Swamp Thing 3.17: People Make Choices

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“The film couldn’t and doesn’t rely on its special effects,” said director Wes Craven, erroneously. “As the producers went for the person who did the effects on the basis of who gave the lowest quote, you can understand why I had to make the film more of a human experience.”

Which is all very well — I like a human experience as much as the next guy — but the fact is that Swamp Thing absolutely does rely on its special effects, because the non-human is the lead character. This is a superhero movie about a big green monster who saves a beautiful woman from a mean wizard, which means you’re going to need, at minimum, a credible monster, woman and wizard. A story like that can’t just skate by on insights into the human condition, especially since I don’t think Swamp Thing has any of those, either.

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Swamp Thing 3.16: Suiting Up

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I suppose that now is as good a time as any to start assigning blame.

We’re currently thirty minutes into a ninety-minute Swamp Thing movie, which means it’s time for them to stop dicking around with opossums and go ahead and show us Swamp Thing. So here he is in long shot, emerging from the mire to bang on a boat, and save the day.

You don’t see a lot of him, right away. A muscular green arm grabs the bad guy’s head, and throws him off the boat. Then there’s a shot of the monster hitting the boat and turning it over, and then we see him from behind, carrying an unconscious Cable out of the danger zone.

So you know how sometimes in monster movies you only get to see little pieces of the monster — a fang, a claw, a tentacle or two — because they want to save the thrilling reveal for later in the film? Yeah, that’s not what’s happening right now.

This isn’t whetting our appetite. It’s managing our expectations.

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Everything Somewhere

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,

It was silly of me, I suppose, to hope that a follow-up to WandaVision, Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home would be anything but disappointing; I just didn’t expect it to be as disappointing as this. I guess sometimes green means stop.

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Ghost Rider 31.1: We Are Going to Have to Stop Finding Things Cool

Ghost Rider

Once again, I’m taking my life in my hands, performing the incredible daredevil feat of getting drunk and talking about terrible non-MCU Marvel movies on the Signal Watch podcast. This time, host Ryan Steans and I take apart the 2007 Nicolas Cage barnburner Ghost Rider, the first movie ever filmed entirely on the side of a guy’s van.

This movie has — 18 second pause — everything, if you like people who drive fast and talk slow. Nicolas Cage plays a mentally-uncertain motorcycle riding daredevil, who sells his soul to the Devil for a bag of magic beans and turns into a flaming-skull CGI desktop screensaver, battling a cadre of mean demons and that one guy who tried to steal a girl’s purse.

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Swamp Thing 3.14: Mister A

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So I believe that this is the moment in Swamp Thing — when the villain tears off his lookalike skinsuit made out of another person’s face, and it turns out to just be a different guy, who sits down quietly and introduces himself — that the real disappointment sets in, and you realize that this movie might not be the rocket sled to adventure that you were hoping for.

“You have heard of, but never seen me,” says the tired old man, settling himself in a chair with a sigh, “so I will introduce myself. My name is Arcane.” And that is literally the only thing that we ever know about him.

Is he a doctor, a dictator or a drug lord? Is he a cult leader? Is he a criminal? Why did they say he was dead? Why are there people who risk their lives for him? Does he have employees, or worshippers? I have dozens of questions about who this character is supposed to be, and none of them are answered in the film in any way. His name is Arcane. The end.

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Swamp Thing 3.13: The Birth of Tragedy

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Welcome back to another episode of What Doesn’t Make Sense in the First Twenty-Five Minutes of Swamp Thing, my personal quest to puzzle out what the hell anybody is talking about in this movie.

Just to be clear, I am fully aware that the abyss is gazing also into me. I’m becoming the confusing, nonsensical and poorly-lit creature, muttering biology words in the corner of my crowded laboratory. Someday I will be free of this lab scene, but not today. Not today.

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Swamp Thing 3.12: The Hostiles

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And then the island is overrun by malefactors and nogoodniks, emerging from the mud flats. Dr. Alec Holland has just made his amazing scientific breakthrough — like, literally in the last sixty seconds, he made it — and suddenly, this is a base under siege.

I don’t know if you remember all those guards with guns who were scattered around the landscape outside the lab, but every single one of them has either been shot, run away or turned out to be just a cardboard cutout with “guard” written on the front. As far as the main characters are concerned, they are alone on the moon with no outside assistance, surrounded by a tribe of terrible people who are dead set on ruining everybody’s day.

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Swamp Thing 3.11: Interruptus

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I suppose I’m just a romantic old fool, really, but I like to see the young people enjoying themselves. They’re standing in a crowded corner of a stifling set in South Carolina, surrounded by nonsensical movie biology and running out of money with every tick of the clock, but right now — just for this moment — Swamp Thing is an appealing movie.

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