go’ 10) and first time director Alex Garland has created a polished and clever science fiction drama that stands proudly within a genre fairly overcrowded with A.I.

The title is pronounced ‘ex makuhnuh’ and comes from the phrase ‘deus ex machina’, which literally translates as ‘god from a/the machine’ and is used to term the introduction in fiction of some godly or outlandish solution to a problem, a fudge if you will, referencing plays of old when a statue of a god would be mechanically made to appear on stage and perform whatever service was required of it to save the protagonist’s bacon.

The Hunger Games : Mockingjay Part One (2014) 56/100

Posted on January 4, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 56/100 123 Min

The ‘Part One’ in the title here is the main problem with the film – splitting Suzanne Collins’ final Hunger Games novel, Mockingjay, into two parts has just spread the story far too thin to work well, reducing this one to very humdrum melodrama with little of note going on, and although I don’t know the ending of the series it’s a safe bet what the conclusion is going to be, most probably also with the heroic sacrifice of one of the main characters to resolve a number of the somewhat tedious issues now in place. All of the previous characters, like Peeta, Gale and Finnick, are utterly reduced to brief moments of perfunctory dialogue and new characters, like Natalie Dormer’s Cressida, are very rudimentary plot devices – everything is all put on the shoulders of Jennifer Lawrence in the role of Katniss Everdeen as she is, once again, heralded as the reluctant champion of an entire nation.

This time the games have finished and the resistance have to fight a media war to win over hearts and minds – Katniss is to be their lightning rod, but the evil Capitol seek to undermine her image and crush the broiling rebellion set in motion by the events of ‘Catching Fire‘. There’s a lot of DRAMA without a great deal really happening and there is a curious mix of quite dark scenes of war with soap opera drudgery, and the final ‘twist’ is not only clichéd but laughably so, in fact the same thing was attempted in ‘Flash Gordon’ (80) but they realised it was rubbish so it didn’t last long. Hopefully the finale will have all the fireworks and soul that this one is missing, although interestingly political protests around the world, from Thailand and Hong Kong to the United States, have seen people adopt the three fingered salute used in the series, as well as graffiti slogans from the franchise, which is extremely impressive – are the filmmakers up to the task of delivering on the final instalment?

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